Read Online A Sound Among the Trees by Susan Meissner - Free Book Online
Authors: Susan Meissner
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Carson or the kids, just away from her. Carson seemed quietly happy to be married again and the children eager to please their new stepmother. But Marielle wasn’t a replacement granddaughter. Adelaide hadn’t contemplated how that wouldn’t change one iota when she pictured Marielle living at Holly Oak. Carson had a new wife and the kids had a new mother, but she did not have a new granddaughter. She didn’t know what she had, but it was not a new granddaughter.
A four-uniform order also gave her sufficient reason to hide away in the parlor if she wanted privacy to sort all this out mentally. The parlor wasthe one room she told Carson she wished to keep just as it was, despite there being a new “woman of the house.” Marielle could do, within reason, whatever she wanted to with the other rooms, but the parlor—the one room where time seemed to be a hushed afterthought—was hers.
Adelaide had always felt that way about the parlor, since that long-ago day her great-grandmother Susannah described how she had sewn Confederate uniforms at the long oak table and once had hidden two of the uniforms inside her feather bed. Her great-grandmother had told her of other events that had happened in the parlor, the echoes of which, Susannah had said, still rippled through Holly Oak. Susannah told her she’d read her marriage proposal from Nathaniel Page by letter in the parlor. She was accused of being a spy for the Union in the parlor. She served tea to the man she loved in that parlor and held a dying baby in the parlor. And—with an emancipated slave—planned the escape of two hidden Union scouts in that parlor. Susannah had taught her wounded husband how to walk again and gave permission for her daughter, Annabel, to marry in that parlor. And the most significant thing? The parlor had been a makeshift field hospital during the Battle of Fredericksburg. Yankees, shot to bits on the frozen flatland below Marye’s Heights had been dragged back to town to the houses they hadn’t obliterated by shelling the day before, to die or be bandaged or be sewn. In Holly Oak’s parlor, a dozen or more wounded Union soldiers had bled and died on the floor, slumped in corners, and even on top of the table where Susannah had sewn together Confederate uniforms—the strangest kind of irony. Two soldiers had been buried in the cellar, and later, so her great-grandmother said, were exhumed and laid to rest at the national cemetery, a hill of green that overlooked the very spot where they had fallen.
Adelaide remembered asking her great-grandmother how she knew there were echoes rippling in the house—she had been eight—because she had listened for the echoes and had heard only silence inside and woodpeckers outside. Susannah had said a house is meant to be a place of safety andrefuge, not a place for spilled blood and lies and broken promises. Adelaide could still recall, even eighty-some years later, the images that filled her head as she tried to hear those echoes of violence and lies and broken promises. She had bad dreams for several nights afterward, and she might have had worse nightmares had Susannah expounded, but her grandmother Annabel had stepped into the parlor at that moment and told Susannah not to tell Adelaide any more stories like that, that it was Susannah’s fault the notion that the house was cursed perpetuated year after year and for pity’s sake to stop it. Before she was hushed a second time, her great-grandmother had told Adelaide to listen carefully and she would hear them, the echoes, and that only the women of Holly Oak could hear them. And when Adelaide asked her in a whisper if it was true that she had been a spy—gossip at school and on the streets was that she had been—Susannah told Adelaide to let the house tell her if she had been a spy or not.
The parlor became the center of the house’s mystery after that day, since Adelaide’s great-grandmother passed away a few months later, having never
A four-uniform order also gave her sufficient reason to hide away in the parlor if she wanted privacy to sort all this out mentally. The parlor wasthe one room she told Carson she wished to keep just as it was, despite there being a new “woman of the house.” Marielle could do, within reason, whatever she wanted to with the other rooms, but the parlor—the one room where time seemed to be a hushed afterthought—was hers.
Adelaide had always felt that way about the parlor, since that long-ago day her great-grandmother Susannah described how she had sewn Confederate uniforms at the long oak table and once had hidden two of the uniforms inside her feather bed. Her great-grandmother had told her of other events that had happened in the parlor, the echoes of which, Susannah had said, still rippled through Holly Oak. Susannah told her she’d read her marriage proposal from Nathaniel Page by letter in the parlor. She was accused of being a spy for the Union in the parlor. She served tea to the man she loved in that parlor and held a dying baby in the parlor. And—with an emancipated slave—planned the escape of two hidden Union scouts in that parlor. Susannah had taught her wounded husband how to walk again and gave permission for her daughter, Annabel, to marry in that parlor. And the most significant thing? The parlor had been a makeshift field hospital during the Battle of Fredericksburg. Yankees, shot to bits on the frozen flatland below Marye’s Heights had been dragged back to town to the houses they hadn’t obliterated by shelling the day before, to die or be bandaged or be sewn. In Holly Oak’s parlor, a dozen or more wounded Union soldiers had bled and died on the floor, slumped in corners, and even on top of the table where Susannah had sewn together Confederate uniforms—the strangest kind of irony. Two soldiers had been buried in the cellar, and later, so her great-grandmother said, were exhumed and laid to rest at the national cemetery, a hill of green that overlooked the very spot where they had fallen.
Adelaide remembered asking her great-grandmother how she knew there were echoes rippling in the house—she had been eight—because she had listened for the echoes and had heard only silence inside and woodpeckers outside. Susannah had said a house is meant to be a place of safety andrefuge, not a place for spilled blood and lies and broken promises. Adelaide could still recall, even eighty-some years later, the images that filled her head as she tried to hear those echoes of violence and lies and broken promises. She had bad dreams for several nights afterward, and she might have had worse nightmares had Susannah expounded, but her grandmother Annabel had stepped into the parlor at that moment and told Susannah not to tell Adelaide any more stories like that, that it was Susannah’s fault the notion that the house was cursed perpetuated year after year and for pity’s sake to stop it. Before she was hushed a second time, her great-grandmother had told Adelaide to listen carefully and she would hear them, the echoes, and that only the women of Holly Oak could hear them. And when Adelaide asked her in a whisper if it was true that she had been a spy—gossip at school and on the streets was that she had been—Susannah told Adelaide to let the house tell her if she had been a spy or not.
The parlor became the center of the house’s mystery after that day, since Adelaide’s great-grandmother passed away a few months later, having never
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