1:Olivia
AUGUST 1940
Olivia Ashe savored the sunset as light folded into the evening hours, casting a rainbow of color across the golden lake. White blooms trumpeted the fading light along the path, her moonflowers—Datura innoxia—celebrating the quiet hours. The world outside was embroiled in conflict, but here, among her flowers, she found peace.
She’d spent much of her afternoon staring at a blank page on her typewriter, neatly rolled into place as it waited for her words.
Once again, she’d failed.
The page pleaded for a story, but she had none to offer. Instead of the beginnings for her next novel, she had typed a letter to her publisher, asking for another extension. By the first of the year, she’d promised, she would deliver a manuscript.
By then, she prayed, the stubborn block would be gone.
In years past, when words refused to come, she would spend an afternoon paddling across her family’s small lake. The steady rowing, thesweet forest scent, sprung a wellspring of ideas, her characters becoming quite chatty after an hour or two. Once anchored, she’d sit on the shore with a pen and tablet to channel the fresh flow.
But those days of immersing herself in imaginary worlds, discovering her story along the way, were long gone. The rowboat was as rickety now as her mind, abandoned in the reeds. Who knew what became of the paddle.
Olivia cradled two bouquets of lilies and phlox, freshly picked from her garden, as she rounded Ashe Lake. On the hill behind her stood Haven House, the two-story country home she and Graham had constructed a decade ago on the foundation of his parents’ former house. They’d built a wide porch to entertain. A quiet space upstairs for her to write. All during the 1920s before the stock market crash turned the world on its head.
In the years after the crash, when so many in Pennsylvania lost their homes, she and Graham had filled it with friends and family who needed a place to live. A haven, they decided, for anyone in need. A house where stories overflowed.
The back patio once offered a fine view of Ashe Lake, but trees obscured most of the building now, except her office. Graham had built a turret just for her with a half circle of windows overlooking their gardens and then the lake and trees. For ten years, it had been her sanctuary.
Her aunt, Hattie Belle, was the only person who continued to live with Olivia, her second-floor room lit up tonight with an electric lamp. Hattie had cared for Olivia as a girl, and now she loved every child in their small church as if they were her grandchildren. During the night hours, Hattie crocheted blankets for the newest mothers.
During the day, Hattie had taken on the roles of housekeeper and cook, so Olivia could focus solely on her craft. Since Graham’s passing, Olivia could have subsisted on milk and crackers, but Hattie insisted on proper meals—meat at least three times a week, fresh vegetables, and her weekly whipped potatoes and peach pies.
Via Belle—the pen name Olivia used on all her books—had to release a novel soon. Without the income, she and Hattie wouldn’t be able to continue living in Haven House. A smaller place in Catawba would suit them fine, but the old property with the lake and forest had been Graham’s home too. She wanted to preserve it for all of them.
To the east of Ashe Lake was a forest of cedar and maple. Over the past three years, her rubber boots had worn the dirt path smooth from her nightly trek into the trees. Hattie worried about her venturing out at twilight, but the steady chorus of cicadas, the breath of wind rustling branches, the ripples on their small lake—all of it soothed her soul, especially now when words refused to come.
How she wanted to hear God’s whisper in the breeze. Words that spoke to her heart.
Why had He stopped speaking to her?
Even if she no longer heard Him, she knew He was near. She could feel the warmth of His being. A presence that reordered chaos. But still she longed to hear His voice.
She needed no flashlight for her hike. The moon was supposed to be at its fullest tonight, and a battery-powered beam couldn’t compare to its crisp, clear light. When she ducked under a branch, the brilliance of sunset dimmed in the forest, sprinkling golden rain across dozens of granite stones, broken and worn.
The Ashe family plot was more than a resting place. It was a library, really, with each tomb memorializing a collection of stories. Some had been forgotten over time, others celebrated for generations.
The gate creaked as she opened it, a sound she loathed. The scent of pine and chatter of cicadas welcomed her into this private place but not the guardian disguised with wrought iron. The gate had never liked her.
Many of the stones, draped with lichen, were illegible. She regretted not writing down the Ashe stories when Graham had told them to her, in the days after they decided to build their home on this inherited land.For that matter, she wished she’d done a lot of things while Graham was alive.
His parents rested at the eastern edge of the cemetery beside a number of Graham’s ancestors, their graves surrounded by a fortress of weeds. She’d buried Graham, the dearest of men, by the fence closest to Haven House. Closest to her.
Graham’s story was chiseled in stone. His life marked by dates, then words that would honor him always:A servant of God.
As reverend of the Catawba Presbyterian Church, Graham had served her and their community well. And she had loved him from the moment they’d met, back when she was a student at Elmira College in New York. He’d just begun working for a local church, and her service attendance, three times a week, had been impeccable. When he finally proposed marriage on her nineteenth birthday, along with a move south to Lancaster County, she’d gladly accepted. They’d had a remarkable twenty-two years together.
She laid the first bundle of fresh lilies and phlox on a pile of dried bouquets. Like with every visit, she pressed her fingers to her lips and touched the granite. Though Graham was no longer in this world, the memories were fresh. His unwavering kindness and unfaltering faith. The steadfast calm whenever she stormed. All of it lived on.
A whole chorus of cicadas trilled in the trees. The cemetery might feel like a lonely place for some, frightening even in the dark, but here with her memories of the past and prayers for the future, she found strength.
Stepping back from the stone, coolness brushing over her arms, Olivia continued her conversation with Graham as she often did on her evening visits, always a whisper as if she might disturb those who’d gone before her.
“The words are still stuck,” she whispered. Lodged somewhere between her head and fingers. Clinton Herring, her publisher for the past twenty years, said she needed to dig deeper, find the source again—themuse, he called it—that had produced thirty novels. Graham hadn’t taken thewords with him, Clinton said, she just needed to find where they’d been hiding.
