Family Secrets

by Judith Henry Wall

  “Come on, Ellie, I need for you to wake up,” she said, rolling her sister’s shoulders back and forth, then gently slapping her face. “Together we can figure a way out of this mess.”

  A small mewing sound came from deep in Ellie’s throat.

  “I’m here, sweetie,” Vanessa said, stroking Ellie’s forehead. “Your big sis is here.”

  The mewing turned to a moan. “My leg,” Ellie gasped.

  “What about your leg?”

  “It hurts,” Ellie groaned, gesturing toward her right leg. “It hurts like hell.”

  Vanessa carefully pulled up Ellie’s elegant taffeta skirt, which had gone swish, swish when she walked, and shone the tiny beam on her right leg.

  At first Vanessa couldn’t believe her eyes.

  A bone was jutting through the skin on Ellie’s right shin. Suddenly the hopelessness of their predicament came down upon Vanessa like an avalanche. Georgiana was barely breathing, and Ellie’s leg was badly broken. Vanessa realized it was up to her to get help, and they would all die if she failed.

  Fear gripped her like a vise. Bile rose in her throat.

  “I can’t stand the pain!” Ellie cried out. “Help me, Nessa. Please help me!”

  “I will, honey. I will.” But Vanessa hadn’t a clue as to how she was going to do that.

  “Is my leg broken?” Ellie asked, her jaw clenched.

  “Yes. Don’t try to move it. I’m going to find help.”

  “I need water.”

  “Yes, I’ll get water and bring help.”

  Vanessa rose shakily to her feet and used the tiny beam of light to explore their place of confinement. A narrow set of iron rails ran through the middle of a long, narrow tunnel that must be part of an old mine. The rails disappeared into darkness at both ends of the space. Primitive wooden benches lined one wall.

  She ran her tiny beam of light around the outside perimeter of the area. Then she followed the rails toward the opening at the far end. The tunnel curved out of sight, and Vanessa rounded the curve only to be greeted by a pile of boulders and rocks and loose dirt from a long-ago cave-in that had sealed off the tunnel.

  Then she made her way back through the tunnel and explored the other end. But once she rounded the curve, the penlight revealed heavy iron doors covered with rust. She pushed on them and kicked them, but they didn’t budge.

  There was no keyhole. Probably the doors were secured by a sliding bar on the other side. She pounded on them and called out but could tell that such efforts were futile.

  She walked back to the pile of boulders and dirt at the other end, put the penlight in her mouth to free her hands, and climbed. She could feel air coming through spaces at the top of the pile. She turned off the penlight long enough to see if any light was squeezing through the spaces.

  There wasn’t.

  What she wouldn’t give for a stick of dynamite and a match.

  Ellie was calling out to her. Vanessa climbed down. “I’m coming,” she called.

  She knelt beside her sister. “I can’t stand the pain,” Ellie sobbed as she grabbed Vanessa’s hand.

  Vanessa kissed Ellie’s forehead. “Remember what Daddy used to say about pain?”

  “That it will feel better when it stops hurting,” Ellie managed to say. “But I need a painkiller. And a doctor to set my leg. Where are we, Nessa? Can’t you just go for help? Please,” she sobbed. “The pain is unbearable.”

  “I’m working on it, honey,” Vanessa said, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “And there isn’t any water?”

  “No.”

  “Are we going to die?”

  “Not if I can help it. Close your eyes and try to think of something beautiful. Think of going to see Mother. Think of us all sitting on her terrace with Lily and Beth and watching the sun go down over French countryside, and Mother’s Frenchman is serving us wine and cheese.”

  “I don’t want any wine,” Ellie said. “I’m never going to drink wine again.”

  “Never say never. Now close your eyes, honey. I need to work on things.”

  Vanessa closed her own eyes. Please, please, please help me save my sisters.

  She felt Ellie’s hand on her arm. “Is Georgiana here, too?”

  “Yes, Georgiana is here. We’re here together.”

  Twenty-Eight

  AFTER pulling clothing from the suitcases and improvising pillows to cradle her sisters’ heads, Vanessa put some spare batteries in her pocket and began a more methodical search of their prison. She walked up and down the chamber using her narrow beam of light to search every inch.

  At first she thought the object at the far end of the row benches was a boulder, until she saw the high-topped sneakers. Large high-topped sneakers belonging to a large person curled on his or her side and facing the wall. A person so large it had to be Willy.

  But why would Willy be locked up with them? That made no sense. No sense at all.

  Maybe Willy had locked herself in here by accident and soon Hattie would come let her out, a thought that made Vanessa’s heart soar with hope.

  When she was within a few steps of Willy, Vanessa said her name.

  When she got no response, she knelt and touched the woman’s massive shoulder. “Willy, can you hear me?”

  “Go away.”

  “What’s going on?” Vanessa demanded. “Why are we here in this place?”

  “We are here to die,” Willy said in a flat, emotionless voice.

  “You brought us here, didn’t you?”

  “Myrna told me to.”

  “Myrna? Is that the name Hattie uses now?”

  “Yes. Myrna Cunningham. I never knew she had another name until she showed me that story in the newspaper.”

  “Okay, I understand that Myrna told you to bring me and my sisters down here. But why are you here?” Vanessa demanded.

  “I loved her,” Willy said in the deflated voice of a person who had decided to give up. “She’s the only friend I’ve ever had in my entire life.”

  Vanessa took a seat on the closest bench. “Willy, I want you to sit here on this bench with me and help me figure a way out of here.”

  Willy didn’t budge. “There’s no way out. Besides, I might as well die. Myrna doesn’t want me anymore.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Willy didn’t answer. Vanessa knelt beside her again and shook Willy’s shoulder. “I want you to tell me why Myrna doesn’t want you anymore.”

  “When Myrna said that you and your sisters had to die, I didn’t think that was fair. I told her you were nice ladies and really pretty and her own flesh and blood and that all she had to do was ask you not to tell whatever it was she didn’t want you to tell.”

  Vanessa recalled the conversation she’d had with Willy on Georgiana’s cell phone. Willy had said that Hattie was her dearest friend.

  Willy had been chatty and friendly on the phone and when she picked them up at the airstrip. But when she took them to the dining room and later in Hattie’s office—or rather Myrna’s office—notarizing the confidentiality agreements and serving them wine and cheese, she had seemed nervous and dejected. Probably the drug was already in the goblets when Willy filled them with wine. And she knew it. She had been willing to commit murder for Myrna.

  Had Myrna prepared for their arrival by obtaining some powerful sedative? Vanessa wondered. Or maybe she had simply doubled up on whatever she had on hand. Or tried to kill them with some sort of household poison and hadn’t used enough to get the job done.

  Vanessa wanted to scream and yell at Willy and tell her that she was just as evil as Myrna. She wanted to tell her that she deserved to die along with them for doing such a thing.

  But maybe Willy could help her find a way out of this place.

  Willy turned over onto her back and looked up at Vanessa. “Myrna heard me talking to Miss Rachel on the phone. Miss Rachel said that her mother hadn’t quite been herself at the board meeting and wanted to know if something had
happened to upset her. That was after I talked to you on the phone. Myrna told me that your visit to Eagles Nest had to be a deep dark secret, so I told Miss Rachel that I couldn’t talk about it. Myrna was standing in the doorway and heard what I said. She grabbed the phone from me and told Miss Rachel that sometimes I said really stupid things. I know I’m not a smart person, but Myrna has never called me stupid before.”

  “You’re not stupid, Willy,” Vanessa said. “Myrna said that because she was angry that we knew a secret about her that she never wanted anyone to know.”

  “What was the secret?” Willy asked as she struggled to a sitting position.

  “We discovered that when our father was born, Myrna was in prison. And we found out what her name was back then. Both her names. She was born Henrietta Worth, but she was Henrietta Polanski by the time she was sent to prison. I guess Myrna thought it wouldn’t take much more sleuthing on our part to learn that her crime was trying to rob a bank and killing a man who worked there. As it was, she told us herself. The whole god-awful story. I guess she’d planned all along to bring us down here and leave us to die and took some sort of sadistic pleasure in telling it.”

  “She had to get rid of you girls because she knew that when she was on television, you would recognize her,” Willy said, her eyes filling with tears.

  “Why was she going to be on television?”

  “After her son is governor of Colorado, he’s going to be president of the United States. Myrna will be standing with Mr. Randall and his wife and children when they are up on the big stage with all the balloons coming down from the ceiling and the band playing happy music and everybody clapping and cheering and waving signs that say ‘Cunningham for President.’”

  Willy paused and took a deep breath before continuing. “Myrna told me that if I carried you and your sisters and all your things down here so she could lock you up and make sure that no one would ever know that you’d ever been to Eagles Nest, she would take me to Washington, D.C., after Mr. Randall is elected president and I can stay with her in the White House. Myrna never lets anyone take her picture and has never been on television and keeps to herself except when her family or the people that help her run her company come to Eagles Nest. Even when Mr. Randall was going all over the state campaigning for Congress, she wouldn’t let anyone take her picture or put her on television. But when he runs for president, everyone will expect his whole family, including his mother, who is one of the richest women in the whole country, to be up there on the big stage, and Myrna wants to share in the glory because, after all, none of her children would have amounted to a hill of beans if it hadn’t been for her.

  “And if you and your sisters were still alive, you would look at the television and say, ‘Oh my God, that’s our grandmother, and our uncle is going to be president of the United States!’ And you would tell all your friends, and then the newspaper reporters would find you, and you would tell them that your father is Myrna Cunningham’s son and that he was born in prison because his mother had done bad things. And then maybe people wouldn’t vote for Mr. Randall and he would never be president and Myrna has been working to make him president since the day he was born. Even though she has all that money, it might not be enough to make him be president if the American people learn her secrets.”

  “That’s quite a story,” Vanessa said, “but you’re just as wicked as Myrna because you brought us down here and left us to die.”

  Willy sighed. “I know, and now I am going to die and go to hell and burn forever and forever.”

  Vanessa leaned over and pulled on one of Willy’s meaty arms. “Maybe there’s a way to keep that from happening, but we can talk better if you sit up here with me.”

  With a groan, Willy hoisted herself onto her hands and knees, then pulled herself onto the bench.

  “Have you been in this place before?” Vanessa asked.

  “Hattie used to have a wine cellar on the other side of the big doors. I’ve been in there lots of times. And I knew that on the other side of the doors was an old gold mine where a long time ago there was an explosion and a lot of miners died. That was before Myrna bought the mountain and built her house on it. I’d never had been inside this place until I carried Georgiana down here. Then I brought you, and last was Ellie. But I tripped and dropped Ellie, and now her bone is sticking out of her leg. I felt real bad about that, but Myrna said it didn’t matter since Ellie was going to die anyway. Myrna helped carry down all your things. When I carried the last of your stuff in here, I heard the door close behind me. And I knew that she had left me here to die because she was afraid I might tell someone that you ladies had been to Eagles Nest and were left to die down in the old mine. And because I told her that I thought what she was doing was wrong. Myrna doesn’t like people to disagree with her.”

  Vanessa took a deep breath and sat up straight. “You have done a very bad thing, Willy, but you can make up for that by helping me find a way out of here.”

  Vanessa realized the penlight was about to go out and changed the batteries. And thought to look at her watch. It was one twenty-seven. But she didn’t know if it was night or day.

  “How long have we been down here?” she asked Willie, shining the narrow beam on her face.

  “I don’t know.”

  “More than an hour?”

  “It took more than an hour to get you girls and all your stuff down here,” Willy said.

  “So how long were you lying on the ground?”

  “Not too long.”

  “Do you think it’s daylight by now?”

  Willy shook her head.

  Vanessa went to check on her sisters.

  Ellie didn’t respond when Vanessa touched her shoulder. Vanessa kissed her forehead but didn’t try to rouse her. Her semiconscious state was a blessing at this point.

  Georgiana mumbled a bit when Vanessa stroked her face and arms. “Willy is here with us,” she told her. “She’s going to help me find a way out.” Then she kissed her and told her to go back to sleep.

  “With Vanessa holding the penlight, she and Willy inspected every inch of the walls, first in the area around the iron doors, then in the open area between the two passageways, and finally the pile of rocks that blocked the other end of the tunnel. Willy tried to move one of the boulders at the bottom and hopefully disrupt the entire pile, but she couldn’t budge it.

  “We need something to pry one of the lower boulders loose,” Vanessa said.

  “I wish there was some water,” Willy said.

  Vanessa didn’t bother to answer. She wondered how long it would be before they passed out from dehydration. Already her tongue felt dry and swollen, but that probably was from the tainted wine.

  With Willy following, Vanessa returned to the benches. They turned one of them over, and Vanessa stood on it while Willy struggled to work the legs loose. Once this had been accomplished, they dragged the bench top back to the pile of boulders, and Willy tried to use it as a wedge to loosen a pivotal boulder. Again and again, Willy tried, with Vanessa adding her weight, but to no avail.

  They tried another boulder and another until Vanessa decided a change of tactics was needed. She returned to the row of luggage and removed Georgiana’s tripod, which in its folded-up configuration was about the size of a small fireplace log.

  Willy put one end of the board at the base of a boulder, and Vanessa scooted the tripod under that end. Willy pushed down on the board using all of her substantial weight.

  The board splintered.

  Willy picked up the folded-up tripod and found a space between two boulders into which one end of the tripod would fit. Then she picked up a large rock and began pounding on the other end.

  Again nothing happened.

  She and Willy crawled up to the top of the pile and began displacing any rocks that were small enough to be moved. They did manage to open up a space large enough for Vanessa to put her forearm through.

  Vanessa could feel exhaustion taking hold of h
er muscles. And Willy seemed to be sliding into resignation. “Maybe we should just try going to sleep and hope we never wake up,” Willy said.

  “No. We are going to get out of here,” Vanessa insisted. She had to get out of here so she could finish raising Lily and Beth. So she and her sisters wouldn’t have to die down here.

  Maybe they could devise a sling of some sort and pull the boulders away.

  Vanessa went back to the luggage and brought back two leather belts from Ellie’s bag. She buckled them together into one long strip and put it around one of the smaller boulders next to the opening they had made. Then with Willy pulling one end and Vanessa the other, they were able to pull away two small boulders and open up a larger space.

  “It just has to be large enough for me to crawl through,” Vanessa said, shining the light on the opening, which would do nicely for a small dog.

  Vanessa was exhausted. And she could tell Willy was, too. But what else could they do but keep trying?

  She shone the penlight through the opening and could see that the tunnel with the pair of rails continued on the other side.

  Willy pounded the tripod into the opening and pushed a rock down the other side. Then another.

  “You’re getting close,” Vanessa told her. “Just a little bit more.”

  Willy put a leg through the opening and, with a loud grunt, pushed with all her might.

  Vanessa could hear a dislodged rock rolling down the other side of the pile.

  Willy slid down to the ground and lay there panting like an exhausted dog.

  Twenty-Nine

  VANESSA wormed her way through the opening, then scooted down the pile of rocks on the other side. She took several deep breaths, then investigated her surroundings with the narrow beam of light.

  She thought of the men who had died in this mine so many years ago that there was no one left to grieve for them. She wondered what horrors they’d endured before they died and imagined the suffering of their families. “I’m sorry,” she said out loud. “If your spirit still haunts this place, would you please guide my steps? I really need to find a way out so I can get help for my sisters. I’m sure you don’t want anyone else to die down here.”