“You’re upset about her. I know. What you’re doing is called acting out. It’s what some people do when things happen they can’t control.” Rupe lays a hand on Quinn’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay, son. She’ll be coming home soon.”
Quinn stares at the growing fire in the trash bin. Even the yellow of the flame is not as bright as the dot on his mother’s picture. It is an omen, a bad omen.
“She is coming home, Quinn.”
She’s never coming home. Never, never, never.
“…and then everything will be back to normal. You’ll see, just like it was before.”
The flames are crackling now, orange and yellow talons reaching up and out of the bin. Quinn lifts the painting, stares at the bright glob one last time, then breaks the canvas over his knee and thrusts it into the fire. It swooshes as it hits the flames. Smears of black inch over the canvas, work their way toward the yellow light in the painting. Quinn stays until the glob is obliterated in flames, then he turns away.
Now she is dead.
***
People talk about the disappearance of Evie Arbogast Burnes for years. How had it happened? When? Where? And in the good Lord’s name, why? They piece a story together, bit by bit, an eventual telling that eases them back into normal existence, to a manageable level where they can send their children to the grocery store without following them halfway there, just in case. Is it the vigilance of the town that keeps the disappearance a lone incident, or is it a random act that marks Evie as its unfortunate victim? She hadn’t been a child, she was a woman, full grown, the wife of Rupert Burnes, mother of Quinn and little Annalise when she vanished. There’ve been no answers, despite the diligence of the town and Rupe himself, driving a 100-mile radius in his red F350 to distribute flyers, talk to local officials, go door to door. She’s gone and no one’s ever learned the truth about Evie Burnes, though many guess or in the end, fill in their own tales. In truth, most don’t want to know, for fear the answers could be too stark, too revealing, too dangerous to accept into the town of Corville, population 5,298. Generations of families have lived there; grandfather, father, son, and so on, painting their names on trucks, buildings, lawn service vehicles. Corville’s a town of family and closeness, a safe harbor from cities whose next-door neighbors remain nameless and faceless by choice, where destruction and violence plaster newspaper headlines and further encourage anonymity.
Evie hadn’t been born here, but they embraced her once she married into the Burnes family. And they loved her, the whole town had. No one could bake a better bumbleberry pie than Evie Burnes, the kind with a crust that melts in your mouth, makes you hold out your plate for seconds. And the raspberries and blackberries came from the bushes on the corner of the Burnes’s lot, the rhubarb, too, that she said was the secret to making bumbleberry pie. That’s not all Evie baked either; she made chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles, and cream puffs for St. Michael’s bazaar and on pot luck night, she always brought stew or pot roast.
Painting was her true gift, though it took years before anybody, including Rupe, discovered it. She gave lessons in her attic on Monday and Wednesday afternoons after school. Watercolor, mostly, once in a while, she used oils, but only if the student asked. She taught her students how to paint streams and evergreens capped in snow, and fields of sunflowers with clear skies and heat beating down on them. Her paintings were always entered in St. Michael’s annual silent auction and had become one of the largest moneymakers, right along with Rupe’s ninety-day snow removal certificate.
Evie Burnes was a blessing to the town, a tender heart with a gifted hand. She’d become one of them, and losing her had been tragic, unfathomable.
But the not knowing part, the never knowing part, that’s what still makes people shiver when they talk about it. Some say maybe she was too trusting, even for Corville, maybe she saw too much good in people, that she missed the bad, the tiny scraps of evil that cling to most everyone at one time or another.
And maybe that’s what snatched her from them, they say, left a husband and two children behind, broken and grieving, and a town that cannot forget.
Epilogue
Twenty-two years later
She stares out the window as snow blankets the ground. The forecast calls for nine inches by tomorrow afternoon, which might interrupt most travelers on their holiday ventures, but not New Englanders. They are a resilient breed and Evie is one of them, has been for years. She’s made a promise to share Christmas with Quinn and Annie and it will take more than a bit of inclement weather to stop her from keeping that promise.
The car is packed and ready. Four dozen sugar cookies, frosted and sprinkled, rest between layers of wax paper in plastic containers. There’s a bumbleberry pie in the fridge that will ride on the front seat beside her tomorrow morning. Quinn wants to learn the secret of her pie filling and she’s agreed, though she suspects he’s more interested in besting Ash Lancaster at yet another of their culinary duelings. For two men who proclaim not to care for one another, they certainly spend quite a bit of time traipsing between one another’s homes. And didn’t Quinn say Ash and Arianna were visiting with their little girl, Nanette, on Christmas day?
Evie fingers the necklace Rupe gave her a lifetime ago. Tomorrow she’ll see her son and daughter and their families. Quinn is a doting father to Hope and Lucy and one day soon, Annie may have some good news of her own.
Who would have thought life would turn out like this? Certainly not the Evie Burnes who cooked, cleaned, and scrubbed dirt from socks. Or the one who stole someone else’s identity and disappeared into the fabric of another life. Those women are merely scraps of a past that is often unrecognizable. What remains is a person filled with hope, love, and belief in the beauty of the second chance. And finally, that is enough.
The End
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Excerpt from Simple Riches
Alexandra Chamberlain is a cosmopolitan woman whose uncle taught her to discard everything but the bottom line on a balance sheet. She’ll do anything to earn his approval and prides herself on excelling at her job, which is selecting small towns to buy up, flatten, and replace with luxury resorts. When Alex decides to investigate Restalline, Pennsylvania as a potential site for the next resort, she enters the town under the guise of a researcher gathering information for a documentary. It should be easy, just like all the others. But this town is different, from Alex’s zany landlord to Nick Androvich, the town doctor with a battered heart who questions Alex’s motives yet can’t deny his attraction to her. As Alex and Nick explore their growing relationship, they must face the truth about each other and themselves as they search for their own Simple Riches.
Simple Riches
by Mary Campisi
Prologue
She stared out the window, waiting. They would be back soon, wet and dripping from the water and then it would be time for breakfast. Oatmeal with yellow raisins, two sprinkles of brown sugar. Her stomach grumbled. She leaned forward, pressed her nose against the glass. The water was dark today, the waves loud and mean looking, like a lion roaring when they hit the rocks and burst apart. She wished she could run outside right now, in her nightgown, fast, all the way down to the beach, with the sand between her toes, the salt stinging her face as she flung herself into the water. But she’d promised them she wouldn’t. Next year, Daddy told her. Next year, you can come with us and I’ll show you what heaven looks like.
She couldn’t wait until she was nine, then she could go with them, see what they saw, see Daddy’s heaven. Just the three of them. It had always been that way, unless she counted Chessie next door. She guessed she was as close to a relative as she had. Chessie was like an aunt, kind of big, with a soft voice and a shiny black braid. She’d miss her when they left next week, but Chessie said she’d save all the best seashells for when they came back next summer.
Her stomach growled again. She squinted out the window. Maybe she should go to Chessie’s, bring over the oatmeal and raisins, see if she’d fix them, maybe give her an extra sprinkle of brown sugar. Maybe… no, she would wait.
She picked up the mirror Mommy and Daddy had given her yesterday. It was blue and green with a long handle and the most beautiful jewels all around; red, green, blue, yellow—sparkly and bright. She turned it from side to side, stared into it, blew her breath onto it. The true jewel is in the mirror, her father had said. Look into it, Alexandra, look into it and see the jewel. Where? Where was it? Where?
The red numbers on the clock moved forward, one click at a time… 8:24…8:32…8:51. She put the mirror down, got up and went into the kitchen, grabbed a graham cracker from the cupboard. 9:11…915. Nibble, nibble, nibble. 9:38…9:59…10:00. She brushed her hands against each other, watched the sugary crumbs fall in her lap.
Maybe she should go down to the beach, dig for sand crabs, look for her parents. Maybe… no, she would wait.
10:05…10:07…10:13. She pressed her nose against the glass again, harder this time. Her eyes were starting to burn, like they did when she got suntan lotion in them. Mommy knew how to take care of that… she put drops in and told her to blink, blink, blink. Daddy told her to cry and it would wash everything away. She swiped a hand across her nose. I’m crying now, Daddy. See? I’m crying now and it still hurts.
Maybe something was wrong… wrong, wrong, … very wrong. At 10:29, she jumped up and ran out of the house.
***
“Look at her.” The woman with the shiny necklace and smelly perfume shook her head. “That blond hair all knotted up… and those feet. They’re filthy. She looks like an urchin, Walter.”
The man, tall with a deep voice, said, “Not in front of the child, Helen.”
“Oh, Walter, for heaven’s sake, she hasn’t spoken a word since we got here. For all we know there’s something wrong with her. A genetic malformation…” The woman patted her big, yellow-white hair in place. “Who knows? Between that brother of yours and that Russian woman”—her voice dropped—“she could be deficient.”
“Peter had the IQ of a genius,” the man said. “And Nadia certainly was more than borderline functional.”
“You know what I mean.”
The man pinched the top of his nose, let out a long breath. “What I know is that my brother and his wife are dead and this child is headed for the orphanage if we don’t take her in.”
The woman named Helen sniffed, her blue eyes darting to the corner. “I don’t think we should rush things. Couldn’t we at least have her tested? Just to be certain there isn’t a deficit of some sort.”
“There’s no deficit,” the man said, his voice stiff. “She’s just lost her parents for God’s sake. She doesn’t know us from the stranger on the street. How do you expect her to act?”
The woman pinched her red lips together. “I’m sure I have no idea. I never had a brother who slept under the stars and believed in Karma. For all we know, she’s been weaned on magic mushrooms and has no brain cells left.”
“Peter was an artist, not a junkie.”
The woman laughed. “Walter, this self-righteous attitude does not become you.” Pause. “Or is that guilt I hear?”
“That’s enough.”
She ignored him, laughed again. “It is guilt. I think I’ll bask in the glory of it. The great Walter Chamberlain in a moment of guilt. How utterly… unique.”
“I said that’s enough.”
“I’m not going to be stuck with this child because you feel guilty about cutting your brother off from the family money. Neither should you. You gave him a choice and he took it.”
“I thought he’d come back.” The man ran his hands over his face and his words softened. “After a month, maybe two…”
“He didn’t want the money, Walter.”
“But he could have had anything. Instead, he chose this?” He swept a hand around the room. There was a red and gold couch, three folding chairs and an easel. “This is what he wanted?”
The woman walked up to him, raised her face to meet his. “He wanted freedom, the one thing you couldn’t give him… or take away from him.” She stepped back, opened her purse. “I’m going outside for a cigarette while you decide what to do about her.”
The girl hugged her knees closer, her eyes following the lady’s yellowish-white head out the door. They’d been talking about her. The tall man named Walter looked like Daddy in an old kind of way. Uncle Walter and Aunt Helen. That’s what they’d called themselves. How could they be her aunt and uncle? She didn’t have any relatives. Just Mommy and Daddy and herself. Just the three of them. That’s all it had ever been. Mommy! Daddy! Come back!
“Alexandra?” The man, Uncle Walter, was looking down at her.
She lifted her head, stared back at him. Maybe the policeman was wrong. Maybe the man and woman they found washed up on the beach three days ago weren’t really her parents after all. Maybe they just looked like them… Maybe…
“Alexandra?” he said again. “Do you hear me? Can you understand me?”
Uncle Walter had said something about losing somebody. Maybe Mommy and Daddy were just lost. Maybe he was going to help find them.
“Aunt Helen and I are going to take you back with us… to Virginia.”
She opened her mouth. “Mommy…” She sucked in a gulp of air. “Daddy…”
He shook his head. His hair was the same brown as Daddy’s. “I’m sorry, Alexandra. They’re gone.”
Gone. “Can you find them?”
“No. I can’t.” He looked out the window, toward the ocean. “They’re in heaven now.”
She bit her lip, hard, harder. They’re in heaven now… The sound of the waves beat in her ears… heaven… heaven… heaven.
“I promise you, Alexandra, I’ll make it up to you.” Her uncle’s voice reached her from far away. “I’ll give you everything that should have been your father’s. He didn’t want it, but you will. You’ll see…”
Chapter 1
Arlington, VA—26 years later
“You’ll save the maple tree, won’t you?” The man rested his hands on the desk. His fingers were gnarled and weather-beaten, the nails thick with yellow deposits. “You know,” he said, his faded blue eyes on Alex, “the one I showed you yesterday.”
Alex looked away and rifled through the papers in front of her. This was the part she hated the most, looking into their eyes, seeing the loss, the pain of leaving, the agony of knowing their homes would be bulldozed. Gone. Nothing left but snapshots, bunches of them, stuffed in shoeboxes or photo albums in a vain attempt to hold onto a moment in time that would prove as elusive as a grain of sand. Some left the remembering inside their head, buried under layers of inconsequential nothingness, crowded between mounds of garbled data. Underneath it all, crammed together was a history, a life— a remembering that faded and disintegrated with time.
Was it really so much to ask that a tree be saved? At least it could serve as a landmark for what had been before, a compass of sorts to lead generations of families back to their ancestral home. A simple tree. “I made note of it,” Alex said. “And we’ll certainly try—”
“Mr. Oshanski,” her associate, Eric Haines, cut her off in his typical lawyer style. “We’ll make every attempt to save your tree.” He smiled, a quick flash of white, before adding, “And hundreds of others like it.”
The old man leaned back in his chair, blew out a long breath. “My father planted that tree when my sister, Emma, died. She was only two. Scarlet fever, they said.” He stared at his hands, clasped them together. “He told us it was Emma’s tree and every time we looked at it, we should think of her.”
They could promise to save one tree, couldn’t they? Alex looked at Eric, waited for him to tell Mr. Oshanski he’d make certain the tree stayed. For Emma. But Eric was already shuffling through the document in front of him, reaching for his pen.
The old man smiled at them. “Thank you.” His eyes were wet. “Thank you for doing this for me. For Emma.” He reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. Twenty minutes later, Mr. Oshanski shuffled out of Alex’s office, a cane in one hand, a check in the other.
“We just made Leonard Oshanski one rich old man.” Eric tossed his pen on the desk, leaned back, and clasped his hands behind his head.
Alex fiddled with her own pen, a Montblanc, black with gold. “You did mean what you said to him, didn’t you? About saving the tree?”
“Why do you always doubt me, Alex? Of course, I meant it.”
She nodded. “Good.”
“It’ll never happen, though. You can’t bulldoze around one tree. Think of the time and money it would cost.” He shrugged. “Even if that wasn’t an issue, the heavy equipment would kill the roots. The tree would never make it and then, somewhere along the line, you’d have to come back in and dig it out. More time and even more expense.”
Alex stared at him, wondering how she’d ever thought there was a soft side to this man. How could she not have noticed the calculated pauses, the way he played with words, spoken and unspoken, twisting and massaging them to create his own justifications, state his own case? He was a lawyer, and a damn good one. Negotiation was his forte. That’s why WEC Management employed him as legal counsel and that’s why it was one of the premier developers of exclusive vacation resorts in the country. Eric Haines knew how to make his words come out in a voice that wrapped itself around the listener, soothing, calming, lulling. There was something about the way he looked at a person, as though they really mattered, as though he really cared. He could convince them that signing over their property was the right choice, the noble choice, for the betterment of family and personal interests. And it all seemed so genuine, so damn real, that people believed him. Even people who knew better.
What's Left of Her: a novella (The Betrayed Trilogy) Page 7
