Scrapbook of Secrets

by Mollie Cox Bryan

  She grimaced. Now the settlers were a different kind. They were coming in droves and getting rid of trees to build their houses on top of one another. They were named Tiffany and Taylor and Reed and Britney. There were no new citizens in the mold of Johann Miller, Peter Baughman, or Mary Jenkins—people of substance. The settlers of the area were of sturdy stock; they fought off harsh winters, survived droughts, and raised families. Of the three founders of Cumberland, of course, Beatrice liked to tell the story of Mary Jenkins. Damn, she wished she could go back and time and chat with her.

  When Mary arrived in Cumberland Creek, she was with her husband and three children and expecting her fourth. After a year of settling—house built, land staked, first crops planted—her husband died, leaving Mary and her children vulnerable in this small community.

  They settled the farthest out—close to the mountain—and so Mary didn’t have much comfort of community as she raised her children, tended her crops, took care of her home and land. Many different stories—legends—existed about her. One claimed that she shot down a Native American whom she found lurking around her property. Another claimed that she later fell in love with a Native American, mothered more children by him, even though they never married. Beatrice liked both stories—though, as with a lot of personal history, nobody could prove a thing.

  One thing for sure was that the hills were full of Jenkinses. At one point in time, the Jenkins family owned most of one mountain and the hollows around it. One of Mary’s younger sons, Samuel, married a Scotch-Irish girl, who was part of the next wave of settlers in the area. Bridget O’Reilly Jenkins populated the mountain with fifteen children. Hence, Jenkins Mountain and Jenkins Hollow.

  “Are you ready to go, Mama?” As she pushed in a wheelchair, Vera spoke up and interrupted Bea’s thoughts.

  Bill picked up his mother-in-law’s bag.

  Well, at least he was good for something.

  Chapter 12

  After Vera and Bill situated Beatrice at home, they took off for Cumberland Creek Episcopal Church, which was where Maggie Rae’s memorial service was being held.

  “I didn’t know the woman,” Beatrice had said earlier that day. “But I wouldn’t mind going to pay my respects to her family.”

  “Oh, Mama, you just had surgery, and the doctor said for you to stay in for about a week. Besides, it’s okay for you to miss a memorial or funeral once in a while,” Vera said, with a grin, reaching in her bag for a chocolate. Funerals and memorial services were one of Beatrice’s favorite events. Not that she liked to see loss and grieving, but she loved the spectacle of them—everybody wearing their best clothes, beautiful music and prayers, sometimes poetry. A good funeral would entertain Beatrice for weeks. She could talk about the strange hat Ellie Pickering was wearing: “I mean, what was the woman thinking?” Or about the fact that some women weren’t wearing panty hose or stockings in the church. She wasn’t a churchgoer anymore. “But it’s the principle of it,” she’d maintain.

  The best part of any service was the reception, where families laid a huge table filled with food that neighbors, family, and friends brought to them. It was also a cause for Beatrice to mull over for weeks. “I think those deviled eggs went a little bad. I was sick for days.” Or “Lord, that red velvet cake was the best I’ve ever eaten. Who brought that? I need the recipe.”

  But today, Beatrice was staying home, and Vera would report back to her mother, answering the many questions she was sure would be asked of her. So she planned to pay particular attention to clothes, hats, poems, and songs. But she ached in her heart and in her guts. This memorial service would be like no other, she knew. Nothing like this had ever happened before in Cumberland Creek—a young mother killing herself, leaving behind four children and a husband. Maggie Rae’s private burial just took place two days ago. What could a preacher have to say that would make sense of any of it? Provide any comfort to any of the family—especially the children?

  Bill placed his arm around Vera’s waist as they walked through the church doors together. This was where they had married and attended church, off and on, for their whole married lives. The church grew bigger and bigger—and while they never officially gave up on their membership, neither one liked the direction it seemed to be heading in. The intimacy of worshipping together with people they had known their whole lives was lost.

  They walked into the hushed sanctuary, organ music was playing “How Great Thou Art,” and people were already seated in clusters. There were more empty spaces in the long pews than not. There was Annie, sitting next to Sheila and her husband, and behind them sat Paige and her husband. Vera and Bill slid over next to Annie.

  “Hello,” Vera whispered to them.

  Annie looked absolutely stunning in a black turtleneck shirt dress, with a simple long gold chain draped down the front. Her long curly hair was pulled into a tight bun, showing off those cheekbones. Gold earrings. So chic.

  DeeAnn—wearing a floral dress in navy blue and a matching hat—slid in behind them. “Lord,” she breathed out, red-faced. “I don’t know how I’m going to make it through this.”

  Her husband put his arm around her and sat back against the pew. “It’s horrible,” he said, looking more serious than Vera had ever seen him. Usually quick to laugh and crack a joke, Jacob was the high-school basketball coach and physical education teacher, and Vera had gone to school with him. When he was all dressed up in a dark brown suit, hair slicked back, and shaved, hell, he wasn’t a bad-looking guy. Still had those green eyes and most of his hair—unlike Bill, whose hair was long gone—not that it mattered to Vera, not one ounce.

  A hush fell over the crowd as the organist stopped playing and the family walked down the center aisle. From where Vera was sitting, she enjoyed a perfect view of the children—the youngest, being held by a woman—Maggie Rae’s sister? Next to her sat a dark-haired man whose face she couldn’t quite see, but his arm was around her, so perhaps that was her husband. Was he wearing Mennonite plain clothes? Hmm. There were the grandparents—she assumed—huddled around the others, with the husband, holding on to Grace’s hand. She sat next to him. Vera wanted to weep as she looked at Grace, so sullen. Would her spark ever return?

  It was more than grief. It looked almost like a different child sitting there. Her eyes not only lacked their luster, but they also lacked their youth. Vera’s bottom lip began to quiver; a sweaty, trembling Bill handed her his handkerchief. Well, he was certainly taking this hard—and he barely knew this family.

  Vera turned and briefly looked over the crowd—odd, a Mennonite contingent was there. They looked to be Old Order. Back in the corner, bearded men dressed in dark suits gathered. The women, in the opposite corner, were wearing dark heavy cotton dresses, with their prayer caps tightly around their hair buns, and their faces free of makeup. They traveled a long way off Jenkins Mountain to be here; Vera wondered what the connection was. Perhaps it was Maggie Rae’s sister.

  But hadn’t she heard about a new faction of Mennonites? Perhaps these people were from that group. There was something about them that didn’t seem quite right to her—but what did she know. Lord knows, she didn’t know much about Mennonites.

  Vera looked at Maggie’s Rae’s blond husband. It was the first time she’d ever seen the man—he never came to the studio or to the recitals. He was tall and thin—not at all what she expected. Now, what was his name? Robert, that’s right. While Grace inherited her mother’s dark hair, her face was almost an exact replica of his—those ice blue eyes, tiny nose, and heart-shaped face.

  Vera wanted to stand up and witness against the man. Strongly suspecting that he beat Maggie Rae, she thought she’d like to humiliate him, just once. But not in front of the children. God knows what they had already seen.

  She struggled to see the other children, along with their grandparents, as if one of them could transmit through osmosis what really transpired in that house. Maybe the truth would come pouring from Maggie Rae’s sister’s swollen
eyes—or her other daughter’s high forehead. But the truth was never that easy, Vera thought, and probably Maggie Rae’s sister was as confused as she and her friends were.

  Did they know that Maggie Rae was writing erotica? Did they know her husband “hurt” her? It was hard to imagine in this day and age that any woman would put up with that from any man. But human nature was a complicated thing.

  All in due time.

  Chapter 13

  Annie could count on one hand the number of times she was ever in a church—none of which were like this one. She was in awe of the beautiful stained-glass windows—not so much in awe of the crucifixes everywhere, especially the one on the altar, where Jesus looked like he was in excruciating pain. Awful.

  She could barely stand to look at Maggie Rae’s family and gave up listening to the preacher, whose voice was a monotone in her ear and made her doze off from time to time. She struggled to listen—but she only slept about four hours. Ben was up and down all night long with a cough—and she had gotten in late, to begin with.

  It was difficult to set aside Maggie Rae’s papers last night. She felt she had to get at least one scrapbook started—little did she know that she would fill the pages and finish one album last night. Annie loved finding the right space on the page for the pictures, figuring out whether or not to crop them, what kind of stickers and paper to use on the page, and so on. It was deeply satisfying, which surprised her.

  And she was piecing together a life, as well as learning how to scrapbook. She used all the pictures from Maggie Rae’s youth, right up to her wedding—which was three days after college graduation—an English major, of course, mused Annie.

  Eight months later, her first baby girl, Grace, was born.

  Smart woman, foolish choices. Life-altering mistakes.

  Robert was a devastatingly handsome young man. He looked like he stepped right off the pages of GQ, for Chrissake. His clothes hung on him just like a model’s, clung in the right places, showing off his thin, muscular physique. Those blue eyes, though, held very little emotion. Annie could not read anything in them—even in the wedding pictures. He was smiling, but his eyes looked the same as when he wasn’t smiling. Odd.

  Most of the evidence she’d read in Maggie’s papers had led her to believe he did beat Maggie Rae; that added to the sense of evil she felt emanating from him. At least it was in writing that he hurt her, though the hurt could’ve taken many forms. She didn’t like the way he was touching his daughter as she sat next to him, listening to the preacher. There was something false about his movements. Had he been hurting them, too? Who knows what they had witnessed?

  Annie grimaced, remembering the way her mother and father nearly killed each other. She remembered waking up with her brother clinging to her out of fear because they were screaming at each other and throwing things at one another. When they split, it was a relief.

  She took her eyes away from the family. It was too painful to watch them. Even though she hardly knew them, she felt like she knew Maggie—she pasted her baby pictures in a scrapbook last night, along with photos from her vacation Bible school, high-school prom and graduation, college graduation, and then wedding. The hallmarks of her young life were captured in one leather scrapbook for her children to have someday to take in and try to glimpse a mother whom they hardly knew. A mother who was so ill that she shot herself—Annie winced. It didn’t feel right.

  All of those hopes and dreams she had caught a whiff of while gluing Maggie Rae’s pictures in the album—she wanted to write, and she did write. She wanted more out of life; that was obvious. Ah, but depression can hit anyone, especially postpartum. Her youngest child was three. Could she have been struggling for at least three years?

  Annie remembered the last time she saw Maggie Rae, who was in the yard and waved across the fence. Maggie Rae was smiling. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” she said; then she shyly looked away before taking off after one of her children who had decided to eat dirt.

  It was so difficult when two mothers were trying to carry on a conversation—hell, so many were started and never finished. It was the same in her house. What she wouldn’t give sometimes just to have an uninterrupted conversation with Mike.

  When they were dating, they often talked late into the night. Just talked. That was what she missed even more than the hot sex, she decided, while half listening to the preacher lead a prayer. She felt a sudden desire to get home to her own children and husband. She should feel free—sitting here without them. Instead, she looked at the family, looked at the preacher, and glanced at Bill, Vera’s sobbing husband. Hmm, I didn’t know that Bill knew Maggie Rae.

  Of course, how would she? She barely knew either of them. But how would they even know one another? He was a married lawyer, and she was the busy mother of four children? He appeared cold and standoffish. Annie’s stomach churned. She didn’t like him—and she had yet to even talk to the man.

  She leaned over to Vera. “I have to go,” she whispered. Vera nodded her head, as if she understood. Annie slipped quietly out of the pew. She kept her eyes focused on the floor, not wanting to know who was looking at her—the “new” woman in town. Just over a year.

  Her heart felt like it would explode as she tried to catch her breath outside, walking home. Was she having a heart attack? She felt no pain, though, just a racing heart. She walked quickly past the cars and the horses and buggies in the parking lot. She held on to a fence to steady herself. She closed her eyes and saw the face of Robert Dasher and a chill came over her. A feeling of dread enveloped her—for Robert surely killed his wife, even if he did not pull that trigger.

  “Annie?” said a woman’s voice.

  She opened her eyes. “Yes?”

  “Are you okay?” Beatrice asked her.

  “I’m fine. A little dizzy or something. That service—”

  “Sad, heh?” she said, putting her arm around Annie.

  “Bea, you’re supposed to be resting.”

  “I am. I was just on my front porch and I saw you. Won’t you come in and get a glass of iced tea?”

  Suddenly she realized how very thirsty she was. Annie smiled. “I’d like that very much.”

  After Annie sat on the wicker chair on Beatrice’s front porch, she took a long drink of the sweetest iced tea she’d ever tasted.

  “Mmm, that’s good,” she said, feeling the cold glass in her hands on this warm spring day. What a typical Virginia spring—cold one day, the next it was warm enough to crave a glass of a cold drink.

  “A little tea and sugar is a good thing,” Beatrice answered. “Now, how are you feeling?”

  “Oh,” Annie said, waving her hand. “I’m fine. It was just a bit warm in that church.”

  The two women sat quietly and listened to the birds and the sound of cars in the distance.

  “A bit sad, too,” Beatrice said, then cleared her throat. “I can’t imagine that she killed herself. Is that what they are still saying?”

  Annie nodded. She took another drink of the tea, felt the caffeine and sugar soaring through her veins. “The thing is, I mean ... last night I read bits of her letters and other papers and found out her husband hurt her. He uses the term ‘hurt’ in such a way that it would lead you to believe he hit her.”

  “I don’t know why I’m not surprised,” Bea said. “Do you think he killed her?”

  A pang of panic seared through Annie again. “Murder?”

  But that’s what this all had been leading up to, hadn’t it? Not a suicide, but a murder. A husband killing his wife.

  Happens all the time, Annie reminded herself. Happens all the time.

  “I don’t know what’s worse,” Bea said.

  “At least if she had killed herself, we’d know that was what she wanted, as twisted as that sounds.”

  “We need to be careful. We can’t go around accusing people of murder,” Bea said in a lowered voice. She took a drink of her tea and smacked her lips together. “What do Vera and the scrapbo
ok queen have to say about your theory?”

  “They don’t know it. I just came up with it right this minute,” she said.

  “Sometimes I think my daughter’s brains are all in her feet and hips—but it will hit her, if it hasn’t already.”

  “But what about you? Have they found out who stabbed you?”

  Beatrice shrugged. “I’ve not heard a thing. Pretty damn good. I’ve been going to that grocery store since way before it was a huge Wrigley’s. Here I am, eighty years old, and I get stabbed. And here’s the thing—I never felt it.”

  Annie smiled. “That’s a blessing, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. But now, I keep going over and over in my mind who I saw that day, and the sad thing is, well, I didn’t know most of the people in the store that day. It’s hard for you to imagine how that makes me feel. I used to know everybody here.”

  “I barely know anybody here,” Annie said. “And I’ve been here a whole year.”

  “A year!” Beatrice exclaimed. “How have I missed you, dear?”

  Chapter 14

  Vera was entranced by the tables of food. One table held a whole Smithfield ham, all pink and sweet smelling, with glistening chunks of pineapple on top of it. Sitting next to the ham was a huge pan of fried chicken, which she hadn’t eaten in several years. But she took a plate and piled it high with ham and chicken—and oh, over there was potato salad, which she also needed to taste.

  Another table was full of nothing but “salads”—linguine, pasta, potato, coleslaw, carrot-and-raisin, Cobb, cucumber, both vinegar based and sour cream based. Then there were several kinds of Jell-O salads—red, orange, and green.

  Oh, that green pistachio Jell-O salad was one of her favorites. It was so light and fluffy. She only wished the soft lime-green color was a bit more appealing. And those Mennonites were always bringing shoofly pies to events. Vera hated it. Once, she had taken a bite of it and had nearly thrown up.