Page 30 of The Hermit on the Hill

I set the journal down carefully on the bench seat next to me. "Breakfast?"

Sam shook his head and took his own seat across from me. He didn't have to say a word. His message was clear as he stared at me until I'd taken a bite. I moaned and chewed, my hunger ramping up as the food hit my taste buds.

Sam cleared his throat and began to eat.

"This is delicious," I said. "It might even be better than my mom's. Though she doesn't make veggie lasagna. She uses meat in everything she can use meat in. Unless George is eating with her. She's been trying more vegan recipes for him."

"The baby needs all the nutrients he can get and there are far more of them in vegetables than meat."

His words made me defensive, but I pushed the feeling down. It was good he was concerned about our baby's welfare, and I'd prove to him I was more than capable of looking out for our child.

"Did your grandmother teach you to cook?"

He snorted. "She hated to cook, and we didn't have enough money for fancy ingredients. We ate a lot of basic beans and rice and cheap pasta meals from a can or a box. I taught myself to cook once I was on my own and had the money for it."

"My family didn't have much when I was growing up, either. We ate a lot of beans and rice. It takes a fair amount of money to cook a good meal. The spices alone could bankrupt a person."

"What do you think of my grandmother's journal?" he asked.

"It's amazing. The things she could do… I mean, I've read about folk medicine before, but to have this first-hand account from a practitioner right here in Catalpa Creek. It's the find of a lifetime."

"You're welcome to read it whenever you're here." He moved his food around his plate, thoughtful. "There's something I'd like to discuss with you, but I need to be sure you'll tell no one what I'm about to tell you."

I smiled. "I think you know I can keep a secret." Even so, he had little reason to trust me. He knew me as well as I knew him. Not at all.

He smiled back, but it still wasn't a genuine, open smile. It was a cat who's gotten the canary smile. "You kept the secret better than I did. I'm sorry I shared it, but you can trust Brittany."

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone else until I tell the rest of my family."

"Of course. My secret has to do with my grandmother. When I moved back to Catalpa Creek and built this house, it was because this was the one place in the world that always felt like home to me. But once it was done, my grandmother began to haunt me."

I stared, sure I'd misheard him. "That's why you have salt on the window sills and the red ribbons."

He scowled. "Not that they've worked, but yes. I was trying to get my grandmother to leave me alone. I loved her, but she's an obnoxious ghost."

Somewhere in the house, a door slammed, and Sam glared at the ceiling.

He looked at me. "It took a few weeks of her leaving clues, but I finally remembered that when I was a kid, my grandmother mentioned she'd buried her legacy somewhere on the property and to find it, I'd have to learn her craft. It took me another few weeks to figure out what that meant, but then I found the first clue in this weird scavenger hunt she created."

"What do you think she meant by legacy?" I asked, leaning in. This was the coolest thing I'd ever heard of. A treasure hunt custom made for me.

"I don't know, but she helped a lot of people over the years and they didn't always pay her in cash. Maybe she's buried something valuable that she intends us to make a family heirloom."

"Why didn't locals go to a traditional doctor? Wasn't there one in town?"

"Not when I was a kid. Had to go to Hartlesby for a general practitioner, or Roanoke for a specialist or the hospital. By the time I was a teenager, folks had mostly given up on the old ways, but for most of Nana's life and a good bit of mine, there were enough people who still favored folk ways and were suspicious of doctors with degrees and sterile labs and no dirt under their nails from digging up herbs."

"And you believe in them, don't you?" I tiptoed into what was likely forbidden territory.

Sam pulled a nail from his pocket and put it on the table. "I'm not sure. As I said, the salt and the knives and the red ribbons haven't been working for me, but Nana raised me in those ways. It's hard not to believe."

Outside, the wind picked up and buffeted the windows. The house creaked. I'd never believed in ghosts, never really believed the folkways worked, but I'd always loved them. I loved the magic of them, the idea that will and wisdom could overcome reality, could conjure magic.

In that house, at that moment, I believed in the possibility of a ghost. I believed Sam's Nana had all the powers and abilities she claimed to have. "Tabitha said you left Catalpa Creek when you were a kid? What happened?"

He looked away, out the window. "I was twelve when Nana passed. After that, I was sent to live with an aunt in Maryland and Brittany was sent to live with her mother and then to a cousin in Texas. I missed Brit, but she was as happy as I'd ever known her to be living on a horse ranch in Texas. Nana's land was sold, and it took me years to get back here and be able to buy it back. I want to find Nana's treasure, but the clues are way above my knowledge. That's why I stole your credentials and your research. I need to know more about folklore to understand what she was trying to tell me."

"What are the clues?" I was more excited than I'd been about anything since I'd found out I was pregnant.

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