Page 55 of The Girl on Hallow's Eve

“I found this. I think you may want it,” I say, unfolding the cloth to reveal a pocket watch.

He gasps and takes the watch with trembling hands, tracing his brother’s name in the metal with his fingertip.

“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you so much.”

“It was in a box with some other things. I don’t know what all of them are, but I’ll show them to you.”

Tears fall softly and steadily down Elias’s cheeks now, but he’s silent. He watches as the backhoe approaches the collapsed barn.

“Are you ready?” I ask Elias. He nods. “Are you sure?”

“Take it down,” he whispers.

The sound of old wood crumbling and new trees growing through it snapping crack the chill silence of the morning. We stand in silence as the building is brought to the ground and then cleared away. For these moments, this is a funeral.

The rubble is gone and I have my shovel in my hand, walking toward the soft earth that used to be the floor of a stable, when another car comes into view. It hesitates as it goes past the trees, almost like the driver thinks none of us notice he’s there. George waves. Sam joins him. The car creeps forward and stops and the driver climbs out.

“What’s happening here? Elias, I…”

“Come on and join us, Keilan,” I call. “You’re just in time.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand what’s going on here. I thought I was coming here to meet with…”

“Your client? Or do you prefer thinking of him as your grandfather?” I ask.

Keilan’s face darkens and for the first time, I really see him.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.

“Oh, but I do. You should have had someone else acquire Elias’s land. It really didn’t look good to have your name down as the representative of the purchaser. But you probably wanted to make sure you looked good to everyone at the Calloway Group. A young go-getter able to not only find the perfect piece of land for the company’s next development project, but also able to acquire it cleanly and at a truly astonishingly low price.

“Walk me through how you pitched this project. I would really like to know what went on in your mind when you went to the developers and told them you believe the perfect spot for the next megamall in the Calloway portfolio would be just outside tiny little Sherwood, Virginia.”

He says nothing and I lean toward him like I’m having trouble hearing the words not coming out of his mouth. “Don’t have anything to say? Maybe you’re just being humble. That’s okay. I’ll fill it in for you.

“You started planning for this years ago when you were trying to track down your family. Your mother died, didn’t she? About five years ago? And after her death, you finally found out who you really are. Where you come from. You found something. A journal. Letters. I don’t know exactly what, but something that led you down the path towards discovering the legacy your father and uncles left for you.” I hold my arms out to encompass the headstones in the grass and the holes in the ground where Sam, George, and I dug yesterday. “This one.”

“Stop,” Keilan says.

“Why? It’s really an intriguing story. You learned that you were born into a family of thieves and murderers, who believed they grew stronger with every drop of blood they spilled.The people who came this way looking for work or a comfortable place to stop for the night didn’t just go missing. They were robbed, killed, and buried here, among the family cemeteries. The only one not a part of it was your grandfather. He didn’t know what was happening. His father never taught him the ways. It skipped a generation and went right to Elias’s children. His sons. They learned young that stealing from those who have already worked is far easier than doing the work yourself.

“Only, they took it much farther than their grandfather and his father before him. What was for them a supplement, one or two a year, became an addiction to the boys. They didn’t want to work at all if they could get all they wanted without it. Elias watched the businesses his family built and he sustained fail and close. All that was left was the pumpkin patch, the apple orchard, some horses, the tavern, and a couple of fields of crops. The tavern stayed empty for longer and longer until it one day burned to the ground.”

“I’m not going to listen to this,” Keilan says.

He turns around to go back to his car and Elias steps forward.

“Yes, you are. You are going to listen to every word. I sold you my soul, Keilan. But you may never have had one. You were such a little boy the last time I saw you, the week Colby died. Your mother took you after she found out who he really was. I didn’t know. If I had known, I would have sent them away long before. I would have ended it myself.

“She saw him, didn’t she? She watched him kill a man and she couldn’t bear it. How long had she suspected? How long did he torture her by not telling her where the money came from to put food in her mouth and clothes on her child? Probably years. But not as long as me. When he was found, I knew no horse did that to him. That was rage. Martin forced the horse to stomp on him once, to create the right mark and to get blood on his leg, but Colby had been brutalized long before that.Who did it for her? I know she didn’t do it herself.”

“Conrad Smith,” Keilan finally says.

Elias nods. “He loved her from the first day he saw her. Your father’s uncle. He even killed for her.”

“She thought he rescued her. That’s why she gave me his name when we left Virginia,” Keilan says. “She didn’t want me to have his. The irony of him killing to defend her from a murderer was always lost on her.”

“But you lived up to it. Perhaps even better than he ever did,” I say. “Tell me, when you saw Mindy’s name, how long did it take you to realize she is related to the Smiths who gave you your name? She told me that her family has been entrepreneurs for generations, that they owned businesses that started up this town. That was here. At Briar Hill. Before the family split. She doesn’t know. I would hope she never will, but I don’t think there’s a chance in that.

---