toward me.”
“The wall?”
“Yes.”
Emily slid her fingers between wood and rock, pulled, and gasped. The entire thing slid, clanging into the far wall. “It’s a door!”
Cool, stale air wafted through the opening. “What do you see?”
“Nothing.”
Jake bent down and dug in his toolbox for a flashlight. He flicked it on and stepped behind her, lighting up the darkness.
“It’s a room.”
Tamping down his curiosity, he handed the flashlight to Emily. The light arced across rock walls. He tried to peer around her.
“Looks like an old cistern.” She slipped through the opening. “But there are shelves.” Her voice echoed.
Turning sideways, Jake squeezed through the opening and stared at the shadowy emptiness. Low, two-foot-wide boards braced with thick posts lined three walls.
Emily rubbed her bare arms. “It must be ten degrees colder in here. A root cellar maybe.”
He didn’t answer. The width of the bottom shelves reminded him of something altogether different—berths in the hold of an ancient ship.
The flashlight beam bounced from wall to ceiling and stopped at a square door in the wood above their heads. “Where does that lead? Wouldn’t it open under the porch?”
“It would now. Maybe the porch wasn’t there when the door was put in.”
Emily ran the beam across high shelves and a row of black hooks. “It looks like a coatroom like you see in old schoolhouses.” She lowered herself to a bench and scanned the room for a long moment then turned her eyes to him. “This feels significant. I can’t explain it. I guess that sounds crazy….” Her voice trailed to a whisper. She flattened her hand against a wall.
She didn’t sound crazy at all. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but the space almost vibrated with a sensation of—Emily had nailed it—significance. He reached up and touched the cold roughness of an iron hook. “I think you’re right.”
The flashlight painted the walls in systematic strokes. Floor to ceiling, ceiling to floor. When the beam reached the northwest corner, it stopped. The halo of light spilled onto the bench. Emily leaned forward then rose and stepped closer. The light concentrated into a plate-sized disk. She knelt. “Come here,” she whispered.
Jake crouched behind her. Carved into the bench was a picture he’d seen before—four five-petal flowers with rounded petals and two concentric circles in the center of each, connected by stems with three leaves. Crude block characters curved around one side of the wreath, spelling out “MARIAH 1852.”
His long, low whistle split the shadows, eclipsing Emily’s gasp. “What do you know about the Underground Railroad, Miss Foster?”
September 2, 1852
Water lilies brushed the sides of the canoe with a soft whisper. Quiet, yet more noise than Liam would have liked. The night was still. A chill hung over the moonlit river in clouds of low fog, engulfing him in thick gray mist one moment then dropping like a sheet falling from a clothesline the next. Paddling just enough to steer clear of the bank, he combed the river’s edge with seasoned eyes. His newly rifled musket rested on his thigh. A dozen minié balls rattled in his pocket like a handful of lead acorns. But the weapon that fit his hands as if he’d been born with two fingers attached to the string nestled beside him like a trusty hound. Balancing his paddle across his knees, he reached over his shoulder and stroked the turkey fletching of an arrow pulled out, ready and waiting, from the others in his quiver. Soon. A half mile ahead, a clearing created a gathering place. As the deer nibbled on the lily pads and stems, he would find the young buck that had eluded him for three nights.
He shifted his cramped legs, inadvertently grazing the traps with his boot. Chains rattled. Liam gritted his teeth. Ten more yards and he’d pass Hannah’s porch. No one should have to travel at night in this dampness that seeped through buckskin like it was parchment.
With a deep breath for courage, he let his gaze travel the riverbank to the porch. Two rugs hung over the railing. His heart missed two beats. His stomach felt as though he’d swallowed the bullets in his breast pocket.
He would be back tomorrow night.
CHAPTER 5
Emily still sat on the low, scarred bench, rubbing her arms for warmth. Leaning back against the rock wall, she tried to separate logical thought from the fanciful musings of the man who had just left.
She regretted the “significance” remark. Though the feeling hadn’t left, it made her sound melodramatic. And it had fed Jake’s imagination.