The Secrets She Carried (43 page)

A hot lump formed in her throat. She tried to swallow it, but it remained. “Been doing a little early spring cleaning?”

“Something like that. Can you come? I’d really like to get rid of them.” He surprised her by smiling. “I’ll feed you, if that sweetens the deal.”

Leslie tried to ignore the little giddyup in her belly, warning herself just how fickle that smile could be. “Um…sure. Let me check on Jimmy and grab my coat, and I’ll be over.”

He was standing in the doorway when she reached the cottage, waiting for Belle to finish investigating a pile of soggy brown leaves. “Watch yourself,” he warned as she stepped past him. “The place is a disaster.”

She felt a sickening pang of dread as she looked around the tiny parlor. Everything the man owned seemed to have been yanked from its closet, shelf, or drawer: battered textbooks, laceless shoes, and other household wreckage, all ready for packing into the large empty cartons stacked by the front door.

“You’ve been busy,” she said stiffly. “I thought you said you were staying.”

“For six months, yes.” He kept his back to her while he spoke, rummaging through a carton of old sweaters. “I figured it might be a good time to sort through some of this stuff while I’ve got a little downtime. Come spring there’ll be lots to do for the opening, and then plenty of loose ends to tie up. The boxes I told you about are in that corner.”

Leslie hurled a scowl at his back. She had hoped he’d have second thoughts about leaving. Instead, it seemed he was counting the days. She thought of Angie’s advice—
make damn sure he stays
—and wondered how she was supposed to do that when he clearly already had one foot out the door. Wishing now that she hadn’t come, she eyed the
trio of boxes Jay had indicated, bulging with an assortment of lampshades, cookware, vases, and shoe trees. It was hard to imagine finding anything worth keeping in the tangle of castoffs. Still, she rolled up her sleeves and bent to the task, leaving Jay to his own boxes.

An hour and a half later she had finally neared the bottom of the last box. She lifted out the last two items, a dented teakettle and a small, flattish box. The teakettle she cast aside, only slightly more interested in the box. Its weight told her it wasn’t empty, but years of heat and grit had glued the lid fast. Using the heel of her hand, she wiped away layers of dust until the words
LA PALINA DE LUX
appeared.

“Hey, is this yours?” she asked over her shoulder, giving the box a rattle.

Jay left a stack of old magazines to join her in the corner. “What’ve you got?” He took the box, wiping a bit more dust from the lid. “It’s an old cigar box. And no, it isn’t mine.” Prying the lid loose, he peered inside. “Looks like an old sewing box.”

After a brief, disinterested pick through its contents, he handed it back. Leslie poked at a tangle of spools, a cloth doll riddled with tarnished straight pins, a measuring tape and thimble.

“It isn’t just a sewing box,” she said softly, her eyes fixed on its contents. “It’s
her
sewing box.”

Jay heaved an impatient sigh, then turned on his heel and headed for the kitchen.

Leslie trailed after him with the box. “But this could be something.”

“It is. It’s a sewing box.”

Leslie groaned. “You know what I mean.”

She waited while he foraged for a Milk-Bone and tossed it to Belle, then waited again while he washed his hands, and tried again.

“I don’t understand you at all. The day I found the manuscript you told me you were so haunted by Adele’s story that the only way to get it
out of your head was to write it all down. Now you don’t give a damn about how it ends? That doesn’t make sense.”

“You think the answer’s in that box?” he shot back, the familiar pulse ticking angrily at his jaw.

“I never said that. But every time I come anywhere near the subject, you bite my head off, walk away, or both, and I don’t know why. I care about how Adele’s story ends because of what you wrote. How can you not care at all?”

“You think I don’t?” His eyes flashed briefly before he turned away, hands fisted on the edge of the counter. “The difference is I’ve had time to think it all through, to think about where those questions might lead. I was here, Leslie. I saw Maggie’s face when she tried to talk about it.”

But Leslie was barely listening, her attention fixed on the contents of the box: an old cloth tape measure, a small tin of buttons, a packet of needles, a hopeless tangle of spools. Then, near the bottom, a square of calico tied with a faded grosgrain ribbon.

“Jay…look at this.”

His expression was dark when he turned, annoyed. She held up the neatly tied parcel, then laid it in her lap, setting to work on the ribbon with unsteady hands. When the knot finally gave way and the folds of cloth were peeled back, she stared down at a plain white envelope and a case of deep green velvet.

“What is it?” His voice had lost some of its edge as he came to stand beside her.

Leslie lifted the case, small enough to fit into her palm, fitted with a tiny metal hasp. Her heart thrummed as she flicked it open and lifted the lid.

“It’s a necklace,” she breathed, holding the pendant up, a tiny book of tarnished silver.

Jay took the necklace and laid it in his palm to examine it.

“It’s a book locket,” he said finally. “My grandmother had one. See
that little notch? You just get your thumb in there, and pop.” The clasp released with a neat metallic snick. He handed it back, letting the chain puddle in her palm. “Open it.”

Her hands were clammy as she teased the wings of the locket apart. Her breath left her softly as a pair of faces appeared, the first a girl with dark hair and a mouth like a rosebud, the other a chubby-cheeked boy in a sailor suit, his head a mass of shiny-bright ringlets.

Leslie’s eyes met Jay’s, wide and full of questions. When it was clear he would say nothing, she teased the girl’s photo from its tiny frame. She was hoping for some sort of identification but found a lock of hair instead. It was darker than ink as it spilled into her palm, as soft and fine as silk. Behind the second photo was another scrap of hair, a single copper ringlet.

“Two babies,” she breathed, staring down at the mismatched locks of hair. “And we don’t know what happened to either one.”

Jay cleared his throat, a dry, uncomfortable rasp that got Leslie’s attention. He had opened the envelope and was reading the yellowed but carefully folded pages, his eyes moving rapidly from line to line. Finally, he looked up, his face an astonished blank.

“I think we know what happened to one of them,” Jay said, handing over the papers.

Leslie slumped against the back of the chair as she read the first line.

Contract to Secure Legal Adoption.

Horror took the place of confusion as she read on, her hands growing unsteady as she reached the document’s end. The signatures at the bottom swam dizzyingly, but there was no mistaking what the paper meant. Slowly, methodically, she folded the single sheet back along its creases and laid it in her lap. Her head came up, eyes wide as they met Jay’s.

“Maggie…was Adele’s,” she said softly.

“Yes.”

“That was the secret, then, the thing Maggie never told you.”

Jay’s eyes shifted to the floor. “I don’t think so. It was something else, something…worse.”

“What’s worse than learning your mother isn’t really your mother, that the woman who gave birth to you gave you up to her rival?”

“The fire.”

Leslie could only gape at him, trying to make sense of his response, of the uncanny stillness in his body as he stood looking back at her. And then, suddenly, she understood.

“You think it was her,” she said quietly, rocked by the words even as they left her mouth. “All the times you wouldn’t talk about it, that’s what you were thinking, that Maggie set the fire, that she killed Adele?”

“She was a child, Leslie. Her father had a new family. Jealous children sometimes do desperate things. I don’t want to believe it. God knows I’ve spent a year trying not to, but I saw her face, and I can’t forget it.”

Leslie stared at the locket, all apart now on the tiny kitchen table, and tried to imagine how Maggie must have felt about her father’s new family—a family that could never really include her since legally, she belonged to Susanne. She tried to envision an eight-year-old girl bolting the shed door and striking the match, but it was impossible. Wasn’t it? Or was it the story Landis Porter refused to tell?

“I guess I get why you didn’t want to know. And why you won’t finish the book.”

“I’m sorry.” Jay dropped his arms to his sides, then quickly recrossed them. “It’s also why I tried to steer you away from the whole thing and why I didn’t show you the manuscript. I hated the idea of you thinking what I did.”

Leslie stood abruptly. “I need to get home,” she said woodenly. She fumbled briefly with the locket, trying to get it back together, then backed away, leaving it where it was. “I need to feed Jimmy. And I need time to digest all this.”

Adele

H
enry is sending our boy away.

I am relieved, mostly, though I know full well the toll his leaving will take on poor Henry. He waited so long for a son and now must give him up. Still, it is the wise thing to do, and the safe thing.

The morning he is to leave, Henry brings Maggie to the cottage to say good-bye. She’s as pale as milk, and thinner than I remember, with a kind of frailty about her that is new and so very hard for me to see. Her lashes are wet with tears, clumped like dark stars about her smoky eyes as she stares up at her daddy, her mouth working in a soundless plea.

It breaks my heart to see her so tortured—even after all that has happened. She is too young to carry such grief, or such remorse, a child come face-to-face with passions she is too young to understand, but whose consequences she must now live with. I only hope and pray that one day she will learn to forgive.

Jemmy has no idea what is happening. He giggles gleefully when Maggie throws her arms around his neck, hanging on to him for dear life. When her daddy finally peels them apart, Maggie wails pitifully that it isn’t fair. She doesn’t understand why he must go, why she must lose someone else. She has lost too much already.

Henry is nearly out the door when Maggie rushes forward to press her beloved Violet into Jemmy’s chubby hands. He gurgles happily, planting a noisy kiss on the doll’s smooth porcelain cheek. Until today, Violet has been off-limits, but now, as I look at the doll’s shiny dark ringlets and wide, unblinking eyes, at her rosy pout of a mouth, I suddenly understand the gesture. For Maggie, the doll is no longer Violet, but a tender keepsake, the only part of her that can go with him.

At the train station, Mama is already waiting.

Henry spots her instantly. But then, he would; folks always said I was the spitting image of her. Her eyes lock on Jemmy the minute she spies him, perched high on Henry’s shoulders, his head of copper curls bobbing brightly above the rest. Her dark eyes suddenly swim with tears, but she manages to keep them from spilling. Mama always did know how to hold in a good cry. Lord knows, life’s given her plenty enough practice. She looks tired; not old, but worn down, her once lovely face creased now and weary, a map of all her sorrows. And now I have given her another. I only hope Jemmy will atone.

He is wriggling like a fish in Henry’s arms, clutching the already bedraggled Violet tight to his chest, suddenly shy in front of this woman who is staring at him so intently, a woman who looks somehow like his mother but is not. Mama reaches out a finger to brush back one of his curls, and he quiets, breaking into a broad, toothy grin. I’m startled to see how much he looks like Mama just then and sad that I have never noticed it until now.

When Mama’s gaze finally shifts to Henry, there is blood in her eye, as if she believes he killed me with his own two hands. Henry says nothing, just stands there clutching the boy, his head bent low, as if he believes it too. Her eyes drag over him, glittering and slow, wanting to hate, to blame, but I see she cannot. She sees his sadness instead, the black grief he carries in his bones now, like a virus, and in that instant they are kindred spirits, allies in loss. She knows that he loved me. For Mama, that is enough.

The conductor is standing at the edge of the platform, periodically checking the large silver watch chained at his ample waist. Henry’s spine stiffens at the sight of him. It’s time to hand Jemmy over to Mama, and it’s tearing him to pieces. Jemmy resists, clutching wildly at his father’s suspenders, back arched stiffly in protest, eyes wide and uncomprehending.

“Go on now, son,” Henry says gruffly, the first words he has uttered since leaving the house. “Go with your gran, and be a big boy.”

But the words mean nothing to Jemmy. He keeps on with his struggling, then sets up a whine that echoes down the platform, catching the eye of several passersby. Henry tries again. This time Mama’s arms wrap him up tight, cradling him against her brown wool coat, and for a moment I sting with jealousy, though I am not sure if this is because I am afraid my son will forget me, or because I wish it were me wrapped up in Mama’s arms.