“I guess we’re all two-faced like that. There’s a face we keep hidden away from the world, and nobody knows what dark thoughts hide behind it,” one of the neighbors had said to Joy.
Joy knew enough of the world to be able to understand that Beppe could be both a loving uncle and a conscienceless murderer. She just couldn’t get herself to believe it.
Her car pulled into a driveway and Joy looked up. She laughed. Sure enough, she had made her way to Uncle Beppe’s farm. The farm was a curious thing. It was an acre or so of untended land, quite wild in appearance. The house was little more than a cottage, with an old, boarded-over well next to it. Birds moved freely all over around, nesting in trees and hopping through flowerbeds. Philbert, guardian of them all, stood tall by a hedge, pecking at the ground with a certain majesty in his movements.
“Heya, Philly. Is Uncle Beppe home?” Joy called out, as she always did. In response, the bird turned it’s back to her and continued to peck at the ground.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She smiled. She walked up the driveway, kicking at the loose gravel as she moved, knowing the back door would be unlocked. The kitchen was a mess, of course. A hen had settled atop the microwave and an injured pigeon with a splint on one leg sat on the dining table.
Uncle Beppe loved birds…truly loved them. He made some money occasionally selling them to families as pets, but spent most of what he earned on rescuing and rehabilitating others in need. The rest of it he spent on booze.
Joy went down to the basement and, sure enough, Uncle Beppe was fast asleep in an old easy chair with his feet propped up. Joy knocked twice on an overhead beam and he woke up, blinking at her.
“Sweetie? What are you doing here?” Uncle Beppe cleared his throat.
“I came to see you.” Joy felt her heart well in pity at the way her uncle was living. Murderer or not, he needed to change his lifestyle. The family had tried many interventions over the years, but Beppe had stubbornly refused to change anything.
“Sit, come on.” He pointed to another beat-up armchair and Joy sank down into it.
“Is this about your Uncle Pietro? I’m going to go see him tonight. He and your Aunt Giulia are both being discharged soon. Your Aunt Sophia said we should make them a week’s worth of food.”
“No. That isn’t it. Dad told me about Lauren,” she said, watching his face carefully.
Immediately, guilt and regret flowed across his face. He looked away from her and at the ground. “Ah…Lauren.”
“Dad thinks that the attack on Uncle Pietro had something to do with her death,” Joy said.
“What? That’s impossible,” Uncle Beppe said. “That happened years and years ago.”
“Was it you, Uncle? Did you really kill her?” Joy was still hoping against hope that he’d tell her it was all a lie, a misunderstanding of some kind. But her uncle looked down at the floor and crossed his hands across his chest.
“You did,” Joy said. “Didn’t you?”
“I need a drink,” Uncle Beppe said. He tried to get up but, with surprising speed, Joy pushed him back down onto his chair.
“You’re going nowhere until you tell me the truth,” she said. “I need to hear it from you. All of it.”
“Why?” Uncle Beppe croaked. “Why do you want to do that to me? It’s over. It happened years ago. I made my confession, I was let go. That’s the end of it.”
“What do you mean you made your confession?” Lauren frowned. “Dad said he helped you cover it up.”
Uncle Beppe sighed. “Look, when it all happened—”
“When what happened? Tell me everything.”
“Fine. You have to understand, I was in love with her. No…not just love…the entirety of my soul was in her hands. It wasn’t just love, it was madness,” Uncle Beppe said. “The kind of madness that changes you forever. I didn’t care about anything but her. I didn’t care about what people thought of me, I didn’t care about our families, I only cared that she and I would stay together forever.”
“And so?”
“And so…I was devastated when her father decided she would marry Chip instead of me,” Uncle Beppe said. “I said I’d do anything to prevent that, and I meant it.”
Joy felt a bubble of anxiety rise up inside her. She thought she’d been ready to hear this, but she wasn’t.
“When her father turned me away, I couldn’t handle it. I went a little crazy. Finally, after endless begging and pleading, Lauren agreed to go out with me one last time,” Beppe said. “She came by to pick me up and I drove….I always did when we went out. Her car was a beauty and I was too poor to afford one of my own. As we were driving, Lauren told me that we had to be practical, that life didn’t always go the way we wanted it. She told me that she was moving on and that I should go and be happy.” Beppe laughed. “Fat chance of that.”
“And then?”
“I was driving and we were arguing,” Uncle Beppe said. “We were arguing with each other and…that’s all I remember. I blacked out somehow. When I came to, the car was wrapped around a tree and Lauren was dead.”
“Just like that?” Joy was skeptical. “You must remember something.”
“I don’t. That’s what’s so horrible about it. Half the reason I drink is to try and remember…the other half is to hope I forget.”
“What next?” Joy asked.
“I found a phone and called my father, your Nonno,” Beppe explained. “He told me to stay where I was, and came running. I was still barely conscious. Your Nonno did everything after that. He pushed the car and Lauren into the lake, he took me and gave me stitches and then he brought me home and tried to coach me on my alibi.”
Joy was horrified. “Nonno did that? Our Nonno?”
“He said he didn’t want my life ruined because of an accident. You see, I drank the night before…drank a lot…and my father was convinced I might go to jail if they found out.”
“Were you still drunk when you drove?” Joy asked.
“I really don’t know,” Uncle Beppe said. “All I know is that I was completely in shock for a day or two. I couldn’t do anything more than sit in one place and stare at the wall. My brain just wasn’t working. When it finally did begin to work, I hated myself. I hated that I’d caused so much misery. I decided to confess everything to Lauren’s father.”
“You what?! Does Dad know this?”
“No. He doesn’t. Only your Nonno and I knew. We went to Lauren’s house together and I told Arthur Sullivan everything. Everything I could remember.”
“And then what?”
“And then…he forgave me,” Beppe said. “I still don’t understand it. It felt like a curse, not a relief. He told me he didn’t need to do anything further to punish me. That I’d done the job myself.”
“He forgave you? Lauren’s father forgave you?”
“I know. I couldn’t believe it, either. I still don’t. But grief changes a man, I suppose. I never understood why he forgave me, and he never told the cops that I was the one who was driving her car that day. Your Nonno said we forever owed that family a debt for what he did. I suppose that’s why your Nonno gave half the house to Aurora. It was his way of trying to repay the debt. As if that was equal payment…”
The world seemed to still. Outside, birds squawked and trilled. Cars zoomed by on the highway in the distance. A clock ticked somewhere far away. But all Joy could hear was a ringing sound in her own head.
“Aurora?” she said blankly.
“Aurora, of course.” Beppe nodded. “It’s her family, isn’t it? Arthur Sullivan was her grandfather. Trevor Sullivan was her father.”
“I…I didn’t know. Nobody knew.”
“It was obvious the second I looked at her,” Beppe said. “She looked so much like Lauren. The family resemblance is obvious. I was surprised nobody else put it together. Chip did, I suppose, since he’s the lawyer. He must have done a background search.”
“But…but Aurora never even mentioned her father.
She said her mother raised her alone.”
“Well, Trevor was a bad sort. Lauren’s father died soon after she did - a broken heart, I’d say. Trevor lived on, but he went to jail for something. He’s been in and out of jail all his life.” Beppe looked ashamed. “Sometimes I think I’m to blame for that, too. I ruined three lives that day, not just Lauren’s. The whole family has me to blame.”
“And that’s why you drink?” Joy asked. “Everything you are, everything you do - it’s been shaped by those few fateful moments you can’t even remember.”
Beppe gave her a watery smile. “You could say that. I don’t deserve to live, Joy. What I did was unforgivable. Lauren’s father was right when he said that I’d find a way to punish myself. I have. The only thing I do is try to forget.”
Joy didn’t know what to say. Perhaps she should have been disgusted, or angry, or repulsed. But all she could feel was pity for her uncle, and she realized she understood what Nonno had been thinking when he tried to cover up the evidence of Lauren’s death. Uncle Beppe might have caused her to die, but Joy found she couldn’t help but love him all the same. He was still the same good man she knew, and she knew there was no malice involved in Lauren’s death. It was a tragic accident - that was all.
Only…someone who loved Lauren might not think the same way. A Sullivan might think that Uncle Beppe had committed a crime that deserved punishment. Aurora, for example, who claimed she knew nothing about why Nonno had left her the house.
Wasn’t it too much of a coincidence that Chip had died only one day after Aurora came into town? Besides, if Joy’s father’s theory was right and the killer had just gotten confused about the houses, then it had to be someone new to town. No local would make a mistake like that.
But an outsider, like Aurora, might.
*****
Chapter 17
The Calendar
“Good Morning.”
Aurora looked up from the middle of a cardboard box and smiled. She’d come to work early today, and had already begun working at organizing the files. Slowly, surely, what had seemed like a heap of impossible work had begun to look manageable. The key, Aurora knew, was to break a giant lump of tedious work into the smallest possible pieces. That way, you could make headway one piece at a time. Otherwise, the dusty files were quite intimidating.
In a strange way, Aurora felt like a detective - she was trying her hardest to find the logic behind Henrietta’s filing system. Nothing was alphabetical, of course, nor was it grouped by topic. Yet Aurora couldn’t help but feel that there was a certain design behind it all. After all, from what Max had told her, Henrietta had never taken more than two minutes to locate a file. If Aurora could only figure out what logic she had used, her work would be cut by half.
Max was holding out a box of donuts and a coffee.
“Want some?” he asked, shaking the box.
“That looks like heaven.” She smiled. “I don’t mind if I do.” She picked out a pistachio donut and bit into it, sighing with satisfaction. It had a hazelnut-chocolate filling. “Amazing.” The coffee, however, was tepid, muddy water.
“Sorry. I know it’s bad coffee,” Max said, seeing her expression as she sipped it. “I usually get my morning coffee from Pietro’s Café. But you probably know what happened, right? The explosion?”
“Yes.” Aurora shuddered. “It was quite horrible. I wonder who did it, and why.”
“It’s all anyone in town’s talking about,” Max said. “People are linking it to my uncle’s death, too.”
“Any word from the police about either?” Aurora asked.
Max shook his head. “Chief Brooks and his men are really friendly folk. But I think they’re a little out of their depth here. I wouldn’t be surprised if they borrowed a detective from the neighboring county. I think they should, personally. Come on, take a break with me.”
“I will, thanks.” Aurora followed him out onto a tiny balcony adjoining what had been Chip’s office, and the two of them sat down on cane furniture. Chip’s office stood just three buildings away from Pietro’s Café and, from the balcony, Aurora could see both the café and the lovely, little church opposite it. Bells began to chime just as they sat down.
“It’s tradition.” Max smiled at Aurora’s confusion. “The town bells ring at nine every morning and five every evening. Back in the day, it was a handy way for people to know when to go to work and when to stop for the day.”
“It’s lovely,” Aurora said. The sky was overcast and there was a heaviness to the air that foretold rain. She sipped her coffee, bit into her donut and thought back to New York. Rain in New York meant grimy streets, people shaking their fists as cars splashed through puddles and a world that turned monochrome-gray. Here, impending rain made the surrounding fields look even greener.
Despite everything, Aurora felt like coming here had been the best decision she could have made. Bent River had the potential to be her home for a lifetime - she could feel it in her bones. A rough start didn’t mean anything.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Max poked her shoulder.
“Nothing.” Aurora smiled. “Hey, I meant to ask you, did Henrietta ever write anything down? Do you have something she might have used, like a notebook?”
“Hmm,” Max considered this. “There’s one thing that might help. It’s on Uncle Chip’s desk. Hang on. I’ll get it for you.” He went inside and returned with a blue composition notebook. “There you go. She used it as a calendar.”
“Thanks.” Aurora shrugged. She had been hoping for something that would explain the filing but, as administrative assistant, the calendar was a necessary tool, too.
She flipped through the pages. Henrietta had scrawled her own dates on it and had about five years of data in one book. Aurora noticed that mostly, the same people came in on the same days of the week: Mrs. Smith on Fridays, Mr. Fennel on Wednesdays, Peter VanBilt on Tuesdays.
The very last entries were scribbled in, in a different handwriting. Presumably, this was Chip, filling his own calendar after Henrietta had quit. Aurora’s eyes flicked over them without thinking. Trevor Smackwell, 11am Tuesday. This was followed, in a different colored pen, by Katie Pendant, Manhattan, Thursday Lunch.
“Wait a minute.” Aurora shot up, suddenly excited. “That’s it! That’s it!” She rummaged through the pages and gave Max an eager look. “I’ve got it, Max!”
“What’s that?” Max looked bemused.
“Henrietta’s system, of course! She didn’t file things by topic or alphabet. She did it by the day of the week that client came in! Smith on Friday, Fennel on Wednesday! Of course! I see it now! That’s the pattern I’ve been missing!” She could have danced.
“What does that mean for us?” Max smiled.
“It means I’ll be able to organize your files today…all of them!” Aurora grinned. “I can’t wait!”
“You really love this.” Max laughed. “You must be the only person on all of planet earth to get excited about organizing files.”
“It’s no different than an architect getting excited about building a house,” Aurora replied. “A filing system is a thing of grace and beauty when done right. And I’m going to do it right!”
“Go for it,” Max said. “I’ll be here supplying all the coffee and donuts you need.”
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