"A widow on a rock?" Mulder asked, leaning forward, immediately intrigued.
"The widow," Flora corrected him, smiling at a group of people who had just entered. "Welcome. Sit wherever you like. Oh, hey Danielle. Be right there." She looked at Mulder and smiled. "Hang on, I'll be right back."
She patted his arm and walked away, saying hello to the group again. Mulder looked at Scully and she stared back with a sigh.
"A widow, Scully," he said, grinning as he picked up his spoon. "You know this is gonna be a good story."
"Just because it's a widow, it doesn't guarantee something odd is in the works. My mother is a widow. Does that mean she possesses some mystical abilities or has a backstory worthy of a diner being named after her marital status?" She raised her eyebrows and filled her spoon with soup.
"Well," he said, tapping his spoon against the cup before sticking it into his soup. "If she walked the streets calling for your father, in her nightgown, or if she turned to a life of potion making after he died, then yes."
"That's quite a leap from widow to witch," she said with a short laugh.
"Well, in a lot of folklore a witch is a widow, or a spinster."
"Or a woman who was simply smarter than a man and their fragile egos couldn't handle it."
"Also true," he said, taking a bite and humming at the delicious flavor. "You know, you'd probably-"
"Think hard before you finish that sentence," she said, narrowing her eyes as she took another bite.
"I'd petition on your behalf," he said, grinning with a wink. "Insisting that you were actually quite learned in many areas and should be heard."
"And then we'd both be burned at the stake."
"Where one goes…" he said and she smiled as she shook her head, opening the packet of crackers that came with her soup, and dipping a piece in.
"Not sure that would solve the problem," she said, eating her cracker.
"But then we'd be free to haunt those who had wronged us. Sneaking up and giving them a fright. Wailing in misery, but secretly laughing about it later."
"Seriously?" she asked.
"Of course," he said, taking a bite and swallowing it quickly. "I like to think we'd still check in at the end of the day, despite being corporeal beings. See how the other fared with their ghostly activities and what needs to be accomplished the next day. Together or separate."
"You really think you'd do that? Give up a peaceful afterlife to haunt people?" she asked with a half smile.
"If it meant righting a wrong, getting vengeance against those who treated you badly, without hesitation," he said, taking a drink of tea and nodding. "Because fuck those people."
She laughed heartily and shook her head, dipping another cracker into her soup and chewing it
"I could understand if you would have some misgivings, what with the prospect of heaven and all. Pearly gates, streets of gold…" He made a weighing motion with his hands and she laughed again.
"If it meant even one condescending man was roused from his sleep or tormented throughout the day, I could see the appeal." She smiled and he smiled back as he nodded, taking another bite of his soup.
"Sorry," Flora said, walking up to the table, holding what looked like a pamphlet in her hand. "I thought we had some by the register, but it was empty. Had to go to the back to get this for you."
She set it down in front of him and it was indeed a pamphlet with a picture of the rock they had discussed. There was also a faint drawing of a woman wearing a long dark dress, her golden hair loose and nearly to her waist. The words The Widow of Edge Rock were written in a gothic font. His eyes lit up as he quickly wiped his hands on a napkin and picked it up.
"This is something I made up. Oh, not made up as in not true, but created to tell others about the widow, especially as it pertains to the diner's name. It has all the basics of what you need to know," Flora said, pointing at the pamphlet. "It's starting to get busy here, everyone looking for a bite, but if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask." She smiled at them and nodded as she walked away.
"Here we go," Scully said, rolling her eyes and sighing with a small smile. He grinned as he opened the pamphlet and began to read it aloud.
"In 1796, Sarah Merchant, the only daughter of the town's doctor, married Obadiah Blackwell, the oldest son of the town's general store owner. Though the marriage was prearranged and the two shared a substantial age gap, his thirty eight to her twenty one, they cared for one another very much. Sarah was grounded in her beliefs and Obadiah was a bit of a dreamer. Together, they found balance and highlighted the best qualities of one another."
"That's nice," Scully said and he looked up at her. "Knowing that their pre-arranged marriage was not looked upon as bad. Some people never find that feeling."
"True," he said, with a nod as he continued reading. "In 1800, four years after they were married, Obadiah became very ill. Sarah's father was called upon, medicines given, but nothing was helping. Obadiah began to slip away from this world. When all hope felt lost, Sarah remembered a medical book of her fathers she had read when she was younger. Finding it again, she asked her father to consider the treatment plan mentioned. He did not agree, insisting she had no idea what she was talking about, and that Obadiah would not live much longer."
"Jesus," Scully said, pushing her now empty cup of soup aside.
"Yeah," Mulder breathed and kept reading. "Receiving no assistance from her father, Sarah attempted to treat Obadiah on her own, creating tonics and elixirs. When her father found out, he forbade her from seeing Obadiah, believing she was poisoning him. When Obadiah died, Sarah was not by his side, though people who had been there said he asked for her until his very last breath." He looked up at Scully and she stared at him as she shook her head.
"How incredibly sad," she whispered and he nodded.
"After the passing of Obadiah, Sarah began to withdraw from society. She no longer spoke to her family and mostly stayed at the little house on the edge of town where she and Obadiah had lived. People saw her walking in her black dresses, near the town bridge staring down at the water, or standing on the edge of what would later become known as Widow's Rock."
"Why would she have chosen that location?" Scully asked and Mulder looked at her, blinking in surprise to find that they were still in the diner, his mind at the rock and the bridge, believing he could see Sarah there, her expression mournful.
"Uh…" He turned the pamphlet over and nodded as he continued. "People had been known to picnic on that rock, spending the day in the surrounding hills, but after seeing Sarah there so often, it was avoided. At the bridge, and eventually at people's homes, packages began to appear. Jars of elixirs, powders wrapped in brown paper, poultices in small containers. While it could never be confirmed for sure that it was Sarah, the townspeople had their suspicions. They believed that… oh, Scully. This… this is…" His eyes bulged and he pointed to the pamphlet. "They believed that Sarah was leaving medicines she had created for those she somehow knew were sick or suffering. She left them on routes she knew would be travelled on or where people lived, possibly to make up for the fact that she could not do anything to help Obadiah when he had needed her most."
He looked at Scully and held her gaze.
"She was trying to help people, Scully. To cure them."
"Mulder…" she began, shaking her head and closing her eyes, but he cut her off.
"What if… what if it's not a malicious spirit, entity, feeling, whatever you want to call it, but a healing one? Something strong and powerful and it feels bad because we don't know what else to call it?"
"Mulder," she said, opening her eyes and sighing heavily. "You are making wild assumptions based on a story you didn't even know about two minutes ago."
"Peter was dying and now he's not," he said matter-of-factly. "You said yourself that you didn't know why that would be." She put a hand up as she stared at him with a hard expression.
"I can't explain it, no. But I also will not state that it happened because of the spirit of a woman who has been dead for over two hundred years. Mulder…" She scoffed and he opened his mouth to respond when Flora arrived with their food, halting their conversation.
"Here we are," she said, setting down their plates, napkins, and extra silverware. "I'll take those other plates from you and come back to refill your drinks. Will you be needing anything else at the moment?" She smiled at them and Mulder nodded, holding up the pamphlet.
"Yeah. I need to know much more than this pamphlet has to tell about Sarah Blackwell."
Flora nodded with a huge grin as Scully shook her head and reached for a napkin. Placing it into her lap, she stared at Mulder and sighed.