23

1999

THE FULL MOON seemed to follow Winna down the mountain as she drove her trusty old Lincoln Town Car on the winding road back to Grand Junction. Walt had purchased the car in 1993. She had driven it a hundred and two thousand miles, and still made it all the way from New Castle to Grand Junction. She had always wanted to make that trip—a vagabond, free as a bird, traveling across the country with her camera—even though she ended up being on assignment for American Roads, she felt the freedom she had longed for. It was fun being a photojournalist for a change.

At a sharp curve on a steep decline, she shifted into second to slow her speed. Thinking happily about her evening with Emily and Hugh, she felt certain that her daughter had made a good marriage and was happy with her husband and child. There were no other cars on the mountain road. Winna kept her headlights on high-beam. In the moonlight, nothing in the landscape looked familiar, but her headlights flashed on a mailbox with “J. L. HODELL” neatly painted in white letters. For an instant, she thought of stopping, but the house was dark. It didn’t look like John was home.

John Hodell had been on her mind since she last saw him. She had invited him to dinner, offering to cook the trout he’d caught on a weekend fishing trip. As he watched her pan-sear the fish, she felt something happen between them. She couldn’t exactly name it, but his eyes were lit with pleasure and she felt the happiness of a young girl enjoying attention that was also affection. The feeling lingered with her long after he had left and was with her still as she drove down the mountain.

That ease and contentment kept them at the table late into the night. For the first time, he talked about his life after the war—about the gambling that led to financial ruin, about Jim Cross coming to the rescue, helping him see that he had to get help. He told her about his long climb back to what he called “sanity.” Once John was “clean,” Jim had become his business partner. John talked about Jim’s loyalty. How his faith in him had changed his life. Winna had not asked and there was no mention of his taking money from the business to pay gambling debts. They had embraced tenderly when they said good night and had kissed.

Driving downhill, she applied her brakes on a curve and admonished herself to slow down. A fitting image, she thought, of my life as Johnny’s girl. Back then, before women’s lib, she was both young and clueless. A thrilling thing—Johnny’s love—but clearly a downhill ride for me. “What a mess we made, John,” she said aloud as her tires whined around another curve.

After their trout dinner, he had called the next morning to discuss the possibility of replacing the furnace. Before he said goodbye, he asked her to dinner at his house. She had accepted.

Winna turned into a residential neighborhood at the base of the foothills. I’m not going to be a fool about John. I’m too old to be a fool. Don’t kid yourself, Winna. Resolutions and promises to herself accompanied Winna the rest of the way home.

AS WINNA PULLED into the driveway at the house on Seventh Street, she noticed the attic light was lit. Had it been burning since she searched the trunk? In her excitement, she must have forgotten to turn it off. She parked in front of the garage and entered through the kitchen door. It was not terribly late, but Winna was tired and climbed the stairs to the second floor, stopping to flip off the light at the bottom of the attic stairs.

She readied herself for bed and pulled the chain on the bedside table lamp, plunging herself into darkness—the perfect setting to discharge the accumulation of the day. Juliana, Edwin, Dolph, and baby Henry materialized in her mind until the memory of John’s kiss chased them away. Turning on her side, she snuggled into her pillows remembering how John had made love to her when she was sixteen.

She closed her eyes as the words of her childhood prayer came to mind for the first time in fifty years. “Now I lay me down to sleep….” Look at what an old house full of memories does to you, she thought as tears wet her pillow.

The bewildering sound of carefully placed footsteps on the attic stairs stopped her tears. Terrified, she lifted her head as the attic door opened with a click. Winna held her breath as the dark figure of a tall man crept past her open door. She froze as his footsteps quietly descended the back stairs. She was not dreaming. He was in the kitchen. She heard the sound of the kitchen door open and quickly got to her feet. Racing across the hall to the old nursery’s window, she saw the intruder run down the driveway, turn on Chipeta Avenue, and disappear into the night.

STILL SHAKEN FROM the events of the night before, Winna poured her first cup of coffee, stirring in both sugar and cream. She remembered that until Walt had left her for another woman, she had always taken her coffee black. Was that the way she hoped to sweeten her bitter cup?

She sat down in the library to mull over last night’s visit from the police. She had been terrified and, for the first time in her life, dialed 911. From window to window, she ran in the dark, making sure he was gone. She thought of the doors and hurried to check every one—all but the kitchen door were locked. Within minutes of her call, the police had arrived at the front door. Scared to be alone in the house for another minute, Winna had to restrain herself from rushing into their arms.

She couldn’t remember their names—only that one was young, blond, freckle-faced, and about to burst out of his uniform and the other tall, dark, and handsome. She had taken them upstairs to the attic where they did their best to look around in all the clutter.

“Is anything missing?” the blond one asked as he cast his eyes over the tangle of dark objects jutting from the attic floor.

“I have no idea. Look at this mess,” she said, throwing her arms wide.

“Who has keys to the house?” the other officer asked as he shined a long flashlight into the dark corners of the attic. “You should change the locks.”

“The kitchen door wasn’t locked,” Winna said. “We’ve never locked the kitchen door—not in over eighty years.”

He gave her a sheepish grin, then shook his head and said, “I’ll bet you’ll lock it now.”

He flashed his light to the floor. “Nice and dusty. Come look at these footprints.”

Winna doubted their value. “They might be mine. I can’t count how many times I’ve been back and forth across this floor.”

The blond officer got down to his haunches for a look. “These tracks are pretty confused and if he picked up dust on his shoes and made a track in the hall, we probably destroyed it on our way in.”

After the attic, she had shown them her room and described how she lay in bed holding her breath, hoping the intruder would think she was asleep and wouldn’t have to come in and kill her.

They dusted for fingerprints around the attic door, then checked the front door and the door to the side porch to make sure they were locked.

“Ok, Mrs. Jessup, we’re through here. Before we leave, though, I want to see the key to the kitchen door,” the dark-haired one said.

Feeling like a foolish child, Winna disappeared into the library to look for the key. The officers waited for her in the reception hall while she rummaged through some drawers and finally found it. The moment she appeared in the hall, the older officer held out his hand, palm open, and she placed the key there.

He looked at it and smiled. “Get the lock changed and keep your door locked. This is the oldest key I’ve seen in a long time.”

“We’ll write this up, but don’t expect much in the way of an investigation—especially since nothing is missing. House break-ins are very common and hard to solve unless you catch the burglar in the act, or if stolen goods resurface somewhere later. Now lock yourself in and don’t answer the door again tonight.”

“THEY MUST HAVE thought I was an idiot,” she said to herself on her way to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. Wondering who on earth had been in her attic last night, she comforted herself with the thought that she’d have new locks on the doors by the end of the day.

Putting the terrors of the night before out of mind, she reached for the last of Adolph Whitaker’s letters. Winna had already read a few. The earlier letters were written while Adolph was a student at Brown University. He wrote to Juliana during her senior year in high school and the two years she attended college in Denver. Had Dolph written only twenty-eight letters in a span of five years? It seemed likely that Juliana had only saved her favorites.

He described his classes—mostly classics and English literature—wrote his thoughts, and little poems.

If college bred

Means a four-year loaf,

O tell me where the flour is found,

By one who needs the dough.

Winna wondered if his literary skills included something that corny or if it was a popular saying with the college crowd at that time.

Dolph seemed to thrive in his studies. His career at Brown went smoothly except for bouts of homesickness and his interminable yearning for Juliana. Autumn letters spoke of the pain of separation. He used metaphors for their separation like “cruel abandonment of summer,” his heart “fleeing the cold winds of autumn.” The bereavement of a tree as it sheds its leaves, “its very life force.” Late winter and spring letters welled with “ardent longing” and the “soon to be fulfilled promise of new life,” of his “swift flight to Colorado,” and the “joy awaiting him in her embrace.”

In Grand Junction every summer, Dolph’s “dear selfless mother” labored as a cleaning woman while he worked his old job at the grocery. He recalled his days off when he and Juliana blissfully strolled in local parks, fished by the river, or picnicked at Whitman Park. He wrote his memories: picking peaches with Juliana at harvest time and taking a horse-drawn wagon into the country to visit friends. Yet August always came and when Dolph boarded the eastbound train, they were torn apart. “Our every parting is a little death,” he wrote.

During his senior year at Brown, something new came into his life.

Dearest Juliana,

Content is the man whose happy labors are rewarded. Just loving you has made me the happiest man in the world, my dearest. I do not deserve the great good luck that has befallen me now. Today I received a letter from Mrs. William Ailesbury of Ailesbury Court in Newport.

Newport is a seaside haven for the very rich and powerful who live in palaces on Narragansett Bay, not so far south of Providence. Every summer, captains of industry and their families and friends come for the salubrious ocean breezes. They refer to their mansions beside the sea as summer cottages. I find that quite laughable.

I shall not keep you in suspense another moment, my sweet. How I wish you were here to share my joy! I am told that Mrs. A. is one of Newport’s finest, most illustrious hostesses, famous for her patronage of the arts and her divertissements. Put these two fine attributes of womanhood together and you have a monumental piece of good luck for artists. This paragon of good taste and intellectual curiosity finds great joy in introducing her favorite artists and entertaining her wealthy friends, both of whom she, no doubt, seeks to impress.

She has invited me to read at her first-of-the-season soiree, luckily in early June. I won’t miss more than a week of the summer with you.

Be happy for me, my darling. I am beside myself with trepidation and joy. My distinguished hostess has commissioned me to write an ode to the roses of summer. An interesting choice, for her name is Rose. It shall be the first lucre I have earned as a writer. Now I must add generosity to the list of her many virtues.

Do not be heartbroken if you receive few letters in the weeks to come. With Mrs. A’s commission and my final studies, I will hardly have time to sleep.

Everything I do, my darling, is for you—that I may soon afford to marry. I remain your faithful kindred spirit,

Dolph

P.S. Mrs. A. says she first read my work in the chapbook of poems Brown printed last year. How that poor little thing fell into her hands, I do not know.

After he graduated from college, Dolph took a job as an English teacher at Moses Brown, a private school in Providence. Before his early summer appearances at Ailesbury Court, he had appeared at several other mansions in Newport. Obviously, Dolph was in demand. His letters reassured Juliana that they would be married the following year, but that that summer he could not afford the time it would take to go home.

His next letter came a mere week later. Winna was most interested in the following paragraphs.

You cannot be more disappointed than I am, Juliana. I would be there by your side this summer if I could. I am trying to make my way in the world and your sudden proclamation that you no longer believe that I will be able to support you has left me astounded, not to mention heartbroken.

You promised to wait for me. We both knew it would not be easy. We both promised that our letters would sustain us.

In the following letter, Dolph seemed somewhat relieved by Juliana’s reply.

A misunderstanding is something I never want to have with you, my darling. As you wisely said, I am sensitive, maybe overly so, about the differences in our background—at least where wealth is concerned. You deserve to have a happy life. I cannot give up writing, but I can give up teaching for something more lucrative and I will seriously think about how to proceed to that end.

A letter written the winter of 1915 was the last one she saved.

Dearest Juliana,

My guilty hand takes pen in hand at last. I am sorry for not writing, my dearest. You cannot imagine the demands of my schedule. I have not heard from you in an age. Are you ill?

I know my absence from Grand Junction last summer disappointed you terribly. By fall, your letters were scarce and unforgiving. I have apologized repeatedly in my heart, if not enough to you. At this late date, I do not know what to say to reassure you. I know I have not written very often. Are you unable to forgive me, or have you met someone else?

Both lack of forgiveness and faithlessness are disastrous vices in a woman, Juliana.

In your last letter, you speak of nothing but your father’s business affairs, Daisy’s latest slight, the stories you plan to write, and the gifts you received for your birthday. You show no interest in my welfare and ask no questions about my work. You say nothing of our love. It might as well have been a letter to a brother.

Are you punishing me? If so, I am all but mortally wounded by your silence, your cold refusal to speak of our love.

Rose has generously introduced me to a representative at Alfred A. Knopf, a just established New York publisher who is interested in my novel. For you alone, Juliana, I informed her that I cannot stay on for the season this year and must return to my fiancée in July. We have a wedding to plan.

My hope is that you will return to Providence with me in August, just as we have always promised. You will love the world I inhabit here—a world of wealth, beauty, and high art. A world where you belong. Rose has arranged several appearances for me in both New York and Newport in April and May.

In truth, all I look forward to is being with you, Juliana. Please write and salve my wounds. Don’t be cruel, my own dear kindred spirit.

Dolph

How had Juliana interpreted this last letter? In Winna’s mind, Dolph seemed full of ambition for both art and love. The letter seemed to reveal a decline in their bond and she found herself sympathizing with Dolph. Those were vastly different times. She reread the paragraph beginning with “Rose.” It was the first letter where he had called her by her given name. Was there a romantic involvement with Mrs. A., his Rose? How had Juliana responded to this? Without Juliana’s letters, her view was incomplete, but one fact was plain.

The rhythm of Dolph’s visits to Grand Junction saw him arriving in early to mid-summer and returning to Providence in late August. Winna decided she would scan the library’s microfilm for editions printed in August 1915-1917 to see if they mentioned the death of a man on an eastbound train.

Before she left the house for the library, she called John to tell him about the light in the attic and what had happened the night before.

After listening quietly to the whole story, John said, “I don’t like this. I’m concerned about you being alone in that house. Have you told Emily and Hugh?”

“No. That’s why I’m telling you. I didn’t want to worry them or Chloe. But I guess someone should know.”

“You thought I wouldn’t worry?”

“Well—”

“Have you called the police?”

“Yes, last night,” she said, feeling as if he was grilling her. “I guess I thought you might have some kind of level-headed idea. Like who the hell was in my attic at ten-thirty last night, or what I should do now?”

“You might start by locking your kitchen door,” he said without a trace of humor in his voice. “Do you think that by locking the front and side doors you’ve fooled someone bent on getting in?”

“We’ve never locked the kitchen door,” she said, sounding lame even to herself.

“Thank God you didn’t try to be a hero and approach him. You could be dead this morning.”