Free Scrapbook of Secrets by Mollie Cox Bryan Page A

other side of the post office was the bakery, and then Vera’s dancing school. It had been a big warehouse at one point, until Vera bought it, that is. Her daughter painted it the prettiest shade of yellow Beatrice had ever seen—it reminded her of butter, though it was even prettier than that. The bakery was chocolate brown and pink, with two wrought-iron tables out on the street for people to sit down and eat their muffins and drink coffee. It was so clean and beautiful, with those pink window boxes and cascading petunias in the summers.
    Dogwood trees were planted all along Main Street. In the spring, it was a magnificent sight to behold as she walked through her little town. At the end of the business district, she often stood and looked out over the mountains—where she grew up—deep in the hills, nothing but earth and rock and tree and sky. The winding Cumberland Creek started as a trickle in one of the deep caves on Jenkins Mountain.
    Across the street from the dancing school was the Wrigley’s, which leveled several of the small businesses for that huge parking lot. A few small restaurants were lined up next to it. Mr. Wong’s was a Chinese place, and the other place was a greasy hot dog shop.
    Lord, what people will put into their bodies these days!
    But sometimes Beatrice liked to sit outside of the drugstore, which was between the hot dog shop and the local museum, and watch as people streamed in and out of her daughter’s dancing school. Vera was a small-business success—by all definitions. But a great sadness hung over Vera. She thought her mother didn’t know this, but mothers always do.
    That she could never have a child tore at Vera’s heart, so she became a mother to the children she taught. Beatrice always wondered, but never asked, for fear of dipping too far into Vera’s business, why didn’t they adopt? There were so many children who needed a good home. Biology was only one part of mothering, and any mother worth her salt could second that.
    Bea’s favorite part of her town was the small park in between the town buildings. This was not the park where the playground was—thank God for that. She loved kids, but there was a place and a time for them. She found a measure of peace, surrounded by beautiful fountains, lovely plants, and good company—this is where the people who were closer to her age gathered. No loud music, no strange modern slang, just pleasant companionship. Some days, she’d sit next to the fountain with two or three other women—men were rare—and just listen to the water trickling, watch the goldfish swim, think about days gone by. In fact, it was always best when they didn’t talk: sometimes the small talk nearly drove her mad. But few people were left in her world with whom she could chat about quantum physics. Or history. As she got older, she had learned to appreciate history, and was fluent in the town’s past.
     
     
    Cumberland Creek, at first called Miller’s Gap, was settled in 1755 by a group of Pennsylvania farmers of German descent. Pennsylvania was too expensive and crowded. Land in this part of Virginia was still plentiful and cheap then. Sometimes Beatrice liked to imagine what Cumberland Creek would have looked like to the settlers—no buildings, no fences, no real roads, just paths leading horses and wagons around the mountains. She’d read that at one point in Virginia’s history, the trees were so large and dense that squirrels could travel from the mountains to the ocean without touching down on the ground.
    Imagine the mountains and forests pristine. So dense that the sun barely peeked through. So clean that you could inhale deeply and not get one whiff of another human.
    She grimaced. Now the settlers were a different kind. They were coming in droves and getting rid of trees to build their houses on top of one another. They were named Tiffany and Taylor and Reed and Britney. There were no new citizens in the mold of Johann Miller, Peter