LEGEND Read online

  Later, there was a tiny notice that Mrs. Jordan and her widowed daughter-in-law had moved to Denver, and eight and a half months after that was a notice that Mrs. Jordan had given birth to a nine-pound baby boy, who was named Cole Tarik Jordan.

  Kady went through three years of curled-up microfilmed newspapers until she found a mention of a kidnap attempt on Mrs. Ruth Jordan’s young son. The reporter, who was obviously on the side of the residents of Legend, almost brushed aside the nearly successful kidnaping as though it were justified after what Ruth had done to the people of Legend. Kady’s stomach turned as the reporter went on and on about how Ruth had had the mines blown up and how she’d thrown people out of their house into the storms (it had been summer, but that didn’t seem to matter to him). He went on to hint that Ruth had somehow brought on the attack of cholera that killed so many people who had once lived in Legend.

  Days went by while Kady searched the archives, but she could find nothing else about the Jordan family. Then in 1897, she found the article that Ruth had shown her, the one that said that a Mr. Smith had been found murdered in his home in Denver and he’d willed his entire estate to be used to build orphanages. This was the man Ruth thought Cole had killed while Kady had cooked.

  In the next year, 1898, Kady found Ruth Jordan’s obituary. It said that she was survived by one son, C. T. Jordan of New York City, but unfortunately, urgent business had prevented Mr. Jordan from attending the funeral.

  When she read that, Kady had to look away as tears came to her eyes. It didn’t look as though Ruth had had enough time to reconcile with her son before she died.

  Kady read on to find that the funeral had been “sparsely attended” and there had been some unpleasantness that had to do with something that had happened long ago.

  After Ruth’s obituary, Kady found only bits about the Jordan family. The Jordan mansion was sold through lawyers, then torn down in 1926.

  She searched the old New York directories but could find nothing on C. T. Jordan or Cole Jordan, leaving Kady to wonder what had happened to Ruth’s son who had been so full of anger.

  After the newspapers, Kady began to search the books, and there she found what she didn’t want to see. A book on ghost towns had a chapter titled, “A Town Destroyed by Hatred,” which was a highly dramatized account of Ruth’s closing of Legend. When Kady turned the page, she gasped aloud as she saw a line drawing of an emaciated, wirehaired old shrew laughing in glee as the children of Legend died of cholera. “You took away my family, now I’ll take yours” was the caption.

  Never in her life had Kady wanted to destroy a book, but she wanted to destroy that one with its lies and poison. She closed the book with such a sharp thud that the man across from her frowned.

  Now, sitting in her apartment, the sun about to rise, Kady felt at a loss as to what she should do next. As far as she could tell, her adventure in Legend was over. What she should do now is go to bed, sleep for a few hours; then tomorrow she would mail her nearly forgotten résumés and try to start a new life.

  But Kady couldn’t seem to work up the energy to walk into the bedroom, so instead, she pushed half a dozen pages of notes off the sofa and stretched out on it. She was asleep instantly.

  And the minute she closed her eyes, she began to have the dream. At first everything was the same. The veiled man was holding out his hand to her, and Kady was trying to reach it, but this time something was different. This time she seemed to be moving away from him, and she could tell by the expression in his eyes that he was angry with her.

  “Now,” he said, and for the first time Kady heard his voice. It was deep, with a strange quality to it, as though the bottom of it were filled with dried leaves.

  “You must come now,” he said. His voice seemed to be a command, but at the same time it was a plea. “If you do not come now, I cannot return.”

  With those words he disappeared in a flash, and Kady was left alone in a dry, sandy place that was eerily empty. “Where are you?” she called and began to turn around, looking for him, looking for some clue as to where to go. “How can I go to you if I don’t know where you are?” She was shouting and frantically turning about, looking for anything that would tell her where she was.

  She awoke with a start, and her face was lying in a wet place on the couch; she had been crying in her sleep. For a moment she didn’t remember the dream, but then it came back to her with all its frustration. Where was she to go? How was she to go when she had so little money? She needed to get a job, needed to get on with real life.

  On impulse she went to the wall that had once opened and made an entrance into Legend. Now it was just a wall. “Damn all of you!” she said, turning and leaning against it. “You want me to do something, but you give me no help.”

  It was at that moment that she heard Ruth Jordan’s voice inside her head. “I will give you six weeks. If you haven’t contacted my son’s descendants by then, it will be clear that you’re not going to.”

  Six weeks? Kady thought, then leaped toward the couch to find her date book and tore through the pages. Her heart was pounding so hard she could hardly think. How much time did she have left? Even if she had all the time in the world, how was she going to find Ruth’s descendants? What were their names? Where did they live?

  “Three days,” she said aloud, looking at the calendar. “I have three days left.” But where? she thought, her eyes roaming the room as though she might see something written on the wall.

  Kady looked up at the ceiling. “Damn you, Ruth Jordan! Help me! Where do I look?”

  The words were hardly out of her mouth when she again seemed to hear Ruth’s voice and what she’d said that night on the porch. “He’s in New York trying to make a life for himself. He wants no help from me, actually, he wants no contact from me.”

  “New York,” Kady said, then ran to the bedroom to pack a bag. A train could have her in the city in three hours.

  Twenty minutes later she opened the door to her apartment, overnight case in hand, and ran smack into Gregory.

  “Oh, Kady, my darling,” he said, trying his best to pull her into his arms. “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you. I forgive you for everything, and I ask that you forgive me, and I hope we can—”

  “Would you please move? I have a train to New York to catch.”

  “Train? You can’t think of leaving me. If you do, I’ll—”

  She could tell she wasn’t going to get away from him easily. “If I leave you, you’ll have even fewer customers than you’ve had this last week,” she said with satisfaction. Kady was disgusted by her own vanity, but each night she’d made sure she walked near enough to Onions to see that the street was no longer filled with customers. Hardly minutes after she walked out, some dear food critic had published the word that Kady’s Place was now just a steak house. He’d even speculated on where Kady was going to be cooking next, which could only help her find a job.

  “All right,” Gregory said with disgust, pulling away from her but completely blocking her way to the stairs. “You win. What do you want? Ten percent of the action?”

  “If you’re asking me if I want ten percent of Norman House Restaurants, the answer is no. Now, would you please get out of my way so I can leave?”

  “Fifteen percent, and that’s my final offer.”

  “Good! I refuse, so now you can move.” She tried pushing him aside, but he wouldn’t budge.

  “What is it that you want of me?” he asked, making it sound as though she were a demanding shrew.

  Kady set her suitcase down and looked him in the eye. “I don’t want anything from you. Nothing whatever. To tell you the truth, I never want to see you again.”

  “Just because we had a lovers’ quarrel is no reason to—”

  “Aaaargh,” Kady growled, then gave him a good kick in the shins that made him move to one side of the stairs, and grabbing her case, she ran down them. She was on the Metro and heading toward Union Station before he could cat