by Lisa Wingate
Following our short ice-cream break, we had no difficulty finding the newspaper office. It was closed, so we proceeded on to the feed store. The enormous grain silos, by far the tallest structures in town, would have clued us in nicely, even without directions. We found Leland Lowenstein perched on a stool in the office, just as we’d been promised. A friendly man of rather generous proportion, he was happy enough to make our acquaintance, until we mentioned Mercy White’s book. His look turned decidedly sour at that point.
“Listen, I don’t want anything more to do with that book. Or any book. That book and that publishing company nearly cost me everything I owned. I’m out of the publishing business, except for the newspaper, and we only print facts. No memoirs, no gossip column, no long, drawn-out stories from sweet little old ladies who swear it’s the truth. You know that woman, Mercy White, had terminal cancer, and she was aware of it when she wrote the book? She knew she wouldn’t be around to defend that thing, and I’d be left holding the bag. If you’re here to try to sue me for defamation of character, don’t bother. I dissolved the publishing corporation. It’s done. It’s over. There’s no money to be had from me, and Mercy White donated all her estate to the American Cancer Society. So there.”
“We don’t want your money.” Epiphany stepped forward, as if she felt the need to defend me. At the sales counter, the clerk and her customer paused, then politely tried to pretend they weren’t listening in. “All we want is to ask you some questions.”
Leland Lowenstein shifted backward on his stool. “Listen, all I did was go through the stuff she wrote and try to condense it down to something readable, and”—he stabbed a stubby finger into the air, glaring at Epiphany and then at me—“folks oughta have thanked me for that instead of running me out of business. There was a lot more dirt that I convinced her to take out of the book. A lot.”
My hopes rumbled like an Atlas/Centaur rocket making ignition, ready to lift off the ground. “Was there anything more about the night of the VanDraan fire, about the children and what happened to them?”
Brows tightening, he licked his lips, tilting his head back and peering through his glasses, as if to get a better look at me. “Why do you want to know? Because if you’ve got ideas of saying you’re one of the long-lost VanDraan kids so you can get your hands on the family fortune, don’t bother.”
His cool reception suddenly made more sense. “I wasn’t aware that there was a family fortune.”
“Well, there’s not,” he snapped, and I decided he was quite an unlikable fellow. No wonder he was willing to print a book in which an embittered old woman sought revenge on her family members and the whole of the town. “At least eighty-five people already tried it, after the book came out. A few even wanted to exhume old VanDraan’s body, but anyone who knows about him knows he isn’t buried under that headstone. The man fell off a fishing boat in the Gulf, drunk, or else somebody pushed him, but he was never seen again. There wasn’t any kin, and he was pretty near broke by then, anyway. He was a drunk and a bad gambler. His ranch got sold for taxes, and any other readily available assets he had were dunned for debts. There was enough of his estate left to put the dates on his tombstone, and that was about it.”
My mind became a jumble, the pieces I had been putting together lying like a box of punch cards dropped on the floor. The woman Epiphany and I were trying to track down, Clara Culp, could be nothing but a fraud. Mercy White’s story could be a fabrication, and the truth, perhaps, was that my entire family had perished in the fire. I felt a loss that caused me to stagger slightly.
Epiphany caught my arm. “Can we sit down?” She nodded toward the assortment of dusty chairs in the corner. “My grandpa’s got heart troubles.”
The mention of heart troubles either concerned the man or brought forth a dime’s worth of sympathy, because he nodded grudgingly and slid off the stool. We moved to the corner of the room, to the obvious disappointment of the counter clerk, who’d stacked and restacked the same pamphlets several times as an excuse to remain within earshot.
Settled in the corner with us, Mr. Lowenstein seemed slightly less defensive.
I thought again of the woman in Houston. “Did anyone exhume the mother’s body, or any of the children’s? Was DNA testing ever performed regarding these people who claimed to be the VanDraan children?”
“There was a court case or two, but the judge ruled against it. Nobody even knew if there were enough body parts in those coffins to perform DNA tests. When a three-story house burns to the ground, especially back in those days, there’s no telling what was or wasn’t sifted out of the ashes.” His gaze darted downward and slid across the floor, as if there were more, but he chose not to share it. I considered how to best approach him further. If I told him why I was here, he’d likely assume I was another charlatan out for money or notoriety.
Folding a foot underneath herself in what looked like a most uncomfortable maneuver, Epiphany leaned closer to him. “But if there wasn’t any money in it, why’d people want to start lawsuits and stuff? Lawsuits cost money.” Clever girl. She’d hit the nail on the head.
Mr. Lowenstein’s discomfort seemed to increase twofold. He rubbed his hands back and forth on the chair arms. “Listen, why do you want to know all this? I’m not looking to get in the middle of anything. I don’t want to be called into any more lawsuits or tied up in anybody’s mess, all right? I’ve washed my hands of Groveland, Texas, for as long as I live.”
“But how come someone would be making a lawsuit, if there’s no money?” Epiphany pressed, blinking repeatedly, effecting the falsely innocent look of a teenager who knows exactly what she’s doing.
Mr. Lowenstein shifted my way, seeming to wait for me to shush her, but of course I had no intention of it. She was doing well.
Finally, Leland Lowenstein sank in his chair. “Listen, the whole thing is a ball of wax that just needs to be left lie. My advice is, don’t go poking into it.”
“Into what, though?” Epiphany’s eyes were wide with fascination. She flashed an enthusiastic smile that didn’t seem entirely lost on Mr. Lowenstein.
“There was some dispute about the VanDraan holdings in Groveland, all right?” He spit the words out as if he were loath to. “The man owned half the town, and a few years before he took that fishing trip, he’d moved out of Groveland and sold off everything, most of it on terms of one kind or another—private contracts between him and the folks he sold to. After he died, his office burned, and all those private contracts were gone, you know? There were those who figured it was awful convenient, him happening to fall off a boat, and then his office burning down when a bunch of folks owed him a lot of money. Once he was out of the picture and the paperwork was gone, they were free to say they’d paid in full. The district attorney wanted to investigate at the time, but when he tried, he was out of office pretty quick. The county judge and a lot of those business owners were connected, you see? And who’s going to get up in arms about debts owed to the most hated individual in town? VanDraan was a bad man. You didn’t make your fortune in rum-running and buy up half of a town by being a saint. He practiced extortion, and he practiced brutality, both at home and in business.”
Painful memories haunted my mind—the terrible fighting upstairs, the bruises hidden underneath my clothes, my wrists tied together, bound to the iron lion’s head that should have been for tying horses, a buggy whip splitting my skin. I’d been saved, spirited away from him, and I had to know what had taken place. “Do you believe the VanDraan children were alive after the fire?”
Mr. Lowenstein considered me for a moment, his gaze connecting with mine, searching, until finally he nodded. “Yes, sir, I do. I believe Mercy White was telling the truth—maybe not about everything in the book, but I think she was telling the truth about what happened in the VanDraan house. I think there were reasons her daddy kept it to himself until his daughter asked him about it on his deathbed. He finally told her the story, then. The truth was that the sheriff
knew exactly what happened the night of the fire, because he ended up involved in it, too.”
Lowenstein paused for a moment, looking out the window as if he were conjuring up the essence of the past. “VanDraan was a bad customer. He was drunk the night that house burned down, and he beat his wife either to death or close to it. Then he went into a rage, or a panic to cover up what he’d done, and he set the house on fire, with his kids and the maid, a black woman named Cecile, down in the nursery. He locked the door to the nursery and bolted the shutters so they couldn’t get out, and then he set fire to the place. After that, he headed off to a club, where he could get his cronies to testify to his whereabouts for the entire night.
“Those old houses could go up like tinderboxes, but the kids and the housekeeper were on the first floor, so the smoke took longer to get there. As soon as VanDraan was gone, Cecile tried the doors and windows, but there was no way out. Fortunately, she was a smart woman, and resourceful, even though she probably wasn’t but fifteen or sixteen herself. One thing a maid knows is the nooks and crannies of a house. There was a fireplace in the nursery, and it had a small iron ash hatch in back, so the fireplace could be cleaned from outside. That young girl, Cecile, got every one of those kids out through that little door, and she took them across town to the sheriff’s house, on foot, in the dark, with the whole town in an uproar about the fire.
“That’s the night Mercy White remembered. The part she didn’t put in the book was that the housekeeper saved those children more than once. That night after the fire, the sheriff drove her and those kids down to black town, and she hid them out, and the sheriff took care of things with the undertaker—maybe he got some bones somewhere, or maybe they just put ash in the caskets and kept them closed, but he never told anyone those five kids weren’t dead—especially not their daddy.”
“But what became of the children?” I imagined the story in my mind—horrific, terrible, triumphant as well.
“They were sent away, one at a time.” Mr. Lowenstein studied me, and I had the sense that he knew why I wasn’t surprised that the children hadn’t perished in the fire. “According to Mercy White, the maids arranged it. Back in those days—well, you probably remember how it was if you’re from anyplace around here—every family of any stature had a maid or two, a black woman, who took care of the house and kept the kids, sometimes also a man who tended the garden or worked as a driver. If one moved on, or you needed new help, you didn’t put an ad in the paper. You just asked the help you already had, or you asked a neighbor’s maid, or gardener, or the man who swept up the theater. They all had aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, kids they’d grown up with who were looking for work. They knew one another. They knew where their relatives and their neighbors worked. They knew the families they worked for—which families could be trusted, whether they’d be sympathetic, whether they’d be inclined to take in a child, whether they could come up with the necessary paperwork to make the old names disappear and provide new birth records.”
Lowenstein’s eyes curved upward slightly, as if he were admiring the handiwork involved in forming new identities. “Back in those days, it wasn’t so hard. No computers, no cross-references, no Social Security numbers for young children. You take a prominent family with connections, they could arrange it, especially in a town a distance away, where the child wouldn’t be recognized.” Turning his hands palms up, he patted the air slightly, as if he were urging a reluctant little tyke into a new place. “One redheaded child here. One there. Nobody would be suspicious. After all, no one was looking for them. They all died in the fire, right?” He offered a wide, slow smile, not particularly waiting for me to answer the question, but allowing me to think about it. “Nobody was the wiser.”
I contemplated the story, trying to decide whether I remembered any of those events. Did I recall squeezing through the ash door, running along darkened yards, the winter air pressing needles through the thin fabric of my pajamas, my feet crunching into the frosty grass, falling snow muffling the sounds? “Was it wintertime?” I asked. “Was it snowing the night of the fire?”
He frowned at the question, then shrugged. “That’s the way Mercy told it. It was January, unusually cold for this part of Texas. The fire didn’t spread to the houses nearby because there was a dusting of snow on the roofs.”
Epiphany’s fingers squeezed my arm, a silent affirmation of the reality winding, threadlike, through my mind, gathering loose links into a chain. I was hearing the story of my life. For the first time.
“Were you ever able to talk with the housekeeper, Cecile?” The book was published almost twenty years ago, after all. Cecile could have been alive at that time, only ten years or so older than Mercy White, perhaps ten or twelve years older than myself. “Did Mercy White ever talk with her? Did Mercy know where the children were taken? The names of the families who adopted them?”
Leland Lowenstein stroked his chin, seeming to note his need for a shave. “Cecile was dead, remember? Just like the children. I imagine she moved away somewhere and found another life for herself, another name, another job. Mercy White thought she could have ended up in St. Louis. Mercy’s father took her to the big fair there when she was a teenager, and Mercy remembered being left at the hotel while her daddy went to visit someone. She couldn’t imagine who, because they didn’t have any relatives in St. Louis, but when he came back, he had home-baked goods with him, like he’d been to someone’s house to eat, and she thought that was odd. Whose house would he be visiting in a strange town? If you ask me, I think that sheriff paid a visit to Cecile.”
Disappointment settled heavily over me. Had I reached the end of the line of clues? I hadn’t found what I needed. I still didn’t know for certain where my siblings were, or whether this woman in Houston was one of them. “Then Mercy White wasn’t aware of the names—the families the children had been given to?”
Mr. Lowenstein shook his head, seeming a bit regretful now. “Not that she told me, but with Mercy, it was always hard to tell. I figured that out the hard way. She’d spin out a tall tale as quickly as the truth, and just as convincingly. Believed her own version of history most of the time. I will say that after the book came out, when word got around and brought in the so-called VanDraan heirs, Mercy seemed to be able to rule most of them out with a question or two, so it’s definitely possible that she knew where the kids had gone, what their histories should be, maybe even the names of the adoptive families. Whatever her reasons, though, she felt the need to keep mum about it, which for Mercy was saying something.”
Epiphany scooted forward in her chair. “Did she ever talk about a Clara Culp? Did Mrs. Mercy White know her? I mean, could she be one of the VanDraan kids?”
Leland shrugged. “Couldn’t say, young lady. That was a long time ago, and once things got so messy with the legalities, I figured the less I knew, the better. I just tried to stay out of it. Mrs. Mercy was enjoying all the hoopla and the controversy and the people knocking on her door. She finally had everyone’s attention, which was what she’d wanted all along. She was entertaining visitors and defending her side of the story right up until the cancer took her. Not how I’d want to spend my last days, but Mercy was a unique woman.” Shifting in his chair, he indicated to Epiphany that the conversation was over—there was nothing more to tell. “Young lady, all I can say to you and your grandpa, here, is that if you’re planning to poke around into what happened to the VanDraans and their money, you’d better be careful. There’re still folks around who don’t want to talk about it.”
Chapter 22
Epiphany Jones
I didn’t ask if J. Norm wanted to keep on toward Houston or not. When we left Littlewood, I just turned south, grabbed some junk food, and tried to zone out. Beside me, J. Norm gazed through the car window while time passed, and I counted down the mileage signs to Houston. He didn’t even seem to notice that we were getting closer and closer. He was off in his own world, probably thinking about all the things Mr. Lelan
d Lowenstein had said.
I wanted to check the e-mail to see if we’d heard back from Clara Culp, but I figured I’d better let things alone for now. J. Norm looked worried, and I was afraid he was thinking we should turn around and head back to Dallas. After what we’d learned in Littlewood, he was probably wondering whether Clara Culp was for real or not. Whether she was or whether she wasn’t, I guessed our trip would be over once we found her.
Thinking about that sent a chill over me. The air from the window sat cold and clammy on my skin, even though it was still plenty warm outside. No matter what happened, I couldn’t go back to Dallas. I shouldn’t have made that promise to J. Norm about not running away. From Houston, I could hop a bus and be out of Texas in no time. I’d figure out where Greg Nash Park was, and start there. I wanted to see the place where my first birthday pictures were taken, with all the family around. If I could find somewhere to stay for cheap, at a shelter maybe, I’d have enough money to last a little while. Maybe I could get a job—work during the days and keep my search going after work. How hard could it be to find my daddy’s family? J. Norm hadn’t seen his family in seventy years, and they were supposed to be dead, and we’d still found clues—enough clues to bring us here.
If I was going to do this, I’d need the computer. . . .
I glanced at it on the floorboard. J. Norm’s legs sagged over it, his bony knees stretching the brown polyester pants that it seemed like he wore about every other day. His hand jerked toward the computer, the kind of movement your body makes without you telling it to, and I knew he’d fallen asleep again. When I looked at him, he was out cold, his head drooping off to one side. He was probably worn-out after all the excitement. The little patch of hair he usually kept slicked across the top of his head was waving in the window breeze like a tiny flag. His glasses hung loose over his knee, where he might knock them onto the floor and step on them. Pinching them between two fingers, I set them on the console so they wouldn’t get crushed; then I tried to think through my next move.
