Family Secrets

by Judith Henry Wall

  Vanessa stumbled along following the iron rails, her step growing progressively more unsteady. The grade was downhill, which was discouraging. She was going deeper and getting wearier with each step. And scared. More scared than she had ever been in her life.

  Periodically, she turned off the light to see if she was still surrounded by absolute darkness.

  She was.

  The tunnel had offshoots that burrowed steeply downward into the earth. She followed what appeared to be the main passageway. Like a robot, she put one foot in front of the other and kept walking.

  The grade evened off for a time and then she realized she was going uphill. Which sapped her strength but could be a hopeful sign. Maybe she was climbing toward an entrance to the old mine, one that wasn’t locked.

  After an indefinite time she heard a rumbling sound. And wondered if a ghost train was coming down the tracks.

  Or maybe her poor exhausted mind was playing tricks on her.

  She walked on. Then she heard the sound again.

  Thunder.

  She turned off her light. The thick darkness had lessened.

  She switched the light back on and kept walking. Around the next bend in the tunnel, boulders and loose earth were strewn all over the track. And there was a hole overhead with roots reaching down inside the tunnel. Light was coming through. Dawn’s early light.

  The opening looked large enough for her to climb through, but it was too high for her to reach. She tried to roll one of the loose boulders over so she could stand on it. But the boulder would not budge.

  She called “Help!” several times, but her voice seemed lost in the subterranean space. She thought of the wilderness around Hattie’s mountain. The chances of someone being close enough to that hole in the ground to hear her were infinitesimal. But not outside the realm of possibility. A hunter could be passing by. Or a hiker.

  She called out again, then waited for a response. Again and again she tried, until her calls were so feeble a person would have to be standing at the edge of the opening to hear her.

  She tried jumping and grabbing hold of one of the exposed roots. She grabbed hold, but it pulled loose, bringing a cascade of dirt with it.

  She backed up and tried a running jump. A second root pulled loose. But even if a root would hold, she did have the strength to hoist herself through the opening.

  Maybe if she could sit on Willy’s shoulders…

  But Willy would not be able to get through the opening back at the rock slide. And they didn’t have the strength to enlarge it.

  Drops of rainwater were coming through the opening. She opened her mouth and caught what she could. Each drop felt precious.

  She knew that dehydration would eventually set in. She wondered how long it took to die of it. A couple of days maybe of drifting in and out of consciousness. No one would be looking for them because no one knew where they were. And they weren’t due back in New York until next week. By the time anyone realized they were missing, they’d be dead.

  Maybe Georgiana had awakened from her drugged sleep, she told herself as she turned around and retraced her steps. Maybe the two of them could come back here and together they could push one of the boulders under the opening. Or she could hoist Georgiana on her shoulders.

  They had to try.

  And if their efforts didn’t work, what then?

  But Vanessa already knew the answer to that question. It would be as though they disappeared from the face of the earth. Their bodies would never be found.

  She thought of Lily and Beth. Her precious daughters would never know what happened to their mother and aunts. Penelope would come home from France and hound the FBI and the state police in Montana. And in Colorado. Vanessa had mentioned to the clerk at the hotel in Helena that she and her sisters were going to the state.

  And Ellie might have told Boone that they were heading to Colorado during the conversation she had with him on her cell phone before they boarded the plane. But Boone wasn’t about to come looking for them.

  Vanessa allowed herself to imagine such a scenario anyway. Boone couldn’t reach Ellie on her cell phone and became desperate. He would call…

  But even if Boone were the knight-on-a-white-

  charger type, he wouldn’t know where in the state of Colorado the damsels in need of rescuing were located.

  And Colorado was a big state.

  She wondered if the pilots who flew them to Steamboat Springs even knew what their three passengers’ final destination was.

  If anyone did connect the missing sisters with Hattie, she would probably claim that they never arrived at her house. And how would anyone prove otherwise?

  Vanessa looked longingly at the patch of sky overhead, then trudged on. With the tunnel so close to the surface, she was surely near to an exit.

  She trudged on but soon was shining the light on a cave-in that completely blocked the way.

  With one goal in mind—to be with her sisters—Vanessa turned around and retraced her steps. When she reached the pile of boulders, she dragged her unwilling body up to the opening, then squeezed her way through the hole she and Willy had made, then scooted down the other side, dislodging some smaller rocks.

  With the penlight showing the way, Vanessa rounded the bend in the tunnel. Georgiana had moved closer to Ellie. She had risen up on an elbow and was staring blindly into the beam of light. “Who’s there?” she called out.

  “It’s me,” Vanessa answered.

  “Thank God,” Georgiana sobbed. “I thought I’d had a stroke or something and gone blind.”

  Vanessa knelt beside her baby sister and took her in her arms.

  “Something’s the matter with Ellie,” Georgiana said. “She was moaning and crying out. Is someone coming to get us? We need an ambulance for her.”

  “I know, darling,” Vanessa said, smoothing her hair.

  “I’m thirsty,” Georgiana said, clinging to Vanessa’s neck, “and afraid. Really afraid. Oh, God, Vanessa, I’m so glad you’re here. And where are we anyway?”

  “We’re in an old mine that’s under Hattie’s mountain,” Vanessa explained, lowering Georgiana’s body and turning her attention to Ellie. She felt warm and was either sleeping or unconscious. Vanessa did not try to wake her.

  She stretched out between her two sisters.

  “But why are we here?” Georgiana asked.

  “Hattie was afraid that we would tell her secrets and locked us up down here.”

  “How long have we been here?”

  “All night. The wine Willy served us was drugged. She carried us down here while we were unconscious. She dropped Ellie coming down the steps, and her leg is broken.”

  “If you were unconscious, how do you know what happened to Ellie?”

  “Willy told me. Hattie locked her in here with us.” Vanessa shined her light around, looking for Willy. She was where Vanessa had first spotted her, curled into an unmoving, shapeless lump, her face against the wall.

  “Where have you been?” Georgiana asked. “Did you get help?”

  “Not yet. I need to rest for a while, then maybe I can find a way out of here. I did find a place where I could see the sky, but I couldn’t reach the opening. Maybe you can go with me and climb on my shoulders and crawl through.”

  But Vanessa had to rest first. Right now, she couldn’t take another step, much less lift her sister on her shoulders. And Georgiana was too slight to lift her.

  Or maybe with Willie and Georgiana both helping her, they might be able to enlarge the hole at the top of the pile of boulders and make it large enough for Willie to craw through. Then she and Willie could hoist Georgiana up to the opening in the tunnel roof. Hopefully a road or a house was nearby.

  It was their only chance at rescue.

  Vanessa stretched out between her sisters and shined the penlight upward—a pillar of light in the darkness.

  She thought of her daughters. She wasn’t giving up. Not yet.

  She turned off the
light and allowed her eyes to close. But if she allowed herself to go to sleep, she might never wake up.

  “Georgiana?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you stand up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s try.” Vanessa turned the light back on and rolled onto her hands and knees, then pushed herself to a standing position.

  She helped Georgiana to her feet. “My head hurts like hell,” Georgiana said, “and I feel so dizzy. If I just had some water…”

  Her weight sagged against Vanessa. Gently she helped her back to the ground. “We’ll try again in a little while,” Vanessa said.

  Vanessa stretched out again and allowed her thoughts to return to her daughters. How blessed she was to have such great kids.

  A memory flitted through her mind. They were in Central Park. Beth was about six months old, lying on a blanket mesmerized by the swaying tree branches overhead. Lily was toddling around on sturdy little legs. Georgiana was a skinny high school girl with her hair in a bushy ponytail, and Ellie a college girl in jeans and a blazer. Vanessa had just spotted their parents coming down the sidewalk to join them. Hand in hand, her handsome parents were laughing about something. They waved when they spotted their waiting daughter and granddaughters and hastened their step. Together they all went to the zoo, then met Scott back at the apartment, where they ate pizza and played poker and drank beer at the dining room table. Vanessa could almost hear their voices. And the laughter.

  She turned off the penlight and placed it in her pocket. Then she lay on her back and put her right hand on Ellie’s arm, her left on Georgiana’s.

  She was beyond tired, Vanessa thought. Exhaustion was heaped on top of her like a pile of boulders. Only her mind was free.

  “We’re going to die down here, aren’t we?” Georgiana asked.

  “We’ll both feel stronger after we rest,” Vanessa said, “and I’ll take you to the place where you can see the sky.”

  “Do you believe in heaven?”

  “I’d like to think there is such a place.”

  “If there is a heaven and we don’t get out of here, Daddy will be up there waiting for us.”

  With that lovely thought Vanessa closed her eyes. She imagined the three Wentworth sisters walking down a path between big old trees with their branches meeting overhead making a lovely green tunnel with dappled light on the path and her sisters’ faces. At the end of the tunnel they could see a form silhouetted against the sunlight. It was their waiting father, his arms opened, ready to embrace them.

  Her imagining was so real that Vanessa could almost feel the heavenly air softly caressing her face.

  Air.

  Vanessa opened her eyes, leaving the lovely green tunnel behind. Something was different. The air was different. And it was less dark. She could make out the benches against the wall.

  She pulled the penlight from her pocket and shone it on Georgiana’s face. Her eyes were closed. “I’m going to check on something,” Vanessa said, touching her arm.

  “You’re coming back, aren’t you?” Georgiana said without opening her eyes.

  “Yes. I promise.”

  Vanessa walked slowly toward the curving passageway that led to the iron doors. Once she had rounded the curve, she stood there in wonder as she witnessed a miracle. One of the rusty iron doors was standing open.

  She blinked her eyes. And again. Perhaps she was hallucinating.

  She almost felt as though her mind had detached from her body, and she was floating above herself willing her body to take the next step. And the next.

  She stepped through the opening into a cavern with rows of empty wine racks—the former wine cellar that Willy had mentioned. Daylight was streaming through an opened door at the top of a metal staircase.

  She climbed the stairs and walked through the open door and found herself in the garage area below Hattie’s mountain dwelling.

  Vanessa remembered Willy saying that Hattie had fired the security officer, but just in case someone was in the office, she walked over to the concrete-block structure and tried the door. It was locked. And the windows were barred. She knocked anyway and kicked the door.

  Then she punched the call button on the elevator but nothing happened. Which was probably just as well. She had no desire to face Hattie.

  She tried a door on the Hummer, which was not locked. But there were no keys in the ignition. Or anyplace else. Probably they were locked inside the security office. But she did find an opened water bottle with a few inches of water left in it.

  She sat on the running board and made a ceremony out of taking the first sip. Then she tried to decide if she had options and decided she did not. She would have to walk down to the road and flag down a passerby.

  The bright sunlight hurt her eyes. Her watch said that it was five minutes after nine.

  She reached the first security gate and wondered whether scooting under it or climbing over it would cost her weary body the greatest expenditure of energy.

  She climbed over and kept walking.

  And when she reached the second gate, she climbed over it. The road was just ahead. She could see a vehicle through the trees.

  A dusty van with the words UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE on the side was parked by a large metal mailbox. Vanessa looked around for the mail carrier.

  A path led from the mailbox. The mail carrier was standing by a high security fence.

  A body was impaled facedown on the fence. A body with snowy white hair and dressed in black. The body of the woman who had given birth to Vanessa’s father sixty-two years ago in the women’s prison at Deer Lodge, Montana.

  The mail carrier was staring at Vanessa. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  Vanessa realized that he was taking in her filthy clothes. She touched her face, which was also covered with dirt.

  The man was middle-aged. Not in uniform, but his billed hat bore the postal service logo.

  “My sisters and I came here”—Vanessa paused—“to visit her.” She nodded toward the body on the fence.

  Vanessa stared up the face of a cliff. High above the path she could see a deck jutting outward. Just a deck. The rest of the house was not visible from this angle. She closed her eyes to deal with a bout of dizziness.

  “Who are you?” the man called out again.

  Who was she? She was the mother of Lily and Beth. She was the sister of Ellie and Georgiana and the daughter of Penelope and her dear departed father. She was the granddaughter of the woman whose dead body was on that fence, a woman who used to be named Hattie but now went by Myrna. Willy had told her Myrna’s last name only hours ago, but she couldn’t remember what it was. “My sisters need help,” she told the man. “One of them has a broken leg, and the other one is very weak. Please, call an ambulance. Please.”

  Her legs felt as though they were made of rubber. They were no longer going to support her.

  She sank to her knees. I cannot lose consciousness. I cannot.

  The man took a few steps in her direction. Then stopped, fear in his eyes.

  “My sisters are in an old mine,” Vanessa told him, her tongue thick, her words slurred. “There’s a stairway behind the security office. My sisters need help. They desperately need help.”

  “Who are you?” the mail carrier asked for the third time.

  “Please,” she sobbed as she collapsed on the gravel path. “It doesn’t matter who I am. Just call an ambulance. Please.”

  Thirty

  THE county sheriff arrived first. Then the state police, followed by an ambulance. Ellie, still unconscious, and a limp Georgiana were placed on stretchers and carried out of the mine. A paramedic started IVs. Vanessa rode up front with the driver and sipped water from a plastic bottle. Her exhaustion was extreme, and she kept dozing off. Even with the siren blaring, she would fall asleep. The driver told her they were being taken to the closest hospital, which was sixty miles away in Steamboat Springs. He assured Vanessa that, since the town was a
ski resort, it had lots of doctors with expertise in fixing badly broken legs.

  When the ambulance arrived at the hospital, Ellie was administered to then sent to surgery. Georgiana, who was suffering from dehydration, dizziness, and an excruciating headache, was admitted. The doctor in the emergency room had wanted to admit Vanessa, but after drinking a Coke and eating a package of peanut butter crackers, she insisted she had to be with her sisters.

  She hadn’t realized just how filthy she was until she drew curious stares in the elevator. Once she had arrived at surgery, she informed a woman at the nurses’ station who she was. Ellie’s surgery was under way, the woman told her. Then she provided Vanessa with a hospital gown, robe, and slippers; towels and a washcloth; and a packet of toiletries; then showed her to a bathroom with a shower. Vanessa stood under the shower for a long time, shampooing her hair, allowing the hot water to wash away the dirt from that dark place. But nothing would ever wash away the memory.

  In oversize hospital attire, she went in search of Georgiana’s room.

  “Are you asleep?” Vanessa whispered.

  “No,” Georgiana said, opening her eyes. “Is Ellie okay?”

  “She’s in surgery.”

  “Was it a nightmare or did Hattie really lock us up in an old mine?”

  “Yes, she really did, but don’t think about that now. Get some rest.”

  “I love you, Nessa.”

  “I love you, too, honey.”

  “I wish Ellie didn’t hate me.”

  “Shh,” Vanessa said, smoothing the curls away from Georgiana’s forehead. “We’ll work things out when everyone is feeling better.”

  She stayed with Georgiana for a time then went back up to surgery. After begging more crackers and a carton of milk, she took a seat in the waiting room. She had dozed off when an authoritarian male voice said, “Mrs. Crowell?”