In The Forest Of Harm Read Online Free PDF

a long moment no one spoke; then Mary replied, choosing her words with care. “My mother didn’t die of anything, Joan. My mother was raped and murdered.”
    â€œOh, jeez.” Joan shrank back in the seat. “How awful. I don’t know what to say. I didn’t realize it was anything like that—”
    â€œThat’s okay. It’s old news.” Mary kept her eyes straight ahead.
    â€œHey, Mary. Tell us again where we’re going.” Reliably, Alex booted the conversation back up onto happier ground.
    Mary cleared her throat. “A spring called Atagahi. Not many people know about it. My mom took me there a lot as a child. We used to soak in it like a hot tub. The Cherokees think it’s visible only to those who need it. If you wash in Atagahi’s waters, your wounds will be healed.”
    â€œCool,” said Alex. “You can jump right in and forget about the State of Georgia versus Calhoun Whitman, Jr.”
    â€œI can hardly wait,” Mary replied, the hate-filled faces of Cal Whitman and his brother Mitchell flashing before her.
    They sped on through the cooler, pine-scented air. The foothills grew steeper, and overall-clad farmers whittled beside Chevy pickups laden with mountain apples and sourwood honey for sale. Twice they had to stop to let Joan’s queasy stomach calm down. Then Mary pointed down a gravel lane that sloped off the paved highway. “Turn left, Alex. There’s a place I need to visit down there.”
    Alex turned the Beemer down the lane, gravel popping under the wheels of the car. The road skirted the base of a mountain, then crossed a shallow creek and broke into a meadow bright with goldenrod. On the far side of the field stood a small clapboard church.
Horton’s
Chapel U.M.C., read a hand-lettered sign by the front door.
    â€œGosh!” Alex gazed at the bright white church sparkling against the golden meadow and dark green pines. “This looks right out of Norman Rockwell.”
    â€œPark over there,” Mary directed. “Near the cemetery.”
    Alex circled the church, pulling the BMW under a sprawling oak tree with a tire swing dangling from its lowest limb. Mary pointed at a split-rail fence halfway up the hill. It enclosed a number of white tombstones that erupted like jagged teeth from the thick grass. “My mom’s buried up there. I’d like to have a look at her grave.”
    Alex glanced at her friend, trying to divine the expression in Mary’s smoky hazel eyes. “Should we come, too? Or would you rather be alone?”
    â€œNo. Please come.” Mary smiled. “I’d like you both to see it.”
    They got out of the car and walked up the hill, Joan and Alex following Mary through a cemetery that could have been in any churchyard in America, except for the names on the tombstones. Where most places you’d find Joneses or Smiths or Johnsons, here lay Owles and Saunooks and Walkingsticks and Crows. The three young women threaded their way through the graves. At a simple granite slab, Mary stopped.
    Martha Joy Crow
, the inscription read.
1948–1988
. Joan’s eyes filled with tears. “Gosh, Mary. Your mom was only forty.”
    Mary looked down at the gravestone. Alex had heard this story a thousand times. Joan had never heard it. Mary swallowed hard and began to speak.
    â€œMy mother died in the late afternoon on April eleventh. She was working in Norma Owle’s store. Someone came in and did the Big Three—robbery, rape and murder.” Mary rattled off her official version of her mother’s death. She’d learned long ago that if she said it fast, it tasted not quite so bitter coming out of her mouth. “Not an uncommon crime for most of America. But a very uncommon crime for here.”
    â€œDid they ever catch her killer?” Joan spoke in a whisper.
    â€œNo. They scoured these mountains for weeks, but they never caught anybody.