Evergreen Falls by Kimberley Freeman Read Free Book Online Page A

the cave from the coming rain dissolved, too. I accepted that I would have to trudge back up the path, but first I wanted to see how deep the cave was.
    The opening was small, and flanked by a slab of granite about chest height. I had to bend almost double to enter, but once inside I could stand up. The cave was about the size of my bathroom, although the ceiling was much lower. A strong, unpleasant smell of animal pervaded the dark and cold. I started to think about spiders, and then I couldn’t get out of there quickly enough.
    It was as I was coming out that I saw something that looked like a design etched into the back of the rock that half covered the opening. I peered at it closely, then realized I was looking at a love heart carved into the stone. The granite had been too hard for curved lines, though. The heart had sharp corners, and the lettering inside was also sharp, made of lightning bolts. But the letters were clear enough. SHB.
    I stared. My letter writer, SHB, had carved this. No, that wasn’t right—SHB’s secret lover had carved this. Who was she? I reached out with tentative fingers to touch the carving, feeling the past and present collide. Only when I touched it did I realize there was something else carved here, but I couldn’t see it in the dim light.
    I pulled out my phone and lit up the torch. The other carving wasn’t letters or love hearts. It was scribble. Violent scribble, not as deep as the letters but carved into the rock nonetheless. With force. Perhaps even with anger. My skin prickled.
    I flipped the phone around, turned on the flash, and took a photograph to send to Tomas. I searched the rest of the cave with the torch but did not find any more carvings. I stood for a long while gently running my fingers around the sharp-edged heart. The mystery deepened.

CHAPTER FOUR
    1926
    S omewhere, far away, up above the water, Violet could hear her name being called.
    Her eyes flicked open. Sunshine hit the water and refracted green and blue. She shot up and broke the surface. The late-autumn sun slanted through the willows and she-oaks. Ada stood beside the swimming hole, beckoning wildly.
    “Please, Violet. We’ll be late.”
    “We’ve ages.”
    “I’m going without you.”
    “Suit yourself.”
    Ada stomped off through the grass and Violet rolled onto her back to float. Ada had always been a wet blanket. It was one thing not to own a bathing suit, but quite another for her to raise her eyebrows at Violet’s, especially when she was so proud of it: black with an emerald belt and matching emerald bathing cap.
    “She’s right, you know,” Clive said from where he sat on a flat rock with his sketchbook open. Violet wondered if he was drawing her. “You will be late.”
    Violet and Ada worked together at the Senator Hotel in Sydney’s city center, where Violet’s shift started in an hour. Plenty oftime. “You all worry too much.” She rolled over and dived under again, her eyes closed, a curl loosed from her bathing cap tickling her cheek. Then up again, and this time she swam until she felt the stony ground beneath her feet. On the bank, the towel and dry clothes were waiting. The cold hit her hard. This might be her last swim until October, perhaps. Violet loved to swim, loved to disappear into the liquid-crystal water. It took more than a bit of cold to put her off.
    “Look at you,” she said to Clive, peering over his shoulder to see his picture: she was a little disappointed to see a willow taking shape on the page. “Man of leisure.”
    “It’s temporary. The new job starts in a few days.” He turned his face up to her and smiled. “You’ll come and see me, won’t you, Violet?”
    Violet knew that Clive was sweet on her. They had worked together the past two years at the hotel. “Maybe. It’s a terribly long way up to the mountains.” She pulled her dark hair free from the bathing cap and toweled it vigorously.
    “But the hotel is so grand. You’d love it. All the