by Meg O'Brien
“I’m impressed,” I say, “and amazed that it works.”
Beside us is a small grotto with a statue of the Blessed Mother. A bench faces it, beneath a centuries-old oak tree. Sister Pauline sits, and pats the space beside her. I take a seat.
“It does take a certain amount of structure to make it work,” she says. “For the sisters who want it, we have daily Mass, prayers throughout the day, silence in the evening hours. Even the women who have left their orders partake in much of that. It’s not a habit one loses easily—but it also isn’t required.”
I think back to my days before moving to San Francisco and working for the Chron. I attended Mass regularly, made novenas, took Communion. Sister Pauline is right; it’s not something one loses easily. It took meeting Jeffrey to put me on a different path. Jeffrey, though born and baptized a Catholic, never practiced the faith after the age of fifteen. His parents were devout people who worked hard all their lives to eke out a living and finally acquired a comfortable, middle-class life. This they attributed to their faith in God, and when they died they stunned Jeffrey by leaving everything to the Church. He was fifteen at the time, on his own and penniless.
What his parents were thinking of, I’ll never know. But kind-hearted lawyers took on his case and tried to fight the Church. They failed, and now Jeffrey speaks of the Roman Catholic Church in less than glowing terms. I know that much of his drive to accumulate money and property has to do with those early years.
In the beginning, I found it endearing to think of the wronged, naive adolescent going up against the huge and powerful entity of the Roman Catholic Church. Only later did I see the scars it had left.
“The sisters here who have left their orders,” I say. “Are they the ones who no longer wear habits?”
“Not necessarily. Whether or not to wear the habit is a personal choice. Generally, the younger nuns like the freedom and comfort of civilian clothes.”
She turns to me. “About Louisa. When one is thrown from self-sufficiency to dependency in the blink of an eye, and when that same someone is dealing with bad health and poor medical care, well, as Louisa said, it can do things to a person. She might turn to her faith and become stronger for it—or she might lose hope and become, at least for a time, bitter. Our prayers go up every day for our little Louisa.”
“And Sister Helen. What about her?”
“Are you asking me if Helen is better or worse from her experiences before coming here?”
“Yes.”
Sister Pauline smiles and touches my arm. “I’m sorry, but that’s something you’ll have to ask her.”
Pulling out her pocket watch, she glances at it. “I’ll be late for afternoon prayers if I don’t go now. Would you like to sit here a while? Perhaps I can get Helen to come and talk to you after prayers.”
I hesitate, thinking that it must be close to three, and the odds of Sister Helen talking to me today are not good. Besides, I still have a lot to do. Find Jeffrey, find Ben, put things together, figure them out…
It seems too much, suddenly, and I’m exhausted from Rio. “Tell you what,” I say. “I’ll give it an hour. Would you tell Sister Helen I’ll be here, and I’d really like to talk to her?”
Sister Pauline assures me she will do that. As she hurries down the hill, the diminishing clack of her rosary beads drifts back to me, a poignant reminder of days gone by.
Rising from the bench, I stretch out instead on the ground a few feet from the tree, staring up at the open sky. There are no sounds now, only the occasional twitter of a bird. The grass beneath me pricks at my exposed arms; it is still dry and brown from the summer, as there has been little rain. But the sun feels good, and this is the first peaceful moment I can remember having since Marti died.
It is so odd, I think, when one loses a loved one. There are tears at unexpected moments, for no apparent reason. A feeling of being dead oneself, of the life force having left so that nothing remains but a numbness, an overwhelming sadness.
There is also an inability to believe it’s really happened. This person cannot be gone. It’s not right.
I know I have not been tracking well since Marti died. I haven’t allowed myself to cry very often, fearing I’d lose myself completely in grief. In bed at night, however, there are moments of rage, when everything goes red. After the red comes the dark—as dark as I imagine the far reaches of the universe to be. I feel alone in the world, abandoned on a frozen star.
It is worse, I think, because of the way Marti “abandoned” me the few months before her death. Since Rio, I have begun to understand that. I still cannot accept it, but I understand it. Marti was searching for her son.
The Ryans told her that Jeffrey was negotiating for Justin’s release, and that the FBI was involved. Marti, however, would never have sat idly by and let him run the show. She would have launched her own investigation.
And if that’s the way it happened, she must have discovered pretty quickly that Jeffrey had lied about the FBI being on the case. That would have been easy enough to find out.
From there, would she have confronted Jeffrey with his lies?
Or did she pretend to believe him, while continuing to search for Justin herself?
I could see her doing that. I could also see her not telling the Ryans that Jeffrey had lied. Why make them worry, especially if she was on the kidnapper’s trail herself, and believed that Justin would soon be safely home?
For that matter, she might not have completely trusted the Ryans with this information about Jeffrey. Since they were listening to and trusting Jeffrey so completely, she might have thought they’d tell him what she was doubting him.
Moments later I open my eyes as a shadow comes between me and the sun. My first wild hope is that it’s Sister Helen. Instead, it’s Lydia Greyson, the founder of The Prayer House and the woman who gave Marti a safe resting place in her family plot. She stands above me.
I sit up, shading my eyes from the sun. Here, I think, is someone who may be able to tell me many things.
But will she?
13
We sit on the bench beneath the tree, I in my jeans and Lydia Greyson in hers. She does not look like the stylish, wealthy woman who stood beside Marti’s grave with Sister Helen and Ned. Here, she obviously works the land next to the other women. Her jeans are grass-stained at the knees, and I see that her hands, black-gloved at the funeral, are raw and chapped as if they have spent many hours in the ground, the laundry, the kitchen. I am guessing her age to be in the mid-fifties.
“Sister Pauline tells me you came here to speak with Helen?” she says. Her tone is distant, not at all friendly.
“I did, but she won’t speak to me,” I say. “Do you know why that is? Both she and Ned seemed upset with me at the funeral.”
Lydia Greyson gives me an assessing look. There is more than a hint of anger in her voice. “I can’t imagine that would be so difficult for you to figure out.”
Irritated, I answer her in the same tone. “Well, I’m sorry, but it is. I’m not aware of having done anything to upset Sister Helen, at least not in the twenty years since I left the order.”
“Not you personally, perhaps, but…” She hesitates. “Ms. Northrup, did your husband send you here?”
“My husband? No, of course not. Why would he?”
“You really don’t know?”
“Ms. Greyson, I came here to talk to Helen about Marti. What would my husband have to do with that?”
A great deal, I now realize after speaking to the Ryans. But Lydia Greyson doesn’t know about Justin.
Or does she?
Her sharp blue eyes study me and finally she nods. “I suppose I must believe you.”
“I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t you?”
“Think about it, Ms. Northrup. Your husband has spent the better part of this year trying to persuade me—unsuccessfully, I might add—to sell The Prayer House and the land it’s on to him. I thought perhaps you came here as his emiss
ary. If that in fact is the case, I would like you to leave right now. I would also appreciate it if you would inform your husband that I have not changed my mind and do not intend to do so.”
I am caught off guard. The only thing I’ve been thinking of since Rio is Justin’s disappearance and Jeffrey’s part in it, whatever that is. Lydia Greyson has thrown me a curve.
“Lydia—may I call you that?”
She nods, though a bit stiffly.
“And please, call me Abby,” I add. “Lydia, I swear to you, I don’t know about any of this. Why would Jeffrey want The Prayer House?”
“Oh, please. You have to ask?”
“Yes, I have to ask! What’s going on?”
She points to a distant peak, as Sister Pauline did earlier. “You see that mountain? Our property extends to there, in the east. And to there—on either side. Beyond those boundaries, however, on all sides, lies your husband’s property. We are surrounded by several hundreds of acres of land your husband owns.”
I am startled. “Jeffrey’s bought that much? I had no idea.”
“Oh, he’s been very clever, buying it up quietly over the years. There’s only one problem, from your husband’s point of view. We sit smack in the middle of land he wants to sell to developers—who, in turn, will put roads through, build golf courses, plant concrete. Even if I wanted to sell, which I don’t, I will not allow them to do that.”
Her jaw firms. “Some of us in the Carmel Valley have been fighting for years to keep development to a minimum here. The time may come when we can no longer hold out against those who are determined to turn this beautiful countryside into a cash cow. Meanwhile, I for one intend to stand my ground.”
“And Jeffrey? You say he wants to sell to these developers?”
“Developers who won’t buy until they have assurance that The Prayer House and its land is part of the package. When more water becomes available out here, they intend to build a major complex, including two hotels, several restaurants, a shopping mall and a country club. Your husband, I’ve learned through certain sources, already has developers lined up. Until he can promise them The Prayer House, however, they are dragging their heels.”
“My God. We’re talking about millions of dollars here for Jeffrey.”
“Many millions, I would think.”
“Does Sister Helen know about this?”
“Helen has known for quite some time. She, Marti Bright and I talked about it frequently. Marti, in fact, is the one who brought this information to me several weeks ago.”
Is this, then, the reason Marti and Helen turned against me? Was it not about Jeffrey’s handling of Justin’s kidnapping, after all?
“They must have thought I was in on Jeffrey’s plan to take over The Prayer House,” I say, “or at least supported him in it.”
“Well, you do live…” Lydia pauses, giving me an arch look.
“A rather privileged life, you were going to say? Well, you’re right. But why do people always see the wife as a carbon copy of the husband? Especially Marti. She was my closest friend. She must have known I’d never support Jeffrey in destroying something like this.”
“Actually, I think she wasn’t entirely certain. After what happened to Helen, Marti became a fierce advocate of housing for the elderly and the poor. She was outraged that your husband would try to take The Prayer House away from sisters who would lose their home, were they forced to leave here.”
“As she should have been,” I say, appalled. “I just wish she’d talked to me. I’d have helped her, dammit! She should have known that.”
“There’s more,” Lydia says. “You might as well hear it all. Marti suspected your husband of manipulating real-estate prices here in the valley. She discovered that he’d bought undeveloped land at a low price when the market was right. Just a few months later he sold select parcels of the same land at inflated prices. Your husband’s goal, according to Marti, was to increase the value not only of the first few properties he sold, but also the remaining acres he owned. That way he could sell the entire package to developers at an enormous profit.”
“But property increases in value all the time. That’s not illegal.”
“No, of course not. It’s the way he managed to inflate those prices. They went up quickly—far too quickly. Marti suspected your husband was involved in an illegal manipulation of the market. She wanted to expose him, bring him down, as she put it.”
Lydia’s voice turns bitter. “Unfortunately, she was murdered before she could come up with enough proof to take to the authorities. Convenient, wouldn’t you say?”
I am silent a long moment. Finally I say, “You don’t really believe my husband murdered Marti to keep her from exposing him?”
She just looks at me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “my husband has a lot of faults, but…a killer?”
Even as I argue the point in my mind, however, I know in my heart that for wealth and power, Jeffrey would do a lot. And if Marti stood in his way?
I stand and walk to the edge of the bluff overlooking Carmel Valley. The land here is some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. No high-rises or freeways in sight.
Lydia stands beside me. “It’s always been my dream,” she says softly, “to build a center here. Nothing elaborate, and I’d see to it the trees and all our natural resources were protected. We already have enough well water to support such a center, and the gardens are providing most of our food. It’s all organic, you know, so that runoff doesn’t harm the surrounding land.”
“What kind of center are you thinking of?” I ask.
“A place for women without homes, of course. That’s always been my first love. I’d make this new center a home not for sisters, but ordinary women who have found themselves homeless for a short period of time—say, from the loss of a job, or extraordinary medical bills. It wouldn’t be just a shelter. I’d offer them classes so they could learn new skills in work they enjoy, and there would be time for exercise and the creative arts, things that would build the spirit while they’re rebuilding their lives.”
She turns to me and smiles. “In the village of Brugge, Belgium, there once were houses for single women to go to live. The only rent they had to pay was prayer. I would like to provide a place for women going through difficult times, where their only ‘rent’ would be to attend to their spirit, in whatever way is appropriate to them.”
“I like that idea,” I say.
Her smile fades. “Well, then, talk to your husband. He’s the only one who could ruin it for us.”
“But you say you’ve refused to sell to him.”
“Yes, well, that was bravado. Though I haven’t shared this yet with the women here, I’m afraid your husband has begun a campaign to run us out.”
“What kind of campaign?”
“The latest is a lawsuit designed to make me thoroughly gut The Prayer House and rebuild it according to code. It’s an ancient building, and when I took it over twenty years ago I put in new kitchens, bathrooms, planted the gardens…”
She makes a gesture of defeat. “Unfortunately, the kitchens are not up to code for selling our soups and baked goods to the public. I didn’t foresee, when I originally remodeled them, that we’d be doing that one day. But the women here have worked very hard to support themselves, and the county has graciously looked the other way over the years—largely because they know our standards of cleanliness are the best. Recently, however, someone claimed to have become ill from our food. The ensuing lawsuit opened us up to all kinds of trouble.”
She sighs. “You know, I’ve always prided myself on being a strong woman. But rebuilding The Prayer House over the years has eaten away at my resources, and now, having to defend this lawsuit—”
Her voice takes on a deep note of sadness. “Rather than make the kinds of improvements they’re demanding, I may be forced to close down The Prayer House. In fact, bankruptcy is not out of the question—not only for The Prayer House, but for me person
ally.”
“My God,” I say, “and wouldn’t that fit neatly into Jeffrey’s plans? He’d step in and gobble up The Prayer House in a hot second.”
“Including all the land he’s been trying to persuade me to sell,” she agrees. “Of course, I can’t prove your husband is connected to this lawsuit, but that would be the ultimate effect.”
She turns and faces me. “I must be frank with you, Abby. I went to the police about all this right after Marti was murdered. I told them what Marti had told me, that she suspected Jeffrey Northrup of illegally manipulating prices here in the valley. I also told them I believed your husband would not stop short of murder to keep Marti from unveiling his little scheme. I believe that’s why they’re looking for him now.”
I am silent long moments, staring out over the valley.
“What are you thinking?” Lydia Greyson asks.
“That I have been a fool,” I say. “Whatever else Jeffrey has done, I never would have suspected him of doing something like this.”
“No, not a fool to love a man and believe in him,” Lydia says gently.
“It’s worse than that. A fool to believe in a man I haven’t loved in years.”
Sister Helen never shows, and I leave Lydia Greyson on the hill, contemplating the future of The Prayer House and her hoped-for new center. On my way back down the road, I have reason to wonder just how many ways and how often I have been a fool. On another lower hill facing this one, I spot a familiar car parked off the road. The vegetation out here is so brown I might not have noticed it, as Ben’s unmarked police car, the Brown Turd, blends in so well as to be camouflaged.
Ben’s been watching The Prayer House, I think at first.
Or it is me? Is he watching me?
If Ben follows me home, I don’t see his car behind me. But then, it’s his job to make sure people don’t see him following them. To add to my distress, there has been no call from him when I arrive back at my house. When I phone the station, I’m told he “isn’t available.”
