Written on My Heart

by Morgan Callan Rogers

  “I have to go to the bathroom first,” I said, and bolted upstairs. If anyone heard me upchucking everything I’d ever eaten going back through the past almost eleven years, no one ever let on. When I was done, I brushed my teeth, slapped water on my face, walked back downstairs, and sat down again. Dottie plunked a cup of hot tea in front of me and I put my hands around the mug. The warmth seeped into my palms.

  “Okay,” I said to Parker. “Tell us what happened.”

  “Did you read them letters Stella and her sister gave to you? Them letters from Edward to Carlie?”

  “No. I didn’t want to know what that suckass had to say to my mother.”

  “Well, I matched most of ’em up with the ones that Barrington’s wife dropped off last winter.

  “Carlie’s letters to him are kind of like I remember her. Funny, light, pretty clever, about stuff she had going on in her life. She wrote about how much she missed him and told him she loved him. Up until she met Leeman, that is. The last letter she sent to him, in July 1950, she said that she loved Leeman and she hoped that Edward would be happy.

  “Now, Barrington’s letters are a different story. From the get-go, his letters are filled with how much he loves her and how he can’t live without her. Later on, he talks more and more about what he’s going to do to her when he sees her. Stuff that made even me blush, and I’ve heard it all. One letter says ‘I Love You’ for twenty pages. That letter was written in August 1950, when Carlie was eighteen and Barrington was twenty-two or three or thereabouts.”

  “Carlie and Daddy were together by that time,” I said.

  “Didn’t seem to faze him. He was married and had a son on the way, but he wrote the twenty-page I Love You letter after his wedding. He also wrote Carlie a nasty letter, after he found out about Leeman. Says that she won’t be happy with him, that he’s just a fisherman. That she’ll get bored and come back to him, and he was going to wait for that, no matter how long it took.

  “His letters didn’t stop with the letter telling her she’d be sorry she met Leeman. He kept on sending letters to her. Twisted stuff, like how he was better at sex than Leeman, and how he could make her happy that way. About how much money he had compared to Leeman. About how he’d seen you at The Point at Ray’s with Dottie. Said he gave you both lollipops. The date on that letter tells me you and Dottie was about five.”

  Dottie and I squeezed each other’s hands at the same time.

  “Other stuff too. Says he watched Leeman and her in bed one night.”

  “Oh my god. Why didn’t she turn him in?” I cried.

  “Because she never read them letters. You saw how the envelopes were sealed shut. She didn’t know he’d given you and Dottie candy, or he was pretty much stalking her.”

  “Then why did she keep them at all?” Bud asked.

  “I can’t say,” Parker said.

  “Maybe she knew something might happen to her,” Dottie said.

  “That’s conjecture,” Parker said. “May help build a case, but evidence seals them. She never read the letters, and she didn’t turn them in, so I can’t say why she kept them.”

  “Who killed her?” I said, hating those words. “That’s all I want to know.”

  “We have a suspect . . .”

  “You said that. Who the hell killed my mother?”

  “Florine, take a deep breath,” Billy said. “Parker will tell you.”

  “Thank you, Pastor,” Parker said. “I don’t know as you noticed, Florine, but none of them letters—except for the ones that Grace Drowns sent to you in different envelopes—has a postmark or a stamp. Barrington didn’t want them going through the mail, so I wondered how he might have gotten them to Carlie. He could have left them in her car while she was at work, I suppose. Or he could have stopped by the Shack and made sure she got them that way.

  “I went to the Shack when Carlie first disappeared and talked to everyone there. They was confused and scared, but they didn’t know nothing. Cindi and Diane both said that, as far as they knew, Carlie always went home after her shifts. Edward didn’t come up, because no one thought he might be involved. And of course Patty swore up and down she didn’t know nothing.

  “After I read the letters, I went back and I talked to Cindi about Barrington, about two weeks ago. She’s the only one still there that knew all the players.

  “She told me that Barrington’s been coming to the Shack since he’s been legal to drink. Spent a lot of time there over the years. Sits at the bar by himself. Cindi said that he came in when Carlie was working, and he came in when she wasn’t there. Said Carlie acted the same around him as her other customers, friendly and nice. He talked to Patty a lot, Cindi said. Said she never thought much about it. Patty liked anyone who gave her good tips, and Edward was loaded.

  “So, then I got to thinking about Patty,” Parker said. “I asked Cindi if she knew where I could find her. Cindi gave me the address where she sent her last paycheck and I looked it up. Turns out her sister lives there, with Patty, who has emphysema and needs an oxygen tank. I asked Patty if she’d mind talking to me. Took a while, but finally she agreed. So, last week, I went to New Jersey to talk to her.”

  Parker shook his head. “I was shocked when I saw her. She’s forty-two years old or thereabouts, but she looks to be about thirty years older. She couldn’t even get up. She had to stop and catch her breath a lot when we was talking.

  “She had a lot to say. She told me that she wanted to get it off her chest, that it might help her to breathe better. I asked her about the letters. She told me that Barrington used to slip the letters to her, along with a ten-dollar bill. She would sneak them into Carlie’s car sometime during the shifts she and Carlie shared. She said that Barrington wouldn’t do it because he had a reputation to protect and was afraid of being caught.”

  “Why would she do that?” I asked. “She and Carlie were friends.”

  “She liked the money,” Parker said. “And she said she didn’t see the harm. She admitted that she liked to stir things up. But when I asked her, she said she never told Barrington when she and Carlie were going to be in Crow’s Nest Harbor. Patty figured out he was a creep when he showed up in the Harbor the first time.”

  “He could have asked anyone else at the restaurant where they’d gone without them becoming suspicious,” Bud said.

  Parker nodded. “That’s probably what he did. Out of the nine years they went up to the Harbor, he showed up for five of them. They’d be walking through town and there he’d be. They’d go to a restaurant, and he’d waltz in and sit at the bar and watch them. Neither Patty nor Carlie wanted him around, but Patty told me they agreed that they’d be damned if they were going to let him ruin their good time and their special place, so they put up with him. They even made a game out of finding ways to avoid him.

  “The summer Carlie disappeared, Patty told me that she came up with the idea that Carlie should bleach her hair blond and wear Patty’s clothes, while she dyed her hair red and wore Carlie’s clothes. They did it partly for laughs, and partly to confuse Barrington, should he show up.”

  “Why did they go to all that trouble?” I asked. “Why didn’t Patty just come forward and tell someone she thought Edward was weird? For that matter, why didn’t Carlie?”

  “I don’t know why Carlie didn’t,” Parker said. “Maybe she didn’t think he was a threat. Maybe she thought she could work it out on her own. Maybe she didn’t want the attention. But I know why Patty never came forward,” Parker said. “She had her own issues. And Barrington found out what they were.”

  “What do you mean, her own issues?”

  “Well, she liked to play around with young boys.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, not understanding.

  “Oh my god,” Glen groaned. I turned to him, surprised.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Dottie asked.
>
  Glen put his face into his hands. “Oh my god,” he said again.

  “She messed around with you?” Parker said, softly, to his nephew.

  As we all stared at Glen, I recalled the words he had said to me that day we’d talked in his tent in Grand’s living room: “What she said still messes up my head, along with everything else. She was smart. She was older than me. She was . . .”

  “Patty?” I said. “You were talking about Patty?”

  It took him a while to answer, and during that time, I ran everything I had thought about Patty through my head. Funny, sassy, flirty Patty. I had adored her and wanted to be like her. This was the same woman who had made my friend feel like shit? Had done things to him? Things that were wrong?

  Glen took his hands away from his face and sat up straight. Dottie handed him a Kleenex and he blew his nose. “She did it to me,” he said. “I was one of those boys.”

  “What she did was against the law,” Parker said to his nephew. “Do you feel like talking about what happened?”

  Glen wiped tears from his cheeks. “If it helps Florine, I will,” he said.

  “Take a deep breath,” Billy said.

  Glen did just that, and then he said, “I was ten. I used to ride my bike to the Shack. Ray’d give me money and tell me to go bug someone else for a while, so I’d pedal up the road for French fries and a Coke. One day, Patty was leaving the Shack to walk back to the cabin she lived in, and she asked if I wanted some homemade cookies. So, I followed her. When she brought the cookies out, she wasn’t wearing nothing. I’d never seen a real naked woman before. She asked if I wanted to touch her boobies.

  “I didn’t know that we was doing something bad,” he said. His face darkened to crimson. “She told me we wasn’t hurting nobody, and she thought I was special. Later, she got mean. She’d touch me down there and laugh and tell me what a loser I was, that no one would ever love me. Then she told me to get lost, and if I said anything, she’d tell the police. She said, ‘You know what rape is? I’ll scream rape if you say a word.’”

  We all sat in silence as Glen stared out at the sunny day, letting his tears run unchecked. No one had known. No one had even suspected. I thought about when Carlie had died. No one had known or suspected that either. My heart ached with the unfairness of it all. Bud squeezed my hand again.

  Dottie got up and walked over to Glen. Dottie, who brushed off anything that got too sappy with her smart remarks. Dottie, who surprised all of us by bending over Glen’s chair and wrapping her arms around him from the back to comfort him. She stood that way for a minute, and then she sat down again.

  Bud cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to make less of this than it is,” he said to Parker. “And I can’t believe the bitch did that to Glen. If I’d known, I would have strangled her with my bare hands. But what does that have to do with Carlie?”

  Parker said, “Glen, I don’t know as it will make you feel less alone, but you weren’t the only boy Patty ‘liked.’ When I talked to her, she mentioned Andy Barrington.”

  Far off, from somewhere inside my head, an ocean began to roll forward.

  Parker said, “He used to visit her ‘for cookies’ too. But when I talked to Patty last week, she said she had told him to bug off earlier that summer because he was getting rough with her. Said he was strong for his size. Told him she’d call me if she caught him hanging around. He stayed away for a while. But he knocked on her door the night before she and Carlie left for Crow’s Nest Harbor that last night. She wouldn’t let him in. Threatened him with me again, and he left. But somehow, he found out where they were going and he hitchhiked up. His family didn’t know he had gone. No one watched the kid, really. They mostly noticed when he got in the way.”

  And then Andy’s words floated through my memory: “I was deflowered by a—uh—woman of experience, in New York City. Taught me to touch her where it mattered most.” That woman, not from New York, but from New Jersey, had been Patty. I barely heard what Parker said next.

  “Andy hung around their motel until he saw the person he thought was Patty walk into town. He stayed far enough away so that he couldn’t really see her face. Just followed her by the color of her hair and her clothes. She came back along the cliff walk after that, and he followed her along the path.”

  Suddenly Parker stopped talking and laid a hand on my hand. “Florine,” he said, “you all right?”

  “Jesus, you’re so pale,” Bud said.

  “Put your head down between your legs,” Dottie said.

  Bud got up and pulled my chair back. Dottie gently pushed my head down until it rested on my knees. My back whined, but the pain brought me back to myself. Hands patted my back, stroked my neck. I sat up.

  Andy’s desperate voice sounded in my head: “I hope you will forgive me. . . . I mean it. . . . Sold my soul a long time ago.”

  I had loved him. And he had killed my mother. And he knew what he had done every time he touched me or told me he loved me.

  A voice that didn’t sound like mine whispered, “How did he kill her?”

  Parker held my eyes. “He thought he would jump her, scare her a little. Remember, he thought that she was Patty. Carlie was so shocked when he grabbed her that she fought him and during the struggle, Andy broke her neck.”

  I put my hands into my hair, grabbed it, and pulled. A wail burst from my throat: part grief, part rage. Bud and Dottie said soothing things that made no sense, but the sound of their voices eventually calmed me down.

  Bud said to Parker, “What happened after that? What did he do with her?”

  “Andy put her body into some thick bushes off the path and left for home. Edward Barrington was up there that day too, but he didn’t see Carlie, or Patty, so he headed back to his place just after dark. He caught Andy hitchhiking by the side of the road. He was in rough shape. Barrington hammered at him until Andy told him what had happened. Edward could have gone to the police, but he didn’t do it. He told me he didn’t want Andy arrested. Didn’t want the Barrington name dragged into it.

  “Edward drove them back to where Andy had hidden Carlie’s body. Somehow, they got her to the car without being seen and they drove south. They buried her near their cottage the next day.”

  “Where?” I said. Parker told me.

  I cupped my face in my hands. In my place, my secret place, over by the pines on the other side of the clearing. My mother had been that close to me, for all that time.

  “Her body is in Augusta,” Parker said. “We needed to autopsy the body to be sure it was her first before we could tell you.”

  “I want to see her,” I said.

  “You think that’s such a good idea?” Bud asked gently.

  “I want to see her,” I repeated, hitting the table with my fist. “She’s my mother. I’ve been waiting for a long, long time for her to come home.”

  I didn’t ask about what was going to happen to Andy or Edward. I didn’t want either of those bastards to have the last word. My mother’s body had been found and I could bring her home. That was what mattered.

  Arlee’s voice, singing a song I couldn’t quite catch the words to, arched over us, high and sweet, from way down in Ida’s yard.

  “I bet she hasn’t changed her dress,” I said. I stood up. “I don’t want her to get it dirty.” I left the house. Arlee was down by the Florine, slapping a paintbrush onto the sanded hull. The ruined dress was covered with a shade the color of midnight.

  “Hi, Mama,” she said.

  Ida ran out of the house. “Oh, my goodness,” she said. “She was watching television not thirty seconds ago. I’m so sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  Ida saw me, then. “Oh, dear god,” she said. “Is . . .”

  I nodded. “I don’t want to talk right now,” I said.

  Ida nodded. “I’ll say a prayer,” s
he murmured.

  “Thank you,” I said. She touched my arm and went inside.

  Arlee pointed to a second paintbrush. “Help me, Mama,” she said. I dipped it into the can and we painted the boat, together.

  48

  Of course, I still had questions, and after a sleepless night spent on the porch with my son in my arms, my husband snoring beside me in the next rocker, and Arlee asleep on the sofa, I called Parker again. Bud and I went to his office for this meeting. My body ached with sorrow, but I was calm.

  “I’m confused,” I said. “How did you find out that Andy had done it?”

  Parker said, “After I got all those letters and I read them, I called Barrington. Told him I wanted to talk to him again. He wasn’t as eager to do it as he had been before, but he said he would come up to the office. Andy was at the cottage with him. I keep an eye on Andy anyway. Deals drugs, but he’s not the big pin. I was hoping he’d lead me to his supplier, but he’s got bigger fish to fry now. Anyway, while Barrington was talking to me, Andy walked in. Said he was tired of the bullshit. Said he had killed Carlie, but that it was an accident. Edward tried to shut him up, but Andy told him to fuck off, that they should have done this long ago. I talked to Andy and he told me how things had happened. Then, I talked to Edward, and he finally broke down and admitted it. Said he hadn’t wanted to turn his son in, no matter how things had happened.”

  “What about the purse?” I asked. “Carlie’s purse was found by that pond near Blueberry Harbor. Why was it there?” The only clue to Carlie’s whereabouts had been the finding of her purse by a pond near Blueberry Harbor, one hour south of Crow’s Nest Harbor, three and a half years after she had disappeared. Nothing further had ever come of it, but I had always wondered about it.

  “Barrington said he got to drinking and had a lamebrain idea—his words, not mine—that if he moved it there and buried it, it would somehow break things up. Said he drove up the coast to the pond near Blueberry Harbor because it was the first place he saw that was off the road. It didn’t hold any special meaning for him. Don’t make sense, I know, but that’s what he did.”