by Barbara Ross
“I’ll go too.” I wanted to be helpful. I also wanted to get out of the house. How was I going to tell my mother that cousin Hugh had been alive, but now was not only dead, but he’d been murdered? The dread of that conversation emptied my brain of every thought, my body of every feeling.
“Rose can handle it, Julia,” Marguerite said. “I think it’s time you and I had a talk.”
Chapter 17
When Rose left I moved to the chair next to Marguerite, where the lawyer had been. I inched it even closer and leaned in her direction.
“I imagine you have some questions for me.” Marguerite grasped my forearm. I was surprised by her strength. She looked frail, but the hand on my arm channeled inner toughness. I had so many questions, I didn’t know where to begin.
Marguerite took the reins of the conversation, thank goodness. “You were surprised to hear me refer to Hugh as my son.”
Okay. Let’s start there.
“I adopted him as an adult twenty years ago. I was at a crossroads financially. This house was in dire need of repairs and updating. I was going to have to sell it, or condo it and live in one small section. I think you’ll agree, architecturally it’s of a piece.” She gestured toward the magnificent staircase. “I didn’t want it chopped to bits. My father bought this house in 1888. He brought my mother here after their wedding in 1919. My family is meant to be here. Hugh was a great lover of architecture, and family too, and he agreed. He invested his savings in the house. I already thought of him as my son. It seemed like the right time to make it official.”
For such a great lover of family, Hugh had been outrageously cruel to my mother, and to his parents. That seemed to be his way. He turned up when he was needed—when my mother was lonely at boarding school, when Rose was overwhelmed by her grandparents’ estate, when Marguerite needed money for her house—and then he left in the most dramatic fashion imaginable. Twice.
I wondered how Vivian, Marguerite’s only child, felt about Hugh’s adoption. I’d been worried Page, an only child for a decade, would resent a new sibling. What about four decades?
“But how did Hugh come to be here in the first place?” I asked. “How did Hugh Morrow become Hugh Morales, if you adopted him years after his disappearance and ‘death’? How could he have done this to my mother?” It burst out of me. He’d put her through the agony of his disappearance, and then let her live with the sadness, guilt, and emptiness all those years. How could he have been only a three-hour drive away, alive and, until recent years, healthy?
Marguerite gave me a look, emanating from her hooded brown eyes. “He didn’t mean to disappear. At least not at first. He told me he had a fight with a girl he liked and all he could think was to leave the party. That’s the trouble with islands. You cannot get away from people you do not wish to see. So he hid aboard the boat your grandfather hired to take the party guests back to the harbor. When it docked he waited until all the guests had left, then walked away. He hitchhiked back to Cambridge with a tourist who was driving south toward his home in North Carolina. I’m sure the man never saw the news reports about Hugh’s disappearance. He never came forward.”
I should have realized, spending his summers on Morrow Island, Hugh would have his own friends, including girls. Mom had never mentioned a fight with a girl on the night Hugh disappeared. But then, she might have seen it as a motive for a young man to fling himself into a cold, dark sea. She had never said it, exactly in those words, but I knew that’s what she feared most. That her cousin had killed himself.
“Hugh went to a college friend’s apartment,” Marguerite continued. “He was feeling low about the girl, and didn’t look at the news or newspapers. I’m sure he knew your mother and grandfather would miss him, but he had no idea about the search. It wasn’t like it is today. There wasn’t endless press coverage about a twenty-one-year-old man who left a party.”
She sensed my skepticism. “He was a foolish young man,” she said. “When he did realize, he was horribly embarrassed about all the fuss, but the more he thought about it, the more he saw it as a solution to a problem.”
“What problem was that?”
Marguerite looked down at her hands in her lap. They had dark age spots, and long, graceful fingers like my mom’s. They were the first bit of family resemblance I’d spotted.
“It must have occurred to you that for a young man to spend not just his summers, but so many of his school holidays with distant cousins, something must be terribly wrong at home. Arthur and Hugh’s father was a tyrant. He was one of the top lawyers in the city and he demanded his boys follow in his footsteps. He browbeat Arthur into attending Stanford Law and joining his firm. Arthur was in his first year working there when he went overboard into San Francisco Bay. There were many who believed it was not an accident.”
So Rose lived in the shadow of a suicide, as my mother did.
“Hugh’s father was a bully who used his voice, his fists, and his money in his attempt to completely control the lives of his sons. The boy’s mother was a person who cared only about reputation and image. The only opinions that mattered were those of the people outside her home. Their father could yell, bully, and even beat the boys as long as the neighbors and her friends didn’t find out. Hugh dreaded graduating from college. He’d shared this with me and I’d told him to run off, go to Europe as I had as a young woman. Live abroad. Start over. But Hugh didn’t believe he could ever escape the long arm of his father. When he was missing, and then presumed dead, he saw his chance. He did start over. By never volunteering he was alive.”
“And you supported this?” Hugh had been twenty-one, but Marguerite was fifty-eight, if I calculated right, with a grown child of her own when Hugh disappeared. Surely, she must have had some empathy for Hugh’s parents.
Marguerite shook her head, the braids that wound around it moving slightly. “I didn’t know about the deception at first. I’m telling you now what he told me later, when he returned here. After a couple of weeks in Cambridge, he did take off, traveling constantly. He learned the tricks of building a new identity from his fellow travelers on the road. He turned up here the first time two years after his disappearance. I begged him to call his parents, but he refused. He said if I told them, he’d disappear from my life as well. He only stayed two weeks that first time. I think it was a test, to see if he could trust me, though he didn’t return again until after his parents had him declared dead.”
“Why do you think he came back?”
“Because, like me, Hugh had a strong feeling for family. His parents may have been awful in their different ways, but Hugh longed for an affiliation. I’m sure that’s why he returned to me, and why he sought out Rose after his parents passed away. He didn’t want his parents’ money. To him it was a part of the leash his father had used to control him. After so many years on the road, his needs were modest by then, anyway. But he wanted to know his niece.
“After his parents had him declared dead, he came to live with me. We called him Hugh Morales, even then, and I told my friends he was a nephew of my late husband’s. He rebuilt his life and he was a part of rebuilding this neighborhood. He became a realtor, an expert in historic buildings. When my mother moved into this house in 1919, this neighborhood was the anchor of a genteel Boston. Then came the Depression, the war. My contemporaries fled to the suburbs, but I stayed. I stayed through the rooming houses, and the hippies, and then the yuppies, who bought the houses and converted them to condos. I stayed through it all. Hugh loved the house as much as I did. Aside from Morrow Island, I think it was the only place he thought of as home.”
“Rose told me when you were on Morrow Island as a child, you stayed at Windsholme.”
“Ah, what a house that was. So grand, so soaring, so sumptuous. But you know it.”
“Not really. I’ve only seen it empty, dirty, and run down. I try to imagine what it was like in its day.”
“The perfect place for a child. So many hiding places—in the gr
eat house, on the grounds. There was a rose garden right beside the house, surrounded by a tall hedge. And beyond that, a playhouse, a mini version of Windsholme.” She had closed her eyes, as if carried back by the memories.
“The rose garden is gone, but the playhouse is still there. Now it’s surrounded by woods.”
“I am glad to hear that. Windsholme is a special property, you know. It was designed by Holden Hodgman, his only house in Maine, and the grounds were designed by a student of Frederick Law Olmsted.”
“I know.” My friend Quentin was always going on about the house and what an architectural gem it was. “Why did you stop going to Windsholme?”
“The house wasn’t my mother’s. She was given the right to use it for life, but my father left it to my half brothers, and then William bought out Charles’s portion.” I knew this from Floradale Thayer. “Even before the stock market crash in twenty-nine, William had lost most of his money. He was barely holding on to the property. And after the crash, it all became unsupportable. The house, the grounds, the servants. And the last night my mother and I spent there, something happened. A valuable necklace was stolen during a wild party.”
“Was the necklace ever found?” I kept my voice as casual as I could.
“No one knew who took it, though there were many suspicions. Some said it was a maid, though I always thought that sounded made up, a story to move suspicion away from the family and their fancy guests. Some people thought your great-grandfather William stole it, to sell to keep his homes and his company. Some even thought my mother made up the story of the theft, so she could sell it. Those were desperate times. Only Hugh’s branch of the family in San Francisco prospered, and that was later. The whole affair soured my mother on the family. She fell out with her stepsons and their children after that.”
“But you found Arthur.”
“When my mother died, I was alone. I knew I had half brothers who were much older. I found the family. When Arthur matriculated at Harvard, I contacted him.”
“I am sorry about Hugh. It must be difficult for you.” I meant what I said. In a short time, I’d come to like this elderly woman a great deal.
“It truly has been like losing a son.” Her voice remained strong, but turned husky. “I am grateful that at the end, we were able to bring him home. He wanted to die here, and thanks to his generosity in helping me maintain this house and keep it in the family, I was able to give something back to him. I hired Paolo and that made it all possible. I’m an old woman. I have limited resources. But that I could do.” She sighed. “But enough of that. I’d love to hear about your family, but this morning’s unexpected news has worn me out. I must go rest. We’ll talk again.”
“You should meet my family. You should come to Morrow Island in the summer.”
“At my age, I don’t make plans six months in advance. And I’m not sure I’m up to the journey. But thank you. I should like to know your mother. With Hugh gone, there’s no impediment left.”
Marguerite used her cane to push herself to her feet. I jumped up to help her. “Thank you, dear. I shall go up to rest.” We walked to the bottom of the stairway. She sat on a mechanical chairlift that would move her to the second floor. “You should go see Hugh’s room,” she said. “His books and whatnots. They’re going to belong to your mother. Second floor, third door to the left.”
The machine moved her slowly up the stairs. It was a graceful exit, almost like she was ascending to heaven.
Chapter 18
I waited until I heard Marguerite’s door close at the top of the stairs, and then started up. Her room was at the back of the house. Down a long hallway were three doors off to the left, one to the right, and then another door at the other end that must have led to the room facing Marlborough Street. Every door was closed. The hallway was narrow and dark, much different from the generous proportions of the rooms downstairs. I moved to the third on the left and knocked lightly, not wanting to intrude if I had the wrong room. The door opened an inch and I pushed it wider.
There was no mistaking the look of the sick room. At the sight of the hospital bed, stripped bare, my heart squeezed and memories of my father’s illness flooded back. Mom, Livvie, and Sonny had tended to him during the long months of his cancer, shuttling him to treatments, and finally sitting by his bedside in the days and nights before his death. I’d returned to Busman’s Harbor for the occasional weekend or holiday, telling myself it was all I could do in the face of a busy career and my life in New York. My father understood and supported me, of that I was certain, but my absence, my inattention, was the greatest regret of my life.
There was other equipment scattered—a hospital table, a commode in the corner, and a metal pole used for bags of medication—but at its core, it was a masculine room, decorated in rich brown colors. I closed the door behind me for privacy. There was a double bookcase and a simple oak bureau on the opposite wall. The room had a single window, a result of the town house being on a corner.
I knelt by the bookcase to look at the titles. Of all Hugh’s possessions, his books would tell me the most about him. I was grateful for some quiet time to absorb the world-shaking news of the last twenty-four hours.
Cousin Hugh liked history and biography, with a particular interest in the Civil War. There was a set of old notebooks he must have used to study for his real estate license back in the 1980s. I wondered why he hadn’t discarded them. And then I found it—A History of the Morrow Ice Company. Cousin Hugh had a copy. I laughed out loud. No longer was I beholden to Floradale Thayer. Once the book passed to Mom, she could read it, and Livvie and Chris, and Page when she was a little older. I pulled the book from the shelf and cradled it in my arms.
The door opened and Paolo Paolini stepped in. “Who’s here?” he asked, his voice more curious than accusatory.
“It’s me, Julia. I’m on the floor behind the bed.”
He moved farther into the room and closed the door behind him. “You like the books? Mr. Hugh, he loved books, so much. He read almost until the end, and in the last month, they read to him, the family. Mrs. Morales read to him, and Mrs. Vivian. He liked Mr. Jake to read to him the most. Very expressive, he said. He could listen to Jake for hours. Mrs. Tallulah read to him too, but he liked her to sing. Only Rose didn’t read to him, because she arrived just before he died.”
“Rose told me she got here in time to say good-bye.”
Paolo nodded. “This is true. She got here late Wednesday night, spent Thursday with Mr. Morales, and he died in the early hours of Friday.”
“I don’t know how you do it,” I said. “To know from the beginning that you will be there at the end.”
He regarded me with his big, sad eyes. “When you are needed most, that is when the work is most rewarding.”
It was a lovely sentiment and I admired him for it. I didn’t think I could do it, especially again and again.
“Mr. Morales spoke often of your mother and grandfather and their many kindnesses,” Paolo told me. “He believed he had done your mother a great wrong, though he never confessed to me what it was. It weighed on him more than anything else in his life.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Every single person, including my mother, who had ever spoken to me about Hugh had talked of what a decent, kind man he was. But he had deceived and hurt my mother grievously, this woman about whom he spoke so fondly.
“Paolo, before he died, did Mr. Morales ask you to mail a small package?”
His face was as uncomprehending as Rose’s had been. “No. I mailed nothing for him, not even a letter.” Paolo moved to the doorway and put his hand on the knob, preparing to take his leave. “You should look in the top bureau drawer,” he said. “That is where the things of value for your mother will be.”
I thanked him and stood. He nodded and went out, closing the door behind him.
I looked back at the books. An old-fashioned scrapbook lay on its side on the bottom shelf. I pulled it toward me gently. My h
eart leapt with excitement. What would it be? Photos of Hugh and Arthur as boys? Or pictures of my mother and grandfather on Morrow Island? I opened the big front cover.
There was a newspaper clipping from the Busman’s Harbor Register, announcing my parents’ engagement. On the next page was the article about their wedding. “The bride wore an ivory gown that had been worn by her mother.” There was the announcement of my birth, and two years later of Livvie’s, along with lots of articles about the Snowden Family Clambake, from YOUNG COUPLE TRIES THEIR LUCK WITH AN OLD MAINE TRADITION, to stories about the clambake’s booming success. “I could feed more tourists if I could find more people to hire,” my father said one year.
The scrapbook was entirely about my family. It was overwhelming, both flattering and more than a little creepy. I didn’t know what to think. Why? Why would someone do this?
There were stories about me in the elementary school play, and Livvie on the swim team, reports I’d made the honor role, and what Livvie had been up to with the Brownies. Then I disappeared to prep school, but Livvie was represented during the high school years, swimming to state records and championships, going to the junior prom. Then came her wedding picture, shot from the neck up to hide her pregnant belly, Sonny behind her looking uncomfortable in a jacket and tie. I kept turning pages. Notices that I’d made Dean’s List at college. The announcement of Page’s birth. My grandfather’s obituary. My father’s obituary. On the last page, articles about the murder on Morrow Island and photos of Windsholme, burned.
I sat cross-legged, not moving, barely breathing, the big book in my lap.
* * *
Minutes ticked by. The door opened and Tallulah came in. She walked toward the bed, then spotted me behind it on the floor. “You found the scrapbook.” She sounded happy, not surprised to see me, and not at all worried about my reaction to finding my family’s life documented by an allegedly dead relative.
