by Jan Burke
Behind me, the passenger door to the Jeep opened. I didn’t need to fake being startled.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I thought I heard someone call my name,” I said. “I was mistaken.”
“Liar,” she said, and shut the door. It didn’t close all the way. She reopened it, on an impressive list of expletives, and slammed it shut again.
The ride to her home was silent. She let me help her out of the Jeep. She gave me a big hug and said, “You’ve endured a morning with two stupid, querulous old women. I’m sorry, Irene.”
“Oh, one of those women is dumb as a fox, getting me to tag along,” I said. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She touched a dry, thin hand to my cheek and said, “I’d tell you everything if I could. I meant what I said to Lillian — you and Lydia make me very proud. But I’ve made promises, Irene. I intend to keep them, at least for now. But you keep digging, and don’t be discouraged or afraid of what you may find, and my little promises won’t matter at all.”
“All right, I will.”
I walked her to her door. “Helen, I just remembered something I wanted to ask you about.”
“Yes?”
“In 1936, you left the paper for a while.”
A look came into her eyes, one I had seen a few times before. In college, if I turned in something she especially liked, she got that same look. “Yes. Come in for a moment, won’t you? I won’t keep you, but it’s too brisk out here for this talk.”
We went inside and shed our coats. We sat together on her sofa.
“I did leave the paper,” she said. “For about a year. How do you know about that?”
“O’Connor’s diary mentioned it. Why did you leave?”
“Several reasons. I’ll give you a few of them. First, I wasn’t being paid the same wage my male counterparts were making, even though I was supporting myself.”
“Wrigley the first was still in charge?”
“Yes. An old man by then. I went in to ask for a raise, he told me he couldn’t give me one — didn’t I know there was a Depression on, and there were men who wanted my job, and so forth. Take it or leave it, he said.”
“So you left it.”
“Yes. That’s why everyone thought I had left. But you see, I knew what his reaction would be, so it served as a way for me to disguise my other reasons for leaving.”
“Which were?”
“First and foremost, I was madly in love with a man who felt a great deal of affection for me, but whom I could plainly see was not ready to settle down.”
“Jack.”
“Jack. Gorgeous as all get out, and a devil to boot. He was younger than I, and still sowing his wild oats.” She smiled. “You can’t change them, you know. They have to outgrow it.”
“You knew about Lillian?”
“Oh yes. Lily was as beautiful as he was. They made a striking couple. And of course, her old man was loaded, so she thought that would keep Jack chasing after her. What he liked about her was her spirit, not her father’s money.”
“Is Lillian why you left?”
“No, being jealous or angry of Jack’s women would have been exhausting and useless as well. He also had a way of — oh, at the time I was convinced it was some rogue’s trick of his, but he made me believe I was something special, that he might flirt here or there, but that I truly mattered to him. Besides, I liked Lillian. I admired that spirit in her, too. She was barely out of high school, but she could put a woman twice her age in her place. A bit spoiled, but she’s smart and if you get her interested in something other than herself, she can surprise you with her generosity and drive.”
“She was married by the time you left the paper, right?”
“Yes, although Harold was never much of a husband. They weren’t married a month before he moved to Europe without her. He traveled all over the world. He was involved in the sale of supplies to military groups, including ammunition — just barely kept his nose clean as far as the government was concerned, but many American companies profited from wars in other countries during those years. Barrett Ducane was one of his business partners. I think he even did some business with Mitch.”
“Lillian was pregnant when Harold left for Europe?”
“Yes. She had lost both parents not long after her wedding — a car accident. She wanted to get away for a while after that happened. It was summer and terribly hot, so she decided to go up to a huge cabin owned by her family — a lodge, really — in the mountains. She later told me that she felt alone and abandoned and began to think about women who were less fortunate than she, and that’s when she got the idea that she’d start a place for unwed mothers.”
“I didn’t know about that.”
“It’s still in existence. She purchased another, smaller cabin nearby. If the Vanderveers had known of the scandalous use she had made of the lodge, they would have come back to haunt her. But she made the right choice. I think it kept her occupied, kept her from dwelling on her problems. And away from Thelma Ducane, who was a terrible influence on her. Those unwed mothers were better women than Thelma, who had the morals of a jackal.”
“How did you get involved?”
“She heard that I had left the paper and was looking for a job. She was Wrigley’s godchild, and he was fond of her.” She smiled. “Dear Lillian. She gave the old man a great deal of misery over letting me go, and told him that she was going to hire me just to spite him. So she invited me to come up there to help her run her home for unwed mothers. And fiercely refused to let me consider coming back to the newspaper. We got along famously.”
“Wasn’t that frowned on back then, a single woman working around unwed mothers?”
She laughed. “Irene, what do you think they thought of women who worked for newspapers?”
“Oh. The cabin — the smaller one? That’s the place where Katy was born?”
“Yes.”
“No wonder you were so close to her.”
“Yes, I was a part of her life from the very beginning.”
“And later, Lillian gave the cabin to Katy, and Katy willed it to Jack?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve always wondered about that will. Do you know why she wrote it?”
Helen hesitated, then said, “I can answer that, but — I can answer it more fully if you will first call Lillian and tell her that you want her to give me permission to tell you all about the day Katy made the will.”
I looked at her as if she were nuts.
“Courage failing you? She is younger than I am, but I still think you’d beat her in a fair fight.”
I pulled out my cell phone and pressed redial.
Lillian answered, and when I told her what I wanted, she said, “Put her on the phone.”
I handed it to Helen.
After a moment, Helen said, “Yes, of course I forgive you. And you forgive me, I hope?”
There was another long pause, during which Helen rolled her eyes. “Yes, it was a terrible thing to say to you.”
Another pause. “Yes, I will… this will be for the best. You understand that? … I’m glad…. Thank you…. Yes, I’ll see you then. Good-bye.”
She looked at the phone, handed it to me, and said, “You’ll have to hang up. I can’t stand those things. And the buttons are so small. Who designs such things?”
I disconnected the call and put the phone away. I turned to her and said, “Wow.”
“Wow?”
“You two had a hellacious fight, one I was afraid would end in blows, and that’s all it took to patch things up?”
“We’ve had lots of practice over the past sixty or so years. Eventually you figure out that you’ll never have enough time to enjoy the company of your closest friends, so it’s best to learn how to mend damage quickly.” She paused, then said, “Lydia called me yesterday.”
I felt my spine stiffen.
“Do you know,” Helen said, “I think she’s in the wrong.”
“Not entirely,” I admitted. “Really, my attitude started it.”
“Perhaps, but the thing is, she knows that for the most part, it’s she who is in the wrong now.”
“She knows?”
“Yes. Which is why you’ll have to be the one to make another effort, Irene — so that she can admit it.”
I frowned.
“Is the worst thing she said to you worth more to you than the best thing she’s ever done for you?”
“Not even close.”
“Then let go of it. Call her. Invite her somewhere. Not to talk things out, just to see each other, and when the time comes you can tell each other how stupid all of this fighting is. All right?”
“If she snubs me again, I am siccing you on her.”
“I doubt it will be necessary.”
“Tell me about the will.”
She sighed. “All right. I want you to understand two things. The first is that I didn’t know the answer to this until very recently. I threatened to sell the cabin, and I suppose that was enough to make Lillian cave in and tell me what had happened. The other is that this is absolutely confidential. If you feel you might have to tell someone at some point in time, it will have to be after Lillian has given you permission, or because she’s dead. If you can’t promise that, I can’t tell you.”
“All right.”
“Here’s what Lillian told me. A few days before Katy’s birthday, Mitch came across Katy and Lillian when they were together, doing some shopping downtown. Their hands were full, holding the handles of their shopping bags — you know the type of bag — big fancy paper bags with twine handles. The chauffeur had already gone ahead with an armload of boxes, and was going to bring the car around. Mitch offered to help carry the bags until the car arrived, and Katy snubbed him. He asked her why she was always so rude to him. She said something like, ‘Uncle Jack has told me all about you.’”
“I remember O’Connor mentioning that she called him that.”
“She had always called Jack that, from the time she was little. Jack was much more of a father to her than Harold was — Harold spent less than a half-dozen nights a month at home. But whatever she called Jack, she probably shouldn’t have mentioned him to Mitch. Jack’s name was always enough to make him lose his temper.”
“Because of the stories he wrote about Mitch?”
“I think so. Although God knows Mitch’s mind works differently than a reasonable person’s — he can’t forgive any injury, he’s quick to perceive a slight, and he sees the smallest criticism as a major insult. Which is why what happened next was — was the worst thing that could have happened.
“According to Lillian, Mitch took her by the chin and said, ‘Uncle Jack, is it? He’s not your uncle, any more than Harold’s your father. Didn’t your mother ever tell you how close we were, all those years ago?’ Katy spit in his face.”
“Not that I blame Katy,” I said, “but given what happened later, why didn’t Lillian tell the police about this?”
“Irene, you must remember that for twenty years, we thought Katy had drowned in a boating accident. Lillian told me she thought of going to the police about it in 1978, when you found out what had really happened to Katy and Todd, but when she saw that even Ian and Eric wouldn’t be convicted, she realized that it would be her word against Mitch’s and Mitch would claim it never happened.”
“No one else saw it?”
“Someone might have seen it, but to be able to recall a relatively minor incident twenty years later? She doubted anyone heard him. At the time it happened, she was hardly in a state to take down names from witnesses — she was hoping no one had seen it. She apologized to Mitch and fortunately her driver pulled up just then, which is probably all that kept Mitch from striking Katy.”
“What happened after that?”
“Lillian dragged Katy into the car and, once they were home, scolded her. She tells me that Katy retaliated by asking certain uncomfortable questions about Lillian’s past, and why there had never been any other children in the family, and so on. Lillian refused to answer them, and told her she should be less worried about Lillian’s youthful foolishness and much more worried about her own — that insulting a man like Mitch Yeager could be extremely dangerous. When she asked if Mitch was her father, Lillian said that if she didn’t want someone to spit in her face, she’d better stop asking such things.”
“And the will?”
“Ah, yes. The will. Katy said Jack should have been her father, and that she loved him more than anyone she was related to by blood. Lillian said, ‘This is your family, and it will be Max’s family, and you ought to be grateful that you weren’t raised by a drunkard without two nickels to rub together.’”
“Ouch.”
“Lillian said that Katy managed a parting shot as she left the house. She told Lillian to roll up all her nickels and shove them up her ass — yes, I know, not very ladylike — and that drunk or sober, Jack could do a better job of raising a child in a shack than Lillian or any of the Ducanes could in a mansion.”
“So she went from there to a lawyer?”
“Oh, that wasn’t the mystery it seemed at first. Apparently she already had an appointment to see him. Dan Norton — the homicide detective who first investigated their disappearances? — did look into the business of the will back in 1958. The lawyer told Norton that she had come to consult him about getting a divorce from Todd, something she had told others she intended to do. She arrived early — probably a result of storming out of Lillian’s house before she planned to leave. While she waited to see the lawyer, she talked to another client who was there to have a will and other papers drawn up — a young widow who said she wanted to make sure that if anything happened to her, her children would be left in the care of an aunt, and not her mother.”
“Which made Katy think of her own child. And she made sure Jack had a shack to raise him in.”
“Yes.”
I thought about all she had told me. “I’m not sure this brings me any further along,” I said.
“Perhaps not. Keep reading those diaries of Conn’s,” she said. “And come to me again if I can be of any help.”
I thanked her for confiding in me. Just before I left, I asked, “Helen, are you hoping the tests prove Max is the missing child, or that he isn’t?”
“I’m hoping for Max’s happiness and safety. That above all and more than anything.”
“Nothing more?”
“Oh, are you asking me if it would be a relief to know that Katy’s child lived? Yes, because given what you and Conn figured out about that night, if Max isn’t that child, I fear that child was murdered. I also hope that perhaps, one fine day, there will be justice. Justice would be sweet. It’s one of the things that happens as you age, you know. The taste buds go like everything else, but the last ones to leave you are the ones that can taste sweetness. If the good Lord is willing, I’d like to taste a little sweet justice for Katy.”
60
FOUR WEEKS LATER, THINGS SEEMED TO BE LOOKING UP. HAILEY’S STORY on Helen was nothing short of beautiful. We got letters from readers young and old after it ran. I had taken Helen’s advice and called Lydia and pretended we weren’t fighting, which happened to work, and eventually we had a long heart-to-heart about it that resulted in newsroom harmony, greater mutual respect, and increased local sales of Kleenex.
One unexpected result of this was that she became less defensive about Ethan, which ultimately made her more watchful. I decided not to tell her that Frank hated the Harmon story, mostly because he had only said, “This is bullshit, he never had this much access to Harmon,” when he saw it.
One evening, I stopped by her desk before leaving for the day. I had found some quizzes among O’Connor’s papers, and I told Lydia about them. “Middle sections of articles — no headlines, leads, or bylines — had been clipped out and pasted onto cheap paper — I suspect Jack took the paper from the newsroom. O’Connor had written names next to them
. It took me a while to figure out what was going on. Jack used to have O’Connor read stories without knowing who had written them, to teach O’Connor to recognize the style of the different members of the staff.” I shook my head. “He was ten or eleven years old, and he was getting most of them right. I don’t think I could do that now.”
“Sure you could,” she said.
From her computer, she printed out a few things that would be in the next day’s paper.
I was surprised. There was a little guesswork involved, but I got about eight out of ten. I missed twice — both were written by Ethan. Neither of us commented on that fact.
“Let’s see how you do,” I said.
Her test was a little harder to devise, because she had already read almost everything filed, so I waited at her computer until a few new stories were filed, and then added two sections from older stories of Ethan’s. I picked harder passages than she did — odd snippets, paragraphs that wouldn’t be recognized because of special content.
She also got eight of ten — she missed both of Ethan’s, too.
“What the heck does that mean?” she said, frowning.
“Maybe his style is imitative,” I said, hoping I wasn’t about to start another fight.
“No,” she said slowly. She asked the computer to give her everything written by him for the past month.
It pulled up a lot of material, but she quickly culled out two minor local stories. “You see?” she said. “These two — I would have known either one as his style. I like it, actually. Clear and direct. Doesn’t overdo it.”
I admitted they were well written. “Pull up the Harmon story,” I said.
She opened it, and I read it over her shoulder. I kept my mouth shut, but I wasn’t the only one who noticed a difference in what we were reading now and what we had read before. The style was also clear and direct, but there was something finer involved — a surer hand, more detailed observations, and words that evoked more powerful images. It stumbled here and there, but then the next sentence would redeem it.
