Eloise peered at Ann Rose and asked, puzzled, “Are you my sister?”
Ann Rose sat beside her and took one hand. “No, we’re your friends. I’m Ann Rose Anderson and this is Katharine Murray. Oscar Anderson is my father-in-law. You know Oscar. He went to school with Scotty and Winnie. We want to talk to you about the war.”
Since there were only two chairs, Katharine sat on the edge of the bed and let Ann Rose steer the conversation.
Eloise looked puzzled. “Are we at war?”
“I meant World War Two, when Scotty was in the army and Winnie was a pilot. Over in Europe. You and Nettie stayed home with little Art.”
“Scotty was in Atlanta. Were you in the war?” Eloise waited for Ann Rose to fill the gaps in her memory.
“No. But do you remember Bara, Art’s little sister?”
Eloise puzzled that over. “The girl.”
Ann Rose nodded encouragingly. “Little Bara.”
Eloise watched her fingers pluck the throw and spoke as if to herself, her words scarcely audible. “Scotty thought her ugly and skinny, but I liked her. She had very expressive eyes, even before she could understand what we were saying.”
“Did Nettie and Winnie adopt her in New York?” Ann Rose slid the blunt question in like butter.
Eloise looked up, suddenly angry. “Nettie! She made him do it, you know. He didn’t want to. But Nettie insisted. He had nightmares for weeks, after. Terrible dreams.” She plucked at the soft pink throw covering her knees, eager for them to understand.
“Nettie wanted to adopt the child but Winnie didn’t?” Ann Rose asked, puzzled.
Eloise stared like a pupil who doesn’t understand the question. “In New York,” Ann Rose prompted her.
Eloise nodded. “Scotty doesn’t, but I do. I like seeing all the people. Murdoch likes to go, too.” She turned to Katharine. “I’m glad you finally decided to come see me. My own sister, and you never come. Nobody ever comes. Nobody!” Her voice rose. “I sit in this stinking place day after day and they don’t feed me, don’t bathe me…. I’m not leaving you a penny! Not one red cent. You never come!”
An aide rushed in and began to talk softly. “It’s okay, Miss Eloise. You need to rest. Let me help you to your bed. You need to rest.” She waved toward the door and spoke softly to Ann Rose and Katharine, “I’m sorry, you need to leave now. She gets like this sometimes.”
As they walked to the car, Ann Rose asked, “Did you get anything from that?”
“Not much, except Nettie wanted to adopt the child and Winnie didn’t—which is odd, considering the way they treated her later. He adored Bara, and she him.”
Ann Rose nodded soberly. “He was Bara’s god. She has never been the same since Winnie…”
Katharine almost confessed right then what Bara had told her, but she couldn’t bring herself to repeat it aloud, even to Ann Rose. Surely Bara had been confused from drugs.
Ann Rose was still mulling over what Eloise had said. “I wonder why Winnie didn’t want the child. I mean, he had such a heart for children. Look at how much he contributed every year to various charities for children.”
“And you would think adoption would be something a couple ought to agree on before they do it.”
Ann Rose’s face grew grave. “Nettie and Winnie agreed on very few things, from what I understood.” She checked her watch. “I think we have time to swing by Rita Louise’s.”
Katharine grimaced. “The shorter our visit, the better, as far as I am concerned.”
“But I think we ought to call before we arrive on her doorstep, don’t you?” Ann Rose pulled her cell phone from her capacious bag.
“Don’t tell her I’m with you,” Katharine warned, “or she might suspect what we want.”
“Come in, dear,” Rita Louise welcomed Ann Rose dressed in a powder blue linen dress and low gray heels, every hair in place.
Her cordiality dropped several degrees when she glimpsed Katharine, and plummeted as her gaze traveled down Katharine’s clothes. Rita Louise belonged to the school of ladies who manage to drag themselves to the beauty parlor every week long after they get too frail for other functions, and who rise and dress for company every day whether they expect guests or not. Katharine’s Aunt Sara Claire had been the same.
Ann Rose’s classic khaki skirt, starched striped blouse, and polished flats with stockings passed muster, but Rita Louise’s expression made it clear that the turquoise cotton T, cropped khaki pants, and turquoise leather flip-flops Katharine had put on for a casual day at home were not acceptable for a morning call.
If Rita Louise remembered her tearful confession to Katharine at the cathedral, she gave no sign. Feeling like an urchin dragged in off the street, Katharine decided to let Ann Rose do the talking.
“We’ve come on a sort of delicate matter,” Ann Rose began when they were seated with cups of steaming coffee before them. “I think you know that Bara asked Katharine, here, to help her identify a box of medals she found among Winnie’s things, and in the process they came across a citation stating that Winnie didn’t get home from the war until February of 1945.”
Rita Louise gave a chilly nod.
“Do you also know that the police may suspect Bara of shooting Foley?”
“Yes.” Rita Louise didn’t indicate whether she agreed or disagreed with that theory.
Katharine gave Ann Rose high marks for plowing on through rising ice. “Now they have discovered that some valuables are missing, so they are beginning to wonder if someone came in from the outside and beat up Bara, Foley interrupted them, and the intruder shot him. Payne wonders whether the intrusion had anything to do with all the visits Bara made last week.”
“Payne wonders whether one of us killed Foley and beat Bara?”
Rita Louise’s power bills must be low in the summer, Katharine reflected. The woman could chill the air with a look. Even Ann Rose was nonplussed.
Katharine decided it was time to pull her share of the sled. “Payne asked me to at least talk to the people Bara talked to, to see if they have any inkling of what kind of hornet’s nest Bara may have stirred up.”
Rita Louise lowered her face to her coffee cup so they could not see her expression. “Bara spoke and acted rashly, before she thought. Nettie did her best to civilize the child, but—”
“Bara was adopted, wasn’t she?” Ann Rose asked.
When Rita Louise looked like she was about to deny it, Ann Rose added quickly, “I found a picture in Oscar’s album showing Nettie three months before Bara was born. Nettie wasn’t pregnant.” She put one hand on the gnarled bejeweled ones. “If you know something, Rita Louise, you need to tell it. For Bara’s sake.”
“Everything in the world has been done for Bara’s sake! What has she given in return? She despised the woman who raised her. She flouted the society that nurtured her. She brought disgrace on the family name.”
Katharine would have argued Bara’s case. After all, the woman and her eccentricity had raised more money for charity in Atlanta than Rita Louise. She had survived two dreadful marriages and managed to raise decent children. She had stayed sober for twenty-five years. But before she could defend Bara, Ann Rose chose a simpler and more effective way.
“For truth’s sake, then,” Ann Rose said gently. “Because it is truth that sets us free.”
Rita Louise did a moment of private battle before she sagged. Her shoulders slumped. Her spine curved. Her chin quivered. She had to set down her coffee cup because her hands trembled too much to hold it. To Katharine, it was like watching a spring thaw after a particularly severe winter.
Rita Louise spoke only to Ann Rose. Katharine felt uneasy, like she was eavesdropping on a confessional. “I don’t know what to do. Promises are sacred. I have believed that. I do believe it.”
“You made a promise to somebody you aren’t sure you should keep?”
Rita Louise twisted her hands in her lap. “Yes. Years ago, a good friend asked me to share her burden. In
great distress she told me a secret and asked me never to reveal it to anyone. I promised, even though…” She broke off and said hoarsely, “I gave my word, but sometimes I wonder if I was wrong. I kept my promise, though. I never even told John.”
“Did the secret concern Bara?”
Rita Louise hesitated. “Yes.”
“Nettie is gone and Bara still here. I’m not asking you to tell us, but you could tell Bara if you know anything about her birth parents.”
Rita Louise grew cross. “I don’t know what good it does to rake that up now.”
“Maybe you have carried Nettie’s burden long enough.”
Rita Louise reached for her coffee and took a sip, and made a slight face. Katharine’s was still warm. Had Rita Louise’s chilled from contact with her lips?
Rita Louise set the cup back on its saucer and said, “When Nettie and Winnie moved back down here after Winnie finished at Columbia, they brought Bara with them. Nettie pretended the child had been born while they were up there. She even tried to make people think Bara was younger than she actually was, though the girl was tall and precocious. Nettie told me privately that she had adopted Bara when the child was three, but it was difficult for her.”
“Do you know why Winnie would have objected?” Katharine asked.
“Winnie objected?” That clearly puzzled Rita Louise. “It was Nettie who objected. She did not want another child. Art was a lovely boy, no trouble at all, but his birth was difficult. She could not have more children. They had both accepted that, but then Winnie foisted that child on poor Nettie, in spite of her strenuous objections. No woman would gladly do what she did. Take in another woman’s child and raise it as your own. Look at it every single day and watch the other mother’s face grow clearer and clearer before you. Nettie was a saint!”
The ice was rising again. Rita Louise clasped her hands before her.
“Do you feel you did wrong by concealing from Bara that Nettie was not her birth mother?” Ann Rose probed the old woman’s conscience as delicately as a surgeon.
“Why, no. Nettie did not want that known. I would not go against her wishes simply because Bara stormed in here drunk, demanding to know the truth. The truth? The truth would destroy her. She worshipped Winnie.”
“Winnie was her father,” Katharine reminded her. “He raised her and adored her. That’s what makes a father.”
Rita Louise’s laugh was harsh. “Oh, yes, Winnie was her father. But he was never worth her worship. He drove poor Nettie…” She took a deep breath. “I made a promise and I will keep it. You tell Bara that Winnie was her father and Nettie was her mother. That is all she needs to know. Now, I need for you to leave. I am weary.”
Back in the car, Ann Rose gave Katharine a rueful smile. “I don’t know which of them is crazier, Eloise or Rita Louise. Do we know a single thing we didn’t know before?”
Katharine considered the two stories. “They remember the adoption very differently. I wonder which of them we should believe.”
She replayed the conversations over in her mind while she drove home from Ann Rose’s and realized something she had not picked up at the time. When Rita Louise spoke of telling Bara that she was adopted, she had not spoken of keeping or breaking promises. She had spoken of honoring Nettie’s wishes. It was when she spoke of “what Winnie drove poor Nettie to do” that she had mentioned the promise again. What promise could Rita Louise have made that was eating up her very soul?
Chapter 31
Viktor’s e-mail arrived late Monday afternoon:
Anton Molnar was a hero during the world war. He was active in the resistance movement and did some amazing things. You can find articles about him on the Internet, telling how he hid out in barns, moved invisibly through battles, and saved countless lives. A couple of the articles are in English. I will translate the others, if you like, but I don’t know how true they are. Some stories get exaggerated over the years. Speaking of exaggeration, according to my cousin, Anton defected to the US in the late fifties and was brutally gunned down on Atlanta’s dangerous streets. I can’t get my cousin to visit me. He thinks everybody in Georgia carries a gun. He doesn’t think Anton has any family left. His twin sister died in forty-seven of tuberculosis, and his parents had died before he left home.
Katharine mulled over the e-mail and checked Anton Molnar’s story through the English articles online, kicking herself for looking up Slovenia on Friday, but not Molnar. How young did you have to be to turn automatically to the Internet when you had a question?
A paragraph in one story held her attention: “Anton Molnar is credited with saving more American lives than any other member of the Yugoslavian resistance. Men forced to bail out of damaged planes were brought to him, and Molnar smuggled them to Allied troops, often taking them through actual skirmishes safely. He was known as the Gray Ghost for his ability to pass invisibly through the lines.”
She thought that over a few minutes, then found Kenny’s card and called his office.
“Why, hey, Miz Murray. I was fixing to call and ask if I could come up to your place tonight or later this week to drop off Hollis’s clothes. She left them at Mama’s after she changed into her riding things.”
“You could take them by her house,” Katharine suggested.
“I know the way to your place. Besides, she probably won’t ever want to see me again.”
He sounded forlorn and very young. Katharine wished she could reassure him, but she had no data to contradict him. “I’ll be here all evening. You might want to wait until the traffic lets up and come later.”
“I’ll work a little late, then, grab a bite of supper, and come around seven thirty. Will that be all right?”
“That will be fine.”
She was about to hang up when he asked, “Did you want something else? I mean, since you called and all.”
Katharine wondered if senility was setting in early. “Yes, I did. What was that Web site you used to find the citation for Bara Weidenauer’s father’s Medal of Honor?”
He rattled it off so quickly she missed half of it.
“Try it again slowly, please.”
“Sorry.”
He repeated it and she copied it carefully: www.army.mil. Then she read it back to him, to be sure she’d gotten it right.
“That’s it. Did you get Uncle Vik’s e-mail? He said he’d found out about somebody for you.”
“Yes, and I think it’s going to be real helpful. I’ll write and thank him.”
“Okay. I’ll see you tonight.”
She found Winnie’s citation and read it again. He had been rescued in Yugoslavia and smuggled to Allied forces. Had Anton Molnar done the smuggling? Was it Winnie he had come to see in Atlanta?
Was it Winnie who had shot him? Did Nettie know, and Winnie make her promise not to tell? Was that what Rita Louise knew?
Katharine was still sitting at the computer thinking that over when she heard Tom call from the kitchen. “Hello? Anybody home?”
She went with pleasure to meet him. “You’re home earlier than I expected. Did the plumbing go all right?”
“Not bad.” He set his duffle on the countertop and went to open a beer. She set the duffle on the floor and he frowned. “Sorry. I keep forgetting about germs.”
“Germs don’t forget about you. How much work did he have to do?”
“Enough to deal with the problem. Mostly outside. Sometime in the coming months we’ll have to replumb most of the house, but he and I agreed that could wait until you can go up there and stay awhile.”
“Thanks a lot.” But Katharine didn’t really mind. She’d take lots of books and escape to the lake house in the autumn, when the leaves were turning and geese were flying over. Maybe she’d ask Ann Rose and Posey to each come up for a couple of days to enjoy the solitude. The older she got, the more she appreciated close women friends.
When the doorbell rang, Tom and Katharine were sitting in his library enjoying a rare weekday evening at hom
e. The sunlight was slanting through the French doors leading out to the sunroom and they were both reading, with the added pleasure of being able to look up occasionally and smile at each other.
He got reluctantly to his feet. “Who could that be?”
“It’s probably Kenny Todd, Jon’s friend. He said he’d stop by to drop off some clothes Hollis left at their place on Sunday. Come meet him. I think you’ll like him.” Katharine had already told Tom about their Sunday afternoon, including its abrupt ending.
They answered the door together, and she introduced the men. Kenny stood as tall as he could and stuck out his hand. “It’s a real honor to meet you, sir. Jon has told me about what you do and how good you are at it.”
Tom accepted the compliment with his usual modest grace, then asked, “Did he also tell you I was seldom home for any of the important events in his life?”
Kenny hesitated. Tom clapped him on the shoulder. “Didn’t mean to embarrass you. I wanted to point out that I know there are two sides to any story. Speaking of that, Katharine here says you and Hollis had a bit of a dustup on Sunday.”
Katharine was startled, but not really surprised. It was in line with Tom’s conviction that small issues become big issues only if they aren’t confronted and defused before they grow too large to be contained.
Kenny cleared his throat. “We had a disagreement, yes sir. She lives in a very different world than I do.”
“Nonsense.” Tom kept his arm around Kenny’s shoulder and led him into the hall, then looked around, bewildered. “Is there any place for three people to sit in this house?”
“Just the breakfast room,” Katharine told him. “Or out by the pool.”
“Let’s go out by the pool. It’s nice at this time of day. Do you have time for a little visit, Ken?”
“It’s Kenny, sir. I never took to ‘Ken.’ And yes, I’m free this evening.”
They stopped in the kitchen long enough for the men to grab cold beer and Katharine to fix herself a glass of tea, then wandered out into the soft light of the closing day.
Daughter of Deceit Page 28
