Family Secrets

by Judith Henry Wall

  She reported what she had learned about the man and the woman to Josh. He took a great interest in the gun case in the downstairs hallway.

  The third morning when the woman was upstairs tending to her husband, Hattie motioned to Josh that it was all right for him to come inside. He stood in front of the gun cabinet, studying its contents and fiddling with the lock. Then he pulled open the drawer at the bottom of the cabinet, revealing boxes of ammunition, but quickly closed it and headed for the back door when he heard the woman’s footsteps in the upstairs hallway.

  The morning of their fourth day at the farm, the woman asked Josh if he knew how to drive. He assured her that he did. Then she asked if he knew anything about motors. Josh told her that his uncle owned a service station, and he had worked there weekends and summers since he was ten years old.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d take a look at the truck,” she told him. “I haven’t been able to get it started, and I’d hate to have to haul chicken feed in the Chrysler. If you get it started, I’ll give you an extra two dollars.”

  An hour later he came to the back door and informed the woman that the truck needed a new battery and spark plugs. And she should really replace two of the tires. She put newspapers on the backseat of the Chrysler for Josh to sit on and drove him into Hayes so they could make the required purchases.

  While they were gone, Hattie roamed about the downstairs opening drawers and examining what few books were on the shelves—almanacs, a history of the United States, Robert’s Rules of Order, a Bible, and a book on etiquette called The Perfect Woman that said a woman should never raise her voice or say ungracious things to others. When the man pounded on the floor, she went upstairs. “Isn’t she back yet?” he demanded.

  Hattie shook her head and gave him a sip of water. While she was bending over, he pinched her breast.

  The next time he pounded with his stick, she ignored the summons and continued her perusal of the downstairs.

  When she heard the car pull up out back, she hurried back to the kitchen and busied herself scrubbing the floor.

  By evening, the pickup was drivable, and the woman gave Josh the promised two dollars.

  After dinner, as Hattie and Josh made their way down to the creek, he told her the truck would be their getaway vehicle.

  “But the Chrysler would be faster and less likely to break down,” she said.

  “Yeah, but a big, shiny car like that would stand out like a sore thumb, especially with you and me inside. That old truck looks like every other old truck. And it will take us places that Chrysler can’t go.”

  “Like where?”

  “Like across fields and creeks and down rutted dirt roads. And besides, likely as not, I can fix it if it breaks down. I’ve already stashed a jack and some tools behind the seat.”

  Once again, after they made love, they talked long into the night. Josh had gone into the bank while the woman was at the feedstore. He explained how it was laid out. He wanted Hattie to stand by the door with a rifle pointed at the bank president, whose desk was in the corner behind a railing, and Josh would deal with the two tellers. Much as he would like to empty the safe, it would take too long.

  “We’ll grab whatever cash the tellers have in their drawers and take off,” he told her. “There’s a deserted farmhouse just this side of town. You can hardly see it from the road for all the trees and weeds. I figure we’ll go there and hide out for a few days. No one is going to look for us so close to town. The sheriff will think that we’re heading south for the state line or north into Canada.”

  The next day, after the woman carried a breakfast tray upstairs, Josh came in the house and pulled the telephone cord from the wall, then pried open the lock on the gun cabinet. He loaded a rifle and carried it upstairs. Hattie followed.

  She held the rifle while Josh tied the screaming man spread-eagled to his bed. The woman looked at them with accusing eyes but said nothing as Josh tied her to a chair.

  Josh searched the house for money while Hattie carried food and blankets to the truck. She felt excited like when she was a little girl getting ready to go on a picnic. But she was worried, too. Worried that Josh wasn’t smart enough to plan a bank robbery.

  Josh stashed two rifles and boxes of ammunition behind the seat of the pickup and soon they were on their way into Hayes. Josh talked constantly, telling her over and over exactly where she was to stand and that she should keep the gun pointed right at the bank president’s face. “If he tries to make a phone call, shoot him,” Josh said.

  Myrna’s three listeners were looking at her wide-eyed and had obviously not been expecting guns and a bank robbery—maybe something less brazen such as taking money from a grocery-store cash register when the clerk’s back was turned.

  “I knew even then the scheme was a bad one,” Myrna told them. “Josh and I were just two dumb kids. How could we expect to rob a bank and then drive off into the sunset and live happily ever after?

  “But I never questioned his leadership in the endeavor,” she admitted. “That was a mistake I never repeated. Since that time, I have run my own show.

  “We parked directly in front of the bank and waited for two women to stroll past on the sidewalk.” Myrna’s heart grew heavy as she remembered that horrible day. The worst in her life. Worse even than when her father died. Her father’s death had been inevitable. She had just hurried it along. But she could have prevented what happened that day in the First National Bank of Hayes, Montana.

  “Josh gave me a kiss,” she told her listeners, “and then he said, ‘Let’s go.’ And there we were, two teenage kids carrying hunting rifles into a bank. There were two customers—a man in a straw hat and a woman with a little boy at her side. And just one teller—a middle-aged man with his thinning hair plastered to his skull. The president’s desk was empty. It turned out that we arrived just after the bank president and the other teller had gone across the street to the café for their morning cup of coffee.

  “Josh yelled, ‘This is a stickup,’ or something like that. The woman screamed and pushed her little boy behind her. The male customer put his hands in the air. And the teller ducked behind the counter. Josh leapt over the counter, and a shot rang out. And then another shot and Josh screamed. I found out later that the bank had been robbed before. Several times apparently. Each teller kept a loaded revolver in his cash drawer.

  “The teller stood up and aimed his revolver at me and told me to put the rifle on the counter. But I pointed the rifle at him and pulled the trigger. The look on his face was one of surprise. I don’t think he thought a young girl like me would do such a thing. I dropped the rifle and crawled over the counter. Josh was on his back. The teller had shot him in the chest, but he was still alive. Not for long, though.”

  Myrna heard a gasp from one of her listeners. The young one—Georgiana—had her hands over her mouth and tears in her eyes for a man she’d never met. For Josh. The father of her father. The other two looked horrified that this was where her teenage love story had taken them.

  “Fear was in Josh’s eyes,” Myrna continued, her voice a monotone. “He knew he was dying. I kissed him and told him that I loved him. Which I guess I really did. He was the only man I’ve cared for in such a sweet, trusting way. The teller was moaning beside us, blood spurting out of his chest. There was no point in trying to help him. He was dead before the sheriff arrived. Josh, too, but I stayed with him until the sheriff dragged me kicking and screaming off to jail. It wasn’t going to jail I was protesting. I just didn’t want to leave Josh.

  “They put me in a cell with a concrete bench and a chamber pot, and a long time passed with no one coming to question me or turn me over to a lynch mob. Finally I called out that I was thirsty. When a deputy brought me a glass of water, I told him about the man and woman tied up in the two-story farmhouse. Finally the sheriff came. When he asked me my name, I told him Hattie Polanski. I don’t really know why I did that. Polanski was Josh’s last name. I’d asked him
what his last name was only the day before. A Polish name. In the five days we had known each other, nothing had ever been said about marriage, but I guess I married him posthumously. Maybe I was trying to protect my mama or keep the Worth name untainted. But it didn’t work. When a picture of Hattie Polanski appeared in the county newspaper, people in Coal Town knew who it was. The daughter of the town whore. I was arraigned and tried as Hattie Polanski, though, and that’s what I continued to be called in newspaper coverage of the crime and the trial. No one ever asked how I managed to get myself married while I was on the run. Not even Mama.

  “Mama came to see me in the jail and brought me food and clean clothes. She never mentioned what happened to Mr. Sedgwick’s son or the money I’d left for her. She never asked how come I tried to rob a bank or who the boy was that I was with and how I got hooked up with him. All she said was that she was sorry—like it was all her fault. But it wasn’t. I’d been stupid to let an empty-headed boy tell me what to do. If Josh had been mean and ugly, I never would have gotten involved with him. But he was beautiful and tender and reminded me of my dead brother. And oddly enough, maybe the rest of my life wouldn’t have turned out nearly as well if the two of us hadn’t met in the back of that old truck with the wooden-slat sides. I would have just let one thing follow another and not set out a plan for myself.

  “But after that dreadful fiasco, I have planned well and succeeded in every endeavor I have undertaken. I have exceeded even my own greatest expectations. After I escaped from Deer Lodge and established my new identity, I enrolled at the Western Colorado School of Mines, one of the first women ever admitted to what had been an all-male stronghold. They had no lodging for women students. Most of the buildings didn’t even have restroom facilities for women. I managed, however, and worked harder and studied more than any of those male students and graduated at the top of my class. Instead of burning down Coal Town as I’d always intended, I bought—thanks to a wealthy husband—the mine from Mr. Sedgwick’s heirs. It had been closed for years, and they probably thought they were unloading an albatross. But I’m getting ahead of myself,” Myrna said, getting up to refill her water glass.

  “Mama came back to Hayes for the trial,” she told them as she reseated herself, “which took place less than a month after the crime. Nowadays cases like that can take months or longer to come to trial, but not back then. Not in John Coulter County, Montana, especially when the sheriff and the judge and the prosecuting attorney and the attorney assigned to defend me and every other person in the county already knew what the verdict would be. My attorney was a fat, old man with whiskey on his breath. In both his opening remarks and his summation, he claimed that I was an innocent young girl led astray by a man with a ‘devious criminal mind.’ I didn’t know what devious meant, and I doubt anyone on the jury knew either. The trial lasted only a couple hours, and the jury deliberated about fifteen minutes.

  “People in the courtroom were angry because the jury gave me life in prison when they wanted a hanging. The jury spared my life because the teller had two bullets in him. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but Josh managed to shoot him at the same time I pulled the trigger of my rifle. The doctor who testified couldn’t say for sure which gun killed the man. Or maybe the jury spared me and sentenced me to life in prison instead of hanging me because I was only sixteen and had long blond hair and blue eyes. No one knew I was pregnant yet. I’m not sure I even knew myself. Such irony. Josh never planned to kill anyone, but in his dying breath he shot the teller who was about to shoot me and in doing so not only saved me but saved what would be his only child.

  “Mama waved as they took me back to my cell. That was the last time I ever saw her. They took me to the prison in Deer Lodge the next day.

  “One of the other inmates had performed abortions and offered to help me get rid of the baby I carried. I’m not sure if I turned her down because of fear or because of Josh’s memory.

  “When the doctor in Deer Lodge came to the prison to deliver the baby, he asked if I had a relative who could take it in. Otherwise, it would be sent to an orphanage. My mother was out of the question. The doctor was nice enough to call Aunt Vera on his own dollar. Can you imagine how stunned Vera Wentworth must have been! But the doctor said she didn’t hesitate. She just said yes, that she would get there as soon as she could. It amazed me that my father’s sister came all that way to get that baby.”

  “Did you ever think about trying to get him back from Vera?” Vanessa asked. “Or maybe getting to know him or helping him financially? I know that Vera had to sell part of her farm to educate him.”

  Myrna felt a wave of anger at the oldest sister’s question. “I went to great lengths to change my identity, and until you three came along, no one knew that I was a convicted murderer and gave away a baby and escaped from the prison by hiding in the trunk of the warden’s car.”

  Hattie was a murderer, bank robber, and an escaped convict.

  And if Hattie or whatever name she now used was telling the truth, Vanessa and her sisters were the only people to whom she’d ever told her story. Which made Vanessa nervous. Very nervous as she pondered why Hattie had responded to that newspaper story in the Denver newspaper. And why she had told them her secrets. None of it made any sense.

  No sense at all.

  If Hattie’s story became known, she could be sent back to prison and might very well spend the rest of her life behind bars. If she was as wealthy and important as she appeared to be, her arrest would be a major news story. Her hard-earned reputation would be ruined. Whatever family name she now used would be tainted. Her entire family would suffer.

  Vanessa watched fascinated while Hattie stretched and yawned and marveled at how supple the woman’s body was. And her mind was as adept as her body.

  But her conscience was flawed.

  Hattie had gone to great lengths to keep the secrets she had just divulged to them. Vanessa didn’t approve of her killing the son of the man who owned the mine in Coal Town but could understand why she might have done that. But she had not spoken one word of remorse over the killing of the teller at the Hayes bank.

  She and her sisters were virtual prisoners in the isolated mountain home of a sociopath.

  Vanessa looked around the room and wondered where the telephone was.

  She glanced at her sisters wondering if they were suffering from the same disquiet she now felt. Ellie was staring out at the nighttime sky, her mind obviously elsewhere.

  Georgiana met Vanessa’s gaze and reached for her hand. “I’m scared,” she whispered.

  Twenty-Five

  I’VE kept you girls much too long,” Hattie said, glancing at her watch, “but I promised that we would have some wine and cheese before we bid farewell.”

  Vanessa glanced at her own watch. Hattie’s seemingly endless story had taken less than three hours.

  She wondered how they should bid farewell to a hostess who hadn’t wanted them to visit her in the first place and made it very apparent that she never wanted to see them again.

  Vanessa watched as Hattie reached under the edge of the table to press the button that would make Willy magically appear once again. Then Hattie rose from her chair and headed for the bathroom.

  As soon as Hattie’s back was to them, Vanessa put a finger to her lips warning Ellie and Georgiana to wait until Hattie was out of earshot before they said anything.

  Once the bathroom door had closed behind her, Ellie spoke first. “Well, that was quite a story, but I don’t believe a word of it. I think she was just having fun with us. Her tale is too far-fetched even for a novel.”

  “I believe her,” Georgiana said softly.

  “Me, too,” Vanessa whispered. They now knew things that could ruin Hattie’s reputation and the family name she had apparently worked hard to establish, Vanessa realized. The confidentiality agreements she and her sisters had signed were supposed to protect Hattie’s secrets. As long as the Wentworth sisters kept their mouths shut, they
should be safe from Hattie’s wrath.

  Vanessa wondered how legally binding the agreements were. Could they have been a ruse to put them at their ease?

  “We should leave here,” Georgiana whispered. “Now. Tonight.”

  “But how?” Vanessa wanted to know. “We can’t just call a cab. And Willy is not going to take us anyplace unless Hattie tells her to.”

  Willy arrived just as Hattie emerged from the bathroom and opened folding doors that revealed a kitchenette. Vanessa and her sisters watched Hattie’s silent helper remove a tray from the refrigerator and carry it to the conference table. The tray held cheese, fruit, and foil-wrapped chocolates. Willy brought a second tray with crackers and French bread. Then she placed a waiting bottle of wine on an ornate, freestanding opener and removed the cork. Once the cork was removed, she poured the wine into heavy silver goblets that looked like something out of King Arthur’s court and carried them to the table. Then she opened a second bottle and left it on the credenza.

  “Thank you, my dear,” Hattie told Willy. “That will be all.”

  When the elevator door had slid closed behind Willy, Hattie said, “I selected a very special Beaujolais from the year your father was born, which was a vintage year in Burgundy and the most dreadful one of my life. Out of the events of that time, however, a baby was born who—judging from what I have learned from you ladies—grew up to be a good-hearted man who cared deeply for his family. But let us suppose that before he met your mother, he impregnated a woman and had a child out of wedlock that he never acknowledged. If that child showed up decades later, your father would probably have wished him or her well but could not possibly have the same feelings for the child as he had for the children he had cared for and loved from the day they were born. I know you find me harsh in my rejection, but you represent a very difficult time in my life.