We found Georgia in the kitchen pretending to be busy and pretending to be unaware of the fact that Elliott was there. I introduced the two of them. They both stood their ground for a long tense minute. Then Elliott smiled one of those huge, face-engulfing smiles and he went to Georgia and gave her a bone-crushing hug.
“You have no idea how nice it is to finally meet you, Georgia.”
It would be so very hard not to like Elliott. She laughed and hugged him back, saying grudgingly, “It’s nice to finally meet you too.”
I left them alone in the kitchen to talk for a minute, which was probably not very nice of me, but they needed to get used to each other. They might as well get started.
I was packing up the stacks of research and printouts when Elliott came up behind me and circled my waist. “See? Nothing to worry about.”
“Who said I was worried?”
He laughed at that. “Yeah, right. Hey, I have a surprise for you.”
“I have really grown to hate surprises. What is it?”
He pulled an enormous pair of bolt cutters out from the canvas bag he had brought with him. I said, “You shouldn’t have?”
He cocked his head as if I were an idiot. “It’s to cut the lock off that box you told me about.”
“Oh! Brilliant!” There was a knock at the door. As I went to answer it I said over my shoulder, “We’ll open it as soon as Graham gets back.”
I threw the door open. Emory and Maggie Bryant were standing on the front step.
“Oh. Hi there. I . . . hi.” I didn’t want Emory to think that he made me nervous, but for some reason he did, and the last time I saw him I was bleeding out all over his backseat. I decided to just turn my attention to his wife, Maggie.
She smiled at me and I felt myself calm down. “Hello, Olivia, I hope we’re not intruding. I wanted to check on your stitches, and Emory . . . thought he’d come along with me.”
“That’s so nice. Come in, please.”
I led Maggie and Emory into the cottage and introduced them to my sister. Emory was looking around the room, taking it all in. I tracked the movement of his eyes as he searched through all of the pictures and maps and articles scattered around the room. He was looking back and forth between the Vietnam pictures of Oliver with his buddies and the wedding photo of George and Janie.
Maggie brought me into the kitchen where she subjected me to a thorough examination of my head wound. I said, “I understand you’re a veterinarian. I feel terrible that Elliott made you stitch me up.” I thought back to the desperate look on his face when I had gotten hurt. The way he held my hands to keep them from shaking.
Maggie shooed that away. “Don’t be silly. I don’t mind at all. It’s actually nice to be able to have a patient that can talk back now and again.” She was finished. “It looks good. No sign of infection.”
As we walked back in to join everyone else, I overheard Emory giving his condolences. Georgia and I glanced at each other, each one silently willing the other not to give away anything about our illegal late-night operation.
I repeated what Emory had said. “You’re sorry for our loss?”
He looked at me with that same intense stare that he had from the day we met. “Yes, I understand you’re scattering the remains of your mother today.” I felt a wave of relief wash over me. Then he added, “And burying her son.”
How in the world had they known about Oliver? Maggie suddenly looked nervous or anxious. Emory walked to the Wall of Discovery and pulled down the photo of Oliver on his boat in Vietnam, staring at it. I kept seeing the name Bryant in my head. The tumblers were clicking into place in my brain. Of course. I looked at Emory and asked, “When did you change your name?”
He didn’t answer; he just looked at me. I had guessed correctly.
I took the photo from his hand and flipped it over. The names written there were: Me, Whitey, Johnnie, Turk, and Slim.
“You used to be called Johnnie, right? Johnnie Bryant. Is Emory your middle name? You served with Oliver in Vietnam and then what? Did you come back to Tillman with him when you got out?” The muscles in his face froze. He didn’t say anything. I looked at the picture again. It was hard to see the face of Johnnie in the pictures because of the harsh shadow cast by his floppy hat, but I knew it must have been him. I said, “Your name was written on the coroner’s report too. Johnnie Bryant, eyewitness. Were you the last one to see Oliver alive before he committed suicide?”
The room was deathly silent. I could tell that the others had followed my train of thought to figure out how I had reached my conclusions.
Finally Emory said, “No. I wasn’t the last one to see him alive; that was George. I was the one who found him though. I knew he’d be in the lake. I tried to get him help; we all did. I’m sorry to say that he was very seriously depressed. He was unstable even before we came back stateside.”
I felt my knees go out and I plopped down on the couch. I glanced at Maggie and saw a look of compassion aimed at Georgia and me. Was this why she had brought Emory to my house, not to check my head or give us condolences, but to answer the questions that we didn’t even know we had?
I turned back to Emory. “So you knew my mother? You knew Oliver and George? You even stayed at their house, didn’t you? You were staying at Rutledge Ridge when Oliver died. Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Emory sat down, clearly emotionally exhausted. He and Maggie shared a silent moment and in it she gave him the strangest look. She said, “I’m going to Betty’s. It was nice to see you again, Olivia.” She waved at the others, manners and decorum trumping the obvious growing tension in the room.
When she was gone Emory cleared his throat. “I didn’t say anything because this was my story, and I didn’t think you had a right to it. I don’t think it’s any of your business.”
Georgia spoke up. “Then why are you here now? Did your wife make you come?”
“Maggie? No. She didn’t know anything about it till last night when Buddy came over.” I was getting ready to demand that he tell us what the hell he was talking about, but Georgia put her hand on my shoulder to shush me. She had a husband and three kids so she was more experienced in the art of hearing a confession. She realized the bounty to be had by waiting patiently and quietly.
Emory started talking and he didn’t stop for almost an hour. As soon as we had left Buddy’s house on the night of the covert operation, he had stormed over to Emory’s. He told Emory that even though it was foolish and stupid, Georgia and I were bound and determined to find out everything we could about our mother. Buddy and Emory were the only two people left in this town who had known Janie. They were the only ones who could tell us anything else about her time here. Buddy told Emory that if he didn’t share his story with us then Buddy would do it for him, probably in a very unflattering light.
Emory did a decent impression of Buddy, repeating with a drawl, “They already know about the damn baby. They might as well know whatever else you can tell them.” He went back to his normal voice. “I guess Buddy thought I could fill in some blanks for you, after George and Oliver died, but before she met your dad.”
So Emory began to tell us his story, starting with his tour of Vietnam when he met Oliver. Jonathon Emory Bryant, or Johnnie, and Oliver were the only two men on their boat to make it back to the States. He mentioned some river they patrolled, but I didn’t know enough about Vietnam for it to register. He talked about how dark the nights were, how long they lasted. How the attacks would come randomly at you from small fishing boats, thick muddy banks, or women and children. The river was out to kill them from the moment they got there. To live through it, to fight back, meant killing. That was war; that was the job. Only Oliver couldn’t take it. It broke him. He wasn’t able to settle it with his own moral compass the way the others could, because he didn’t really want to survive in the first place. He hadn’t for a long time.
Emory made it sound like Oliver had serious suicidal t
endencies. I wished I could have defended Oliver, but knowing how it ended I had to admit Emory was right.
Emory had come home with Oliver to start a boating and fishing business on the lake. They weren’t stateside long when Emory realized that Oliver wouldn’t be able to make it work. By the time they got back to Georgia he was too far gone, too desperate for the long fight to be over.
Emory talked about how awful it was for George and Janie after Oliver died. When he mentioned that Janie was pregnant and expecting the baby I heard a sniffle from my sister. All of our emotions were raw, even Emory’s.
Emory jumped around in time, telling us bits about Oliver in Vietnam and then some pointless fact about the house on Rutledge Ridge. He said several times how nice George had been and how welcoming Janie had been when he arrived with Oliver. This whole thing was obviously a story that Emory had never intended to tell. He had not run through it in his mind, practicing the way to weave it. It was just spilling out in fits and starts, disjointed and at times incoherent.
He didn’t seem to want to talk about the baby, but he made himself. Emory said that he had looked just like George, the same eyes, the same coloring, the same smile. He said that Janie was so wonderful with the baby, so loving, so attentive, so in awe of him. Then he stopped himself from thinking about little Oliver and what it all meant. His mind bounced to the fire and about how difficult the cleanup of the site had been. His eyes kept going to the black metal box as he spoke. It was sitting in the center of the table, locked tight. He would stare at it unblinking as the silent minutes stretched out. He talked about the fact that nothing from the house could be saved. Saved. That pulled his mind to the moment when they finally found Janie in that boat on the water. Every boat on the lake had been sent out to dredge for Janie’s body, sure she was gone.
Emory said, “When we found her, in that boat, and she was okay . . .”
He was quiet for a long time. That’s when I realized. He was in love with her.
“Emory, did you . . . did you have feelings for her?”
He laughed at my stupid choice of words. “It was a long time ago, but this is still painful for me.” I didn’t think he wanted to answer the question, but he had gone this far. “Yes, I had feelings for her. I loved her.” He deflated back into his chair, having said that out loud, and rubbed his face until it was red. “I really did love her. After George and the baby . . . She was so hurt, so fragile. I truly thought I could make her whole again. I think I could have made her happy. She would have grown to love the marina, and maybe me, in time.”
“Did you . . . Were you planning to marry her?”
He nodded. I was stunned. How could my mother have been involved with someone like Emory? I was starting to realize that Buddy might have had a point when he questioned the wisdom of trying to uncover everything my mother had done.
Emory explained. “She said yes. It was more than two years after George and Oliver. She wasn’t herself again yet, but I thought she had made progress. I guess if I were being honest I would have to admit that she wasn’t exactly in touch with reality. She was still so quiet, almost catatonic at times. She pretended to come out of it for the sake of the people around her, but even then she hardly ever spoke more than a few words and she barely ate anything. Her mind wasn’t right. She was not a whole person when she left.”
“Left? What happened?”
“She was just gone one day. She didn’t take any of her new things that we had bought. She left a note on the door and that was it. It took me weeks to find her.”
Georgia asked, “What did the note say?”
“It said, ‘I’m sorry. Cancel the wedding.’ That was it.”
I wondered where she would have gone. This would have been years before she met our father. “Where did she go?”
“She checked herself into a hospital. A sanitarium.”
“Mom was in a mental hospital?” I felt Georgia’s hand light gently onto mine.
Emory continued. “When I finally found her I wanted to get her to leave with me, but I couldn’t even get her to see me. Her doctor said that she had a break with reality; she couldn’t cope with what had happened. That’s when I realized that she had never really felt about me the way I had felt about her. It wasn’t long after that when the notices started coming about the foreclosure. She didn’t care about any of it, her property, her estate, or me. She gave all of her money to Buddy’s son, Nate, and it was a substantial amount of money. I guess I was still angry with her and hurt when I bought the land out from under her. I honestly thought she would come back here. If not to me then at least to the lake, to the area. This place was so much a part of who she was. I always thought I would see her again. Anyway, a few years later Maggie moved to town.” He shrugged not wanting to tell us that part of his story and knowing we didn’t have the right to ask about it.
Georgia, Logan, Elliott, and I had been made a bit catatonic ourselves at discovering that Emory had been in love with her. I didn’t for a second believe that she had loved him back; she just didn’t know what else to do in the moment. In some strange way it reinforced my belief that she honestly loved our father. She wouldn’t have married Adam Hughes otherwise. Somehow they found each other and loved each other enough for her to want to live. Enough for her to want to try again with life.
None of us seemed to know what to say. I thought back to how strange Emory had acted since the first time he laid eyes on me. Now it all made perfect sense, considering how much Georgia and I looked like our mother. Then I thought of how kind he had been when I got hurt, rushing me to Maggie to get stitches.
I put my hand out. “Thank you for coming here. I can tell it wasn’t easy for you.”
He smiled and we shook, awkwardly. He stood to leave. “I guess if you have any other questions, I’ll answer them.”
I said, “Because Buddy is making you?”
Emory smiled at that. “Yes, Buddy is making me.”
Logan spoke up. “Can I ask why you took the pages from the map book in the library?”
Emory seemed to consider that for a second. Probably trying to decide what the consequences would be of admitting to it. “There were some notations on there about the tax deed that would have led you to me. I just didn’t want you coming to me asking a lot of questions about her.”
Elliott asked, “What about the missing journals from the Fells?”
He seemed genuinely confused. “I don’t know anything about any journals. But, I will tell you this”—he looked back at the box on the coffee table—“when we found Janie in the lake that night, the night of the fire, she had that box in the boat with her.”
All eyes turned to the box as Emory left. Georgia wouldn’t let us open it yet; we had to leave for the cemetery. She promised, as soon as we got back we could see what was inside.
THIRTY-TWO
As I took the winding country road that led to Huntley Memorial Gardens I glanced in my rearview mirror at the urn containing my mother’s ashes. Logan had buckled it into the seatbelt next to her. I really missed her. I wondered what she would think about the fact that I had canceled my wedding to Leo. I knew she had liked him. But she had canceled a wedding to the wrong person, hadn’t she? Granted, in spectacularly more dramatic fashion than me. I figured she would understand. And I think I had finally come to understand what she meant about needing someone in order to breathe.
The memorial service we had had in Maryland for our mother when she passed away had been so difficult. It was sad and hard and busy. It was full of everyone else’s expectations and needs for dealing with their grief, their desire to say good-bye. None of it felt as if it had, in any way, helped me deal with her death.
But this send-off, this good-bye, felt like a complete catharsis. We three girls, Janie’s girls, were going together to say our farewell and remember the woman she had been and the life she had lived. The whole life she had lived. The life she had lived with George and with Oliver. The life she had lived wi
th our father, Adam, and with Georgia and me. The life she had gotten to live with her grandchildren.
We carried the urn across the cemetery toward the tent set up in section 30. Underneath the tent was the small casket that we had wrestled from the ground. It was covered with a white satin cloth and behind it stood an enormous wreath of white lilies.
Mary Frances was waiting for us, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her pudgy white hand. I said, “Everything looks lovely, Mary Frances. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, dear. You know Betty Chatham insisted on doing the flower arrangements for you. So fortunate.” She set her gaze on the flowers as if they were made of bacon. “Betty’s the head of the Altar Guild you know.” I could tell that we were to be as impressed about that as we were supposed to have been about her presidency of the Tillman Garden Club.
Georgia looked at Logan and me. “What’s an Altar Guild?”
Logan answered under her breath. “They do church flowers and stuff. Betty Chatham is like some kind of competitive florist.”
Mary Frances asked, “Would you like us to say a few words, or would you like a moment alone to say your good-byes?”
Somehow I had been designated as the spokesperson for our crew. “Could we lower Oliver into the grave, and then take a few minutes?”
“Oh, of course.” Mary Frances gave a signal to a groundskeeper and Oliver’s little casket was slowly lowered into the ground. Then they stepped back a few yards and pretended that they couldn’t hear anything we were saying.
Georgia, Logan, and I stood over the edge of the grave, peering down into the hole that held Oliver’s little casket. It was right next to George’s grave. They were finally together again.
The air was still and quiet with just a faint buzz of insects in the tree line. I glanced at Logan, then to Georgia. I said, “I’m glad they’re all going to be together.”
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