For a few precious moments, Annaliese and Olivia were alone. They perched side by side, like two birds of the same species, on the bottom step of the servants’ staircase. Throckmorton and Ebenezer sat happily in their laps.
Before leaving the ballroom, Annaliese had ripped a square of paper off the crushed Starring Miss Chickadee Finch stage sign. On it she printed five words in large letters—FREE TO A FOREVER HOME—and mounted her handmade sign on top of the pile of phony sock monkeys.
Throckmorton was proud of Annaliese for doing so. Most everybody, he decided, deserved a second chance.
Olivia had asked Joe to go outside and warm up the car while she and Annaliese said good-bye. He willingly complied. Throckmorton was beginning to think that the flashy leader of the Bird Land Big Band had a crush on his soon-to-be-famous soloist.
“You don’t look like your photograph,” Annaliese said, the first one to speak.
“No, I don’t,” Olivia replied. “It was taken a long time ago.”
Olivia ran her fingers through her close-cropped hair. “Yes, I know. A bird.”
“Miss Chickadee Finch,” said Annaliese. “It’s a silly name. But I like it.”
“It’s all part of the act,” Olivia said, patting Annaliese’s knee. “It was Joe’s idea.” She smiled. “I tried Miss Scarlet Tanager and Miss Robin Redbreast, but they didn’t stick.”
“Mrs. Ellis Easterling, too,” Annaliese matter-of-factly reminded her.
“You must be very angry with me.”
Annaliese scrunched up her face and shoulders. “It’s hard to be mad at someone you’ve never known.”
Olivia’s face burned a deep shade of red. “I couldn’t come back, Annaliese. I didn’t know how.”
“But you’re here now.”
“Yes.” Olivia nodded. “Your great-grandmother helped me find a way.”
“Why did you leave?” Annaliese asked. “I don’t understand . . . no one would tell me.”
“Someday, when there’s time, I’ll tell you the whole story,” Olivia promised. “But here’s the short version: Ellis was traveling around Europe. We met in Hamburg, where I was singing in a café. I was young and foolish. We eloped.
“Then we moved here, to Eastcliff. I thought I loved him, and then I thought I didn’t—and I was afraid I never would. I needed some time to think.
“My brother, Karl, had come to the States looking for me. Your father didn’t believe that Karl was my brother. He got angry. He told me I was a bad mother and not to bother coming back.” Olivia clenched her fists. “I should have fought harder. I was a coward. I gave up.”
Here, she broke down and started to cry.
“I was so sad and so depressed and so . . . ashamed.”
Olivia could barely get the words out.
“I couldn’t forgive myself for what I’d done—to Ellis, to the boys, to you. The longer I stayed away, the harder it was to come back.”
Annaliese squeezed her mother’s hand. “But not anymore.”
“No. Not anymore.”
Annaliese leaned her head against Olivia’s shoulder. “I’ve already forgiven you, you know.”
“You have?”
“Just like Throckmorton did when I left him in the net,” Annaliese told her. “Forgiving is not always as hard as it seems.”
The loud, insistent honking of an automobile’s horn interrupted whatever Olivia might have wanted to say.
She plucked a folded piece of paper out of her handbag and pressed it into Annaliese’s palm. “This is my schedule—the dates, cities, and names of all the clubs where I’ll be performing over the next couple of months.”
“Wow.”
“Hang on to it,” Olivia told her. “Then you’ll always know where I am. And if you ever need to reach me, tell Miss Pine—she’ll know how to track me down.” She smiled sadly. “It looks to me like your nanny’s going to be around for a long time—if you get what I mean.”
“Miss Pine’s okay, but she’s not as good as a real mother.”
Olivia and Annaliese stood up. Olivia drew Annaliese into her arms. This time both Throckmorton and Ebenezer got crushed in their scrumptious hug.
“But Miss Pine is right about one thing, young lady,” Olivia said, wagging her finger. “You should be in bed.”
After Olivia, Ebenezer, and Joe drove away, Annaliese first returned to the ballroom, where she helped Judge Easterling and Miss Pine make arrangements to return the repaired sock monkeys to their keepers.
Only after that was accomplished did she and Throckmorton go back to bed.
Throckmorton would learn later that every single sock monkey went back to their rightful homes again. And all of the phony sock monkeys were adopted.
Neither Judge Easterling, nor any of his relatives, ever told Great-Grandmama what happened on the night of her ninetieth-birthday party. Humbled by the sight of their wounded sock monkeys, Ethel Constance Easterling’s descendants kept it a closely guarded family secret.
Spring came early to Eastcliff-by-the-Sea that year. Balmy March winds blew, the frozen sea cracked open, and purple crocuses pushed through melting snow.
In early April, Judge Easterling announced his intention to court Miss Pine in the old-fashioned way. Annaliese’s former nanny moved into the carriage house to help Great-Grandmama recuperate, and Annaliese enrolled in the local school.
Every day a picture postcard arrived, each one sent by Olivia from a different city on the East Coast. Annaliese pinned each postcard on a bulletin board next to her bed. Pinned between a postcard from Boston and another from Baltimore was the note that Olivia had written to Annaliese on hotel stationary. Throckmorton had heard Annaliese read it aloud so often that he had the eight words memorized:
I love you.
I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Throckmorton also found out that once, when Olivia was performing in a town nearby, she took a day off from her tour to visit Evan and Teddy at St. John’s Military Academy. At first, Evan had a hard time agreeing to give his mother a second chance, but Teddy readily forgave her.
Throckmorton, Captain Eugene, Sir Rudyard, and Miss Beatrice spent countless happy hours at the tiny lace-covered table in the corner of Annaliese’s room. As a result of many deep, philosophical, and insightful discussions, they agreed that sock monkeys and keepers alike heal at different times in different ways. And that a secret is safest when everyone knows it.
One day, the topic of the sock monkey massacre came up—a sore subject, to be sure. Boldly, Throckmorton asked the question that he’d been dying to ask: “Who did it?”
“No one knows,” said Sir Rudyard. “He, or she, was in disguise.”
“A black mask,” Captain Eugene said.
“Black wig,” Miss Beatrice recalled.
“Black floppy hat,” said Sir Rudyard. “Putrid breath and . . .”
All three sock monkeys chanted at the same time: “Hands. That. Smelled. Like. Fish.”
Hands that smelled like fish?
Bingo!
“Madge!” Throckmorton shouted.
“That lazy maid?” asked Captain Eugene, incredulous.
Yes, that lazy maid, who soon thereafter was arrested. Police found her with a pocketful of precious jewels that pirates had once stolen from a Spanish king. Not surprisingly, the authorities uncovered a substantial stash of objects pilfered from Eastcliff-by-the-Sea. Subsequently, the crown jewels were returned to Spain’s royal family, and the family’s heirlooms to the Easterling estate.
As far as Throckmorton was concerned, The Story of a Lazy Maid Named Madge ended happily ever after.
She was thrown in the slammer and never seen nor heard from again.
Hooray!