The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus

by Jaime Jo Wright

  Chandler stared at her. A pathetic form of humanity, captured by her own need to hide, to hide who she was and what she’d done. To hide to protect her children’s future. In the end, Margie had ruined lives. She had concocted a story of what-ifs and could-be’s that had never actually happened. The roundabout relation to Richard Ripley—the Watchman—and Margie was certain her children, even a further generation removed, would bear the scars of Ripley’s sins.

  Maybe Margie was right. Maybe it would have happened. But at least . . . at least she could have shared the burden with Denny and Linda—even Hank. At least they would all have been alive and able to write a new future for themselves, to draw on the strength of the family that circus history claimed was once a close-knit community.

  “Is he all right?” Margie pressed.

  Chandler didn’t answer. Instead, she bent for her purse and drew it up over her shoulder. She nodded her thanks to Margie’s lawyer and caught the eye of the officer in the corner, who moved forward to lead Chandler from the room.

  At the doorway, Chandler turned to address Margie. “If you had only asked for help, Margie . . .” Chandler gave a sigh of defeat with every ounce of truth in her words. “I would have been there for you.”

  PIPPA

  He was dead.

  Richard Ripley had been found in the costume house, a pair of scissors lodged in his back, with Patty Luchent hanging above him like the ultimate scene of horror.

  Pippa and her mother, Victoria, sat side by side on the settee. People had come and gone through the parlor, offering their condolences, expressing their shock, and asking questions. So many questions.

  Why?

  Have they found who killed him?

  What reason have the police uncovered?

  There were no answers, but deep inside, Pippa remembered Georgiana’s proclamation that she would expose the Watchman. She recalled the familiar voices and then the scuffle that had begun when Pippa had careened down the steps and lost her own senses in the madness.

  There were certain facts that lined up all too coincidentally. Her father often visited the circus throughout the summer at its various stops. He had been in St. Louis, where Jake’s sister, Bridgette, had been murdered. He was cold, calculating, and oppressive toward her and her mother.

  Yet there was also nothing to say any of that wasn’t pure coincidence. And to tarnish the Ripley name and leave her mother in ruins . . .

  Pippa was used to being quiet. She had been that way all her life. Richard Ripley had taught her as much. She had a feeling she wouldn’t be alone in her silence this time. That Georgiana Farnsworth would temper her voice going forward, knowing more than she would admit. Someone had to have shoved the scissors into Richard Ripley . . . the circus would remain a place of secrets. The questionable kind. The kind that even if told, would still have inquiry circling around them. Answers they would never be able to firmly resolve.

  Pippa felt her mother’s gloved hand come to rest on top of hers. She met Victoria’s gaze. The beautiful lines of her mother’s face were marred by weariness that came with planning a funeral, laying to rest a spouse, and sifting through the effects of what they left behind. Forrest had been helpful. Very quick to step into the role of executor for Bonaventure Circus. He would be honest and careful with her mother, Pippa knew. Even so, he would never be anything more to her than her father’s partner.

  Had Forrest suspected her father? Was that why he’d been hell-bent on protecting her? Perhaps. Either way, protecting her from the Watchman—whoever he was—was Forrest’s excuse for why he and Jake had finally ceased their fisticuffs at the Autumn Formal. That at the last possible moment they’d joined forces and arrived at the circus together. They were not comrades by any means. Only united by the mere fact that Pippa’s mother had cried for them to stop and for someone to go after her daughter. Now Forrest seemed remarkably defensive of Georgiana. A bewildering turn of opinion. That they seemed connected somehow was an avenue Pippa didn’t wish to explore further. That Forrest might share Georgiana’s secrets, might know more than he was willing to admit . . .

  It was unforgivable from any angle, and Pippa had no desire to try to sift through it and find more truth. She was already overwhelmed with the truths that had been revealed. Of Benard. Of—God help her—Clive! Pippa had yet to face her birth father. Word had come that he would make it. The hospital was confident of this. But what lies had Clive told her all these years? Feigning ignorance and illness to excuse his knowledge of who Pippa was?

  “Pippa?”

  She lifted her eyes to Victoria Ripley. The woman’s fingers wrapped around hers, and Pippa dropped her gaze to them. It was the first time, in a very long time, that she recalled her mother touching her gently.

  “I am so sorry,” Victoria whispered. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears.

  Pippa was unsure of what Victoria meant. “For what?”

  Victoria’s breath was shaky, and she looked up to the ceiling for a long moment before giving an answer. “He tolerated you because of me, Pippa. I couldn’t—I tried to protect you from him. But, in doing so, I pulled far away from you.”

  Pippa squeezed her mother’s hand. “He never hurt me.” Good heavens, did his own wife suspect him too?

  Victoria nodded. “Yes. He was a hard man to love, Pippa. But he did allow me you.”

  Pippa stilled at the words.

  Victoria’s soft smile burrowed its way into Pippa’s soul. “I wanted a child . . . so badly. I begged him. I begged him to let me keep you. I’ve always seen you, Pippa. You’ve always been just a heartbeat away from mine. But your father—he was a jealous man. I couldn’t allow him to resent you more than he already did, by showering my affections on you. On you, my lovely, my beautiful daughter.”

  A tear escaped Pippa’s eye. She wasn’t sure how to curl herself around the words Victoria spoke. Around the admission that her mother had hidden so much more from her than she’d realized. That, after all this time, she had been remarkably and loyally loved by her mother, who had sacrificed for Pippa’s own sake.

  That neither of them would miss Richard Ripley was not a relief, nor did it bring peace. That he had wedged between them for years, that he had commanded and lorded his strength over their bond and effectively stained it brought an agony for which Pippa was unprepared. The lost years, the lost memories, the not knowing that she was, after all, wanted. By someone.

  Victoria shifted on the settee and faced Pippa. She ran her hands down the length of Pippa’s black chiffon sleeves, then cupped Pippa’s face with her hand. “No more, my dear. I have prayed for this day. Not this outcome, but this day, for years. I knew God would bring you to me in time. I had only to remain patient and trust that He could work where others couldn’t. That He could overcome what we all made so dreadfully wrong.”

  Pippa leaned into her mother’s hand. “How is it you think God cares about us so?”

  Her question was honest. Achingly so. If she retraced her life, she saw only lies, desperation, loneliness, and yet now her mother saw rescue, hope, and fruition to long hours of beseeching a higher Power.

  Victoria’s lips thinned in a solemn smile. She reached down and took Pippa’s hands in hers. “How is it you think that God doesn’t? When you could have been orphaned, instead you became mine. When you could have been hurt, instead your father merely commanded you. When you could have been scoffed at and mocked, instead you became respected and admired. He has taken back His justice and is making right His plan, in spite of what man intended.”

  Pippa nodded, though she didn’t say more. She couldn’t say more. For while Victoria’s words made sense and offered a kind of comfort she hadn’t expected, they also left her with the blatant question that had yet to be answered.

  How could her father, Clive, love God so much, and his daughter so little?

  Chapter forty-one

  She would finally face Clive. But not the little man of the circus whom Pippa knew. She would face
her father. Pippa paused outside the door of Clive’s room at the small Bluff River Hospital. The smells of medicines and antiseptics mixed with the familiar tang of cigar and spice.

  Jake gave her a short nod. “Go.”

  Pippa paused, her gaze roving his face. Bruised, he looked down at her. Jake smiled then. A lazy smile, his unlit cigar drooping in the corner of his mouth.

  “I’ll be here. Waiting.”

  “Are you all right?” Pippa whispered, her words thick with meaning. Bridgette. Closure to Jake’s sister’s assault.

  There was so much wickedness. It was hard to know if evil had been silenced or simply arrested for the moment. She supposed evil would always lurk in the shadows, unrepentant, in its own hiding of sorts.

  Jake bent and pressed his lips to her forehead. A long, lingering kiss of weary understanding. “I will be,” he said. But there was struggle in his face that told her it would not be resolved with the imprisonment of Benard or the ceasing of the work of the Watchman. Another kiss, this time to Pippa’s temple. “If justice were simple,” he added, “we wouldn’t struggle with closure. I’m not sure I’ll ever have it, to be honest. If Ernie hadn’t pulled me off Benard, I—” Jake paused, choked—“well, I guess I got to leave God something to do, and instead I need to make a fresh start.”

  “Patty doesn’t get her fresh start.” Tears burned Pippa’s eyes.

  “No.” Jake’s forehead rested against hers. “But we do.” He stepped away and tipped his head toward the door. “This moment isn’t for me. I need to check on Lily—Ernie said she’s going to be all right.”

  “Is Georgiana . . . ?” Pippa’s question was left hanging between them. Jake didn’t know what Pippa had overheard that night. Regardless, Pippa was still worried that Georgiana would take advantage of the current weakness of the circus and capitalize on her cause.

  “Georgiana has been quiet.” Jake ran his fingers through his hair, thoroughly mussing it and giving him a rakish appearance. “She would be a fool to go after Bonaventure now. In the wake of your father’s death, there is much community sympathy for your loss. Forrest will—he’ll capitalize on that, and Bonaventure will ride the rails again next summer. With Lily.”

  Pippa gave in to her impulse, embracing him and breathing deep of his scent. Pulling back, she whispered, “Thank you.”

  “Of course,” he replied, then gave his customary shrug.

  “I need to go now.”

  Jake looked past her to Clive’s hospital door. Then he locked eyes with her. “It’s not easy to protect the ones we love, Pippa. We all fight for them in our own way. Don’t be too quick to judge the avenues by which we do so. We are only human.”

  Pippa pushed open the door.

  The room was white. From the ceiling to the floor. The bed looked empty until her eyes rested on its midpoint, where Clive’s feet poked up beneath the blankets. His eyes were closed, outlined by black bruises. Stitches lined the side of his head, and his arm rested in a cast.

  Pippa sucked in a shuddered breath. Clive. He had known—all these years as she’d grown up before his eyes—that she was his daughter. He knew she searched for him. Why hadn’t he confessed he was her father?

  Clive’s eyes fluttered open, as far as they could beneath the swelling of his eyelids. He reached out his good hand. “Pippa . . .” His voice sounded raw. She didn’t move. She couldn’t. “I’m sorry.” While he said the words, Pippa struggled to accept them.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Clive pulled his hand back. “Sit.”

  There was nowhere to sit but in the chair by his side. Pippa took it but moved it back a few inches so she was out of his reach. Clive turned his head on his pillow.

  “I made a grievous error.” Clive swallowed. It seemed laborious, as if it pained him. “You were that error.”

  Pippa pulled at a thread on the lace cuff of her sleeve. Those words smarted.

  Clive corrected himself. “Leaving you was my error.”

  “Why did you?” The words forced their way through Pippa’s throat. “Was it my leg? You didn’t want a deformed child?”

  Clive’s eyebrows drew together, and he slammed his palm on the bed. “Look at me! Do you think I would judge your malady?”

  His passion stunned Pippa. She slumped in the chair and looked at him. Clive struggled to sit up, pillows dropping behind his back as he did so.

  “It was a miracle your mother loved me. She was beautiful. She was . . . normal, at least as most men would consider it. When she had you, I held you in my arms and I didn’t see your leg. No. I saw that you were perfect.”

  As Clive ground out the words, Pippa met his eyes, staring intently now at her father. She had never been described that way before.

  Clive shifted toward her. His wince made him stop, yet he continued his confession. “There I was. Widowed. A dwarf. A circus sideshow, and my baby girl was an average human being. I knew she would grow up to be beautiful like her mother who’d died giving birth to her child.” Clive reached out as if to touch her, then drew back his hand. “I couldn’t keep you. Raise you in my world? Allow you to be ridiculed because of who I am? Who wants his child to have to bear that sort of title? To have society wave the banner over her head that she is different somehow?”

  Clive waved his good arm down the short length of his body. His words choked. He coughed. His mouth pursed, and his eyes speared Pippa in her seat.

  “I couldn’t face the truth that you might grow up to be ashamed of me. Embarrassed by who I am. That you are the daughter of the circus dwarf. I lost sight of who God had created me to be, and of what beauty God could bring from the daughter He’d given me.

  “I met with Richard Ripley. I knew that he and his wife were childless. He agreed to take you, but I asked to make it appear as if you’d been abandoned. That way, you couldn’t find me. You wouldn’t know my shame. But now you do. And as it turns out, my shame is not my height, or the proportion of my limbs, or my face. My shame is that I gave you away.”

  Pippa focused on her cuff, pulled some more on the thread, and unraveled another delicate loop of lace. It was a distraction, helping to keep her feelings at bay. She couldn’t look at Clive at the moment. “Why didn’t you tell me when I asked? When you knew I was looking for you? And how did you not know that Benard—that he was watching me all these years, with you right beside him?”

  “Oh, Benard.” Closing his eyes, Clive lay his head back on his pillow. “I didn’t know about Benard. He hid it well. I only knew that he grieved for you, just as I had. I didn’t even realize he had followed me the day I left you at the Ripleys, that he had known where you went. I just knew you were fragile, and if I told you I was your father, it would only confuse and hurt you. I had to protect you. I did so with my silence. I was wrong. My silence was always my way of trying to protect you.”

  “You were wrong.” Pippa swiped at her tears. “I would never have been ashamed of you.”

  “Benard was a child when he joined the small circus band we were with at the time.” Clive opened his eyes again. “For a while he was like our son, more so your mother’s. She loved him. And when you were born, he helped me care for you the few days after your mother died. He shared my grief.

  “After I left you at the Ripley house, Benard and I grew apart. I was drowning in my grief. I didn’t realize that he was too. I didn’t know he’d slipped a toy in your basket when you were a baby and I left you. I didn’t know he’d spoken with your mother in the hours after you were born, before she slipped away from us. I had no idea he’d vowed to watch over you or developed a bond with you as a baby, which would later become a sick sort of obsession with him. Benard was gentle, loyal. But he was broken, and it turned him into a wicked man.”

  Pippa watched Clive’s throat work. Benard’s duplicity, his acts of violence had wounded Clive far worse than he’d injured her. Clive loved Benard, she could see it. A part of her was jealous for the fatherly love he’d bestowed on som
eone on whom it was wasted when she had longed for this her entire life.

  When Clive spoke again, Pippa raised her head and met his earnest gaze.

  “Please forgive me. You were . . . are loved, Pippa. Very, very much.”

  Pippa stared into her birth father’s eyes and saw in them the very pain she had carried. The rejection she assumed had followed her entire existence. Pippa thought of Jake, of his past. She saw Richard Ripley’s hard face. She thought of Forrest, his tendency toward arrogance, but also the protectiveness he’d shown her. Of Franny and her desire to be accepted by Pippa. Even Georgiana Farnsworth and her campaign to bring awareness to the abused and unloved—and maybe her own secrets she would carry with her for years to come.

  “Come here.” Clive reached out his hand. Pippa rose, the lace cuff a long ball of thread in her hand. She dropped it and laid her head on her father’s small chest.

  “I forgive you,” she whispered through her tears.

  Clive’s hand stroked her head, the way a father tended his daughter. Loving. Protective. He had been willing to give his life for her. He had given his entire life for her.

  “You are a gift, Pippa Ripley.” Clive’s words breathed through her heart into her soul. “And I’ve never lost sight of you.”

  Chapter forty-two

  CHANDLER

  She had removed herself from the group gathered in the backyard around the picnic table, and now Chandler stared out the window, watching them all. Cru stood over the grill, flipping hamburgers, his hoodie sweatshirt spotted with grease that must have spit from the meat. Lottie and her mom sat opposite each other, hands holding mugs of hot apple cider. Lottie threw her head back and laughed at something Mom said. They seemed to get along well. Sure, they had their differences of faith and foundation, but that didn’t eliminate the beauty of kindness.

  Chandler’s dad raked a pile of leaves, and as fast as he piled them, Peter launched into the pile, throwing the leaves into the air like confetti. Denny sat in a lawn chair a bit away from the group, balancing a bottle of beer he’d smuggled in to the “very prohibition-style picnic” and sucked on his cigarette. There was contentment on his face, but Chandler saw sadness there too. The police had finally released Linda’s remains for burial, and a memorial service was planned for the following week.