Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The following morning Connor was already going through a hatbox of thimbles and other sewing bits when Holly made her way through the precarious pathway of junk to the back of the attic. She was wearing a pair of sunglasses because the light still hurt her eyes, but she was feeling much better overall.

When Connor looked up, she handed him a ceramic cup of coffee. “I don’t know what you like, so it just has milk.”

“Perfect,” he said, scanning her from sunglasses to jeans. “How are you feeling?”

“Better.”

“Do you get migraines often?”

She shrugged as she toed aside a half-sewn doll dress that he’d piled with the thimbles and spools. “Sometimes I have a lot; sometimes I go months without them. They’re unpredictable.” Liar, liar . They were as predictable as the sun rising in the east.

He nodded at the lid of the wooden sewing box. “The initials are A.C. I think we’ve found Autumn’s stuff.”

“I can’t believe her possessions are actually here.” Holly knelt beside him and reverently ran her hands over the sewing box. “It’s two hundred years old. That’s wild.”

His eyes twinkled. “It’s cool, right?”

“What are we looking for?”

“Journals and documents, first and foremost. Letters would be great, jotted notes, handwritten receipts—all of that. But really anything that will give us clues about Autumn’s life will be helpful.”

Holly scanned the narrow space under the eaves and spotted a dark navy trunk that had been pushed so far back and forgotten for so long that mice had nested on top of it. She dragged it forward, dust spitting into the air, and flipped open the tarnished brass latches. When she lifted the lid, the old mouse nest and droppings slid to the floor, and she tried not to gag. Holly had a thing with mice, and that thing was she hated them. It was part of the reason Prickles being labeled a rodent made her so pissy.

She clicked on the flashlight she’d brought with her and shined it inside. “Holy shit,” she whispered. “Connor, take a look at this.”

He kneeled beside her and gave a low whistle.

The trunk was stacked with dozens of thin books with leather covers, and they looked a lot like journals.

Holly lifted out the book on top and gingerly peeled back the cover, aware that she was probably the first person to handle it in over two hundred years. On the front page, in faded ink it read:

Autumn Celeste

1820

Her heart thumping with a mixture of fear and excitement, Holly pushed her sunglasses on top of her head and gently turned the page. She caught her breath, prepared to read Autumn Celeste’s deepest secrets, but instead her brows pinched together in confusion. The page was blank. She turned to the next page and then the next. All of them were blank.

Connor frowned and lifted out the next volume. It was labeled 1819 , and it too was blank inside.

“This is weird, right?” Holly said as she opened the book for 1818, only to find more empty pages.

“I would say it’s weird,” he agreed. “If they were a stack of blank books that would be one thing, but why write out the date for every year only to leave the journal empty?” He pointed to the ink on the first book and then compared it to the ink on the second. “Different ink. She didn’t write them all at the same time.”

They took out the remainder of the books—a total of twenty—and at the very bottom they found a bundle of correspondence tied with a faded black ribbon.

Their eyes met in excitement. Holly was surprisingly eager to discover more about the woman who’d left them her apple legacy. Holly should have taken the time to learn about her family history before now, but she’d always let duty and chores get in the way. It shouldn’t have taken Connor coming here for her to slow down and give proper attention to the past.

Connor nodded to Holly, and she slid the first letter off the top of the stack, grateful that she was here for this discovery. If there was anything sensitive in the letters, she’d have a chance to either make explanations or skip over it entirely.

There was no address on the letter and Holly wondered if it had been hand delivered. She unfolded the paper, which was dry and fragile with age. The writing was slanted and difficult to read, the ink severely faded. She shined the flashlight on it and stumbled over the words as she read aloud.

Councilman—

I must ask that you do not write to my husband again. The claims you made in your last correspondence angered him greatly, and I fear further provocation will not bode well for you. Out of concern for my husband and what he may do if you continue, I insist you cease your baseless accusations. You cannot blame a man for defending his wife, and Thomas is a devoted husband and dedicated citizen of our town. What you claim to have seen that night was a simple misunderstanding. You must know that your campaign against me will not change Thomas’s mind about the station. You stand only to hurt a good man.

Take care with your words, Councilman. Accusations have consequences.

Autumn

“Holy shit,” Holly whispered again. Half tales of how their orchard had come to be had filtered through the generations, but she’d never had proof until now. She’d known only that Autumn had planted the orchards out of spite and that the seeds had been special indeed, but there was a greater story here, perhaps one that would explain Councilman Miller’s ghostly presence in their orchards.

Maybe this would be enough to satisfy Connor.

Connor’s eyes were gleaming with excitement. “This proves she and the councilman were not only in contact but also on poor terms. The threat is implicit: back off, or you’ll be in trouble.”

Holly nodded. “It sounds like he accused her of something and then tattled on her to her husband. Apparently, her husband didn’t appreciate it.”

If fit with what she and her sisters had been told. Autumn Celeste had been the only remaining child after her mother and sisters were burned in Switzerland for being witches in what Aunt Rose liked to call gendercide . Autumn had eventually escaped to America, where she’d met her farmer husband and fallen in love, only to be accused of being a witch by the local councilman.

Connor pieced together the story far too quickly for Holly’s liking. “I bet he accused her of witchcraft. He must’ve ‘seen’ something in the middle of the night and thought to confront her husband. There were more than enough spiteful and gullible husbands who would listen to anything spewed by a man as powerful and wealthy as Councilman Miller, even if it meant persecuting his own wife.”

Holly’s skin prickled as it did every time she thought of how fifty thousand “witches” had been executed in Europe, the vast majority of them women. “Men fear powerful women.”

Connor nodded. “Some do. Thankfully, it seems Autumn’s husband wasn’t one of them.” He gently extracted the letter from her hand and let his eyes roam over the text. “She wrote this letter out of fear that the councilman would push her husband too far. She wanted to protect her husband, except she never sent it.” He rubbed his palm over his chin as he thought. “She wrote at the bottom that the councilman’s witch hunt wouldn’t change her husband’s mind about the station. Do you know anything about that?”

Holly shook her head no.

“I’ll have Charlotte dig into any local records involving police, fire, and train stations at the time.”

“If the ghost in our orchards is real, I don’t think Councilman Miller backed off.”

Connor leaned on his heels. “So who killed the councilman? Autumn, her husband, or someone else entirely?”

“Men are statistically more likely to commit murder, but I’m going to guess you go with the witch poisoning the apple,” she said tartly. She tried not to be angry about yet another woman, her ancestor , being accused of doing evil simply because she was powerful.

Connor laid a warm hand on her wrist, and when she lifted her eyes, she saw that a line had appeared between his brows.

“Well?” she asked when he didn’t say anything.

“I was going to reassure you that it isn’t like that, but maybe it is. Maybe I am witch hunting. Maybe in more ways than one,” he muttered softly, so softly that she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. He raked a hand through his hair and gazed into the distance. “If witches do exist,” he said at last, “I get why they want to stay hidden. History has not been on their side.” When his eyes met hers again, they were so penetrating that Holly’s breath caught. “I want to normalize the paranormal, not hurt people.”

“Autumn Celeste was not a witch.” Holly took the letter from his hand and folded it again. The air between them was saturated with suspicion. “But she was persecuted all the same.”

“I’m not here to persecute anyone.”

“Then leave her out of it.” What she meant was, leave us out of it.

Connor drummed his fingers on the edge of the trunk. “I’m not going to accuse Autumn of anything unless I have solid proof.”

Holly was frustrated, but she’d done all she could for now. She opened the next letter, a missive to a woman at church about donating shawls to the needy. They combed through the remaining letters, but none of them mentioned Councilman Miller again.

Holly spent the next half hour working silently beside Connor, sweating in the hazy golden light of the attic, until they’d gone through all of Autumn’s meager belongings. Aside from her sewing box and the trunk of blank journals and letters, they’d discovered a keepsake box containing the moth-eaten baby clothes of her three daughters and locks of their hair, several hatboxes with the crushed hats still inside, and a few poetry books.

Connor stood and stretched, lifting his arms over his head. The hem of his T-shirt rode up enough that Holly got an eyeful of abs and a dark, happy trail. She gulped and turned her head away, and when Connor wasn’t looking, she grabbed the blank journal from 1820 that she’d stashed behind the trunk when they were repacking it. She tucked it into the back of her jeans and smiled brightly at him before she followed him out of the attic.