by Jessa Archer
And then one day, the summer after graduation, Tanya was gone. Just up and vanished over the Fourth of July weekend. Packed her things into the back of her car and headed to Nashville, her parents said, without so much as a word of goodbye.
I hadn’t believed it for a second. Neither had Wren. Yes, Tanya had been planning to move to Nashville, but she was going at the end of the summer. We were going to rent a place together. I was starting college in the fall at Vanderbilt. Tanya had no interest in higher education—she was going to find a job and try to land singing gigs at night. And as tough as it is to break through as a singer, none of us ever doubted that Tanya would make it. She would be the next Bonnie Tyler or Pat Benatar.
Wren, who had wanted to be a doctor back then, had joined the Army to earn cash for college. Once her enlistment was up, she would join us in Nashville.
We’d had it all planned out. In fact, we’d been planning it for two entire years. So nope. Wren and I didn’t believe she’d simply run off. But, unfortunately, we were pretty much the only ones.
Two men were carrying a dresser over to their pickup truck when we reached the McBride house.
“Got this for thirty dollars!” the younger one said to Wren as he sidestepped the realtor’s sign, which now sported a SOLD banner. “Can you believe it?”
“Looks like you drive a hard bargain,” Wren told him.
The man on the other end of the load, who I thought might be the younger one’s father, chuckled. “I gotta teach you to haggle, boy. You should’ve offered him twenty. Pretty sure he’d have taken it.”
We dodged a few people clustered around the open garage door and stepped inside the house. Wren suggested that we check out the upstairs first, since the drawer had broken on her nightstand and she was in the market for a replacement. Two of the bedrooms, however, were already stripped clean, and the only nightstand left had a note taped to the top saying that it had been sold to the people who purchased the house.
“Well, poo,” Wren said. “Guess we should have gotten here earlier.”
We wandered around a bit more, then went back down to the living room.
Wren smiled and ran her finger along the spine of one of the many books that lined the shelves of the living room. “This part of the house is so very Ms. McBride.”
She was right. All you had to do was look around and you knew instantly what our former English teacher had loved most. If she wasn’t standing in front of the class teaching, Lucy McBride’s nose had always been deep inside a book. I once caught her hiding out in her office during a pep rally, which teachers were expected to attend unless they had some other pressing task. In her case, the “pressing task” had been finishing John Irving’s The Cider House Rules.
Given the sheer number of books in this room, and on the shelves upstairs, I had the sense that she hadn’t parted with many of them when she reached that final page.
Ms. McBride’s teaching influenced my eventual career almost as much as my after-school job at the Thistlewood Star. Jim Dealey taught me the mechanics of reporting and the specific skills needed to run a small-town newspaper, many of which still came in handy during the twenty-six years I worked at the much larger Nashville News-Journal. Lucy McBride was the one who kindled my love for the written word and who honed my writing skills to the point that I tested out of freshman comp in college. I was her prodigy—during my last two years of high school, she entered my work in writing contests and sent me scholarship information for creative writing programs. I’m pretty sure she expected me to write the great American novel someday, and she’d been deeply disappointed when I’d opted to write the news instead.
“The world needs more beauty,” she’d told me the night our senior class—all thirty-seven of us—gathered here at her home for our pre-graduation cookout. “More poetry, more imagination. That’s what makes life worth living. Why not write stories that lift people up? That make them happy? Do you really want to spend your entire career writing about tragedy and corruption?”
I’ll admit that her words stung a bit. But I knew she was upset about my decision, almost as if it was a personal rejection. So I’d simply smiled and said, “The news is important, too. Someone has to write stories that explain the world we live in. And I’ll do my best to sneak a little beauty into the mix.”
We’d kept in touch at first, but the last time I’d spoken to Ms. McBride was at my own parents’ funeral nearly a decade ago. I’d planned to look her up when I moved back to Thistlewood last fall, but it was one of those things I hadn’t gotten around to doing during that first miserable month, as I went about the many tasks involved in ending a marriage of nearly thirty years. I’d also just purchased what was left of the Star, which had been shuttered since Mr. Dealey died five years earlier, and was trying to figure out what I’d need to do to get the paper up and running again. The answer to that question had been “a whole heck of a lot,” unfortunately, which had left me very little time for social calls.
As fate would have it, Ms. McBride had passed away peacefully in her sleep by the time I got settled. I didn’t even have the online version of the Star going at that point, so I hadn’t been able to post an obituary for her. One of the odd quirks of my former boss at the Star was his belief that every person’s last mention in his paper should be distinctive. Your obituary was your final bow, he’d always said, and it should stand out, rather than blending in with a notice for a community garage sale being held in the local park next Friday. So he’d given every person their own special font face—some bold, some italic, some serif, some sans. For example, the former high school football coach died right after I started working at the Star. Coach Bailey was an obnoxious little toad of a man who’d routinely yelled not just at his team, but at pretty much everyone. Mr. Dealey composed his obituary in Times New Roman, a perfectly ordinary and respectable font. But he’d used small-caps. It was a subtle enough joke that most people missed it, but those who got it had to admit that it was perfect.
I’d decided to keep that tradition going, and if I’d been up and running in time to publish Lucy McBride’s obituary, I would have chosen a pretty font. Something flowing like Lucida Calligraphy or Edwardian Script. Her love of beauty was reflected in the house she’d shared with her son, Kenneth, until he grew up and moved to California a few years after I headed off to college. It was a colorful house—not in a garish way, but with walls of seafoam green and pale yellow instead of the ubiquitous beige most people adopt. When we first arrived, a cheerful abstract print rug had still covered much of the hardwood floor in the foyer, but a man was now rolling it up while his wife dug around in her purse for some cash. The news that they paid a mere ten dollars for the rug seemed to start a chain reaction, and people were coming up to Kenneth, pointing at various objects, and throwing sinfully low offers his way. I didn’t see him refuse a single one. He just nodded, as if their offer of fifty dollars was perfectly fine for his late mother’s nearly new leather sofa. Maybe he didn’t need the money. It was entirely possible that he just wanted this all to be over so he could go back to the airport and catch the next plane home.
“I don’t think Ms. McBride would like this,” Wren said. “All these people milling about, touching her things. Sitting on her furniture. She was a very private person.”
“I know. It’s a necessary step, though, if you’re going to sell the house.”
“True,” she admitted. “The only real alternative is hiding things away in storage, like I did when I sold Gran’s place. I should haul all of that stuff out and have a sale of my own soon.”
I’d donated most of my parents’ personal items after their funeral, keeping just a few mementos. But I’d never had to deal with putting their house on the market, since Cassie and I—and occasionally her father—had always spent a few weeks here in the summer, taking advantage of the river and the nearby tourist attractions in Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, and Sevierville. And in retrospect, keeping their house had been a very good
thing. When Joe had his mid-life revelation and decided he was no longer in the mood to be married to me, I’d been able to pile my clothes and a few other things into the Jeep and simply go. It was a relief not to worry about divvying up furniture, dishes, and so forth.
The only thing I’d really missed from my life in Nashville was my daughter, and recent events seemed to have solved that problem. Cassie had decided not to return to Nashville after our misadventure a few months ago, when Edith Morton’s killer held us at gunpoint. I was glad to have Cassie home, but the decision worried me. She’d had a life in Nashville, and a job she enjoyed. Was she staying because she wanted to be here, or because that experience had scarred her. She seemed okay to me, but what was there in a tiny mountain town for a girl in her early twenties? How long would she enjoy weekend outings like this one, accompanying her mom and her mom’s best friend to an estate sale? When I was her age, I would have been bored silly. There was no force on the planet that could have convinced a twenty-two-year-old Ruth Townsend to live in Thistlewood, Tennessee.
“Do you know where Cassie went?” I asked Wren.
“Still upstairs, I think.” She leaned toward me and whispered, “Cross your fingers that she hasn’t found another diary. I don’t have a key to this place, so sneaking in to return it would be much harder.”
“Remind me to check her purse before we leave,” I said. Cassie’s curiosity was a large reason we’d wound up in hot water a few months back, but it was also a major factor in me solving the case. Not something I’d want to risk again, however.
Wren glanced over at Kenneth McBride, standing at the edge of the room with a dazed expression on his face. Human interaction didn’t seem to be his strongest suit. Or maybe he just didn’t like crowds.
“Oh, Ruth,” she whispered. “Why did we come here? This is actually sad.”
“I know. Do you want to leave?”
“Yes. But first I’m going to buy some of these books. I’ll give them a good home. The ones I don’t have room for, I’ll donate to the library. How much do you think I should offer?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you should ask him?”
Wren squared her shoulders as if she were preparing for battle and walked across the living room. I hung back, trying to stay out of everyone’s way, and watched as she tapped him lightly on the shoulder. Her lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying over the ambient noise—a baby crying somewhere, laughter upstairs.
Someone stepped up behind me. I turned, thinking it was Cassie, but instead found Dean Jacobs smiling at me. As usual, he was looking very handsome, something that’s hard to pull off in a mail carrier’s uniform.
“Good morning, Ruth.”
“Dean! It’s so good to see you. What brings you here?”
He looked around doubtfully. “I’m kind of wondering that myself. Not like I need anything else cluttering up my house. I should have a sale of my own, actually.”
“You should team up with Wren,” I said and looked down at my watch. “It’s early. Mail already delivered?”
Dean laughed but looked a little guilty. “Nah. Just taking a quick break. Saw the sign when I was coming down the sidewalk and noticed your Jeep out by the curb.” He glanced down at the floor. “I was sorry to hear about what happened to you and Cassie. Can’t say I ever really liked the two of them, but I didn’t think they were murderers.”
“Greed can be a powerful motivator,” I said. “I’m just glad that it’s over.”
“Yeah. Me, too. Is…um…Cassie staying in town for a while?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I think she’s at sort of a crossroads. Trying to figure out what she wants to do next.”
“Oh. Is she…here?” His face was turning red, and I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
“You should come up and see us one night,” I told him. “If not for you mentioning that Edith’s door was locked the day she died, I might not have figured things out. The least I can do is cook you dinner.”
He looked surprised. “Really?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Do you think Cassie would like that?”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “I would, though.”
“Then I’d love to. Just let me know when.”
Cassie chose that moment to appear, and Dean flushed again.
“Good morning, Cassie.”
“Oh, hey, Dean,” she said, and then turned toward me. I wanted to laugh because she was so completely oblivious to the torture she was inflicting on the poor boy.
“I was just telling Dean he should come over for dinner sometime. What do you think?”
“That’s a great idea. It’s almost always just me and Mom. Sometimes Ed or Wren. I love them dearly but…it would be sooo nice to have someone closer to my own age around for a change.” She turned her attention back to me. “Mom, I have to show you something. Hurry.”
“Okay.”
Cassie bounded off toward the kitchen and through a door that led to a garage. Dean and I followed. Lucy McBride’s car had already been sold, and the smooth concrete floor was spotless. Plastic totes were stacked neatly in one corner, most labeled in the large, loopy handwriting I remembered from the blackboard as we discussed Beowulf and Hamlet. Decorations, apparently—Halloween, Christmas, July 4th. I felt a little pang of sadness that these would probably never see the light of day again. No one was going to buy someone else’s memories like that. I wondered if Kenneth would throw them out or pack them up to take back to California.
The one thing that seemed out of place in the almost obsessively tidy garage was a large cardboard box propped up against the wall next to the garage door. It looked like the kind of container that a mirror might come in—tall and wide but not very deep. Scrawled across the front in blocky letters was Ruth Townsend—Thistlewood Star.
“What on earth?” I said.
“Looks like she left something for you,” Cassie said. “Come see. I have to confess that I already peeked.”
I shook my head, laughing. “Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?”
She pulled open the flap covering the end of the box. I reached in slowly to touch the frames stacked upright inside the package.
“Canvases?”
“They’re paintings, Mom. Pretty good, too, based on the ones I saw.”
She reached in and gently pulled the first one out.
It wasn’t simply good. It was breathtaking. A large, vibrant tree took up most of the canvas. Some kind of weeping willow, maybe, but the colors were surreal. The trunk and branches were fairly normal, painted in a muddy, weathered brown acrylic. The leaves, however, were various shades of teal—some neon bright, some dark, and others almost transparent with the blue-green revealing the ugly brown below. I’m here, the brown seemed to say. No matter how pretty the surface, I’m always here underneath.
“It’s beautiful,” Dean said from behind my shoulder. “A little eerie, though.”
I nodded. He had summed it up perfectly.
The world needs more beauty. That’s what makes life worth living. Maybe this was her way of reminding me about that conversation so many years ago.
“They’re all beautiful,” Cassie said. “But why are they out here in the garage—and with your name on the box? Do you think she wanted you to have them?”
“I don’t know,” I said as I slid Lucy’s painting back into the box. “Maybe I should go ask Kenneth.”
“They’d look perfect in your office at the Star,” Cassie said. “The place needs some color.”
She was right about that. I’d been thinking for months that the office looked kind of dreary. And now that I’d taken over the newspaper, it somehow seemed right to have Lucy McBride’s artwork hanging in Mr. Dealey’s old office to represent the two people—well, aside from my parents—who did the most to set me on my path as a journalist.
“I think that’s a good idea,” I told Cassie as I rummaged in my purse to see if I’d brought my checkbook.
I had a little cash on me but not much, since I really hadn’t expected to buy anything. For the most part, I’d come because Wren mentioned it, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to get Cassie out of the house. And looking at her just then, showing Dean the other paintings, I thought maybe that was a very good idea.
I turned to see Wren coming down the steps into the garage. “There you are! I was beginning to think y’all left me here.”
“Nope. Did you get the book situation worked out?”
Wren nodded. “Twenty dollars. I feel like I’m stealing them.”
“If any of those are first editions, you sort of are. And knowing Ms. McBride, that wouldn’t surprise me at all.”
“I know, and I tried to tell Kenneth that, but he said he’s just glad to know they’ll have a good home. He’s out of boxes, though, so I’m going to come back later, after all of this traffic clears, and load them into the trunk. If y’all are ready to go, I’m starved. Maybe lunch at the diner? And Dean, you’re more than welcome to join us.”
“Wish I could,” he said, “but break’s over. I need to get back on my route.”
“Wren, come here,” Cassie said. “Ms. McBride was quite the artist. And look.” She tapped my name on the box.
“I’m going back inside to talk to Kenneth,” I told her. “See what he’ll let them go for. My office needs a little color.”
“Huh,” Wren said. Her voice sounded a little strained. “I didn’t know she painted. He’ll probably give them to you for free, though. I had to practically shove my twenty into his hand. And if she put your name on them…”
That was true, but I wondered whether the paintings were really something her son was willing to let go. These were things his mom created with her own hands. Originals. I was pretty sure that a piece of her soul had gone into these, and that thought caused my eyes to water.
