The Caged Graves by Dianne K. Salerni Page A

Aunt Clara’s advice, she next cornered Beulah in the kitchen and persuaded her to return one of her own calling cards to the McClure house, along with a note stating she would be home to visitors that afternoon.
    Then she set about preparing her father’s neglected parlor for callers. Stealing a cornflower-blue sash from one of her old dresses, Verity tied back the curtains to let in the sunlight. She found two matching vases in the dining room china cabinet and filled them with boughs from a flowering tree across the road. She removed an ugly tarnished mirror from the wall and replaced it with her mother’s portrait. By the time the three women arrived to pay their social call, Verity was dressed, primped, and seated in an improved parlor, determined to make a better impression on the sisters than she had on the brother.
    All three of the McClure ladies were dark haired, blue eyed, and rosy cheeked. The younger two, Harriet and Caroline, were twenty and twenty-two, respectively, and the eldest, Anne, almost thirty. Within ten minutes of their arrival, they’d convinced Verity to call them by their pet names—Annie, Carrie, and Hattie. They inquired about her health, they asked about her family in Worcester, they wanted to know her favorite color and whether she preferred needlepoint or embroidery.
    But mostly they talked about Nate.
    They adored their younger brother and were eager to regale Verity with all his positive traits: he was hard working and loyal and earnest and kind. Verity had to smile and couldn’t help but warm toward their description of him. Oh, he had his faults, too. The sisters agreed that he could sometimes be
too
hard working—and probably too earnest—and kind to a fault. In fact, his virtues were his biggest faults. When Annie confessed that no one had ever been able to get Nate to eat carrots, as if this were the most terrible thing she could say about him, Verity laughed.
    At first Verity thought they were trying to repair yesterday’s disaster, but the more they talked, the more clear it became that they knew nothing about it; they thought Nate had left for Wilkes-Barre without meeting her. Verity felt relieved that he’d kept their ill-fated excursion to himself, another point in his favor. However, his sisters seemed to be the only ones to call him Nate instead of Nathaniel. This reinforced her conviction that their hands had guided all the letters he’d written, including the one in which he invited her to use that name.
    â€œHave you been busy since your arrival?” Carrie asked. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole town were trying to get a look at Ransloe Boone’s daughter! Whom have you met?”
    â€œI haven’t had many callers yet,” Verity admitted, carefully not mentioning Nate’s visit. “Today I spent the entire morning failing to mind the Thomas boys carefully enough and then helping to stitch one up.” She described her attempts to prevent her cousins from being trampled, run over, crushed, or maimed. “Luckily for me,” she said, “Piper’s telling everyone his injury came from fighting a deserter over General Washington’s payroll.”
    â€œOh, is he, now?” Carrie leaned forward, her eyes twinkling. “He hasn’t said where the payroll’s hidden, has he?”
    â€œCarrie!” Annie gasped, tapping her sister with her fan. “For shame!”
    â€œWell, if anyone knows, it’s those boys!”
    â€œI’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Verity.
    The sisters seemed caught between laughter and embarrassment.
    â€œIt’s the old story about the Battle of Wyoming and the lost treasure,” Hattie said. “Carrie, you silly thing! All the boys play that game; it doesn’t mean anything! Nate used to act it out when he was little. He made me play old Silas all the time, running through the swamp