Faith’S Lesson: The Chronicles of Barrow’S Hollow

By Anne Radcliff

By turns lyrical and touching, set amid a landscape of beauty, Faiths Lesson - The Chronicles of Barrows Hollow takes the reader on travels with a turn-of-the-century New England heroine. Armed with tenacious self-reliance and wit, bolstered by faith and values, the young girl finds herself in a world of circumstance quite unlike that of her own. Struggling with her stirring feelings for a suitor of means and privilege, Faith is forced to confront her past, her roots, and her truest test of priority in life. Lost family members and seemingly lost hope converge to lead Faith to her most important decision.

Faiths Lesson captures the readers imagination as the struggles, hopes, and dreams of a young girl and the feverish progress of her years have become a series of vignettes, as though they were a recollection of a dream.

Nothing remains now of those times, save a majestic memory. As this narrative recollects, you are invited to share those memories, which until now have remained safe in the hallowed quiets of Barrows Hollow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inspiring Voices
• Release date: Feb 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781462409174

Anne Radcliff

Anne Radcliff practiced law in Pennsylvania for over two decades. She received a political science/English degree from Colgate University and a JD from Case Western Reserve University. With six legal titles, countless articles, and a collection of poems previously published, Radcliff now pursues her passion for writing fiction. She resides on the southwest coast of Florida.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The Winds Begin

She spotted his eyes before she saw the knife; and she realized immediately from his fearsome countenance that his distorted heart, ripped open by anger and disgrace, was out for revenge. Negotiating for her own life, she whispered to the desperate man in reassuring and calming tones. You don’t want to do this. Let me call someone to take you home. The man with the knife shook his head stubbornly, his maddened eyes flashed and defiance overtook him. He lifted his arm, knife in hand, not allowing her a further moment to dissuade him.

The seconds that ensued found Faith’s senses spinning uncontrollably. Her mind flashed to her grandmother at home, to her writing, and to the meaning that she found in words. For a fleeting instant, she thought about Archie, her basset hound, restlessly anticipating his daily treat when she walked through the door at the end of the day. Images raced through her mind in nonsensical order.

Her thoughts rushed to the scolding admonitions that she would hear for letting this sort of thing happen. Faith, how many times have I told you not to be in places alone? She could hear the warning aphorism of her grandmother’s better safe than sorry remonstration. Then there were her best friends who had been part of her major life events, from her first romance gone awry, through journalism school, her marriage and the birth of her child, and onto the surprise 40th birthday party that they had just thrown for her in the back room of Barrow’s Coffee Shop. Their faces, wrung dry from worry, wrenched her heart. She could already hear their pained entreaties, please don’t leave us, Faith; stay with us. The very last vision that she managed as the searing blade altered her life forever was that of Cameron: would she see him again?

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T he day started like any other day. How could she have known that this day was to be so very different? Precisely one hour before she was due in court to cover the highly publicized Finch murder trial, Faith sat inflexibly at her writing table, focusing intently upon a large manila-colored package; anticipation and trepidation intermingling uncomfortably in the gap between her throat and her heart. Her psyche was filled with misgivings and thoughts shot through her mind with logic assuring her that what she viewed before her was either a delusion carried forth by the fatigue of writing or a jest in the worst possible of t aste.

Mechanically plowing through a barrage of telephone messages scribbled upon little pink slips that represented the latest updates about the trial, this Friday was beginning like most. She had depleted the full week of its energy reviewing the case. She had been at her desk in the office for almost two hours already and it was just 8:00 a.m. Before she had put her first cup of coffee to her lips, the battle flags were raised and the din of journalistic madness commenced anew.

The calls would start well before Beth arrived. Faith would answer them, trying to mimic the spirited enthusiasm of her secretary. There were no signs of white flags in the distance and Faith knew that she would be soldiering on through yet another weekend barricaded in her office, researching new stories and outlining investigative reports.

In the interim, between penning notes about Mrs. Pembridge and her husband’s alleged dalliance with their daughter’s gymnastics coach and querying Mr. MacCallum about his wife’s newly found interest in their farm hand, Faith noticed an odd manila package on her desk.

A streak of broad calligraphy on the front of the envelope displayed the words faith-healer. One hand-sketched star was carefully drawn just below her name; perchance an unforgettable reminiscence of sunnier moments in Faith’s earlier days. Faith immediately recalled Cameron, for only he had called her faith-healer as a moniker of affection. He would often tell her that she was his faith-healer because she believed in him, no matter the circumstance or the challenge—that because she believed in him, he could do anything; and that her faith in him would heal him in his most trying of times. He pinned to her the name faith-healer with all the love in his heart. Could anyone else know this private sign?

Through all of their years together, Faith never had tired of hearing the way in which he spoke that phrase. It was only her dear Cameron who had ever drawn little stars on every mailing or letter he had sent to her. Every bouquet of roses bore a card with a star, scribbled on love notes, and inscribed in books; and even on his wedding gift to her—a beautiful photo album, was the telltale star…Cameron’s calling card.

How preposterous, she mused. Get hold of yourself and just unseal it, she ordered herself. Faith was not one who came undone easily. It had been a long while since that had happened to her; but Faith realized that she was still vulnerable. She pulled apart the flap of the envelope to reveal a package of photos. She gasped in disbelief, and she was almost amused at her remarkable reaction as she thumbed through the stack of familiar photographs. Examining the pictures for particulars, she sat bolt upright in her seat; a cold spur ran up her spine like ice on a burn. Her eyes fell upon a photograph of her adorable pouting Anna riding the yellow horse at the carousel. Faith recalled it instantly. Anna always wanted to ride the blue horse, but it was always taken. The photos depicted a time in her life that Faith thought long over…something that she had been burying in a graveyard of memory. The package was filled with her reminiscences, something so personal to her. Attached to the last photograph in the stack was an index card with an instruction neatly typed across the thick yellow cardstock: Meet me at the bridge.

By this time, Faith had bounded out of her chair infuriated that someone would send to her something so cruel. Faith was certain that her heart had stopped beating. Just as Faith began to draw a strained breath through an air that felt as thick as cotton, her intercom buzzed. As she struggled to regain her composure, Faith found her voice to acknowledge her secretary’s page. Thanks, Beth. I didn’t hear you come in. I’ll take the call, choked Faith. The call dropped as Faith picked up the line. Oh well, she’ll send it in again, Faith shrugged, knowing that the caller would be re-connected. The red light on her telephone console illuminated again. Thank you Beth, I’ve got it now, Faith announced. This time, the call did not drop and an almost familiar, yet eerily undefined voice on the line sent a paralyzing shudder through Faith. Is that you? she whispered as she heard the caller’s words. How can it be? Faith continued. An electric current shot through her. Faith was instantly lost in flashing images from her past. She shut her eyes to stop them.

Faith-healer? the voice on the line had queried. She dropped the telephone. At that moment Beth burst through the office door. Come on Faith, you’ve got to go, Beth admonished. I have your notepad for the Finch trial and… before Beth could finish the sentence, Faith whisked by her, barely disguising her reaction.

I’m not going to court now, Faith proclaimed. Have someone else cover it, please, Beth; I’ve got to leave! Reschedule it please; I have an emergency, directed the anxious writer. Faith watched as Beth stood in dismay; her shocked expression slowly working its way to her lips as she could barely mouth her reply, wha…what’s going on? Faith heard Beth manage to call out to her as she slammed the door smartly in a hurried exit.

Faith was down the stairs in seconds, taking them two at a time. Her pace was panicked and her heart was pounding so violently within her chest that she was certain that passersby on the street could hear it beating as she rounded the block. It can’t be him, she told herself, trying to calm her racing mind. It’s impossible!

She let her mind drift away from the trauma of the morning to settle upon Anna. What she would have given to see Anna again! She wanted to see both of them; to talk with them once more; perhaps to hear a word spoken in one of their voices. She recalled the giggling laughter of little Anna.

How she missed that! It had been just yesterday it seemed. Not really. The whole of a year had passed since she lost them. Her happy life slipped away from her so fast. Faith detested the highway after that. She recoiled from it at all times; taking back roads and traveling out of her way just to avoid seeing that road. She had had the perfect family, or so it seemed in memory. Of course, there were those crazy days; those arguments that should never have happened over something that really did not matter. There were the days that she and Cameron would pass one another like strangers while cramming three days of work into one, barely saying hello to one another as they crossed paths in the kitchen. The part that survived all of those hectic, frenzied days, was the love that each carried for the other. They knew it was there. It was the glue that held them together. It moved them through everything. It was real. Was anything else real?

Month after month, Faith smothered her loss with work; taking on more and more assignments while pushing her writings to success and to acclaim in the little town. She buried her pain in the problems of others, writing about them, exploring them…losing herself. Faith was struggling. She knew it. She was going through the motions of life…waiting to live again. But when? How would it happen for her? The writer in her was searching for truth. What was at the end of her search? Was this all there was?

Faith raced to the bridge as butterflies fluttered inside of her. Moving through the shadows, she strode ever closer toward the bridge with a long, graceful step; her hair loose and flowing uncontrollably past her shoulders. Her clever hazel eyes were tired; and when she moved nearer to the bridge, she could not bring herself to look at the spot where, only five years earlier, Cameron had proposed to her. She avoided turning her eyes to that point; instead pretending to watch the water as she drew closer to the bridge. After Cameron and Anna died, Faith returned to work, immediately craving a distraction and taking on anything that would allow her to avoid her suffering, her loss. Her work overtook her life, consumed it; and she walled herself into a place where she wanted to feel nothing ever again. Somewhere beyond the safety of her self-imposed isolation, she yearned to understand that there was more to life…more to death—but she was afraid to feel. Her pace slowed as she moved nearer to the bridge. Faith commanded herself to swallow her heightening apprehension and to arrange her wild thoughts. She backed away, stunned by her emotions as a warm light shone in the spot where she could almost see Cameron.

The bridge had not been altered at all since her last outing there with Cameron. It was windswept, aged, and calm; with rays of sunshine darting through gnarled timber and cracked boards. It always had been her and Cameron’s out-of-the-way escape. He had arranged their first meeting there she recalled—a summer picnic.

She closed her eyes to summon up the special moments that they had shared in that very place when, suddenly, his familiar voice encircled her. The sound of it bounced along the water’s edge and back again to Faith’s ears. Faith turned toward the sound in impulsive expectation, her eyes adjusting to the light spreading across the bridge. Her gaze fell upon Cameron. Was it possible? Cameron appeared exactly as he had only one year ago. His keen jaw perfectly angled, his bright intense stare penetrating, his wavy hair tussled and playful.

She shut her eyes tightly, squeezing them closed and willing her senses to stop tormenting her. As she opened them again, she was certain that this invention of her wild imagination would have vanished like a softly blowing breeze. You’re not real, she asserted. I’m making this up. Too many years lost in my notebooks and I am finally losing my mind, she thought, almost collapsing at the vision of him.

"I am here, he guaranteed, and I had to talk to you. Faith, you need to know that there is more than you think. Faith found a long buried sorrow surge within her, bubbling from the depths of her being like a pot about to boil. She had been filled with unspoken grief. Faith was awestruck by Cameron’s voice, his presence. I know that it was terrible for you after I was gone, the way you hurt so deeply. I understand that you were trying to survive by shutting out your pain, he acknowledged. Faith, you need to know, need to believe, that it is all so much more than you can imagine and I’ll be waiting here for you when you come home. Anna will too. She loves you very much and she wants you to know that she really did like the yellow horse in that picture of us riding the carousel." He took her shaking hand, pulling her close to him and he gave her a wispy kiss.

She felt an odd numbness spread through her and then dissipate like a gentle wave. In its place, she felt a glow and a tender awareness. Her disbelief vanished, replaced with a serene and comforting understanding. She had longed to find a comfort and a peace in her heart. Something that would water the seeds deeply rooted in her soul. She needed to discover that glimpse of understanding that allows one to find a purpose and a center to one’s life. In that moment, the tears of grief that had so dampened her heart began to dry in the light of the summer sun. The truth she needed to find, found her. I believe in you Cameron. You’re my faith-healer, but she was speaking to herself. Cameron had stepped into a spreading beam of summer sun. She turned and walked toward the light at the far end of the bridge, warmth and hope filling her soul as a wind began to whistle through the trees.

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Emerging into the sunlight, Faith gradually opened her eyes to see beams of light dancing through the window. She was lying in a reclined hospital bed, and her friends were at her bedside, noticeably encamped in an apparently lengthy vigil. She whispered Cameron’s name too weakly for them to hear. Faith’s stirring and obvious expression of bewilderment prompted instant explanation from her friends. You were stabbed by a man whom you interviewed about the Finch murder, Beth disclosed immediately. The doctors didn’t think you’d make it, but you’re going to be fine, Beth assured her. Faith took in the words as if she were hearing a fairy tale. No, she rejoined, for she knew what had happened to her. I went to the bridge…the hollow… she tried to explain, straining to sit up. I found you on the floor of your office dear, Beth corrected. You really need to lock that office door if you’re going to be there alone. You just rest now, Beth directed…you get some good rest. As Beth closed the door to the tiny hospital room, Faith listened to the wind bleating at the window over her bed. Her mind was a whirl of confusion and her body ached. The room seemed suddenly quite small indeed as her focus transfixed in a dazed stare at the window. Everything around her was utterly transformed she thought. Slowly, Faith closed her eyes completely and she listened to the howl of the wind encircle her.

CHAPTER TWO

Faith Meets the Wind

I t was another time. A tintype haze dissolved into yesteryear as the northwest wind blew wildly at the lozenged panes of the windows and whistled through the rustic chimneys of the stone manor. Feeling completely breathless, Faith rushed from the room. She rounded the landing of the large center staircase and she ran up the stairs as she struggled for air at each step. Once in her guest chamber, Faith threw open a set of large French doors to the balcony hoping to feel a cooling breeze. Silently, she stood in the center of the grand room feeling foggy and confused. She paused before the ornate dressing table observing her reflection in the polished silver mirror of the dressing stand, seeming hardly to recognize the woman staring back at her from the glass. Her mind raced in distraught torment. What should she do? she wondered. Why was this happening to her?

Instinctively, she removed her traveling bag from the elaborately carved wardrobe and she drew therefrom the lovely little compass that Cameron had given to her years before. Her trembling fingers touched the letters etched into a star-shaped pattern—"TO FAITH-ALWAYS-CAMERON." Her fingertips faltered upon the word, ALWAYS. With tremulous hands, she threw off her costly gown and she donned her dark traveling suit. She left her hair as it was as she numbly knotted a crimson scarf about her head. She would slip away quietly, perhaps to the train station, and then be gone before the gala evening had drawn to a close. She hoped not to be seen as she made her way through the massive doors of the manor house.

A half mile off, beyond the estate, lay a road that stretched in the opposite direction to Roseleigh; a road that Faith never had travelled, but often she had noticed, and she had wondered where it led. She had heard Reggie’s coachman mention it as being the shortest way to town through the woods. Toward that road she directed her steps. No reflection was to be allowed now; not a single glance was to be cast back, Faith instructed herself. Not one thought was to be given to the past for she feared that the very thought of it would dissolve her courage and break her energy. She skirted fields, hedges, and lanes until the sun began to offer an oddly orange and pink glow in the east. Her shoes were soon wet with dew as the wind began to find new breath. Faith pondered her drear flight and wandering with agony she thought of that which she had left. She thought of Reggie now—in his room—watching the sunrise; hoping that she should soon come to say that she would stay with him and be his. Her flight, she was sure, as yet was undiscovered; she knew that she could not answer him thus.

Faith adhered straight into the path; she held onto a hollow that she saw deeply furrowing the brown hillside; she waded knee-deep in its dark growth; she turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle, she sat down under it. High banks were about her; the crag protected her head with the sky above her. Some time passed measured by her weary, trembling limbs. Hours ticked by as she braced a staunch wind and chill. Faith believed it may be a full day or more of foot travel before she could reach the human habitation of Queenston. Worn out with this torture of thought, she slipped to her knees.

Night was coming, and her planets were rising; a safe, still night, too serene for the companionship of fear she thought. We know that God is everywhere, but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us, she thought. His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence, Faith pondered as she rose to her knees to pray for Reggie’s forgiveness. Looking up, she, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty heavens and she felt the might and strength of God. Sure was she of His efficiency to save what He had made, convinced she grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. She recalled her grandmother’s reminder to be thankful to God in all trials and she turned her prayer to thanks for giving