The resolution to Hannah’s story wasn’t so quick or dramatic as the destruction of the summerhouse. It took me getting up the nerve for a thorough search of the Colonel’s office for the missing pages of Reverend Holzphaffel’s diary. I came up empty, but it gave me the idea to go into Rhys’s room and check the desk there – the twin to the one in mine.
In the matching secret compartment, I found the missing pages, read them, then carried them back to my room and put them in Hannah’s desk, along with her diary. I knew what Hannah was searching for in the woods, and she wasn’t looking for death.
And Dad must have known too. Who else could have secreted those pages there? It was only speculation – the way my connection with Hannah was only speculation – but I imagined Dad going through a journey similar to mine his last summer here. Paired up with Rainbow by the town, discovering the potential in the earth here, rousing the ghosts.
I didn’t know where he’d found the pages from the reverend’s journal. They were the originals, so someone must have torn them out and hidden them long before Holzphaffel’s relative ever got hold of the books. I was guessing Dad discovered them in the Colonel’s office, where I expected to find them. He’d read what Holzphaffel had suspected happened at Bluestone Hill, the story that I’d just read. Dad had seen what the manipulation of power could lead to, the kind of thing our family was capable of, and he had walked away to start his own life.
But I wasn’t my dad, and I wasn’t really about sticking secrets in drawers. So I read the reverend’s pages again, and made a plan for how to reveal the secrets written in them.
On the day the river receded from the woods, I took Gigi and Rhys with me and went searching.
‘What are we looking for?’ Rhys asked, helping me over a spot where the water had left the ground crumpled like the front of a wrecked car.
‘I think Gigi was on the trail of it the night of the flood,’ I said, watching her plumed tail like a beacon as she trotted ahead of us. ‘Before she got turned round by too many ghosts.’
For this, my new senses came in handy. I knew when we were close, and hurried after Gigi when she started running. My limp was back – not always, but definitely on long, uneven treks like this one.
Rhys and I found Gigi quickly, sitting under a bedraggled lilac tree. I dropped to my knees and dug in the soft mud with my fingers. Even if I’d thought about bringing any of my gardening tools, I wouldn’t use them for this.
Surprisingly close to the surface, I touched something hard yet porous. By this time, Rhys had put my actions together with the story I’d told him, and leaned over my shoulder to see. ‘Is that it?’
‘Yes.’ All that was left of the tiny skeleton was the skull and a few of the bigger bones. I left them all where they were.
Rhys took out his phone. ‘Dr Young will know what to do. What do you want me to tell him?’
‘That the flood uncovered these, and Gigi found them on our walk.’ I paused. ‘Let’s leave the fact that my great-great-grandfather was a murderer out of the story.’
‘It could have been Ethan Maddox,’ he offered, as if that would make me feel better.
I shook my head. ‘I think he may be responsible for his brother disappearing. But it’s not Ethan who watches Hannah search for her baby.’
Reverend Watkins agreed to let the bones be interred next to Hannah Davis’s exiled grave, even though they were never really identified. There’s not much left of a newborn to test for a DNA match.
I was content. Hannah could stop looking for the child her father had left out in the woods to die, and the baby could finally rest with the mother it barely knew.
And with nothing to watch, the Colonel disappeared, too. I would attribute it to shame that his deed had been discovered, but he was just a shade, repeating a pattern that had now been broken.
Epilogue
On the day I turned eighteen, I received access to the Davis trust fund. On the day after that, I made my cousin Paula and her partner a no-interest loan sufficient to renovate Bluestone Hill and (finally) open it as an inn. She could even hire someone to do the work for her – including the painting.
Which was fortunate, because the bluestone monolith and stone circle made the Travel Channel’s list of ‘Mysterious Places to Stay Overnight’, and the inn was booked up before the paint was even dry.
Professor Griffith finished his book, and it was about as widely read as you would expect. One of his colleagues called it ‘well researched but absurd’. I think the professor considered that a compliment.
Maddox Point was built, but it became Cahawba Point, a village of rustic rental lodges, where people could enjoy the unspoiled beauty of the Cahaba River. No ATVs or powerboats allowed.
Shawn Maddox missed the cutoff for his college paperwork, and ended up getting a job at the Daisy Café. I didn’t expect that would last, because he was still Tom Sawyer, even without the magic charm. But it gave me satisfaction for the moment.
I saw Addie in an ad in Seventeen recently. She looked gorgeous, sulky and petulant, and I’m sure it will sell a ton of perfume.
Mother and Dr Steve are unaccountably happy. He really loves her, and she really loves that he loves her. So it all works out.
I told John about my adventure, and he didn’t think I was crazy. I’m not sure what made me trust him, except that he used to be the only one who cared what happened to me.
But not any longer. Now there’s Rhys.
Because of Rhys, I found out what a hassle it is to get a student visa to the UK. Apparently the British like something more definite than ‘undeclared’ as a major. I know I have a lot to learn, but where does helping the world with your supernatural green thumb fit into a traditional course of study?
At least they no longer have a quarantine on dogs.
Rhys says we’ll figure it out.
Eighteen may be young to know you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, but I felt like this had been several lifetimes coming, and didn’t want to waste a moment of this one.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Cahawba (often spelled Cahaba) is a real place, and I’ve worked a lot of its history into Sylvie’s story. The Davis and Maddox families are entirely fictional, there is no Bluestone Hill or Maddox Landing, and I’ve tweaked the geography a bit. And though, as far as I know, there is no nexus of earth magic at the junction of the Cahaba and Alabama Rivers, if you walk around Old Cahaba Park, it takes only a little imagination to see the ghosts of the houses and bustling streets of Alabama’s first state capital. For more information on the park and the preservation efforts there, visit www.cahawba.com.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to the staff of Old Cahawba Park for answering my questions (and for maintaining such a useful bookstore and website). Liberties and outright mistakes in history and geography are all my own.
This book is my friend Cheryl Smyth’s fault. She introduced me to Old Cahawba, and to the natural beauty of a state I’d long assumed was all about Confederate flags in the back of pickups at NASCAR races. Also, it’s handy having a mad scientist on call.
Credit also goes to my friends and critique partners, Candace Havens and Shannon Canard, who suffered through some very rough drafts and a few hysterical phone calls. And to Mom, who let me drive her car through some really rutted Alabama roads in the name of research. And to my husband, Tim, who has come to take so much in stride.
Much gratitude goes to my agent, Lucienne Diver, who totally gets where I come from, because she comes from there, too. But this time I have to give extra kudos to my editor, Krista Marino, who pushed Sylvie (and me) out of our comfort zones to make this book (even) better. I’m so lucky to work with her, and with all the folks at Random House.
And, as always, I’m grateful to teachers and librarians for their support, and to my readers, who are awesome.
ROSEMARY CLEMENT-MOORE lives and writes in Arlington, Texas. The Splendour Falls is her first book published in the UK for t
eenage readers. You can visit Rosemary at www.readrosemary.com.
Rosemary Clement-Moore, The Splendour Falls
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