Page 44 of Heartbeat

She nodded. “Since I’ve never belonged anywhere, I don’t really know how to read a room, so to speak. Themountain is so beautiful, but it feels like… Oh, I’m going to sound silly saying this…but it feels like it holds its people close…guarding them from intruders.”

Sean flashed back to the disaster a couple of years ago when a younger cousin was shot up here by a man hunting for buried treasure.

“You don’t sound silly at all. I think you’re just sensitive to energies, and mountains are ancient. Who knows what secrets they still hold?” And then he pointed to a driveway and mailbox on his left. “That’s where Louis, Rachel, and Lili live. Cameron and Rusty Pope live further up, and then the Morgans, and the Raines, and our house, and farther up, Uncle John and Aunt Annie Cauley. She’s the one with the bakery. There are at least a couple of hundred people up here who can all claim some kind of kinship with each other.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To the top.”

“What’s up there?”

Sean reached for her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “The Church in the Wildwood. There’s something I want to show you.”

“I can’t wait. How much farther?” she asked.

Sean grinned. “When my brother B.J. was a kid, ‘Are we there yet?’ was the totality of his conversation.”

Amalie was laughing as she poked his shoulder. “I get the reference, but it’s obvious wearen’tthere yet because you’re still driving. My question had to do with time and distance.”

Sean’s smile widened. “Lady, you are an absolute delight, and since you asked, and unless you want to risk a wreck on these winding mountain roads, maybe another twenty minutes.”

He made it in fifteen, and the gasp from the seat beside him was worth the drive.

“Do you feel that?” she whispered.

Sean glanced at the look on her face as he pulled into the parking lot. She was awestruck.

“Feel what, honey?”

Amalie shook her head and got out on her own, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“It’s here! This is what I kept feeling last fall when I’d look up at the mountain. Something is here that belongs to me!” Then she frowned. “No…not belongs…something that’s part of me.”

Sean walked up behind her and slid his arm across her shoulder.

“That does it. You’re going to have to talk to Aunt Ella.”

Amalie glanced up, and as she did, the features on his face shifted just enough that she thought she was looking at someone else, and then the notion faded.

“Do people still use the church?” she asked.

“The parking lot is full every Sunday. The old preacher’s name is Brother Farley. If he has a first name, I don’t know it. The little house behind it is the parsonage. It’s where he lives, but I don’t see his car. Probably visiting someone who’s sick. He’s known for that.”

“I didn’t know places like this still existed,” Amalie said. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

“The church isn’t why we came.” He held out his hand.

She clasped it without caution, already knowing she would follow him anywhere. He led her around the church to the cemetery stretching out to the edge of the forest, then wound their way through the gravestones at the far end before he stopped.

Amalie looked down. There was a very old marker, and beside it, a little wooden structure, like an upside-down box, newer but slightly weathered.

Sean pointed to the ancient marker. “The man who founded Jubilee is buried here. I’ve mentioned him before. His name was Brendan Pope. He’s the grandfather of us all. He died in the late 1880s. His Chickasaw wife, Cries A Lot, who he called Meg, disappeared on this mountain in 1864. Her body was never found. Then two years ago, his old journal turned up. It was the first that we knew what had happened to her. And it hurt our hearts to think our little grandmother was lost all this time. We all decided that if we used the clues from the journal and some drone technology, we might find her.”

Amalie was shaking as she touched the top of the little wooden house over Meg’s grave.

“And you did! Oh Sean! Nearly two centuries in the dark, and you found her.”

Sean blinked. She’d done it again! How the hell would she know about that abandoned cellar where they’d found Meg’s bones? He shivered, then let it go.

---