Part 3
The first frost came three nights later.
Sibila woke shivering.
Her fire had died.
The window glass was white at the corners, and the water in the washbasin wore a thin skin of ice.
The mountain had begun teaching her that inheritance and survival were separate questions.
A beautiful house still required wood.
A good roof did not bake bread.
Seven acres could not sew a shoe.
Sibila went to work.
Temperance showed her how to bank coals beneath ash so they survived until morning.
Rafe brought a secondhand iron pot.
A farmer named Amos Bell traded six pounds of potatoes for Sibila’s labor helping his wife wash wool.
The minister left flour on the porch without a note.
Sibila patched the roof of the woodshed.
She gathered fallen apples and cut away bruises for drying.
She pulled the last onions.
She learned to split wood despite the blisters.
Her first attempt at repairing the porch support leaned visibly east.
Rafe inspected it.
“You planning to have the porch visit Maryland?”
Sibila glared at him.
He laughed.
Then he showed her how to set a stone footing below frost depth.
They worked all afternoon.
Rafe accepted coffee but refused payment.
“You all do that,” Sibila said.
“Do what?”
“Help as if I can’t possibly repay you.”
“Maybe we trust you’ll find a way.”
She thought about that for a long time.
At the asylum everything had been counted.
Bread.
Soap.
Blankets.
Labor.
Kindness in Amberly Gap seemed to operate on a slower account.
People remembered.
Not for leverage.
For belonging.
Sibila began reading Absalom’s journals at night.
There were four volumes.
They covered fifty-two years.
He wrote more about wood than people.
Ash bends.
Walnut cuts clean in winter.
Cherry darkens if given patience.
Do not fit wet wood to dry.
A joint forced today will split tomorrow.
But scattered between those observations were pieces of family history.
Rosalyn sang “Wayfaring Stranger” while sweeping the shop.
Rosalyn hated turnips.
Rosalyn once kept an injured crow in the pantry for eleven days.
Rosalyn carved her initials into the underside of Absalom’s workbench at ten and denied it while sawdust still clung to her sleeve.
Sibila laughed aloud at that.
The sound frightened her.
She had not heard herself laugh much.
Then the journals darkened after Vashti entered the family.
V. says Rosalyn too familiar with hired men.
Thaddius agrees.
Rosalyn angry.
Should have defended her quicker.
Later:
V. says girl seen talking with Samuel Renshaw near mill road.
Rosalyn says he is decent.
I believe her.
Then:
Terrible quarrel.
Words said which cannot be pulled back.
Rosalyn gone at dawn.
Vashti says best to let her cool.
I will go after her tomorrow.
The next page:
Horse lame.
Thaddius says Rosalyn boarded eastbound stage.
Will follow.
The pages that followed became a chronicle of searching.
Marberry.
Tarnwick.
Harrisburg.
Pittsburgh.
Back east.
Letters.
Investigators.
Notices placed in newspapers.
Money spent.
No result.
Then Sibila found an entry that made her stop.
April 2, 1861.
Asked Thaddius why Rosalyn’s letter returned without postal mark. He says clerk failed to cancel. Possible.
Four months later:
Another returned clean. Strange.
Then:
I no longer give letters to family.
Will carry myself.
After that, nearly every letter carried a legitimate postal stamp.
By then Rosalyn had changed addresses repeatedly.
Absalom had lost years.
The pattern became clear.
Vashti and Thaddius had not merely disliked Rosalyn.
For at least four years, they had controlled which letters left the valley.
But why keep them?
Why not burn them?
The answer appeared in the final journal.
Absalom suspected.
He had begun collecting evidence.
Sibila turned one thin page.
If I accuse without proof, Thaddius will deny and V. will weep and the whole town will be asked to choose sides. Better to know.
Later:
Found three of my letters among discarded papers in old shop cabinet after Thaddius moved accounts.
Could not prove how they came there.
Kept them.
And finally:
I believe I understand now.
Thaddius feared Rosalyn’s return would divide what he considers his inheritance.
V. feared it more.
I cannot repair what cowardice has allowed.
I can only make certain they profit no further from it.
Sibila read the sentence twice.
Profit.
That word sent her into Absalom’s business ledgers.
The shop had made more money than the will suggested.
Far more.
Absalom recorded furniture commissions, timber sales, church work, freight payments.
Yet his savings at death were only six thousand two hundred dollars.
Still substantial.
But there were withdrawals.
Large ones.
Made during years when his eyesight was failing.
Each bore Thaddius’s initials.
Sibila copied the figures.
Winstead examined them the next morning.
The lawyer’s face tightened.
“Your grandfather gave Thaddius power to handle business matters?”
“Apparently.”
“That is not unusual.”
“Are the withdrawals?”
Winstead was silent.
“Some could be explained.”
“And the others?”
“Some require explanation.”
“Can he keep the money?”
“If Absalom knowingly gave it to him, yes.”
“If he didn’t?”
“Then no.”
Sibila placed Rosalyn’s unsent letter on his desk.
Winstead read it.
He removed his spectacles.
“Where did this come from?”
“The cabin.”
“There are more?”
“Thirty-seven.”
Winstead leaned back.
For a very long moment, the only sound was a wagon passing below the window.
“I have disliked Vashti Fenimore for forty years,” he said.
Sibila blinked.
The lawyer looked embarrassed.
“That statement was professionally unnecessary.”
Despite herself, Sibila smiled.
“Then why did Grandfather leave Thaddius the money?”
Winstead studied her.
“You noticed.”
“How could I not?”
He rose.
“I am permitted to tell you something now that you’ve found those papers.”
He opened his safe.
Inside was a sealed document.
“This is not another will. It is a memorandum attached to the existing one.”
“Why wasn’t it read?”
“Because its conditions had not yet occurred.”
Sibila went still.
“What conditions?”
Winstead read.
If my granddaughter comes willingly to Cold Water Ridge and remains upon the land thirty consecutive days, the provisions described in the attached schedule may be executed.
Thirty days.
Sibila stared.
“Why?”
“Absalom said a person may come for money. Thirty days on that ridge in autumn would tell him whether you came for a home.”
“What happens after thirty days?”
Winstead folded the paper.
“I cannot legally reveal the schedule before the condition is satisfied.”
“Even to me?”
“Especially to you.”
Sibila stood.
“That’s infuriating.”
Winstead almost smiled.
“Your grandfather expected you might say something similar.”
She returned to the mountain angry.
Then she realized something.
She had already lived there twelve days.
The money suddenly mattered less than she expected.
Thirty days would come whether she counted them or not.
The mountain had begun changing.
Maples burned red down the slope.
Cold gathered in shadows before noon.
Wild turkeys crossed the clearing.
Sibila’s hands hardened from chopping wood.
She stopped thinking about leaving.
She learned the names of neighbors.
She mended Temperance’s curtains.
She wrote letters for Rafe, whose reading was better than his spelling.
She began cleaning Absalom’s tools.
One afternoon she attempted to carve.
The first block of pine became an object resembling neither bird nor spoon nor any known species of vegetable.
Rafe studied it.
“What’s it supposed to be?”
“A leaf.”
“Could be.”
“It isn’t.”
“No.”
She threw a shaving at him.
By the second week her leaves looked like leaves.
By the third, Temperance trusted Sibila to sharpen the smaller chisels.
Then a stranger arrived.
His name was Arthur Pembroke.
He owned an antiques gallery in Philadelphia and had come to Amberly Gap after seeing a cabinet in a banker’s home bearing Absalom Fenimore’s mark.
Rafe, who could not keep anything secret longer than breakfast, mentioned the carvings.
Pembroke climbed the mountain.
Sibila disliked him at once.
Not because he was rude.
He was too polite.
His eyes changed when he saw the hawk.
He picked it up with both hands.
“Miss Renshaw.”
“What?”
“Do you understand what this is?”
“A bird.”
Pembroke looked at her.
“Yes.”
He turned it toward the window.
“Do you understand what kind of bird?”
“A red-tailed hawk.”
“No. I mean what kind of object.”
She crossed her arms.
“My grandfather carved it.”
“Your grandfather was not merely a furniture maker.”
Pembroke examined the feather work.
“He was an artist of extraordinary ability who apparently refused to participate in the art market.”
“The what?”
“The people who pay absurd amounts of money for beautiful things.”
He looked at her.
“Would you sell it?”
“No.”
“I haven’t offered a price.”
“No.”
“Five hundred dollars.”
Sibila stopped breathing.
Temperance, sitting near the stove, made no sound at all.
Five hundred dollars.
More money than Sibila could earn in years.
Pembroke saw the hesitation.
“Seven hundred.”
Sibila looked at the initials.
AF 1833.
Her mother’s birth year.
“No.”
“One thousand.”
She wrapped the hawk in its oilcloth.
“No.”
Pembroke seemed delighted.
“Excellent.”
“Why?”
“Because if you had said yes at five hundred, I would have known you had no idea what you possessed.”
He looked around the room.
“How many pieces?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Miss Renshaw, I am trying to tell you that if the quality is consistent, this collection may be worth several thousand dollars.”
The mountain went quiet around Sibila.
Thaddius had laughed at three dollars.
Vashti had slid the key across the table.
Your share.
The family felt it was important that you receive something.
Pembroke continued talking.
Museums.
Collectors.
Exhibitions.
Catalogues.
Sibila barely heard him.
Her grandfather’s letter returned to her.
Do not let anybody tell you what this house is worth.
They have been wrong about that for thirty years.
And I have counted on it.
That evening, someone in Amberly Gap told Thaddius Fenimore about the thousand-dollar hawk.
By noon the next day, he and Vashti were climbing Cold Water Ridge.