Keepsake

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  She paused. No one moved or spoke. Quinn felt instinctively that he was in the presence of a truth teller. Her gaze, dark and beautiful still, swept over each one of them, compelling them to continue with her on her melancholy journey into the past. Quinn knew then what a powerful presence she had once been, would always be, among those of the opposite sex. The atmosphere in the small room was electric, rolling from one to the other and leaving the hairs on the back of Quinn's neck standing on end.

  All of the men believed her, of that there was no doubt.

  She wasn't looking at any of them now, but seemed to be peering into some dark and forgotten corner of her mind. Peering so hard that she squinted, as if there were no hope of getting any real light there, and she was just going to have to do the best that she could.

  "I didn't know what to do. She had no pulse, she wasn't breathing. I ran to the phone to call an ambulance, but I knew she was dead. What could they do? They would ask questions. There would be an inquest, an autopsy perhaps. My mind went completely blank. I hung up."

  She sighed and said, "And then I ran to the gardener's cottage."

  It was a megawatt jolt to Quinn's system. His head snapped back and his knees went limp. It was all he could do to keep standing.

  "I knew that Francis Leary had ... feelings for me. I'm sorry, Quinn, this will be hard for you, but you wanted the truth. He had spoken of how he felt—obliquely, of course—one afternoon when we had been working a long day in the garden and I invited him in for iced tea. He was so sweet," she added with a smile that wasn't at all self-conscious. "Another day, he reciprocated with tea in the cottage, and I could see that he had made an effort to lay out a pretty table. But he never hinted at those feelings again. I think ... well, I think he understood that I loved my husband. But he wanted me to know, that's all."

  She seemed embarrassed by the recollection. Holding herself close, she walked away from them all and up to the window that overlooked the parking lot, the same window that Quinn had stared through as he and Olivia had waited for news about Mrs. Dewsbury.

  "I knew, in any case, that I could trust him completely. So I ran straight to him and told him what had happened, why Alison had come to see me. I told him that she had said she was pregnant, but—and this is the truth—that I thought the baby might be Rupert's. Rupert was always so possessive about her ... jealous, really. And Rand and Alison were always such good friends; Rand would do something silly and chivalrous like offer to marry her," she said, throwing a mournful smile over her shoulder at her son.

  "And who could believe Alison? She was always such a hard girl to know. I would have confronted you about it, Rand, but I never got the chance.

  "Anyway, I told Francis everything. I told him that the scandal would destroy our family. That it would make it impossible for us to stay in Keepsake and for Owen to keep the mill ... everything that was in my heart, I told him."

  She turned around and said with a painful laugh, "I wasn't so composed in the cottage as I am now. The truth was, I was hysterical. But Francis managed to calm me down, and then he came up with a plan. He would stage it to look as if Alison had committed suicide. The blow to the back of her head, that would be from hitting the quarry wall when she threw herself over the edge with... with the rope around her neck. He—"

  She turned slowly away from them again.

  "He took care of everything."

  She sighed, and except for the vague hum of hospital machinery somewhere, there was no other sound. Three men, none of them shy, and there was no other sound.

  Quinn was reeling. In a daze, he said, "My father? He took care of everything?"

  Teresa Bennett turned back to face him. "He did it for me, Quinn. And when the police began to close in on him, he ran. Not because he was afraid for himself, but because he thought they might figure out what really happened. By running, he was drawing suspicion away from me, from my family. I'm sure that's why he did it."

  "For you. For your family," Quinn repeated, trying to get it into his head. All he could think was: once again, aced by the Bennetts. Two lives, shot to hell, all for the Bennetts.

  Almost automatically, he reached back for his single best defense against self-pity: twelve lives were saved because of his father's misbegotten chivalry. Children's lives and mothers' lives. In the great, twisted revolution of force and matter that made up the cosmos, everything had somehow worked out.

  He had labored through that reasoning so often before, but now, with a creation of his own struggling to survive, he understood it in a profound and almost religious way. It all works out. Somehow, some way, it all works out. Believe that.

  He bowed his head, humbled at last into acceptance.

  After a long eternity Teresa Bennett said to her son, "Quinn is right, Rand. You will have to tell Eileen. She loves you so much. I think you'll be all right ... but give her time."

  To her husband she turned and said, "I'm sorry, dear. I know you were afraid that it was Rand who killed her, all these years. I should have told you, but I couldn't bear to see the look in your eyes that I'm seeing now," she whispered.

  She reached up to touch his cheek where a tear had rolled down. "I'm sorry."

  Last of all, she turned to Quinn. "Your father was the kindest man I've ever met, and the truest gentleman. I didn't know that men like him existed outside of women's imaginations. I can't ask you to forgive me," she said softly. "And it's too late to ask him."

  She sighed and looked longingly at the door, contemplating flight herself, Quinn supposed. Or maybe she was simply willing someone to come through it and give her, just once, some good news.

  In any case, that's what happened. Dr. Jack Whiteman, the physician in attendance, had a cautious smile on his face as he said, "The news is encouraging. There was no bleeding, the membranes are intact, the cervix hasn't dilated. She's stronger than she looks. We're going to keep her here for a bit, and after that, she'll need to limit her activities and get plenty of bed rest. If Miss Bennett is conscientious about restricting herself, then the chances are very good that she'll carry to term."

  Teresa Bennett said calmly, "Thank you so much, Doctor," and burst into tears.

  Her husband rushed to her side. She threw herself into his arms, and between heartrending, uncontrollable sobs, Quinn heard her say over and over, "Oh, thank you, thank you, God ... oh, thank you, God."

  Quinn had trouble speaking with the hard knot in his throat, but he said to the physician as he was about to leave, "Can I see her?"

  "You're—?"

  "The baby's father."

  "Two minutes."

  "You bet."

  Pale and shaken, Rand said, "Mom ... Dad ... I'm going home. I, ah ..." His sigh was a long, shuddering effort to get his own emotions under control. "I'm going home."

  He and Quinn exchanged one brief glance, and then Rand walked quickly out of the visitors' room ahead of him, perhaps in a hurry to make up for lost time.

  Quinn never could recall how he got himself from the visitors' room to the side of Olivia's bed. Possibly with wings, maybe on a magic carpet—but there he was, still knocking back that lump in his throat and wishing he could will away the tubes and the black-and-blue marks and the cast on her leg.

  Olivia gave him a trembly smile. "We made it ... she and I made it, Quinn ... thanks to you." Her smile firmed up as she said, "I'm glad you had experience saving people from fires."

  She was so beautiful, an angel booted down to earth expressly to dazzle him through the remaining years he had to live there. Pray God they were many.

  He brushed aside a curl that had flopped over a bandage on her forehead. "I love you," he said.

  He was surprised to see a flush in her cheeks. "And I love you, but you'd never know it the way I acted today. Oh, Quinn, I'm sorry," she said in a soft wail. "This whole thing wouldn't have happened if I hadn't sent you away."

  Quinn shook his head and said, "We're not going down that road—ever again. We're not going to
look back anymore, Liv; too much wonder lies ahead."

  But Olivia wasn't quite ready to turn around and face happiness square in the eye.

  Plucking nervously at the sheet, she said, "I have to keep looking over my shoulder, Quinn. My family's past is like some big, horrible crow, flying low behind me and waiting to peck me to pieces if I trip and fall."

  "Not anymore," he told her.

  Perhaps it was her mother's place to explain—Quinn had no doubt that she would be doing that—but he wasn't willing to let this one, this great love of his life suffer a single new moment of anxiety over someone else's mistakes.

  "It was an accident," he said, and he went on to explain how good people with good intentions had ended up doing a horrible deed.

  When he was done, she murmured,' "Will you ever forgive him, do you think?"

  "I already have." He couldn't help adding, "What about you, Liv? Can you forgive your mother?"

  "I don't ... know." She frowned in confusion, and yawned, and then closed her eyes. "They've given me ... just a little something ... for the pain," she explained with a sigh. "I wonder ... what my mother can take ... for her own ..."

  She was gone. Asleep, whether she wanted to be or not.

  Quinn got up quietly and turned off the light above her bed. In the dim glow of the nightlight, he studied her bruised and scraped face, aching to make it all better.

  Almost without an effort, he was able to picture her in the same bed with color in her cheeks and their daughter in her arms.

  I wonder how she feels about the name Jessica.

  Smiling, he stepped quietly from the room. He would ask her first thing in the morning.

  Epilogue

  "No, no, no, Jessie! No, no, sweetie. Come here. Sit by me. Sit by Mommy."

  Olivia held out her arms over her impossibly bulging stomach, but Jessie had other ideas. Off she ran, charging out of the conference room and down the halls of Sayles & McCromber, fully prepared to be chased, caught, and swung in the air. Wasn't that Daddy's favorite game?

  "Quinn—!"

  "Say no more—I'm on the case," said her husband ahead of her. "That's a little lawyer humor, get it?" he said with a wink on his way out.

  Eyeing the sticky handprints on his glass-doored bookcases, Albert Sayles sighed and said, "Children rarely manage to sit through real-estate closings."

  He was kind enough not to mention that this one hadn't started yet.

  "I'm so sorry, Mr. Sayles," Olivia said for the fourteenth time since their arrival fourteen minutes earlier. "The sitter didn't show, and I couldn't reach my sister-in-law. Maybe if I hold Jessie ..."

  She began the massive effort of lifting her unwieldy body out of the wooden-armed chair, but that sent the elderly bachelor into total panic. "Please, Olivia, it's no trouble," he hastened to say, gesturing her to keep her seat. "I'm sure Quinn has the tot in hand."

  The joyful shrieks of the tot in question bounced loudly down the hall and into the conference room, causing Mr. Sayles to suck much air through his nose.

  "Oh, dear," said Olivia, trying to look dismayed. "I hope no one's reading a will just now."

  "She seems a handful," he said on the exhale.

  "My mother says she's just like me."

  "I don't recall that they ever brought you into the offices."

  Fifteenth time: "I'm so sorry."

  "When are you expecting your—?" He nodded vaguely at her stomach.

  "A week?" Olivia hazarded. "It's a surprisingly inexact science. It's been a wonderful pregnancy," she added, although he couldn't possibly care. "Whereas with Jessie ... So I'm hoping that this child will be a little more laid back."

  "That would be nice. For you, I mean. Naturally."

  And there they left it until the arrival of the seller of the big white Victorian that Quinn and Olivia had contracted to buy. Mrs. Dewsbury, dressed in burgundy twill and walking with the help of her Sunday cane, came stepping in smartly ahead of Quinn and Jessie.

  Relieved, Olivia greeted the widow with a big grin. "Ah, you're here—and don't you look nice, Mrs. D."

  "My dear, you look enormous!"

  "Nur-mus," said Jessie, holding on to her father's hair with lollipop hands. Her vocabulary was getting better every day, even if her hygiene wasn't.

  The elderly woman took a seat, and Mr. Sayles popped out of the room to see how long it would be before her own attorney showed. Clearly he wanted to get the show on the road.

  The widow was in a state. "I was up all night, fretting," she confessed to Quinn and Olivia. "I ought to have made up my mind sooner about selling you the house. I feel just terrible. How will you handle a move and a new baby, not to mention that one up there?" she asked, pointing to the dark-eyed monkey who seemed to be enjoying the view from atop Quinn's shoulders.

  "Don't be silly. It's not as if we're moving right in," said Olivia, handing Quinn a wet wipe for Jessie. "We'll need to get the workmen into the kitchen and—"

  "That's another thing. You're paying me far too much for the house; it's falling down."

  Quinn laughed and said, "Are you kidding? We practically stole it out from under you. I just hope the AARP doesn't hear about this."

  "Oh, you stop that," the widow said gaily.

  "You stop that!" mocked Jessie as Quinn reached up over his head to clean her hands.

  Olivia was glad to see that Mrs. Dewsbury was exhilarated at the prospect of moving into a retirement community and passing the house on to someone she loved. Quinn had been very careful about approaching her, checking first with her son and afterward insisting on three separate appraisals before he made an offer over and above the highest of them. Everyone was happy, Olivia, most of all. It was much too quiet outside of town, and besides, they were bursting the seams of the townhouse.

  Mr. Sayles returned with Mrs. Dewsbury's attorney, a man even more bent and white-haired than he was, and they began the numbing process of handing over a venerable piece of Americana from one generation to another. Olivia signed wherever they pointed, but—her advisor at Harvard would have been ashamed of her—her mind wasn't focused on the numbers at all.

  Her mind was where her heart was: in a big white house on a wide street in a nice neighborhood in the center of Keepsake, where an old porch swing had been left hanging on its chains especially for her. She planned to spend a lot of time there, nursing her newborn baby while Jessie ran around on the lawn. When the children were in school, maybe she would go back full time to Miracourt. But not now... not yet. Now was the time for porch swings.

  She glanced sympathetically at her husband, stuck with the job of deciphering dust-dry legalese while he rubbed sleepy Jessie's back.

  Poor Quinn. What a long list of projects she had lined up for him: a lamppost at the turn into the drive ... a pergola in the back yard, leading to a small, stone-walled, and very secret garden ... a fountain like the one he had carved from granite for her mother, with a tiered waterfall tumbling soothingly into a tiny hollowed pool ...

  All in his spare time, of course.

  "What're you smiling at?" he murmured, echoing hers with one of his own.

  "Oh ... nothing. Just happy, I guess."

  Poor, poor Quinn.

  ****

  The Memorial Day dedication didn't begin until six. There had been plenty of time after the closing on their new house for Jessie to nap and Olivia to put up her feet and rest. Quinn, still traumatized from her difficult first pregnancy, hadn't wanted her to go to the dedication at all, but Olivia had insisted.

  "Quinn! You volunteered to build the memorial wall, stone by stone and with your own hands. How could I not go to this?"

  And so she put on a maternity dress of pale blue linen and dressed Jessie in buttercup yellow, and they picked up Mrs. Dewsbury and drove to Town Hill to wander the grounds before the official ceremony to honor Keepsake's fallen.

  It was a wonderful afternoon, sunny and warm and mild. Mrs. Dewsbury went off to the penny sale tent in searc
h of bargains, and Quinn and Olivia pushed Jessie in her stroller past the bake sale table, emerging at the other end with a gooey cupcake for Jessie and brownies for themselves.

  Nibbling their treats, they stopped to buy a dozen tickets from Betty Bennett, who was manning the booth for the Sewing Club's charity raffle of a wedding quilt.

  "My aunt seems happy, don't you think?" asked Olivia as they wandered out of earshot.

  "Very. Sad to say, but the divorce is the best thing that could have happened to her."

  "She didn't think so at the time."

  "Even before it, she was happier than your Uncle Rupert will ever be. She has the capacity for joy. He doesn't."

  As usual, Quinn's understanding of people Olivia had known all of her life was better than her own. She was too close to them, she had long ago decided; she couldn't see them as clearly as he could from the sidelines.

  They were resting near the gazebo in chairs set up for the band concert when Rand came by in search of Mrs. Dewsbury.

  "Try the penny sale tent," Olivia told her brother. "What's up?"

  Rand sighed and said, "She left a message with my office that she wants to bring her old Kenmore stove to the new place when she moves in on Monday. I've explained to her that her stove is gas and that there's no gas available on that side of town yet. She says she'll wait."

  "She will, too," Quinn said with a laugh.

  "Is she your most difficult buyer?"

  Rand shrugged. "Average. It's a retirement community; the elderly tend to know what they like." He leveraged himself out of his chair by pushing hard on his thighs. "Frankly, I admire that generation. Their credit is perfect and they understand the value of a dollar. But—I can't produce gas where there is no pipeline. Has Eileen showed up with the kids yet?"

  "Haven't seen them."

  "Tell her I'll be in the tent with Mrs. D."

  He walked away, a man with a mission.

  Smiling, Olivia said to Quinn, "Getting out of the mill—and from under my father's thumb—was the best thing that's ever happened to him. Look at him hustle. He really wants to succeed. It's an amazement to me."