Haint Babies

By Virginia Bryan

Bee Heath has always wondered about the circumstances of her birth. Her parents have never treated her well. She has always felt unwanted and lost. Worse, her parents had no pictures of her from birth to first grade, and that discrepancy has always puzzled her. Her parents would never answer questions about such matters. Then a woman who claims to be her birth mother leaves property to her in her will, including a huge mansion. Neighbors claim the house is haunted, and there have been reports of strange noises and lights at the home. Many say they hear a baby crying unconsolably inside. Bee is a modern, take-charge woman, not easily scared. But when she makes a horrific discovery in the attic, she faces terror and fear as she realizes not only her life but innocent others may be in danger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Virginia Bryan
• Release date: Oct 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466051614

Virginia Bryan

In the past, I did a lot of writing and got a lot of rejection slips. Then I divorced my first husband and went back to school to earn two computer degrees. Those qualifications led to a job in computer technical support for 12 years, but that work ended when the major company I worked for started sending all their help desk support to India.For years, I had been licensed to sell real estate, and decided it was time to switch careers once again. My business was steadily growing until the unfortunate collapse of the economy caused the housing market to tank. Business turned bad for everyone, not just me; but there was a silver lining. My current husband insisted this was my mandate to get back to writing.I was born in Burke County, located smack in the middle of the ancient and storied Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. My family moved away; but a vast number of my kin people still live there, many on Mineral Springs Mountain – the setting for many of my tales of betrayal, deceit, death, ghosts and hidden portals to other worlds.Burke County is also the site of the Brown Mountain Lights, mysterious, colorful balls of light that have been seen for hundreds of years and yet manage to defy scientific attempts to prove they do not exist. There is no doubt they are real; but to this date, no one has deciphered their true origin or meaning. Furthermore, locals swear to seeing ghosts on a daily basis, and not only at night. Gain their confidence, and they will share stories of ghost sightings even in the bright sunlight.I know that forbidding landscape all too well, having grown up steeped in the culture, privy to ancient tales of love and loss and hidden – and at times irresistible – forces. In my books, I share tales based on that mountain background, and the stories told to me.My favorite hobby is reading. There is nothing like the excitement of cracking open a new book, and I would read 24 hours a day if I could. However, even I cannot read enough, fast enough. So many books, so little time! I also do crafts, make jewelry, do art projects and paint (also have a degree in Commercial Art).Writing is my all-time favorite idea for a career. In the meantime, I still sell real estate as bills have to be paid!

Book preview

Prologue

Requiem for a Lost Child

You came to me a tiny bud

Tightly curled with limpid grace

I drew you close and marveled

At perfection of your face.

I wanted so to protect you, to shield

You from perils that before you lay;

To love and cherish you, keeping back

Sickness and pain, holding death at bay.

You were a just-opened blossom

When winter’s freezing winds burst apart

Those bright petals, strewing tatters,

Crumpled and dry, cross my broken heart.

Now winter has come, winds so cold;

Neath the hard soil new life surges;

The earth is brown; sky hard and bold;

Spring will come and new life emerges.

Secrets © 2011

Chapter 1

You loved me once when I was new;

Held me near and to your heart drew

Me closely, and my cheek you kissed;

But that was then. What did I miss?

Secrets © 2011

People around here say that place is full of haints, said Lena.

Some folks say they seen them, she continued. And they hear babies crying, all night long. Some folks are afraid of that house. I saw a visible shudder creep over her sturdy frame.

Lena Knox is my cousin, a strong hills woman with the characteristic black hair and bright green eyes of the original settlers.

We were standing in front of the house I had just inherited in Waldens.

Waldens is a town located in the foothills of Burke County, North Carolina, situated in the area of Morganton and Valdese. A picturesque little town, it covers only about 5 miles, with about a tenth of a mile being water sources, and has a population of approximately four thousand.

Waldens was settled by folks from the Waldensian Valley of Italy. Some early residents wanted to name the town Waldensia, but decided after much debate and many arguments that Waldens was a more Americanized version that would help them fit in better in their new home.

Waldens is the town my family came from, and many of its residents are related to me in some way or another, whether by birth or marriage. They are not without fault of course, but they are basically good people, hard working, hard loving and very resourceful.

Haints are what my mountain kin call ghosts, and older residents knew without a doubt that Waldens, and indeed the whole of Burke County, was full of them. And they didn’t mind telling you so.

My mother liked to scare her six children with ghost stories from the past, and I vividly remember some that gave me nightmares as a small child.

There was the story of the great uncle who moonshined, making what was called ‘white lightning.’ He had several stills back up in a holler and made a pretty good living at it. The trouble was he was his own best customer, quite often consuming much of his inventory. He was a mean drunk and would subsequently get in a lot of trouble because of it. Although he was related to me, I have to admit he may not have been the best person, or the most honest one.

Now, this event happened some time ago, when the world was younger and people lived closer to the earth. I won’t say folks were superstitious, but there were some who were quite certain there were unseen beings among us.

One night, my uncle was on one of his moonshine runs, careening down a winding, narrow, switchback mountain road in an old Model-A, the kind that had running boards on each side. He had souped it up for speed and agility, and it took those curves like a hound dog with a panther clinging to its back. Still, he was trying to drive a little more cautiously than he might have otherwise. He had a stock of moonshine nestled carefully under a patchwork quilt, but he could still hear the gallon Mason jars clinking against each other. He had already drunk about a quart before he even got started, and he didn’t want to sacrifice any more of it to breakage.

He said later that it had been a strange evening all around, with fearsome noises around his hidden still and weird sounds in the woods. At first, he thought it was ‘revenoors,’ as the mountaineers called federal agents, but none came forward. All too soon he became convinced it was ghosts who had come to call. Recently, he’d had a couple of his hard-drinking customers die in wrecks. Though he would not consciously admit to such a thought, he may have been privately afraid they might have returned to seek retribution.

It was a particularly moonless night, and the roads were full of shadows and mysterious dark places. The wind was swirling around the mountain, rocking the car back and forth; and he had to concentrate to keep it on the road. He claimed later he had been hearing strange, ghost voices in that breeze, and it had already made him nervous long before he passed that dark spot in the road where he felt the haint jump on his running board.

He swore to the day he died that such a thing happened, and no one doubted his word because most had survived their own experiences with ghosts. He claimed the haint rode beside him the entire trip down the mountain, clinging to his driver’s side door and screaming in his face. Other relatives who saw him later that night said he was white as a sheet and shaking like a leaf in winter. What happened when he reached the bottom he never said, but others had their suspicions. He wouldn’t talk about it, but he got very nervous when someone else did. Whatever it was, some people claimed the horrific experience made him rethink his ways and reform some of his bad habits. One thing was certain -- he did start going to church, and did quit drinking, or at least toned it down a bit, so perhaps they were right.

Another favorite ghost story described the night when, as a young girl, my mother attended a wake. People don’t much do it anymore but back in the day, the body of the deceased was taken back home and put on display. Neighbors and townspeople would come to pay their respects. And perhaps for some, to gloat.

The departed man was not popular; indeed, he was legendary for his cruelty and miserliness and he was deemed by many to be the meanest man on the mountain. Most likely, there were some folks who were more than happy to see the end of him.

My mother, who was a very small child at that time, said they were all sitting around talking when they heard what sounded like chains being dragged around the tiny log cabin. The men suspected that a cow had gotten out and was roaming freely about. So they went outside to put the cow back in the barn. Eerily, they found nothing near the house, or by the barn. With the men safely back inside, the racket began afresh; and they went out again to find nothing. After that, all parties present were very much reluctant to venture outside again that night. There was a general consensus of agreement that the chain rattling was a sign the devil had come to retrieve the soul of that evil man. Nobody wanted to interfere with the devil’s work, lest their own soul might be harvested as well. Needless to say, no one wanted to invoke the devil’s wrath; that would come soon enough.

From my mother’s experience, and stories that other relatives told me, it’s no surprise that ghosts, otherwise known as haints, have been an ongoing fact of life in Burke County since its first settlement. Conversely, many of the old timers have their own eerie tales of similar experiences with the spirit world.

One of the most famous, and most enduring, ghost stories is the account of the Brown Mountain Lights. Not a recent ghost tale; these lights have been seen and reported at least since the year 1200.

There are a number of legends associated with the lights. The earliest have to do with a huge war that happened in the year 1200 between the Cherokee and Catawba Indians close to Brown Mountain. Cherokees felt the lights were carried by Indian maidens looking for their husbands or lovers who died in that ancient fight on the mountain. Early settlers believed the lights were spirits of Indians killed in that magnificent battle.

One more modern story is of a farmer from the Low country, perhaps near Charleston, who came to hunt and subsequently became lost. Learning of his master’s fate, his slave followed him vowing to bring him back home. The story was that he was seen over many nights swinging a lantern in search of his master. Unfortunately, the slave himself disappeared as well. No trace of him was ever found, either, and legend has it that he still haunts those hills looking for the missing man, still carrying the lantern.

In 1850 a woman disappeared, and it was said by some that her husband murdered her. One night, a search was conducted for her. While the search went on, strange lights appeared across the mountain. The woman’s body was not found. Shortly thereafter, the husband too disappeared. Some years later, a woman’s skeleton found on the mountain was identified as hers, and the lights began appearing again and have done so since.

No definitive answer has been found for the Brown Mountain lights. Some have blamed them on gases, minerals or radioactive ore, but no proof exists of that. Some have said the lights are reflections of car headlights, but they have been seen long before motor vehicles even existed. Some believe they are reflections of light from nearby towns, but they occurred long before there was such a thing as electricity.

Such a story may be hard to believe for some folks, but those lights still appear today, and people still visit the area hoping to see them. And the fact is, there has never been a rational explanation for their existence. No wonder ghosts are still a quite real presence in Burke County.

And that may be one reason why, standing in front of the huge house, Lena regarded it with a touch of fear. Looking at it, she visibly shivered. She couldn’t have been cold; it was 88 degrees that day.

Come on Lena. It’s 2011. Do you really think there are ghosts in there? I asked her, surveying those ancient rocks and parapets. Just looks like an old house to me.

I wouldn’t doubt it a bit, she insisted, and then added, Nobody’s lived in that house for awhile. One evening, one of my friends went across the mountain over yonder, Lena pointed vaguely across the mountain, to see her mama. By the time she got back, it was gittin so dark she almost couldn’t see. And she tol' me she heard a baby crying in there. It wailed and wailed like it done lost its mother. She shivered again. But the thing was, there were no lights on in the house. No lights at all. When she tol’ me about it, gave me the willies.

Indeed. That wouldn’t surprise me a bit. Well, actually, what did surprise me was that anything would give Lena the 'willies' because she was one of those no nonsense, elemental mountain women who lived close to the ground, a sturdy woman that nothing seemed to shake. One or two had been known to kill a rattlesnake in her kitchen. What didn’t surprise me was the story of a ghost baby crying mournfully in a ghostly house filled, perhaps, with lost souls.

Too many stories; too many ghosts, and they seemed to be present always, waiting at the fringes of reality.

And now here we were, gazing at this imposing, huge three-story Victorian mansion built on the side of Mineral Springs Mountain. It was quite a sight to see. It was constructed of all mountain stone, as many buildings of that time had been – rocks were omnipresent and free. It had porches and turrets and gargoyles and other strange beings carved into the rock. It looked like one of those massive, hulking Transylvanian castles that populated Vampire horror movies. Standing outside, we could see what appeared to be thick, dusty curtains of faded dark blue velvet hanging at the windows, tattered and faded in spots, with tiebacks that exposed the middle panes. Those windowpanes looked hazy, the windowsills dusty, and spiders spun gossamer webs in random corners.

In 1985, a huge forest fire crossed Mineral Springs Mountain and destroyed many of the homes clinging to the hillside (most having belonged to my relatives). This foreboding Victorian mansion was one of the few that didn’t totally burn, quite obviously because rock is nearly indestructible. But the stones still displayed black smoke stains where the fire swirled around the home, trying to consume it and perhaps send it back to hell, if you could believe what the locals said about it.

The fire must have also burned many of the trees around the house, but that was over 25 years ago, and nature has a way of restoring itself. More trees had grown up to replace those that perished. While they were not as tall as some of the remaining old forest trees, they had reached a goodly size. There was a grove of them surrounding the house, and the underbrush had grown thick and dense once again.

Over to one side, set back from the road, there was another much smaller building, again built of rock, that might have once been used a separate garage. It was mostly hidden by the surrounding brush, reminiscent of a witch’s house that may have once been visited by Hansel and Greta. What had once been a gravel driveway leading to it was now a copse of underbrush and pokeberry thick with glossy black berries growing profusely on red stems.

When I was a child, my mother hated pokeberry. Ever hungry birds, just trying to survive, would devour the berries, themselves quite poisonous. The birds’ systems were unable to digest those tainted fruits, and they would subsequently be dropped on the wash hanging on our clotheslines. Left would be the nasty red stains, and the clothes would have to be washed again. Needless to say, nobody much liked pokeberry. Here, they were everywhere and seemed to conform quite well to the atmosphere surrounding this ghostly mansion.

The house before us really didn’t fit in with the normally modest homes built elsewhere in the foothills town of Waldens. It looked to be at least a hundred years old and must have been the talk of the town when it was erected.

I looked up at that massive façade, trying to imagine what it must have been like to live in such an impressive mansion when it was in its best days. Now, it seemed to be abandoned and deserted, a shadow of its former self.

My eyes caught a flash of movement -- just a glimpse of a dark figure in an upper window. As if realizing it had been seen, it darted away quickly, a black shadow flitting across the glass. Unsure what I had seen, I blinked and looked again. The window stared back blankly.

Did you see that? I asked Lena.

She glanced at me. What?

I thought I saw a figure in that window, right over there. I pointed to the window in question.

She gazed upward. I don’t see nothing, she said.

And neither did I, now. Maybe, with all this talk about ghosts, I was just letting my imagination run away from me. It must have been the reflection of a cloud, or a shadow from a nearby tree. I looked behind us. There was no tree close enough to be reflected in the window. The sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue.

You keep talking about ghosts, I joked. Now you got me seeing them too.

She gave me a baleful stare, not amused. She made a sound of dismay. Don’t go making fun of something you don’t understand. We’re not a bunch of backward hillbillies just because we might believe there can really be ghosts.

I realized that I had offended her, but I didn’t bother to answer. How could I tell her what I really thought about such nonsense? These were my people, sure, but this was 2011 and I couldn’t help but think such talk belonged back in the dark pages of history.

I regret it now, but I should have paid more attention to what she said. Later, I would wish I had listened a little better.

But here at this moment, when the idea of owning this house seemed to be an exciting adventure, all the talk and the rumors just seemed to be just that – talk and nonsense.

I looked again at the house. Once, it had been a beautiful castle. Now, it just looked like it needed a lot of repair.

What have I gotten myself into? I wondered.

Not that I had any choice in the matter. I had just recently found out that I had inherited it from a woman who was supposedly my birth mother.

All my life I had wondered about my birth. I had often been told that I had been born in the equivalent of a tiny, log cabin in a little township called Rutherford College, so named because there was an actual college, and little else.

According to the story, I arrived in the middle of the night and came so fast there was no time to call the doctor. My dad claimed that he delivered me. He also said I was so small I could fit in his one hand. My dad was short of stature, and his hands were not that big. I was never given a name, and my birth certificate said only, baby girl.

For years, I wondered about my lineage and my parents and my birth. I had five brothers and most had black hair and brown eyes, thanks to my brown-eyed daddy, except the one that had black hair with green eyes, courtesy of my mother. But I, the changeling, had bright red hair and looked nothing like my brothers, who were no help at all. They were sound asleep when I supposedly made my entrance to the world. They only knew that when they woke up early that morning, a strange little wrinkled baby lay screaming and wriggling in their old crib. And stranger still, it was a girl, and they didn't allow girls in that family. I definitely did not fit in.

My family moved from Burke County down to Charlotte when I was a baby, so I have no childhood memory of the Waldens area. But when we would return for visits and funerals and reunions, there were always comments on how different I was from the rest of the family. And there were other comments I would overhear, really just partial phrases that made me wonder. And when I walked into the room, the talk would suddenly cease.

But the fact that puzzled me most was the lack of photos. The only ones my parents had of me were made when I started first grade and then went on from there through high school. They had no cute baby pictures, no tiny baby dressed up for church in a frilly, pink Sunday dress, as befits an only daughter. There were no toddler photos, no first step, no first solid food in the high chair, no Christmas photos on Santa’s lap, and no Easter Sunday shots with a fancy Easter Basket and colorful, dyed eggs. And most of all, there were no pictures of a doting mother or father holding an adorable, beloved daughter.

It was as if I sprang suddenly upon this earth, having somehow progressed from newborn to first grade without leaving any photo evidence. An alien baby, deposited upon this world, with no previous evidence of existence. Maybe they really did find me under a cabbage leaf.

Strange indeed. My mother said I was just being silly and shrugged off my questions. We wuz poor, she would say. We didn’t have no money for pictures.

But, I sassed back, You have pictures of all the boys.

And then she would get mad and say, You want me to fetch my switch? A switch was a branch off one of the shrubs outside. Yellow bell made a good one, lean and flexible and vicious. She could wield it like a whip. Need I say, I learned very early how angry she would get if I continued on that path.

And my dad? He was a dark and temperamental man, quick of temper and full of anger, and I dared not broach such heresy to him. Sometimes, I would overhear him arguing with my mom. She would be giving him hell, raging on and on about something, but they would shut up when they saw me listening.

I grew up, never getting the answers I wanted, and my parents passed away without ever telling me anything about my early existence. But that didn’t stop my wondering, and questions stayed with me.

I am a realtor. I work for one of the largest companies in the country, a fine company that believes in win-win and do the right thing. My name is Blakeney Heath, but everyone calls me Bee. I suspect my parents gave me that somewhat manly name because they were never happy having a girl, and perhaps an odd, mannish name might make that fact less noticeable. Trouble with that theory was that I sure didn’t look like a boy.

But conversely, I was raised like one, taught young never to be afraid of anything, especially not bugs and snakes. I would never have survived if I had not been fearless. And through our many fights and tussles, my rough and tumble brothers taught me to persevere and never give up.

My mother herself had been raised much like a boy, and she had nothing to teach me of the graces of being a girl, or even how to influence boys and get them to do my bidding. My brothers would never have allowed such heresy.

Girls at school didn’t seem to like me very much and I never seemed to fit in, perhaps because I never really learned the basic girl skills most girls know instinctively. Unfortunately, too, they managed to get very offended when I laughed at them for being afraid of a garter snake.

To make things worse, I couldn’t talk girl talk and wouldn’t act silly around boys, most of whom I regarded as just friends and not possible romantic partners. Having seen too many boys too many times in certain unflattering ways, I had no illusions about the opposite sex.

It was strange childhood, never feeling that I belonged anywhere, or that I was even wanted. Those early years were filled with wonder and doubt and unanswered questions. And a certain meanness that my parents displayed towards me. As I said, I never felt that I belonged anywhere, and my parents reinforced my angst with an uncaring and spiteful attitude.

Now here I was in the small mountain town of Waldens, standing in front of a house left to me by someone I never knew existed, an unknown, faceless person I had been told was my ‘real’ mother.

The week before, I had received an official looking letter from an attorney here, the Honorable Winston Churchill Barnstone, Esquire. The letter came with a cryptic message that he wanted to talk to me about a possible inheritance from a deceased resident of Waldens.

I have a lot of relatives in this little valley, but none of them have any money. They are all good people, by and large kind and generous of heart, but they are poor. They really would give me the shirt off their back, but might not be able to afford to buy another one for themselves.

I could not imagine any one of them leaving me anything of value. Plus, I was not aware of anyone that close to me recently passing away.

But I called the attorney at the number he had given me and explained myself and he laid a bombshell on me. Your mother left you some money and her house, he told me.

My mother? My mother passed away a few years ago, and I know for a fact she had no money. She was poor all her life, and suffered because of it. I think you have the wrong person.

Was your mother Lovelady and your father Rance Heath? he asked. What is your birth date? Do you have a birth certificate showing those were your parents?

I verified those details, still not really believing what I was being told. I confirmed that I did have a birth certificate.

So why don't we meet, said the attorney, and we will go over everything. It was the weekend. We arranged to meet in two days, on Monday.

My husband Jack was not happy about my driving to Waldens by myself. He was having to leave for an extensive, on-going training session with his company and couldn't come with me. I told him it was a two hour drive at the max. And since he was to be away for at least two weeks, I could take my time with this whole thing. If I truly was inheriting a house, I would have to do something about it. I couldn't just let it sit there and rot. As a realtor, I knew vacant and unloved houses tended to deteriorate quickly.

Well, you better clear it with Ike, Jack reminded me.

This takes a little explanation. A short time ago, I had found a dead body in a house, and a lot of money that had been in the home had gone missing. The perpetrators of the actual crime thought I stole the money and kidnapped me to try to get it back. They imprisoned me in an old barn, along with another realtor they thought had helped me steal the money. We had both suffered some fairly major injuries as a result of our treatment during captivity. We had managed to escape, and the crooks had been arrested. But going to trial takes a long time, and the police really wanted me to stay in town. Ike Brown was the detective handling the case.

Ike greeted my call with pleasure. How are you, Bee? he asked.

I think I'm pretty much recovered, I said.

Glad to hear it. You did give us quite a scare. Is this a personal call, or do you have a reason? he asked.

I explained the whole inheritance thing and he surprised me by being agreeable.

We don't really need you right at this moment, since trial date's not even been set. But I want you to take your cell so we can be in contact, if necessary. And please be careful. I do worry about you.

I thanked him for his concern, hung up and told Jack I was good to go.

I thought I heard him curse under his breath, and he did confess, I was hoping he'd say you couldn't go. He gazed at me with worry. Why don’t you wait until I can go with you?

I need to take care of this now, I reminded him.

He frowned at me and I smiled back, but it didn’t mollify him. I still don’t like it, he said.

I didn’t answer, and finally he dropped the subject. He knew me well enough to know it was useless to argue once I made up my mind.

What can I tell you about Jack? Tall and well built, he worked out and it showed. He was a strong muscular man, and even his name was manly – Jack – a testosterone loaded name that reminded me of woods and country and yes, lumberjacks. He was a good looking man, I’ll say that. And, he was, as my mountain kin folk put it, Handsome as sin. And I had to admit; the way people have always liked and enjoyed sin, that was quite handsome indeed.

His hair was the rich red of a deep merlot, and he had that fair skin that goes with it, and even still had a few freckles from childhood. I’ve always had a weakness for blue-eyed men, and he had the most beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever seen – bright blue eyes, as blue as the sky, as blue and deep as the sea, bedroom eyes. When I first met him, that old saying from the hills popped into my head, The devil has blue eyes.

And, I have to admit, he was just as cute as the proverbial button. Women liked to look at him and I didn’t blame them a bit. I liked to look at him too. And I certainly got to see a whole lot more of him than they did.

And I love Jack, I really do. He can be adorable, but he can also be a little aggravating. Now, sitting here gazing at that worried look on his face, I understood how he felt; but I had to do what I had to do. I appreciated his apprehension, but as I said; he can be a little annoying, especially here lately. Always protective of me, he had been worse than ever since that whole unfortunately kidnapping deal had gone down.

I have to be frank with you; I needed some alone time where someone wasn't asking me a million questions every time I left the house. I had been too used to being too independent for too long. Sometimes Jack seemed to think I was so helpless, but I have to remind him every now and then that I did get myself and the other realtor out of that barn and saved both our lives.

Sunday, I called my cousin Lena in Waldens. Of all my kin people (and there are scores), she has always been my favorite. She is only about 12 or 13 years older than I am, and the closest cousin to my own age. My mother was the youngest of twelve children and had grown adult brothers and sisters when she was born. Consequently, most of my cousins were my parents’ age and seemed remote and distant. It was hard for me to relate to them on the same level, as they were adults and I was just a child.

And one thing I can say about Lena is that she has always loved me. That’s the all-time best thing I can say about her. Ever since I could remember when we traveled back to Waldens, she has been the one who hugged me, kissed me and played with me. She gave me the grounding that I needed. She made me feel like a wanted and valued person and blessed me with the certainty that someone, at least one person on this earth, loved me unconditionally. And I returned her love just as strongly. Although there were not that many years between us, she was almost like the mother I had never had.

Lena worked at the hosiery mill, and I suspected she would be off work today. Most people in that small town still strictly observed Sunday. She picked up on the second ring.

Hi Lena; it’s Bee, I said.

Her delighted voice came across the line. As always she was happy to hear from me.

Bee, it’s so good to hear from you. What’s up?

I explained that I was coming to Waldens, on business I said (no need to go in great detail over the phone) and would like to see her while I was there.

I’m excited, she trilled. It’s been way too long. Never mind a hotel; I want you to stay with me.

Lena had never married. Her parents, Betsy and Camden Knox, had both been killed in a tragic accident back in 1989 when Hurricane Hugo pummeled the state of North Carolina. The mountains had been hit with torrential rains. In those tall hills, there’s nowhere for all that rain to go, except into the valleys and that caused major floods and much destruction. Her parent’s car plunged off the mountain on a switchback road washed away by water pouring straight down the mountainside.

Lena had inherited her childhood home and now lived there alone. Once, I asked her why she never married, why she never even seemed to date anyone. She hinted that she had been in love once long ago with the perfect man, but it didn’t work out. She had never found another man who suited her quite so much.

And then she confided sadly, Maybe I really missed out on life. I should have found someone else and got married, like you.

Lena, marriage isn’t the great experience some people would have you think. I caught my first husband red-handed so to speak. Actually, it was red something else, but I’m being polite here.

But you got shut of him. You have Jack now, and he seems to love you, she said.

Yes, I did, and I did love Jack but there were moments when he got on my nerves, too. I knew he loved me – he told me so all the time. But I could never understand why he wanted me. I am a little older than he. And I am not the most feminine woman – too independent, too opinionated, and I just don’t have it in me to be a silly girl.

Once, I said to him, Why do you want me? Most guys think I’m not feminine enough.

And he replied with the right words, You’re feminine enough for me. I like how you’re not afraid of bugs and snakes, and you can fix things.

Still, there were sometimes conflicts between us. Jack was raised in a family with a strongly-chauvinistic dad, and that had influenced some of his attitudes towards women. I had to tell him sometimes, This is not 1950, when he expected certain traditional behavior from me.

But listening to Lena, I had to face it. Although I had great affection for her, I sensed a dark side behind her calm exterior. I suspected she had an aversion to marriage for a reason. There could well be a skeleton in her closet, something both shameful and degrading, a secret she never wanted me to know. But I never asked. I valued our relationship too much to spoil it with questions she might not care to answer. Sometimes not knowing is best.

Bee?

I had paused much too long, wool-gathering. She was waiting for my answer. I’d love to, I said. You’re right; it’s been way too much time since I’ve been there.

I’m looking forward to it, she said happily. And the best thing is, I’m taking a few days off from work. You know, a little ‘staycation,’ as they say. It’s a good time for me.

Great. I’m meeting with the attorney at 10 a.m. When I’m finished there, I’ll come to your house.

We disconnected and I mused over how great it would be to be back in a place where I always felt so welcome.

On Monday morning, I started out early to drive Waldens to meet with the attorney. Driving there was much easier now than it had been once, a straight shot up I-77 to the I-40 junction and then a short distance to Hickory. After that, it was only a little further to Waldens just beyond Hickory. In the past, when the interstate was still fairly new, I had taken my mom to Waldens many times. She was terrified to ride on the interstate and insisted we take the old Highway 16, which had been there for what seemed like forever. I could remember all too well the long, aggravating drive up what was essentially a country road, having to poke through the small towns, getting stuck behind slow moving semis and, sometimes farm tractors, for miles.

I got off at the Flat Gap exit 111, turned right on Carolina to go to old 70, allowing my GPS to find the way.

The attorney's office was on Faet Street near the old rock school my mother had attended as a child. I turned left off Highway 70, looking for the address. I knew the GPS did a pretty good job of guiding you; but unfortunately, it’s not always exactly accurate.

I spotted the number in the middle of the block. The old white house was surrounded by a white-washed picket fence covered in ivy. Two comfortable-looking rocking chairs sat on the wide porch, one on each side of the front door.

The front yard had been converted to a small parking lot with only about six spaces. I parked beside an old pickup truck and a small Honda Civic sitting there companionably like old friends.

I strolled down the short walk to the front door. It was big, heavy and mahogany colored with a frosted glass panel. Winston Churchill Barnstone, Esquire, Attorney -at-Law was neatly lettered on the glass. I pushed open the door.

A bell tinkled in the back, and a woman came down the hallway. She was older, a little plump, with white hair, and a friendly pink face with plump cheeks. She looked like everyone’s favorite grandmother. A lace-trimmed apron would have completed the picture. Instead, she was dressed professionally and conservatively, in a black jacket with a long skirt and a severe white shirt buttoned to the neck.

She gave me a wide, warm smile, displaying perfect small teeth. How can I help you, miss? she asked with a mountain tang. The word help came out as 'hep.'

Hello, I said, I have an appointment with Mr. Barnstone.

She gave me an appraising look. Oh, yes, you must be Ms. Heath.

Yes, I am, I replied. I wondered if she were the attorney's mother. She hadn't bothered to volunteer her own name and I asked curiously, What is your name?

"Oh, I'm Pat Halley. I'm just Mr. Barnstone's assistant. I