Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(53)
“Bright Star was turned down at first but made a case, claiming prejudice against religion, so a state-senator friend of mine told me.”
Kate just shook her head, and for once, Grant marveled, she didn’t have anything to say.
They pushed the kids on the swings and watched them come down twisting slides and crawl through wooden tunnels. “Our best hardwoods,” Grant told her. After that the boys wanted to roll down a small hill that was close to the old asylum cemetery. A mound and a cemetery seemed the perfect setup for what he wanted to tell Kate.
Waiting for the right moment, he sat on a bench next to her while little Andy slept with his head in her lap, and his two older brothers ran endlessly up the hill, then rolled down. Again, Grant was struck by how good she was with these kids, how natural. Kate the clever, ever the professional Professor Lockwood, looking like a young wife and mother. Kate, who had assured him just by looking at the hill that it wasn’t an Adena mound.
“You asked about my grandmother the other day,” he said, his eyes on Jason and Aaron. Shades of him with his friends in their very young days, he thought.
“Yes,” she said. They didn’t bother to keep their voices down, since the oldest two were whooping up a storm, and Andy hadn’t budged. “I can see why you don’t know much about her since she died so young.”
Where to start? “She died here,” he said in a rush.
“Here? What do you mean?”
“Here at the asylum—the mental hospital. Kate, the look you saw in her eyes in that photo in the guest room—she was what we’d call schizophrenic today. She heard and saw things that weren’t there.”
“Poor woman. Like what?”
“Like what she called Indians coming out of the mound to kill her.”
Kate gasped and jerked so hard that Andy stirred. She soothed him. “Delusional about your mound—so close behind her house?”
“Right. The thing was, she had a great-grandmother who was massacred with her family by Indians, the historic ones in these parts. I think that played on her fears.”
“So, Grant, did your grandfather ever enter the mound to assure her there was nothing to be afraid of? And was there?”
That sure as hell wasn’t the path he wanted this revelation to take. “Look, Kate, all I know about this is what I overheard as a kid. Her so-called insanity wasn’t exactly a big topic of family conversation at the dinner table, let alone with friends, but you asked about her earlier, and I wanted you to know.”
“Can you tell me more of what you do know?”
“She was admitted to the asylum in the early 1970s, but the care here didn’t seem to help her. She had electroshock treatment, and it might have made her worse. In 1974, she broke away from a nurse, ran down a third-floor hall and threw herself over the banister, down the staircase to her death. Broken neck...” His voice caught. “Broken skull, too. I guess my grandfather and dad finally got the caretaker to admit that she was screaming that the savages were after her again. That’s about all I know. She just couldn’t shut the mound out of her mind—and that really did her in. She obsessed about it, and that wasn’t healthy for her.”
Kate narrowed her eyes at him. “Why didn’t your grandfather move away with her, away from the mound?”
“He did once, moved in with the Custer family, but it didn’t help, and he didn’t have the ability or money to move her farther away. He needed to stay close to the mill or it would have gone under.”
“So she went under. You know, it’s tragic what people used to call insane. Female patients were often committed in the old days for things like postpartum depression or menopause problems—even epilepsy. She isn’t buried here in the cemetery, is she?”
“No. She’s in the Mason family plot with Grandpa and my parents not far from where we buried Paul. But I just want you to know the fact that she was haunted by the mound is another reason I want it left intact, untouched—kind of like, in her memory.”
“I can’t help but wonder if she would have been better off if it was opened and relics or Adena skeletons—if they are there—were taken away.”
“Let’s take these three home to their grandparents and get a report on how Todd’s doing today. I also want to find out if Jace has learned anything after getting the climbing harness back from the hospital. It could have been faulty somehow. The man climbs enough that it could have frayed.”
Damn, he hoped that was the case, Grant admitted to himself. Because despite Brad’s novice climbing abilities and the fact he was shaken to be left hanging in the tree alone, he had a big motive for hurting Todd. And Todd’s shout from the tree ordered Brad not to grab at him....
“Grant, I’m glad you told me about Ada. Of course, her fears could have been linked to the tragedy that befell her own ancestor. I’m so sorry she felt haunted and paid a big price for that. In a way—a more sane way—they haunt me, too,” she admitted.
Kate carried Andy while Grant corralled the other two boys, and they headed back to his car. He wasn’t sure Kate had gotten the message not to get too involved with Mason Mound, but Kate was Kate and always managed to turn things back on him. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but damned if he’d tell her how the mound obsessed him, too, but in a different way. He couldn’t let her in there, however much she was working her way into his life and heart.