© Copyright 2006
by Elizabeth Delayne

Faith That Weeps

Part II

Carrie paced the front hall impatiently. She’d gathered up her paperwork and stood with her briefcase over her shoulder. She watched as the lights on the upper-level shut off, leaving the stairway partially dark. They came down the darkened stairway in single file.

Brad was the first one down. “I guess you want to check things out.”

Carrie grimaced, but flipped through the open laptop case and checked the side pockets. “Sorry.”

“Its okay,” Brad said as he stepped back and Tonya came forward with her bag open. “Tyler told us. The manuscript you lost–it was like an important journal or something.”

“My great-great-great-great-great grandfather corresponded with both Robert E. Lee, George McClellan, and President Grant–before, during and after the war,” Carrie frowned as she continued to leaf through the papers in Tonya’s case. “We lost the journal of the war years.”

“Do they know who took it?” Tonya asked.

“It was on the University’s watch–they investigated, questioned, had the police do the same thing. I think they have some ideas, but they have no proof.”

“Was–“ Lisa opened her bag, “was your great ... you ancestor, we he like a spy or something? Or with the underground railroad?”

Carrie frowned at Lisa’s tone. “He was a Southerner and military man—one in the same.”

“So he was against slavery, right?”

“Look at this place,” Tonya put in at Lisa’s question. “It was a plantation. Does it look like he was against slavery?”

“So he had slaves?” Lisa asked with disgust. “Then why spend the money to fix it up, to honor such a past?”

Her tone was sharp—a direct attact. It through Carrie off guard. She’d promised herself to work on her tendency to lecture–as Dani had cautioned.

“The saying goes, ‘Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it,’” Brad defended.

“But we’ve seen the figures–“ Lisa argued. “It’s going to take a miracle to get the funds to bring this place back. Why do it if it represents such ... darkness?”

“It’s a concern, I guess,” Carrie murmured–surprised at the neatness of Lisa’s files in her lateral briefcase, so different then the stacks of earmarked papers in her own.. “But in Europe people have such a different concept of preservation. Their buildings are so much older–and they preserve the worst, the worst of kings and tyrants. The Nazi meeting quarters and death camps are still there. You don’t visit to celebrate it. You visit it to ... remember.”

Carrie searched Lisa’s bag, finished with her inspection, but then Tyler opened his. She cringed. She’d never worried about him. Not before. Did their relationship dictate such formality now?

She looked up at him, trapped when she looked in his eyes. Still, she saw no tenderness, no familiarity.

“Well, I for one think it’s cool that you’re bringing this place back and can’t wait to see it when you do,” Tonya said, bringing Carrie back to reality. “Have you always wanted to do this?”

“Always. It’s my family home—“ Carrie murmured, distracted as she half-heartedly flipped through Tyler’s paperwork, “has been since before the war and after. There were a couple high profile affairs, some embezzling and a little smuggling–the stuff of novels and history. My grandfather was decorated in WWII and his father in the Great War. We have one ancestor that was out in Texas for awhile and fought at San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt, and another who pushed for state desegregation long before Kennedy mandated it.

“And a plantation was more than a building or an economic center; it was a center of the society, more important and sometimes closer to each other then the town. During the civil war, the plantation owners tended to be the politicians, the influential ones—“ Carrie felt herself sliding into the familiar history and grimaced. “Well—I don’t guess you want the full lecture.”

“I’d like to hear it,” Tonya said. “It’s so ... real. So—”

“Historical?” Brad said with a smirk.

Tonya rolled her eyes and Carrie laughed–it just rolled out of her for the first time all evening.

“How about personal? We’re not looking at someone else’s house–we’re here at your house.”

“I think we’re connected and we all feel connection to the past. We all make mistakes. We’re all overwhelmed,” Carrie shrugged. “They fought a war that was so much more complicated and so much harder then they had fought before. There’s a carving in the glass upstairs where my ancestor’s daughter, Annabelle Grace Lindsey, got engaged and she tested her diamond on the window—you know, to see if the diamond was real. She carved in my beloved Elijah—her beau who went off to war and she never married. Supposedly, she wrote a few books that were fairly acclaimed in the area during her lifetime, but they were under a pseudonym and disappeared.”

“The legend of Annabelle Grace,” Tonya murmured. “There’s a plaque upstairs in the library where the Tennessee Tribune did an extensive article about her. What happened?”

“We don’t have many details, or know if any of the legend is true. We do know that she died upstairs in her childhood bed, having watched two more generations being born in this house. And she never had children of her own...”

As her voice faded, she could hear the wind and rain picking up speed. She sighed–knowing she’d done it again. She’d fallen into the habit, the history and the lecture. Dani was right.

As she finished up searching Tyler’s bag, they stepped outside. It was the first time she’d ever been in his presence that they’d said so little to each other. Even years ago in their first year of college, they’d talked for hours the first day they met.

But he was silent, probably bored with her–tired of her, as Dani put it, obsession.

Lisa was his girlfriend now. Lisa and her oh so organized briefcase. Lisa and her perfect nails and hair.

The rain had started to fall by the time they stepped outside, but the wind had picked up and the air felt heavier—as if the rain would drop in buckets in any minute. The others walked to the car as she locked up, listening to the unfamiliar beep of the alarm warning her off and the patter of rain through the trees. She felt off—distracted by the emptiness she felt. She wanted to escape back to her car, curl up and indulge herself in a long cry.

So she was surprised to turn and find Tyler still there.

“Go back with us.”

She double checked the lock and switched out the house keys for her car keys. “Why?.”

“This isn’t some quick summer storm, Carrie. Look at the sky,” he pointed to the dark clouds. “Your car’s in bad enough shape as it is.”

“It’ll get me ... home.” Or she could stay here, curled up in one of the leather chairs in the library, or pull out the candles and head into the old wing where the electrical work had not been completed. All alone.

A perfect way to remember Jayce’s ghost stories.

She shivered.

“Not tonight. You need new tires. You can’t drive in a storm on those.”

She looked at her car and frowned. “I need new tires?”

“You’ve stripped the tread. It’s dangerous for you to drive home in this storm on those tires.”

When was the last time she’d gotten new tires? Not since her dad was killed–long before. He’d always reminded her, taken care of those things. She hadn’t let herself think ...

When Tyler reached out and took her hand, she let him pull her toward Brad’s car, all the while looking back at her own car and wishing for her father.

* * *

He’d taken advantage of her grief. Tyler refused to feel sorry about that. She did need new tires. They would have fought about it if she’d pressed the issue–but when he saw the raw grief in her eyes, he hadn’t given her a moment to deal with it. He’d pulled her toward the car before she thought to argue.

They were all quiet. Brad’s concentration was on the road as the rain pelted down hard and fast.

Tyler turned and looked at her, where she sat behind Brad. Her eyes were closed as she leaned her head back, her glasses slightly askew. His sweet, absentminded Carrie wouldn’t have remembered on her own to check her tires, but if it was mentioned, she would research and find out what exactly needed to be done about it.

He smiled a little. He missed being around her, missed the look in her eyes that she got when she dove into history. It was good to see it tonight, good to see her, to be with her.

The car jerked against the wind. Brad gritted his teeth, his knuckles white as his hands clutched the wheel.

Tyler said a prayer, kept praying. He looked out the window. The view was limited, the rain poured thick. Already limbs were scattered along the road and trees were bending against the wind.

The limb that fell surprised them all.

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