A Sound Among the Trees Read online

  Praise for

  A Sound Among the Trees

  “In A Sound Among the Trees, author Meissner transports readers to another time and place to weave her lyrical tale of love, loss, forgiveness, and letting go. Her beautifully drawn characters are flawed yet likable, their courage and resilience echoing in the halls of Holly Oak for generations. A surprising conclusion and startling redemption make this book a pageturner, but the setting—the beautiful old Holly Oak and all of its ghosts—is what will seep into the reader’s bones, making A Sound Among the Trees a book you don’t want to put down.”

  —KAREN WHITE, New York Times best-selling author of The Beach Trees

  “My eyes welled up more than once! And I thought it especially fitting that, having already shown us the shape of mercy in a previous novel, Susan Meissner is now showing us the many shapes of love. A Sound Among the Trees is a hauntingly lyrical book that will make you believe a house can indeed have a memory … and maybe a heart. A beautiful story of love, loss, and sacrifice, and of the bonds that connect us through time.”

  —SUSANNA KEARSLEY, New York Times best-selling author of The Winter Sea

  “I have a dozen things to do (like sleep!), but here I huddle through the night, turning pages, mesmerized by yet another Susan Meissner novel. How does Susan create characters that stay with me long after I close the book? How does she transport a reader so easily to a mansion in the South, in this century, bringing one family’s challenge of the Civil War to speak to contemporary times? How does she address the emotions and memories that hold us hostage with such grace? How do her turns of phrase bring tears unbidden to my eyes? I keep reading, knowing I’ll discover a fascinating story and hoping I’ll infuse some of the skill and craft that Susan weaves to make it. A Sound Among the Trees is one more exceptional novel from a world-class storyteller. Jodi Picoult, make room at the top.”

  —JANE KIRKPATRICK, award-winning author of The Daughter’s Walk

  “A Sound Among the Trees is another Meissner masterpiece filled with well-shaped characters, a compelling plot, and haunting questions: are our memories reliable enough to grow us, or do we cling to them as an excuse not to live? Meissner stunned me as she skillfully grappled with those mysteries. I left the book resolved to live joyfully in the sacredness of today.”

  —MARY DEMUTH, author of The Muir House

  A SOUND AMONG THE TREES

  PUBLISHED BY WATERBROOK PRESS

  12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200

  Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921

  Apart from well-known real people and real events associated with the Civil War, the characters and events in this book are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Susan Meissner

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown

  Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York.

  WATERBROOK and its deer colophon are registered trademarks of Random House Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Meissner, Susan, 1961–

  A sound among the trees : a novel / by Susan Meissner. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-45886-5

  1. Haunted houses—Virginia—Fredericksburg—Fiction. 2. Fredericksburg

  (Va.)—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3613.E435S68 2011

  813′.6—dc22

  2011013220

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Part One: The Garden

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two: The Parlor

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part Three: The Studio

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part Four: The Cellar

  Chapter 23

  Part Five: Holly Oak

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Author’s Notes

  Readers Guide

  Acknowledgments

  There’s a sound among the forest trees, away, boys,

  Away to the battlefield, hurrah!

  Hear its thunders from the mountain, no delay, boys.

  We’ll gird on the sword and shield.

  Shall we falter on the threshold of our fame, boys?

  FANNY CROSBY, 1861

  Part One

  THE GARDEN

  he bride stood in a circle of Virginia sunlight, her narrow heels clicking on Holly Oak’s patio stones as she greeted strangers in the receiving line. Her wedding dress was a simple A-line, strapless, with a gauzy skirt of white that breezed about her ankles like lacy curtains at an open window. She had pulled her unveiled brunette curls into a loose arrangement dotted with tiny flowers that she’d kept alive on her flight from Phoenix. Her only jewelry was a white topaz pendant at her throat and the band of platinum on her left ring finger. Tall, slender, and tanned from the famed and relentless Arizona sun, hers was a girl-next-door look: pretty but not quite beautiful. Adelaide thought it odd that Marielle held no bouquet.

  From the parlor window Adelaide watched as her grandson-in-law, resplendent in a black tuxedo next to his bride, bent toward the guests and greeted them by name, saying, “This is Marielle.” An explanation seemed ready to spring from his lips each time he shook the hand of someone who had known Sara, her deceased granddaughter. His first wife. Carson stood inches from Marielle, touching her elbow every so often, perhaps to assure himself that after four years a widower he had indeed patently and finally moved on from grief.

  Smatterings of conversations wafted about on the May breeze and into the parlor as received guests strolled toward trays of sweet tea and champagne. Adelaide heard snippets from her place at the window. Hudson and Brette, her great-grandchildren, had moved away from the snaking line of gray suits and pastel dresses within minutes of the first guests’ arrival and were now studying the flower-festooned gift table under the window ledge, touching the bows, fingering the silvery white wrappings. Above the children, an old oak’s youngest branches shimmied to the tunes a string quartet produced from the gazebo beyond the receiving line.

  Adelaide raised a teacup to her lips and sipped the last of its contents, allowing the lemony warmth to linger at the back of her throat. She had spent the better part of the morning readying the garden for Carson and Marielle’s wedding reception, plucking spent geranium blossoms, ordering the catering staff about, and straightening the rented linen tablecloths. She needed to join the party now that it had begun. The Blue-Haired Old Ladies would be wondering where she was.

  Her friends had been the first to arrive, coming through the garden gate on the south side of the house at five minutes before the hour. She’d watched as Carson introduced them to Marielle, witnessed how they cocked their necks in blue-headed unison to sweetly scrutinize her gra
ndson-in-law’s new wife, and heard their welcoming remarks through the open window.

  Deloris gushed about how lovely Marielle’s wedding dress was and what, pray tell, was the name of that divine purple flower she had in her hair?

  Pearl invited Marielle to her bridge club next Tuesday afternoon and asked her if she believed in ghosts.

  Maxine asked her how Carson and she had met—though Adelaide had told her weeks ago that Carson met Marielle on the Internet—and why on earth Arizona didn’t like daylight-saving time.

  Marielle had smiled, sweet and knowing—like the kindergarten teacher who finds the bluntness of five-year-olds endearing—and answered the many questions.

  Mojave asters. She didn’t know how to play bridge. She’d never encountered a ghost so she couldn’t really say but most likely not. She and Carson met online. There’s no need to save what one has an abundance of.

  Carson had cupped her elbow in his hand, and his thumb caressed the inside of her arm while she spoke.

  Adelaide swiftly set the cup down on the table by the window, whisking away the remembered tenderness of that same caress on Sara’s arm.

  Carson had every right to remarry.

  Sara had been dead for four years.

  She turned from the bridal tableau outside and inhaled deeply the gardenia-scented air in the parlor. Unbidden thoughts of her granddaughter sitting with her in that very room gently nudged her. Sara at six cutting out paper dolls. Memorizing multiplication tables at age eight. Sewing brass buttons onto gray wool coats at eleven. Sara reciting a poem for English Lit at sixteen, comparing college acceptance letters at eighteen, sharing a chance letter from her estranged mother at nineteen, showing Adelaide her engagement ring at twenty-four. Coming back home to Holly Oak with Carson when Hudson was born. Nursing Brette in that armchair by the fireplace. Leaning against the door frame and telling Adelaide that she was expecting her third child.

  Right there Sara had done those things while Adelaide sat at the long table in the center of the room, empty now but usually awash in yards of stiff Confederate gray, glistening gold braid, and tiny piles of brass buttons—the shining elements of officer reenactment uniforms before they see war.

  Adelaide ran her fingers along the table’s polished surface, the warm wood as old as the house itself. Carson had come to her just a few months ago while she sat at that table piecing together a sharpshooter’s forest green jacket. He had taken a chair across from her as Adelaide pinned a collar, and he’d said he needed to tell her something.

  He’d met someone.

  When she’d said nothing, he added, “It’s been four years, Adelaide.”

  “I know how long it’s been.” The pins made a tiny plucking sound as their pointed ends pricked the fabric.

  “She lives in Phoenix.”

  “You’ve never been to Phoenix.”

  “Mimi.” He said the name Sara had given her gently, as a father might. A tender reprimand. He waited until she looked up at him. “I don’t think Sara would want me to live the rest of my life alone. I really don’t. And I don’t think she would want Hudson and Brette not to have a mother.”

  “Those children have a mother.”

  “You know what I mean. They need to be mothered. I’m gone all day at work. I only have the weekends with them. And you won’t always be here. You’re a wonderful great-grandmother, but they need someone to mother them, Mimi.”

  She pulled the pin cushion closer to her and swallowed. “I know they do.”

  He leaned forward in his chair. “And I … I miss having someone to share my life with. I miss the companionship. I miss being in love. I miss having someone love me.”

  Adelaide smoothed the pieces of the collar. “So. You are in love?”

  He had taken a moment to answer. “Yes. I think I am.”

  Carson hadn’t brought anyone home to the house, and he hadn’t been on any dates. But he had lately spent many nights after the children were in bed in his study—the former library—with the door closed. When she’d pass by, Adelaide would hear the low bass notes of his voice as he spoke softly into his phone. She knew that gentle sound. She had heard it before, years ago when Sara and Carson would sit in the study and talk about their day. His voice, deep and resonant. Hers, soft and melodic.

  “Are you going to marry her?”

  Carson had laughed. “Don’t you even want to know her name?”

  She had not cared at that moment about a name. The specter of being alone in Holly Oak shoved itself forward in her mind. If he remarried, he’d likely move out and take the children with him. “Are you taking the children? Are you leaving Holly Oak?”

  “Adelaide—”

  “Will you be leaving?”

  Several seconds of silence had hung suspended between them. Carson and Sara had moved into Holly Oak ten years earlier to care for Adelaide after heart surgery and had simply stayed. Ownership of Holly Oak had been Sara’s birthright and was now Hudson and Brette’s future inheritance. Carson stayed on after Sara died because, in her grief, Adelaide asked him to, and in his grief, Carson said yes.

  “Will you be leaving?” she asked again.

  “Would you want me to leave?” He sounded unsure.

  “You would stay?”

  Carson had sat back in his chair. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to take Hudson and Brette out of the only home they’ve known. They’ve already had to deal with more than any kid should.”

  “So you would marry this woman and bring her here. To this house.”

  Carson had hesitated only a moment. “Yes.”

  She knew without asking that they were not talking solely about the effects moving would have on a ten-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl. They were talking about the strange biology of their grief. Sara had been taken from them both, and Holly Oak nurtured their common sorrow in the most kind and savage of ways. Happy memories were one way of keeping someone attached to a house and its people. Grief was the other. Surely Carson knew this. An inner nudging prompted her to consider asking him what his new bride would want.

  “What is her name?” she asked instead.

  And he answered, “Marielle …”

  The present rushed back in around her as the parlor door opened and a boy stood in the doorway, eyes wide. Adelaide took a step back from the table. She had seen this child arrive earlier that day with his parents when she was still puttering about in the garden. Members of Marielle’s family. She had not met them yet.

  The boy wore a black button-down vest and a scarlet bow tie that pointed to eight o’clock. Most of his hair had been slicked into obedience. Most of it.

  “Wait. This isn’t a bathroom,” he announced.

  Adelaide composed herself. “No. It is not. The bathroom is the second door on the left. Not the first.”

  The boy looked over his shoulder. “I think someone’s in there. The door’s closed.”

  “Then I suppose you will have to wait.”

  The boy cast a glance about the parlor and then looked back at Adelaide. “So are you the old lady who lives in this house?”

  She stiffened. “This is indeed my house. Who are you?”

  “I’m Kirby. I live in Santa Fe. That’s in New Mexico.”

  “Kirby. Your parents named you Kirby.”

  “Not curb-y like the street. Kirby. With a K.”

  Adelaide moved toward the boy and the parlor door. She put her hand on the handle as if to close it behind her. But he stood unmoving in the doorway, oblivious.

  “So this house was here before the Civil War? It’s that old?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  The boy took a step inside the room. “There’s an old lady outside who says it’s haunted.”

  “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”

  “I don’t. I don’t believe in that stuff.”

  She made another attempt to close the door. The boy seemed not to notice.

  “So you make Civil War uniforms in
here? My aunt says you do. But I don’t see any.”

  “And who might your aunt be?”

  “Marielle. You know, the bride. ’Course she’s not a real bride now. They were married last weekend in Arizona. I went to the wedding.” He cocked his head. “You weren’t there.”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t they invite you?”

  “Of course they invited me. Perhaps we should join everyone in the garden. Have you met my great-grandson, Hudson? He’s probably your age.”

  The boy didn’t move. “I met him in Arizona. But he’s not my age. He’s ten. And I’m nearly twelve. My mom said old people are sometimes afraid of airplanes. Are you afraid of airplanes?”

  “Shall we?” Adelaide motioned them away from the room.

  Kirby took a hesitant step back into the hallway. “So do you make Civil War uniforms in that room?”

  “I do.”

  “I’m just wondering why you do that. That war has been over for a long time. The North won.”

  “Yes. Here we go.” She closed the door and they now stood in the hall. The air in the hall seemed stiff. Unmoving.

  “Do you make them for museums or something? Because that seems dumb to me. Museums are supposed to have the real thing. Not copies of the real thing. Don’t museums here have real Civil War uniforms?”

  “Yes … they do. Perhaps you would like to use the bathroom at the top of the stairs?” Adelaide felt as if the walls were pressing in now, listening. It was a familiar feeling.

  “I can wait,” Kirby answered. “So if you don’t make them for museums, why do you make them?”

  People were moving about the lower level of the house, in and out of the large patio doors off the main dining room. Caterers were bustling between the kitchen and the garden, and attendants at the front door were helping people with their gifts and cards for the newlyweds. No one appeared to be looking for the boy.

  “I make them for reenactments.”

  “For what?”

  “Reenactments. It’s like pretend. People wear them for pretend. They pretend they are in the Civil War, and they wear them. Surely you know what pretend is.” Adelaide headed for the patio doors and the clean air outside the house.