But in the center of the room, the site of the explosion (or whatever it was), an enormous black stain was burned into the floor. At the center of the stain were three small gifts, left behind.
A dog collar. A silk pocket-handkerchief. A bouquet.
27
ALICE DARTLE
Cassadaga, Florida
FEBRUARY 1, 1920
THE HOTEL IS gone, and the great trucks have come to clear away its remains. Men with shovels are dumping load after load into enormous containers, shifting the rubble from here to there, and soon they’ll take it away to someplace else. A landfill, I guess. There’s certainly no use for any of it now.
Oscar Fine and George Colby already have plans to rebuild. They’re talking about selling bonds to raise money—because Cassadaga can’t go without a hotel, not for very long. Too many people come to visit for the services and to learn about the faith. We can’t house them all in these few scant blocks—not if we turned out every bedroom, porch, and patio. Not if they all brought tents and all camped down by the lakes that are already filling up with the promise of spring’s mosquitoes.
The next hotel will not be a wood one—that’s what I hear.
An architect from New Jersey said that we should build the next one from stone or stucco. He drew up some loose sketches, saying we should do it in the mission style—since this is Florida. A pretty peach stucco; that’s what he recommended.
He also recommended fire doors.
As a safety measure, I’m sure they’ll be incorporated. Even though there’s no Heinrich Kramer anymore, to hate us all and try to burn us down. Fires happen from other things, too. Electrical problems and lightning, carelessness and accidents. This is a town that loves its candles and leaves them burning.
Stucco it is.
• • •
FOR now, everyone gathers at the bookshop and the fellowship hall—where Imogene Cook and Dolores Brigham have pooled their resources to open a little café. There’s tea and coffee, and sometimes cookies or sandwiches. Mostly the food comes from Candice Pearson, who wants very badly to show that there’s only a set of railroad tracks between her business and theirs. It’s not a canyon.
As for me, I’ve moved into my new room with what few belongings I managed to save. I’ve bought a few things since the hotel burned, when I went to DeLand for a shopping trip with Imogene. She isn’t really that bad. She just says what she thinks, and there’s no drawbridge between her brain and her mouth. No canyon there, either.
You get used to it.
David Fine is still in jail, but we’re working on it. Tomás still refuses to press any charges against him. He has every right to. No one would think less of him if he did.
But he won’t.
• • •
THIS morning I went to the fellowship hall to see about breakfast, and I found Tomás there. As he spoke with two men, Felipe snored on his lap.
One of the men was a police officer, and the other was an extraordinarily handsome man about my own age, wearing a small pair of wire-rimmed glasses and the nicest suit I’ve ever seen. I thought they must be talking about David, and maybe the good-looking fellow was a lawyer.
At first I kept my distance because I didn’t want to interfere, but then Tomás called me over and said it was all right. He wanted me to meet his friend.
He introduced me to the officer, whose name I forget, and to Silvio Casales, whose name I will always remember. (Lord, what Momma wouldn’t do if I brought a Spanish man home and called him mine.)
“There was a fire at Mr. Cordero’s shop,” the policeman said. “And then Mr. Cordero . . . he disappeared. We had some concerns, but then the fire marshal discovered the corroded gas pipes. The lines were a hazard in the walls, and no one knew until it was too late.”
“The place simply . . . Well. It was as if someone threw a stick of dynamite in the window,” said Silvio in an accent that made me want to melt. It was just like Tomás’s, so I don’t know why it made me giddy. It’s not like I’d never heard it before. “My brother was inside,” he added. “He lost his life in the fire.”
Oh. That took the edge off my giddiness. “That’s terrible—I’m so sorry to hear that.” I looked at Tomás like he might explain.
He did, but only a little. “I was inside, too. I escaped without being harmed too badly, but I hit my head and I was very confused. I went home and left a note for Silvio, and I came here. I scarcely remember the preparation or the journey. It is all a blur.” Something about the way he said it . . . I didn’t believe it at all, but the look on his face said that it was important that either Silvio or the policeman (or maybe both of them) needed to believe it. “Then I came here, and you saved me.”
I blushed to the roots of my hair and the tips of my toes. “You saved us in return, if I recall correctly.” But then I thought we’d better not explain all that in front of these friendly outsiders. Not all at once. It’d be an awful lot to take in.
Tomás gave me a discreet wink to show that we were thinking the same thing. Then he said, “You’re being too modest. You’ve been such a help to me—I couldn’t have . . . have found my way without you.”
“I’m so glad I could help, you have no idea. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, and when you first arrived”—I put on my most earnest face for the policeman—“you were so very addled, and I was so very worried.”
Silvio sighed. “It’s a miracle you arrived at all! Much less in one piece, and with Felipe in tow. I feared that you’d lost your senses!”
“War strain,” said the officer, with a tone that said he knew all about it. “Prompted by the fire and the explosion, I should think. My own brother came back with a hard case of it. Sometimes he gets confused, too. And sometimes he wanders off. Eventually we had to put him someplace . . .” He cleared his throat. “Just for a few weeks, until he could get his head together. And it looks as if you’ve found yourself again. A trip to Cassadaga was all you required, so count your blessings, I say.”
“I count them daily. Hourly, even, and high among them is this good man here—for Silvio has been taking care of my affairs in my absence. It was not fair of me to ask it of him, and I regret having left him behind. But I . . .” He turned to me. “Alice, you know better than anyone: I did not know what to do.”
Silvio scoffed. “Bah. It was nothing, a trifle! Someone had to take care of the insurance men, and I know your books better than anyone. The house only needed a man to lock the doors and mail the mortgage to the bank. I’m just so impossibly glad to find you here, and to know that you’ve been safe.”
I snorted, then immediately went as pink as a strawberry cake. “Oh, excuse me. I’m sorry. Yes, Tomás has been quite safe. This is a quiet, peaceful little community. Positively dull. Not a bit of danger to be found.”
“It’s a tad . . . odd . . . ,” said the policeman. “But everyone seems very nice.”
“That’s Cassadaga in a nutshell!” I said cheerfully. Too cheerfully. I laughed because I couldn’t stop myself, and that only made me even pinker.
On this note, the officer excused himself, saying that he’d gotten everything he came for and wishing us all a good day. Tomás invited me to take the empty seat he’d left behind. I dropped my bottom into it so fast that he didn’t have time to finish the offer.
“What will you do now?” I asked him. “Will you go back to Ybor City or stay here?”
“Silvio and I have been discussing that. I am not sure what the future holds, but there is a bit of insurance money from my shop.”
“Fire insurance,” Silvio clarified. “The fire department loves him. He makes them the most wonderful suits.”
“I made a suit for one of them. One man’s father, to be precise.”
“It was the right man. The payout is swift, and it’s enough to rebuild . . . if that’s what you want to do,” he said
to Tomás, with a gaze that was one part adoring child and one part concerned parent.
“I came here to speak with Evelyn, and I have done so.” He fiddled with his cup of coffee, swirling the contents to stir them. “Whether you believe me or not,” he added to Silvio. He already knew that I believed him. “She and I were interrupted, you know. She died while I was away at war. We . . . we had such plans. There might be some chance that we . . . that we could talk again.”
• • •
I was torn.
I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t likely. She’d done what we’d asked of her: She’d given us light, and love, and help. Now she was really and truly gone—passed to the other side, for good, or that’s what my heart believed. But I’d been wrong before, now, hadn’t I? And the heart is deceitful above all things; I know that much is true. The Methodists taught me that in Sunday school.
I also wanted to tell him that Evelyn might wish for him to move on. After all, he was still young. There was still time for him to find another wife and even start a family. He was handsome and kind. Since she truly loved him—and I know that she did—she might suggest it.
He might not want to hear it. He might ignore that message, even if he did receive it from her.
Or you never know. He might not.
• • •
SILVIO smiled, and it lit up the room. Or just me. Who cares? He’s stunning, even with the cute little glasses, and I can appreciate a stunning man. He might like a soft woman, and he might like books.
Or you never know. He might not.
But no, I bet he does.
I tried to keep from grinning. I gave up on that, just like I’d given up on blushing.
• • •
SILVIO was still graciously, lovingly trying to steer Tomás back into some semblance of normal life, and I adored him for it.
“But the insurance money will not last forever. You should rebuild before it runs out, and then we’re both out of luck. You could even rebuild here, if you like it so much—and if you want a fresh start. I could help you . . . ,” he said, a long, lingering hint in his tone. “There is much to recommend the place, and I have no other family to keep me in Ybor. I could use a fresh start, too, I think.”
“But here?” Tomás asked.
“Why not? Look around you. So many visitors, passing through each season . . . visitors who probably have not considered the weather, and plan to stay for weeks at a time. They will wish they had not brought so much winter wool. They will need new clothes. They will not want to find a car to take them to the nearest town with the shops they need.”
“Best of all, they have money,” I said to bolster the case. “Some of them have quite a lot. They come a thousand miles and stay for ages. It isn’t a cheap trip. You could perform a valuable service to the community!”
“I . . . Well, I could think about it. I would not wish to do it alone, and I cannot ask Silvio to pick up his home and move here. He has no more family, but he has a house—”
“Which I rent.”
“And a girlfriend.”
“Not for weeks.”
“Really?”
They lapsed into Spanish, and I didn’t follow it. I’d already caught the most important part: He did not have a girlfriend. The naked finger on his left hand said he had not traded her in for a wife. This was excellent news.
Then they switched back to English, and Tomás laughed. “I am sorry. I was only surprised. I will think about it, all right? Will that make you both happy?”
Silvio said, “For as long as you are thinking about it, unless you decide to leave. I really do hope you’ll decide to stay here.” He did not take his eyes off me.
Tomás noticed and smiled. “Very well, then. For the two of you, I will consider it.”
“For the two of us?” Silvio asked, his forehead attractively furrowed.
“Yes, for the two of you. And for Felipe, who seems to like it here.” He waved one hand, like there was a much bigger picture we were missing. “I’ll think about it, and I’ll probably do it, for the only good reason on earth.”
“And what’s that?” Silvio asked.
Tomás stroked the back of the sleeping dog’s head. I know he was thinking of Evelyn, but I hope a tiny part of him was thinking of Silvio and me when he said, “My old friend, I will do it for love.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’ve said before (and will no doubt say again) that I hate writing acknowledgments because I’m always afraid I’m going to leave somebody out. The usual suspects always get first billing: my editor, Anne Sowards, for taking a chance on this weird little love story; my wonder agent, Jennifer Jackson, for all the heavy lifting; my husband, Aric Annear, for listening to me whine a whole lot.
Also, in particular for this book, I have to thank my cousin Jacqueline Chamberlain, the hostess with the mostess! Thanks a million to her for putting up with me for a research trip to Cassadaga, where we took the tours, followed the walking trails, and kicked around in the bookshop buying all sorts of fun (and useful) things. I very much appreciated her company and hospitality.
Likewise, many thanks to the kind folks at Cassadaga, who were patient and lovely at every turn. Thank you for the readings, the conversation, and the willingness to share the history and lore of this marvelous little community.
I hope I’ve done it justice.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cherie Priest is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the award-winning Clockwork Century series (Boneshaker, Dreadnought, Clementine), the Cheshire Red books (Bloodshot, Hellbent), and the Borden Dispatches (Maplecroft, Chapelwood).
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