The Secrets She Carried (2 page)

Yes, I still feel the cold. I still feel a lot of things. Like the deep-down shiver of my sweet little Maggie as she stands beside her daddy, stealing fingers the color of bone into his calloused brown hand, needing his warmth. But there is no warmth in him, my poor, dear Henry, and it grinds my heart to see it. Yes, I still have a heart too. Or an ache, at least, where it used to be.

Maggie clutches at the buttoned-up collar of her black wool coat, hunching her shoulders as if to hoard her heat. I want to scold her for not remembering her gloves—and Henry, too, for not looking after her. He’s dressed her up, I see, put her in her yellow dress from last Easter, the one with the bow in back. Already her knees are blue with cold.

But it’s not in me to be angry. The man next to Maggie hardly resembles the one I knew, and I knew Henry Gavin well. He’s hollowed out now, hardly there at all, though his boots still leave prints in the earth. And he never leaves off staring at that stone. I knew right off where he was going when he cranked up that old truck, and I knew right off why. He means to tell her.

She’s a beautiful child. Her face is so still and pale, like a doll’s, the fine blue-white of china, and her gray eyes are wide and shimmery
from the chill. My arms long to go around her, to hold her close, to keep her warm and guard her against all that may come. For a moment the pain is so raw it nearly bends me in two. You forget sometimes to steel yourself against those moments. You think it all stops, but it doesn’t. You can still hurt, long after you’re dead and gone.

Well, if the child must know, and it seems she must, I wish it were me doing the telling. Men don’t do these things well. She’s already confused. I could see it in her face when he got out of the truck and started walking, and I see it again now as she follows her daddy’s eyes to the pale slab of soapstone.

It’s my stone, my bones that lie beneath that mound of dark earth, all fenced in with pretty black iron. There’s a gate with two doves and a shiny brass lock to keep me in my place. Too late for that, I guess. There are words inscribed there, but no dates and no name. Thank heaven, at least, for that.

The sun comes through the clouds like ice water, and the wind makes a sound like crying. Maggie’s hair lifts out around her head like smoke. “It’s beautiful, Daddy,” is all she can think to whisper. Her voice is soft as a secret.

Henry isn’t wearing a coat over his gray flannel suit, and the breeze yanks at his tie, whipping it like a flag over one shoulder. His eyes look so tired, so far away. He doesn’t blink, just stares back at her with his Adam’s apple bobbing against his collar. His mouth begins to churn finally, but no words come, and all at once there are no more questions in his daughter’s eyes.

What can the old fool be thinking? He must see that no good can come of it. Even the child knows that. And what in God’s name would the fine folk of Gavin, North Carolina, have to say if they learned he had buried his wife’s maid up on his precious ridge? I don’t belong here. There are places for us, separate places far off from our betters. My stone should be proof enough of that. We’ve already given those stiff-necks and their kind enough wood to burn.

Maggie tries again for her father’s hand, but he’s forgotten she’s there. She steps to the stone alone and goes to her knees. Her fingers are blue as she folds them beneath her chin. It’s the first time I’ve wanted to cry, and the first time I realize I no longer can. It doesn’t seem fair when your heart still aches so. But so much isn’t fair.

“It’s time to go, child,” Henry calls out. His voice is thick and unfamiliar, like when you wake from a dream. “I’ve got work to do, and your—” He stops, glances away, clears his throat. “Your mama will be wondering where you got to.”

Maggie stands facing him. Her knees are stained and she scrubs at them with the heels of her hands. I’m relieved that they’re going. He sees now that it’s the wrong time to tell her, that it will always be the wrong time. There’s no point, after all. Not anymore. But Maggie isn’t ready to go. She turns back, bending to read the stone’s brief inscription. Her mouth moves over the words—words so precious I feel them like a wound.

The eyes she turns to her father are shiny with tears. Her tiny shoulders rack with silent sobs. And in that moment, I see Henry change his mind.

“Maggie, I want you to listen.” His voice is dry like paper as he clamps his rough brown hands on her shoulders. “There’s something I—”

But she won’t listen. She claps her fists over her ears, shakes her head from side to side, and her words wrench my soul. “Never say it,” she whispers. “If you say it, then it’s true.”

For a moment Henry goes rigid, and I believe he will fall into little pieces at the child’s feet. The air goes out of him suddenly, a long, slow gush of breath, a kind of caving in. It makes him smaller somehow, frail in a way I never noticed. Let it go, Henry. You must leave it where it stands. The child has asked you to.

Maggie has him by the sleeve now, tugging him against his will back to the present. “We better get back,” she says, her voice strangely grown-up. “Mama’s going to want to know where we’ve been. We’ll stop up at Jackson’s and get you some cigarettes. You can tell her you ran into old man Gainey or somebody.”

She starts for the truck then, her cold blue fists knotted at her sides. I can tell by the tilt of her head that she’s listening for footsteps, but there are no footsteps, only the low keening of her daddy’s heart breaking wide open.

Leslie

New York City, 2013

L
eslie Nichols eyed the answering machine’s cool blue pulse with fresh dread. If she’d learned anything in her thirty-seven years, it was that flashing blue lights usually meant trouble, and whatever was waiting for her on that machine would prove no exception. She knew it the same way she knew today’s stack of mail meant trouble. No surprise, really. It had been that kind of year, a demoralizing charade of
let’s keep in touch
lunches that never went anywhere.

It was almost hard to believe. Two years ago she’d been the hottest name in the industry, the up-and-coming diva of the luxury-lifestyle spread. Now, thanks to electronic media’s blight on the magazine world, she couldn’t even find a job. Print publications were quickly becoming endangered species, with new launches like
Edge
—the magazine she’d almost single-handedly put on the map—among the first to become extinct, leaving her with a stack of unpaid bills and a plummeting bank balance.

As she kicked off her shoes she gave the mail a quick shuffle—no surprises, since the senders had been thoughtful enough to stamp
PAST DUE
and
FINAL NOTICE
all over the envelopes—then held her breath and jabbed the answering machine’s message button.

Leslie let her breath go when she heard the familiar voice: Gwen
Waters from the offices of Goddard and Goddard. At least she didn’t owe
them
money. In fact, she wasn’t even sure why they were still pestering her. Maggie’s estate had nothing to do with her. There was nothing for her at Peak Plantation, just questions and ghosts, neither of which she cared to confront after thirty years of carefully preserved distance. Nothing that belonged to her, and certainly nothing she deserved.

After a year of unreturned phone calls she would have thought she’d made that much clear. But Gwen Waters was still talking, something about the window for Leslie to claim her grandmother’s estate set to expire at the end of the month, about the property defaulting to another beneficiary if she didn’t contact their office in the next forty-eight hours.

Leslie blinked at the machine as the message ran out. Another beneficiary? Before she could hit the button to replay the message, a new voice filled the small kitchen, deep and familiar and far less pleasant. The floor seemed to shift as it penetrated, like bourbon and smoke cutting across the distance and the latest gap of years. No explanation, no apology, just Jimmy. She didn’t listen to the whole thing. She didn’t have to. It was the same message he left every few years. He was about to become a free man and would need a bit of cash to finance his reentry into society. Yes, sir, he sure was looking forward to seeing his Baby Girl.

So here it was, then, the trouble she knew she’d find at the other end of that pulsing blue light: Jimmy. That she didn’t want to see him made no difference. He would show up on her doorstep, unless, of course, she made it worth his while to stay away, which was the part he never said but always meant. It was how things worked between them. The last time she tried telling him no, she came home to find him on the sidewalk in front of her building with a prison haircut and an old green suitcase. She had written him a check on the spot. Only this time there wasn’t any money.

The thought of Jimmy moving in brought a clammy wave of panic, the kind she’d experienced often while growing up but believed she had outgrown—or at least outdistanced. Now that distance appeared to be shrinking. Under the circumstances, it hardly seemed fair. But then, in her experience, fate was rarely fair. Time, once again, to gird her loins. Maybe her life was a huge question mark at the moment, but she’d be damned if she’d let a boozy ex-con add to the tangle, even if that ex-con
was
her father.

Staring at the stack of unpaid bills still clutched in her fist, Leslie choked back a bubble of laughter. Fate might not be fair, but it definitely had a sense of humor. Maybe there was a reason Gwen Waters called today with her time limit and threat of another beneficiary. Maybe it was to remind her that while she didn’t have many options, she did have at least one.

Going back to Peak was an absurd idea, and yet the more she pondered it, the more it made perfect sense. In Gavin she’d be miserable but safe. And if Jimmy did figure out where she was, she doubted he’d have the nerve to show his face.

Still, the thought of going back made her palms go sticky. It would mean giving up her apartment, as good as an admission of defeat, but it would buy her some time. She could disappear for a while, raise some cash with the sale of the plantation. Not much probably, but enough to keep her afloat until she found a job.

Leaving the bills on the counter, she wandered into the living room and poured herself a drink, then headed for her favorite chair, a sleek red leather cube that had cost her two weeks’ pay. She had grown to love New York, especially at this time of day, when the sun began to slide and the light melted like butter onto the buildings, washing the skyline like an old sepia shot. Was she really ready to walk away? To give up her swanky address and the prospect—however dim—of another six-figure salary?

The thought left her hollow, but then so did the thought of Jimmy,
camped out on her doorstep. Too restless to sit, she pushed out of her chair and stepped to the window. Her knees felt like Slinkies as she stared at the cars crawling like so many ants on the street below. The vodka was doing its work. A few more and she wouldn’t give a damn.

Except she had to give a damn. She had to make a decision.

Jimmy’s message said a couple of weeks. That wasn’t much time. Thirty years
was
a lot of time, though. Thirty years since the inquest into her mother’s death. Thirty years trying to outrun demons she wasn’t even sure were real. Maybe Jimmy wasn’t the only reason to return to Peak, or even the best one. New York didn’t offer much at the moment—no work, no love life, a handful of acquaintances she barely saw anymore. Maybe it was time to stop running and finally confront those demons—real or imagined—while Peak still belonged to her. Maybe it was simply time to go home.

Leslie felt stiff and cranky, the highway a blur of asphalt and gritty guardrail as she crossed over into North Carolina. It had taken just three days to tie up the loose ends of her life, a fact she found too depressing to examine in any depth. The truth was, aside from her apartment, which she’d managed to sublet to an old work colleague, and a designer wardrobe she had consigned to storage with the certainty that she’d never wear any of it again, there had been precious little to handle.