HIDING (eBook)

CHAPTER 3

PLAN B

Camilla pulled the car into the lane. It wasn’t much further, maybe thirty yards, before she reached the house. She opened the door and took a step into the heat. It was muggy and flies buzzed around her head.

After a breath she gathered her things. She didn’t have much, a tote bag, her purse, and her sweater. She removed everything from the glove compartment and searched the inside of the car to ensure nothing was left. It wasn’t a rental; she had bought it with cash from a small lot in New Jersey using a forged driver’s license under the name Debby Jones. Heading to the back of the car she took the license plate off with her nail file. She couldn’t hide the car, but no one was going to notice an abandoned car parked next to an abandoned house.

Camilla stood and started up the lane toward the house. To her left was a view of the mountain and to her right was the small creek that she used to catch crawdads in. She remembered one summer afternoon she and momma wandered down to the creek. It had rained for a whole week and the stream was deeper than usual. Momma brought a paper bag and had a blanket draped over her arm. They spread the blanket near the creek bank and momma opened her treasure chest disguised as a paper bag.

They sat on the river’s edge having a picnic of peanut butter sandwiches, crackers, and Kool-Aid. They giggled, talked, and ate- something that happened rarely. Momma told her about the grey goat that just had babies. They were twins and she clapped with delight. They lounged on the blanket gazing at the clouds when all of a sudden momma stood up and ran into the creek. She sat down in the water shouting, “Come on in Cami Sue! It feels so good!”

Camilla stood gazing at the creek. She wanted to stay in that memory but felt it floating away. On she walked. The leaves were spectacular and the air was crisp and clean. The sky grew bluer by the minute. That’s how it was on the mountain. Generally, rain came in the morning, lifting the fog unless the clouds were low. By eleven o’clock the sun would break through. She looked at the sky, no sun yet. It had to be between 8:30 and 9:30.

As Camilla walked the hollow widened. The creek wandered off around to her right and the mountain rambled toward the east forming a bowl. In the winter when it snowed, she would walk to the field behind the house and look at the mountains as they wrapped around the valley. She would pretend she was in a snow globe.

As she rounded the bend the peak of the barn came into view. She stopped; nothing had changed. When she walked this path in her school days seeing that peak meant she was home. Now she was back and happier than ever to see it still standing. Never once did she think it might not be there.

She had bought the land and the house ten years ago through her law firm which purchased and managed properties out of New Jersey. However, no one knew she bought it because she had changed her name to Camilla Sue Kennedy. Cami Sue Rose didn’t exist anymore. She bought the property as a client and turned the file over to one of her associates. She bought the land to ensure no one else took it, but she never actually checked on the house to see if it was still Standing. That wasn’t ever a concern or question, it was always going to be there.

Camilla walked past the barn and the cow pen. Past the corn crib and the pile of boards that was once the chicken house. She approached the front porch, studying the house. It was in bad shape. The porch looked the most damaged with part of the roof caving in. The railings were either missing or crooked. Paint had been beaten away by weather and neglect. Although, the doors were still in place and the windows weren’t broken.

Camilla stepped gingerly onto the porch and was relieved to find that it didn’t collapse under her. To her right was the porch swing, still intact. The seat had a couple of broken pieces and the chains were rusted, but it was still there. She walked to the swing and gently sat down. The swing faced the barn so she could see the hay loft and where the silo had caved in.

Camilla wanted to stay on that porch, mainly because she didn’t know if she could bring herself to step inside. When she was sixteen, she ached for this porch, this house, but at eighteen she left without looking back.

Gathering her courage, she picked herself up off the swing and crossed the porch to the front door. It opened easily and she stepped inside. As she stepped inside a groundhog scurried out the back door which was lying on the grass.

She stood in the living room; it wasn’t as big as she had remembered. The furniture was still in place, torn and faded. She turned and walked past the stairs into the kitchen. It was all there, the sink and stove. The cupboards with dishes, the table and chairs, even the slop pan. The curtains hung at the windows a bit faded with tiny blue flowers that her momma had sewn. She turned away from the sink and a mouse scurried across the floor. Camilla jumped, running into the hallway.

She took a couple of shaky breaths then walked on. Behind the stairs was the basement door, the bathroom, then the back door. She walked out the back to see the large outbuildings standing. One was leaning quite a bit but the other looked better. The old outhouse was lying in a heap, but the land...the beautiful overgrown fields and the mature woods took her breath away. Unexpectedly, she began to cry.

Minutes later she wiped her eyes, scolding herself. She walked back into the house up to the stairs where she noticed dark red stains. That was from momma. She sat on the step and touched the stairs. Tears rolled down her face and she bit her lip, determined not to fall apart.

About eight years ago Camilla hired an investigator to look into her mother’s death. Age has a way of changing perspective and by the time she was eighteen Camilla couldn’t make sense of her mother’s death. It had been ruled death by childbirth and hemorrhage. An accident. However, two years after her momma’s death suspicion took hold.

Camilla continued up the steps into the hallway. At the top of the stairs was her bedroom which she shared with Katie Lynn once she was born. She opened the door; it was if time had frozen. This had been her safe place. The place where she kept her secrets, hopes, and even dreams. Against the wall was a full-sized bed with four high posts and a carved footboard. On the opposite wall was a matching dresser and mirror. There was a closet and another small dresser that did not match which belonged to Katie Lynn.

Camilla opened a drawer to find they were empty except for one. On the day she had to leave, she left a letter to her Momma. It still sat there, covered in dust. Camilla picked it up and placed it in her sweater pocket. She went to Katie Lynn’s dresser; every outfit Katie ever owned was there. Camilla picked up a onesie, hugged it, and broke down again.

Carrying the onesie, she went back into the hallway. She stopped in front of the windows and looked out at the back field. She felt herself becoming numb. She didn’t think she could do this. She didn’t think she could hide here.

She went into her brother’s bedroom where more memories lived.

Three days after Momma’s funeral, two military officers climbed the lane to the farm. They found Daddy in the yard outside of the barn who led them to the porch where he asked for iced tea. When Camilla came back out to the porch Daddy, she found crying. He had never done that before. Not even at Momma’s funeral. That wasn’t the emotion he liked to show. When asked what was wrong, he responded curtly.

“Your brother’s dead. He won’t be coming home.”

Daddy got up and went back to the barn. As the two men stood up, she tried to offer an explanation.

“My Momma just died.”

She wanted them to tell her how Tommy was killed, and they obliged. He was shot down while in a helicopter. There weren’t even bodies to retrieve. Tommy wasn’t coming home.

Camilla shuddered at the memory as she walked across the hallway into Tommy’s room. She spent many nights here, especially after he was gone. She would climb into his big bed and cry herself to sleep. When Tommy left the hollow, she promised him she would write every day. Sometimes the letters were a short; with a mere hello and in others she poured out her heart. Other times she would draw him a picture. Almost always, she would fold the letter around dried flowers.

Camilla couldn’t linger in this room. It wasn’t Tommy’s anymore. It hadn’t been in a long time. She cleaned everything out after those two men came. There was no funeral or memorial for him. Daddy offered no words of comfort and the family never mentioned Tommy again. He became a memory that only she seemed to carry. As Camilla turned to leave the room, she saw a duffle bag in the corner. That wasn’t supposed to be there.

Camilla sat on the floor with the duffle bag opened in front of her. A thirty-five-year-old woman crying a sixteen-year-old’s tears. She pulled out the clothes Tommy wore the last time she saw him. He had come home for two weeks before being shipped out and even after all these years they still smelled like Tommy. She pulled a flannel shirt up to her face, sobbing twenty years’ worth of grief.

She wiped her face with the shirt and reached into the duffle bag again, her hand falling on something hard. What she pulled out was a handmade wooden box about the size of a cigar box. Carved into the top was the name Thomas...