She craved Mary’s gentle reassurance. You were just a normal, happy, active child. Then again she winced. Willful, headstrong, jealous. Harsh words about a three-year-old! She sighed and reread the old doctor’s words. I, too, am a parent and I understand how painful your dilemma. You must do what is best for your family. Her father gave her away because she was too difficult for his fragile wife.
Regina sat a long time, fingering the notes her father had locked up in his writing box. The hour was late and her eyes grew heavy. Her emotions had exhausted her. Yet sleep wouldn’t come. She stretched and took up the rest of Sophie’s letters, sorted them into chronological order, and opened the first one.
Dear William,
It is with the greatest reluctance that I turn to you…
Regina pressed her hand to her chest with a soft, “Oh.”
She checked the date. July 1930. Poor Sophie. Regina’s heart broke as she read about her beloved godmother’s home being seized after her husband’s financial ruin and suicide.
I am desperate.
In the next letter, she read with relief that her father had come to Sophie’s aid. With interest, she followed Sophie’s reports about settling into a small but comfortable house in the country outside of Petersburg. Gradually, the tone changed from abject apology and gratitude to more general anecdotes and descriptions of Sophie’s life during the Depression.
Regina yawned, slipped under the covers, and read more.
I was, as I can only now tell you, heartbroken when I first set out on that wrong path without you…
She sat up and reread. Checked the date. 1932.
For all that I try to admonish myself with stern lectures that I can only revive a wound with your company, I look forward every day to your return, only for the blessed few moments that our minds and hearts can meet…
Love letters, all of them, dating from the years when William traveled so frequently to Richmond and Petersburg. Sophie would have been in her forties, William in his fifties.
Regina was now wide awake, unsure how she felt. Betrayed by William? Disappointed in Sophie? She couldn’t find it in her heart to love either of them less.
She read them all twice. The affair lasted years, before they agreed to end it. Sophie would marry Henry Blount and move to Savannah.
Ten years older than I, and not strong, but kind…
William went back to Alice, and two more children were born. The last letter was sent after a gap of several years, in 1945.
I write to you again, my darling, only because my poor old Cousin Chapman has died and left me property in Louisiana which I have sold to pay you back (check enclosed!) for all your kindness to me in my most desperate time. It is bittersweet to say that I am content, and I know that you are too, with your sweet girls, your new little family. I can only thank God your Alice never knew.
His new little family, her family, a family of four. A tiny spark of anger flared and died as she fell asleep. A late family of four, who could have been happy if only Gigi had not died.
20
A Baseless Accusation
“Good news,” Mary said when Regina returned from her morning walk. “The doctor said Papa is definitely rallying right now. He had a hard time last night, very disoriented and in some pain, I’m not sure why, but they changed his medicine and he is more wakeful than he’s been since he had the stroke.”
“That’s wonderful. So he may recover?”
“We’re still not counting on that. The doctor suggested that the family might want to take the opportunity to visit with him. I called everybody, and they’ll all be back by this afternoon.”
“Oh. Great.” Regina made an effort to sound sincere but doubted that Mary was fooled. “I really need to work as much as I can today. I’m supposed to have a project ready for a meeting with clients tomorrow.”
“And Al MacDonald called you. He left a number. It’s by the phone.”
Al would be at work in Richmond. She shut the study door and placed the call. He picked up immediately and sounded so happy to hear from her that she had to smile.
Then he said, “My dad called the sheriff.”
Her hand flew to her stomach. “Oh my gosh, he did?”
“Picked up the phone before I could stop him. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I guess it is. What did he say?”
“The sheriff didn’t know if your mother told them she saw that guy. He’s going to have somebody pull the file and see.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks. Was that all?”
“He said that somebody on the scene, like maybe your sister’s husband, made the accusation that got Rawley picked up to begin with.”
“Robert Medina. I heard that too, from Sophie.”
“He put it together that Rawley was back and forth to Richmond, working in the neighborhoods where the murders happened.”
“Sophie said Robert did it to look good for Alice.”
“How would that work?”
“Deflect blame from her, I guess.”
“Then he dug up some story about Rawley and an underage girl.”
Regina was instantly incensed. “That hypocrite!”
A short laugh on Al’s end. “Sounded like the sheriff had a similar opinion. Anyway, somebody’s going to look at the file, see if they know she saw him there. Say, did you know there was another drowning, a long time ago?”
“Yes, I know.” Regina lowered her voice and looked around, though with the study door closed, neither Mary nor Alice could hear her. “That was Alice’s sister. That’s why she’s so traumatized, I guess, because she witnessed her sister’s death in similar circumstances as a child.”
“He said somebody got blamed for not watching her.”
“Maisie. The girl who killed herself. She blamed herself for Alice’s sister’s death.” Repeating Mary’s version.
“So that’s the suicide’s ghost. Drowned herself.”
“No, hanged herself.”
“And I don’t know about blaming herself,” he added. “It sounds like she got blamed.”
“I guess that’s right.” Mary’s version had glossed over that part. “Anyway, I read everything in the Richmond papers yesterday. Rawley didn’t have a very good alibi, just his parents. He wasn’t far away when it happened.” On a tractor. She tried to picture how close those rolling fields came to the lake.
Al’s voice broke into her thoughts. “You okay?”
“The whole family’s coming back today. I was hoping they’d stay away until at least tomorrow.”
He laughed then said, “You can survive one day in their company. You can tell me all about it later.”
“Ugh. I hate it.”
“Call me any time.”
She was smiling again as she hung up.
Regina took a pot of tea with her to the attic, determined to make headway on her project. She sat down and studied the text for the runaway project, The Starting Block. Funny name for it. What had Ron said? Maybe she’s rebellious, maybe she’s a little on the wild side. Anger smoldered in her. When had she been rebellious? When had she ever been the least bit wild? And again she felt herself pulled in by the unwelcome grip of the past.
She’s at the dinner table in the cottage. Fifteen years old. Ignoring him until she realizes he’s commenting on her clothes. She looks down. She’s wearing a pleated skirt and long-sleeved, button-down Oxford shirt. What’s wrong with it? Mary says nothing. Ree stops eating, jumps up to clear the dishes, can’t wait to get out from under his eyes. Flees to her room and shuts the door.
Regina shook off the memory. She hated him. He rode her every minute they were in the same room, sneering about the way she looked. With the perspective of a dozen years, she wondered why Mary had never defended her, but of course she knew why. Mary never stopped longing for the husband who was so rarely home. Mary could have said, It’s just a plain long-sleeved shirt, or What’s wrong with a pleated skirt?
Later, in her room, Mary made ex
cuses for him. “You’re beautiful, Ree. Robert just wants you to be careful of your reputation.”
Tearfully, Regina asked, “What’s wrong with what I wear? It’s what everybody wears. It’s what you wear.”
Mary stroked her hair. “It looks better on you than it does on anybody else.”
Regina’s eyes popped open, Mary’s voice from long ago echoing in her ears. She stood and paced. Surely she could knock out something for the project without reliving those hated days.
Back then, her clothes were a lot like Mary’s. Some of them actually were Mary’s. The same clothes on his wife didn’t move Robert to insinuate that Mary was immodest or full of herself or looking for trouble. Did not inspire him to quote Bible verses about Jezebel, for God’s sake.
When it was clear Robert would be staying, Regina joined clubs and afterschool activities that kept her away from home until after dinner.
“Delilah!” Robert muttered as she slipped in the door late enough that it was dark outside.
From her room, she heard him telling Mary she was never home because she was running wild, sneaking out with boys. And still Mary said nothing to defend her.
When Al started walking home with her, Robert followed her to the door of her room and blocked her from closing it.
Heart pounding, Ree cried, “Mimi!” and felt a rush of relief when Mary appeared behind him.
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s bringing young men home with her now.”
Regina spoke past him to Mary. “He just walked me home.”
“Oh, I know what he’s got on his mind,” Robert said.
Regina yanked the door away from him and slammed it, wishing she could bolt it. She leaned her ear against the door, heard him fume, heard Mary placate, caught the phrase “bitch in heat.”
Worst were the times she found herself alone in the house with him, a situation she avoided with a passion, but she came to realize that he deliberately arranged to be alone with her when he could.
“Mary,” he would say, “don’t we have any cereal?” Or cheese, or crackers, or potato chips.
Regina begged Mary, under her breath, “Don’t you see what he does? He goes in the kitchen and looks for what we don’t have so he can send you out to get it!”
“Oh, Ree.”
“Can I come with you?”
“Of course.”
Who could she talk to about what was happening? Mary was complicit, under Robert’s spell. It never even occurred to Regina that she might talk to Alice or William, Alice so distant and absorbed in perpetual grief, William with his business and his roses. Even Frank, who visited infrequently, had his own growing, happy family. Edith and Pace might as well have been strangers. And Bebe, Regina’s self-appointed nemesis?
There was no way she would bring even a girlfriend home, and she knew instinctively that going on a date was out of the question. She took to hiding in the attic of the big house. Studying. Reading. Drawing. She was happy to lose herself in the world of literature and art. Her grades were stellar, except for math, and Al had started helping her with that.
He wanted her to go to the prom with him. They agreed to go casually, as if they’d cover for each other since everybody else was going. But she knew he liked her, and she liked him. She designed a dress for herself, based on Alice’s blue taffeta gown, and asked Mary if she could have that dress to alter for the prom. Quietly, she asked, out of Robert’s hearing.
Mary said, “One of those old dresses in the attic? I don’t see why not.”
Then she and Al met in the park to practice dancing, and when she got home, Al kissed her hand at the gate. When she stepped through the door, she turned and found herself face-to-face with Robert, and close enough to smell and feel his heat.
In the first moment when she froze, he looked her up and down. She felt herself disheveled, hair tousled, pushed back behind one ear. She tried to slip by him, but he grabbed her arm, and she realized with horror that her back was muddy, damp. He roughly brushed the leaves off her backside and demanded to know what she had been doing with that boy.
“No daughter of mine,” he seethed. Called her Jezebel, Delilah, and a slut.
Regina cried out, “Mimi?”
She sensed instantly that Mary wasn’t home and debated momentarily about running out of the house and screaming for Al. But knew she would never get past Robert. She hurried toward her room, realizing even as she did it that she would have been safer heading for the kitchen and the back door. The door of her room was closed, and she fumbled desperately to open it, hand shaking uncontrollably.
“‘Pharaoh looked upon Abram’s sister,’” Robert bawled, “‘and took her unto himself and gave of his bounty to Abram because of her.’”
She whirled on him. “You’re crazy!”
Then she quickly turned away with a gasping sob from the unmistakable erection in his pants. She held her ears to try to shut out the made-up scripture about women lying down with unclean men, biblical language to describe what he imagined her doing.
She screamed, “You’re disgusting!” and slammed the door as hard as she could.
That enraged him. “I’m disgusting?” He bulled through the door.
“Go away! Leave me alone!” She tried to escape and he cut her off, called her a hussy, pinned her in the doorjamb, pressing against her.
She screamed at him to stop, and at that moment, Mary came home.
“Robert? Ree?”
He was off her in an instant, backing up in the hall, pointing. “Look at her. She’s been rolling on the ground with that boy she runs around with.”
Regina ran past Mary without waiting to hear what she said, burst into the big house—which was silent, seemingly empty—and ran up the stairs all the way to the attic. Alone on the third floor, she heaved, her breath coming in great wheezing gasps. She collapsed in the rocking chair, bent over hugging her stomach, and rocked until long after dark before her beating heart slowed down.
Voices from below brought her back to the present. Pace and Fran. Bebe and Edith. Frank. So wrapped up in remembering, Regina was actually startled to see bright sunlight outside. She glanced at her watch. It was barely one o’clock. She’d made no progress on her project, and the family was reassembling. She took another moment to savor her active, conscious hatred for Robert Medina.
She looked at the shadowy, shame-faced figure on the Haven Acres brochure one last time and said, “This is me.”
She heard Mary calling her and reluctantly headed for the stairs. She should never have come home. No wonder she stayed away. What good did it do for her to be here? She was glad to have seen her father, made a sort of peace with him. But she should never have come to this house, to stay with these people. And the whole idea of finding out why and how her sister died seemed empty and foolish to her now. She should never have agitated Alice or Mary about that.
I am bad for this place, she thought as she approached the living room. And it’s bad for me. Fresh resolve. Stay away. Leave and never come back. She’d had the right idea when she ran away eight years before.
Mary and Alice, just back from the hospital, reported that William was conscious and aware. Alice headed up to her room, and Mary said, “We were there all morning. It wasn’t until the last hour or so that he fell asleep. I think we’d better let him nap for a while. You can all go later.”
Frank said, “Why don’t I go with Ree after a while, so I can get back to Roanoke? Then the rest of you can go together later this afternoon.”
Bebe interrupted the general murmurs of agreement. “And Regina, do not raise the issue of Eugenie’s death with him. Because it was his daughter too.”
Regina flushed, and Frank demurred, “She wouldn’t do that.”
“She did exactly that at dinner the other night.”
“I did not!”
Edith pushed down with both hands “Let’s not fight. We can all agree it isn’t something we should be bringing up right now.”
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“I never brought it up,” Bebe insisted. “Regina did.”
Regina flamed, “You brought it up one minute ago!”
Edith and Mary exchanged a look.
From the archway, behind them, came Alice’s voice. “It’s not as if a day goes by that I don’t think about it.”
Pained silence.
“How could I forget? My daughter drowned and I was responsible.”
They all chorused, “No,” except Regina, who listened keenly.
“I know what happened to my baby. No one believes anything I say.”
Regina, hand on her heart, said, “I believe you. I believe you saw him. Didn’t you say you saw him?”
Alice looked at Regina as if she were a stranger, and a chill crept up Regina’s spine. She took a quick look around to see if anyone else realized how far out of touch their mother was, but everyone else looked sympathetic and distressed, except Mary, who looked weary and resigned but unflustered. Bebe glared at Regina as if vindicated.
Regina said, “I know how it feels not to be believed.”
“Of course we believe you, Mama,” Fran said with a short, nervous laugh. “About—you saw someone?”
Pace laid a hand on Fran’s arm, and she sank back into the sofa with a quick apologetic look at him.
Edith said, “Of course we believe anything you say, Mama.”
“You think—” Regina started, but the words died in her throat when Alice turned laser-eyes on her.
“I don’t think. I know.” Calmly, complacently. “She was murdered.”
And with that, Alice turned and headed up the stairs.
Regina met Bebe’s eyes.
But Bebe didn’t back down. Her voice was a rasp. “This is your doing. She has never said that before. You gave her that idea. She’s not strong—”
Edith said quietly, “I’ve heard her say it.”
Pace cleared his throat, shifted in his seat, and said, “That man Rawley had an alibi.”
“Maybe she saw someone else,” Regina said.
Blue Lake Page 18
