Clinton, bless him, was quite pragmatic about things like love and loss. But he was brilliant at business. Just because Graham was gone, he’d said, didn’t mean she had to stop writing.
Sales had dipped during the Depression years but remained steady enough for Herring & Son to continue releasing her books. Readers today needed stories, he’d said, that spoke to their heart. They needed her.
And Clinton needed her books to support his company’s bottom line.
Before Graham died, she’d reached her first million in sales, and the royalty payments, on top of her advance income, provided enough money to build Haven House. But without a new book to promote, her income was dwindling. She wasn’t destitute—she could still provide for herself and her aunt—but she couldn’t sustain their home much longer.
It usually took her six months to write a novel, but last October, Clinton had given her another extension—an entire year to finish her next story. The time hadn’t helped. With two months left before the extended deadline, a whole ream of paper remained blank on her desk. She had no story to fill the pages, and not enough time, she feared, to finish one if an idea finally struck. Even the words she’d managed to write were nothing more than drivel.
A good beginning was what she needed, then the rest of the story would pour out.
If Graham were still alive, they would dream up the first chapter together. Something urgent and compelling. Something strong enough to captivate her attention and that of her readers.
But she couldn’t think of a new beginning and certainly not a middle when she was solidly stuck in the dreaded middle of her personal life, not sure which direction to turn now that Graham was gone.
Would God give her another story or was He guiding her into a new place?
She blinked slowly, the soft moss on Graham’s grave returning in focus.
Next to him, in the smallest plot of all, rested Annabelle Leigh Ashe, their only child. When Annabelle was born, Olivia thought she would embrace motherhood for the rest of life, but then their baby girl had fallen asleep in 1921, a month before she turned one, and never awakened. Almost two decades had passed since her daughter’s death, but some mornings, when Olivia first woke, the grief was fresh again. Perhaps that’s why she often couldn’t sleep during the night hours. Her heart and mind feared another life would be lost.
Olivia missed her husband, desperately at times, but it gave her a small comfort that he slept next to Annabelle. Even though they’d slipped into the next life, healthy and strong in eternity, she liked to think of them resting here together.
The second bouquet, she laid beside Annabelle’s gravestone and added a plush lamb she’d purchased in Catawba. If her daughter had lived, she’d be an adult now, but Olivia still thought the lamb belonged with her.
A downburst of moonlight replaced the shimmer of dusk, Annabelle sleeping in its warmth with the lamb in her arms and Graham at her side. Instead of speaking, Olivia chose the hymn she’d often sung when rocking Annabelle to sleep:Jesus is the Shepherd true, and He’ll always stand by you, for He loves the little children of the world.
In life and in death, she knew Jesus loved her girl.
In her earlier dreams, after Annabelle was born, she’d envisioned a half dozen children running circles around her and Graham, playing in the garden and swimming in the lake, but she’d given up that dream when she realized, after years of hoping, that she and Graham would have no other children.
She’d found some solace in her fictional world, writing in her free hours and inviting the many children of congregants over for what she calledteas. They drank Hattie’s mint punch, then spun like whirligigsacross the wood floors, racing and hiding in walls and climbing underneath the stairs.
Every moment with those boys and girls filled her with joy. They didn’t replace her love for Annabelle, but in the laughter, she could almost imagine her daughter among them, spinning and racing and hiding away too.
The children who’d once used her home as a playhouse were adults now, quite polite and mannered when they visited. She missed the squeals that once echoed between her walls. And she missed Graham tossing his shoes by the door and then loosening his collar to play like one of them.
Olivia stepped away from Annabelle’s grave, prepared to follow the path of moonflowers back home, when she heard a rustling sound. An animal, she thought. Nothing of concern. A squirrel or a raccoon in the forest.
But then a stick snapped, and she whirled in the darkness. “Who’s there?”
A black bear hadn’t been sighted here in years, but if a bear had wandered onto her property, her voice should frighten it away.
The chorus of cicadas had quieted, and she listened for another crack of a branch or grunt of an animal.
Instead she heard a cough.
Leaping back, she positioned herself between Annabelle’s gravestone and the intruder as if she could protect her daughter. A skip of her heart, the swift passage of time, seconds slipped by before she realized how ridiculous it was to guard Annabelle. The only person who needed guarding was her.
Not that she cared much about what happened to her life, but her aunt would be devastated if she had to bury her last relative. There was no sense tempting fate, be it a friend or foe who roamed her forest.
She rushed around the gate, not stopping to close it. The moon, brighter now, no longer comforted her as she followed its lead toward home. When her gaze swept over her shoulder, a shadow lingered near the trees like someone was watching her. Then the person—a child—disappeared into the woods.
Annabelle.
She took a deep breath, cursing her fervid imagination. Words may not be flowing from her hands, but her mind churned constantly, trying and failing to press her imagination into a stream.
Of course, it wasn’t Annabelle. Olivia knew keenly the power of imagination, but she didn’t believe in ghosts. Somehow a child, in the hours long after dinner, had ventured into her woods. Perhaps one of the Lamb family children—her nearest neighbors—had gotten lost.
