Nora Roberts - The Hollow

“Sounds like it to me.”

“I don’t want to feel responsible for something happening to you. Don’t say it.” He held up a hand. “My office, my schedule, my feelings.”

She angled her head, the gesture both acknowledgment and challenge. “Then you’ll have to fire me or, to toss back your own advice, deal.”

“Then I will-deal. We’re going to try to come up with some sort of alarm or signal that can reach everyone at the same time. No more phone trees.”

“What, like the Bat Signal?”

He had to smile. “That’d be cool. We’ll talk about it.”

When they walked out together, he asked, “Are we smooth now?”

“Smooth enough.”

Despite Cybil’s edict, the rest gathered in the kitchen. Whatever was on the menu already scented the air. Cal’s dog, Lump, sprawled under the little cafe table, snoring.

“There’s a perfectly good living room in the house,” Cybil pointed out. “Well-suited for men and dogs, considering its current decor.”

“Cyb still objects to the flea-market-special ambiance.” Quinn grinned and crunched into a stalk of celery. “Feeling better, Layla?”

“Much. I’m just going to grab a glass of wine then go up and chart this latest business. By the way, why were you calling me? You said you’d tried to call me on the office phone and my cell.”

“Oh God, with all the excitement, we forgot.” Quinn looked over at Cybil. “Our top researcher’s come up with another lead to where Ann Hawkins might have lived after the night at the Pagan Stone.”

“A family by the name of Ellsworth, a few miles outside of the settlement here in sixteen fifty-two. They arrived shortly after Hawkins, about three months after from what I’ve dug up.”

“Is there a connection?” Cal asked.

“They both came over from England. Fletcher Ellsworth. Ann named one of her sons Fletcher. And Ellsworth’s wife, Honor, was third cousin to Hawkins’s wife.”

“I define that as connection,” Quinn stated.

“Have you pinpointed the location?”

“Working on it,” Cybil told Cal. “I got as much as I got because one of Ellsworth’s descendents was at Valley Forge with George, and one of his descendents wrote a book about the family. I got in touch-chatty guy.”

“They always talk to Cyb.” Quinn took another bite of celery.

“Yes, they do. He was able to verify that the Ellsworths we’re interested in had a farm west of town, in a place that was called Hollow Creek.”

“So we just have to-” Quinn broke off, catching Cal’s expression. “What?” Because he was staring at Fox, she turned, repeated. “What?”

“Some of the locals still call it that,” Fox explained. “Or did, when my parents bought the land thirty-three years ago. That’s my family’s farm.”

IT WAS FULL DARK BY THE TIME FOX PULLED UP behind his father’s truck. The lateness of the hour had been one of the reasons his parents weren’t going to be invaded by six people on a kind of scavenger hunt.

They’d have handled it, he knew. The house had always been open to anyone, anytime. Relatives, old friends, new friends, the occasional stranger could count on a bed, a meal, a refuge at the Barry-O’Dells. Payment for the hospitality might be feeding chickens, milking goats, weeding a garden, splitting wood.

Throughout his childhood the house had been noisy, busy, and often still was. It was a house where those who lived in it were encouraged to pursue and explore their own paths, where the rules were flexible and individualized, and where everyone had been expected to contribute to the whole.

It was still home, he thought, the rambling house of stone and wood with its wide front porch, its interesting juts and painted shutters (currently a sassy red). He supposed even if he ever got the chance to make his own, to build his own family, this farm, this house, this place would always be home.

There was music when he stepped into the big living room with its eccentric mix of art, its bold use of color and texture. Every piece of furniture was handcrafted, most by his father. Lamps, paintings, vases, bowls, throws, pillows, candles, all original work-family or friends.

Had he appreciated that as a child? he wondered. Probably not. It was just home.

A pair of dogs rushed from the rear of the house to greet him with welcoming barks and swinging tails. There’d always been dogs here. These, Mick and Dylan, were mutts-as they always were-rescued from the pound. Fox crouched to give them both a rub when his father followed them out.

“Hey.” Brian’s grin flashed, that instant sign of pleasure. “How’s it going? You eat?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on back. We’re still at it, and there’s a rumor about apple cobbler.” Brian swung an arm over Fox’s shoulders as they walked back to the kitchen.

“I was going to drop by today while I was working in town,” Brian continued, “but I got hung up. Look what I found,” he said to Jo. “He must’ve heard about the cobbler.”

“It’s all over town.” Fox went around the big butcher-block table to kiss his mother. The kitchen smelled of his mother’s herbs and candles, and the thick soup from the pot on the stove. “And before you ask, I’ve had dinner.”

He sat in a chair he helped make when he’d been thirteen. “I came by to talk to you guys about the house-the farm.”

“Moving back in?” Brian asked and picked up his spoon to dig back into what Fox recognized as his mother’s lentil and brown rice soup.

“No.” Though that door would always be open, he knew. “The main part of the house is pre-Civil War, right?”

“Eighteen fifties,” Jo confirmed. “You know that.”

“Yeah, but I wondered if you knew if it was built on any earlier structure.”

“Possible,” his father answered. “The stone shed out back’s earlier. It stands to reason there was more here at one time.”

“Right. You looked into the history. I remember.”

“That’s right.” Jo studied his face. “There were people farming here before the white man came over to run them out.”

“I’m not talking about the indigenous, or their exploitation by invaders.” He did not want to get her started on that one. “I’m more interested in what you might know about after the settlers came here.”

“When the Hollow was settled,” Jo said. “When Lazarus Twisse arrived.”

“Yeah.”

“I know the land was farmed then, that the area was known as Hollow Creek. I have some paperwork on it. Why, Fox? We’re not close to the Pagan Stone, we’re outside of town.”

“We think Ann Hawkins might have stayed here, had her sons here.”

“On this farm?” Brian mused. “How about that?”

“She wrote journals, I told you about that, and how there are gaps in them. We haven’t found any from the time she left-or supposedly left-the Hollow until she came back a couple years later. If we could find them…”

“That was three hundred years ago,” Jo pointed out.

“I know, but we have to try. If we could come by in the morning, first thing in the morning before I have any clients coming in-”

“You know you don’t have to ask,” Brian said. “We’ll be here.”

Jo said nothing for a moment. “I’ll get the famous cobbler.” She rose, stroking a hand over her son’s shoulder on her way to the cupboard.

HE’D WANTED TO KEEP ALL OF IT AWAY FROM HIS family, away from home. When he drove the familiar roads back to the farm at the first break of dawn, Fox told himself this search didn’t, wouldn’t, pull his family in any further. Even if they proved Ann had stayed there on their land, even if they found her journals, it didn’t change the fact the farm was one of the safe zones.