Excerpt From Jo Grant’s Journal:
…I’ve been thinking about Alice Franklin and Bob Harrison’s wife, Rachel. Rachel’s probably been on my mind because of Alan working with her baby-Brad and asking about how to deal with him. I don’t know Rachel as well as Alice, but I saw her with Brad when we were growing up. And she made me think of Ginger, the shorthaired female mutt who strayed in when I was a kid that we kept and had spayed.
I think we’d had her a couple of years when I found the box of puppies dumped beside the road. I ran home to get a wheelbarrow, and when I got back, somebody’d come by and peppered the puppies with a .22, which made me feel entirely justified in killing whoever that was.
Tom buried the dead ones while Mom drove me to the vet’s with the others. I brought the one home the vet said would live, railing against human nature the whole way there and back.
We already had a big male lab a friend hadn’t been able to take care of too, but Mom let me keep the puppy. Ginger, our little female mutt, took that new puppy as her own, and she wouldn’t even let the lab – she’d always gotten along with fine – even inside the same room with the pup. She followed that little guy everywhere, her head right over him every single second, drooling on his back till he was soaked. She just wouldn’t let up, and we had to find him another home. She was bereft, and I felt really sorry for her, but then after two or three days, she was treating the lab like normal and letting him eat her food.
Brad’s mom was like that. Protecting Brad every second, trying to shield him from the outside world and what he might not want to hear. Which might’ve made him think he was defective and couldn’t fend for himself.
Alice Franklin let Spence go – Martha and Richard the same way – after she’d spent a lot of time and thought teaching them how to be. ’Course, she was caught up in the business, even when she worked from home when the kids were young, and that probably helped.
Brad’s mom, though, in her defense, I think she had two or three miscarriages, or a child died as an infant. Something like that. So that probably made her do what she did. We all react to what we’ve been through. We don’t get to keep clean slates.…
Sunday, May 6, 1962
The rest of that week, when Alice was in the hospital, actions were taken that ended in a death more vicious than any Jo had faced before – and threatened her too, before it was over, in ways she couldn’t foresee.
She was serenely ignorant at the time, and went about her life that week more content in some ways than she’d been since Tommy died.
She worked two days at White Hall and spent much of her time at home studying Cassius Marcellus Clay, “the Lion of White Hall,” who was both illustrious and infamous, because of his many conflicting traits.
Long before the Civil War, he was Kentucky’s most effective supporter of emancipation and had freed his slaves when he’d inherited them at twenty-one, giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars then, when ten cents bought a steak dinner at Delmonico’s in New York.
He was six-feet-six, and a legendary hand-to-hand fighter who wore a bowie knife around his neck, even with his evening clothes when he was Lincoln’s ambassador to Russia and a close friend of the Czar.
As Jo looked at letters and journals and ledgers, at archival photographs and every receipt, taking paint scrapings and peeling away wallpaper, she became more and more intrigued with him and his family and the history of the house, as she tried to uncover what it looked like in 1865.
She also worked with the horses a lot that week – grooming and training babies for the sales and helping Tom’s mare, Maggie, deliver a big-boned bay colt she called Tommy while she tried to come up with a registered name that made sense based on his breeding.
She helped Toss too, in whatever form that took. Though he kept up with what he could – scheduling pick-ups and deliveries of mares, ordering grain and vet supplies, scheduling wormings and shoeings.
Jo talked to Alan on the phone a couple of times, and he came over Saturday and rode Flicker. But he seemed more distant and guarded. More closed and unwilling to stay long enough to talk about anything important. And that ate away at the contentment she’d felt earlier in the week.
She was reasonably sure he was pulling away because she’d told him Tom had talked about him, and there was something she wanted to ask. She wished she hadn’t said a word, but was irritated with him too, for running from anything personal the way Tom had after the war. And that meant that Saturday night she sat home and fumed, feeling more restless than normal.
Spence called on Sunday and asked if he could stop by. He said he owed her an update and that he’d ask Alan to come too, so he’d only have to talk about it once.
He couldn’t reach Alan, as it turned out, because he’d ridden his bike south to Berea. So Spence left a message with Jack asking Alan to meet them once he got back.
Toss was coaching Buddy as he tried to teach ground manners to Tuffian, so Spencer and Jo could stay at her place. They sat under the arbor in back that stretched the whole width of the farmhouse and threw sticks for Emmy off and on, while Spencer explained what had changed.
“I’d read your notes and listened to the tape by Monday afternoon. I spoke to Tara’s Aunt Betsy. And I called Grace in Louisville, and phoned Dwayne too. Then I called Tara that night and told her I wanted to see her Tuesday night, sometime after dinner.”
“So you believed what the others said?”
“I did. It was depressing. It showed me what a fool I was, but—”
“No, Tara’s really good at this. She figures out what somebody wants very fast and makes herself look like she’s it. And it seems like the persona doesn’t slip till she’s got the guy committed. Maybe that’s why she rushes into marriage. She knows she can’t keep it up.”
Spencer nodded, while he opened a bottle of Toss’s beer, and stared off across the farm pond beyond a big weeping willow. “Anyway, when I got there to break the engagement on Tuesday night, she wouldn’t put Giselle to bed, and I thought it seemed deliberate. Like she didn’t want to hear what I had to say, because she knew I’d changed. I couldn’t act like I hadn’t. I couldn’t see her the same way.”
“What kind of person could have?”
“So the next night, Wednesday, right after work, before she went home to get Gigi from the sitter, I waited for her in the parking lot and talked to her in her car where no one else could see us. I asked her about Rusty and how he left, and her time in Louisville afterwards, and why she didn’t get along with Betsy – and she lied again about all of it. I didn’t refer to Dwayne, to try to leave him out of it.”
“Hearing her lie must’ve been painful.”
“Necessary, however. The pill that had to be swallowed.” Spencer pulled Emmy into his lap, where she curled up and sighed. “I told her I knew Rusty left her money and the apartment, and other details about her past too, and that we had to stop seeing each other. She could keep the ring or sell it if she wanted, but our relationship was over. Tara went wild. She got absolutely hysterical. More or less as you’d expect.”
Spence didn’t say anything else for a minute. He just sat and stroked Emmy’s ears, as though that was some kind of comfort. “I told her I didn’t want to hurt her, but I wouldn’t change my mind. That our views of the world were too different to make anything else possible.”
“You couldn’t do anything else.”
Spence smiled cryptically and closed his eyes. “But that wasn’t the end of it.”
“Somehow I didn’t think it would be.” Jo sipped coffee from a large white mug, then leaned back in her chair.
“She called me repeatedly that night, then drove over with Giselle. I answered the phone the first couple of times and then didn’t. I opened the door once and said I was very sorry, but there wasn’t anything else to be said.
“After that, she circled the house, pounding on the doors and windows till after one o’clock, with Giselle in the car all that time. How destructive is that? I mean what does that do to Gigi? How can she help being warped?”
“That’s the saddest part.”
“It was worse than I ever imagined.”
“Did Tara come to work Thursday?”
“Yep. She didn’t try to talk to me but she left me a letter defending herself and wanting to talk again. Then Friday night she called about eleven saying she was deathly ill, throwing up uncontrollably, that she’d passed out once and didn’t want to have Giselle there alone in case there was something dangerously wrong with her. She said her neighbor was out of town, and her mom was visiting her parents in Knoxville.
“So I went. If it was true, what else could I do? And, of course, Giselle was up watching us. I’ve never seen anyone look more sad and pathetic than Tara, lying on the sofa, barely able to raise a hand, with a bucket she’d used to throw up in sitting beside her.
“Giselle sat in my lap, leaning up against me, holding my hand, asking why I wasn’t marrying her mother, and couldn’t she ever see me again, and how could I leave her forever, when she wanted me to be her new daddy.” Spence put Emmy down and walked out into the lawn, his shoulders sagging as he crouched down to Emmy, whose boxerish ears had flopped happily as she’d bounded over and thrown herself on her back so Spence could rub her chest.
Jo tried to think of something useful to say and came up with absolutely nothing.
“Then Gigi went into the bathroom.” Spencer stood up and walked back toward Jo. “When she came back she was carrying a little bottle, asking if she could have it, since she’d found it in the wastepaper basket.
“Tara said, in the tiniest weakest sickest little voice, ‘That’s not for you, sweetie, that belongs to Mommy. Bring it right here and get ready for bed. It’s way past your bedtime.’ It was ipecac. Tara’d taken it to make herself vomit.” Spencer shrugged and shook his head, then sat on the arbor’s stone step.
“How’d you react to that?”
“I picked Giselle up, and kissed her on the forehead, and held her for a long time. Then put her down and walked out the door.”
Neither of them said anything. Till Spencer walked over, and sat in his chair again, and drank the rest of his beer.
“So that was the end of it?”
“Nope. Tara called after I got home till I took the phone off the hook. First thing Saturday morning I called her mom, who hadn’t gone to Knoxville, by the way, and told her what had happened, and that I had to stay away from Tara so she understood it was over for good. And that meant that she, Tara’s mom, would have to take care of Tara and Gigi if anything else happened. That the best thing for Tara and Giselle was to accept the fact, once and for all, that Tara and I are finished.”
“How’d she take it?”
“Her mother? I thought she was sympathetic. But she didn’t want to get involved either. She’s been through hell with Tara, don’t you think? With what Betsy had to say? And from what she implied herself when she talked to me.”
“I know that was true in high school.”
“So I left my phone off the hook, did what I had to do with the horses, and then went to the hospital to see if they were ready to release Mom. They released her while I was there, and as we were packing her up, Tara called her room to talk to me. Not what Mom needed. Having to talk to Tara.”
“No.”
“And you only know part of it. On top of the blood clot, which is fortunately better, there’s this guy who grew up with her writing her crazy letters.”
“Why?”
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Why? You must need to tell someone. If I hadn’t been able to whine to Alan after Tommy died I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
Spencer looked as though he were arguing with his instincts. But then he rubbed his eyes, and started again. “His dad was in medical practice with Mom’s dad in Virginia. They’d dated each other years ago, and he broke up with her when they were in college.
“After they’d both married and had kids of their own, the families became friendly when we ran into each other in Williamsburg, where they were from. Then this last fall, he and his wife and daughter were visiting his mother, and his daughter got ill. His dad was dead by this time, and my grandfather treated her. She was hard to diagnose. Appendicitis often is, and after the surgeon operated, she developed peritonitis, and they ended up losing her.
“So he blamed my grandfather, who died six months later. Now this guy’s decided it was deliberate, and that my mother’s always hated him, ever since he broke it off with her, and it was a conspiracy to hurt him.”
“Sounds like paranoia.”
“I think it must be. He’s quit his job and left his wife. And another letter came Friday.”
“Which is not what your mom needs.”
“She’d like to be able to help him but doesn’t know how to begin.”
Jo watched Spence throw a stick for Emmy and said, “You folks need some good news.”
“You know any, do you?” Spence smiled sardonically and grabbed on to Emmy’s stick so she could tug against him.
“I do actually. You’ve met Buddy Jones?”
“Sure.”
“He works part-time for Mercer Tate, and Mercer told him this week that he should trailer his mare over there this Thursday, and they’ll breed her to one of his stallions. Mercer’s drastically reducing the rate, and Buddy can work off part of it and pay him the rest over time.”
“Good for Mercer.”
Jo patted Emmy, rubbing her ears and under her chin, after she’d sat on Jo’s feet. “I’m glad your mom’s doing better. And I’m sorry about Giselle.”
“Thanks. You know you saved me from damn near ruining my life.”
“Good. Alan and I were both afraid you’d never speak to us again.”
“So will you tell Alan? I don’t want to go through it again if I don’t have to.”
“Sure.” It almost looked to Jo as though Spence wanted to say something else but had decided to hold himself back. “Is your mom out of the woods?”
“The doctors think so. They’re keeping her on blood thinners and making her put her leg up, but they say the clot’s dissolved pretty well. Booker and I are supposed to go to Europe in two weeks, but we’ll cancel if there’s any doubt about how well she’s doing.”
“The broken engagement must be a relief to her.”
“Yeah. But there’s more for her to worry about. She also found out today that when she let an employee go for drinking on the job, he got jailed that night for being drunk and disorderly. And the day after her blood clot hit, he got put in the hospital in what sounds like a psych ward that works with alcoholics.”
“Isn’t that good?”
“I hope so. But Mom’s wondering if she could’ve done more. And after he gets out, if there’s something she should do then. She doesn’t need that on her mind right now.”
“No.”
“I’ve gotta go.” Spence was up and walking toward the driveway when he said, “Thanks” over his shoulder.
Tuesday, May 8, 1962
Two days later, Spence got to work at six, the way he usually did, and found Tara sitting in his office. She was in a guest chair, dressed more sedately than usual in a black skirt and blouse, her hands folded in her lap, her hair tied back.
“You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to make a scene. I only wanted to tell you how sorry I am I’ve been so emotional and made it harder for you.”
Spencer didn’t answer. He stood just inside his door, waiting to see what she’d do.
“I’ve had trouble handling feelings before. I know I can be more sensitive than I probably should be. And I b’lieve I’ve done that with you.” Her voice was high and breathy the way it always was unless she was angry, when she screamed as loud as anyone. But this time it was so quiet Spence had to strain to understand her.
“I don’t want to lose my job. I need to work to support Giselle. I can’t afford any trouble between me and your mom.”
“She’ll be fair. If you come to work and do it well, nothing would have to change.”
“Thank you.” She stood up, her arms at her sides, her head hanging for a moment, before she looked up in Spencer’s eyes. “If you ever could see your way clear, Gigi would like to go to church with you.”
“I’d like to take her. I would. But Gigi needs to understand that we won’t be seeing each other anymore.” Spencer was looking away from Tara when she lowered her head and walked by.
At eleven, on her lunch break, when Spencer was in a production meeting in the plant, Tara walked into his office, and opened the center drawer in his desk.
His keys weren’t there. But his sports jacket was hanging on the back of the door, and she went through the pockets till she found his keys.
She slipped two off the key ring.
And took them to the hardware store four blocks away and had copies made while she waited.
She was back in his office before twelve, sliding his keys on the ring, before he was done with his meeting.
Wednesday, May 9, 1962
Jo had already interviewed the microbiologists and technicians in Equine Pharmaceuticals’ lab. And that day she measured the space and drew freehand plans, and talked to Alan about organization and work flow. There were task areas she thought should be switched, and she could see ways to add counter space and another desk if he wanted one.
She’d gotten there at three, and they’d worked until after five when Alan asked her if she’d like to go back to his place and grab a quick bite. Jack was working at the Franklins’ home and wouldn’t be home until seven or after.
Jo called Buddy’s wife, who said she’d be happy to take dinner to Toss. Jo and Alan drove separately to his house on Pisgah Pike.
Alan had started out stiffer than usual but warmed up as they’d worked at the lab, and when they were getting dinner together – he grilled steak while she made a salad and steamed fresh asparagus – he seemed as polite and businesslike as usual but not as calm and relaxed.
Once they started eating on his screened-in porch, he began to thaw and turn into something like himself – the easy-going, humorous himself he’d been before she mentioned Tom talking about him on the tape.
Jo told him what Spencer had said on Sunday and that he’d called and told her Tara had apologized at the office too, though Spence still hadn’t trusted her to mean what she said.
Alan and Jo hypothesized about what Tara was up to, and how much mental illness played a part. They talked about the Kentucky Derby the Saturday before, and how well Bill Hartack had ridden Decidedly, setting him up to win. And moved on from there to Jo’s work at White Hall and the lab at Equine Pharmaceuticals.
Then Alan swirled the Burgundy in his glass, took a swallow and set the glass down, and looked directly at Jo. “What was it you wanted to ask me?”
“I’m not sure I should tell you.”
“Because?”
“When I told you I had a question, it seemed to make you want to avoid the question, and me as well.” Jo smiled when she said it, while untying the leather strip that held her hair in a ponytail – tying it back up tighter while Alan sat and watched.
He stared at her after she’d finished, holding his fork without seeming to notice, before he started to speak. “That’s because I had an idea what you might want to ask.”
“I don’t want to bring up anything painful. There’re plenty of people who won’t talk about the war, and I know there’re lots of good reasons for that.”
They sipped their wine and finished their salads. And stared out at the night.
“Did Tom tell you something happened when I was in the hospital that I never talk about?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve only discussed it with my parents. No one else needed to know.”
“I see.”
“No. You don’t see.” He said it matter-of-factly.
But it still stung.
Alan said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound so cold.”
Jo blotted the corners of her mouth with her napkin before she said, “That’s okay.”
“I was injured by a grenade. I was patched up and sent back to the States. And I was in the hospital for a long time. There were so many guys hurt worse than I was, I felt guilty. Why was I as whole as I was when all these other fellows weren’t?”
Jo knew better than to say anything in that silence, and she sat back in her chair.
“There was a woman who was volunteering in the hospital. A history professor who was really good with the head wounds and the shell-shocked, reading to them, and playing cards and games like checkers and chess. There was something healing about her. The humor. The quietness in her. I never could put my finger on it.
“Anyway, I was one of the head wounds that healed well. So I watched her with the other guys and got to know her myself.” Alan poured the last of the Burgundy into both their glasses, then pushed his chair farther from the table, and laid his left leg on an empty chair. “She was a widow with a daughter. Her husband was a Marine who was killed during the Bataan death march. After we’d known each other for a year, Jane and I got engaged.” Alan stopped again.
Jo held her breath, holding herself back from asking anything else.
“The wedding was two weeks away. We’d gotten to know the minister really well. Jane had made a dress for her daughter and a suit for herself. My parents were about to come out on the train from upstate New York. Then she got a call from a Marine in San Francisco who’d been a friend of her husband’s. Her husband was alive and with him, and had been for months. He’d survived Bataan and been shuffled among P.O.W. camps all across Japan. He’d been tortured beyond endurance. And he was so traumatized by what had become of him that he didn’t want to come back to Jane and let her see him the way he was then. But his Marine buddy couldn’t keep taking care of him. He didn’t know how to do it. Jane, of course, did what she should’ve done, and went to bring her husband home.”
Alan didn’t say anything else.
Jo sat silently, till she couldn’t stand it any longer and told him she was sorry.
“Thanks. Me too.” He stacked his salad plate on top of his dinner plate and slid his leg off the chair. “She did the right thing. I wouldn’t have respected her as much if she hadn’t. But that didn’t keep me from wishing things were different. And I haven’t met another woman since I thought I could marry.”
“I see.” It’d cut and stung, and she’d had to work at controlling her face. And that took Jo by surprise. “Well. I’m glad you told me.”
“Why?” He said it neutrally, but fast and direct.
“It makes me feel like I know you better. I’m sure it must’ve been hard.”
“Going through it? Or telling you?”
“Both.”
Alan picked up her plates and stacked them on his. “What about Nate?”
“Tom told you about him?”
“No. He referred to him in the letter he left you, that I read in Middleburg.”
Jo nodded and said, “I forgot.” Then folded her napkin and laid it on her placemat. “I was engaged to Nate when I was in architecture school. He was a Political Science Ph.D. candidate who liked undergraduates. I apparently was his favorite among many, which was not my idea of a marriage.”
“No.”
“I was lucky to find out when I did. My horse had cancer then, Jed, the one I really loved. Then Mom got brain cancer, and I got out of Ann Arbor.”
An uncomfortable silence settled in again – along with a sad, sick feeling somewhere in Jo’s chest. “I better get home. Thanks for dinner. I won’t stay and do the dishes, so I can help Toss get to bed.”
“Thanks for doing the work at the lab. I liked your suggestions.”
“There’ll be others. Probably different. I’ll know more as I work on it.”
“Jo—”
“Is Jo here?” It was Jack, coming in the back door, carrying work boots that were stained bright green from a day spent cutting grass.
Jo said, “Hey, Jack. How you doing?”
“Good. Thanks again for letting me borrow your truck. Anytime you want it back, I’ll find something used that—”
“Keep it till Toss needs his. Good night, Alan.”
She was gone, climbing toward Toss’s truck under the trees on the hill.
“Did I interrupt something?” Jack was taking off his shirt, walking toward the circular stairs.
“Just business. She’s working on the lab.”
“I didn’t know that was today.”
“When you’ve gotten cleaned up, I’ve got some news for you.”
Jack spun around and stared at Alan.
“Nothing significant. Don’t get your hopes up. We’ll talk when you come down.
Jack took his first bite of steak on a stool at the kitchen island two feet in front of Alan, who was washing dishes and setting them to dry in a wooden rack.
“So?” Jack chewed without seeming to notice, all his attention on Alan.
“I talked to a friend of mine who’s in Berlin now—”
“In the army?”
“No. Though he was during the war. He was able to trace the gangster from Nantes in U.S. Army files, because Bouchard was arrested for his black market dealing, pretty much the way you expected. Before I say anything else, I’d like to tell you what I’ve learned about Esvres-sur-Indre. The town where you said he met with the F.T.P. guy you suspect.”
“Okay. However you want to approach it.”
“As you know, it was a tiny village where everyone knew everyone else. Like everywhere in France, a large percentage of the population was sent to work camps in Germany if they weren’t working on farms that supplied food to the Nazis. The Catholic priest in the village at that time opposed the Germans and helped the Resistance. But a collaborator turned him in, and he was caught by the Germans and sent to a concentration camp where he died.
“But today, in 1962, when someone my contact knows mentioned the priest in the village, no one he talked to would acknowledge his existence. They all claimed there’d never been such an incident. No one had collaborated in the entire village. And the past should be left in the past. It would do nothing but harm to dredge it up now.”
“So?”
“I think that illustrates how significant the cover-up is in France, and how hard finding out what happened to you would be if you went back.”
Jack didn’t react directly. He ate another bite of steak, then asked about Henri Reynard.
“There’s nothing in the U.S. Army archives that has to do with the gangster’s alibi for Henri Reynard. In fact, Reynard isn’t mentioned anywhere. And the raid in Tours isn’t referred to. There’s no reference of any kind that tells you what you want to know. Not that my contacts could find.”
“Damn.” Jack looked down at his plate, disappointment sweeping away the hope he’d had in his eyes, while anger tightened around his mouth till it turned stubborn and petulant.
Alan was watching him with cold analytical eyes, sympathy swallowed up then. Feeling hot and itchy and irritated with himself – and the look on Jo’s face too, when she’d walked out the door. “You know what I think?”
“No. How could I? But I guess you’ve earned the right to tell me.”
“I know who threw the grenade that tore me up. I watched him do it. He was trying to kill a woman he thought was a traitor, and I knew wasn’t. I know what he did after the war and that he was as ruthless then as he was when I knew him.” Alan was pacing, back door to circular stairs, then turning to cross again.
“I hated him, believe me. Because it wasn’t combat when he threw that grenade, but revenge, based on rumor, and partisan hatred too, and his own political ambition. He didn’t want that particular woman opposing him in local elections after the war. But she did fight him and won, as it turned out. Because she lived.”
“So how did you get hurt?”
“I was in the way.”
“You put yourself in the way?”
“Let me ask you a question.”
“Okay.”
“Since the war, have you seen any of the people you knew in the O.S.S. except for Tom?”
“No.”
“Have you had any dealings with anyone in France who thought you were a traitor?”
“No.”
“Does anyone you’ve met since the war in this country know what you were accused of?”
“No.”
“Then you live every day without any direct effects from it?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then why not try to get over it?”
“Why! How can you—”
“If what happened in France doesn’t affect your life, except in your reactions to the memory of it, why do you let it control how you live now? You know you weren’t a traitor. Why isn’t that enough?” Alan stopped in front of the sink and stared hard at Jack who was standing by then, glaring at him with sweat standing out on his forehead.
“If I’d gone back to France and wreaked vengeance on the guy that nearly killed me, what would that have accomplished? I had to make that choice too, one more or less like yours.”
“But—”
“Jack, you’ve been given incredible gifts. You got a law degree as a kid. You learn languages overnight. You’ve written poetry that’s well respected. I learned about that from Tom. You can start over and have whatever life you want. But you’ve got to get over the hate and humiliation that’s held you hostage till now.”
Jack had stepped closer, his face red, his eyes hot, fists set on the counter. “How can you stand there—”
“You’ve seen people who hold grudges. It’s like they’ve taken cyanide and expect the other guy to die.”
“Shut up!” Jack grabbed his keys off the counter and slammed the back door behind him.
Alan heard Jack’s truck start up.
Then he stood still for a minute and listened, before he turned the lights off.
After his eyes had adjusted to the dark, he walked outside, and climbed up to the drive, and started down toward the road.