Vanessa took another sip of her coffee, then said, “Edward Sedgwick and his car are at the bottom of a place your mother called Quarry Lake, which is located near a town east of Coal Town originally settled by Germans, and at one time all the signs on storefronts were written in German. Hattie knew about the lake because years before she and her parents and her little brother, Patrick, went there on a picnic. She shared a number of poignant memories about her family. I think they really loved each other, but life was never the same after Patrick died.”
The congressman shook his head. “Mother never talked about her early life, and she had no photographs or keepsakes or mementos from her childhood. Not a one. We never made a trip back to her hometown, never visited her family’s graves. My mother was the most private person I have ever known, and I find it extremely difficult to believe that she would tell total strangers things that she never told her own children.”
“I guess she wanted to make sure she didn’t say anything that would cause you and your siblings to snoop around in her past like my sisters and I did,” Vanessa said with a shrug, “especially since she apparently planned great things for you from the day you were born. As for why your mother shared her deepest secrets with my sisters and me, I think she realized from the moment she saw that picture in the Denver newspaper that she was going to do away with us, so it didn’t really matter what she said. She knew that if we kept sleuthing around, someone was bound to remember that Hattie Worth was the girl involved in the Hayes bank robbery. And then we might go back to the Hayes newspaper and give the editor a follow-up story that was a whole lot more sensational. Hattie apparently decided to make a game out of it. She was playing a sick game when she dredged up her past with us as captive listeners because all along she planned to make sure that we were never going to have a chance to repeat what she told us.”
“That’s my mother you’re talking about,” Cunningham said, anger in his voice. “She was a remarkable woman who instilled in her children a sense of duty and taught us the value of hard work and treating others with respect.”
Vanessa shrugged. “That may very well be. But unless what your mother told me and my sisters was a pack of lies and she locked us up in an abandoned mine just for sport, your mother had a past that includes murder, bank robbery, and escaping from prison.”
The congressman leaned back and regarded her with narrowed eyes. “If you hadn’t come looking for her, she could have lived out her life in peace,” he said, not trying to keep the bitterness from his voice.
“Yes, I suppose that’s true. And in a few years she could have been standing there in front of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., watching you sworn in as president of the United States of America and allowing the whole world to think that she was an admirable woman who had lived an exemplary life. Your mother was living a lie. A really big lie.
“We came looking for her,” Vanessa continued, “because our mother wanted us to take a trip together. I imagined us finding a sweet old lady who would cry tears of joy when we found her. Instead we almost lost our lives. And now I have to deal with an ambitious detective who would just love to call your mother’s death a murder and blame it on me.”
Vanessa closed her eyes and put a hand to her forehead. Her sisters were alive. Her children still had a mother. She wanted to get on with her life and not have to hire an attorney to defend herself against trumped-up charges made by some law-enforcement officer who wanted to make a name for himself. She didn’t kill that old woman, but she wasn’t sorry that Hattie was dead. The woman had either killed herself or slipped and fell. Or maybe the security guard she’d fired came back to settle the score. Vanessa wondered if it was possible for anyone to know for sure.
“The police said that someone had wiped away all the fingerprints in the house,” Randall Cunningham said in an accusatory tone.
Vanessa was surprised that a law enforcement officer had shared information about the investigation with him, but maybe a congressman who was the son of one of the state’s wealthiest citizens had special privileges. “And you think that I did that?” Vanessa demanded, looking him directly in the eye.
Cunningham shrugged.
“The last memory I have of being in that house,” she informed him, “was sitting at the conference table in your mother’s office and realizing that I’d been drugged or poisoned.”
When Cunningham tried to inject a comment, Vanessa held up a hand, indicating she had still more to say.
“I did try to go up to the house to find a phone and call for help, but the elevator didn’t respond. So I walked down the drive and climbed over both security gates. When I got to the road, I saw the postal van and was overjoyed. Then I saw the mail carrier standing there by…” She paused, remembering the ghastly sight of Hattie’s lifeless body impaled on the spikes atop a seven-foot iron fence.
She looked at the handsome face of Hattie’s illustrious son. Did Congressman Randall Cunningham think that she was a murderer? “I did not push your mother off that deck or down that path,” she said. “The last time I saw her was the night before in her office.”
He stared down at his folded hands for a time, then said with a resigned sigh, “I believe you, and I think I can promise you that the coroner will rule that her death was either suicide or an accident.”
“Which do you think it is?”
“I can’t imagine my mother committing suicide.”
“And I can’t imagine her unlocking those doors and allowing us to go free. Willy said your mother had dismissed the security officer before we arrived. Maybe he came back and opened the door, and Willy left the mine for a time. Your mother had been the center of Willy’s life, and she had dutifully gone along with your mother’s plan to get rid of my sisters and me even though she realized it was horribly wrong. Then after Willy had done her bidding, your mother abandoned her and left her to die along with us. Maybe Willy had a chance to settle the score and took advantage of it.”
Cunningham shook his head. “I understand that Willy was still in the mine when the police and paramedics arrived.”
“She could have left while I was searching for a way out. She probably knew how to get the elevator to work. Or maybe she climbed up to the house on that path.”
But the congressman wasn’t listening. There were tears in his eyes.
He had loved his mother, Vanessa realized, horrible person that she was. But Vanessa could not bring herself to express one iota of sympathy. She regretted Myrna Cunningham’s death only because it meant that she would not spend the rest of her life in prison.
“It will all come out,” Myrna Cunningham’s son said with a deep sigh. “The remains of the man at the bottom of the quarry lake will be found. And someone will come forward with memories or old newspaper clippings showing that back when my mother was still Hattie Worth, she was convicted of murdering a bank teller.”
“Is this going to ruin your life?” Vanessa asked.
“Maybe.” Then he sagged back in his chair and slowly let out his breath. “Or maybe my wife and I will take a slow boat to no place. I never really wanted to go into politics. Now I’m off the hook. Ironic, isn’t it?”
Vanessa nodded. Yes, it was ironic.
She stood and retied the sash on her robe. “What will happen to Willy?”
“My brother and sisters and I will see that she is taken care of—and has legal representation if it turns out that she needs it.”
Thirty-Two
THE two women used flashlights to light the way as they climbed the narrow path. But already the darkness above the eastern horizon was fading.
Thanks to her weekend biking, Vanessa took the climb in stride and was only slightly winded when she reached the top of the hill. As was her mother.
“You come up here often, I take it,” Vanessa said with admiration in her voice.
“Yes,” Penelope said as she sat on a still intact section of an otherwise crumbling rock wall and patted a place beside
her.
Vanessa seated herself and took in the predawn view from the top of the hill. Intermittent clusters of light from villages and farms floated in pools of darkness, and occasional beams from headlights wound their way through the countryside.
Vanessa used her flashlight to examine her immediate surroundings. The rock wall showed signs of having once encircled the crest of the hill. And standing sentinel atop a rocky crag were the ruins of an ancient tower that could be seen from the terrace of Jean Claude’s farmhouse and that he referred to as “the Roman ruins.”
The arbor-shaded terrace was used as a summer dining room. Since Vanessa and Georgiana had arrived three days ago, every meal had been eaten there, and each one had been lingered over and enjoyed. Which was nice. Maybe after a summer in France, Lily and Beth would occasionally be willing to forgo television and linger over a meal.
“It’s time,” Penelope said, putting a hand on her daughter’s arm. “Turn off your flashlight.”
Vanessa obliged, and they waited while the eastern sky became steadily lighter. Even though dawn had arrived every morning since the world began, Vanessa felt as though she were waiting for some auspicious event to take place, which it was, and a miraculous one, and for those last few seconds of anticipation she found herself holding her breath.
Just as the first rays burst over the horizon, a distant rooster began to crow. A second rooster joined him. And then a third chimed in at the precise instant a church bell began to peal.
And all around them, from a distance and close by, other roosters let the world know that they had awakened, and other church bells joined in to announce the new day. Their music was discordant yet incredibly beautiful and moving. It was a concert Vanessa would never forget.
“Thank you,” she whispered to her mother.
“Food for the soul, isn’t it?”
Vanessa nodded. “You should have insisted that Georgiana come.”
“She wanted to sleep in, and I can bring her another morning. Besides, I wanted to share it with you first. You need it more.”
For the longest time they sat there watching the golden light spread itself across the French countryside with its picturesque hamlets, patchwork of cultivated fields, wooded areas along a meandering creek, and vintage farmhouses with their cluster of outbuildings.
Other sounds came forth. A tractor coming to life. The lowing of cows. Barking dogs. Birds singing.
Beauty and peacefulness were a delightful combination, Vanessa realized. After a time her mother linked arms with her and said, “I thought this might be a good time for you to tell me what happened in Colorado. You’ve only told me bits and pieces. Georgiana and Ellie, too. I need to hear the whole thing from start to finish.”
Vanessa sighed and shook her head. “I can’t. Not yet, anyway.”
“Yes, you can. Start by telling me exactly how Ellie’s leg got broken.”
Vanessa closed her eyes, remembering how she had shone the tiny beam of Georgiana’s penlight on Ellie’s leg and seen the jagged end of a bone jutting through flesh and recalling Ellie’s pain and her own feeling of utter helplessness.
A shudder went through her entire body just as it had then.
To explain about Ellie’s broken leg meant she would have to explain who Willy was and how they came to be locked away in an old mine and why the woman who had given birth to their father wished them dead. And how could she tell such a disturbing story in such a peaceful place? It would seem a sacrilege. She felt a wave of anger that her mother expected that of her.
Penelope pulled from the pocket of her jacket a bottle of water and two croissants wrapped in a cloth napkin. Vanessa took a bite of her croissant and drank some of the water.
“Is it what happened in Colorado that makes you so distant or is it because it pains you to see me with Jean Claude?” Penelope asked.
“Actually, being here with you and Jean Claude is easier than I thought it would be,” Vanessa acknowledged. “I think the poor man is afraid of me. You must have told him tales about your ferocious oldest daughter.”
“Let’s just say he realizes that you’re the daughter who’s the least accepting of our relationship. He’s a good man, Vanessa. I’ll never love Jean Claude the way I loved your father, but I do love him, and my life with him is very satisfying.”
Vanessa had wanted to not like her mother’s lover, but Jean Claude was gentle and considerate and obviously adored Penelope. Adoration from a man was something Vanessa had never experienced. And probably never would, she thought with a sigh.
“Ah, another sigh,” Penelope said. “So many sighs since you arrived. That’s something new with you. You were incredibly sad when your father died, and you were angry and hurt when Scott left, but whatever happened in Colorado has made you distant. You were always my strong, sensible girl. I counted on you to look after your sisters, which you always did, and now you are looking after your own daughters. You will always be that sort of person—responsible and reliable—but now you seem to be operating by rote. You seem to have lost heart.”
“It’s like when Daddy first got sick, and I couldn’t do anything to change the inevitable outcome,” Vanessa said, and another sigh came unbidden. “Then Scott left, and no matter how many promises I made, he didn’t come back, and my daughters have suffered because of that. Down there in that old mine, I felt the same way. I had tried everything I could think of to get us out of there and finally gave up. My sisters were going to die because I failed.”
She waited for her mother to comment, but Penelope was silent.
Her mother’s silences had always had more impact than her words. Vanessa closed her eyes. “The beginning was Hattie’s letter, of course. The postmark was the first clue.”
Once Vanessa started, it was as though the dam had broken. She felt the need to share every detail, to leave nothing out. She got misty-eyed when she told her mother about the elderly woman in the nursing home at Deer Lodge who had taken care of Hattie’s baby until Vera arrived by train: “That was the sweet moment. It was downhill after that.”
Then there was the yearbook picture. The newspaper article. The phone call from Willy. The flight to the middle of nowhere. The incredible house jutting out from the side of a Colorado mountain. And Hattie’s incredible tale of murder and bank robbery that ended with their being served drugged wine.
Vanessa clung to her mother’s hand while she told her of the horror of waking up in the abandoned mine and knowing that her sisters’ lives depended on her finding a way out.
“I tried,” Vanessa remembered. “I really tried. But finally I was ready to give up and curled up beside my sisters and began organizing my last thoughts. I thought about you and Daddy. And Ellie and Georgiana and I growing up together. My precious daughters. What hurt the most, of course, was the thought of leaving Lily and Beth.
“As to who opened the door to the old mine, I suppose I’ll never know for sure,” Vanessa said. “Maybe one of Hattie’s children got wind of what their mother was up to and put a stop to it. Or the security guard she’s fired came back for some of his possessions and snooped around a bit.”
Vanessa closed her eyes, seeing the rusted iron door that could have barred them from living out the rest of their lives. “The more I think about it, though, the more it seems that Hattie herself had to have opened it—not because she wanted to save the daughters of the child she gave away but because she couldn’t bear the thought of her poor Willy feeling abandoned and unloved in that old mine as she waited for death. Of course, their relationship would already have been damaged beyond repair. Hattie had revealed her evil side to the person who most loved her. Maybe that was what Hattie was thinking as she navigated the path down her mountain. The state police thought it was highly unlikely that she could have ended up impaled on that fence if she tumbled down the path, but maybe she didn’t tumble. Maybe she spread her wings like an aging eagle and flew to her death.”
“But we didn’t die, and out of th
e nightmare Ellie found love.” Vanessa had to smile. “Amazing, isn’t it? Fashion-plate Ellie who never left home without full makeup and the perfect outfit and shining hair and was on a perpetual quest to find Mr. Right, and then Mr. Right turns out to be a Georgia-born orthopedic surgeon practicing in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, who happened to be on call that day and first sees Ellie when she is an unconscious, filthy, stinking mess with a bone sticking out of her leg.”
“You should have called me sooner, Vanessa,” Penelope said. “I would have flown to Colorado. And when you did call, you were so vague. Georgiana and Ellie were much more forthcoming, but they’d been unconscious and didn’t know the whole story.”
“I’d already been grilled by the police and by Hattie’s son and didn’t want to tell the whole damned story another time. And I didn’t want you flying back to the States and interrupting the wonderful summer that you created for Lily and Beth, my wonderful daughters, who are…”
Vanessa searched for a word to describe the change in her daughters. “They are wiser. They understand that there’s a world beyond their little circle of friends and their school, and that there are other cultures and other ways to think and live. In the town square last night watching them mingle with the friends they’ve made this summer and actually speaking some French, I was overwhelmed by the change in them.”
“Wiser. That’s a good word,” Penelope observed. “And you will let them return next summer?”
Vanessa nodded.
“Okay, let’s see now.” Penelope held up her left hand. “Ellie is in love and bubbling over with happiness.” She folded down her index finger. “Georgiana has given up hand and foot modeling and has been awarded a contract for a coffee-table book that will document the upcoming national tour of singer Trisha Bell and her band, of which Georgiana’s own faithful Freddy is a member.” She folded down her middle finger. “Lily and Beth are wiser,” she said, folding down fingers three and four.
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