Tessa huffed. Now she was receiving advice from Crazy Kate? “Back to the spear. Why did you bury it at the house? Because of a vision?”
Crazy Kate nodded. “Fifty years ago, I saw that a terrible sickness would come through Mystic Water just before Christmas. I saw . . .” She paused as though recalling the memory resurrected the grief along with it. “I saw that many people would become sick, and some would die.”
“The Hamiltons?” Tessa asked, sliding to the edge of her chair and staring at Crazy Kate.
“I saw Dr. Hamilton—their father—would bury his wife and all four sons.”
“Allof them?” Tessa’s hand knocked into her teacup, and amber liquid sloshed onto the saucer.
“It was tradition for the sons and their wives and children to come to Mystic Water and spend Christmas at Honeysuckle Hollow. There was nothing I could do to deter them. Mrs. Hamilton wouldn’t listen to my warnings. She never accepted that Matthias chose me as a wife.” Crazy Kate’s smile was slow. “Can you blame her?”
“But you tried to save herandthe whole family with the spear?”
Crazy Kate walked toward the suncatcher in the living room. She touched it with her fingertips. Pale, fractured light skittered across the wood floor. Tessa turned in her chair to follow Crazy Kate’s movements.
Crazy Kate sighed. “I tried, but the future is not so easily changed. The spear had been in Mama’s family for hundreds of years, and it hung in my childhood bedroom my whole life. When I married, Matthias and I moved into our own house in town, and I left the spear behind. But I snuck back in here when it was still my parents’ home one evening and took it. I couldn’t let the Hamiltons die. Icouldn’t. Not Matthias. Not Geoffrey, but . . .” Crazy Kate turned to look at Tessa, and tears streaked her weathered cheeks. “It wasn’t enough. I couldn’t save them all. We lost Benjamin and Geoffrey. They faded in the night like snuffed candles inside Honeysuckle Hollow. Lost to their fevers and fitful dreams.”
Tessa gasped. “No.” Chills rushed up her arms. “I’m so sorry. But you tried. You saved Matthias and another brother and their mom, right? They should have thanked you for that. You did all you could.”
Crazy Kate returned to the kitchen and grabbed the bottle of rosemary tea and held it up into a shaft of sunlight. The tea sparkled like sea glass. Her shadow trembled on the floor, and Crazy Kate crossed the small space and placed the bottle on the table in front of Tessa.
“Take this away. Those memories are too strong.”
Tessa grabbed the bottle. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know—”
“Don’t apologize for what you couldneverhave known. I’m going to rebury the spear, and no one should ever touch it again,” she said. “Do you understand? You may have bought the house, but this spear is mine, and it belongs there. Trudy Steele wants to see the house torn down because she’s still angry and blames Mystic Water for taking her husband, but I won’t let that happen. Matthias and I didn’t live in the house, but he still loved it and his family. He spent his life making that house a place of goodness and hope.”
Tessa paused, trying to connect pieces of the past with the present. “You didn’t take Matthias’s last name?”
“I wanted to keep my daddy’s name,” Crazy Kate admitted with a shrug. “It’s not so unusual these days, but back then it was practically a social faux pas. I never was one to follow the crowd.”
Tessa said, “How rebellious of you. I don’t understand why Trudy Steele owned the house and not you.”
Crazy Kate shook her head. “I never wanted Honeysuckle Hollow. It belonged to the Hamiltons in a way I never did. When Matthias died, he left the house to another relative, Trudy Steele.”
“But who is she?”
“Geoffrey’s widow.”
Tessa let that truth resonate in her brain before she spoke again. Crazy Kate’s first love had married someone else, and thatsomeonenow wanted to tear down Honeysuckle Hollow because Geoffrey had died there. No wonder the old lady was so bitter about it. “But her last name is Steele. Did she remarry?”
Kate nodded. “Briefly, but it didn’t last long. Why she kept his name, I’ll never know.”
“You don’t have to bury the spear. Since I own the house—or practically own it—you could keep the spear inside. I wouldn’t let anyone mess with it.”
“I’m to trust that you won’t sell it or give it back to the Cherokee Nation like Austenaco Blackstone suggested?”
“Aren’t you technically part of the Cherokee Nation? Besides, it’s yours, and you can decide whether to trust me or not,” Tessa said. “Nothing in the world would make me want to sell the spear or give it away now.”
Crazy Kate narrowed her eyes. “Why? It’s worth a lot of money. I doubt anyone alive has ever seen a spear like it.”
Tessa shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I’ve been drawn to Honeysuckle Hollow since I first stepped foot in it a few days ago. If it weren’t for you, your protection prayer, and your love, I would never have been given the chance to own it.”
“And this chance to own Honeysuckle Hollow is the right decision for you?”
Tessa chuckled. “It’s probably the most impulsive, stupidest decision I’ve made in a couple of years. It’ll probably bankrupt me, butmy heartis telling me yes.”
Crazy Kate smiled. “Finally, you are learning. You’re a slow one.”
