A HALF-CENTURY-OLD FILM ABOUT EVERYDAY life in a one-stoplight North Carolina town wasn’t exactly the thriller we’d planned on for the evening’s entertainment. But after we’d polished off the pizza, Jack settled in next to me to view the section of the Crawford film I’d watched earlier. I didn’t want to prejudice him toward the theory I was developing, so I didn’t say anything by way of introduction.
Jack occasionally made comments about the clothes, hairstyles, or cars. When we came to the part featuring Olivia’s kin I simply said their names. I stopped it when their part was over.
“Tell me what you noticed,” I said.
Jack frowned. “Is this one of those tests to see how observant I am? Was there something freaky going on in the background that I missed ’cause I was looking at the people on camera?”
“No, nothing like that. I just want your impressions.”
“Okay,” Jack said, drawing the word out. “Well, for one thing I’m glad I’m living now instead of back then. I don’t care what people say about the good ol’ days. That looked pretty hardscrabble if you ask me.”
“What else? What about Olivia’s people?”
“Well, her uncle and aunt looked like salt-of-the-earth types. Her mother seemed self-conscious, a little out of place maybe. And I’d say her dad was one of those showboat guys who likes to be the center of attention and in charge. Is that what you mean?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. And tell me if I’m reading too much into this.” I told him what I’d observed of the exchange between Beth and Blaine by the front door at Olivia’s house. “Could it be that these women, grandmother and granddaughter, were each being abused? Psychologically, at least.”
Jack considered then shrugged. “Sure, it’s possible.”
His ready reply took me aback. I’d been expecting, hoping, that he’d tell me my theory was a stretch. “But surely Beth wouldn’t put up with that kind of thing, right?” I protested. “She’s an accomplished person. She earns her own living. It’s not like she’s trapped in a marriage out of financial want. And they have no children. Why would she stay and take that?”
“You know my sister, Kelly, right?” Jack said. “You wouldn’t think she’d stay, either, would you? But she did. And in her case it wasn’t just psychological. Kelly married young. Fell for a guy with a few rough edges she thought she’d be able to file down. She stayed with him for nearly four years, hiding bruises under makeup and wearing long sleeves. She didn’t tell anybody, not even me. She couldn’t bring herself to leave him until the night he pushed her out into oncoming traffic in front of a coffee shop because she put too much cream in his coffee. Hadn’t been for an alert driver, she’d have been killed. She packed her bags that night and finally developed a stone ear for all his promises about how it would never happen again.”
“That’s so awful. I can hardly believe it. Kelly’s such a strong person,” I said.
“Yeah, she is—now,” Jack agreed. “She met Mark a year later. It took him a long time to earn her trust but to his credit he hung in there and proved his mettle, and six years and two kids later he’s still proving it. Looking back on it Kelly herself can’t even understand why she stayed as long as she did. I think this is one of those things that looks a lot different from the outside than the inside.”
“Well, I may be wrong about Beth and Blaine, but I’m convinced Olivia’s mother, Renny, was controlled by her husband, maybe even physically abused. And in those days even when women got up the courage to speak out there was little in the way of help. Lots of times even cops would dismiss a complaint as a family matter and wouldn’t intervene. Maybe that’s why Renny wouldn’t leave Johnny. She’d defied her parents to marry him, given up everything of her old life, and she was probably too ashamed to admit she’d been so wrong about him.”
“Yeah, well, Beth and Blaine seemed like the perfect couple from all appearances, but like I say this thing looks different from the inside. I guess it wouldn’t do to just come out and ask her, would it? And anyhow, what difference does it make now?”
“None, I suppose. Except it could be motive. If Beth was being mistreated anyone who cared about her would want that to stop—one way or the other.”
“You got candidates?” Jack asked.
“No, not really,” I said, though my mind was already constructing a list of those who might be most outraged: Daniel, Tony, even Olivia, however unlikely a suspect she might be. I thought of all those petite women who—if legends were to be credited—could call upon mama-adrenaline to lift a car off a pinned child.
Thankfully, these unpleasant musings were interrupted by the sound of Esme and Denny laughing in the front hall. Denny came in, looking far better than he had when he’d left.
“How was the massage?” I asked.
Denny crooked his neck from side to side and shook his arms. “I can’t remember when I’ve felt this loose,” he said. “I was nearly able to forget the case for a while there.”
I looked over at Jack, then we both gave Denny a rueful smile.
“Sorry,” Jack said, “but I think maybe I’m about to put some of that tension back in.” He told him what he’d found and the two of them immediately set off for the greenhouse.
Esme stood at the window, a wistful look on her face as she watched Denny’s car back out of the driveway. “Ah, well, duty calls.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s early yet; let’s you and me read some more of Celestine’s diaries so we can get all the books back to Olivia before we leave for Wilmington. How far did you get?”
“Is Celestine still urging you onward?” I asked, avoiding the question.
“Oh, honey,” Esme said, flapping a hand. “She was even there while I was having my massage, and not happy I was trying to relax when there was work to do. Even that Tibetan new-age music they play couldn’t drown her out. Same message—It’s not right—over and over again.”
I told her the tidbits about the dog and the timing of Johnny Hargett’s draft notice. Then I told her my theory about Johnny and Renny’s relationship.
Esme considered. “I don’t doubt it,” she said. “Looking at the way he was with her in that movie set my teeth on edge. My husband was just like that, a peacock, full of charm and strut and pretty to look at. I was young and silly and beguiled by all that. Until we got married and I tried to turn him into a husband. He couldn’t catch on to the nuts and bolts of that job and the swagger lost its allure real quick. Nobody to blame but myself, though. Mama warned me not to marry a musician.”
Esme had married young and was still young when she became a widow. Her husband had been killed in a car crash on his way to a gig. After he died Esme took back her birth name and swore never to put her trust in a man again, until Denny came along and convinced her, with our help, to go to coffee with him.
“Yeah, well, here’s the other part,” I said. “I see some similarities between that relationship, Renny and Johnny I mean, and how Beth and Blaine acted that day at Olivia’s.” I told her about what I’d seen in the front hallway and how it paralleled what I’d seen in the Crawford movie.
“That’s a big leap based on one little interaction,” Esme said.
“I agree, but it might explain why Beth got so upset when we watched the Crawford movie that day. Remember? Olivia thought it was seeing a happy couple that undid her, but now I’m wondering if she saw her own pain reflected back. I sincerely hope I’m wrong. I know it’s complicated, but it’s hard for me to accept that Beth would stay in that kind of relationship.”
Esme stared off into space for a moment. “Complicated is one word for it,” she said. “I might have ended up in that same boat if Roland had lived longer. I don’t think he’d ever have hit me, considering I was a head taller than him and fifty pounds heavier. Plus he’d have been too worried about damaging his hands and not being able to play his sax again. But he tried his best to keep me in what he thought was my place and little by little I was letting him box me in.”
That shocked me, but I tried to keep it off my face. Esme was the last person in the world that I could ever imagine being subservient to anyone.
She shook her head as if to clear it, pulled a diary off the stack, and flipped it open to look at the date. “This one takes up the time frame when Johnny decamped,” she said. “I’ll start in on it and you finish the one you were reading.”
“Deal,” I said. “I’ll fix us a cup of tea.”
“Chai for me, please,” Esme said, settling on the end of the couch and kicking off the high heels she insists on wearing, as if six foot two weren’t altitude enough.
By the time I came back she’d stretched out with a blanket over her legs, taking up the entire sofa, and was deep into her reading.
I set her chai on the table and she murmured an absentminded thank-you. I went back to skimming the diary I’d been reading, sucking in the words like a baleen whale straining to find the bits of info that might be useful in constructing Olivia’s family tree.
We read in companionable silence, stopping occasionally to read aloud to one another. The more we read, the fonder we both were of Celestine. So I had to share her excitement when she first suspected Renny was pregnant with Olivia:
Renny is putting back on a little weight here lately. That’s a good thing because she had fell off to where I was worried she was going to waste away. I am awful glad but nervous, too, as I figure it means something more than her having an extra biscuit once in a while. I believe she is in a family way, which is thrilling and worrying at the same time. It tickles me to death to think we might have a little one around here, but I worry for Renny’s health and I worry even more for what kind of daddy Johnny will make if he does not grow up right quick like. I was hoping he’d surprise me and make a good husband to Renny, but that has not been the way things have gone. Oh, but putting all that on the side, a baby! That would be joy heaped on top of joy.
“I imagine that must have been hard for Celestine in some ways,” Esme said, her voice wistful. “She’d wanted children herself and it hadn’t happened for her.”
I heard the tremor in Esme’s voice. “Did you want children, Esme?” I asked.
“I did,” Esme said quietly. “Very much. But I was waiting for some sign that Roland was ready to be a father.”
“And then he died.”
Esme tilted her head. “I think I’d given up on babies long before Roland died. Then life just went on like it will and then it was too late.”
“Looks like the sign never came for Johnny Hargett, either. This is from a couple of months later, listen”:
I’ve never seen my Riley like this. He’s got a fire stoked up inside and it is good Johnny is off on one of his rambles as I fear what Riley might do to him if he could get his hands on him right now. Renny is already struggling to carry her swollen belly and has been sick to her stomach right much. She usually comes over and lets me rub her shoulders and make her a tonic, but she’d kept to her house for two days and I got worried and went over to look in on her this afternoon. Riley was just getting home from the post office and he stepped over there with me in case she had some little chore he might do for her. She had a black eye. She claimed a switch from the maple tree snapped back on her when she went to fetch firewood, but she was telling a story and she’s no good at fibbing.
Riley got real quiet then he made her tell him and she said it was her fault, that she’d said something she ought not have said and that Johnny had lashed out before he could stop himself. She cried and cried and said he didn’t mean to do it and he’d promised her solemn nothing like that would ever happen again.
I never had any high hopes for Johnny, but even I wouldn’t have thought such as this was in his nature. We are heartsick. Johnny was not raised to think he could do his wife like that. His daddy was a kind man, tender and respectful of their mother. Johnny Hargett knows this is not right.
“Well,” I said, “there we have it. And there’s your answer to what Celestine has been trying to tell you when she says it’s not right. I suppose there’s no way to gussy this up for Olivia.”
“No, I guess not,” Esme said. “On the other hand, maybe she’ll realize it was a good thing he ran off. These things generally go from bad to worse if they’re left to run their course. Renny was in danger, whether she knew it or not. Her parents were halfway around the world by then, so Riley and Celestine were all she had. Thank God for them.”
“Yeah,” I said, flipping through the diary and skimming. “I don’t see anything here about what happened between Riley and Johnny over this. There’s a long gap here, the longest I’ve seen. She didn’t write for a couple of weeks and then this”:
Johnny is gone. He has told everyone in the county he wouldn’t go and fight so no one was surprised he would run off. It is a terrible shame to bear, but folks don’t know the half of it and it’s best they never know it all. Renny is pitiful. I don’t know how to comfort the girl except to let her know she always has a home here with Riley and me. She’s still hoping Johnny will come back, but Riley and me know better. My heart is heavy but we will all have to pull together in the traces and make a good life for this baby.
“I must have the book that comes just after yours,” Esme said. “Celestine writes here that an elderly lady named Mrs. Yarborough saw Johnny boarding a train with a knapsack. Mrs. Yarborough was fond of Renny and let it be known that if she’d suspected the scoundrel was running out on Renny and his baby, she would’ve flogged him with her cane. She was also highly offended he’d gotten on the same train as young men in uniform. Celestine says Mrs. Yarborough’s eyesight was poor and she was easily confused, but that it was good Renny believed her, so she’d accept Johnny was gone for good and she could get on with making a new life for herself.”
My cell phone rang and almost simultaneously Esme’s started singing from her purse. Jack and Denny were both calling in with a report. Once Denny had seen the tarp he’d called out the crime techs. The preliminary test showed the substance on the tarp to be blood, but there were no details beyond that.
“They’re packing it up to take it to the lab,” Jack said. “This may still turn out to be nothing. Denny says it could just as easily be animal blood, but I don’t think he believes that. Plus, he called Beth and she confirmed they had a dun-colored tarp. I’ve gotta wait here to lock up so I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Esme and I clicked off our phones at almost precisely the same instant and compared notes. Jack had read Denny right. He fully expected the results would show the blood on the tarp belonged to Blaine. That didn’t prove that Blaine was killed at their home, but it certainly gave weight to the theory. And it raised a lot of questions, most centering around Beth.
“She’ll be okay,” Esme said, reading my mind.
“How do you always know what I’m thinking?”
“Just because I never birthed children doesn’t mean I don’t have a mother’s heart. I’d never try to replace your mom, but there’s no law says you can’t have two.”
“I think Mom would be happy about that,” I said.
“She is,” Esme said, with certainty.
“You’ve heard from my mother?”
“Calm down,” Esme said. “No messages, no unfinished business. But she’s a soul at peace and I’m certain she’s very proud and happy with the choices you’ve made in your life—so far anyway,” Esme said, tipping her head to give me the look over the top of her reading glasses.
I smiled, thinking of how much my mother would have loved Esme. Mom was always drawn to the unusual. “Okay, thanks for that, Mama Deux,” I said. “And the choice I’m making right now is to toddle up and get some sleep. You?”
“I’ll read on a little longer,” Esme said. “Now that I know what Celestine was trying to tell me, maybe I can find a way to give the poor woman some comfort.”
I put on my PJs and crawled into bed—and was instantly wide awake. My mind ping-ponged between conviction that Beth had been abused and thinking I’d gone off the deep end. By the time I drifted off I was certain I’d hyped this up in my own mind, influenced by what we’d learned about Beth’s grandmother. Beth and Blaine surely had their problems, and given Blaine’s wandering eye, he was no candidate for Husband of the Year. But a cad was one thing, an abuser quite another.
I finally drifted off into a hard sleep and dreamt of little feist dogs wearing children’s school shoes and soldiers throwing civilians from trains. And then Celestine was there in a flour sack dress, shaking me and telling me it wasn’t right again and again. I tried to slip from her grasp but she held firm. I woke to find Esme’s hands on my shoulders, her face inches from mine.
“That’s not what she meant,” she said, her voice raspy. “It was something else, something horrible. Wake up, Sophreena.”
I squinted against the light as Esme switched on my bedside lamp. She sat down on the edge of my bed as I pushed myself into a sitting position and tried to get my mind in gear.
“Oh, Sophreena, we have done it now,” Esme said, clucking her tongue. “I don’t know how we’re ever going to tell Olivia about this.”
“What?” I asked, wide awake now.
“I know what happened to Johnny Hargett,” Esme said. “Oh Lord, Sophreena, what a mess. I wish we’d never gone looking. Celestine wrote it all down in her last diary, on the very last pages. It’s like her dying declaration.” Esme opened the notebook she’d been clutching. “Listen to this”:
By the grace of God I have lived a long and mostly happy life. I was blessed with a good man to share my joys and trials. He was a good man, the best man I ever knew of and I want you to remember that, Olivia, if ever you read this. Riley and me made a promise long years ago we would never speak of this to another living soul, and we never did. But I am getting myself ready to cross over the river Jordan and this is weighing on me something terrible. I do not want to take it with me when I go. I know this might make you despise our names and remember us badly, Olivia, but I pray not as we did the best we knew how and always loved your mother and you with all we had in us.
If you have read my books I kept you will already know that Riley and me found out that your daddy was ill-treating your mama when she was carrying you. Riley spoke to him about it and he made a solemn vow it would never happen again and that he would straighten up and do right by the both of you. And things went along pretty good there for a little while, but then Johnny got a notice that he’d be under charges if he didn’t report for the draft and he went on a bender and everything fell apart. We heard terrible noises and hollering and Riley went running out to the little house to stop whatever was going on. He told me later if he hadn’t come he believed Johnny would have killed your mother. He was crazy out of his head.
I took care of your mother and Riley hauled Johnny off down to the river and out onto the train trestle where they used to go when they were boys. Riley wanted someplace where he could hold him and not have him run off, and where he could cool down some himself because he was so mad he didn’t trust himself. He started in talking to Johnny, trying to make him understand what he was doing was wrong, but Johnny was too full of whiskey and fear and hatefulness to listen. He told Riley that Renny was his wife and he could do with her whatever he pleased and it wasn’t nobody else’s business and that he’d teach Riley to butt in and then he hit Riley so hard in the stomach it doubled him over. They got into an awful fight and then Johnny tried to get past him, yelling about going back to the house to teach Renny to keep family matters to herself. Riley tackled him and they fought hard and that’s when it happened. Riley hit Johnny and he went right through the uprights and over the side of the trestle and fell to the river below. Riley heard a scream and a noise like something soft hitting something hard, sounds that stayed with him all his life. It was sounds he heard in nightmares and in his waking hours, too. Riley went as fast as he could down to the riverbank, but he couldn’t find any sign of Johnny. The water was high and the river flowed fast that time of year and it is filled with big rocks and all kinds of entanglements from the roots of trees and such. Riley walked the banks all that night and we did it together all day the next day, but we never found a sign of him. Riley knew Johnny was dead, as nobody could have survived that fall. But he needed to find him for all kinds of reasons that probably don’t make good sense all these years later. Riley couldn’t stand it that he didn’t have a Christian burial beside where their mama and daddy found their final resting place. Riley was destroyed. He blamed himself. He grieved for his brother and yet hated the thing his brother had become.
We had an awful dread the body would be found, and then were sick it wasn’t and Johnny was out there by himself to meet his maker without even a send-off with some love in it. He most likely got tangled up in roots or in some of the junk people used to dump into the river before there was landfills. We couldn’t bear to think about that, about Johnny being left in that cold dark river all alone.
Riley struggled about whether to report what happened to the sheriff. Not out of fear for his own self, but because of your mother. He asked me did I think Renny would take this all on herself and believe she caused it by telling. I said she surely would. Your mama was like that, especially in those days when she was so young and with her feelings so tender because of her condition. We decided we couldn’t let your mama know what had happened. We agreed we’d let her think Johnny had just gone off again, at least until after you were born and your mama was stronger.
Then the talk around town picked up about Johnny running off to avoid the army and it seemed like that would be a better thing than the truth of it so we didn’t dispute it. Renny had shame to bear, we all did. But she was saved from a terrible guilt that would have followed her all her life long that she was the cause of what happened. That helped me and Riley hold up under the burden of it. You can’t ever know what this did to your Uncle Riley. He was never the same after that and he paid for his part in it a thousand times over. I pray you won’t harden your heart against him, but if you do you have to give me my share, too. Him and me talked it over and decided the best way we could make it up was to watch over your mama and you and do all we could for you. And I want to think we did.
We loved your daddy, Olivia. We did. But it was like he had some kind of sickness and we couldn’t help him. We didn’t know about any syndrome-this and disorderthats back in those days.
I expect you’d like to know if your mama ever knew any of this. The answer is I just don’t know. She surely never heard one word from Riley or me, but she was a smart woman and there was times when I was pretty sure she suspected something like this. Maybe not that Johnny died, but that Riley had run him off or something like that. But after you came along she turned her face to you and never did dwell on bad things. She loved you with everything in her, and me and Riley loved the both of you. That’s one reason I’m leaving this behind. I think you’ve got the right to know it all and it can’t hurt any of us now. I am old and I am weary and I’ve carried this long enough so I will lay it down here on this page. I’m not brave enough to tell you while I live. I’ll leave it up to a wisdom greater than mine to lead you to read this or to keep it locked away in some dark corner or put it in a burning fire unread.
With my dearest love until we meet up yonder,
Aunt Celestine
“Holy crap,” I breathed.
“Uh-huh,” Esme said, closing the book with a snap.