Taryn shrugged. “That’s okay. We could build a fire and sit with our backs to it.”
“Then wouldn’t our fronts get cold?”
Taryn drummed her little fingers on the kitchen table, thinking. Stella could all but see the light flash on in her head. “Nope! Cause we’d build a fire in front of us, too!”
The house was certainly less quiet with Taryn around and Stella was glad. She was happy for the company–the living company. Taryn’s red hair was pulled up in a messy ponytail, the curls escaping every which way. Her shorts were too small, her shirt too big, but she dressed herself and was proud of it.
Stella leaned over and pressed her lips against the back of Taryn’s neck and took in her sweetness. The child tasted of life. They were at opposite ends of the cycle, the two of them. She never felt closer to whatever higher power was out there than when she was with her granddaughter.
Later, at bedtime, Taryn pouted. “I thought we’d stay up late and watch movies.”
“Not tonight, dear. I’m very tired and I bet you are, too.” Stella fluffed the featherbed under their fitted sheet and then plumped the pillows.
Taryn stood in the middle of the floor, her arms crossed across her scrawny chest. “We usually stay up all night.”
“Yes, well, I am trying to get back on a better sleeping pattern. And you should, too. Your little butt will be starting school next year,” Stella told her.
Taryn would turn five in March and couldn’t wait to start school the following autumn. Stella could only bet that her parents couldn’t wait, either. They loved their daughter, but also loved their alone time. Both were dedicated to their jobs. What little time and energy they had left they gave to each other. Most couples who have children fall in love with each other first and then, jointly, with their child. They’d never really gotten to that second part.
Taryn began to climb into bed with her grandmother when she stiffened and stopped. Stella noticed her hesitation and took her hand away from the lamp. “What’s the matter?”
“Somebody’s sad,” Taryn said. Her little nose crinkled up and cocked her head to one side, unknowingly mimicking one of her grandmother’s favored habits. “I can hear them crying and asking for help.”
Stella held her breath and listened as well, but heard nothing.
“What else are they saying sweetie?”
Taryn closed her eyes. Stella could tell she was trying to listen, to take in what she was hearing. “It’s a girl. Oh, Nana, she’s very sick. She’s frowing up. She can’t help it. She’s trying to be quiet, to be a good girl.”
Stella’s eyes clouded over, the implication of what her granddaughter was telling her sinking in. “Oh, it’s okay to throw up,” she said.
Taryn shook her head back and forth, her ponytail bouncing. “No it’s not. Not for her. She’s got to be quiet. The monster will wake up. The monster will come and get her and then she’ll never see her mommy again.”
A big tear appeared at the corner of Taryn’s eye and rolled down her cheek. She was concentrating very hard, of that Stella could tell, but she didn’t understand what she was hearing or saying.
Stella walked over to her and engulfed her in a hug. “Oh sweetie, it’s okay. That was a long time ago. What happened in the past stays in the past.”
“But she was right here,” Taryn insisted. “I heard her.” She clung to her grandmother’s waist and buried her head in her stomach.
“It felt like she was right here, but you were just hearing something from a long, long time ago,” Stella tried to soothe her. The poor little thing was shaking. “She’s okay. She was just a little sick.”
“No, Nana,” Stella pulled away and looked up at her with serious eyes. “She’s died. She didn’t get better. Sometimes people don’t get better and they die. Just like her.”
“Do you know that for sure Taryn?” She didn’t want to press her but was eager to know what she knew.
“Yes,” Taryn nodded. “She died all by herself in her little bedroom.” She stopped talking and turned to face the closet. “There!” Taryn pointed.
Stella sighed with regret. Then it was true.
“I wish I could make her feel better,” Taryn whispered. She climbed into bed and pulled the covers up over her eyes, her body disappearing under the blankets.
“So do I, honey, so do I.”
With the blueprints spread out before her, Stella studied the images of her house. She didn’t understand all the little lines and circles and angles but she knew the rooms when she saw them.
As luck would have it, she didn’t need to be able to pick them out at all–someone had labeled them. There was the kitchen, the parlor, the bedrooms, the bathroom, the mud room, the sitting room, the dining room…they were all there in neat little boxes.
And then there was the nursery.
When the original house was built, Thaddeus had apparently had one thing in mind: grandchildren. Why else would the farmhouse boast five bedrooms? Unfortunately, he probably hadn’t lived to see any. For that matter, Rose and Roderick hadn’t produced any heirs. Those bedrooms had been as empty then as they were now. Still, it explained the small room off Stella’s bedroom. The closet itself was a new addition. It had once opened into a smaller room, a nursery in which to keep an infant until they were old enough to sleep in their own bedroom.
So at what point had the child died in the room and why was there no record of her?
Stella continued to look for answers but could find none in the house.
The reference librarian’s name was Jean. She wasn’t surprised to see Stella back there again. “It’s kind of addictive isn’t it? Looking into the past?”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Stella agreed. “Or obsessive. It’s clear that I am in need of a hobby.”
Jean didn’t smile much but Stella closed her eyes for a moment and allowed herself to reach out to the woman. A warm, bright light flooded into Stella’s arms and made them tingle. She nodded in approval. You couldn’t always judge a book by its cover.
She gave Jean the information she was looking for and then settled herself at a reading table. Spread out before her were local history books, full of images and newspaper stories from the early to mid-twentieth century.
When Jean returned she had more information.
“Okay, I think I found what you wanted. Turns out Roderick worked for the railroad. He was also a WWII veteran. I pulled out some image for you,” these, she slid across the table to Stella, “so you can see what he looked like if you’re interested.”
Stella studied the image of the man who had first lived in her house. He was handsome in an All-American kind of way: wavy blond hair, full lips, bright eyes, tanned skin showing through even in a vintage photograph. Still, there was something about his smile that made her uneasy. It was there, but didn’t seem to touch his eyes. He was not happy in the photograph, despite the fact that the two men who flanked him were laughing.
“And this is Rose.”
Rose Maguire had been a pale woman, almost sickly thin. Stella was expecting a radiant beauty but instead got a slight less-characterized version of Olive Oyl. Her complexion was sallow, her eyelids droopy, and her plain hair pulled back tightly in a bun but she had a wide smile that did touch her eyes and this somehow made her appealing.
“Well, they didn’t marry based on looks did they?” Stella muttered. “Kind of a homely little thing.”
“I’m sure it had to do with money,” Jean agreed. “Thaddeus was a descendent of one of the first settlers here. They owned a ton of land. Some of it’s still in the family today.”
“Huh,” was all Stella could say.
“So they married right about the time of the war,” Jean mused. “Just a few years before we got involved. And then he was off to fight. Wonder how long?”
Stella shook her head. “Hard to say. I was born in 1925. My father was forty by then. By the time the war came along he was too old to fight. My brothers went,
though. One was gone for two years. Another was killed in action in Normandy.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jean apologized. “Roderick did make it back to her, though. And then went to work on the railroad. Retired in 1971. He was pretty old when he retired.”
“Pretty old when he went to war,” Stella said. “Maybe he lied about his age.”
“Kind of funny though, huh?” Jean mused. “He got married and then went to war not long after. Then he retired and died right after that. Man couldn’t really catch a break.”
Stella had learned to live with the noises in her house as best she could but that didn’t mean they didn’t unsettle her.
After spending the day in Franklin again she was worn out. The hot bath helped her tired and aching joints but it didn’t slow her mind down. She found herself thinking about Rose as she soaked.
“Did you love your husband?” she asked aloud to nobody in particular. “Were you glad when he was gone? Did you cry? Grieve?”
Rose would have only been around nineteen years old when her husband went off to war. What had she done to pass the time away? Her father would’ve been gone already. Had she had a child then? Had the child been born out of wedlock and that’s why she didn’t have a birth certificate?
A horrible thought occurred to Stella then. Had Rose had the child out of wedlock and Roderick, upon returning home, found out and killed the child or locked her away?
Feeling sick to her stomach now, Stella rose from the water, shaking. A door slammed to from inside her bedroom upstairs, the force so strong that a picture hanging in the hallway fell off its nail and shattered on the floor.
“So you want me?” Stella called. “I am trying to help you! Just tell me who you are!”
Perhaps she’d been wrong after all. The needling thought was prickling at her. Perhaps she was jumping the gun on the Maguires. Maybe it had been the other family, the ones after them, who had lost a child in that room.
No, she was right. Stella might not have been as sensitive as her granddaughter but she knew things, too.
With a towel wrapped around her waist she trudged up the stairs, weary from so much thinking.
The door slammed again, this time jolting her and nearly making her lose her balance. A shot of fear sliced through her and cut to her to the quick. The child was angry tonight, angry because Stella was relaxing in a bath while she was dead and unresting. But why her? Why did it have to be Stella?
When she entered her bedroom she stopped mid step in her doorway, amazed at the sight in front of her. Her room was a holy wreck. Her comforter had been pulled off the bed and was thrown in a corner of the room. The fitted sheet was hanging from the ceiling fan, going around and around in circles on low speed, the feather bed torn. Feathers littered the floor like freshly fallen snow, some still floating lazily through the air. Tufts of baby powder puffed up, tiny clouds of dust. Dresser drawers were open and Stella’s belongings were tossed around the room like garbage.
Stella’s instinct was to flee, to run straight from the house and never look back.
There was a giggle, though, from the closet and this made her burn. No longer afraid, she puffed up her chest and marched to the door. Dead or not, the child had misbehaved. She knew how to deal with that. After all, she didn’t even tolerate rudeness from her own child and she was a married woman.
The giggle came again as Stella neared, the high-pitched sound almost sweet. Stella melted just a little but her resolve was strong. “Now you listen here,” she began.
When she walked into the small child’s room, however, the resolve disappeared. For just a brief moment she caught a glimpse of a little girl, not more than seven years old, sitting on the edge of the old bed. In her hand was Taryn’s stuffed horse, the one she slept with and the one she’d accidentally left behind. The ghost child gathered the horse to her chest, squeezed it, and then disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the stuffed animal.
It wasn’t for me after all, Stella thought strangely. It’s for Taryn.
“I hate to bother you at home Mrs. McKenzie but I managed to locate someone who might be able to answer some questions about your project.” Jean’s voice on the answering machine was loud against the quiet kitchen. “She’s a bit of an unofficial town historian and I said you might like to meet her. I hope that wasn’t too presumptuous of me.”
Stella played the message back several times before returning Jean’s phone call. She was tired. No, more than that, she was exhausted. She needed rest. She needed a vacation. For the first time since her husband’s death she’d had a purpose, a project, and it was wearing her to the bone.
But Stella always finished what she started.
Lillian Becker was seventy-five years old. She looked much younger. When she pulled up in her gold Cadillac in Stella’s driveway and got out of the car Stella would’ve pegged her for sixty. Maybe younger. She was a spry pixie of a woman with a mannish haircut, ears that stuck out, and more freckles than wrinkles.
“Hi, I’m Lily,” she introduced herself warmly, shaking Stella’s hand with a firmness most people didn’t use on those past the age of sixty. “I’m so glad to meet you.”
Stella got a whiff of coldness.
Once they were settled in her parlor, Stella didn’t know how to start. “I am trying to learn more about the family who built this house and lived here. I suppose they must’ve been rather ordinary, though, so there isn’t much for me to find out.”
“I think I can help you,” Lily smiled. “I didn’t really know them personally, but I was a young woman back then and my father was a doctor. That was back when they still made house calls. He knew them well.”
Stella felt waves of excitement spread throughout her. Finally. Finally!
“Is there something specific you want to know?”
Stella chewed on her lip before answering. “I am trying to form a timeline in my head,” she began. “It seems that they got married. Shortly thereafter Roderick went to war, presumably leaving Rose here alone. And then, after that, he returned? And then went to work on the railroad?”
Lily nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Some of the women worked at a factory here during the war. Rose did not. She didn’t have to. Her father didn’t lose any money in the crash. They sailed right through the Depression, don’t ask me how. We didn’t. He was inventive man, though, lots of money and lots of land. Owned several patents. At any rate, she didn’t need to work. I think, through the grapevine, that caused some contention. I was a nurse in Nashville but came back here to stay with my family on my days off. There was a lot of gossip regarding that situation.”
“What kind of gossip?” Stella felt awkward about gossiping even now, forty years later, but she couldn’t help it.
“That perhaps there was another man involved,” Lily whispered. “Maybe even someone from the other side?”
“The other side?” Stella repeated.
Lily straightened in her chair. “That perhaps she was harboring a fugitive. A German or, worse, a Japanese.”
Stella thought of the secret room and smiled a little. No, there was no signs of an escapee hiding out in there. Some people would just believe anything as long as it made a good story.
“I never believed it, of course, but those were the rumors,” Lily stated stubbornly.
“What kind of man was Roderick like?”
Lily smiled. “Oh, good looking. Charming. Intellectual. Witty. Almost the perfect opposite of his wife. The very few times I saw her out in public she was sour faced, prissy, almost hoity toity. You’d get the feeling she thought she was too good for anyone else.”
Stella considered this. She wondered if that’s what people thought of her as well. Those who hadn’t lost their husbands, who didn’t have their partners by their side, who felt like they were missing a limb, could never understand the grief. It would always be misconstrued in the wrong way.
“It’s interesting that they didn’t have any children,” Stella said ligh
tly, trying to push the conversation into a different direction.
Lily leaned forward, her eyes bright. “Oh, but they did. They did. My father was the one called out here to deliver the baby. It was the middle of the night. I remember because it was a weekend and I was home staying with my mother and father. My mother had arthritis and wasn’t well. Father went flying out into the rain. He returned hours later, exhausted.”
Stella thought she could see a faint blue light emanating from Lily’s shoulders. The color blue had always unsettled her. Still, she wanted to know more. “What happened?”
Lily looked pleased with herself, content that she’d found a captive audience. “Said he’d delivered a baby girl and that the mother and child were fine.”
“There’s no record of a baby girl being born to them, though,” Stella insisted. “I looked.”
“Yes, that’s the strange thing,” Lily agreed. “The next morning Roderick appeared on our doorstep. Claimed the child hadn’t lived through the night. Said not to file the birth certificate. My father wanted to go out and look but Roderick said the baby had already been buried. He didn’t want a death certificate either, since it she hadn’t lived a full day yet. He thought it might be too traumatic for Rose. Said he wanted to forget it and move on.”
“Well.” That was all Stella could think to say.
“He must have moved on, too,” Lily continued. Later that day he hopped a bus to Nashville and joined up. He was gone for at least two years.”
Lily sighed at this and brushed an imaginary piece of lint from her peacock blue skirt. “I suppose everyone has their own way of grieving.”
Stella couldn’t sleep at all that night. She tossed and turned until daylight, unable to blot out the sounds of the crying child in the room next to her.
Two days later, Lily called. “I just wanted to thank you for the lovely visit,” she gushed. “It isn’t often that I get the chance to talk to someone about our history, someone who’s so interested in it. Everyone else is just sick of me.”
Taryn's Camera: Beginnings: Four Haunting Novellas Page 9
