There Was an Old Woman

by Hallie Ephron

  The wind blew a particularly sharp scent of fire over them, and Evie gagged.

  Mrs. Yetner held her hand over her own nose and mouth. “Brings it all back, doesn’t it?”

  It certainly did. Evie remembered standing in just this spot, watching her parents’ house burn. That house now stood unscathed on the other side of Mrs. Yetner’s.

  “It was such a hot day, remember?” Mrs. Yetner said. “Windy, too.”

  “Like today,” Evie said, burying her face in Ivory’s soft fur. She’d been wearing a sleeveless top and shorts and her feet were bare. The crowd then, just like the crowd now, had been mostly strangers who’d looked on with disappointment as firefighters doused the last vestiges of fire. “Ginger was there, and so was my mother. And all I could think was that Blackie and her puppies were inside and there was nothing I could do.”

  “We all felt helpless.”

  Evie turned to face Mrs. Yetner. “The weirdest thing happened. When I was in your bedroom, I opened the bedroom closet door and I had the sensation that I’d been there before, only I was inside the closet looking out.”

  Mrs. Yetner pursed her lips and nodded. “You and Ginger had gone into your parents’ closet with the dogs to hide.”

  “We did?”

  “I was the one who found you there and got you out.”

  “You? But I thought my mother—”

  “I was sitting out on my back porch when I smelled smoke. I banged on the door but no one answered. I ran down the street to pull the alarm, and when I got back, your mother’s car was there. She was frantic. The house was burning, and she couldn’t find you or your sister anywhere. The fire trucks hadn’t gotten there yet. Someone had to go inside, so I went.” Mrs. Yetner’s eyes went wide as she remembered. “I found you and Ginger in the closet in the downstairs bedroom. You’d been playing dress-up and trying to smoke your mother’s cigarettes. You were still wearing her high heels.”

  “Trying to smoke? Me and Ginger?” It took a moment for the realization to hit Evie. “You mean my mother didn’t start the fire?”

  “That’s what she let everyone think. She didn’t want you girls labeled as fire starters. I think she especially didn’t want your father to know, him being a firefighter and all. But really, you were just children, and much too young to have been left alone. It’s a lucky thing I was there.” Mrs. Yetner touched the scar on her face.

  Evie remembered after the fire had been mostly put out, watching in agony, worrying about the dogs. Finally, one of the firemen had gone inside. What felt like hours later, he’d come out carrying Blackie and her pups. They were alive, but barely. She’d watched as a medic held an oxygen mask over Blackie’s snout. She’d promised God that she’d be good, really she would, if only Blackie didn’t die.

  It had been quiet then, just as it was quiet now. Evie realized the fire hoses had been turned off. A moment later there was a crash as the roof of the house next door to Mrs. Yetner’s caved.

  Firefighters in dark turnout gear broke down the front door and went into Mrs. Yetner’s house. When one of them came out later, carrying three inert bundles, Evie was grateful that Mrs. Yetner couldn’t see that they were cats. White cats. They must have been hiding when Evie had gone in, looking for Mrs. Yetner.

  “Another crazy cat lady,” the firefighter said to one of his buddies as he lay a tarp over the three little bodies. “And no batteries in the smoke alarm. That house is a hoarder’s nightmare.”

  Of course, that was how it was supposed to look. Evie was about to go over and set them straight when she saw Finn emerge from the crowd of bystanders, vault the police barrier, and race toward her. Evie had to hold on to keep Ivory from leaping out of her arms as Finn flew past and up the steps of Frank Cutler’s house.

  Cutler was standing behind the screen door. Finn yanked open the door, grabbed him by the shirt, pulled him down his front steps. Mrs. Yetner’s nurse came running out and tried to pull Finn off. Finn pushed her away. She staggered back a few steps and went down hard on her tailbone, stunned.

  “This your idea of a business deal?” Finn yelled at Cutler. “You promised. You said no one would get hurt.”

  “You said do what it takes,” Cutler spat back.

  “You moron. I didn’t expect you to try to kill people. You and your goddamned shortcuts.” Finn turned to one of the policemen. “I’m getting myself an attorney. And then I want to talk to a police detective. My cousin here does, too. He just doesn’t know it. Not yet.”

  Evie felt as if the air had been knocked out of her. Frank Cutler was the cousin Finn had been talking about? The one who was helping him right the wrongs done to their great-grandfather?

  Finn turned to Mrs. Yetner and gave her a pleading look. “I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t believe me, but I am sorry. I never meant for any of this”—his gaze slid over to Evie—“to happen.”

  Evie couldn’t bear to even look at Finn. The deception had been there from the very moment she’d set foot in Sparkles Variety. It was there when he’d stood on her mother’s front steps like a goofy overgrown puppy, wooing her with a six-pack from Bronx Brewery. Just weeks before, his cousin Frank had seduced her mother with gifts and the promise of a steady stream of cash and then accelerated her death with “vitamins.”

  She heard Finn’s voice as he went on explaining, as if there could be an explanation, but she tuned out. Instead, she focused on the minivan that had pulled up at the corner, which Ginger had just gotten out of. Her arms were folded tight across her chest, and as she got closer Evie saw that her face was puffy and her eyes red.

  Evie handed Ivory over to Mrs. Yetner and ran over to Ginger. She didn’t need to ask. She knew their mother had died.

  Chapter Sixty

  A week later, Mina was getting used to living in the trailer that the city let her park in her driveway. She was sitting in its dining nook, savoring a final sip of tea and scratching Ivory behind the ears. Every day she was walking farther and feeling stronger.

  It would be months before she could move back into the house. Fire had gutted her downstairs bedroom; smoke and water had had their way with the rest of the house. The marble mantel had survived, and of course the entire interior of the upstairs bedroom could be brought back from across the street once the house was scrubbed clean and painted. She was lucky: the house next door was a total loss, boarded up and waiting to be demolished.

  So far, Frank Cutler had been charged with fraud, arson, kidnapping, and murder. Mina wanted him charged with hit-and-run, too. She was sure he’d been at the wheel of the black pickup truck, probably borrowed from Finn, that had tried to back over her. When she replayed that moment in her mind, she thought she could see his beady little eyes taking aim in his side mirror.

  Newspapers detailed the exploits of Frank and his firm, Soundview Management; how they preyed on the elderly, getting them to deed their homes in return for a lifetime income and then speeding their demise. Mina still couldn’t believe that Frank and Finn were cousins, and she didn’t want to believe that Finn had had any part in the scheme.

  Dora turned out to be Celeste Hall, the woman who’d taken Mina and Brian on their tour of Pelham Manor. Silver haired under a brunette wig, she was being held, too, though Mina wasn’t sure on what charges.

  Brian insisted that he’d known nothing about what the rest of them were up to. According to him, “Dora” told him that Mina had had a stroke after she returned from the hospital, and that it would be an act of mercy (Dora’s words, according to him) to move her into Frank’s house, where she could get round-the-clock care and wouldn’t even realize she’d left home.

  Brian admitted that the papers Dora had tried to get Mina to sign would have deeded the house to Soundview Management. But setting her house on fire and removing her smoke alarm batteries—he’d had nothing at all to do with that, or so he said. Mina was pretty sure he was responsible for putting her purse in the refrigerator, hiding her teapot whistle, and maybe even burning
her chicken.

  When Mina was feeling generous, she could convince herself that Brian believed he’d had her best interests at heart. And if it hadn’t been for those poor cats, she might have been able to get past the betrayal. But standing by as the house burned with those poor creatures trapped inside? That was a bridge too far. Not that it was entirely his fault. He’d inherited all of Mina’s father’s ruthless avarice and sadly none of his common sense.

  Since the fire, Mina had thought long and hard about her father. She came to the conclusion that for too long she’d basked in his name and swept his transgressions under the rug. It was time for her to make what restitution she could. But how? All she had to show for her father’s thievery was the house. She’d spoken to a lawyer and changed her will so that the property went to benefit efforts to preserve Soundview Lagoons. On top of that, she was determined to air the truth about her father and his sins.

  So, when Evie was helping her move into the trailer and asked her again about her father’s dealings with Finn’s great-grandfather, Mina gave her a straight answer. “I was very little at the time,” she’d said, “but I do remember there was this man—a very angry man—who walked back and forth in front of our house with a sign. Yelling whenever he caught sight of my father. That was Finn’s great-grandfather. My father told us he was crazy. And by the end, I imagine he was.”

  “Your father did swindle him out of his land, didn’t he?”

  “He did. My father was a visionary and a brilliant businessman. He was also a narcissist, a rogue, and a scoundrel. He could convince himself that whatever he wanted was right and fair, and that he’d earned it. Anyone who stood in his way was a fool. Sadly, Finn’s great-grandfather owned what my father coveted. Snakapins Point.”

  Mina carried her teacup all of two steps to the sink. She looked out the trailer window at the boarded-up windows of the house next door. It was a myth that the Jamesons were ever coming back from Florida, a myth kept alive so that Mrs. Yetner and her other neighbors wouldn’t start asking questions.

  Evie seemed far more distressed than Mina at the damage to Mina’s house and her possessions. The girl was crouched outside at that very moment, combing through the remnants of Mina’s smoke-damaged kitchen, separating what was salvageable from the trash that had been dumped in the house to make the interior look for all the world like something out of a horror movie. The “vintage” kitchen utensils and appliances were all going to the Historical Society. A truck had already come and hauled off Mina’s old stove.

  As for Mina, she was looking forward to a brand-new kitchen. Secretly she hoped Evie would move into the sad house next door. But Mina hadn’t dared say so, afraid Evie would take it as a plea for help. In no way did Mina want to become a burden to anyone but herself.

  The one piece of furniture Mina had kept was her mother’s mahogany coffee table. Its top was warped and the drawer stuck, but she preferred it to the ticky-tacky table that had come with the trailer. The spiral notebook she’d kept in its drawer survived unscathed, too, though Mina had lost her taste for listing the dead. On fresh pages she’d started writing down information about places to call about hiring a real health aide and calculating just how much help she could afford.

  Sitting on that table now was an engraved invitation to the gala opening of Five-Boroughs Historical Society’s Seared in Memory. Her story, her picture, her souvenir would be featured. Cocktail attire, it said at the bottom. Mina was having a black beaded dress of Annabelle’s altered for the occasion. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a cocktail, but she was planning to have a whiskey sour—after she’d been introduced and said a few words, of course. She hoped it would come with a maraschino cherry, or maybe two.

  The phone rang, interrupting her thoughts. She let the call go to the answering machine that Evie had set up for her.

  “Hello?” A man’s voice came through the speaker on the machine. “I’m calling about the car?”

  It was the eighth person who’d called in response to the ad Evie had posted for Mina on something called Craigslist. Mina picked up the phone. “Hello? Hello?”

  “Hello?”

  “You’re interested in the car?”

  “1975 Ford Mustang, V8 engine? Ad says fifty-six thousand miles on it. Not a hundred or two hundred fifty-six thou?”

  Pffff. That was what they all asked.

  “I hope you don’t mind my asking, why are you selling it?”

  “Because it’s time.” Brian might have been self-serving, but she did need to face facts. It was time to stop driving.

  “Any problems with the car?”

  “No problems. It runs fine. Not much rust. But you know, old is old. A certain amount of wear and tear is inevitable.”

  That brought a chuckle. “What are you asking?”

  The current high bid, $2,550, was from Chet in Westchester. That was more than she’d ever imagined getting, and more than she’d paid for it brand-new.

  “High bid so far is three thou,” she said. Thou. Mina liked the sound of the slang she’d heard every caller use.

  He whistled. “That’s a lot. I’d take very good care of it.”

  “I don’t care one way or another how you take care of it. It’s not a house pet.” As if on cue, Ivory rubbed up against her, demanding attention. “I’m selling to the highest bidder.”

  “But three thou?”

  Mina smiled to herself. “You go over to the Sunoco station and sit in it for sixty seconds. The interior’s leather. Steering wheel, too. You think you can find another one like it, go right ahead. Then you can call me and if it’s still available—”

  “Wait, wait . . .”

  Soon, Mina had herself a new high bidder.

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Evie stood for a moment in the arched doorway of the Great Hall at Five-Boroughs Historical Society. Waiters and waitresses glided among the guests, carrying silver trays of champagne and canapés. Evie took a moment to, as her father would have put it, “take a victory lap,” greeting guests as she threaded her way past the eighteenth-century steam-powered pumper that could have been used to fight the Great Fire of 1776, through the displays for the Civil War Draft Riots and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and finally to the Empire State Building plane crash. Evie was wearing a killer outfit, a white silk shirt with the collar turned up and billowing sleeves, with a black taffeta circle skirt from the ’50s that rustled when she moved. At the waist, she wore a cinch belt she’d made using a vintage brass buckle in the shape of an eagle’s head and wings.

  Mrs. Yetner was there, too, seated on a little platform alongside the jet engine whose plummet down the elevator shaft had almost killed her. She had on an elegant black beaded dress that Evie guessed was from the 1940s. Her face glowed as cameras snapped her picture and she answered questions from a reporter.

  Evie stepped closer and picked up snippets of what she was saying, “Her name was Betty Lou Oliver . . . ,” “Eightieth floor . . . ,” and “ . . . terrifying. I thought I was going to die.”

  Across the room, Connor was talking to another journalist. Evie caught his eye, and he flashed her a covert thumbs-up. She smiled. This was the kind of publicity they’d only dreamed of getting for the exhibit opening.

  Next week, Evie was returning to a regular work schedule and moving back to her apartment. There was still plenty of work to be done, preparing her mother’s house to go on the market. Finn had gotten Frank Cutler to officially nullify the life estate deed that her mother had indeed signed. Finn had left the canceled document at the house for her along with a handwritten letter. He was truly sorry, Finn had written. He only wanted to preserve Higgs Point and save it from further development. He had no idea that Cousin Frank had gone off on his own and made a deal with developers whose vision was a gated community of high-rise apartments with fabulous views and an exclusive water shuttle to Wall Street.

  Above all, Finn wrote, he’d never meant for Evie’s mother or Mrs. Y
etner or anyone else to get hurt. He went on to say that he stood by his offer to donate the remains of Snakapins Park to the Historical Society, or as much of it as Evie felt was worth saving.

  He’d ended the letter with, “I can’t tell you how deeply I regret what happened. I only hope you can forgive my naive stupidity, and I’ll keep hoping that you might one day be willing to consider me your friend. At least keep this letter and think about it.”

  Evie had kept it.

  Ginger came up behind her and linked her arm in Evie’s. “I’m so proud of you,” she said. “Daddy would have loved this so much. Mom, too. Here.” She slipped Evie the sapphire earrings that their dad had given their mother on their twentieth wedding anniversary. “Put these on.”

  Evie clipped the earrings on, and she and Ginger hugged.

  “I just wish I could have told her that I loved her,” Evie said. She tried not to tear up and run her eye makeup.

  “You didn’t have to. She knew.”

  “Do you think so? Because I’ve been so angry with her for so long. And all these years I blamed her for starting that fire when it was us. We nearly got ourselves killed, and the dogs, too.”

  The room quieted. Connor was up on the dais. He stepped to the microphone, tapped on it, then cleared his throat. “Welcome, everyone, to the gala opening of Seared in Memory. First of all, I’d like to thank our generous donors. Without your support, none of this would have been possible.” Applause rippled through the room.

  “We are especially delighted,” he went on, “to have Wilhelmina Yetner here today, who was on the eightieth floor in the Empire State Building when a B-25 bomber crashed into it on a foggy day at the end of World War Two. She survived the fire. She survived a fall . . .”