One Came Home by Amy Timberlake Page B

her.
    But I knew I had to do it. If you only talk to nice people, you won’t find out the half of it. Nice people either keep their noses so clean they hardly know a thing, or they conveniently forget what they know and fill their heads with daisies. You’ve got to talk to the rude ones as well.
    “Excuse me. One more thing,” I said.
    The look on her face told me turning had taken significant effort.
    I held out the framed photograph of Agatha. “I’m looking for a young woman. Her name is Agatha Burkhardt. She’s eighteen. A little shorter than you. With auburn hair.”
    Pin Eyes took the photograph. She ran her finger around the edge of the frame.
    I continued: “Agatha came through here two and a half weeks ago. She was traveling from Placid, Wisconsin, with three pigeoners—a married couple and a single man.”
    I paused, and then added: “Also, if you know anything about a body found on Miller Road about eight miles outside of Dog Hollow, I’d like to hear about it. The body was difficult to identify.”
    Pin Eyes handed the photograph back to me. “Who is this girl to you?”
    I could see in her eyes that she would not talk unless I told the truth.
    “My sister,” I said. I did not want to say that. Every time I said “my sister” out loud, water gathered in my eyes. It happened then too. I could not control it.
    Pin Eyes looked away (a kindness I noted). Then she spoke: “I hear things now and again. What I heard was that the Placid sheriff took that poor girl’s body back with him, saying he thought he could identify her. Our sheriff said that given the rough condition of the body, it was difficult to say what happened.”
    Pin Eyes gazed out the plate glass window. In the light, her eyes were walnut brown. “I lost both my brothers in the war. A friend delivered a letter from Josiah, the youngest, telling us that if he died, we should know he’d made peace with his Lord and Savior. But Luke? We never found out whathappened to Luke. I hope someone buried him. It is not right for someone to die in service to their country and have no one tell their family.”
    “You’re
assuming
my sister died,” I said.
    She looked at me incredulously. “Has she written?”
    I pressed my lips together.
    She reached out and touched my elbow. “Maybe she’ll write,” she said.
    I saw in her eyes she
meant
it.
    “Thank you, ma’am.” I blotted my eyes, gathered my purchases and the photograph, and quickly left.
    I glanced back at her one last time and saw that plank-hard face again. I did feel bad, though, about calling her Pin Eyes, and I suddenly realized that her girlish ruffles made sense if you thought of her age at the time she lost her brothers. It seemed likely that after hearing about the death of
two
brothers, a person might lack the desire to consider clothing. In addition, I was beginning to understand how the past can seem more alive than the present. I thought of Agatha all the time.
    Outside, I put the purchases in a saddlebag, reserving a sugar cube for Long Ears. I planted it in my palm and let his snout snuffle in my hand while I wrangled my emotions.
I cannot do this
, I thought. I wanted to sit down on that porch and avoid mankind all together.
    But the main street of Dog Hollow bustled with people.
This is your one chance to ask them
, I told myself.
    So I got to work, starting with a line of three men sitting on a bench outside the sawmill. I marched up to them like I was all business. (Though men rarely take someone of my age or stature seriously, they
will
be taken by surprise.)
    The oldermost seemed to have grown on that bench, slumped some, and then stuck. A toadstool would have been more responsive to my questions. But the other two took the photograph from my hands most willingly, and peered closer when they heard my sister’s hair was auburn.
    The one with the pencil-thin mustache whistled.
    The man next to him tittered away. “Myself? Never gone over for carroty hair. But he