Page 44 of The Witch's Orchard
“Do you recall who was here that day?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “It was a long time ago.”
“A decade,” I say. “She’s been gone ten years.”
We say nothing for a moment. The gangly guy tells the kids to pair up and assists them when necessary. I watch as a little girl and her big brother face off.
“You know,” Brother Bob says, almost absently. Again, he’s looking toward the kids but not looking at them. “After a while, I really hopedthey would just find, I don’t know, something. Some little old bones? Give the families and this whole town some place to lay their grief, something to bury, something to pray over and send to heaven.”
His jaw trembles a little and he shuts his mouth. I look away and watch as the big brother jabs and the little girl dips, plants her front foot, and whips a kick up to the brother’s side. He laughs and so does she.
Brother Bob continues, “But… finding Molly like this.”
“She was alive,” I say. “All this time.”
He nods his head, curt and quick. His eyes are watery, but I can’t tell if it’s emotion or just high blood pressure.
“Do you remember anything about that summer?” I ask. “Anything stand out to you at all?”
“It was a hot summer,” he says. “Hotter than usual, I recall. We had a lot of our usual activities outside because we didn’t have air-conditioning yet and it was just too hot indoors. And… that’s the year the plant closed, wasn’t it?”
He’s not really asking me. He’s talking to himself and he answers himself, “Yes. Because that’s the year Harvey Drake died.”
“Did you know Mister Drake well?”
“He was a Gideon. He came to the group meetings. He sang in the choir. He took me down to Junaluska a few times for golf.”
“How did he die?” I ask, thinking of that beautiful house and the small, southern, stylish woman who still inhabits it.
“Massive stroke,” Brother Bob says. “It was awful. He lingered for days.”
“Must’ve been tough for Mrs. Drake.”
“Rebecca’d know more than I would,” he says, pointing to his slender wife across the basement. She’s wearing yet another hand-tailored skirt suit and her white hair looks—curl for curl—exactly as it did the day before. She’s talking to one of the parents, both casually watching the kids.
“I counseled him,” he says. “In his final days and hours. He struggled. He was not ready to meet his Lord and Savior.”
“Are any of us?” I ask.
He shrugs. At the front of the room, the gangly man claps his hands twice and the children form themselves into two lines before him. He bows to them. They bow more deeply back. Then the class breaks up and the kids start scurrying around the room like beetles. One of the parents begins making his way toward us, and I dig a card out of my bag and put it into Brother Bob’s hand.
“If you think of anything,” I say. “Anything at all. Call me.”
He smiles benevolently at me and slips the card into an interior pocket before moving away to shake hands with one of his flock.
I make my way around the edge of the basement and walk up the stairs, where I find Rebecca Ziegler again. She’s opening the heavy front doors, pulling down the stopper with the toe of a tan pump.
“Did you happen to get that list for me?” I ask.
Her mouth purses a little to the side as if what she’d like to do is tell me it’s none of my business, but instead she nods her head and says, “Yes. Right this way.”
I follow her into a small office with an outdated computer and neat stacks of paper in labeled drawers. Several different Bibles line the shelves. They all look basically the same to me, somber and thick. But I suspect Rebecca could tell me the subtle differences.
She opens a drawer and plucks out a sheet full of names.
“Again,” she says. “I’m really not sure about most of those. Several women here that day were on that committee going back ten or twenty years, but we no longer have the meeting minutes.”
“Shame,” I say.
