01 - Aunt Dimity's Death

by Nancy Atherton - (ebook by Undead)

  The two friends talked about everything that touched their lives. As my mother grew increasingly despondent over the lack of a family of her own, Dimity wrote to her about “Mrs. Bedelia Farnham, the greengrocer’s wife, who delivered healthy triplets—Amelia, Cecelia, and Cordelia, my dear, if you will credit it—shortly after her forty-third birthday” and exhorted her not to lose hope. When Dimity wondered how she could bear to see another war-torn family, my mother responded with characteristic common sense:

  Does the word “vacation” mean anything to you? How about “holiday”? I’ve copied the dictionary definitions on a separate sheet of paper, in case you have trouble remembering. Take one, and write me when you get back.

  I’m serious, Dimity. It’s no good, wearing yourself down like this. It’s not good for you and it’s certainly not good for the children. I know I’m stating the obvious, but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated.

  So take some time off. Paddle your feet in a brook. Read a pile of books and eat apples all day. Remind yourself that there’s joy in the world as well as sadness. Then go back to work and remind the kids.

  * * *

  I fixed sandwiches for a late afternoon lunch, and Bill’s disappeared so rapidly that I thought I had scored another culinary coup, until he happened to mention that he hadn’t had any breakfast. I hastily made him another, a thick slab of roast beef on grainy brown bread, and sent him into the living room to eat it, ordering him to leave me alone in the kitchen until I called for him. The letters could wait. It was time for me to heed Dimity’s advice and start making amends.

  In no time at all, I produced a truly scrumptious double batch of oatmeal cookies. I was so proud that I was tempted to go upstairs and fetch my camera, to record the historic moment. It sounds foolish, I know, but if you’d burned as many hard-boiled eggs as I had, you’d understand.

  I could almost hear my mother humming in the warm, cinnamon-scented air, and I hoped Dimity was around to enjoy it, but the best moment came when Bill took his first bite. A look of utter bliss came to his face and he closed his eyes to concentrate on chewing. Then, without saying a word, he picked up the cookie jar and carried it back with him to the study.

  * * *

  Later that evening, I tried my hand at onion soup and a quiche lorraine, and Bill seemed more than happy to test the results. He had three helpings of the quiche. Sometime after we’d finished our dinner break and gone back to our reading, he leaned forward and held a letter out to me. “Here’s one I think you should read.” He shook his head when I looked up expectantly. “Nothing to do with Dimity.”

  “Go ahead and read it aloud, then,” I said.

  “I think you’ll want to read this one to yourself. Here, take it.”

  “But what’s so special about—”

  “The date, Lori. Look at the date.”

  The letter he was holding had been written by my mother on the day after my birth. I took it from him, bent low over the page, and inhaled the words.

  D,

  She’s here! and she’s a girl! We got your cable, so I know you got ours, but I couldn’t wait to write you a proper letter. Eight pounds twelve ounces, eighteen inches long, with a fuzz of dark hair, and ten fingers and ten toes, which I count every time she’s within reach. Since you wouldn’t allow us to use Dimity—I repeat, it is not an old-fashioned name!—we’ve named her Lori Elizabeth, after foe’s mom and me. She has my mouth and Joe’s eyes and I don’t know whose ears she has, but she has two of them and they’re perfect.

  We got your package, too. What can I say? You are a whiz with a needle, but you know that already. How about this: Lori took one look at that bunny’s face and grinned her first grin. Love at first sight if I ever saw it. He reminds Joe of Reginald Lawrence—remember him? that sweet, rabbit-faced lieutenant?—so guess what we’ve named him. On behalf of my beautiful baby girl: Thank you!

  Gotta run. It’s chow time for little Lori and I’m the mess hall. I’ll write again as soon as I’m home. In the meantime, here’s a picture of my darling. Joe snapped it with the Brownie and it’s a little out of focus, but so was he at the time. Yes, he’s still working too hard, and yes, he still smokes like a chimney—the nurses made him open a window in the waiting room!

  Are we proud parents? Silly question!

  All my love, Beth

  The rain slashed the windowpanes as the echoes of my mother’s voice faded into the distance. Staring into the fire, I examined my feelings gingerly, the way you explore a cavity with your tongue.

  “Isn’t it great?” Bill said. “She sounds so happy. It’s just blazing off the page. I especially like the part about Reginald. We’ll have to go through your mother’s photographs when we’re back in Boston. Maybe we’ll find a picture of the rabbity Lieutenant Lawrence…” Bill’s voice trailed off.

  I glanced at him. “You’re right, this is a wonderful find. I never knew that about Reginald.”

  Bill looked at me for a moment, then got up and cleared the ottoman of boxes. He pushed it over next to my chair and sat on it, waiting for me to speak. I had the feeling that he would wait patiently for hours, if that was how long it took me to find the words.

  I pointed to the closing lines of the letter. “My father died of a stroke. He worked too hard, he smoked too many cigarettes….” I shrank from an irony I had been shrinking from my whole life: a man who had survived Omaha Beach had been killed by a briefcase and a bad habit.

  “I’m sorry,” said Bill.

  “I never knew him,” I went on. “I was only four months old when he died, and I never… asked her about it.” I knew so many things about my mother. I knew her favorite color, her shoe size, her thoughts on the French Revolution, but about this central experience in her life I knew next to nothing. Of all the things I had never asked her, this was the one I regretted most. “When she spoke of my father, she spoke of his life, not his death.” I brushed a hand across the letter. “I suppose she thought it wouldn’t help to dwell on it.”

  Bill nodded slowly. Then, his eyes fixed on the fire, he asked, “How can you avoid dwelling in the past when the past dwells in you?” He sighed deeply, still gazing into the flames. “Dimity said it to me one night while we were staying with her, when I told her about the way the boys at school had acted. She disapproved. She told me that the past was a part of me, and that trying to avoid it was like trying to avoid my arm or my leg. I could do it, yes, but it would make a cripple of me.” Turning to me, he said, “I don’t think your mother was a cripple, was she?”

  “No,” I said, “but I don’t know how she managed to get over this.” I held up the letter. “Here, she’s on top of the world, and four months later her world collapsed. How does anyone get over something like that?”

  “Would you mind another quotation?” Bill asked.

  “From Dimity?”

  “It’s something else she said that night. She told me that losing someone you love isn’t something you get over—or under or around. There are no shortcuts. It’s something you go through, and you have to go through all of it, and everyone goes through it differently. I don’t know how your mother did it, but I do know that you’re wrong when you say that her world collapsed. She still had you—”

  “A lot of good I was to her,” I mumbled.

  “And she still had Dimity. Look around you. What do you see?”

  “Her letters.” I felt my spirits begin to lift. “Oh, Bill, how could I be so stupid? Dimity must have been her lifeline.”

  “I can’t think of a better person to turn to at a time like that,” Bill agreed. He reached over and pulled a box onto his lap. “Let’s go on reading. We’ll soon find out if I’m right.”

  * * *

  It was nearing midnight when I put the letters aside, rose to my feet, and left the study, too upset to speak. There had been no phone call from the Harrises, and we had yet to find the unsent letter we were searching for, but that wasn’t what bothered me. Bill had warned me of the
dangers of digging into the past and I had expected to learn some disturbing truths about Dimity—but I had not expected to learn them about my mother.

  Bill caught up with me in the solarium. I stood with my hands on the back of a wrought-iron chair, and Bill hovered behind me, an arm’s length away. It was pitch-dark outside and the rain was still falling steadily.

  “I know it’s not what we expected, Lori, but—”

  “It doesn’t make sense.” My hands tightened on the wrought iron. “My mother wasn’t like that.”

  For four months after the joyful announcement of my birth, the letters from my mother had continued without interruption. Then they stopped cold. She sent one short note informing Dimity of my father’s death, and that was it. For three years, not a Christmas card, not a birthday greeting, not so much as a postcard came from my mother. When I realized what was happening, I went back to that brief note in disbelief—I could almost hear the portcullis crashing down, could almost see my mother retreating behind walls of sorrow and self-absorption.

  Dimity, on the other hand, had continued to write. And write. And write. For months on end, without response, Dimity sent off at least a letter a week—and I don’t mean short, slapdash notes, but real letters: long, lively missives written—it seemed to me—solely for the purpose of letting my mother know that she was not alone.

  And how did my mother respond to this outpouring of affection? With silence.

  “She wasn’t like that,” I insisted. “She didn’t crawl in a hole when things went wrong. She was strong; she faced things.”

  “Dimity said that everyone goes through it in their own way. Maybe your mother had to go through it alone.”

  “But that’s why it doesn’t make sense. She didn’t have to go through it alone. She didn’t believe in going through things alone. She…” Aching for her, I looked out into the darkness, searching for the words that would explain it all to Bill. “She was a schoolteacher, the kind whose door was always open. Her students used to come back to visit her all the time, no matter how old they got. You should have seen her funeral—the church wasn’t big enough to hold everyone, and they all stood up and talked about her, told how they wouldn’t be where they were if it hadn’t been for her.” A faint scent of lilacs took me back to that day. “Do you know the one thing they all remembered? That they could bring their problems to her, and she would listen to them, really listen, with her heart wide open. If anyone knew how important it was to reach out, it was my mother. So you tell me why, for three of the worst years in her life, she didn’t—” I choked on the lump in my throat, swallowed hard, and went on. “And what about Dimity—left out in the cold for all those years?”

  “I think Dimity must have understood,” said Bill.

  “Well, I don’t,” I said. “I keep thinking of my mom all alone with a crying baby, and the bill collectors banging on the door. There wasn’t any Starling House for her, but she could have turned to Dimity.” I rubbed my forehead. “God, I never knew.”

  “Lori,” said Bill, “it’s late, and a lot has happened to you today. Why don’t you go to bed? We can go on with the correspondence tomorrow, when we’re fresh.”

  “I don’t know if I want to go on with it.”

  “Then I’ll go on with it for you,” Bill said soothingly. “For now, you just try to get some rest, okay? I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I was too tired to protest, but I lay awake late into the night nonetheless, curled forlornly under Meg’s blanket, listening to the wind howl mournfully across the rain-slicked slates. I was haunted by my mother’s silence, afraid to imagine the kind of pain that would bring it on. The letters had thrown me into a world of hurt I was not prepared to face.

  16

  As I gazed through the living room windows the following morning, I began to suspect that some local druid had objected to my arrival and conjured this unceasing rain to drive me away. The weather was not what anyone would call auspicious. The storm had continued almost without pause throughout the night and seemed likely, from the look of it, to continue into the next century. As a rule I was very fond of rain, but this kind of endless, cold, driving downpour was enough to put me off the stuff for the rest of my life. Dispirited, I went over to light the fire, hoping that a cheerful blaze would dispel the gloom.

  The bedside phone had awakened me bright and early. It had been Emma, returning my calls. She and Derek hadn’t gotten home from the vicarage until after midnight, and Derek had returned first thing in the morning to put the finishing touches on his repairs. She asked me to come over later that morning, after she’d dropped Peter and Nell off at school. Bill and I had breakfast, then filled a manila envelope with the items I wanted to show to Emma: the journal, the photo, my mother’s letter to me. I threw in the topo map for the heck of it, and Reginald sat atop the envelope, ready to testify on my behalf. Bill stayed in the study to continue reading, while I filled a blue ceramic bowl with oatmeal cookies for the Harrises and killed time watching the storm. I had just finished lighting the fire when Bill called me into the study.

  He was sitting on the desk when I came in. “It’s occurred to me,” he said, “that we haven’t asked Dimity about the missing album.”

  “Why bother?” I replied. “I doubt that she’ll discuss anything related to her problem.”

  “But we don’t know for sure if the album’s related to her problem,” Bill pointed out. “If she evades the question, however…” He nodded toward the manila envelope. “It’s worth a try.”

  I took out the journal and opened it to a blank page. “Dimity?” I said. “Hello? It’s me, Lori. Do you have a minute?”

  I always have time for you, my dear.

  Wide-eyed, I glanced at Bill and nodded. “So, uh, how are you?”

  As well as can be expected.

  “You know, Dimity, Bill and I have been trying to figure out why you’re… stuck wherever you are, instead of moving on to where you’re supposed to be.”

  It is a very long story.

  “I always have time for you, Dimity.”

  And I would prefer not to discuss it.

  “Come on, Dimity, we want to help, but we don’t know where to begin. Couldn’t you just give us a hint? Like about the photo albums, for instance—”

  Lori, I must insist that you drop this line of inquiry.

  “You know me too well to think that I’ll do that, Dimity.”

  In that case

  Nothing more appeared on the page. I looked up at Bill and shook my head.

  “Try again,” he said.

  I tried again, several times, but not another word was added. Finally I closed the book and put it back in the envelope.

  “I guess that answers our question,” said Bill.

  “Or raises a few more,” I said.

  “Such as?”

  “What if we’ve gone too far? What if Dimity’s gone for good?”

  Bill had nothing to say to that. With a pensive sigh, I left him to his reading. I brought Reginald, the manila envelope, and the bowl of cookies to the living room, and as I approached the hall closet to get my jacket, the doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it,” I called, and went to open the door, wondering who would come visiting on such an awful day.

  Evan Fleischer was standing on my doorstep. He shook his greasy locks from his shoulders and sniffed. “Nice little place you have here,” he said. “It’s a shame about the modernization, but I’m sure that doesn’t bother you.”

  Stunned, I took an involuntary step backward. The door flew past me and slammed in his face. If I’d had any presence of mind, I would have left it that way, but my politeness reflexes kicked in and I opened it again without thinking.

  “Strong winds today,” he commented as he brushed by me to inspect the hallway. “Yes, yes, very nice. Plebeian, but it suits you. Ooh.” He shivered. “Drafty, though.”

  He was right. The indoor temperature had plummeted. I was at a loss to explain how that
had happened, but I hoped against hope that the chill would drive Evan away.

  Fat chance.

  “I’ll keep my coat on, since your heating is so primitive,” he said, striding into the living room.

  “You’ll get everything wet,” I protested.

  “For heaven’s sake, Lori, it’s only water.” Still bundled up in his sopping wet pseudo-Burberry, he sat and held his hands to the fire.

  I stood poised in the doorway for a moment, decided not to hit him over the head with the poker, then marched to the study, which was as toasty as ever. Bill looked up as I entered. “I’ll be in in a minute,” he said.

  “I think your services are required immediately, Mr. Facilitator. Your guest has arrived and I have to leave.”

  He looked perplexed for a moment, and then the penny dropped. “Evan?”

  “Live and in person and dripping all over the—Good Lord, what’s he done now?” Loud noises from the living room brought me running. The room was filled with smoke, and Evan was choking and coughing and banging at the windows, trying to get them open.

  “Evan, you idiot, stop it!” I shouted. “If you break my windows I’ll break your neck!”

  I elbowed him aside to open the windows, and the smoke dissipated rapidly. Evan collapsed in a chair, panting and sputtering, while I checked the flue in the fireplace. It was closed. I opened it, then eyed Evan suspiciously.

  “Were you messing around with the fireplace?” I demanded.

  “I was not,” he gasped indignantly. “I was sitting quietly when the room began to fill with smoke. The damned chimney is obviously defective. You should have it replaced at once. I could have suffocated.”