Sins of the Mother

by Megan Mollson

  She was beginning to learn that whenever Ivy got impatient or lost her temper, bad things happened. The last thing they needed was for Ivy to antagonize Daniel. He didn’t need much motivation to clam up and stop talking completely. Besides, even the smallest details might end up being useful.

  “Well, it’s probably because he left early. And I know for a fact that James was a jealous man. So, imagine what would happen if he found out that his wife kept love letters from another man?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Once it became apparent that Daniel didn’t have anything else to tell them, the trio headed back to the farm. Zasha felt apprehensive about seeing Tom after their argument. She thought about what she should say and cringed when she imagined what her parents might say if they found out what she had done. Her father would get stern and lecture her about the importance of looking ahead, while her mother would be silent and disapproving.

  It occurred to her that whenever it came to her relationship with Tom, their parents were always somehow involved. It had always seemed normal to her, but now she was beginning to think that maybe a relationship should be about the two people involved. Were they making things more difficult than they needed to be?

  “I want to know what was in those letters and if James knew that they existed,” Ivy said, dragging Zasha out of her thoughts. “And if James left the meeting earlier than everyone else, why are we only hearing about it now?”

  “There are a million reasons why he might’ve left the meeting earlier than everyone else,” Zasha said, rubbing her face tiredly. “We have to take Daniel’s words with a pinch of salt. He may say that he was over Mary, but we don’t know how true that is. Besides, he looks like the type who’d point fingers at someone else if it suited his cause.”

  “That’s a valid point,” Ivy said thoughtfully.

  “Is this what you two do all day?” Sebastian asked incredulously. “Talk to people and make up new theories? I thought it might be a little more exciting than this.”

  “Sorry to disappoint,” Zasha said sourly. “Not everything is quite as exciting as bootlegging. You know, if the police weren’t so preoccupied with hunting down certain illegal operations, maybe they’d have time to investigate murders.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that, sweetheart, you should tell the government.” Sebastian grinned cheekily at Zasha when she looked at him in shock.

  “Do you think James will let us search the farmhouse?” Ivy asked, preventing Zasha from responding.

  “I don’t think so,” Sebastian said with a shrug. “He’s a private man. He hates it when people stick their nose in his business. Besides, I think he’s going to be tired after a long day.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Zasha said as they made it to the farmhouse gate. She pointed to where Mr. Turner was getting into the car with an overnight bag. She waved at him, and he gestured for them to come closer.

  “I don’t think I got to see you much at the service, sorry about that,” James said dully. “It was a busy day.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Mr. Turner,” Zasha said, waving her hand dismissively. “We understand. Are you heading back to the hospital?”

  “Yes,” he said with a quick nod. “Dorothy arranged a place for me to stay that’s closer to the hospital. The farmhands know how to manage the place while I’m gone. And Dorothy said she’ll clean up after everyone’s gone.”

  “We’ll help out with that,” Zasha promised with a kind smile. “Evie needs you now. Don’t worry about anything else.”

  He nodded, his shoulders drooping slightly. When his gaze met Ivy’s, she braced herself for a hostile reaction, but he nodded at her and started the truck.

  “It doesn’t look like we’ll have to wait long to search the house,” Sebastian said, gesturing at the house where there were only a few people left milling around.

  Zasha scanned all the faces, her heart beating faster while she looked for one in particular. Although she dreaded finding him, she knew that it would be worse if he caught her off-guard.

  “He’s not here,” Sebastian said, rolling his eyes at her. She glowered at him, but the tension in her stomach eased somewhat.

  “I think we need to split up and find those letters,” Ivy said firmly. “We don’t know if we’ll be allowed back in the house any time soon, and we can’t let anyone know what we’re doing. The last thing we need is for the town gossip mill to start circulating that Mary received love letters from Daniel.”

  “Why don’t we wait until everyone is gone?” Zasha asked, wishing that she could sit down for a bit.

  “We don’t know when these people will leave,” Ivy said. “Besides, we don’t have time to wait. We’ve wasted enough time as it is.”

  “Fine,” Zasha grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest.

  Together, the three of them hurried inside and split up. Zasha was careful not to arouse any suspicion and avoided any questions by claiming that she needed to use the bathroom. The first thing she needed to do was find where Mary might’ve hidden the letters. Instead of going to the main bedroom, Zasha headed up to the attic.

  When she and Evelyn were children, they used to spend hours up in the old dusty attic. It was filled with various old items that dated back to when the Turners first built the house over fifty years ago. The girls thought of the attic as their club house and enjoyed rifling through all the forgotten objects. Zasha knew from experience that there would be plenty of hiding spaces for Mary’s letters.

  The attic was dustier than she remembered and Zasha had to stifle a sneeze as she accidentally knocked over a box full of baby toys and released a cloud of dust into the air. The room was smaller than Zasha remembered, and the only source of light were a few sunbeams that filtered through the single boarded up window.

  “You can do this, Zasha,” she whispered to herself, looking around at the stacks of boxes. “Look for the spot with the least dust.”

  That proved more difficult that she imagined, as it looked like no one had been in the attic for years. She decided to make her way to the back of the attic and was surprised when she found what looked like a pathway. Someone had arranged the stacks to ensure easy access to the back of the room.

  Along the way, she found that someone had been looking through some of the boxes. As soon as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she found spots where dust had been disturbed. She trailed her hand along the boxes, looking for ones that had been opened.

  One box was full of baby clothes, and when she lifted a lacy pink dress out of the box, she remembered the first time she had seen it. She had been around seven and had come to visit Evelyn. Little Clara had come bouncing out of the house, proudly showing off her pretty dress. Tatyana had been insanely jealous and had begged their mother to make a similar one. Zasha’s heart clenched as she remembered Clara’s round chubby cheeks and curly halo of blonde hair.

  “Little Clarabell,” Zasha whispered, a tear running down her cheek. “What happened to you?”

  She forced herself to move on, folding the pink dress and shoving it back into the box. The next box contained a bunch of old art projects from school. She couldn’t stop herself from sorting through them and smiling at all the memories. Her breath caught in her throat when she read over the familiar loopy writing.

  Back when the girls were in fifth grade, they had a nasty fight. No one could remember what it was about, but it looked like the girls wouldn’t be able to patch things up. Everything changed when one day the girls came back to school and surprised everyone by announcing that they were still friends. No one expected it, and they weren’t sure how things had been patched up, but they were just glad things had gone back to normal.

  Only Zasha and Evelyn knew how that fight ended. They were both stubborn, but at some point, they realized that they missed each other. Zasha decided that she would swallow her pride for the sake of the friendship and wrote an apology letter. She also baked some cookies and decided to
take them to the farm. On the way to the Turner farm, she passed Evelyn on her bicycle. The two of them stopped and looked at each other in shock. They had both gotten off and looked at each other sheepishly. As Zasha reached for the card and cookies, Evelyn also picked up a card and a pie from her front basket.

  The girls had started laughing and hugged each other tightly. After that, whenever the girls fought, they always baked each other cookies or pies.

  Now, standing in the dark and dusty attic, Zasha was left with the original card in her hands. It was a simple piece of paper, but it meant so much to her. She clenched her eyes shut, but she couldn’t stop the tears from escaping.

  “Zasha!” Ivy called, climbing into the attic, “Did you… Oh… What’s wrong?”

  Zasha didn’t say anything but handed the card to Ivy and sat down on the floor, unable to keep searching. Ivy sighed and looked between Zasha and the card. She seemed to be weighing something over in her mind. After a few seconds, she sat down next to Zasha and put her arm around the younger woman.

  “I know it seems impossible right now, but you’re going to make it through this. And you’re going to be so much stronger because of it.”

  Zasha pulled her knees to her chest and hugged her legs tightly. She was tired of hearing that she would get through it, and that time would heal her eventually. Zasha didn’t want meaningless words, she wanted her best friend. She wanted to find the person who could destroy so many lives so carelessly and make sure that they never walked free again.

  “I know,” Zasha said in annoyance. “I’ll be stronger, and I’ll make it through this. I’ve heard it all. I don’t care about that. I just want them back.”

  Ivy kept quiet, and Zasha worried for a moment that she might’ve offended the investigator. She was about to apologize when Ivy let out a heavy sigh.

  “I know how you feel,” Ivy said, looking down at the floor, her hair fell over her face, obscuring her expression. “I’ve lost people. Too many people. You know what they call us? The lost generation. Hemingway and his pretentious friends. The papers like to romanticize it and the writers like to turn our experiences into something beautiful. They get it wrong though. This will change you. A part of you has been broken, and there’s no fixing it. All you can do is get up and go on. You find a way to cope, and you hold onto it. And if you’re lucky, then you get to help other people cope too.”

  “Is that why you decided to become a P.I.?” Zasha asked, her voice small.

  “There was never any other way for me,” Ivy said with a simple shrug.

  She got to her feet, and Zasha instinctively knew that the moment was over. Although she wanted to sit and wallow for a bit longer, she knew that she had to get up. The two of them silently began searching through the boxes.

  Zasha forced herself not to get caught up in the memories, and methodically searched through the items. When she picked up a stray box, she was surprised to find that it had been perched on a beautiful old dresser. Zasha removed all the boxes to unearth the piece of furniture, and she wondered why the Turners would leave something like that hidden in the attic.

  She opened the drawers but found nothing. As she was sliding the last drawer closed, something caught her eye. This drawer was shallower than the others. Her heart started beating faster, and she put her hand inside and felt around. When her fingers closed around a latch, she pulled and felt something give way. There, under the false bottom of the drawer were a few bright white envelopes.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I think I found them,” Zasha said, her hands shaking slightly as she lifted the letters out of the drawer.

  Up until that moment, it hadn’t seemed real that Mary Turner had a torrid love affair that everyone disapproved of. Evelyn’s mother had always been a passive figure in Zasha’s life. She was always in the background, never doing anything that drew attention to herself. Zasha respected and loved Mrs. Turner, but she had never thought about her best friend’s mother as anything besides a mother and a humble housewife.

  Those few letters proved that Mrs. Turner had been a dynamic person with a whole life that her children knew nothing about. Something clicked in Zasha’s mind, and she realized that what Ivy had been saying all along was true. You could never truly know everything about a person. As these thoughts occurred to Zasha, it felt like her entire world view had been knocked off its axis. What if the killer truly was someone that they knew well and respected? Zasha became acutely aware of her own ignorance and it burnt in her stomach like acid.

  “Well, don’t leave me in suspense,” Ivy said, hurrying up to Zasha. “What do they say?”

  Zasha halved the packet and gave one half to Ivy. She sorted through her half and looked for the most recent letter. Meanwhile, Ivy ripped open the first one and scanned over it.

  “Nothing,” Ivy scoffed. “There’s nothing here. He’s just talking about his life in Union City and how much she would’ve loved it. There’s barely three paragraphs here.”

  “Why would he go through all that effort if he didn’t love her anymore?” Zasha asked thoughtfully, carefully opening the letter. “If he didn’t care, why would he pay for the postage and bother writing about his life?”

  “I don’t know,” Ivy said with a frown. “The story doesn’t make sense, and I don’t think he was completely honest with us.”

  “What a shock,” Zasha said, rolling her eyes. “One of our suspects didn’t tell us the truth.”

  “Is that a hint of sarcasm that I detect?” Ivy asked, narrowing her eyes at Zasha.

  “If you only got a hint, I must not have been doing it right,” Zasha said, the corners of her lips quirking up slightly.

  “You know,” Ivy said, narrowing her eyes slightly at Zasha. “I think when you’re not sad, you must be a lot of fun to be around. There might be someone useful under all this after all.”

  “I’ve been nothing but useful,” Zasha protested, still reading through the letter. “You’d be lost without my help.”

  “Yes, you’re useful here in New Hope,” Ivy admitted, “but that’s not what I meant. I was thinking long-term, honey.”

  “Long-term?” Zasha asked, looking up from the letter with a frown. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what are your plans for the future?” Ivy asked. “If you ever get tired of small-town living, I might be able to find some use for you up in New York city with me.”

  “You mean, you’d want me to work with you?” Zasha asked, her eyes widening in surprise.

  “Well, not with me. For me. I’d be your boss. But yes, I think you could add a lot of value to my enterprise, and it would be a good experience for you.”

  “I don’t think my parents would let me go,” Zasha said, dismissing the notion immediately. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Zasha, how old are you?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Well, honey, in a couple of months, your parents won’t have any say in the matter. Why don’t you think about it? And when you’re ready to give me an answer, we can make it happen.”

  Zasha looked back down at the letter. She had thought it was impossible, but then Ivy made a point that Zasha hadn’t considered yet. What would her decision be if her parents had no say in the matter? She loved them dearly and would never consider making a decision without asking for their advice first, but Ivy was right. The final decision rested with her. The thought was so overwhelming that Zasha pushed it to the back of her mind. She would deal with it later.

  “Look at this,” Zasha said suddenly. “Daniel said he didn’t see Mary when he got back, but this letter is dated a week ago. He references seeing her in the garden, and a conversation they had. He lied to us. And it looks like Mary replied to the letter he sent before this one.”

  “That rat,” Ivy snarled, grabbing the letter from Zasha and quickly reading through it. “That’s why he wanted to only talk to you. He thought he would get more sympathy that way.”

  “Well, don’t I feel special?”
Zasha said, pouting slightly. “The next time we talk to him, I might not be so gentle.”

  “Now do you understand why I’m always on the offensive?” Ivy asked with a chuckle. “If you don’t make them fear you, they think they can take advantage of you. And can we all agree that he deserved to get punched in the face?”

  “I encourage you to do it again,” Zasha said in amusement. “Come on, we can read the rest of those letters later. If we’re up here too long, then someone might realize what’s going on.”

  The two of them hurried downstairs, carefully making sure that no one saw them. When they got to the kitchen, most of the guests had left and Dorothy was already beginning to clean up.

  “I haven’t seen you two around much,” Dorothy said in a friendly tone. “What have you been up to?”

  “I was showing Ivy around the house,” Zasha said quickly. “She was curious.”

  “It’s a beautiful home, isn’t it?” Dorothy asked with a smile. “It’s such a shame the Turners might not be able to live here anymore. You know it’s been their home ever since the family first came to New Hope?”

  “It’s got a lot of history,” Ivy said, lifting her eyebrows up. “I’m impressed.”

  “Oh, there you are, Ms. Morris,” Mr. Hyde said, walking into the kitchen. “I was hoping to speak to you quickly.”

  “Hello, Mr. Hyde,” Ivy said with a sigh. “Are you here to fire me again?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Mr. Hyde said primly. “We might as well work with what we have. I found an important piece of information that I think you should be aware of.”

  “What is it?” Ivy asked with a frown.

  “Could we speak in private?” Mr. Hyde asked, looking uncomfortably at Zasha and Dorothy who were listening intently.

  “Zasha’s been helping me with the investigation,” Ivy said with a shrug. “Whatever you want to say to me, you can say in front of her too.”

  “I don’t think that would be appropriate,” Mr. Hyde said with a frown. “This is highly sensitive…”