"I see you've brought your friend again today," Mamie said after the younger Mrs. Estes left the room.
I took her hand and gave her the preserves. She looked frailer than before, paler, as if she were fading away. "That's right," I said. "Her name is Augusta."
Mamie nodded. "I know." I sat beside her and got right down to business. When somebody's 102, you don't dilly-dally.
I told her we had found Lucy's sketches and early manuscripts. I didn't tell her about Mildred because I knew she had been part of an awful deception, thinking her friend had drowned, and it might upset her to learn the truth.
"Do you know why my great-grandmother let Fitzhugh Holley take credit for her stories?" I asked. "Because if you do, I'd like to know."
Mamie did know, and when she told me, I could understand why the remaining members of the Mystic Six did what they thought they must do.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
He was a handsome man, such a handsome man! And pleasant, laughed a lot. Everyone loved him—including most of the girls at the academy." Mamie Estes looked as if she'd swallowed something bitter as she sat there turning the small jar of preserves in her hands. "Just about everybody had a crush on the professor—I know I did—but that was before we knew."
I waited for her to continue, not wanting to interrupt, yet I could hardly sit still in my eagerness to hear the rest. I glanced at Augusta, who stood in the background. She wore a frothy white dress today that almost blended with the lace-curtained windows. The angel, hands folded, smiled at me and waited serenely. But she had an eternity; I didn't. And Mamie—well, I didn't even want to think about that.
"He was a fiend!" Mamie said, speaking louder than I would have thought she was capable. "He never bothered me because I wouldn't give him the chance, but I don't know how many others he… well, he raped them is what he did! Led them to trust him, then forced himself on them—all of them so innocent. We didn't know a lot back then, and the poor girls didn't know what to do."
"Flora Dennis was one of them, wasn't she?" I asked.
She nodded. "I don't suppose it would do any harm to tell it now. Yes, Flora was one. She was one of his assistants, so honored at first, flattered to be asked. Later, I think she tried to warn Annie Rose, but was embarrassed to come out and tell her what had happened, and Annie Rose probably wouldn't have believed her, anyway." Mamie smiled. "Girls were as headstrong then as they are now, believe it or not."
"Why didn't they tell someone—theirparents or a counselor?"
"Dear child, we didn't have counselors back then. Sometimes, if you were lucky, you had an understanding teacher or parent, but people just didn't talk about things like that. The girls were ashamed—and afraid, I guess, that they would be blamed for what happened to them. That they would be more or less marked as bad girls forever."
"That's horrible!" I felt anger rising in me, fueled by the helpless frustration of being unable to change something that had happened so many years before.
"You're right. It was horrible, and once poor Annie Rose told us about her pregnancy, it all came out."
Tess Estes came in then and asked us if we'd like something hot to drink, but Mamie waved her away. I was glad she didn't want to be interrupted any more than I did.
"I remember when she told us," Mamie went on after her daughter-in-law left the room. "We were working on that quilt—the six of us." She smiled. "You know about our little group?"
I nodded.
"Annie Rose broke down crying, told us what had happened. She had already missed two periods, she said. Then Flora told us the same thing had happened to her and a couple of other girls, only they were lucky enough not to get in the family way. Professor Holley threatened to ruin their reputations if they said anything, Flora said."
My eyes grew hot, and I felt the first salty surge of tears. I blinked them back. "So what did you do then?"
"Lucy went to see Fitzhugh Holley. She wanted him to arrange to send Annie Rose somewhere to have her baby, to protect her from the scandal. And she demanded that he resign. The professor just laughed. He was a married man, you see, already had a little girl. He was respected in the community. 'Who would believe you?' he said to Lucy when she threatened to tell what he'd done."
"Didn't the professor's wife know what a creep he was?" I said.
"If she did, she didn't let on. Remember, things weren't like they are today. The scandal would've been mortifying.
"Lucy's visit did more harm than good, I'm afraid. Earlier she had let the professor critique her little animal stories, seeking his advice, thinking he might even help her find a market for them, and unknown to Lucy, he had already found a publisher! I don't know if the publisher mistakenly thought he'd written them or if Fitzhugh Holley deliberately put his name on the manuscript. At any rate, the vile man threatened to spread awful rumors about Annie Rose—Lucy, too—if she didn't keep quiet about the authorship. Said he'd tell everyone he'd seen them in the company of drummers at the Plenty Good Boarding house, where most of the traveling people stayed." Mamie lowered her voice. "Proper ladies didn't go near there."
"Drummers?"
Mamie laughed. "That's what we used to call salesmen—traveling salesmen. At any rate," she said, "things went from bad to worse in spite of our good intentions. But I must say the other members of the Six stood behind Annie Rose. We were trying to find a place she might go to have her baby in secret, and Pluma—I think it was Pluma—was waiting to hear from a cousin in Augusta when that poor child took her own life."
I was tempted to tell her she hadn't, but Augusta gave me the "Don't you dare!" glare.
We were silent for a moment, and I could see that she had just about used up her strength, and I, my time. "It's too late for Lucy," I said at last, "but there's a good chance the stories will be published this time under the right name, in spite of the late—and despicable—Fitzhugh Holley!"
Mamie Estes gave a feeble wave of her hand. "Oh, him! Don't you worry about that one. He's just where he ought to be. That's all taken care of."
"What will you do about the quilt?" Augusta asked during the drive back to Angel Heights.
"It's not up to me to decide, but if it were, I'd destroy it," I said. "The secret of what those girls did should end with us, and I think Mildred and Vesta agree." And except for the few of us who already knew, I didn't think Mildred meant to reveal her true ancestry.
The alma mater my great-grandmother had written and stitched had been found wedged beneath the spare tire in the trunk of Gertrude Whitmire's Lincoln, and Vesta has promised it to me.
"Ordinarily I don't go along with keeping bones in the closet," Augusta said. "But it's time to turn over a green leaf and start with a clean tablet, if you know what I mean."
I wasn't sure, but I thought I could figure it out. "Aren't you freezing?" I asked.
The dress she wore looked like something you might wear to a summer lawn party—a two-piece white georgette with flowing sleeves and delicate embroidered flowers. The trailing necklace winked at me in sapphire, rose, and gold. Sunset colors. And a scarf, sheer as sunlight, draped her shoulders. She shivered. "You might nudge up the heat a bit."
"Why in the world didn't you wear a wrap? You know how cold you always get."
"I came away in such a hurry…" She leaned forward, spread her pink fingers in front of the heater.
"Oh, bosh!" I said. "You just didn't want to hide that new dress! You did that embroidery yourself, didn't you? Augusta, you are so full of it!"
"Enough of that, Arminda!" Augusta turned her face away, but I could see she was smiling.
"Thank you for looking after Faye," I said later at the house. "That was you yesterday, wasn't it? How did you know where to find her?"
"Gatlin and her husband came here searching for her, so I just followed them and looked where they didn't." Shrouded in a huge apron with silly chickens on it that covered her from neck to hem, Augusta concocted a trifle with layers of ladyfingers, custard, and f
ruit. The next day we would top it with whipped cream flavored with sherry.
"And thank you for everything else, too," I said. I put my broccoli and onion casserole—my mother's own recipe—in the refrigerator to bake the next day.
"You're welcome, Arminda." Augusta covered her masterpiece with plastic wrap and stood back to admire it. She began to take off her apron.
For some reason, I didn't want her to take it off. "Do you think we should make the relish tray now or wait until tomorrow?" I asked.
"Why don't you make it now? Here…" She dropped the voluminous apron over my head, tied it behind me with a gentle tug of the sashes. The sweet fragrance of her reminded me of summer: chasing butterflies through the grass, picking wildflowers for my mother, playing hide and seek at twilight. Happy things.
Still, I didn't like what I was thinking. "Why are you putting this crazy thing on me? You know I don't wear aprons," I said.
"There were times, Arminda Hobbs, when people had to protect their clothing; you couldn't just throw everything in the washing machine. You'll do well to keep that in mind. Besides, I want you to have it."
"But it's yours. You'll need it…"
She didn't answer.
I felt like somebody had kicked me in the stomach. "Oh, Augusta! When?"
She pulled up a stool and poured coffee for both of us. Black for her, sweet and white for me. "Soon now. It's time, I think, don't you?"
I wanted to say no. It would never be time. I wanted her to stay forever, but I knew she was right. Augusta had two missions: mine and one unfinished from years before. I was going to be okay. I sipped my coffee for a minute until I was able to speak.
"You've accomplished what you came for," I told her. "You should be pleased."
"We've accomplished what I came for," she said, touching my forehead with a light fingertip.
"And where will you go now?"
Augusta smiled. "As for that," she said, "I'll just have to wait and see."
I smiled, too. "I have to make a phone call," I said, scrambling to find a number I had written down days before.
"Checking the menu with your family?" She lifted a quizzical brow.
"No, I'm calling the doctor."
Augusta put down her cup and frowned. "Are you not feeling well, Arminda?"
I laughed. "I feel just fine," I said, and left a message for Harrison Ivey inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner.
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