Sacred Ground by Barbara Wood Page A

attracted to the notion that spirits were already supposed to be in residence? Erica had only just begun to read the biography of the enigmatic figure of the twenties, a woman whose face had been known by every person in America, who was seen everywhere in newspapers, magazines, newsreels— a flamboyant personality whose theatrics and mesmerizing voice were the butt of editorial cartoons and social comedians, and yet whose personal life and background were practically unknown. Sister Sarah had sprung out of nowhere, become an overnight sensation, and then had disappeared just as quickly under mysterious circumstances, leaving her church fragmented and in shambles.
    Erica stepped into the gazebo, which shone like a wedding cake in the moonlight, and as she laid her hand on the wood she felt it hum with stories— of stolen kisses and broken promises, of moonlit trysts and séances for the dead. Music and love and disappointment and greed and spiritual contemplation had been absorbed by these old boards over the decades until the gazebo quivered with the remnants of lives that had passed through it.
    Erica looked out at the water and wondered if her mother, wherever she was in the world at that moment— on the Champs Elysées in Paris, on a beach in the Caribbean— felt she wasn’t complete because she had abandoned her child. She is walking through Central Park right now, on the arm of her second husband, a dentist, and feeling that there is a piece of her missing, not knowing that three thousand miles away that missing piece is walking, breathing, dreaming.
    As she pushed her hair back, she realized with a jolt that she wasn’t alone. Someone was already here, on the other side of the gazebo, at the very edge of the promontory. Jared Black! Standing with his feet apart, hands on hips, as if he were having an argument with the ocean.
    He suddenly turned around and Erica was stunned by the expression on his face. It was like looking into the heart of a storm.
    The moment hung suspended between them, like a freak lull in the wind and everything in the night froze for an instant. They had never been alone together. In the weeks since the project began, whenever Erica encountered Jared there were always other people around, issues to deal with and matters to settle. They had absolutely nothing to say to each other in private company. She wondered now which one of them would walk away first.
    To her surprise, Jared turned from the cliff’s dangerous edge and came up the creaking steps of the gazebo to stand beneath the elegant roof trimmed with gingerbread. “Sister Sarah must have preached from here. This structure was designed with acoustics in mind.”
    Erica looked up at the underside of the roof. “How can you tell?”
    “I studied architecture once,” he said, adding with a smile, “back in the Pleistocene Era.”
    The smile shocked Erica, as did the joke. And then she realized that the smile and joke had been forced. He is covering up for something I was not meant to see. The look on his face, his fury at the ocean.
    “I usually have this place to myself,” she said, feeling strange currents in the air and unable to identify them. “The signs frighten people away.”
    “Signs can sometimes accomplish the exact opposite of what they were meant to do.” He fell silent, watching her.
    Erica tried to think of what to say. She had the odd notion that Jared was holding himself in check, that if he let go just a little, if he was negligent in his vigilance for just a moment, he would turn into something he did not want people to see.
    “I’ve been getting calls from Hispanic interest groups,” she said for lack of anything better to say. Ever since the news broke about the La Primera Madre graffiti, Erica was being contacted by people who wanted to come and see it, journalists asking her to comment on what “The First Mother” might mean, Mexican-Americans making a claim of ownership of the cave.
    “We’re the