The Caretakers

by Maxwell, Eliza

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Kitty says. “Please, come in.”

  The two women are awkwardly polite as they’re welcomed into the cottage, but it’s impossible to miss the tension that crackles between them.

  They’ve argued, the poor things. Kitty knows what it’s like to have a sister. She recognizes the signs.

  “The bathroom is that way if you’d like to freshen up,” she offers, giving them the chance to separate for a bit. Tessa nods gratefully.

  Deirdre transfers dishes to the long table, and Margot asks quiet questions about how long they’ve lived here, and the arrangement they had with William Ashwood.

  “He asked us to keep an eye on the place in exchange for staying on at the cottage,” Deirdre says as she seats herself across from Margot at the table. Kitty can see she’s choosing her words carefully. “It was a godsend, really. Mam was alive then. We would have been forced to move away, otherwise, and Mam find another position elsewhere. But this had always been our home, and we were grateful for the offer. He was a good man. A kind man.”

  Margot nods, though she doesn’t smile. “And he made financial arrangements for you? A trust, as I understand.”

  Deirdre stiffens, but nods. “He did. A salary to be paid monthly.” She fingers the napkin in her hand, balling it up, then smoothing it out, only to repeat the action.

  “And when my grandfather died?” Margot asks.

  Deirdre sits up straighter and meets Margot’s eyes calmly. “We received a letter from a lawyer a few months after he passed. Imogene . . . Jane, I should say. Your mother. She inherited the property, as you know. The letter informed us she had no plans to change the arrangements her adoptive father had made.”

  Margot nods again, her expression serious, but she says nothing more as Tessa returns.

  “Did you ever hear any more from her? My mother, I mean?” Tessa asks as she takes a seat next to her sister. They don’t look at one another.

  Deirdre shakes her head. “Not once, aside from that letter, but she was true to her word, and the deposits have continued to this day. What happens now will be in your hands, of course.”

  Tessa glances at her sister as Kitty passes around a basket of fresh cinnamon rolls, but Margot barely acknowledges her.

  “Forgive my saying so,” Margot says, looking from Kitty to Deirdre and back again, “but Fallbrook is obviously in a state of extreme disrepair. Was there no money set aside in the trust for upkeep on the house?”

  Kitty doesn’t miss the way Deirdre’s shoulders square in defensiveness, but her sister’s voice is mild when she answers Margot’s question.

  “Mr. Ashwood made his wishes clear. He wanted no effort or expense put toward maintaining the house. I believe his exact words to our mother were, ‘Let it rot, Mrs. Donnelly.’”

  Margot frowns.

  “We’ve done as he asked,” Deirdre says.

  Margot shakes her head slowly. “I’m sorry, but surely I’m not the only one who finds it odd that Granddad would employ caretakers, employ them for life, no less, for a property he had no wish to be taken care of.”

  Deirdre lays her fork carefully down on the edge of her plate and meets Margot’s gaze head-on. “I’ve always assumed his feelings about Fallbrook were due to the unfortunate events that took place there, the same events that left Imogene orphaned. It wasn’t my place to question his motives, and Imogene—Jane—never altered his instructions.”

  Margot leans back from the table, her hands folded neatly in her lap, but her brows are knit together.

  Tessa clears her throat. “About that,” she says, breaking the tense silence that’s fallen among them.

  Deirdre’s posture becomes stiffer, if possible. As brittle as a dead tree fighting a gust of winter wind. She knows what’s coming.

  “Granddad’s letter was very vague,” Tessa says, almost apologetically. “And in the confusion of the last few days, we haven’t had a chance to do any research on the history of Fallbrook or what happened here.” She trails off, glancing at Kitty for support. Kitty gives her a small smile.

  Deirdre remains silent.

  “You did say we’d answer her questions,” Kitty reminds her gently.

  Deirdre closes her eyes and pulls in a long breath. When she lets it out, it’s with an air of resignation.

  “Ask then,” she says. “But understand, Kitty and I were quite young. I was fifteen. Kitty even younger.”

  She glances at her sister. The moment is brief, but Kitty is shaken by a quick flash of something behind Dee’s eyes. Something that looks unsettlingly like fear.

  “And now we’re old,” Deirdre continues. “It’s not something we discuss if at all possible, and there is a very real possibility that our memories are faulty after all this time.”

  Kitty’s eyes narrow slightly. There’s nothing wrong with Deirdre’s memory.

  Tessa nods. “I understand, and I don’t want to cause you undue stress. It’s just that we know so little. Whatever information you can share will help us in the decisions we still have to make.”

  Deirdre looks down at her hands, her fingers tightly laced together in her lap. “Go on, then,” she says.

  Margot remains quiet, but Tessa sits forward in her chair, leaning her elbows on the table.

  “Maybe you could start by telling us about the family? What were they like? Before . . .” Her voice is careful and quiet. As unimposing as it’s possible to be, given the probing nature of what she’s asking.

  Deirdre’s eyes stay on her hands. She rubs the palm of the left with her right thumb, and Kitty wonders if her arthritis is acting up or if she simply needs something to occupy her.

  “Mr. Cooke needed a wife,” Deirdre says finally. “The children . . . they were quite unmanageable, to be honest. The girls, Ruby and Cora, and Peter, their little brother.” Dee’s voice wavers, and Kitty places a hand on her sister’s arm and squeezes, oh so lightly. A show of support, a reminder that she’s not alone.

  Deirdre looks up and meets Tessa’s gaze. “Their mother died in childbirth, you see, when Peter was born. Mam was the closest thing to a mother he’d ever known. We shouldn’t have been surprised when Mr. Cooke married again, but I don’t believe anyone saw it coming. Perhaps Mam did. I never asked.”

  Deirdre stops, shifts in her seat, but forges ahead. “There were a great many changes at Fallbrook after the arrival of the second Mrs. Cooke. Helena was her name. She was young. Pretty. I’ve never been sure why she married a man with three children. She wasn’t the maternal type. But Mr. Cooke was wealthy. That makes up for all manner of inconveniences.”

  “Helena would have been our grandmother, then?” Tessa asks. “Our biological grandmother?”

  Deirdre’s mouth tightens. “Yes.” The one-word response seems an eternity in coming.

  “You were close in age with the Cooke children?” Tessa asks.

  Deirdre nods. “We were very close. Ruby was older, of course. Only a year behind our brother, Aiden. And Peter, he was like a little brother to us all, the baby of the group. Until baby Imogene came along.”

  Deirdre stands suddenly and takes her plate to the counter, where she sets it next to the sink. She’s barely touched her food.

  “Cora was my age.” Deirdre stops to stare out of the kitchen window, lost in some long-ago memory. Kitty’s heart squeezes tightly and she has trouble drawing a breath. It’s a difficult thing, to watch Dee remember Cora, when she’s tried so hard to forget her.

  “We were best friends,” Deirdre says softly. “The best of friends.”

  Something foul overtakes Kitty, and she remembers suddenly what it felt like to be a child, powerless to mend the things that hurt. “I hated Cora,” she says, then pulls in a sharp breath, as surprised by the admission as anyone. Deirdre turns to face her, eyes wide with shock. “I’ve never told you that, have I?”

  Deirdre stares blankly, uncomprehending.

  “Oh yes,” Kitty continues. “It’s been long enough now, I
suppose I can admit that. Cora . . . Cora had everything, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted more. She wanted what I had.”

  Kitty shrugs, then turns back to the women seated across from them. “But even I didn’t hate her as much as Mrs. Cooke did. Cora was the reason . . .”

  She stops and turns back to her sister, a question on her face. Deirdre shakes off Kitty’s revelation, then walks swiftly back to the table and takes her seat again.

  “Before Mrs. Cooke came, we all attended school in town together,” she says, taking over for Kitty. “It was a small school, as Snowden was a small town. Smaller even than it is now. But Helena felt the children, Cora in particular, would benefit from a more disciplined approach to their education.”

  Her mouth tightens again.

  “For a time, Cora was sent away to a boarding school, but that didn’t last. She returned home in disgrace. But Helena Cooke was a persistent woman when she set her mind on something. A tutor was hired.”

  Kitty holds her breath. How she wishes Aiden had stayed at the cottage this morning. She begged, but he insisted his presence would only complicate things. Deirdre took his side.

  “His name was Lawrence Pynchon.” Deirdre’s words are strong and clear. Only Kitty knows what it costs her to speak his name.

  “His name was Lawrence Pynchon, and less than a year later, without warning or apparent reason, he murdered them all.”

  Deirdre’s eyes are facing forward, focused on some point on the wall above Tessa and Margot’s heads. She pulls in a shaky breath.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I . . .” Deirdre trails off, then pushes quickly back, her chair scraping against the floor. She turns and walks toward the front door, shoulders straight, but her arms are crossed protectively in front of her.

  The three women who remain watch her go. No one moves to stop her.

  Tessa is the first to speak.

  “Kitty, I’m so sorry to drag up such terrible memories,” she says. “This must be difficult for both of you.”

  “Yes,” Kitty mumbles, her eyes still on the door that her sister closed behind her. “We don’t speak about it.”

  “I think we’ve imposed on them enough for today, Tess,” Margot says quietly. It’s the first time she’s spoken directly to her sister since they arrived.

  Kitty’s eyes swivel back to the pair. They’re rising from the table. Soon they’ll disappear out the door.

  “Please don’t go yet.” She reaches a hand across the table.

  “We should give Deirdre some space—” Tessa begins.

  “No, no. You don’t understand,” Kitty says.

  Tessa and Margot exchange a look, and Kitty wishes she were better at this. She searches for the right words, but there’s no good way to say it.

  “You don’t understand,” she says again. “Deirdre . . . well, my sister is lying.”

  28

  TESSA

  “My sister is lying.”

  Tessa stares at the plump, grandmotherly woman seated in front of her. They should be discussing recipes and sewing patterns, not the annihilation of a family.

  “Kitty, what are you saying?” Tessa asks carefully.

  The old woman shakes her head, and her voice drops to a low whisper. “She’s lying,” she says. “Not only the things she said, but the things she didn’t. Mam used to tell us that a lie of omission is still a lie.”

  She says the words as much to herself as to Tessa and Margot, as if her sister is a series of puzzle pieces she can’t quite fit together.

  “I think we should go,” Margot says.

  Tessa is on the verge of agreement, but Kitty isn’t done.

  “There’s something important you need to understand. Lawrence Pynchon . . . he tutored all of us. All but Aiden, who was done with school by then. He was a charming man. Handsome. Sophisticated in a way we’d never seen. Fifteen sounds so young, doesn’t it? A child still, but those are the years when a girl’s heart first tests its wings, searching for a chance to fly.”

  Kitty trails off, lost in another time. Another place. The silence stretches long enough that Tessa looks again to Margot, who’s studying Kitty intently.

  “Are you saying . . . Deirdre . . . ?” Margot asks.

  Kitty comes back from wherever she’s wandered and meets their searching faces.

  “Dee was in love with him,” she says sadly. “She was in love for the first, maybe the only, time in her life. Something happened in those days before it all went terribly wrong. Something happened, and if I could just clear away the fog, I think I could see it. It’s there, hiding right beneath the surface. If only . . .”

  Tessa frowns. “Kitty, if that’s true, if Deirdre was really in love with a man who turned out to be a murderer, then these memories must be even more painful than we could have imagined. We—” She stops and glances at Margot. “I have no business dragging this up. I don’t want to cause either of you more pain.”

  Kitty gives her a small, sad smile. “It’s not that simple,” she says. “If that’s all it was, I’d never speak of it again. But there’s something else you need to know.”

  She leans forward, a new urgency coursing through her. “Lawrence Pynchon was killed in prison, before he had a chance to go to trial. He was attacked. Beaten by the other inmates. He never regained consciousness.”

  Tessa shakes her head, struggling to understand.

  “Without a trial, it was never proven once and for all that he was the killer. Without a trial, there were whispers. Gossip. Terrible things said behind cupped hands that couldn’t be washed away by the truth.”

  “But surely,” Tessa says. “If there was enough evidence to arrest the man . . .” But Tessa trails off. She thinks suddenly of Oliver. Of the evidence planted by Winters’s men. She shakes her head. Oliver was guilty, she tells herself.

  “Someone still planted evidence to make sure he was convicted,” a small voice whispers.

  “Do you believe he did it?” Margot asks.

  “Of course he did,” Kitty says without hesitation. “There was no one else who could have. There were other reasons too. Something about the way they found him with the bodies . . . I remember something . . .” Kitty shakes her head, dismissing whatever the something is that she can’t recall. “The point is, without a trial, there was room, too much room, for questions. For doubt and for gossip.”

  “What kind of gossip, Kitty?” Tessa asks.

  Kitty’s face grows as hard as Deirdre’s had been at times. “The kind that won’t go away. The kind that pushed Aiden to join the merchant marines to escape. For years, decades, he was gone from here, unable to come back without people whispering behind his back, saying the most evil things.”

  A light dawns and a connection falls into place. Tessa finally begins to understand.

  Kitty meets her eyes. “They said it could have been Aiden. They could never be sure. It was ridiculous. He’d walked into town that day. He wasn’t even here, but people made a game of twisting the facts. It drove him away, but it’s followed him, a cloud he can’t escape, all these years.”

  A thousand questions churn in Tessa’s head, flitting past in a way that makes her itch for a notepad and pen.

  Every project begins with questions. The right questions, the wrong questions, the questions you don’t know yet to ask. Finding those answers, then stringing them together into a coherent and compelling narrative, that is the obsession.

  This isn’t a project, she tells herself. Firmly. Definitively. But it feels like a lie.

  “Ms. Shepherd,” Kitty says. The formality makes Tessa wary. “You said you make films. I know nothing about that, and it’s a great deal to ask, but I’d like you to consider making a film about Fallbrook. About what really happened. Set the record straight. Prove Aiden’s innocence once and for all. We’re old now. All of us. But maybe, if you could do that, then he could smile and show his face without looking over his shoulder. Please.”

  Tessa stares at the woman’s ea
rnest face, and a great weight settles on her. Somehow, she knew this was coming. It was inevitable.

  I can’t do this, she thinks. I can’t. For so many reasons. A million reasons, and one very specific one.

  A young woman is dead because Tessa was determined to prove another man’s innocence.

  I can’t.

  She opens her mouth to tell Kitty so, but a movement in her peripheral vision catches her eye. She turns and sees Deirdre standing quietly by the door. Her eyes are enormous and full of horror. One hand is pressed to her mouth as if she’s going to be sick, and her skin has gone a terrible shade of gray.

  “Deirdre,” Kitty says, the word both an apology and a plea. “I’m sorry, I should have told you. But can’t you see? He needs this. We all need this.”

  Deirdre shakes her head and backs up several paces. “Oh, Kitty, what have you done?”

  29

  “That went well.”

  Tessa sighs. She forgot how lethal Margot’s sarcasm can be when she’s angry. She says nothing as the two of them walk back through the woods toward the big house.

  Deirdre didn’t throw them out. Not exactly. But both women understood they’d stayed past their welcome. Kitty walked them to the door, full of apologies and hope.

  “You know you can’t give her what she wants, right?”

  “Yes,” Tessa says.

  “There’s enough on your plate with the last man you claimed was innocent. It’s hardly the right time to take on another cause.”

  “I know that.”

  “I can’t believe you’d even consider it. The police still haven’t found Barlow. This is crazy.”

  “I really wish you’d stop calling me crazy,” Tessa says softly.

  Her sister isn’t aware of the two weeks Tessa spent in a psychiatric hospital in upstate New York. Jane never knew either. Ben was her only visitor, and she’d begged him not to tell them. He’d done as she asked.

  This doesn’t seem like the best time to point out that terms like crazy and insane are offensive. Tessa prefers generalized anxiety and panic disorder, with a side of medication, thank you very much.