| |
May 1940
RUPERT HASTINGS HAD had enough. His wife, Lindsey, was so moonstruck over that new daughter of hers, she didn’t have any time for Rupert anymore. Rupert couldn’t stand the kid. It did nothing but squeal and cry and drool. A couple of times Lindsey had handed the kid to him, and the kid just cried.
Naturally, Rupert always handed it right back. Pretty soon, his wife didn’t even try to get him to spend any time with it.
Rupert had been pacing the floor for the past hour. It was way past bedtime, for heaven’s sake. He had rights as a husband, but she was stuck with the kid because of colic or some such nonsense. A man had needs. What was he supposed to do?
He stormed out the door and headed up toward the cliffs.
Two blocks from the top, he overtook Matilda Martin. He slowed to match her pace. "What are you doing out by yourself at this time of night?"
"I couldn’t sleep, so I left Leon watching Cornelius and came out to take a walk. I do that sometimes. Walking seems to help."
Rupert could think of something else that would help, and it sure wasn’t walking.
"You know where that bench is?" She pointed. "The one at the corner of Fifth Street?"
He nodded. There was just enough moonlight that he could see her finger stretched toward the top of the hill.
"I sit there sometimes and just think."
"Think?" Thinking sounded like a waste of time to Rupert.
"Especially when the night’s so warm and lovely."
"Warm." Rupert echoed her words. "Lovely."
"Yes. Don’t you love a night like this when summer comes so early?"
Rupert could think of only one thing he’d love right about now, and it had nothing to do with the time of day or the weather. He put his arm around Matilda Martin’s waist and drew her off the path.
At first, she acted like she didn’t know what he was up to. He knew it was just an act, though. He knew she’d been asking for this all along, what with all her talk about how warm it was. Leon Martin, that lily-livered husband of hers, couldn’t possibly keep a woman like this satisfied.
Even when she tried to scream—he stopped that pretty quick with a heavy hand on her mouth—he knew she didn’t mean it. She was just trying to get him more excited, and it sure was working just fine.
"You’re not going to tell anybody," he managed to say afterwards. "What’ll they think of you, traipsing around in the middle of the night like this, just asking to get laid?"
Nine months later, when the Martins had a second son and named him Hubbard, Rupert Hastings was too drunk to count back. Leon Martin was delighted to have another boy, and he handed out cigars at the meeting of the town council.
Matilda Martin never again took late night walks.
~ ~ ~
"YOU MIGHT WANT TO LISTEN to this next paragraph," Ida said. "It fits in with what we’ve been talking about."
Charlotte Ellis stopped me on the street a fortnight ago and in her increasingly distracted manner told me she knew the father of my son. Her brother Sayrle, she said. I was glad there was no one near enough to hear her. I was so relieved to hear her totally false accusation, though, I am afraid I laughed in her face. She was taken aback, but something in my laughter must have gotten through to her in a way that a mere denial on my part never would have, for she has said no more to that effect, at least not to me, and I hope to no one else.
"The American Revolution is starting," Pat said, "and Mary Frances is concerned about Charlotte’s rantings?"
"Because it was of more immediate concern to her." Maddy was quick once again to defend Mary Frances. "And remember, they still probably didn’t hear a whole lot about the revolution here in this dead end valley."
I wish now more than ever that Miss Julia were still here. I miss her so, for she was the only one I could speak with about Hubbard. I am fair certain Louetta knows the truth, but we have never discussed the matter. Meanwhile, my granddaughter Marella is like to run her father and me ragged. I am puzzled as to why the child is so unlike her parents, other than her visage. I can see the faces of both her mother and her father in her countenance. John was ever a thoughtful, sweet child, and his wife was a dear from the moment she was born two years along the trail. Marella, on the other hand, is—I will not use the term spawn of the devil, but I do hope she outgrows her feisty adventuresomeness lest her father turn as white-haired as I am before he is forty. She reminds me somewhat of myself at her age.
"That name," Melissa said. "Marella. Wasn’t she the one who was with Mary Frances when she died?"
"I’ll check." Maddy was already on her way to the dresser. She read over the letter, shaking her head. "No. No, Catharina was with Mary Frances. Marella was her mother—Catharina’s mother, I mean. Catharina’s the one who didn’t have a granddaughter, so she gave the instructions about naming the second son Hubbard John to Ketchum’s granddaughter."
My mom just sat there shaking her head. "Seems like a lot of fuss and bother."
Maddy laughed. "Just remember that trying to recall all these connections is gonna keep our brain cells active."
"You need to hurry writing that history," Melissa to Maddy. "Otherwise, I’ll never remember it all."
"Or be able to keep it straight," Dee added. "Can you include a genealogy chart?"
"Sure," Maddy said.
Melissa hooted. "It’ll take up a dozen pages."
"Maybe you should make up a wall chart instead."
Maddy clapped her hands together. "Great idea, Rebecca Jo. I’ll keep that in mind." She pushed her ever-drooping glasses farther up onto the bridge of her nose. "It’ll have to be a large one, though. I’ll have to make the print on the chart big enough so I can read it. These darn glasses of mine don’t always do the trick."
"That’s not the end of this entry." Ida was obviously not concerned about Maddy’s eyesight.
Twice in the past month Marella fell out of a tree and came near to breaking her legs. She is barely five years of age, and yet she shows many aspects of a rabble-rouser. Perhaps as she grows, those tendencies will slacken, but for now she is a born leader. This past summer she talked the boys of the town into trying to build a dam across the Mee-too-chee. They spent hours tossing stones into the creek—we have had little rain, so the water was easily spanned—and they wedged sturdy sticks in place as if they had been beavers working to form a pond. For several days the water behind their small dam deepened with only a few spills working their way through the barrier, but then the first full rain that fell brought an end to all their efforts. By that time, though, Marella had lost interest in the dam and was determined to catch the largest fish that ever lived in the Mee-too-chee. To date her endeavors have netted her a seventeen-inch trout, much to the chagrin of her older and less successful cousins.
"That’s it for this date," Ida said. "Go for it, Amanda."
Amanda left the letters on the table. "Before I read anything else, I could use a break. Do you think Tom’s made any more of that fudge of his?"
"He did," Glaze said. "He told me at lunch that he was planning on it." She looked at me. "He was delighted that you had that box of dark cocoa."
"Between all the hot chocolate and the fudge," I said, "I’m glad I bought the big size. And I’m extra glad Ida brought all those gallons of milk."
"No sense in letting them go to waste." Ida was so practical.
"Especially since Henry uses about a gallon a day in his coffee," Glaze said.
Sadie patted her portly middle. "I’m going to pass on the fudge, but the rest of you go on down. I think I may just rest for a while."
"Do you want me to stay with you?" Easton sounded truly concerned, and my heart softened a little more toward her.
"No, dear. You go have some fudge." She turned toward me. "Before I lie down, Biscuit, would you show me that beekeeping book of Bob’s you were telling me about?"
I knew darn well what she was doing. "Sure. It’s in my bedroom. If you don’t mind taking a detour there?"
I will go, too.
But nobody was paying much attention to us by this time. I knew once the women showed up in the kitchen without Sadie and me, Bob would find an excuse to head upstairs for that meeting Sadie had arranged.
"WHAT’S GOING ON, Sadie?" Bob didn’t sound worried, just curious. He closed the door and then took the chair facing Sadie, while I perched on the edge of the ottoman. Marmalade jumped up in Sadie’s lap. "You said something was wrong?"
"It’s Charlie Ellis." She bit at her lower lip. "She’s not the Charlie I remember." She held up a hand. "I know it’s been more than twenty years, but we were talking about how noses get handed down through families."
"Genetics," I said for Bob’s enlightenment.
"People change a lot, but some things are just too big to change. Charlie was always the sweetest little girl. She and I baked cookies together a lot, and I came to think of her almost like a grandchild. In fact, she called me and Wallace Grandma and Grandpa Masters. Her own grandmother was one of those truly horrible people. I’m surprised that Charlie’s mother stayed around for so many years tending to her mother, but she left as soon as the old woman died. And she took Charlie with her. I never did understand why she left. You’d think that once her mother died—as nasty a woman as I ever saw—she would have felt better about living here. But maybe the house held too many bad memories for her. Anyway, I guess she went and married Charlie’s father."
Bob and I just sat there. I was pretty sure Sadie would get to the point eventually, but it didn’t seem right to try to hurry her along.
"When Charlie came back here three years ago, it was like she didn’t remember anything about me."
Bob made a slight sound, and Sadie said, "I know, I know. But it’s more than that. Charlie loved cookies. This grown-up woman won’t eat them. Charlie’s hair was red and curly as a corkscrew. This woman’s hair is blond—I can see the roots—and straight. All the Ellis women were short. Always. But here we have somebody who’s taller than you, Biscuit. The noses made me remember that."
Bob looked a question at me.
"Hastings," I said quietly, and he nodded. He knew as well as I the way the Hastings men always sported round noses.
"And on top of all this—I could be wrong about it, but I’m pretty sure Charlie was left-handed."
I thought back to the way Charlie had taken the end seat straight across the kitchen table from Glaze, who always tried to sit at the corner of a table so her left elbow wouldn’t be bumping into anyone as she ate.
"And then," Sadie said, "there was that footlocker upstairs."
"What?" I had no idea what she was talking about.
"Remember when Dee asked her to help move that heavy footlocker—the one with all the uniforms in it?"
I nodded, sort of vaguely remembering the incident.
"She picked it up with no difficulty at all."
"So?"
"When Charlie was a little girl, she and her mom went on a long camping trip, backpacking in the Appalachians. Charlie fell off a log or something and broke her arm, but they were pretty far back off the usual trails, and it took her mom three days to carry Charlie out to where they could get help."
Bob sat well forward in his chair. "The break healed badly?"
Sadie looked a bit surprised that he had anticipated her punchline, but she nodded. "Very badly. They talked surgery, but the doctors couldn’t guarantee that it would correct the problem. In fact, they said the operation might permanently damage the bone and the ligaments and make her arm worse than ever, so Charlie’s mom decided against taking the risk. The arm never worked right after that. There’d been some sort of muscle damage in addition to the break. Whenever Charlie tried to lift anything, it hurt her. She couldn’t put any overt pressure on it, but she never let it slow her down. She was such a sweet child, she never complained about it, but sometimes when she and I were baking cookies, I could tell it bothered her. She couldn’t even pick up a bowl filled with cookie dough."
Sadie paused and looked across the bedroom, but I had the feeling she wasn’t seeing what was in front of her at all. "At first I thought she must have grown out of it. But now I’m not so sure."
"Which arm was it?"
She paused, and her eyes sort of went out of focus again. "I think it was her right arm, Bob, which would make sense. The more I think about it, the more I’m certain she was left-handed, so not having the operation didn’t seem to matter too much, and, as I said, it didn’t slow the child down. I’ve never seen anybody dance around quite the way she did. She was always so ... so happy." Sadie didn’t look happy at all.
I thought back to the Charlie in the attic. Not at all the same as Sadie described.
She is not happy. She is angry.
"Do you mind if I get Reebok up here? Would you be okay with repeating what you’ve told me? I’d like him to hear it from you."
"That’s fine." Sadie just sat there while Bob went and fetched Reebok Garner. I pulled another chair up closer.
"Hello, Mrs. Masters," Reebok said when he entered. "The Chief said you wanted to tell me something?"
"First," Bob said, indicating the other chair, "do you remember the fax that came in about the bones found by that hunter?"
"Of course, Sir."
"Do you recall the details?"
"Yes, but I don’t need to remember them. I’ve got the fax with me." He pulled several folded papers out of his shirt pocket.
"Why on earth did you hang onto that, Garner? It should be in the file at the office."
"Sorry, Chief, but I wanted to study it some more, and I figured I’d have time during this storm."
Bob shrugged. "Just as well, I guess."
Sadie told her tale and then subsided against the back of the armchair, which enveloped her small frame.
Reebok flourished the fax, but I interrupted. “Sadie, when we were first talking, up in the attic, about the confusion between the two Charlottes—one in the seventeen hundreds and one here, now—do you remember what Charlie said?"
"I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about."
"Somebody asked if this current Charlotte had a nickname, and she said her roommate in college used to call her Charlie."
Sadie’s faced lightened, and she nodded. "And I said that’s what your mother always called you. That’s what I always called her, too, when she was little."
Bob rubbed his hand over his four-day growth of beard. "College roommate, huh? That may be stretching it, but it’s a place to start."
"How do we find out where she went to college, Chief?"
"Her tee-shirt," I said. "Remember that second day, I think it was, she wore a college shirt over her sweats?" I could still see the distinctive logo and the garish colors.
"That doesn’t prove anything, Ma’am, but I’ll give it a try."
"Trouble is," Bob said, "this is Sunday."
"Yes, Sir, but surely the local station would be able to get hold of somebody in admin."
"Go for it, Garner. But first, let’s look at that fax."
The two of them pored over the picture of the right humerus. Even I could see how the break had mended so crookedly.
"It’s not positive proof," Reebok said.
"I know," Bob said, "but it’s a starting point. Between that and the college roommate angle, I’d say we might be onto something. And not a word of this downstairs, understand?"
As if we’d say anything.
He turned to look at Sadie, and stopped in his tracks.
She’d sat so quietly, none of us had noticed the tears coursing down her weathered cheeks, dripping onto Marmalade’s head. "She’s dead, isn’t she? My sweet little Charlie is dead."
I was ready to offer the quick consolation of there’s no proof yet, but my dear thoughtful husband went down on one knee in front of her and took her hands in his. "I swear to you that if—if—this turns out to be the case, I’ll do everything in my power to see that whoever did it is caught."
And then he wrapped his arms around her—around her and Marmalade—and let her cry.
I do not mind being squashed like this.
WE MADE IT downstairs before the fudge was completely gone, but if we’d waited another three minutes, it would have been too late. "Where’ve you been?" Dave boomed as we entered the kitchen. "We were ready to send out a search party."
"Oh, you know." Sadie leaned across the table to grab a square of fudge. "Get a couple of beekeepers together and we have to talk shop."
I had no idea she could lie so convincingly. I was hard-pressed not to look at Charlie. Who on earth could that woman be if she wasn’t Charlie Ellis? And why was she here?
Easton scooted her chair to one side to make more room for Sadie. "So you didn’t get a nap?"
"That’s all right, dear. Talking about bees would rejuvenate anyone."
Easton’s eyebrows went up. For once, I agreed with her skepticism.
"Hey," Ralph said, "where’s Reebok? Why’s he late?"
He is not late. He is alive.
Carol murmured a few words to Marmalade. This time it took her quite a while to explain the difference between late not on time and late deceased.
It still does not make sense.
"He’s in the office. He had to make a phone call." Bob picked up the last square of fudge, as if nothing in the world was on his mind. "You know what," he said, pulling out his phone. "We need a picture to commemorate this."
Once everybody was situated around the table, Bob snapped a couple of photos. One was of the group as a whole. I was pretty sure one had zeroed in on Charlotte Ellis.
"YOU KNOW," GLAZE said once we were back in the attic, "there’s still one more sketch from that stack of Silas drawings, isn’t there?"
"You’re right." Maddy went to the white dresser.
Thank goodness it no longer wobbled, thanks to Glaze and those encyclopedias.