Necessary Evil

by Killarney Traynor

  “Sure, why not?” I said.

  She nodded and turned back to her computer. “I wish they lived closer. I’d send them some in one of my baskets.”

  Basket weaving was the only hobby that my aunt kept up in the past few years. I suspected that was largely due to Darlene, who wove with her, but the nature of the activity - the simplicity of the supplies, the tidy, methodical weave, the satisfaction of the final product – has a soothing effect on the practitioner. Before Aunt Susanna’s fall, the hobby required her to spend hours outside collecting supplies, or pouring over guides and handbooks, looking for trickier weaves or new techniques. Aunt Susanna and Darlene would collect willows, and then spend afternoons weaving them into the most fantastically shaped baskets, some of which won prizes at local fairs. She had three to enter this year and I was determined to see to it that she went to the fair, her protestations of weakness notwithstanding.

  “You can’t really mail a basket of flowers from here to California,” she was saying wistfully. “Which is too bad, because the one I’m making now would be perfect for her.” She checked her watch and started to rise. “I’ve got to rush. Darlene will be here any minute.”

  I handed her the walker, then turned to the cabinets, rummaging for my breakfast. “You have an appointment today?” I asked.

  “No, Mass.”

  Despite myself, I felt my spine stiffen. Of course. It was Sunday, and if there was one thing that Aunt Susanna never forgot to do, no matter how deep her depression, it was to go to Mass. I used to be as faithful, but lately, I’ve been overbooked. I knew she wasn’t going to be happy about my absence.

  “Oh, right,” I said, keeping my back to her.

  “We’re going to the eight a.m. Mass today,” she informed my back. “We like the music there better. They’ve got that new keyboardist, the one who went to Berkeley. He’s very good – you should come and hear him.”

  “I can’t today, but thanks.”

  Silence for a moment. I found some stale corn flakes and made a mental note to go to the grocery store, wondering when on earth I’d find time to do that, too. Suddenly, I felt overwhelmed and fought the urge to bury my face in my hands and scream.

  Aunt Susanna asked, “Are you going later?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve got lessons all morning, then Lindsay and I have to do the stall cleaning.”

  We thoroughly clean out the stalls at least once a month while the horses are out in the paddocks, and always try to do it on a dry day, so the horses don’t immediately track mud in. It’s a long, hard afternoon’s work, but necessary and overdue. I prayed that my aunt would know to let this go.

  She didn’t.

  “Maddie,” she said, with that note of quiet concern in her tone that was meant to comfort me, but instead set my teeth further on edge. “You can’t do this anymore. You have to take time out, to rest, to pray, to spend time with God. You can’t let work be your life. Come on, Maddie. Cancel the classes and come with me instead.”

  “Cancel the classes!” I barked, turning on her. “Cancel the classes? Susanna, I already had to reschedule the Bailey girl twice this week and Mrs. Taylor is already upset because it’s me and not Lindsay teaching her kids. These people will leave us if we don’t pay attention to them. The Baileys will take Greybeard with them, and if there’s one thing we can’t afford to do, it’s lose a paying customer. We’re barely keeping afloat and you want me to take the day off? No. I can’t go. You go. And say ‘hi’ to God for me while you’re at it.”

  I turned again and yanked a bowl out of the cupboard, annoyed at myself as much as at her. I heard Aunt Susanna shuffle slowly out of the kitchen and down the hall, to where we’d set up a temporary bedroom for her in what had been the TV room. Immediately, a wave of regret washed over me. I shouldn’t have lost my temper, not at her. But sometimes her simple faith drove me crazy. She believed in miracles – I believed in that old maxim: the Lord helps them that help themselves. At that moment, neither of us had much to show for our beliefs.

  By the time she finished dressing, I’d calmed down enough to apologize and she accepted, but I could tell she was not happy.

  That made two of us.

  Chapter 3:

  That night, Aunt Susanna found me sitting dreamy-eyed in the office, with Joe Tremonti’s professional page pulled up on my computer screen. She was in a good mood, having spent the better part of the day with Darlene and a few church friends.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked. The desk was near the door and despite her handicap, she was able to see the screen before I could switch it. “Joe Tremonti! Goodness, he hasn’t changed, has he?”

  I disagreed. The years had touched him, but gently, aging him to perfection - hardening the always admirable jaw line and dusting his thick, dark hair with the right amount of gray. His smile was just as I remembered it: mischievous and even dangerous - and in this professional photo, even after all these years, it was enough to set my heart pattering.

  “Did you know that he was back in the area?” I asked, as casually as I could manage, which was quite the trick.

  Aunt Susanna glanced at the photo and the long list of accomplishments, and shook her head. “I didn’t. I was surprised when I read the article.” She leaned over, took my mouse, and began scrolling down, slowly. “Has he been in touch with you?”

  “No.”

  My face was flaming, both at being caught and from the knowledge that a crush from my teenage years could still be so powerful. I got up abruptly, offered her the chair, then grabbed an armload of files and hurried over to the cabinet to put them away. I said, casually, “When I saw his name in the article today, I became curious and searched for him. He’s guest lecturing at that university while writing a book.” I pulled open a drawer and began to sort files.

  Aunt Susanna scanned the write-up with interest. “I read his book, you know,” she said softly.

  “Which one?” I asked. He’d written several bestsellers, two historical and one historical fiction. I’d read them all, several times.

  “The one that mentioned the dig,” she said, clicking in a distracted way. “The one here on the farm. You remember.”

  I remembered. Ten years ago, when I was seventeen, Joseph Tremonti was an assistant at the local college who’d just gotten a grant from the state to do a historical dig. A popular teacher for obvious reasons, he had the volunteer manpower to do it but was at a loss for a site. When Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth turned him down, a student oh his - one of our riders- remembered that my uncle, while digging out a section of the yard for a cement pad, discovered an old knife that dated back to 1820. Joe went to see it on display at the library, then offered my uncle a deal: if he allowed his team to conduct a dig, Joe would pay to install the cement pad himself. Uncle Michael, excited by more by the idea of the dig than the cement pad, was easily persuaded.

  It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I was a rough and tumble kid who hadn’t much interest in either history or boys. The dig changed that. For six weeks, our yard was covered with college kids and the teacher with the Hollywood good looks who insisted that I join in on the fun. With his flashing smile, intelligent humor, and graceful yet rugged mannerisms, I was a goner before I even knew I had a heart. That summer was momentous: I grew up, and Uncle Michael discovered his passion for the past - a passion that would lead to his untimely accident.

  I looked at the wall over the filing cabinet. In a dusty old frame was the group photo we’d taken at the Dig’s End Party, the last night we’d all been together. Joe Tremonti was in the middle, his confidence radiating even through the passage of time.

  It amused Aunt Susanna then that the team was mostly comprised of girls. I remember mixed feelings of jealousy, admiration, and kinship with those older, seemingly sophisticated young women. In the group photo, I’d somehow managed to stand next to Joe. A messy-haired, sun-browned kid, I was beaming like a lottery winner - standing next to my crush, who
’d condescended to put his arm around my shoulder. I’d felt like a woman then.

  Now, looking at the photo, I saw me as I was: a child who was about to experience her first heartbreak over a boy, a girl who didn’t see the impossibility of a seventeen-year-old’s love for a twenty-four-year-old.

  That was ten years ago and I’d aged considerably. A lot had happened since then.

  But that night wasn’t the last time I’d seen Joe. That had been at Uncle Michael’s funeral.

  ***

  We buried Uncle Michael on a miserably hot and humid day. The church had no air conditioning, so we sweltered during the Mass and the lengthily eulogies. Then the priest, with a stately elegance no humidity could touch, incensed the coffin, and we formed a line to follow him to the cars.

  Aunt Susanna’s brother and his wife, both from North Carolina, escorted her, staying close as she silently wept, leading the long train of neighbors and friends outside, where it was only slightly cooler. They were too absorbed in their own grief to notice when I slipped away to the side, hiding in the shadow of the choir loft staircase. When the doors closed and I was alone, I sat down and cried for the first time.

  I hadn’t time to cry before. There were too many arrangements to make, too many decisions that Aunt Susanna was too prostrate to handle, and I was afraid that my tears would only add to her grief.

  So I sat in the silent staircase, and sobbed. When the door wrenched open unexpectedly, I barely contained a scream.

  Joe Tremonti was framed in the doorway. “Maddie?”

  No one had expected the rising academic star to show up at the funeral, least of all me. Aside from that summer, our family had no connection with the man; but there he was, late, his impeccably tailored suit adorably untucked, rushing only to find that the grieving party had already left for the cemetery and me, a shivering, miserable wreck, crying on the choir loft stairs.

  Seeing him was like discovering a freshwater lake in the middle of the desert: tall, handsome, and kind, pulling me into his arms and letting me sob on his shoulder. I wasn’t too upset to notice that he still wore the same cologne that he’d used when we were at the dig together.

  “Maddie,” he whispered in my hair. “I’m so sorry, Maddie.”

  I’d dreamed about Joe coming back into my life. I’d scripted dozens of witty conversations, imagined me throwing my head back, laughing, looking like Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, only with reddish curly hair. But that day, tears overflowing my swollen eyes, my scripted lines left me. My wits as well.

  “They killed him, Joe,” was the first thing I said. “They killed him.”

  We sat hidden together on the choir loft stairs for a long time. He listened while I cried. I told him about the treasure hunters, and the holes, and the accident, reliving the scene as I spoke. I must have sounded like a mad woman – all I could see were trespassers, flooding our land, leaving holes and destruction, gold-blind to the death they caused, and I began to shiver uncontrollably, despite the heat.

  “They killed him and they’re still there, Joe,” I whispered, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. “They just. Keep. Digging. I found another hole this morning. Another bloody hole!”

  If I hadn’t just cried myself tearless, I would have crumbled again. But I had nothing left to give, just a hollow emptiness and a dreadful fear: that we’d never be free of this cursed treasure story, nor of the ever-present intruders.

  “Oh, Maddie,” Joe said again.

  The others had returned by then. We heard them entering the church basement, the faint sounds of laughter and chatter signifying warmth, security, and kinship. I felt alone, as though I were a million miles away, kept away by a force far more insurmountable than distance. And even though Joe was there, his profile in sharp relief against the light of the doorway, his shoulder brushing mine, his handkerchief crumbled in my hands – even he was there only temporarily. I, and I alone, would have to face the future.

  To keep myself from sliding into despair, I turned to anger.

  “They won’t believe that there is nothing to find,” I snapped in a whisper. “They will keep looking for it – why would they stop now when even Mark Dulles’ failure wouldn’t stop them?”

  “They’ll stop,” Joe said softly, “once definitive proof is found.”

  I laughed, bitterly. “Definitive proof! How can you prove something isn’t there?”

  He looked at me, with just the slightest hint of a smile.

  “That,” he said, “is the right question.”

  ***

  I don’t know how long I’d been staring at the photo, but I was in a deep enough reverie to be startled when Aunt Susanna said, “He’s writing another book!”

  Shaking my head clear, I put the files on top of the cabinet and went back to the desk to take a look. “He is? What about?”

  She pointed at the screen. She had followed a link to the Braeburn College Journal, where the headline announced, Popular lecturer on loan to Mass.

  Still reading, Susanna said, “According to this, he’s writing a book on the Carignan Diaries while he’s guest lecturing. That had some connection to the Civil War, too, which I remember was a favorite subject of his. He was forever talking to Michael about it.” She frowned, seeming confused. “Now, I wonder why he’s doing that, and not something about the Beaumont letter. He was so interested when you sent it to him, and now that he’s in the area, he’d be able to see it whenever he wants...”

  Before she could think too much about it, I pointed out the second to last paragraph of the article. “It says right there. Apparently, this was the project that Professor Maddox was working on when he died and the family asked him to finish it.”

  “For joint credit, I’ll bet,” she said, and before I could question her remark, she read aloud, “Professor Tremonti is looking forward to his return to New England, where he received his Masters and first worked as a student-teacher. ‘I’m looking forward to connecting with old friends,’ he stated. ‘And as much as I love sunny California, it’ll be great experiencing a real New England winter again.’ Professor Tremonti confirmed that he will be bringing his skis and snowshoes.” She sat back in her chair. “I didn’t know he was an outdoorsman.”

  “Oh, sure you did,” I said. “Don’t you remember all those afternoons he stayed late to ride with Uncle Michael and me, and that time we took him waterskiing on Winnipesauke? He took a group up Mount Washington, the hard way. I remember because you wouldn’t let me go.” I stroked the keyboard and went back to the original page, musing, “I still have his phone number. I should send him a text sometime.”

  I must have looked even dreamier than I thought, because there was a sharp note in Aunt Susanna’s voice when she said, “He’s still married, Maddie.”

  Like a bucket of ice water, that jolted me out of my half-formed daydream, and before I could stop myself, my eyes went to his hands. Yes – there was that gold band. I hadn’t noticed before. Something like an iron band snapped around my heart and I experienced a sharp, embarrassing jolt of disappointment.

  He was married. I hadn’t been the only heartbroken girl when he announced it that night at the Dig’s End party, but I was probably the hardest hit. I remember him standing in the glow of the bonfire, his cheeks flushed, his hands trembling as he lifted his soda can high and shouted, “Congratulate me, my friends. She said ‘yes’!”

  Most of the other girls had brought boyfriends or friends with them to the party, so they had support when they cheered in celebration. But I had no one except Uncle Michael and Aunt Susanna, and I was too embarrassed to confide in them. I remember holding it together until the congratulations calmed down, then I made an excuse and hid in the stables to cry until Aunt Susanna found me.

  “Men like him are always breaking young girls’ hearts,” she’d told me that night. “His kind aren’t worth it, Maddie.”

  Back then, I’d wondered why she’d taken such a dislike to Joe. When Aunt Susanna, now gathering her
walker to leave the room, said, “Although I doubt a little thing like that would really discourage a man like him,” I learned that time had done little to change her mind.

  I wasn’t seventeen anymore and had no business mooning over a married man. All the same, I felt the need to defend Joe. Aunt Susanna didn’t know the debt of gratitude she owed him. How could she, when I never told her how that Beaumont letter got into the trunk in the attic?

  “Geez!” I said lightly. “I was thinking about getting a coffee together, not starting a passionate romance! I’s a good girl, I am,” I added, and she laughed as she began her slow march into the kitchen.

  “I’m making tea. Want some?” she called over her shoulder.

  “Sure, after I bed the tenants,” I said.

  I made a habit of checking all the occupied stables every evening before turning in. I pulled on my boots, called for our dog Trusty, and went out.

  It was a beautiful night. Above my head, the trees were rustling as a September breeze brushed by with its touch of frost. There was already a hint of red and gold about the green, although they wouldn’t fully turn until the beginning of October, when busloads of ‘Leaf Peepers’ would make their annual foliage pilgrimage. I took a deep breath as Trusty ran ahead of me, her ears flying behind her.

  Fall is my favorite time of year. Clean, cool air replaces summer’s humidity, we exchange salads for thick, warm soups, and the fiery leaves set the stage for the holiday season. There is something refreshing and reviving about the autumn, something as promising as the new books we used to start the school year with. As I checked the horses and found all peaceful and undisturbed, a wave of contentment swept over me.

  Despite it all, I thought, we’ll be okay. It’ll be tight, but Aunt Susanna will get better. The bills will come and only two thirds of our stalls are used right now, but we will get more tenants, more clients, and more students. My desk job will keep groceries on the table and the bank from repossessing the farm, at least for a little while.