Abby squirmed in bed and pushed away kisses from her morning visitor. “Kitty, I get it. Time for breakfast, right?”
Kitty’s tongue slashed across Abby’s cheek, a warm, rough feel but pleasant, in a cat-breath kind of way. She glanced at her phone. “You crazy cat, it’s only eight o’clock in the morning, and I’m still wiped out. What a night, brutal. Looks like you survived your run-in with our resident maniac in the barn. I guess you deserve a good breakfast after what you went through, but let’s make it brunch instead.”
Abby pulled the quilt over her head. Kitty pawed at it. “Give me a break. My eyes feel like sandpaper, my throat is sore, and I think there’s a cut on my foot. Just one more hour, then we’ll eat.”
Kitty burrowed under the covers and snuggled into Abby’s arms.
“Abs, you in there?” Morton had never met a boundary he couldn’t cross.
“Go away. I’m sleeping.”
“If you were sleeping, we wouldn’t be talking. Open up, I have some great news.”
Abby sighed, hugged Kitty, and dragged herself out of bed and into her robe. She opened the door. “This better be good.”
“I lost four pounds.” Morton patted his belly. “Can you believe it? All that exercise on the bike paid off. Maybe by the end of summer I’ll have a six-pack—abs, you know, buff stomach. Hey, I made a joke. I’m telling Abs I’ll get abs. Funny, huh?”
Abby looked at the soft roll of flab around Morton’s waist. “Uh-huh.”
Morton’s grin faltered. “I just mean I’ll be built, you know, muscles.”
“I’m happy for you. But it’s early, and I’m tired. Can we admire your new body later?”
“We have to hit the bike trail. No time to waste.” Morton pulled a packet of M&M’s out of his pocket. “I need to stay in shape. I already got your bike from the barn, so I’ll meet you out front. Maybe your mom will give me breakfast while you get dressed.”
“Did you see Jack?” Abby glanced toward the window. Did Jack have her dad’s rifle? What should she do about his middle of the night shooting spree?
“I’m so sick of you talking about Jack all the time. He’s too old for you, and he’s slimy. I’m only telling you this because we’re friends. You think I’m jealous of him, but I’m not. It isn’t like that for you and me, and I know it. You’re not into younger men.”
“Slow down,” Abby said. “I have something to tell you, and something else to show you.” She took a deep breath. “Jack’s never going to be my boyfriend.”
Morton grinned. “Hooray. I knew you were too smart to get involved with him.”
“Um, it’s more complicated than that.” Abby glanced toward the barn and back. “Jack’s my brother.” When Morton didn’t react she added, “Lisa is our mother.”
“You’re kidding, right? This stuff only happens on TV. Wow.” Morton wagged his head, then got serious. “Hey, I’m happy for you. At least I think I am. He is weird.”
“Yeah, well, let me tell you the rest.” Abby pulled the shell casing out of her pocket and told Morton what had happened during the night, leaving out the veiled threat. Shouldn’t she want Morton to like her brother?
Morton examined the brass cylinder, adjusting his glasses to peer at writing on the closed end. He whistled. “He told you this came from your dad’s hunting rifle?”
Abby nodded.
“He lied. This isn’t rifle ammunition. First of all, the casing is too small. And see what’s engraved here? On the top is says, WIN, and on the bottom, 9 mm LUGER. That means it came from a 9-millimeter handgun. No one hunts with a pistol, at least not in Pennsylvania. Unless they’re hunting people.”
Abby hated to acknowledge Jack’s blatant lie, even though sharing some DNA didn’t address his honesty issues. “How do you know? There are exceptions to everything.”
“This is Pennsylvania,” Morton said. “Everyone hunts around here. Bill from the junk store took me once, just to watch, and he lets me look at the guns he gets sometimes. You should talk to your mom about this.”
“It’s not a big deal. Jack’s leaving soon anyway. The barn roof is almost done, and he’s going to D.C. for a bike rally on the Fourth of July. It’s a non-issue.”
“But—”
“But we better get going on our bike ride. I can’t wait to hang out with a muscle-bound hunk like you.”
Morton blushed. “Great. See ya in ten. And hurry up, you don’t need to do all that girl stuff for me.”
Abby put one thumb up. When she got downstairs after dressing, she caught a glimpse of Lisa sweeping the front porch. She made an abrupt turn and headed for the back of the house.
After setting out cat food and grabbing an apple on the way through the kitchen, Abby steered her bike onto the trail behind Morton. The helmet he’d hung on her handlebars gave her head claustrophobia; she preferred the wind rushing through her hair.
The grass shimmered in the morning sun, highlighted by dew. It reminded Abby of the dew on her pajama pants, the shell casings, and Jack’s strange outbursts. But somehow none of it seemed so bad in the light of day. She moved her head side to side, relaxing tight muscles, inhaling a hint of recently-mown grass in the air.
A robin flew in front of Abby, screeching as it landed in a nest high up in a birch tree. A stanza from the old poem in Silas’s diary came to her: Pretty little robin, With your scarlet breast, O may tormenters never find, Their way into thy nest.
She had to find the rest of Silas’s diary. His tormenters may have found a way into his nest, but she vowed to chase them out. Could Jack be a ‘tormenter’ in her nest? Did he have to be chased out? Yet she didn’t want to alienate her brother, couldn’t lose the family she had just found.
Morton turned his bike left and glided to a stop.
“I can’t believe we got to the cemetery already.” Abby pulled in behind Morton. “Maybe you aren’t the only one getting in shape. By the end of the summer, I’ll be looking good, too.”
“Nah, I like you better like this.”
Abby’s eyebrows went up.
“I mean, you look great already. And it’s not ‘like you’ like you, just, you know, friends.” Morton hung his bike helmet on the handlebars. “Let’s go down to the river and skip stones.”
“I’m going to look around up here for a while. Go ahead.” She felt drawn to Silas’s grave. The finer points of ghosting were a mystery. Did he rest here, in the cemetery, float about at Bikers’ Rest, or exist in some sort of limbo? And what did the answer mean to any hope of them having a life together?
Morton stared. “Are you being nice to me? Are you sick? Is this a trick?”
“Not sick, no trick—just giving up bitchiness for the rest of the summer.”
Morton grinned and disappeared down the path to the river.
Abby went directly to Silas’s grave. She bent down and cleared away rotting leaves, dead weeds, and an old bottle cap from the grassy mound.
“Did Leticia come and talk to you? I’m sure she did. I’m talking to you, and it’s been almost 150 years since you were buried here.” She placed her palm against the headstone, yearning for Silas to appear to her so she could tell him about Jack. And feel his calming presence.
“Thaaaank youuu fooor coooming.” The syllables were drawn-out and whispery thin.
Abby snorted. “Very funny, Morton. You are such an infant.”
“You should have seen your face.” Morton laughed, and then plopped on an adjacent tree stump.
“Whatever.” Abby went back to clearing debris off the grave. “Doesn’t anyone ever take care of these things?” She pulled out a few weeds and patted the loose dirt in place. “At least there aren’t any bugs today. It’s funny, this seemed so scary the first time I came here, now it seems like a new home for people who moved on to another life. I guess it’s like that for my dad. I’d rather think of him moving on than just ceasing to exist.”
Abby worked her way to the top of the grave. “Look at this mess; it’s embedded around the tombstone, almost up to the engraving. Hand me a stick.” She took a small piece of wood from Morton and dug around the base. “Hey, check this out. There’s something attached at the bottom.”
“Attached?” Morton got on his hands and knees and peered into the space Abby had cleared. “Cool.”
The foundation of the granite protruded in an oblong semi-circle. “It got buried under the dirt and leaves over the years.” Abby felt the top edge. “I think it’s hollow. Help me pull this gross junk out of there.” She grimaced at the accumulated gunk; soggy leaves, a few dead insects, grime.
When they finished it looked like a vase growing out of the stone.
“It’s an urn,” Morton said. “You know, for flowers. They were carved into some of the old markers. I guess someone wanted to decorate his grave.”
Abby examined it closer. “It isn’t carved. There’s cement or something around the edges, like it’s an add-on. Maybe Leticia couldn’t afford a fancy memorial and someone made this later. The stuff around the sides is crumbling.”
She ran her fingernail around the urn. The concrete turned to dust and sprinkled onto the ground, like salt on a pretzel.
Morton jiggled the urn, leaving it off-center. “It’s loose.”
Abby reached around him to adjust it. The urn came off in her hand, leaving an obscene, gaping hole at the bottom of Silas’ headstone. She sat back on her heels. “I can’t believe it. All I did was touch the thing, and now I’ve ruined it.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Leticia must have saved every penny to put this here for her son, and now I broke it. I’m such a moron.” Softly she whispered, “I’m sorry, Silas.”
“Hey, Abs, it’s okay,” Morton said. “It just barely stayed there all these years. I can bring some Quikrete, and we’ll put it back in place.” He squirmed. “I hate it when women cry. I like it better when you yell at me.”
Abby gave him a watery smile. “Thanks.”
“For what?” Morton said.
Abby pushed him. “For calling me a woman, what else?”
“I didn’t mean it. What I should call you is a pain in the butt.”
Abby knocked the remaining cement from the edges of the urn and handed it to Morton. “Hold this. I’ll clean off the tombstone so we can sit it back in.”
She ran her hand around the gap in the granite. “It’s hollow at the bottom.”
“Well, duh.” Morton rolled his eyes. “How do you think the urn fits in?”
Abby felt inside the opening. “There’s something in here.” She slid two fingers into the narrow space and extracted a flat parcel. Her heart pounded. “I’m pretty sure people didn’t routinely hide packages in their loved one’s tombstone. This has to be important. Especially since it’s Silas’s grave.”
“Open it and see.” Morton leaned in close. “This is too cool, like being an archeologist.”
The bundle, wrapped in dust-dulled oilskin and tied with twine, lay in Abby’s palm. “It weighs almost nothing.” She noticed her hands shaking, making the package jiggle. “And it’s wrapped like Silas’s diary pages from the Bible.” She blew off the dust and untied the string.
“Maybe we should wait until we get back to your place to open it,” Morton said. “You know, to preserve it.”
“Who do you think you are, Indiana Jones? When we found Silas’s diary I wanted to take my time, and you were miserable. So this time I’m not waiting. If you want to go home, go.”
With careful, deliberate movements Abby unwrapped the covering; it cracked at the creases but didn’t fall apart. Inside she found another bundle, wrapped in faded, frayed blue-and-white gingham. She peeled it away, revealing a thin stack of old papers, covered with familiar writing.
Abby’s words came out in bursts. “It’s Silas’s handwriting. The edges are torn. It’s the missing diary pages. This is what Leticia meant when she wrote about ‘a truth beyond the Good Book, in slumber forever.’ She left us a clue. I was too dense to figure it out. But now we’ll know the secret.” She took a deep breath. “What if he really did try to kill Lincoln? I can’t take it.”
Morton patted her arm. “It is what it is. Whatever he did won’t change now. Read it.”
Abby nodded and cleared her throat. A small gust of wind ruffled the pages. The top sheet flew across the cemetery. She clamped down on the remaining pages. “Morton, get it. Hurry.”
Morton sprinted across the uneven ground, planting his black high-top on the paper as it drifted onto another grave. “Got it.” He returned it to Abby, breathing hard. “Whew.”
“Be careful; it’s old and fragile.” Abby lifted it from his hand to return to the pile in her lap. “Let’s take it back to Bikers’ Rest. I don’t want to lose it now.” She looked up at Morton’s smug expression. “Yeah, I know, you already said that.”
Abby re-wrapped the diary in the cloth and stored it in Morton’s backpack. She replaced the urn on the tombstone, wedging it in place with stones.
On the ride home, two small butterflies circled her bike. The rest of the scenery passed in a blur. She focused on Morton’s pack with the diary pages nestled inside, bobbing on his back as he rode ahead of her.
One thought burned in Abby’s mind: Silas has to be innocent.