“Ah. Excellent stuff, if I do say so myself. Trail mix with chocolate-covered coffee beans, oatmeal cookies with coffee icing, and espresso brownies.” She gestured like a game-show hostess to the snacks in the glass case under the counter.
Almost a year ago, Willa had let Rachel take over the previously closed coffee bar in the store and gave her the go-ahead to put snacks that had coffee as an ingredient on the menu. It had turned out to be a great idea. Walking into the shop in the mornings was actually a pleasure now. Being met by the sharp scent of chocolate mingling with the moist scent of brewing coffee had a dark, secretive feel to it, like Willa had finally found the perfect place to hide.
Willa’s store, which specialized in organic sportswear, was on National Street, the main road leading to the entrance of Cataract National Forest, widely known for its beautiful waterfalls, in the heart of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. All the shops catering to the hikers and campers were located here, in one long, busy stretch. And it was here that Willa had finally found her niche, if it could be called that. Truthfully, she didn’t care much for hiking or camping or any of the outdoorsy stuff that sustained the town, but she was so much more comfortable with the other shop owners and the people new to town than she was with the people she knew in her youth. If she had to be here, this was where she belonged, not with the glittery townies.
The stores were housed in old buildings that had been built more than a century ago, when Walls of Water was just a tiny logging town. The ceilings were pierced tin, and the floors were nail-worn and lemony. With the slightest pressure, they creaked and popped like an old woman’s bones, which was how Willa knew Rachel had approached her.
She turned and saw Rachel extending the dreaded envelope. “Open it.”
Willa reluctantly took it. It was thick and rich, and felt like cashmere paper. Just to get Rachel off her back, she tore it open. The moment she did, the bell above the door rang, and they both looked up to see who it was.
But no one was there.
Rachel rubbed her bare arms, which were goosepimply. “I just got a chill.”
“My grandmother would say that meant a ghost passed by you.”
Rachel snorted. “Superstitions are man’s way of trying to control things he has no control over.”
“Thank you, Margaret Mead.”
“Go on.” Rachel nudged her. “Read it.”
Willa took out the invitation and read:
On August 12, 1936, a small group of ladies in Walls of Water, North Carolina, formed a society that has since become the most important social club in the area, one that organizes fundraisers, sponsors local cultural events, and gives out yearly scholarships.
It is with great pride that the current members of the Women’s Society Club invite you, as a past member or relative of a past member, to a special commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the formation of this great organization.
Come help us celebrate 75 years of sparkling good deeds. The party will be the first event held in the newly restored Blue Ridge Madam, on August 12 at 7 p.m.
RSVP with the enclosed card to Paxton Osgood, President.
“See?” Rachel said from over Willa’s shoulder. “That’s not so bad.”
“I can’t believe Paxton’s holding it in the Blue Ridge Madam.”
“Oh, come on. I’d give anything to see the inside of that place, and so would you.”
“I’m not going.”
“You’re crazy to pass this up. Your grandmother—”
“Helped found the club, I know,” Willa finished for her as she set the invitation aside. “She did, I didn’t.”
“It’s your legacy.”
“It has nothing to do with me.”
Rachel threw her hands in the air. “I give up. Do you want some coffee?”
“Yes,” Willa said, glad for the end of this conversation. “Soy milk and two sugars.” Just this past week, Rachel had become convinced that how people took their coffee gave some secret insight into their characters. Were people who took their coffee black unyielding? Did people who liked their coffee with milk and no sugar have mother issues? She had a notebook behind the coffee counter in which she wrote her findings. Willa decided to keep her on her toes by making up a different request every day.
Rachel walked back to the coffee bar to write that down in her notebook. “Hmm, interesting,” she said seriously, as if it made all the sense in the world, as if she’d finally figured Willa out.
“You don’t believe in ghosts, but you do believe that how I take my coffee says something about my personality.”
“That’s superstition. This is science.”
Willa shook her head and went back to folding shirts, trying to ignore the invitation, now sitting on the table. But it kept catching her eye, fluttering slightly, as if caught in a breeze.
She flopped a shirt over it and tried to forget about it.
When they closed up shop that evening, Rachel headed off to meet her boyfriend for an evening hike, which was so annoyingly healthy that Willa made up for it by taking a brownie out of the snack case and eating it in three big bites. Then she got in her bright yellow Jeep Wrangler to go home to do laundry. Wednesday nights were always laundry nights. Sometimes she even looked forward to it.
Her life was monotonous, but it kept her out of trouble. She was thirty years old. This, her father would say, was called being an adult.
But instead of heading straight home, Willa turned onto Jackson Hill, her private daily detour. It was a steep mountain slope and a dramatic drive, almost foreboding, but it was the only way to get to the antebellum mansion at the top, locally known as the Blue Ridge Madam. Ever since renovation had started on the place well over a year ago, Willa had made these secret treks up the hill to watch the progress.
The place had been abandoned years ago by the last in a series of shady developers. It had fallen into disrepair and had been slowly disintegrating when the Osgood family stepped in and bought it. Now almost fully restored, and soon to be a bed-and-breakfast with a banquet hall, the wide white Doric columns were back, spanning the length of the house in a dramatic neoclassic fashion. The lower portico now had a period-piece chandelier hanging from the ceiling. The upper portico had cast-iron chairs on it. And it was now a startling mass of windows, whereas before they’d all been broken and boarded up. It looked like something out of the old South, a plantation manor where women in hoop skirts fanned themselves and men in suits talked about crop prices.
The Madam had been built in the 1800s by Willa’s great-great-grandfather, the founder of the now-defunct Jackson Logging Company. It had been a wedding gift to his young wife—a beautiful, delicate woman from a prominent family in Atlanta. She’d loved the house, considered it her equal, but she had hated this mountain town called Walls of Water, hated its lonely green wetness. She’d been known for throwing elaborate balls in hopes of coaxing the citizens to become as fine as she wanted them to be. It never happened. Not able to make society out of what she had, she’d decided to bring society to her instead. She’d persuaded her friends from Atlanta to come for visits, to build homes, to treat this place as a playful paradise, something she’d never felt herself, but she’d been very good at convincing others. It was the particular magic of beautiful, unsatisfied women.
And so a rich society had formed in this tiny North Carolina town surrounded by waterfalls, a town once populated mainly by rough logging men. These well-to-do families were curious, incongruous, and stubborn. Not welcome at all. But when the government bought the surrounding mountain forest and turned it into a national park, and the local logging industry dried up, it was these families who helped the town survive.