Miller's Secret

by Tess Thompson

  MILLER’S SECRET

  TESS THOMPSON

  United States, 2016

  COPYRIGHT 2016, TESS THOMPSON

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

  Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

  Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

  No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.

  Table of Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PART I CHAPTER ONE Caroline

  CHAPTER TWO Miller

  CHAPTER THREE Caroline

  CHAPTER FOUR Miller

  PART II CHAPTER ONE Miller

  CHAPTER TWO Caroline

  CHAPTER THREE Caroline

  CHAPTER FOUR Miller

  PART III CHAPTER ONE Henry

  CHAPTER TWO Caroline

  CHAPTER THREE Phil

  CHAPTER FOUR Miller

  PART IV CHAPTER ONE Caroline

  CHAPTER TWO Miller

  CHAPTER THREE Henry

  CHAPTER FOUR Phil

  CHAPTER FIVE Miller

  CHAPTER SIX Phil

  CHAPTER SEVEN Caroline

  CHAPTER EIGHT Henry

  CHAPTER NINE Phil

  CHAPTER TEN Henry

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Phil

  CHAPTER TWELVE Caroline

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Phil

  PART V CHAPTER ONE Caroline

  CHAPTER TWO Miller

  CHAPTER THREE Caroline

  CHAPTER FOUR Miller

  CHAPTER FIVE Caroline

  CHAPTER SIX Phil

  CHAPTER SEVEN Miller

  CHAPTER EIGHT Caroline

  CHAPTER NINE Henry

  CHAPTER TEN Caroline

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Henry

  CHAPTER TWELVE Caroline

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Miller

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN Phil

  PART VI CHAPTER ONE Caroline

  CHAPTER TWO Phil

  EXCERPT FROM DUET FOR THREE HANDS CHAPTER 1 Nathaniel

  CHAPTER 2 Lydia

  For Cliff,

  Given the choice of anyone in the world, I would always choose you.

  PART I

  December 1921

  CHAPTER ONE

  Caroline

  CAROLINE BENNETT, nestled into the corner of the sofa in her father’s study, organized a stack of letters into alphabetical order. Degrees of handwriting skills aside, each letter was clearly addressed to Santa at the North Pole from one of the forty-two children at Saint Theresa’s Home for Orphans. Caroline was cozy in her red flannel nightgown and thick socks, and her legs were almost long enough to reach the floor. A fire crackled behind the metal grid. Fresh fir branches decorated the mantel and filled the room with their spicy scent. Candles flickered on the side tables, casting soft shadows. Outside, December fog sheathed their home so that tonight they lived in a cloud instead of a street in San Francisco where the houses were the size of schools.

  Caroline knew there was no Santa. She was twelve now, after all. Her days of childish beliefs were in the past. Her parents were Santa. It was obvious now that she knew. She’d discovered the truth when she accidently saw their housekeeper, Essie, wrapping presents in the same paper that later showed up as gifts from Santa. This new knowledge rested heavily in the middle of her chest. It had been lovely to believe in magic. However, her dismay to learn that her favorite saint was, in fact, fiction was tempered by her delight that this year, for the first time, she would be able to help deliver the gifts to the orphanage. Her stomach did flips just thinking of it. As if that weren’t enough, her mother, Sophie, had entrusted Caroline with a sacred task. She was to help find just the right gift for each child.

  Her father, Edmund, hidden behind the newspaper in his large chair with nothing but his long legs visible, occasionally grunted or exclaimed over something he read. He’d missed several Christmases when he was fighting overseas. This was his second Christmas home with them, but Caroline had not forgotten how lonely those days were or the worried tears Mother had shed. Edmund Bennett, as Mother often said, could fill up a room like no other. Without him, the house had seemed empty and less like Christmas, his presents stacked up under the tree for his hoped-for return, their deepest fear that they would remain unopened. Now, though, Father was safe at home, and Mother no longer cried by the fire while holding his latest letter in her delicate hands.

  Caroline settled back into the sofa, placing the piles of letters next to her. “I’ve put them in order, Mother. Are you ready for me to read them now?” Working side-by-side with her beautiful mother, Caroline imagined she’d experienced a great transformation from the previous Christmas. She was taller and more sophisticated, and felt almost sorry for her deluded younger self. What a little dolt she’d been, believing that a man could fly around the world in only one night on a sled pulled by reindeer.

  Other than telling her parents she knew the truth, she kept mum about this devastating fact. There was no reason her friends should have their belief in magic ruined. Believing in something as wonderful as the idea of Santa made them happy, and it was not her place to take that away from them. The longer one believed, the better.

  Essie entered with a plate of sugar cookies, hot chocolate for Caroline, and glasses of sherry for her parents. “Good evening. Some sweets for the sweet?” Caroline grinned, knowing Essie meant she was sweet.

  “Essie, you must stop working and retire for the evening,” said Mother. “You’ve been on your feet since dawn.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Bennett, and I beg your pardon, but dawn is an exaggeration.” Essie, only twenty-five, had come to them four years before as a housemaid but had proven so smart and capable that Mother promoted her to head housekeeper when cranky Mrs. Smith, inherited from Father’s mother, had retired. Caroline adored Essie. She was pretty with brown curls that made Caroline want to pull one to see it spring back into place. Essie was never cross, even with Caroline who sometimes forgot that she wasn’t supposed to run in the house.

  The newspaper lowered. Father’s green eyes fixed upon Essie. “Mrs. Bennett exaggerating?

  Impossible.”

  Mother laughed. “No one asked for your opinion, Mr. Bennett.”

  Essie patted Caroline’s head, smiling. “Oh, the letters from the children. How wonderful.” At the door, she turned back, tears glistening in her eyes. “What you do for those poor orphans—giving them a Christmas. Could’ve been me but for the grace of God.”

  “Thank you, Essie. Have a good rest,” said Mother. “We have a million cookies to make tomorrow.”

  The newspaper lowered once again. “We?”

  “Well, it’s my mother’s recipes, anyway.” Mother tossed a pillow at Father, which he thwarted by once again hiding behind his newspaper. The sound of Essie’s laughter accompanied her clicking heels down the hallway.

  Mother held up her pen and paper. “I’m ready, darling. Read away.”

  The first was from a boy named Miller, who wanted a telescope so he could study the constellations. Caroline put it back into its envelope while left-handed Mother, the paper at a slant so she didn’t smear the ink, wrote his wish on the list. Other than Miller’s rather forthright letter, the others had deeper wishes.


  Please, Santa, bring me a new family for Christmas.

  Santa, bring my mother back to me.

  Santa, do you know where my brother is?

  After the tenth letter, she couldn’t continue. Tears slid down her cheeks and onto the paper, blurring the ink. “Mother, please. I can’t. They’re too sad.”

  Mother set down her pen. The newspaper came down and Father placed it on the table next to him. “Caroline, I know the letters hurt you,” said Mother. “They do us as well. But you must never turn away from truths like these just because it’s hard. It’s your responsibility as a person with so much to understand that many others have nothing and to let it soften you to do good in the world.”

  “For whom much is given, much is expected,” said Father.

  Caroline wiped her eyes with her handkerchief, then ran her fingers over her embroidered initials. “But why do I have so much when others have so little?”

  “We’re lucky,” said Mother. “Because of that we have to serve others as best we can.”

  “Love instead of hate,” said Father. “This is what Jesus taught us. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” Caroline picked up the next letter. “Dear Santa.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Miller

  IT WAS CHRISTMAS EVE. While sugarplums danced in the heads of the other children, twelve-year-old Miller could not sleep, shivering under a thin blanket. An unexpected cold front had come the day before, encasing San Francisco in ice, and the orphanage’s fireplaces could not keep up with the frigid temperatures. Before he ventured from his bed, he listened for the sounds of the other boys sleeping. Norm snored, Wesley murmured pleas to his dead mother, and Timmy made a sound with his lips like he was trying to blow a horn. The other four boys were smaller, and in general, uttered nothing, other than falling out of the narrow beds occasionally and crying until one of the big boys shushed them. One grew tough here. Coddling and sympathy were in short supply. There was no room for softness and sadness. It was only tolerated if it was amid dreams, like poor Wesley.

  Miller walked in silent steps to the window, and drew back the curtain. He stood between it and the glass, looking up at the cloudless sky where stars danced in the black night. He wanted to observe them in the silence, to soak them in without distraction because it made him feel as if anything were possible, like there was more to his paltry existence than the chilled room. He gazed for many minutes until he became a star, too. Silver and shining with heat. Last August, the stars shot across the horizon and he caught them in his hands and hung on, streaking across the sky in splendored glory.

  Dust tickled his nose and he rubbed it with the back of his hand to keep from sneezing. He shivered as he placed his hand on the glass of the window. A layer of ice had formed on the inside, and it melted under his warm hand. This proved he did exist and was not invisible like he’d been that afternoon. He didn’t care that he wasn’t chosen again. No one would ever come for him. He understood that now. Days of hopeful wishes and prayers were with the stars, out of his reach.

  That very afternoon a couple had come at lunch, scanning the children lined up in rows at the tables as they waited for a bowl of lukewarm soup and piece of bread. The couple, wearing tweed coats that almost matched and holding rosary beads, presumably for luck, were looking for a child to take home for Christmas. A gift to themselves, thought Miller, as if the children were toys to be handed about to rich people who had everything already. Their earnest expressions and the way they scanned the children’s faces, like a miracle was about to happen, made him sick. Oh, yes, she’s the one. Thank you, Lord, for our little miracle. A bitter taste filled his mouth, like he’d sucked on a handful of coins. He didn’t try to catch their eyes like he used to. No one wanted a boy his age. There was no point to try to look endearing any longer. He’d predicted they would choose Patsy, the toddler who’d come to the orphanage just the week before, and he’d been right. The woman’s face had lit up like a candle on the Christmas tree the moment she set eyes upon her. “Oh, Frank,” she’d said. “Do you see her curls?” It didn’t take a genius to see that coming. Sweet little Patsy with her chubby fingers and blond ringlets. He didn’t stand a chance.

  He’d lived at the orphanage for almost five years, having been dropped there when he was seven years old in an unceremonious delivery by his deceased mother’s only living relative, a cousin with six children of her own and no desire for any further mouths to feed. Before his mother’s death, Miller had lived with her in a dirty, one-room shack at the end of a country road. Memories of the time with his mother came to him in a series of fuzzy images, like overexposed photographs. Uneven floorboards, rough on the bottom of his feet. One window, a crack like a spider’s web and a layer of dirt so thick that day and night were often indiscernible. A table with one chair next to a wood-burning cooking stove. One time when he was small, he burned his wrist on the stove, reaching for a two-day old biscuit. Greedy boys get burned. He remembered her voice and the sound of the whiskey bottled as she slammed it on the table. That’ll teach you. It did. After that he knew not to touch, no matter how hungry he was. He slept in the closet. When his mother did her business with the men, he was to stay there with the door closed and be quiet, putting his fingers in his ears to stifle the sound of creaking bedsprings and frightening moans. Sometimes, she disappeared for days and came back only to sleep for hours and hours, murmuring things he couldn’t understand. She did not hug or kiss him like he’d seen mothers do on the few occasions he went into town. Instead, he was smacked or pushed or spanked. He was never sure why.

  The memory of smells, more vivid than the images, still lived in his nose. Men’s perspiration, wood smoke, whiskey, and the sour smell of his mother. One day, she didn’t get out of bed. Men came to the door, smelling of booze and cigarettes, but once they came inside, they quickly retreated. The scent of something rotting from the inside out replaced the sour odor of his mother. One day she didn’t wake. He stood over her, unsure what to do. Several flies buzzed around her body, and outside, the shriek of a wild bird pierced the quiet. Her white hand, paper thin, hung from the side of a bed. For five days he remained in the shack alone, surviving on the sack of raw potatoes that had been his companion in the closet. Then, one day, a woman came. She held a paper bag over her nose and offered him her hand. It was the first time he could remember being touched without it being accompanied by a beating.

  Now, Miller took his hand from the glass, sticking it between his thighs for warmth. The stars were as close as he’d ever seen them, and a half-moon hung just above the large oak. Not Santa in his sleigh, as some of the younger boys believed. He’d known for years Santa was not real. Just like God, it was a story to make them succumb to authority. Lies told to them by the nuns to keep them placid, well-behaved. God and Santa are watching. He knew it was all fiction. He told the others. There is no Santa. They were all too young or too stupid to believe him. It wasn’t his problem if the little idiots chose to believe the lies. What did he care? Still, he wondered where the presents came from every year. Surely the Sisters couldn’t manage to buy all of them.

  Miller didn’t believe in the birth, death, or rising of Jesus. However, he knew the nuns who cared for them not only believed the stories of the Bible, but wanted the children to believe as well. So, Miller pretended he did, to keep from being smacked with the ruler over the palm of his hand. Who could believe such nonsense? The other children were ridiculous. Who would give up a life in the world for the thankless work of caring for motherless children simply because of a made-up story in a book?

  The rumble of a car’s engine, and, a few seconds later, the beams of light that appeared between the trees, drew his attention. His stomach flipped over in excitement, despite his disbelief in magical fat men. A visitor of some kind? In the middle of the night? Yes, it was a car coming up the lane, headlights like bouncing balls in the dark. The car, black with wide fenders, stopped in front of the orphanage’s front doors, and the
sound of the engine ceased, bringing back the silent night. A man in a black suit and cap slid from the driver’s seat and walked around the car to open the back door. Small feet in patent leather shoes appeared first, reflecting light from the lamppost, attached to thick legs covered in white stockings. Then, the rest of a girl emerged. She wore a fur coat and hat and was short and stout, like the teapot in the song the woman had sung to Patsy earlier. Slightly younger than Miller, if he had his guess, but it was hard for him to judge the age of children who were well fed. They always seemed older than his scrawny companions.

  The girl’s hands were stuck inside a matching muff, but she shivered despite all her layers. She shifted weight from foot to foot, waiting for whoever was still in the car, her plump face tilted upward, seemingly examining the outside of the building in great detail. Miller pretended to be a statue, hoping she could not see him. A man in a top hat and dark jacket joined her, putting his hand on the top of her head. She looked up at him and smiled. They said something to each other that Miller could not decipher. The man and the chauffer went to the back of the car and pulled out two large boxes. Miller strained his eyes, trying to make out the contents. Packages with bows? Presents for the children. It was not Santa, but this man and his little girl. He was triumphant. He was right. There was no Santa, unless he traveled in a Rolls-Royce and wore a top hat.