The Secrets She Carried

by Davis, Barbara

  Downtown was just beginning to stir as Leslie pulled into Meeting Street and parked along the curb in front of Randolph Estate Sales. She was glad to find the shop empty as she struggled through the door with the sheet-wrapped Rebecca.

  A jangling brass bell brought a thickset man in a lumpy gray cardigan bustling from the back room. His smile was bland, his faded blue eyes comically magnified by the optical visor he wore. “Austin Randolph,” he said, pumping her hand warmly, his voice thick with Carolina drawl. “You must be Miss Nichols. I believe you called about some jewelry?”

  Leslie held out her wrist. “I’d like to know how much you’ll give me for this.”

  Mr. Randolph was clearly startled by her abruptness, but after adjusting his visor, he turned his attention to her watch. “A lady’s all-gold Rolex, and a fairly new one at that.”

  Leslie opened the clasp and slid the watch off, laying it on the glass counter. “It’s two years old. I’ve got the original box and paperwork in the car.”

  Randolph picked up the watch, looking it over with a practiced eye. “Plain bezel, diamond dial…It’s a beautiful timepiece, in excellent condition, but I’ll be honest; I can’t give you anywhere near what you paid. Are you quite certain you want to part with it?”

  In response to Leslie’s nod, he produced a jeweler’s loupe from his trouser pocket and proceeded to make a more thorough inspection. When he was finally satisfied, he reached for a calculator, tapped a few buttons with the eraser of a pencil, then held it up for her to see. Leslie felt her shoulders sag but reluctantly nodded her agreement. He hadn’t been kidding when he said the figure would be nowhere near what she paid, but if she was frugal, it might be enough to finance her plans for the Splash.

  With the necessary papers complete and the cash counted out, Leslie inquired if there might be time to take a look at the Rebecca. Mr. Randolph seemed only too happy to oblige. Hoisting the painting up onto the counter, he peeled back the faded floral bedsheet, adjusted his visor, and turned his attention to the canvas.

  After several minutes, he tugged the visor up onto his forehead. “Are you looking to sell this piece as well?”

  “I haven’t decided,” Leslie lied, feeling a twinge of guilt. “But I would like to know more about it. There are another four at home, all apparently painted by the same artist.”

  Randolph’s downy gray brows lifted in surprise. “Four more, you say?” He glanced once more at the signature in the lower right-hand corner, then pulled off his visor and hung it on a nearby peg. “Art of this caliber really isn’t my specialty, Miss Nichols, but if you’d allow me to, I’d like to hold on to the piece and consult with a friend of mine in the art department at UNC. I can’t be certain, but I suspect it may be a rather special piece.”

  Leslie was disappointed at the prospect of having to wait but was intrigued by his use of the word special. “How long will that take, do you think?”

  “It shouldn’t be more than a week or two. If it’s the painting you’re worried about, I assure you it will be in good hands.”

  Leslie swallowed her disappointment; she’d been hoping for answers today. Scribbling down her number, she handed it to Mr. Randolph, thanked him for his time, and left the shop, her thoughts already shifting to her next appointment.

  The Gavin Gazette was the last stop on her to-do list, and the most critical. She had pulled together a hasty press packet, media of the house and grounds, along with a shamelessly schmaltzy timeline of Peak’s evolution from tobacco farm to winery. It was presumptuous, she knew, to suggest content to a newspaper editor, but as Jay had pointed out, harvest was around the corner and they were coming down to the wire. With advertising dollars scarce, it was starting to look like exposure was going to come down to whatever she could wrangle from the paper.

  As it turned out, she had no trouble convincing Steve Whitney, the Gazette’s new, and somewhat wet-behind-the-ears, editor to agree to a series of local-interest pieces, culminating in a full-color spread in the Weekender, which would run three days before the Splash. It was more than she’d hoped for, even if she did have to flutter her lashes a bit to get it done.

  Thanking him profusely, she reiterated the hope that she would see him at the Splash, then asked to be directed to the archives department. If she couldn’t get instant answers about the Rebecca, maybe she could dig up something on how Adele Laveau might have died.

  The archives department turned out to be a cramped and musty room at the end of the hall. A stout woman with iron gray hair and penciled-on brows informed Leslie in clipped tones that there was no research staff to assist her, but if she was willing to search on her own, she was welcome to stay until they locked up.

  Leslie was glad when the woman finished her brief tutorial and left. Nothing was digitally archived, and the microfiche trays were confusing, but eventually she grasped how the information was stored. Unfortunately, with no concrete dates, there was no easy way to attack the data. All she could do was scan back editions, one at a time, in hopes that something caught her eye.

  After three hours, Leslie was ready to throw in the towel. She had combed through a dozen years of minuscule print and grainy photos and had yet to run across anything remotely helpful. No surprises, no loose ends, nothing pertaining to the woman buried on the ridge or the child she had borne out of wedlock. So now what? There were hospital records she could check, and the courthouse, though in those days rural births often went unrecorded. She could visit local churches, search for a record of baptism for the boy, but it seemed unlikely that Adele would have flaunted Henry’s illegitimate son in church.

  Groaning, she pressed her knuckles to her lids. Perhaps it was time to admit she’d already invested more energy in this wild-goose chase than she could afford. Adele Laveau was dead and gone and had been for eighty years; nothing she learned now was going to change that. Weary and resigned, she reached to shut down the reader, then went stock-still.

  MYSTERIOUS FIRE AT PEAK PLANTATION

  The photo was poor, degraded after so many years, but appeared to show the foundation of a small shed heaped in ash and rubble.

  January 11, 1940—An unexplained fire broke out late Thursday night in an outbuilding on Peak Plantation. Owner Henry Gavin was away from home when the fire started, but returned in time to help extinguish the blaze. The woodshed is reportedly a total loss. No injuries resulted from the fire. Wife Susanne and daughter Maggie were safely in the house when the fire occurred. At this time the cause of the blaze is unknown, but vandalism is suspected. Three local boys, Samuel, Randall, and Landis Porter, all from neighboring Level Grove, were picked up for questioning, but were later released without charges.

  Leslie couldn’t say why she had bothered to print the article. A shed fire might have been news in 1940, but it wasn’t what she’d been looking for. As gruesome as it seemed, she’d been hoping to find some clue about the accident that had killed Adele. Instead, her big discovery had turned out to be a case of vandalism in which the only casualty was an old woodshed. Sighing, she stuffed the article into her purse and flicked off the light.

  On the way home she fiddled with the radio, searching for a station that wasn’t playing LeAnn Rimes or Billy Ray Cyrus and wondering why so many country singers happened to have three names. As she turned onto Gavin Boulevard she caught sight of First Presbyterian’s soaring steeple, white and piercing against the bright blue sky. Without thinking, she pulled into the deserted lot, cut the engine, and got out.

  Something wobbled in her chest as she stepped onto the cracked slate path. For a moment she stood staring at the church’s neat white double doors, its redbrick walls and stained glass windows. Generations of Gavins had attended service in its sanctuary, sung in its pews, wed at its altar, been buried on its grounds. Suddenly, the gravity of tradition, of years and loss, was stifling. What was she doing here?

  In the yard behind the church, headstones stood like rows of well-tended teeth. Leslie forced her feet off the path,
navigating them like land mines as she crossed to where the dead Gavins slept. Henry’s lofty granite obelisk made the family plot easy to locate, a shaft of sullen gray marble adorned with a heavy bronze plaque. Beside him, Susanne rested more modestly, her epitaph as inconspicuous as her plain granite headstone. She had gone first, six years before Henry, at only forty-seven.

  Leslie’s breath caught when she saw the small stone in the grass to Susanne’s right, nameless and etched with a solitary date—a child lost too soon to even be named. Miscarriages and stillbirths were a fact of life in those days, but the sight of it, so tiny and final, was sobering. A few feet away, Maggie’s headstone basked in the last rays of afternoon sun. It was hard to believe she’d been gone a whole year, harder still to realize thirty years had passed since she had decorated gingerbread men or carved a pumpkin with her grandmother. How could thirty years feel like yesterday?

  The marker beside Maggie’s was a perfect match, slate gray granite etched with crosses at the corners, belonging to the grandfather who lived in Leslie’s memory not as flesh and blood, but as a blend of remembered scents—peppermint, tobacco, the faint limey tang of hair tonic.

  And then there was her mother’s stone, a heart-shaped slab of pink-veined marble standing alone in the shade of a nearby oak. Until that moment she had never laid eyes on it. Maggie hadn’t thought it a good idea to let her attend the funeral. And then, three days later, Jimmy had taken her away. Stepping into the shade, she read the epitaph.

  Amanda Lynne Nichols

  April 4, 1953–October 27, 1984

  Beloved daughter, devoted mother,

  Cruelly stolen from those who loved her.

  Stolen.

  The word rocked her.

  Maggie had chosen it, of course, a glaring indictment of the son-in-law she blamed for the death of her little girl. And she’d been far from alone in her suspicions. There had been an inquest, and the not-so-subtle whispers when Jimmy had failed to appear at his wife’s funeral. No one knew it was because he couldn’t stand up long enough to dress himself. The memory of her father—drunk and sobbing on the bathroom floor—still made Leslie shudder. But the memory came with a rush of understanding too, about what she was doing here.

  She had never said good-bye.

  She had carried her mother’s death quietly, locking it away, burying it deep. But now, like the ridge with its abandoned stone and rusted iron gate, time had found its way in. Suddenly, she was weeping, quiet sobs that rushed up from nowhere to fill her throat, for all the lost years and all the unsaid good-byes. Until now, she hadn’t understood how irrevocably linked it all was, and how inevitable. Peak was Maggie’s legacy, enduring and unshakable, tying the past with the future, and somehow, she had unwittingly followed it home.

  Leslie had no idea how long she lingered before finally heading back to the car. She only knew that the sun had begun to dip and she was finally cried out, emptied, and strangely at peace. She had come to say good-bye and she had, to her mother, and to Maggie, and perhaps to some part of her past.

  Chapter 22

  Leslie arrived for dinner fifteen minutes early, wearing black slacks and a matching turtleneck, a chilled bottle of Chardonnay in hand. The cottage door stood open. She walked through to find Jay in the kitchen, contemplating a pair of bronze-skinned fish.

  The smile he flashed when he glanced up was slightly distracted, almost boyish. “I hope you like sea bass.”

  “Sure, I guess. As long as you promise there won’t be a face on mine. Faces on my food make me queasy.”

  “No face, I promise,” he said over the shing-shing of his knife against the sharpening steel. “I’m going to fillet them, then roast them with a sweet-corn and black-eye succotash.”

  Leslie lifted a brow in approval. “Sounds wonderful, and very southern. I’m guessing you didn’t learn to cook like that in Connecticut.”

  “And you’d be right. Maggie and I had a standing date every Friday night. We would trade off cooking for one another. I taught her how to fry oysters and make Yankee pot roast. She taught me to make corn bread and fry okra.” His hands went still over the fish, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “I never tasted okra until I met your grandmother.”

  “I’m glad you were here,” Leslie said quietly. “I’m glad she didn’t…I’m glad she wasn’t alone.”

  Jay looked up then, his hands momentarily quiet. “Maybe it’s time to open the wine.”

  Leslie cleared her throat, grateful for the change of subject. She felt like a novice as she fumbled with the bottle, an awkwardness only intensified by the surgeon-like precision with which Jay was wielding his knife. He wrote books, cooked gourmet meals, knew about wine, and wasn’t afraid to get dirty. It was a daunting combination, and rather attractive, now that she thought about it. The kitchen was small and he filled it completely, lean and tan in his khakis and plain white oxford, and—she couldn’t help noticing—smelling faintly, but distractingly, of sandalwood.

  Pouring a glass of wine, she set it beside the cutting board, then poured one for herself, happy to have something to at least occupy her hands. She should offer to help, to peel something or chop something, but when it came to food prep, she didn’t have a clue and had no wish to demonstrate her lack of skills. Thankfully, she spotted several bowls and a handful of utensils in the sink. She could at least handle a sponge.

  Jay glanced up from his chopping but made no comment when she picked up the sponge and turned on the tap. They worked in companionable silence, elbow to elbow in the tiny kitchen until the fish was ready to go into the oven.

  Jay set the timer, then topped off their glasses and carried them to the small café table in the corner, indicating the chair across from his. “Now, I believe you promised to tell me what you’re up to. Something about a party?”

  Leslie took a sip of wine, surprised at the butterfly wings suddenly fluttering in her belly. She hadn’t realized until that moment just how much she wanted his approval.

  “I’ve been kicking it around for about a week now, and I’m convinced we need to get some early buzz going, get the locals excited about what we’re doing here. A soft opening timed to coincide with the Harvest Festival is just the kind of thing we need. It would be a lot of work, and on very short notice, but the payoff in exposure could be huge.”

  Jay narrowed one eye. “In case you haven’t noticed, Big City, we’re not exactly rolling in cash.”

  Leslie crossed her arms with a self-satisfied smile. “What if I told you it wouldn’t drain the coffers by a single penny?”

  “Then I guess I’d want to know how you plan to pull it off.”

  “By networking. I called Susan Bishop a few days ago to find out what catering would cost, and she immediately wanted in. She volunteered to kick in with food, then offered to pave the way with other locals she thinks will want to participate in exchange for the publicity.”

  Jay looked mildly exasperated. “Leslie, the doors aren’t even open. What kind of publicity do they think they’re going to get?”

  Leslie smiled, a slow-spreading Cheshire grin. “The kind that comes from a full-color spread in the Gazette’s Weekender.”

  “A full color—” He sat up straighter, set aside his wine. “And how much is that going to cost?”

  “Not a cent.”

  “You’re telling me the paper isn’t charging us for a full-color ad?”

  “Not an ad, a two-page feature. We’re talking pictures, history, the works. I also got them to agree to two preview pieces. The first will be about Peak’s history; the second will cover the harvest.”

  Clearly impressed, Jay leaned back in his chair, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Dare I ask how you pulled off this magic feat?”

  Leslie took a leisurely sip of wine, savoring the moment. When she knew she had his full attention, she crooked a finger, drawing him closer. “I’m going to tell you something not many people know about me,” she said in hushed tones. “But first, I ne
ed to know you can keep a secret.”

  When Jay leaned in expectantly, she met him partway across the tiny table, her voice a mere whisper. “I’m actually very charming.”

  Jay’s face went momentarily blank, the expression followed by a burst of laughter so loud it brought Belle scrambling to see what all the fuss was about.

  Leslie glowered at him, arms folded. “It wasn’t supposed to be that funny.”

  Jay made a halfhearted attempt at self-control. “I just expected you to say something else; that’s all.”

  “No, you’re right. I’ve never been charming. When your only role models are the barflies your father brings home on Friday nights, you tend to get shortchanged in the charm department.”

  Jay’s amusement fizzled abruptly, leaving a yawning silence in its wake. Leslie looked away, cursing herself for ruining the moment with that vivid and unsavory image of her childhood. She was relieved when the timer went off and Jay rose to serve up dinner.

  Leslie stood too. “If you point me toward the silverware, I’ll go ahead and set the table.”

  “The drawer beside the sink. And if you would, pull the salads out of the fridge.”

  Leslie did as she was told, adding a pair of cloth napkins she found at the back of the drawer. Jay came up behind her, holding a single candle and a disposable lighter.

  “What’s this?” she asked, taking them from him.

  “I thought we’d do it up right. You know, celebrate your success today.”

  “Oh.”

  “Charm aside, I really would like to know how you pulled it off. Go ahead and refill the glasses and I’ll be right there. Then you can tell me all your naughty tricks.”

  As their plates gradually emptied, Leslie fleshed out her ideas for the Splash, barely pausing in her enthusiasm to breathe between topics. She was pleasantly surprised by Jay’s level of interest, as he asked questions, pointed out challenges, even suggested a few ideas of his own. She was also surprised at how good it felt to talk through her day over a simple meal in the kitchen. She’d been on her own for so long, cut off from anything remotely resembling intimacy, that she hardly knew how to include someone else in her life. It was funny how you couldn’t know you’d been missing a thing until you actually found it.