Miller's Secret

by Tess Thompson

  The way he would mourn and put on a show! Wailing. Trying to jump into the grave with her. How he loved her, they would all say. He’s devastated. The poor man. I hope he finds someone eventually. And those poor children. Then, after an appropriate time, and with everyone’s blessings, he would introduce the idea of Phil. She might come to dinner. The children would not be able to resist her beauty. No one could. A few months later, after they were all in love with her, he would announce their plans to wed. She could come live with them—help take care of the children. None of this he could be faulted for. After all, the children needed a mother. He needed a wife. And Phil was young and beautiful. The perfect solution to their problems.

  Before now, it was only fantasy. When he’d rented the house in Stowaway, he believed it was the perfect solution. She could remain a secret, stowed away at the edge of the world. His perfect secret. At least he would have a few nights a week with her, and she could be comfortable there, but the more time with her he had, the more he wanted. Why should he have to leave her? Phil was his home. He couldn’t survive without her. Just as he learned as a child, it was his only choice. Survival. He couldn’t think of anyone but himself.

  And tonight? The way he’d been tossed aside, after his years of loyalty? He sat back at the desk and turned to a fresh page in his notebook. No more, he wrote. I will have what I want. He’ll be sorry.

  Caroline and the children would leave for Edmund’s beach house next week. He couldn’t do it himself. There were men to hire, he knew, from Timmy Blick. Good old Timmy from the orphanage. Years ago, over drinks, Timmy told him that the bar he owned was only a front for the real money.

  “Cash exchanged for services,” Timmy said. “I’m like a conduit for people with things they need taken care of.”

  “What kind of things?” They were drunk, making Miller bold.

  “Well, let’s say you had a person you wanted to vanish. I arrange it.”

  “Do you take care of them, or it, yourself?” asked Miller.

  “Nah, I got people.” He raised his hands in the air. “These babies don’t like to get dirty with the details.”

  Timmy got rid of people for a living. Timmy was dangerous. But he was loyal, too. They went back. They knew the same demons. They were family. Timmy would know what to do. A professional would know how to make it look like an accident.

  He wrote in his notebook. Call Timmy.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Henry

  THE SCENT OF PARCHED EARTH after a rainfall blended with the briny breeze of the sea and drifted into Henry’s bedroom from an open window, waking him from a dream in which bombs still fell, the blasts in rhythm to his beating heart. In the moment before full consciousness, he opened his eyes, unsure of what sights and sounds would greet him. Gauzy curtains that moved in the breeze softened bright sunlight and brought the sounds of waves crashing against the shore. Seagulls screamed to one another, or was it to him? The sea. You’re home. Alive. Almost intact.

  He’d been home for several years now and still he woke from nightmares almost every morning. How long until the dreams ceased? How many more mornings before he knew with certainty that he no longer woke to the horrors of war but of a world in peace? When would he stop wondering, Why me? Why did I return when so many others didn’t?

  His pajamas were soaked with perspiration. Shivering, he rolled to his side, suspecting he’d slept late. The clock on the bedside table confirmed his suspicions, reading a little after nine a.m. His mother, gone, her ashes mingled with the sea, but her clock remained as a reminder that time marched forward regardless of loss, uncaring of whether the bereaved cursed the passage of time, wishing for one more moment with the one they once took for granted. The ache shot through him with sudden ferocity. He missed her. He missed his father. The happy days of his youth were no more. They could not return. Time moved forward despite the waves of grief.

  He pulled the blanket closer, watching the light play on the hardwood floors. It was a simple room, sparsely furnished with work from his own hands before the war, each piece carved and sanded with meticulous care, as if it were art he made from walnut slabs instead of a dresser and four-poster bed. His phantom arm was quiet now, without pain, succumbing, for now, to the knowledge that it was no longer part of the physical world. Last night when he wanted nothing more than to sleep, his stub had itched and the phantom pain nearly drove him mad. So, this morning, he’d indulged and slept late, something he never would have done before the war. After the war; the phrase was like the title of the book.

  He relaxed into the softness of the pillow behind his head. Perhaps he would remain a while longer, read another chapter of the novel that had been his redemptive companion during his sleepless night. What was so urgent it couldn’t wait? The patchwork quilt, in the pattern of tulips, was twisted around his legs from restless sleep. With the fingers of his remaining hand, he touched the hand-sewn stitches, evoking the memory of his mother’s never idle hands. Her work ethic was enough to dismiss his reluctance to begin his day. His sister, in one of her devoted weekly letters when he was overseas, had written that even at the end when their mother was dreadfully ill from the cancer that eventually took her life, she had not stopped making useful, beautiful objects with her hands. “Self-pity gets you nowhere,” she had often said to them while they were growing up. “Best to figure out a way to get where you want to be instead of acting like a victim.”

  Tossing the blanket and quilt aside, he yawned and slid from bed. In bare feet, he went to the window and lifted the filmy curtain with delighted expectation, for there was not a morning when he was not thrilled to see his garden and the sea beyond. He pushed one pane of the window open wider and breathed in the morning. His garden and the sea and the sky, ever changing, yet the same. When he was scared or homesick while overseas, he had conjured this very image, like a photograph, and it had sustained him. I will see it once more, he had told himself again and again. I am fighting for it, so that all might be free to look out the windows of their homes whenever they choose. He had come back to this place he had once been happy, hoping that it might ease his haunted mind. The hope for happiness had been replaced by its paler sister: peace. Existence was hard enough without putting unrealistic expectations on himself.

  Rain had come during the night. The garden sparkled with drops of water. Overhead, clear skies. Morning fog, common on the coast of California, had either rolled out while he slept or not come at all. Roses bloomed in reds and pinks. The lawn, deep green from daily watering, ended at the edge of the cliff that overlooked the Pacific, and native grasses grew along the precipice in varying shades of yellow and green, creating a shield from the wind like a man-made structure, but without obscuring the view of the ocean. Over the last several days, working slowly, still trying to figure out the best way to manage with only one arm, he’d constructed a fence from native pine to encompass the garden, and it stood pale and knotty, waiting for whitewashing from Henry’s paintbrush. A tenant was coming with a little boy to stay in the cottage next door and he did not want the small one to fall to the rocks below.

  Late yesterday, a car had come, a Rolls-Royce, delivering his new tenants, a young woman and her little son. The attorney had told him her name: Philippa Rains, and the boy was called Teddy. He’d been out when they’d arrived, buying groceries from town, but on his way home, he’d come upon the departing car, a chauffeur at the wheel. After Henry parked his truck under the shade of the large maple, he’d hesitated, wondering if he should go next door and welcome them, but had decided it was late, nearing dinner, and that he would not disturb them. He had not spoken with Mrs. Rains; the details of the lease were negotiated through an attorney. The client must be rich, Henry decided, for the attorney had given him a check for a year’s rent in entirety. He was curious why a young woman and her son were to live here alone but did not ask. It was most likely a tale like so many women of his generation. Her husband had died in the war, leaving her care to either
his family or hers. Yet, the question lingered. Why would she have picked such a remote location? There were no other neighbors for miles, and Stowaway, five miles away, was nothing more than a village with little to interest a young woman. His sister, Rose, had no interest in living in Stowaway, saying it was a place for old people and tourists. Old people, tourists, and Henry. She hadn’t said, but he knew she was thinking it.

  So now, he was taken aback, having almost forgotten the presence of his new tenants, to see a woman on the lawn. It must be no other than Philippa Rains who sat in one of the lawn chairs he’d put out for her, a pencil between her teeth, gazing at an open pad. She wore a yellow blouse that moved like a ribbon in the breeze and black pants fitted and tapered at the ankles. From this distance and angle, he could not ascertain her stature, other than she was slim with long legs and a rather short torso.

  Pants. Women wore pants now, after the war. No wonder, considering the jobs they’d all taken on while the men were away fighting. There were aspects of life before the war that would never return, and although it was a somewhat frivolous example, that women wore pants now seemed to encompass how the country had changed. He sensed a difference in women now, a streak of independence in their eyes he had not seen before, as if this façade they’d all lived under, that women were the weaker sex, that there were tasks and work only men could do, were no longer lies the collective masses believed. His sister, for one, was happy about pants and having a career. Despite the war being over for a year now, she continued running the company left to them by their father. This had been their arrangement. Rose was to run the company. He was to return to the sea and make his furniture with the one hand he had left. I can’t do it, Rosie, he’d said to her. I can’t sit behind a desk. There had been no disagreement between them. They knew one another, knew their parts. Two parts of a whole, he’d always suspected. He’d gotten the heart and Rose the brain.

  After the visit with Caroline, Henry opened his own studio in Stowaway, buying a brick building long empty, big enough for both a workspace and a modest storefront. He concentrated on design and finish work, and hired a young man back from the war to do what he couldn’t. The townspeople, made up of fishermen, loggers, and farmers, rarely frequented his shop other than to stop in to admire his workmanship and encourage him, treating him like a hero but unable to spend hard fought income for pieces that were not useful. Regardless, his reputation continued to build, after the piece he made for Caroline, with the wealthy of San Francisco keen on custom pieces. With this patronage, he kept busy and earned enough to pay for costs, with enough left over for a comfortable life without dipping into the inheritance left by his father. He didn’t need much, being on his own, and he figured the family money should be saved, not squandered on frivolity. Someday Rose would have children, and the money should be protected for them.

  He drew away from the window with some reluctance. A beautiful woman on his lawn was not an everyday occurrence. Perhaps later he would introduce himself, offer his services, and explain about the lack of paint on the fence. First, however, he must get cleaned up and fill his empty belly with sustenance before leaving for his studio. He was working on a commissioned piece for a wealthy widow in San Francisco, taking his time to ensure fine craftsmanship. She’d asked for a walnut wood cabinet to display her collection of dozens of teapots, gathered from her travels around the globe. Well on the way, he was in the final stages of the finishing work, sanding the wood until it was like silk beneath his fingers.

  After bathing, carefully avoiding the sight of his torso in the mirror, he dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt. The right arm of all his shirts had been shortened by Mrs. Thomas, stitched straight across like a hem on pants. In the kitchen, he put eggs on the stove to boil and made a pot of coffee in the percolator. When he’d moved in months ago, most of his mother’s kitchen items were still there, hiding in cabinets. He’d pulled them out one by one, cleaning or polishing as needed, before lovingly setting them back in their places. The twin houses were built during the summer of 1931, and his mother had been thrifty, not only because they were in the middle of the Great Depression, but because it was in her nature. Growing up in modest circumstances in a mill town up north, she had never quite adjusted to both the wealth and generosity of her husband. Thus, the original appliances had stayed, despite the changes of the modern age, including the percolator, which he now filled with water, then scooped coffee into the top.

  Rose asked every time she came to visit if he would like to change out a few things, join the modern era, as she put it, worried about his potential starvation. He politely dismissed the idea, preferring his mother’s old pans and dishes. They seemed familiar, made him feel safe, and evoked memories of happy times. He abhorred the idea that the horrific years of the war were the only recollections that he would carry forth.

  The kitchen itself was small, in equal proportion to the rest of the house, without adornment or opulence, but spacious enough for Henry’s purposes. A vase of roses gathered yesterday had opened and their sweet scent filled the room, mixing with the aroma of the percolating coffee. The original appliances, installed by his father in 1932, included an electric stove and refrigerator, and a deep sink set before the window so that the person washing the dishes might glance up to view the sea. A square table, made of a dark cherry, had been Henry’s gift to his mother after he’d learned his trade, every inch of wood carved, grooved, and sanded with love. Now, he lifted a corner of the yellow and white gingham tablecloth and rubbed his thumb on the smooth wood.

  What would be the best way to greet the young woman? Would she like a cup of coffee? Should he bring one to her, or ask her if she would like one? Some people didn’t drink coffee. Maybe she was a tea drinker? Did he have tea? He opened the pantry and scanned the shelves: flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, yeast, a loaf of sourdough bread—fresh yesterday from Stowaway’s only bakery. Perhaps he should offer her a slice of buttered bread and a bit of Mrs. Thomas’s strawberry jam? He could explain to her where the Thomas’s farm was located, even offer to take her for a visit so that she might meet them. Given that she was in the company of men most days, Mrs. Thomas would be thrilled to meet another woman, especially now that Henry’s mother was gone. Perhaps it would help distract her from her grief over William. The little boy might cheer her. Or would it have the opposite effect? Remind her of her only son lost to war?

  He opened the refrigerator and grabbed a full jar of jam, along with the loaf of bread, and set them on the table. How best to present his offering? A basket with a pretty cloth? He needed a woman to advise him. Men were no good at these things. Again, he opened the pantry and reached to the top shelf where a basket his mother used for picnics huddled under a cloth to keep it from collecting dust. He set the bread, jam, and fresh butter inside, covering them with a yellow tea towel.

  The sun blinded him as he stepped outside. He hesitated, letting his eyes adjust to the light. Mrs. Rains was still sketching, but perhaps sensing his presence, she set her pencil aside and turned in his direction. She stood. Too thin. And fragile, like the sea breeze might knock her to her knees at any moment.

  “Mrs. Rains?” he asked.

  “Yes. Mr. Sayer?” She put out her small and very pale hand. Her fingernails were cut short and painted red. This close, he smelled her perfume: a mixture of gardenias and vanilla. Her gaze skirted to his missing arm and away a split second later. Then, her cheeks turned pink.

  He held the basket, therefore unable to take her outstretched hand. Feeling awkward, he set the basket at his feet, but it was too late. She’d withdrawn her hand. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Rains. I brought you bread. And homemade jam and butter.”

  “Did your wife make it?” Her shoes, black, were flat, like ballerina slippers. Tied back with a white string, her dark hair glistened under the sun except for the strands that had come loose and danced about her face.

  “Oh no. I have no wife. Mrs. Thomas made it. She and her husband
live just up the road a mile or two. They’re old friends of mine.” He pointed in the direction of the Thomas’s farm. “You can’t see it from here, but you passed it on your way to our cottages—the white farmhouse.”

  “The one with the enormous porch?” she asked.

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  “It made me think of my home in Iowa. Aren’t porches lovely?”

  “I think so,” he said. She was lovely. Pale skin against dark hair, nose dusted with nutmeg-colored freckles, a perfect row of white teeth. Small features except for enormous brown eyes that were almond shaped and long-lashed. Her blouse, a filmy material, shuddered in the breeze, occasionally pressing against her small breasts. No older than twenty-five, but possibly younger. Her was face unlined, taut and well-scrubbed, with a splash of red lipstick and rouge on her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to welcome you yesterday,” he said. “I work in town and usually don’t come home until it’s time for supper.”

  “What do you do? For work?”

  “I’m a woodworker. Furniture mostly.”

  “Are the pieces in my cottage yours?”

  “Most. Yes. I made them before I left for the war. My mother fretted for years about the state of the place, that the furniture should be nicer for our renters. I’m a bit out of practice as a landlord.”

  “So far, everything’s been wonderful,” she said. “The key was just where you said it would be.”

  “You won’t need it. No one locks their door around here.”

  She smiled and brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “Like my hometown.” He stole a glance at her left hand: no wedding ring.

  “Where’s your little boy?” he asked.

  “Inside. Having a nap. He had a tantrum this morning, indicating to me he needed more rest. Yesterday was a long day and I couldn’t get him to settle when it was time for him to go to sleep.”