Julia dialed the police department by memory. After six years of regular calls, she was put straight through to the detective.
“Hello, Julia.” Detective Burrows’s voice was tired but kind.
He was a busy man. She’d get right to the point.
“Today is Mikey’s birthday. I just wondered if…” Her voice trailed away.
“Nothing new, Julia.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Not since the false sighting two years ago in Huntsville, but Michael’s file remains active. I talked with the FBI last week.”
She swallowed, disappointed but not surprised. The police did their best. She understood that. For a full year after Mikey disappeared, either Detective Burrows or the FBI unit had called her every day with an update. Slowly, as the case grew colder and more frustrating, the calls dwindled.
“You’ll call me immediately if there’s anything at all.” The desperation and pain she heard in her own voice never lessened. It wouldn’t until her son was found.
“Of course. I wish I had better news.”
“So do I.”
Julia hung up and, heavyhearted, had started up the stairs toward the Blueberry Room when someone knocked at the front door. Deciding to leave the cleaning to Valery, she hurried down to answer, hoping for a drive-up guest. The inn had been slow this month and occasionally someone in town sent a customer her way.
She opened the door to find two older ladies standing on her wraparound veranda. Her mood lifted. No one could be around the twin Sweat sisters without smiling at the two old characters. Dressed in identical pink flowered shirtwaists, shiny pink pumps and jaunty white sunhats with matching gloves, Vida Jean and Willa Dean Sweat were throwbacks to the fifties when Southern ladies dressed and behaved with a certain uniform gentility. The octogenarian Sweat twins, however, were anything but conventional. With their painted-on eyebrows, startling red lipstick and hair dyed a specific shade of lemon yellow, they were entertaining icons of Honey Ridge.
“Ladies, good morning. Come in.”
“We can’t stay long, Julia darling.” This from Vida Jean. Julia knew because she was the twin with the mole on her cheek.
“Of course we can, Vida Jean. Julia, do you have any of your wonderful peach tea made?”
“Just finished. If you’d like to sit in the parlor, I’ll bring in a tray.”
“You are such a darling girl. I was telling Willa Dean this morning. Wasn’t I, sister?”
“Indeed, you were.” Hoisting an oversize straw bag, Willa Dean said, “I wouldn’t mind some coffee cake if you have it.”
“Peach muffins?” Julia offered. “Made fresh this morning.”
“Lovely. Thank you, dear.”
“Coming right up.”
With a smile, Julia left the twins in the pretty old parlor, a polished-wood space with a fireplace, the original chandelier and a toast-colored, camel-backed sofa. Across a persistent dark spot near the fireplace, she’d placed a colorful area rug. She’d heard rumors about the spots but didn’t want to think about bloodstains.
She returned with the tray and after serving the twins, joined them. Valery owed her a little break. There was always work to do—wood to polish, fans to dust or flowers to weed, even when business was slow. This was in addition to the restoration and eventual expansion that would probably never end.
The Sweat sisters, pinkies lifted from the condensing tea glass, regaled her with news of the townsfolk, including a new baby for the Perkinses and the news that poor Brother Ramsey had fallen while repairing the church roof and had broken his leg. Julia made a mental note to send the pastor a card, though she hadn’t darkened the church door in quite a while.
A clatter sounded overhead. All three women looked up.
“Guests,” Julia said. “Or Valery cleaning.”
The twins exchanged a glance. “Willa Dean and I have been wondering. Haven’t we, sister?”
“Indeed. Wondering. You know what they say about this house, don’t you, Julia dear?”
She’d been raised in Honey Ridge. Of course, she knew, but she’d always had an affinity for the old place even as a kid when the house peeled and sagged in exhausted disrepair and weeds choked the front veranda. She’d been a child when the last owners moved to Georgia and left the house to further deteriorate, a sad state of affairs that had fired ghost stories and led to keep-out signs and a locked gate across the entrance.
“They say that about all old houses that have sat empty for a while.”
“Have you experienced anything unusual since you moved in?”
“Unusual?” Like finding antique marbles in odd places or hearing children giggle?
“Granddaddy told stories. Wasn’t he a fine storyteller, Vida Jean?”
“His daddy fought in the war, you know. Chester Lorenzo Sweat, a corporal with the 1st Confederate Cavalry. Sister and I remember the stories, don’t we, Willa Dean?”
Julia didn’t have to ask which war. In Honey Ridge, the Civil War was remembered, revered and reenacted. Stories abounded, embellished by time and Southern pride.
“We haven’t encountered any ghostly apparitions if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Oh.”
“Well.” Vida Jean’s mole quivered.
Straight and prim, the twins crossed their hands atop their straw handbags at exactly the same time in exactly the same manner, both of them clearly disappointed by her statement.
“Would you care for more tea?” Julia asked.
“None for me, dear. The bladder, you know.” Willa Dean reached for another muffin. “These are delicious.”
“Thank you.”
“From your orchard?”
“The peaches are from the freezer, but yes, they were grown here.”
“Lovely.”
While Willa Dean fawned over the muffins, Vida Jean added another tidbit of local gossip. Or news, as the Sweat twins would call it. “Did you hear about the new family that bought the Akins farm? They have six boys. Six. Can you imagine six little boys running through the house?”
A cloud passed over Julia’s heart. She managed a feeble smile. “How nice for them.”
“Oh, dear, I’ve brought up a difficult subject. Forgive me. But that’s why we came, isn’t it, sister?”
Willa Dean drew an envelope
