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“I hear you,” Annie said. “So, Mary, were you able to find out anything about the Carpenters?”

  “Oh yes, Annie. There was a shunning. But my sources don’t know why exactly. Just that one morning she was gone. The family—and the whole congregation—turned their backs on her. They just don’t talk about shunnings to outsiders.”

  Annie was stunned. How could your family turn against you? What did it take to do such a thing?

  “Annie? You okay?”

  “It just makes me so sad to think of it.”

  “It’s hard on everybody,” Mary said. “Even the people doing the shunning.”

  “I get that,” Annie said after a moment. “But what would the girl do out in the world? I mean, where would she go? Who would she even know?”

  “She probably went to a friend’s house, or another congregation could have taken her in. I don’t know.”

  “You mean another Mennonite congregation?”

  “I suppose. These days, there are a lot of factions, even up at the Nest. You know?”

  “These young women lead very secluded lives, yes?”

  Mary nodded—almost with the abandon of a child—as she bit into another chocolate.

  “How would she even meet someone from outside of the group?” Annie asked, thinking how frightening it must be for a person who had lived that life to all of a sudden be without the resources it provided.

  Mary shrugged, licked her lips. “A market maybe?”

  Could be, Annie thought. Maybe she needed to pay more attention to the Wednesday Mennonite Farmers’ Market in town.

  “What would persuade a family to shun their child?” Annie asked.

  “Could be anything. Willful disobedience about anything, like wanting to marry someone outside of the Order or maybe even an unwed pregnancy. Oh Lawd, I remember once a friend of mine knew a girl that was beaten half dead by her daddy.” Mary looked down at her hands. “She was pregnant and not married. I reckon she’d have preferred to be shunned.”

  “I don’t know that I could shun my own flesh and blood,” Annie said.

  “You might be surprised what you’d do if you had a whole group of people telling you this is the way it should be. And if you believe in the common good for the whole group—not just your family. It’s simple brainwashing. Some of our brains are easier to wash than others,” she said and grinned.

  Just then the door swung open; it was Detective Bryant, with several uniformed guards trailing behind him.

  “What are you doing here?” he said to Annie. “I want her out of here. She is not to be allowed to visit in this prison until this case is resolved. I thought I told you that.”

  “I’m sorry. I never got any paperwork on that, sir,” the woman behind him said. “Ms. Chamovitz?” She gestured for Annie to leave.

  Mary frowned. “We were just visiting.”

  Annie picked up her bags and handed Mary another bag of candy. “One for the road,” she said. “Thanks.”

  She turned around and glared at the detective, who looked as if he were about to blow smoke straight out of his ears. Okay, now Annie knew that Bryant knew more than he had let on. There was no way a detective would place a ban on visiting a prisoner, unless there was a reason.

  Chapter 36

  Beatrice had never been moved by scrapbooking. Yes, she had kept some albums throughout her life. But she was always so busy that most of them went unfinished. Her mother, however, had kept several scrapbooks while Beatrice was growing up. There was none of this froufrou, sticker, ribbon, special ink, and paper madness then. The black-and-white pictures were stuck with glue or photo tabs to black or white pages. The older she became, the more Beatrice enjoyed looking at the old pictures of herself when she was younger. Remembering what it was like to have such beautiful, smooth skin; firm, muscular arms and legs; and a mind that never stopped. She also loved looking at the pictures of her parents. She would never give up her wedding album—or Vera’s baby picture album. Yes, there was something to be said for nostalgia, the way it could lift a person’s spirits in their old age.

  But to look at scrapbooking as an art? She’d never imagined such a thing. She’d heard the scrapbook club talking about the artistry of this nationally known scrapbooker or that scrapbooker. She’d blown it off just like any fad. Artistry indeed.

  But art was the only word that came to her as she flipped through the pages of the book that sat in front of her on Sheila’s basement table. It was breathtaking.

  Sheila gazed at Vera with a knowing look in her eye. “Look at these pages. Not the work of an amateur.”

  Vera glared back at her. “It proves nothing,” she said.

  What was Beatrice missing? She closed the book.

  “I like Cookie just as much as the rest of you,” Sheila said. “But this is not the work of a novice.”

  “No, indeed,” Beatrice said, surprised at finding herself agreeing with Sheila. “So?” She looked up at Sheila, then at Vera.

  “When she came to us, it was to learn how to scrapbook,” Sheila told her.

  “This is not really a scrapbook,” Vera said. “Look at it. It’s more like an altered book.”

  “Altered books are an outgrowth of scrapbooking. Sort of taken to a higher, more artistic level. But look at this.” Sheila took the book and opened it to the title page, pulling back a soft see-through page with bits of gold glitter on it. Rice paper? There, in beautiful hand-scripted silver-inked letters flowing across the page, were the words “Cookie Crandall’s Scrapbook of Shadows.”

  “This hand lettering is exquisite,” Beatrice said, looking at Vera. “What do you make of it?”

  Vera sat down. “I don’t know what to think.”

  “Something isn’t right here,” Beatrice said. “The story doesn’t add up, eh?”

  “If Cookie was lying to us about a silly little thing like her scrapbooking talent, what else is she lying about? I mean, she needed our help with scrapbooking, remember?” Sheila finally said.

  “I’m sure there’s an explanation,” Vera said, turning the next page to reveal a double page painted in azure blue, with golden moon stickers. Each phase of the moon was labeled—new moon, waxing crescent moon, first quarter moon, waxing gibbous moon, full moon, waning gibbous moon, last quarter moon, waning crescent moon, dark moon.

  “Oh, look,” Beatrice said, pulling out a smaller page, which slid like a drawer from behind the right page of the double layout. “Moon magic. Hmm.”

  New moon: new beginning and projects.

  Waning moon: casting out of old ways, banishing of old habits, the removal of troubles and worries.

  Full moon: (magic most potent) healing, guidance, completion spells.

  The full moon has different names, depending on when it appears. For example, the harvest moon is the moon that appears nearest to the autumn equinox, late September or early October.

  A second full moon in any month is a blue moon.

  “I never knew what a blue moon was!” Vera said. “That’s fascinating.”

  “Ladies, you are getting carried away by the beauty of this book,” Sheila said. “Let’s not forget why I called you here. Either this book was not done by Cookie or she’s been lying to us all this time. Which do you suppose it is?”

  Vera slid the paper back into place and turned the page and looked at Sheila. “I don’t know which it is or even how to go about finding out.”

  “Why don’t you just ask Cookie?” Beatrice asked.

  “Then she’ll know we’ve been digging in her things,” Vera said.

  “She asked you to get her stuff. What’s the problem?” Beatrice said.

  “I think it’s more than that,” Sheila said. “It’s just uncomfortable. How do you confront a person with something like this? Do you say, ‘We think you’ve been lying to us all this time’ and then expect that person to be your friend?”

  Beatrice cackled. “If she was your friend, she wouldn’t have lied to begin with.”

  �
�Does it matter?” Vera asked. “I mean, you’re talking about when we first met her, remember? I mean, she could have said she didn’t know anything about scrapbooking, you know, just to get invited to a crop or—”

  “Why would she do that? That’s ridiculous. We’ve never said to anybody that they could come only if they are new to scrapbooking,” Sheila said.

  “Well, it’s certainly implied,” Vera shot back at her.

  Sheila gasped. “It is not!”

  “I don’t remember how she was even invited,” Vera said, waving her off. “I had taken some time off myself for a while after Elizabeth was born. When I started coming back again, she was there.”

  Sheila knitted her brows. “I thought you invited her.”

  Vera shook her head.

  “Well, if you two fools didn’t invite her to the crops, who did?” Beatrice asked.

  Chapter 37

  Vera bristled at her mother’s question. Her memory since Elizabeth’s birth had been horrible. But she was certain she hadn’t invited Cookie to the crops. She sat there, her mind spinning with memories, running her fingers over the moon pages. The words blue moon spun around in her head, then the song, as she tried to remember if she had met Cookie before that first crop or if her friends had talked about her so much that she’d felt like she already knew her.

  “Look at that!” Beatrice exclaimed, as she leaned across Vera.

  Each turn of the page offered a feast for the eye. Pressed flowers and herbs were affixed in neat little rows. The pages had holes cut into them, where the flowers and herbs were displayed in little slips of plastic. Lady’s slipper. Foxglove. Henbane. Virginia bluebells. Handwritten descriptions accompanied them. In between the real botanicals were beautifully rendered—yet almost childlike—drawings of fairies.

  “Look at that beautiful ink,” Sheila said. “It almost shimmers.”

  “Shimmer is a good word for all of it,” Beatrice said.

  Nothing shimmery about plants, Vera thought. Yet there was a shimmery, almost alive quality to the page. Was the effect from the ink alone?

  Vera looked at one fairy, who appeared to be dancing. How had Cookie drawn her to show such action? The fairy looked like it was ready to dance off the page. Vera blinked, for suddenly it looked like that fairy was leaping off the page and spinning around in the air. Bright, sparkly dust suddenly blew into Vera’s eyes, making them burn.

  “Ouch!” she said and closed her eyes. The scrapbook fell to the floor with a thud.

  “What’s wrong?” Sheila said.

  “My eyes!” Vera whined.

  “What happened?” Beatrice said. “Open your eyes. Let me see.”

  “I can’t! It hurts,” Vera squealed.

  “Stop rubbing,” Sheila said.

  “Go get a cool wet washcloth, Sheila. Something must have flown into her eyes,” Beatrice said. “I’ll rinse them out. It will be fine.”

  “Fine? The damned fairy blew dust into them,” Vera said, her eyes still closed and burning.

  “Fairy?” Beatrice said. “Are you having a stroke? Do we need to take you to a hospital?”

  “The fairy in the book,” Vera said.

  Sheila was back in the room now and was laughing. “Fairy?” She handed Beatrice the washcloth.

  “You’re going to need to open them,” Beatrice told Vera.

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “It’s going to hurt worse.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Beatrice said. “First, you’re seeing fairies. Now you’re behaving like you’re two. Open your friggin’ eyes. Hold her head.”

  Beatrice wrung the washcloth over her daughter’s eyes, which were fluttering now, finally opening. Vera reached for the washcloth and wiped her eyes. She pulled the washcloth away from her face.

  “Look,” she told them. Vera held the washcloth up for them to see. “It’s got some kind of fine glitter all over it.”

  “Well, I’ll be,” Sheila said, pushing her glasses back on her nose.

  “Where did it come from? I didn’t see any glitter,” Beatrice said.

  “It must have come from the book. There’s plenty of glitter in there,” Sheila said.

  “You mean it leapt from the page into my eyes? Just my eyes?”

  Sheila shook her head. “No, I mean it just blew into them—”

  “With what air current?” Beatrice said, sticking her finger up to feel for one.

  Sheila shrugged. “How do I know, old woman? You’re the physicist.”

  “I’m telling you that I saw a fairy leap off the page and fly around. It blew this glittery stuff right into my eyes,” Vera said.

  “Humph,” Beatrice said. “Of all the things that could have happened, I’m fairly certain it wasn’t a fairy.”

  Vera threw the washcloth down. “Oh, really? I saw it! This coming from you? You swear Daddy’s ghost was with you for years. And you don’t believe I saw a fairy? That’s rich.”

  Sheila crossed her arms. “She’s got a point, Beatrice.”

  “Okay, look,” Beatrice said after a moment. “We were sitting right here, looking at the book with you, and neither one of us saw a thing.”

  Just then the tea kettle went off. “Tea, ladies?” Sheila asked, walking over to the stove in her basement kitchenette. “I’ve got leftover scones and muffins from last night.”

  Vera pushed a long strand of her hair behind her ear, her hand shaking. “I just don’t know what happened. It looked like a fairy.... I don’t know. . . . Maybe it was pollen? A piece of a flower?”

  “Pollen and glitter,” Sheila said, setting a tray with a teapot, cups, and scones and muffins in front of them.

  Sheila poured the tea, and Beatrice reached for a gingerbread muffin. Vera noticed her mother’s hands trembling slightly. Vera took a sip of her tea. Yes. That was good. Real. Right.

  Nothing else seemed to be. She still felt disoriented. Uncertain of what had just happened to her. But as she looked around the room, it seemed like she was seeing things very clearly, with much more vivid hues than before.

  “Well, we are still back where we started from,” Sheila mused after taking a bite of a scone. “We still don’t know what to make of this book or of Cookie.”

  The three of them sat there, eating, sipping tea, looking around the room. Not one of them picked the book up off the basement floor.

  Chapter 38

  Annie was trying to focus her thoughts as she drove away from the prison. She was onto a connection that was making the detective nervous. Yes, he was an ass, but he wasn’t a stupid man. Mary was probably in the middle of a nervous breakdown, but she knew the events and the people of Jenkins Hollow. He knew that. He was hiding something.

  So, the first murder victim was shunned. Which was probably why there was nobody at the funeral. What about the second young woman? Hmm. What was her name? Rebecca. Rebecca Collins. What was her connection to Sarah Carpenter?

  She pulled off the road to make a phone call.

  “Cumberland Creek Police,” a voice said.

  “Hi, yes. This is Annie Chamovitz. I’m wondering if visitation has been set for Cookie Crandall.”

  “No, ma’am. Sorry. No visitors.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  It was odd that they were not allowing Cookie to see anybody, although it wasn’t completely out of the ordinary for someone they considered to be a flight risk. Absurd. Cookie. A flight risk? That was almost as absurd as Cookie even being a murder suspect. None of it made sense.

  She reached into her bag and pulled out her red folder, which had notes and phone numbers from this case. An envelope fell out from among the sheets of paper. She’d scribbled on the back of it. Yes. There it is, James and Doris Collins. Their phone number was right there.

  Annie keyed the number into her cell phone, wondering if it would work, since the Collinses lived in the hollow. But their place was just on the edge of it, and she might get a call through. It rang. Annie’s heart skipped
a beat. She hated talking to bereaved parents. What could you say to them? Annie reached over and turned off the radio.

  “Hello,” a soft feminine voice said.

  “Mrs. Collins, I’m Annie Chamovitz. I write for—”

  “I know who you are,” she said.

  Oh.

  “I was wondering if we could chat sometime. I know this must be an awful time for you, and I truly hate the imposition. But if there’s any information you could give, it might help someone else. Can we perhaps meet somewhere?”

  She breathed heavily into the phone, hesitating. “I don’t know what there is to say.”

  “Specifically, I’d like to talk with you about Sarah and Rebecca and their friendship.”

  “Can we talk over the phone? I mean, I’m not sure I can get out right now.”

  “The conversation could get a little personal, and, well, would you be comfortable over the phone?” Annie despised phone interviews. She felt she missed something if she couldn’t see her subject’s eyes, the way they moved, and so on.

  “Yes, I think so,” Mrs. Collins said.

  Okay.

  “How long had Rebecca and Sarah been friends?”

  “Almost since we moved up here. It’s probably been fifteen years. They both loved to play the piano, had the same teacher. They’d get together and practice.”

  “It’s kind of unusual for a Mennonite girl to get close with a Baptist girl, isn’t it?”

  “Not really. I mean, I guess it depends. They were mostly just playing music together, and I think Sarah’s parents trusted us,” she said, her voice cracking. “They live so close by, and my husband is a vet. . . . He’s helped with their animals.”

  Aha. A connection.

  “Did Rebecca know that Sarah was pregnant?”

  Silence.

  “Mrs. Collins?”

  “You know, I’ve asked myself that same question. I suppose she did. I wish with all my heart they’d come to me, or some other adult, for help.”

  “They were both eighteen and probably thought they could handle it. . . .”

  “Yes. Except that an eighteen-year-old Mennonite girl is quite gullible. Well, even more so than most eighteen-year-olds.”