CHAPTER 1

LILY


Tuesday, July 3, 1928

7:30 a.m.

Mist rises and hangs in the morning’s still-cool air over the summer-warmed pond, making it near on impossible for Sheriff Lily Ross to see more than a few inches below the barely rippling surface over the edge of the canoe. But she puts on a show for Chalmer Fitzpatrick and his grandmother, MayBelle, watching from the dock on the pond’s edge. Lily pokes her paddle into the water, as if she might stir something more sinister than stocked fish in a man-made pond.

MayBelle Fitzpatrick isn’t so easily fooled—or mollified.

“You ain’t looked t’the middle yet.” The elderly woman’s wobbly voice carries with surprising vigor over the water. She doesn’t bother disguising her annoyance with Lily. “Done told you that’s where I saw her.”

True, MayBelle had said as much after Lily came across her just a half hour earlier, sitting folded up on the top of the Bronwyn County, Ohio, courthouse steps in the posture of a little girl sent to sit in a corner, though the large liver spots and loose skin of her scrawny arms belie her age—as much as ninety-seven years, by some accounts, though MayBelle claims ninety-two. There are no records for her birth, and she’s outlived her husband.

This was the third time this week that the old woman had come to the courthouse with the same complaint, though never quite so early. Lily had gently shaken her by the arm, afraid of sending her tumbling down the steps, but MayBelle had jolted awake and stood up with surprising swiftness and litheness, then poked her face right up to Lily’s and intoned: There’s a girl floating facedown in Chalmer’s pond.

Lily, who had checked the pond on the previous two complaints, had carefully guided MayBelle back down the steps and to Lily’s automobile, parked near the courthouse. On the drive back to Chalmer Fitzpatrick’s property—mostly cattle farm, except for the hilliest part—MayBelle had been quiet, staring out at the lush, leafy woods flashing by.

The stuffy automobile intensified MayBelle’s scents of sweat from her long walk mixed with talcum powder and lilac perfume. The latter reminded Lily of her mamaw—Mama’s mother, who had passed away when Lily was fifteen. The reminder of her own mamaw stirred Lily’s heart to tenderness, and she’d glanced over at MayBelle, tried to engage her by pointing out her own farmhouse as they drove past, other people’s farms, the surprising sight of a large owl out in the daytime. MayBelle had suddenly turned to her, fixing her opaque gray eyes on Lily with a sharp stare, then intoned: Stop your jabbering! I seen her, I did. Floating in the middle of the pond. Blue dress. Alice in Wonderland blue. From the storybook. The puffy short sleeves. Big white bow in her hair. Dark hair. The hair fanning out in the water. Long, thin arms.

Lily had driven on in silence, considering these new details. In her first two reports, MayBelle had simply reported a girl in the water.

Now MayBelle frantically hollers, “I done told you—the middle of the pond!”

“Mamaw!” Chalmer’s chastisement is gentle enough, though frustration edges his tone. “The sheriff hasn’t found anyone because there’s no one to find—”

Lily paddles to the middle of the pond.

The fishing pond is just one part of Chalmer’s huge project: an amusement park, set to open on July 4. The Kinship Daily Courier has been covering it frequently and enthusiastically, and not just because Chalmer owns The Mill—the lumberyard on the north end of Kinship, the county seat of Bronwyn County. Chalmer’s Meuse-Argonne Memorial Park will be free to all veterans and their families, and a nominal charge to all others with the proceeds going to the local veteran’s fund. It will have, in addition to the fishing pond, shooting and archery ranges, a stage and dance floor for bands, singers, and other entertainers—even a gasoline-powered generator for lights for evening dances—a games area including bowling, pony rides, and more to come. It’s the biggest development in the county—well, truth be told, in the region—in years. Not like the magnificent Coney Island in Cincinnati, but yet—an amusement park, right here. Lily’s children—as well as Mama’s change-of-life baby, Lily’s little brother who is about the same age as her son—are certainly talking about it with great excitement.

Slowly, Lily stands up in the middle of the canoe, careful not to tip to one side or the other. Here, where the sun more directly hits the water, the mist is nearly gone. Lily notes writhing dark shapes of fish darting about just below the pond’s surface. She guesses: carp, trout, catfish. Probably some crappies.

Plenty of fish. But, as before, no body.

The last of the mist dissolves, and sunlight glints on the water.

It’s impossible even to imagine a body floating here.

Lily slowly sits back down on the canoe bench and paddles to the dock. Chalmer rushes over to grab the front of the canoe. Unnecessary—and irritating. But she doesn’t shoo him away.

She’s deferential because her brother Roger and Chalmer had been close. Before the Great War, Chalmer, though only a few years older than Roger, had been the baseball coach for Roger’s high school team. And in the war, Lily’s now deceased husband, Daniel, had been a gunner, Roger his assistant gunner, and Chalmer their ammo man. Roger had pulled a soldier who had panicked in the trenches back to safety. Chalmer, in turn, spotting a sniper, had tried to save Roger—but Roger had died from sniper fire, in Daniel’s arms. Chalmer had sustained an injury as well, a bullet in his thigh that also nearly took his own life.

Now Chalmer offers a hand to help her out of the boat, and as she rises and steps to the dock he lifts his eyebrows in a semi-amused look as he tethers the canoe to the dock. Now that irritates Lily. MayBelle’s worries may be unrealistic, but they’re not entertaining.

So Lily steps toward MayBelle, as carefully as if approaching a skittish deer, and gently takes the elderly woman’s hands into her own. Thin, loose-skinned, and liver-spotted though her hands may be, there’s a corded strength in MayBelle’s grasp.

“Mrs. Fitzpatrick, I did look carefully,” Lily explains, her tone somber and respectful, “but all I saw were fish. Is it—is it possible you might be thinking of a nightmare?”

MayBelle jerks her hands away and gives a surprisingly strong stomp, wobbling the dock. “Not a nightmare.” MayBelle rolls out her lower lip, like a pouting child. “No one believes me. I’m no fool, or crazy—”

“Mamaw,” Chalmer says, his voice soothing, “no one thinks that—”

“She does.”

At first, Lily thinks MayBelle means her, but the older woman points up the hill to the house. Oh. She must mean Chalmer’s wife, Sophia. Lily knows her from the Presbyterian church and the Woman’s Club. Well, Lily is aware of Sophia. Lily doesn’t really know her. Neither of them attends either organization regularly; Lily only goes when Mama insists it’s been too long and she’d better put in an appearance. Lily’s general impression of Sophia, however, is that she’s a quiet, somewhat mousy woman. Not someone who would sass her husband’s beloved mamaw.

“Now, Mamaw, you know Sophia has been gone for a few months. She’s not been here to think about any of us.” He looks over MayBelle’s head at Lily, lowers his voice. “Sophia’s spent most of the summer so far in Virginia tending to her aunt. She got back a month ago, when a cousin took over the care, and then returned to Virginia after receiving word that her aunt had passed away. Sophia got back from the trip to the funeral last night.”

Ah, that’s right. Chalmer had met Sophia in Virginia. After the war, he had gone off to college—one of very few people in the area who had done so. For that matter, only a lucky few—like Lily and her brother—had the opportunity to go to high school. When Chalmer returned to Bronwyn County, he’d brought a wife with him and had quickly settled down to take over the lumber mill from his father, who had just passed away, only months after his mother. Chalmer’s only sibling, a much older brother, had long settled up in Columbus—and had no interest in returning to either the county or the lumber mill.


Copyright © 2022 by Sharon Short