The Lady Slipper

Chapter One:

Other people’s flowers…

Hannah didn’t notice the swift crunching of gravel that briefly echoed from the opposite side of the house. She was much too intoxicated by the scent of awakening soil and all that it promised. With her face so close to the ground now, she could inhale great, long drafts of it, prickly and laced with greenery. It still felt like winter by her standards, but there was a new balminess in the air that foretold of pleasant days ahead.

A fresh breeze rustled the plastic grocery bags nestled heavily in the dead weeds behind her. She estimated the size of the next bulb cluster by its foliage and plunged her spade, scraping into a protective fortress of hard-packed glacier stones.
Dammit!

One of Hannah’s weaknesses was an unwillingness to stop something once she had started, going at it with singular focus until she finished or was defeated. The winner here would ultimately be the fragile narcissus, although in its now mangled condition it probably wouldn’t agree.

The sound of a car door reminded her that Sophia and the girls were waiting, probably growing impatient by now. She glanced over at the station wagon parked on the street. Sophia’s head was slumped back against the headrest; no sign of movement inside. One more slam.

“Oh my God, get the car started! Hurry!”
“What?” Sophia called out from the driver’s side window. “What’s going on?” She adjusted the rear view mirror for a better look as Hannah forced up the hatch door and slung in her bags of treasure.
Natalie was awake now and wrestling with her safety seat. Paige only flinched at the noise, her sleeping face still mashed hard against her seat belt.
“Start the car!” Hannah shrieked. “Someone just pulled up at the house.” She slammed the back and ran to the passenger side, hastily brushing the dirt from her hands and clothes.
“Mommy!” came a cry from the back. Natalie’s huge doe-eyes bulged with alarm.
“Okay, Nat. It’s okay,” Sophia shushed over her shoulder as she turned the ignition.
“Come on. Get out of here!” Hannah pleaded, pulling the door closed while Sophia edged the station wagon across the road. “Turn right! Turn right!”
Hannah twisted in her seat to get a better view as Sophia eased away from the corner. A tall, suit-and-tie businessman with a clipboard looked toward them from the front porch. He watched for just a glance and then continued with his mission, unconcerned.
“We are so friggin’ lucky he didn’t come from the other direction. Man, that scared the crap out of me.”
“Jeez, calm down. He’s just a real estate agent or something.”
“Mommy!” Natalie continued to struggle and pull at her restraints.
“Okay. Just a minute,” Sophia answered. “Stay in that seat, Natalie Rose!”
“Nattie wants out,” Paige grumbled, still half asleep. Her peachy right cheek bore an angry indentation from the shoulder strap. “Paige wants out, too.”
“We’ll get out in a minute, girls. Just hold on,” Hannah said. She reached into the back and patted them each on the knee. Natalie pulled her leg away, looking back at Hannah with you’re not my mommy contempt.
“What if someone noticed us coming around there?” Hannah speculated. “What if they’ve noticed the holes?”
“Nah. They’re probably just selling the place or something. Anyway, we cover up pretty good. Right? He’s only checking on the house. He won’t care about the yard.”
“Maybe,” Hannah mumbled, scrubbing at her face and neck with a baby wipe. She flipped down the vanity mirror for a quick look. “I just don’t want any confrontation. That would freak me out.”
“I really wish someone would do something with that cute little house,” Sophia mused. She had already dismissed the recent danger and moved on. “It would look so sweet all fixed up, with the outside painted and the gingerbread repaired.”
“Yeah, well, whatever they’re doing, we should stay away from it for awhile.”
“You think?” Sophia said, crinkling her nose. “Oh, I don’t care.” She waved her hand in the air. “I have enough from there anyway.”
“It seems like all the old lots around here have the same plants. Have you noticed that?”
“Yeah. They probably shared with each other. Don’t ya think? You and I have the exact same things.”
“I wonder if they used to have places to buy plants. You know, like a hundred years ago. Garden centers or something,” Hannah said, finally settling back in her seat.
“Gosh, I don’t know. They could have, I guess. Or, they bought from salesmen. Maybe mail order?”
“I just wish we could find something really different.”
“Seriously,” Sophia agreed. “We need something you don’t see every time you turn around.”
Hannah scanned the landscape from the passenger window as they sped past the everyday fields and trees and houses, catching brief glimpses of green emerging here and there among the brown.
“It’s out there somewhere,” she said. “We just have to find it.”

Spilled dirt and paranoia…

Excerpt from Chapter Four:

The next morning, Austin got ready for work with all the vigor of an angry sloth, keeping the house on edge until he was gone. Hannah and Paige had been dressed and ready to go outside for hours, pacing and watching while the cool dawn slipped away. As soon as his car was out of sight, they rushed to the back door and out into the yard.

Hannah held Paige steady while the toddler balanced along the walls of the rock gardens, giving Hannah an opportunity to peek at each of her perennials in their developing stages. They were her other children. She protected them and watched for the tiniest changes in growth and vigor. Every spring she thrilled at the crimped red leaves of the bleeding heart unfolding mysteriously from the soil, the slow but steady progression of the delphiniums, and the curling tendrils of wisteria always reaching for new territory.

She checked for her rescued Jack in the Pulpits and Wake-robins under the trees, but there were no signs yet. The snow drops and crocuses were finished blooming and their leaves were turning brown. The alliums and the hyacinths were getting old and their flowers were spent and raggedy.

Other than the fading early bulbs, everywhere there were signs of life, bright greens, shining new leaves, shoots pushing from the soil. The air was moist and clean, the grass still wet with dew. The hummingbirds were out taking turns at the feeders and she held her breath while she watched them. They would remember her soon and ignore her like she wasn’t there, but at this time of year they were still skittish.

Paige changed her focus to collecting twigs from the grass and stacking them a pile. To her it was all play, and Hannah was happy that she was occupying herself with something imaginative and productive. When the pile was as high as her ankles, she jumped on it with her rubber boots, stomping and crushing the twigs into smaller bits.

“What are you doing?” Hannah asked her.
“Gathering wheat to make bread,” she answered seriously, without looking up.
Hannah chuckled to herself. Things are so rarely what they seem, she thought.

She walked out next to the road to see if the previous year’s day lily transplants were starting to push up. There was a nice clump of green shoots, almost five inches tall. They looked strong and healthy, like they had been there for years. On her way back through the little wooded area she met up with Paige.

“Here, Mommy,” she said proudly, holding the plastic pot containing the slipper orchid.
“Oh, Honey, I haven’t decided where to put it yet,” Hannah said as she bent down to take the pot. “Thank you,” she offered as she reached out for it, not quite getting a grasp before the youngster let go.

The pot fell to the ground and its contents spilled out across the stone path. The slipper orchid lay sprawled on its side, its spindly roots exposed. Paige glanced up at Hannah with a look of surprise and stepped back, stomping the dirt from the tops of her black rubber boots.
“Uh, oh. Mommy drop it.”

Hannah bent down to put it back together. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’ll be okay. Guess this flower needs a new home, huh?” She picked up the plant, carefully placing it to the side, and began to scrape the dirt together. Something oddly shaped, like a small pebble, caught her eye. She picked it out and examined it. It was pale brown and more lightweight than a stone. She set it on the log bench for later. As she continued, she discovered more pieces of similar size and color and set them aside as well.

“Look, Paige, I think these are little bones,” she said, pointing to the bench. “It must be from some little animal.”
Paige looked at them and squatted down over the empty pot, sifting through the remaining dirt with her tiny bare fingers.
“Another one,” Paige said and placed it with the others. “Another one, another one, another one,” she continued with each find. “Something,” she said. “Look, Mommy.”
Hannah looked up at the child’s hand. She had a small ring around her dirt covered thumb. The comprehension of what she was looking at took a few seconds to assemble. 
“Let me see, Honey,” she took the ring off Paige’s finger. “It looks like gold.”

Realization of something not quite right swept over her like a gust of hot wind. Her hands began to shake and she felt light headed as she stood up to look on the bench. What she saw sent her back down to her knees.

“Pretty ring,” Paige said. The toddler reached out to take the ring from Hannah’s limp fingers, dropping it accidentally into the leaf litter.
“Oh, my goodness!” Hannah sifted frantically to find it.
“Here,” Paige said, plucking it from between the leaves. “Paige finded it. Paige’s ring.”
“Let’s go wash it off,” Hannah said, trying to sound calm. “Maybe we should go inside.” She nervously gathered the plant back into the pot. “Come on,” she urged, grabbing Paige’s hand.
Hannah turned on the hose and roughly rinsed Paige’s hands, causing her to cry out when she tried to dig dirt from under the little girl’s nails. She rinsed the ring and looked at it in her palm.

“Mommy is mad,” Paige said.
“No, Honey. Mommy isn’t mad. Mommy is worried about this ring.” Hannah kissed her forehead.
In the kitchen Hannah found an old toothbrush under the sink and scrubbed the ring vigorously with Bon Ami and then threw the toothbrush away. She washed it again with a handful of soap, holding it several minutes to rinse under the running water while she contemplated the possible reasons for a gold wedding band to be in the roots of a shallow growing plant.

She got out a magnifying glass and held the ring up in the light of the window over the sink. It was about five millimeters wide and made of pinkish gold. It had a design of alternating ivy leaves and wild roses engraved all the way around. Inside, there was a three word inscription that wasn’t in English, along with a few jewelry hallmarks.

Paige had been watching her, curious at her mother’s behavior. “Can Paige see?”
Hannah bent down, holding it out in her wet palm. “See the little flowers and leaves? They go all around. Isn’t that nice?”
“Nice,” Paige agreed, nodding her head. She stuck out her finger and touched it. “Paige can hold it?”

Hannah stood up and looked out the kitchen window. She could partially see the log bench in the wild area. This is real, she thought. This ring is in my hand and it’s real. It was in the roots. She looked back out at the bench, scarcely able to grasp what was there.

“Paige can hold a ring? Please?”
“Not right this minute, honey” Hannah answered. She rinsed the ring again and placed it in the windowsill. A small puddle formed around it. It was a normal thing to see sitting in a kitchen windowsill over a sink. She put rings there all the time. Only, this one wasn’t normal.
“We need to go back outside right now and water that plant,” Hannah said. She grabbed a zippered sandwich bag and headed for the door. “Come on, sweet pea.”

Paige followed to the edge of the trees and stood watching curiously as her mother put on her garden gloves and carefully scraped the little pale brown pieces toward the open baggy. She dropped her doll and rushed to Hannah. “Paige help. Paige help, Mommy.”

Hannah swiftly raised her arm to block and the collision caused a few pieces to roll off the bench. She quickly sifted the leaves for them, staying on guard.

“Careful,” Hannah said, trying not to sound irritated. “Go stand by your dolly.”
“Paige help Mommy,” the child insisted.
“Get your doll off the ground, honey. I’m going to water the flower now.”

She gently pushed the toddler away with the back of her arm, feeling as if she would explode. She wanted to get this done and rush back inside. She couldn’t think straight. She searched through the leaves over and over, horrified that one piece could be loose on the ground.

She got a seed tray and dumped the plant out onto it. Spreading the dirt out in the tray, she spotted two more pieces and placed them in the baggy. After potting and watering the orchid, she threw the gloves on the ground and ushered Paige to the open back door.
“Go on in and take your shoes off, sweetheart.”

She held the baggy up to the light and looked at what was inside. The shapes were distinctive, though she didn’t want to believe what she was seeing. It was, however, undeniable. Clustered together in the bottom of this plastic bag were the tiny bones of a human hand.

Outside looking in…

Excerpt from Chapter Six:

They both gave a relieved exhale and looked at each other with the understanding that two people have when they share something that no one else in the world knows. Then, they turned to walk away, heading for the front of the house where they would get in the station wagon and leave this place forever.

Hannah stopped to look up at the house. The windows were silvery reflections of the metal gray sky. Her eyes followed down the contours of the shingles and shutters to the thick stone foundation below. She hadn’t noticed before, but there was a cellar door directly beneath one of the windows at the first floor. This window had rotting curtains that were pulled to the side and the shade was up.

“Did you notice that?” she said.

“What? Notice what?” Sophia sniffed, wiping her eyes and nose with a tissue.

“I bet you could see inside the house through that window. The blinds aren’t pulled down over it like the other windows.”

“Would you really want to?” Sophia asked, scrunching her face in disbelief.

“I do,” Hannah said with conviction. “I wanna see what’s in there before we go.”

“Okay,” Sophia said in a sing-song voice that meant she thought Hannah was crazy.

“You mean you really don’t want to look?” Hannah asked.

“I can’t believe that you do!” Sophia argued. “It’s not like you.”

“It could be where this person lived,” Hannah said. “And died.”

Sophia shook her head and turned, walking slowly in the direction of the driveway with the girls following close behind.

Hannah carefully stepped up onto the left side of the double wooden doors and inched up to the window. The frame was squeezed between two bays, one topped at the second story with a gabled dormer, and the larger one with a hipped dormer higher up at the third floor. The angled doors inspired an image of laughing children climbing up to the window and sliding down, over and over. Hey, hey, hey, playmate, come out and play with me…

A large metal flue pipe emerged from the wall to her left, indicating there must be a stove on the other side of this bay. She reached for the window sill and pulled herself up, one foot on the door frame and one beneath the window.

Sophia stopped and looked back from the corner, calling out for the girls to wait. She put her hands on her hips and stood watching.

Hannah peered inside at a wall of white painted shelves, illuminated yellow through the shades of the other windows. There was an assortment of jars scattered about on the shelves and she could see a small, white painted table almost under the window with a wooden spoon lying on it. The room was large and essentially empty.

She leaned in more, putting her cheek to the glass, and strained to see to the right where there was an archway leading into another room. She could make out the shapes of furniture arranged recklessly beyond the archway. Near the corner was a narrow closed door which looked like it should be a pantry or a closet.

She stepped to the right side of the door frame and adjusted her weight, her hands clinging to the window sill for balance, and she peered in at the opposite side of the room. It became obvious now that this was some kind of food preparation area. It wasn’t a kitchen in the modern sense, but there were shelves all the way to the ceiling and a big cabinet against the far wall with an ornate water pump sticking up from it. Across from the window was a partially opened door to a dark room beyond the kitchen. She knew that this room had large windows because she had seen them from the outside. She could make out what appeared to be something covered with a white drop cloth. Beyond that, there were only dark, shadowy shapes and the reflection of a mirror on the wall. It had been a fabulous house in its day, and just as she had suspected, it was filled with furniture and household items to make any antique dealer salivate.

She turned back and saw Sophia standing at the corner, both the girls giggling and hanging on her arms like she was a Maypole. Hannah was thinking that she wished she had a camera, and Sophia ought to come and look, and she wished she could see the rest of the house. She was ready to call out, the words poised on her lips, when a burst of wind whipped around her and she heard a sharp clatter come from somewhere up inside the house. Like a knee under the hammer, she jumped, yelping a blend of several words put together that sounded like a dog bark, and she put her foot down hard on the doors to push away.

Instead of propelling her off as she intended, the door gave way slightly under her feet and then, as she heard part of the frame cracking loudly, the entire surface crumbled away. Her eyes caught a glimpse of every millimeter of progress as she crashed down through splintered wood. She heard a scream above her and she didn’t know where it came from. It was as though she were outside of herself, watching it all happen through a window.

She felt her head crack against something, but she didn’t exactly feel the pain. Her shirt caught on splintered wood and nails as she went down, tearing her sleeves and scraping her skin, but it didn’t seem real. The pain was peripheral to the panic that was bursting inside her as she hit the stone floor at the bottom, landing in a pile of rotten wood from a long decayed staircase.

There was a sharp pain in her leg, and the blow to her head blinded her with white sparkles from behind her eyes. She reached down and felt something protruding from her left thigh. With a wave of nausea, she ran her fingers over it and around it and then timidly looked. It was a rusty nail driven in through her jeans. The sight of it stole her consciousness for a split second, and she slumped back into the debris.

© Copyright NJCFlynn

Digging into the past…

Excerpt from Chapter Eight:

Hannah followed the back wall behind the stacks, peeking into every opening as she passed. At the north corner, she was forced to turn east toward the front of the building where she found a closed door with a small brass plaque that read, New Milton Historical Society.

She knocked politely and heard the high, thin voice of a woman call out for her to come in. The door opened into what looked like a large, unorganized storage room. There were boxes, newspapers, and piles of books stacked everywhere on the tables and floors. She searched the room for the source of the voice.

“Can I help you?”

Across the room, behind a table towering in old photo albums, was a small elderly woman with a silver-white bun piled high on her head. She wore round, gold rimmed glasses and her cheeks were tastefully rouged. Only her face and hair could be seen above the pile of albums. Hannah made her way over to where she sat.

“Yes, thank you so much. First of all, I’m supposed to say hello from your grandson, Roger. You are Mrs. Heath, correct?”

“Oh, yes. Roger is a lovely boy, isn’t he? So much like his father was at his age. He is forever willing to put up with me and my rambling. He keeps me young. Or, I make him old. One or the other.”

“Yes. We met him at the café and he was very nice. He told us about you.”

“Us? Is there someone with you I can’t see?” Mrs. Heath looked around and behind Hannah.

“Oh. No, ma’am. My friend and our little girls are in the children’s room. We were hoping to both speak with you, but once the girls got a look at that wonderful room, it was hopeless. She sent me on to find you alone.”

“Well, it sounds like you are looking for something in particular.”

“Yes, ma’am. I am. My name is Hannah Foster.”

“Well?”

“I was wondering if you know anything about the New Milton Garden Club?”

“Well, of course. My mother was one of the founding members. They used to meet right here in the library every Thursday, until it was disbanded sometime when I was still a child. The library was much smaller then, you know.”

“Yes. Mrs. Morgan told us about the vestibule.”

“Mrs. Morgan told you? Well, now, that’s a first,” she chuckled to herself.

“Your mother was a founding member?” Hannah cut in too quickly. “Was that back in the late eighteen-hundreds?”

“Yes, it was,” Mrs. Heath looked at her with more curiosity now. “Eighteen hundred and ninety-five, to be precise. Why does this interest you?”

“Because, we’re hoping to find some of their records, or maybe the minutes.”

“Why?”

“We are researching one of their members, Maiya Whiting.”

“Where did you get that name?” Mrs. Heath stood up, leaning heavily on the table in front of her for balance. She hobbled around to where Hannah stood and looked into her face with piercing, steel blue eyes.

Hannah cleared her throat to give herself time. “I just… happened to come across it recently.” God. What a lame answer, she thought.

“I see. You don’t want to tell me. Well, no one knows for sure what happened to Maiya Whiting. That’s what I’ll tell you.”

“I… thought maybe if I could see the minutes or the records of the garden club, that maybe there would be a mention of her.”

“How do you think, with your limited knowledge of what happened in this town back then, that you could look at those minutes and uncover the truth to a mystery that has been a part of New Milton for almost one hundred years?”

“I…I didn’t realize that,” Hannah stammered, embarrassed that she had been naively too bold.

“Obviously, you have discovered something and it has piqued your curiosity. You think you might be able to figure out where she is. What happened to her. Where she went. Why? Is she a relative of yours? Are you seeking money?”

“No ma’am. I just don’t know how to explain right now.”

“Are you a ghost hunter? A treasure hunter?”

“No ma’am. I’m just trying to uncover the story. I know something about it. A little.”

“Well, I’ll not have you bothering that family, if there are even any of them left. They went through enough over that, not to mention my poor mother and Mrs. Culver.”

“Mrs. Culver?”

“Yes. I suppose you came across her name somewhere, as well?”

“Well, yes, I may have. Is it possible that your mother was Miss Nina Blakeslee?”

“Where did you get this information?” She smacked the table with her knuckles. “There are people who have lived in this town all of their lives, and their parents lived here all of their lives and they don’t remember or care about these names.”

“I read about them recently in a book,” Hannah said.

“A book. Just an ordinary book. And, where did you get this book?” The old woman was good. No wonder she was the town historian. She stepped closer without taking her eyes off Hannah’s face, though it was clear she was assessing her in every way.

“It’s a…journal, actually.”

“A journal. Whose journal?” Mrs. Heath commanded.

“If you want to know, you must promise to keep it a secret or I won’t tell you anything else,” Hannah declared, standing straighter and looking stoically back at the tiny woman whose countenance seem to tower over hers. Mrs. Heath continued to analyze her with razor sharp intuition, intent on cutting through the pretense.

“Yes. My mother was Miss Nina Blakeslee,” she finally answered.

After several long moments of silence, she seemed to relax, or wanted to appear relaxed, and turned back to find her seat. “Get a chair and sit down with me.”

© Copyright NJCFlynn