Thistle and Twigg Read online

  Thistle AND Twigg

  ALSO BY MARY SAUMS

  Midnight Hour

  The Valley of Jewels

  When the Last Magnolia Weeps

  Thistle

  AND

  Twigg

  MARY SAUMS

  ST. MARTIN’S MINOTAUR

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THISTLE AND TWIGG. Copyright © 2007 by Mary Saums. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Book design by Mary A. Wirth

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Saums, Mary.

  Thistle and Twigg / Mary Saums.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36063-4

  ISBN-10: 0-312-36063-0

  1. Widows—Fiction. 2. Alabama—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.A78875T47 2007

  813'.6—dc22

  2006048684

  First Edition: April 2007

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Thistle AND Twigg

  one

  Jane Thistle Arrives

  I knew from the first there was something odd about Tullulah, knew it even before I saw the town itself. The feeling struck and traveled deeply into memories I’d not thought of in years, something vague and hard to discern, like an overgrown path found at last with a little searching. Oh, yes, I felt it immediately, as soon as I entered the forest that surrounds it, guards it like a secret treasure, and it was this, you see, that drew me in.

  My first day as an official citizen of Tullulah began with a spectacular omen of things to come. A monstrous brown snake, at least eight feet long and several inches thick, slithered across the threshold of my front door. Naturally, the men from the moving company had left the door open all morning as they moved furniture and boxes inside. It didn’t occur to any of us this might be seen as an open invitation to the local wildlife.

  The snake zigzagged across the wood parquet and down the hall, then turned right into the living room as if he’d dropped by for tea. He meant us no harm and came to none himself, although I must say I’m not at all squeamish and would certainly have shot the trespassing beast if necessary.

  One of the men screamed. The others laughed at the poor fellow, but if the truth were told, we all had a good scare. The snake sidled with frightening quickness, its sideways movement making it difficult for us to predict the direction of its intended course. One of the movers grabbed a wide push broom then scooted the snake, a nonpoisonous one I was assured, out the door and off the porch.

  The incident, though surprising, was also strangely calming, I thought, as I watched the snake swish across my yard into the tall grass that bordered Anisidi Wildlife Refuge next door. The snake’s ancestors, as well as those of the other animals here, had survived on this piece of land for centuries, longer actually. As the newcomer, I intended to live peacefully with my neighbors, even those of the reptilian persuasion. Within reason, of course.

  This, after all, was why I came to this place of special beauty after discovering it completely by accident. Do you believe in chance? I’m not altogether sure I do anymore. For now, let us say that it was, in fact, chance that brought me here.

  Almost twenty years ago, I was driving from Florida where my late husband, Colonel John Bradford Thistle, and I lived. In the fall of that year, he’d received a transfer to a facility in the Midwest and had already flown there to begin his new assignment. It fell to me to stay behind, pack our belongings, and arrange for the moving company, just as I had done many times since our marriage years earlier when he was a dapper young officer and I was his English bride.

  My leisurely drive northwest from Florida was, for the most part, uneventful until an hour or so past Birmingham where, on a whim, I decided to take an alternate route, away from the interstate, for a more scenic drive.

  And scenic it was. I had not seen such beautiful valleys and farmlands since I’d left England, perhaps earlier when as a child I’d visited my grandparents in Wales. The thought of their home, the surrounding countryside, the mysterious look of the land, the play of light and color all came back to me, stirring memories.

  That’s when it began, the odd sensation. At first, it was only that, just a hint of something fresh and new in the air, like the scent of pine that blew in my open windows. A large highway sign indicated I could enter Bankhead National Forest at the next exit, and I could see a great expanse of green ahead as I topped hills.

  Trees grew thicker on either side of the road as the car traveled steadily upward. The air was heavy with the sound of birds’ wings rustling in and out of branches. I had the sense of going back in time, as if I were returning rather than arriving, something I couldn’t define.

  I crested a small hill and slowed as I passed a little clearing with a neatly painted white board sign that bore three lines of text in pretty script: “Welcome to Tullulah, Population 9,523, or Thereabouts.” A lattice trellis framed it, twined with ivy and a beautiful yellow climbing rose. Below me, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, I could see a quaint town square that echoed the neatness of the welcome sign. Beyond the buildings, a vast green backdrop of forest stretched to the horizon, with occasional rock-face cliffs jutting out of tree-covered mountains in the distance.

  While I waited at the first stoplight just outside of town, I had a lovely personal welcome. A mockingbird lit on my car door’s rearview mirror and cocked an eye, studying me, then sang a melodious greeting. He trilled through quite a repertoire, looking at me all the while. One gray wing was a bit damaged on its white stripe, yet the bird was able to hop into the air and fly for a short distance as it sang a three-note farewell.

  I drove around the square to look for a place to eat and parked near the City Grill. And there, as I walked down the quiet sidewalk, was where I first saw the girl.

  She waved coyly to me, smiling as if she had a secret, then ran quickly around the side of a building. I’d say she was about seven years old and had long dark hair in ringlets falling past the shoulders of her white lace dress.

  I looked down the alleyway as I walked by it, but she was nowhere in sight. I wondered at the time if perhaps she wasn’t being naughty, playing outside in her fancy dress when I was sure her mother would have forbidden it.

  I thought no more of it, had my meal, and drove slowly about the little town before leaving, trying to put my finger on why the area brought back memories of my childhood. Not even memories really; there was no certain place that reminded me of another specific location from that time. Yet there was a connection, I was certain of it.

  And then a strange thing happened. As I drove out of town, I glanced at the welcome sign again, this time at its reverse side. To my eyes, the sign said, “Come Back, Jane,” as I passed it. I would have sworn it.

  I braked instantly. Fortunately, there was no one behind me. At the next opportunity, I turned the car around and drove past the sign once more. It clearly said, “Come Back Again.” I attributed misreading it the first time to being distracted, perhaps a little disoriented by driving in a new place, or to driver’s fatigue. However, deep down, something disturbed me. I didn’t know why.

  It would be another year before I figured it out. Tullulah haunted me all that time. I took to studying the area and its history, searching for books of which there were
precious few. That scarcity may have been the great attraction to studying it. It was a new and exotic place of which I had no knowledge.

  So, when I had to drive through Alabama to Florida again a year later, I made a point of visiting Tullulah. I rolled down my windows, breathed in the pine scent, and drove past the welcome sign toward the town square to park near the City Grill, just as before. And just as before, there was the little girl, waving coyly, standing in her white lace dress, running shyly away and disappearing behind the same building. She hadn’t aged a day.

  I must say I was a bit shocked. After I thought about it awhile, everything fell into place. I understood the connection to my past, why I’d experienced the déjà vu. My childhood had been filled with such images, ones dismissed by my parents and siblings, so much so that I pushed them all away and had forgotten them. But now, after years of denial, they’d come back to me. I could see ghosts.

  Something about Tullulah must have made them visible once again. I had no such visions elsewhere. After my return home, I began more intense study of the national park and the other woodland areas of northern Alabama. I dreamed of it, of the deep tranquility I’d felt while in the midst of the forest, and of returning one day. Not for the ghosts, certainly, but for the serenity and the indefinable quality in the air that, once breathed in, possessed me with a great longing for its peace. Years later, when my husband passed away, there was no question what I would do. When his estate was settled, I packed a bag and spent a week in Tullulah looking at property.

  There was really only one choice. One place had a strong sense of connection, and of peace. The old house beside the wildlife refuge, far outside the town limits, seemed to call to me and welcome me in.

  It’s just what I’ve always wanted, to live in a beautiful place where I can relax and never have to move again. The Colonel and I had a deal, you see. Traveling from base to base had been necessary for his work. I knew that when I married him. Since his job required constant travel, he promised our retirement years would be spent wherever I wished. After so many years of having no roots, I realized my home was wherever he was happy He liked Florida, so I told him that’s where I wanted to retire. We were content there, but when his health began to fail, I knew I would not stay after he was gone.

  Through the years, Tullulah had been my secret, the one thing I didn’t share with my husband. I knew he wouldn’t be happy in a small town, this one in particular. It was much too quiet and sleepy of a place. His personality craved movement, excitement, lots of goings-on around him. He was a city man, accustomed to the bases filled with likeminded men who had also seen the world and conquered it.

  No, I knew he wouldn’t care for Tullulah, not at all. For me, it represented everything I’d missed. Beautiful countryside, a slow pace of living. But most of all, a different sort of community from those we were used to. No flat utilitarian, ugly buildings of blocks painted white, or worse, service gray or green. Here the houses and even the businesses surrounding the courthouse square all had personalities to match the people—open, friendly, and beautifully devoid of the harsh, sarcastic atmosphere of cramped city life.

  After that second visit to Tullulah, I became restless, obsessed even. I’d always been a student of history and of the natural world; those things fascinated me and led me to the love of archaeology and ancient civilizations. Learning about the first inhabitants of the area, several native tribes and all new to me, and the array of wild species and their habitats sparked my mind as it had not been stimulated in many years. And so, when the Colonel was gone, I sold our house in Florida, hired a moving company, and set off for my new life.

  After the snake incident that first day, I thought it wise to have a pistol handy. My new house was, after all, bordered by the wildlife refuge on one side and a privately owned forest on another, both of which surely harbored many a wild animal. I found a pistol easily in my old antique trunk, but had no luck in locating the proper bullets among the packing boxes. With the thought that it could be days, weeks even, before I had everything unpacked, I determined to get a box of bullets when I stepped out to pick up lunch for the movers and myself.

  That was how I came to meet Phoebe Twigg, a lifetime resident of Tullulah, who has become my closest friend. I’m sixty-seven and she is sixty-five, although she looks much younger. Her most prominent feature is her flaming red hair, of which she is understandably quite proud. Her clothes reflect her flair for the dramatic with wild color combinations. She makes me feel quite pale and small in comparison.

  Phoebe is a perfect dear. She makes me laugh. There’s nothing she loves more than to entertain with a good story. Facts are of minimal importance and serve only as a springboard for great leaps of imagination and elongated stretches of the truth.

  Unfortunately, someone unfamiliar with Phoebe’s tendency to embroider reality overheard one such fantasy and came to believe Phoebe knew more than she actually did. Although she didn’t mean to, Phoebe put us both in great danger. I have absolutely no doubt, however, she’d tell a much different story.

  two

  Phoebe Twigg

  Sets Things Straight

  Don’t you believe a single word Jane Thistle tells you. She means well, bless her heart, and she’s sweet as can be. She just doesn’t always understand what’s going on down here like I do.

  It’s not her fault. Jane is about the smartest person, man or woman, I’ve ever known. She can tell one Shakespeare play from another. Operas and symphonies, too. All that hard stuff. I want you to know she can tell which modern psycho artist painted what, even with nothing but dots and splatters to go on.

  And those artsy things aren’t even her strongest subjects. History and archaeology are what she loves because she has worked on dig sites ever since she was a teenager. And trees, Lord have mercy, how she loves plain old ugly trees and plants. Knows their Latin names and everything. Anything green, old, or dead and gone for centuries, Jane knows about it.

  I bet she didn’t tell you any of that, did she? That’s because Thistle is a real lady and she don’t go around tooting her own horn like a brazen heifer. She’s a bona fide proper Englishwoman, even though she says she’s completely American now after living in the States for nearly fifty years.

  Yes, ma’am, I tell you what, Jane Thistle is sharp as a hound’s tooth and is a saint on top of that. She’d have to be to put up with that Colonel Board-Up-His-Backside husband of hers for so many years. I never actually met him, you understand, but I’ve seen his pictures. From the way she carries on about him, you’d think he hung the moon or invented chewing gum or something.

  She really is so naive about people. Her husband probably made her that way, always barking orders at her, I bet you. Now, she wouldn’t say that in so many words. But I can tell he must have been an ornery old cuss from the way he’s glowering out of every single one of them pictures in her house like a mean bulldog.

  Oh, I know he was a colonel, but titles don’t mean zip to me. And I’m not saying he didn’t have one or two redeeming qualities. He had at least one I know of: He taught Jane to shoot. Now that I think about it, if it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have met her that first day she moved to town.

  She was standing in line at the back counter of Harvel Wriggle’s Sporting Goods Store. My brother Eugene was having a birthday, and I had gone into Wriggle’s to buy him a new tackle box since fishing takes up the better part of his mind.

  “Pardon me, sir,” Jane said, and I knew right away she was English. I grabbed the closest tackle box, a plastic lime green see-through number, and hustled over to stand in line behind her. I just love British accents and I didn’t want to miss a single word.

  Harvel Wriggle noticed her accent, too, which only confirmed what I’ve always known about him—he’s not as dumb as he looks.He slicked his hair back with one hand, flattening his cowlick down.

  “Yes, ma’am. What can I do for you?” he said, with the cowlick springing up at the end of his sentence
like a question mark on top of his head. I couldn’t help but laugh which, from the look he gave me, Harvel did not appreciate one bit.

  He turned his attention back to Jane, all cute and silver-haired and hardly big as a minute. I wondered if she fixed her own hair. It waved and curled just perfect around her ears. Very classy. Jane has what I call a high-class face, with her little turned-up nose and high cheekbones. She’s got real black eyes that sparkle, and she’s always smiling. The beige and camel outfit she wore that day also showed what good taste she has and how subdued and genteel she is. I wouldn’t be caught dead in beige myself, way too drab, but it looked good on her.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said to Harvel. “I’d like to purchase a small box of 9-millimeter bullets and another of 12-gauge shotgun shells, if I may please.”

  Well, let me tell you what. You could have knocked me and Harvel both over with a chicken feather. I knew right then Jane and I were going to be close friends.

  Harvel just stood there, staring at her with his mouth hanging open.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked him. “You look like you never heard a lady ask for bullets before.”

  “Well,” he said and cleared his throat. “It is mighty unusual. I believe it’s a first, around here anyway.” Some old retired guys, who hang out there at the store because their wives can’t stand them in the house all day, chuckled like it was the funniest thing in the world.

  Believe me, I’ve been around here a long time, and I know exactly how these men think. I could read Harvel’s mind like his forehead was made out of Cling Wrap. He might be laughing but inside he was scared. Men around here like their women docile as old cows, and don’t want to face the fact that one might get trigger-happy. 1 tell you, it was a real treat to see old Harvel squirm.

  I tapped Jane on the shoulder. ‘Thank goodness ‘unusual’ ain’t the same thing as ‘illegal,’ right, hon?”