I shook the memory away, went to the sink and rinsed out my coffee cup, then turned quickly, half expecting… what? Lexie? A Zax? Can’t you feel him? He’s behind our backs!
Grief is a monster.
There was still one last thing I needed to do before I got in the car to drive to the airport—the thing I’d been putting off all night. I went to the answering machine, reached to turn up the volume, and pressed play. The room filled with the sound of her voice. It slammed into me, filled my ears, my lungs and chest. I sat frozen, crying, as I listened to all fourteen messages from my sister. There were no funny rhyming songs. No made-up words or creatures. Only her frantic voice, words tangled and knotted. Mostly, she was reciting letters, numbers, distances, as if it was all some kind of code. I know it seems impossible, she said. But the numbers don’t lie. In another, she was practically shouting: H9, six meters! H9, over fifty meters! How do you explain that, Jax? It’s the scientific method, for fuck’s sake!
The messages got more desperate, more angry. Why the fuck don’t you pick up the phone? I know you’re there! Don’t you dare fucking ignore me! What kind of a fucking social worker are you, Jax?
Then, the final message. Lexie sounded worn out. Hoarse. She spoke in a whisper. She was crying. I had to move close, put my ear right against the machine to hear her. She’s here, Jax. Oh my God, she’s here.
chapter four
June 14, 1929
Brandenburg, Vermont
We found the town of Brandenburg without any problem by following the map: I navigated while Will drove, coaxing our Franklin touring car over the hills and around the bends, the backseat full of suitcases and hatboxes. I traced our route along the map with my finger—the road twisting and turning like a great black snake as it made its way through the mountains. It was a lovely day, and we drove with the top down. I wore my new black wool cloche hat to keep my hair from getting too mussed. We passed more cows and sheep than people on the four-hour journey from our home to Brandenburg through fields and woods, with a few villages scattered along the way—tiny places with just a scattering of homes, a church, and a general store. The sun beat down on the hills we wound our way through, lighting up a thousand different shades of green. We caught sight of train tracks running perpendicular to the road at times.
The town of Brandenburg was quite quaint: a small fire department, two churches (Methodist and Presbyterian), a post office, and a general store where Will and I stopped in for sodas and directions. The store had uneven old wooden floors that creaked. There was a moose head on the wall with an enormous rack of antlers. I elbowed Will, nodded in the poor creature’s direction, whispered, “What do you suppose his name was?”
“Looks like a Stanley to me,” Will whispered back.
“Poor Stan,” I said.
There was a woman in a battered-looking wide-brimmed straw hat filling a basket with eggs, milk, and flour. The place seemed to sell everything: molasses, hats, fishing reels, tobacco, buttons and thread, large blocks of ice. Next to the cash register was a wooden crate of jelly jars full of water. A hand-lettered sign said: Genuine Brandenburg Springs Water, 5¢, SURE TO CURE WHAT AILS YOU!
“That’s the real stuff. Got it right from the springs. Has a funny taste, but it brings good luck and good health,” said the old man behind the counter when he saw me looking at them. “Cured my wife’s gout. I burned my hand real bad, back when I was young and foolish—the skin turned black, and the wound wept something awful. I soaked my hand in the springs every day, and it was healed in a week.” He held up his hand for inspection. “I don’t even have a scar.”
Will leaned in to study his hand. “Incredible,” he said. “Do you know the mineral content of the waters?”
The man shook his head, held out a jar of water. “Don’t know what’s in it, but I swear it works. People have been traveling to the springs to take the waters since before the town was founded. World famous, it is. Would you like one? Cost you just a nickel.”
“No, thank you,” I said, giving him my best smile. “We’re actually on our way to the Brandenburg Springs Hotel. We have a reservation for the weekend, so we’ll be enjoying plenty of the water soon enough.”
“You have to be a paying guest to get to the springs these days.” He scowled, accentuating the lines in his face.
“How do you get these jars to sell, then?” Will asked.
“I got my ways,” he said. He clenched his jaw. “That Benson Harding can put up fences, but that water, it don’t belong to him. You can’t own the springs.”
“No, you can’t,” said the woman in the hat, who’d come up behind us and was looking at sweets kept in jars on the counter: lemon drops, puffed peppermints, horehound drops, licorice. Beside them was a box of Teaberry gum. “Last man who called the springs his own paid a terrible price.”
“What’s that?” I asked. “Who?”
“That’d be Nelson DeWitt,” said the shopkeeper. “He owned the land before Mr. Harding. A bit of an odd man. He ran a boardinghouse and bottled the water, had it taken by the trainload into New York City and Boston. ‘DeWitt’s Elixir,’ he called it.”
“So what happened to DeWitt?” Will asked.
“Drowned.” The man shook his head. “Like I said, you can’t own the springs. That’s not what they’re there for.”
“Those springs are a dark place,” the woman said. “You’d do best to keep away from them.”
“Oh, Harriet, come on now—”
“It’s true and you know it,” she said, flashing him a don’t-you-dare-contradict-me look. The shopkeeper looked like he was going to say something more but thought better of it.
“There’s a fine hotel out on the lake, the Pine Point Inn. You can swim, boat, fish,” Harriet went on. “There’s a dance hall! You’re better off heading there for the weekend.”
“Thank you for the recommendation, but I think we’ll stick to our original plan,” Will said as he dropped a dime on the counter for our sodas. “Could you tell us how to get to the Brandenburg Springs Hotel?”
The shopkeeper nodded. “Make a left out of here and bear right at the fork. That road will take you all the way to the hotel. You’ll probably pass the carriage on the way—they drive down every day at five to pick guests up from the train.”
The woman in the hat, Harriet, shook her head in disappointment. As we left, she said in a low voice, “At least I warned them.”
* * *
“Well that was a bit odd, wasn’t it?” Will said once we were back in the car. We each held a bottle of ice-cold Coca-Cola. “Did you see his hand? Not a trace of a scar. If it’s true that he burned it as badly as he said, that’s amazing.” He turned the Coke bottle in his hand. “There’s got to be a mineral in there with antiseptic properties. Or perhaps it’s the combination of minerals? I wonder if the water has ever been tested to discover its true contents.” He looked into the soda bottle as if it had the answers.
“What did you make of Harriet and her warning?”