The Mill River Recluse (39 page)

“Sure thing,” Father O’Brien said. Fitz grinned and headed toward a podium at the front of the meeting room. As the elected moderator, it was his responsibility to chair the meeting.

Alone again, Father O’Brien looked over the crowd. Kyle Hansen was there, sitting with his daughter on one side and Claudia Simon on the other. Rowen was such a doll, chattering away to Kyle and Claudia as they looked down at her with bemusement. Father O’Brien was grateful that the little girl still had her father, especially knowing what Fitz had revealed to him.

“So, Miss Simon,” Rowen said, looking at Claudia across her father’s lap, “are you going to marry my Dad?”

Father O’Brien had to stifle a laugh as he watched Claudia’s face puckering and reddening. “Rowen, honey, you’re not supposed to ask questions like that,” Kyle said to his daughter, smiling. “It’s embarrassing.” Claudia was smiling, too, although she looked more flustered than anything else.

“Sorry,” Rowen said, more to Kyle than Claudia. “But Dad?”

“Yeah?”

Rowen dropped her voice almost to a whisper, as if sharing a special father-daughter secret. “I like Miss Simon a lot. And if you get married, she could be my new mom, and I wouldn’t have to call her ‘Miss Simon’ anymore.”

“Is that so?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well,” Kyle said, with mock seriousness, “I’ll definitely take that into consideration. You know, Miss Simon and I haven’t known each other too long, so I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. But, I’ll tell you something.”

“What?”

“I like her a lot, too.”

“Could everyone take their seats?” Fitz called from the podium. There was no microphone, and he spoke loudly.

Father O’Brien slipped out of the doorway. He passed the crowded front row of chairs, stopping briefly to greet a middle-aged man in a gray suit. As he expected, the last row of chairs was still almost empty, and he lowered himself into a seat. The din of conversation dropped off as others sat down. Fitz took up a gavel at the podium and rapped three times.

“The meeting will come to order,” Fitz said. “I’d like to welcome everyone to the annual Mill River Town Meeting. Our agenda is much the same as in past years. We’ll elect town officers for the year, then debate and vote on the town and school budgets. Oh, and I believe Father O’Brien has an announcement he’d like to make. My Ruthie and some of our other fine ladies are working to set up our potluck supper, which we’ll have after the meeting.”

At Fitz’s mention of his announcement, many people turned in their seats to look back at him. Father O’Brien only smiled. The room began to buzz again.

“Our first order of business is the election of the Town Clerk,” Fitz said, but Father O’Brien was already tuning out the police chief’s voice. He was thinking about the envelope in his breast pocket and the brown package in his lap. Subconsciously, he pressed a hand against his pocket to make sure that the envelope was there. He felt it and his reading glasses, too, and was reassured.

The meeting passed in a blur. From time to time, Father O’Brien heard Fitz’s voice booming, “Is there any further discussion?” or sometimes, “Forward your ballots.” There was heated debate over whether there was enough money in the school budget to hire an additional teacher’s aide and purchase new books for the library. In the end, the library lost.

About an hour and a half into the meeting, Ruth Fitzgerald and several other women began setting warmed covered dishes on a long table on one side of the meeting room. There were hams and fried chicken, homemade stews and baked beans and potato salad. The long table could accommodate only a fraction of the numerous side dishes and casseroles, and the many desserts would have to wait in the kitchen until later.

From his seat at the rear of the meeting room, Father O’Brien could see the heads turning toward the long table. Even the adults were starting to fidget and whisper. He was wondering whether Ruth had brought any tart cherry pie for the potluck supper when he heard Fitz ask, “Is there any further business before we hear from Father O’Brien?”

The room grew very still as the curious faces turned back toward him again.

Fitz waited a few moments. Hearing no requests, he stepped out from behind the podium. “It’s all yours, Father,” he said, and sat down in a chair off to the side.

Father O’Brien rose and walked to the front of the meeting room. At the podium, he felt the expectant attention of four hundred people. He straightened his shoulders and looked out at the many familiar faces. He had been alone in front of a crowd so many times during his life, and yet, this time was different. The enormous sense of responsibility and loyalty he felt threatened to crush him into the old wooden floor.

He placed the brown package on the podium in front of him before taking his reading glasses and the envelope out of his pocket. With trembling hands, he unfolded his glasses.

It was time.

“About a month ago,” he began, “Mill River lost one of its longtime residents. Mary McAllister lived in the white marble house on the hill—all of us have seen it a thousand times. But not more than one or two of you ever saw Mary. That was the way she wanted it, but not for reasons you might imagine.

“I knew Mary well. I was introduced to her and her husband’s family shortly after I was assigned to St. John’s. That was more than sixty years ago. Mary’s wedding was one of the first I ever officiated. Not even a year after that wedding, she’d lost her father and her husband. Her husband was abusive, and he disfigured her before he himself was killed in a car accident.

“You may be wondering why Mary was so reclusive. You see, Mary suffered from social anxiety disorder. She was terribly nervous around other people, and it only became worse as she got older. Physically, she went to pieces around strangers. When I first met her, doctors didn’t know how to help someone with her condition. It wasn’t even recognized as an illness. Back then, people with Mary’s condition were usually put into mental hospitals and rarely got out.”

Father O’Brien paused. The people facing him were listening attentively. They appeared—at least temporarily—to have forgotten the feast covering the long table.

“But Mary was lucky. Her husband’s grandfather, Conor McAllister, was a kind and decent man. He loved Mary as a granddaughter. He felt responsible for what his grandson had done to her, and he made sure that no one sent her away to a mental hospital. Conor gave her enough money to enable her to be financially secure for the rest of her life. He also asked me to look after Mary once he was gone. He was old, he said, and worried that once he died, Mary would have no one.

“I was hesitant to make that promise. I was a young man then, barely a priest, trying to tend to my first congregation, and here I was being asked to look after someone for the unforeseeable future. I knew there was no guarantee—in fact, it was unlikely—that I would be in Mill River all of my life, or Mary’s. But I knew Mary had no one but Conor, and Conor’s request was impossible to ignore. I became a priest in part to help people. And so, I promised to do what I could, for as long as I could.

“Over time, Mary came to trust me and we became friends. In fact, she was like a sister to me. For a long while after Conor died, I was the only person that she would see. Our friendship lasted more than sixty years, until she lost her battle with pancreatic cancer last month.

“You might ask how a person could live in almost total isolation for that long. I asked myself that question so many times and I have yet to come up with an answer. I do know that at first, Mary was happy being alone. After what had happened to her, she needed to feel safe, and she felt completely secure up in her marble house. She didn’t trust people, either, at least in those early years, and she found plenty to keep herself busy. But as the years passed, she wanted more and more to overcome her anxiety. When she finally worked up the courage to venture out, the experience hurt her terribly. So, she resigned herself to spending the rest of her life in the security of her home. She loved her horses and her Siamese cat, and she struck up an unexpected friendship late in her life.” He smiled at Daisy, sitting rapt with attention, and the little round woman grinned back at him. “She especially loved to read. She learned so much from her books. I think she had one of the sharpest minds I’ve ever known, even though she never finished high school.

“But the reason I asked to speak to you today is because there are a few things that Mary, and I, thought you should know.”

At once, the slight fidgeting that had begun to ripple through the crowd in the meeting room ceased.

“Mary McAllister knew all of you. She used to watch out her windows to see what was going on in town. She read the Gazette and listened to the radio. She watched certain television programs, even though just seeing people on the screen sometimes frightened her. But most of what she knew about you she learned from me.”

A murmur of concern rose up from the townspeople. He could sense what must be going through their minds.

“You needn’t worry,” Father O’Brien said. “I assure you that I told Mary nothing in violation of any of my vows or duties as a priest. I only provided her information much as one friend or neighbor might do for another.”

Father O’Brien scanned the faces watching him. He smiled and looked into the eyes of Ruth Fitzgerald as she stood by the long table. “Mary knew you, Mrs. Fitzgerald. You did her shopping for years without ever having met her, and you saw her only once, but she knew you. She knew when you and Fitz had your twin girls. She saw their picture in the Gazette and said they were two of the sweetest babies she had ever seen. After you opened the bakery, she grudgingly admitted that your tart cherry pie was better than hers.”

The meeting room tittered, and he shifted his gaze to Kyle Hansen. “Mary knew you, Officer Hansen. She knew that you left a hard-earned position in Boston to make sure that your daughter could grow up in a safe place with the one parent she had left. Mary thought that that kind of love was wonderful, and so often lacking today.” Kyle smiled and looked down at Rowen seated beside him. His ears were bright pink.

Claudia Simon sat on the other side of Kyle. Her eyes grew wide as he addressed her next. “Mary knew you, Miss Simon, even though you hadn’t lived in Mill River for more than a few months. She knew you were an elementary school teacher and a good one at that. She often said to me that without teachers like you, she never would have learned to read. Her limited world would have been infinitely smaller without her books.”

Jeanie Wykowski was sitting between her two sons; her husband was on duty at the police station. “Mary knew you, Mrs. Wykowski. Even though you took care of her in the end, she knew you much longer. She worried about Jimmy when he was hospitalized with pneumonia a few years back, and about Johnny when he got hit with a bat during his first Little League game. She knew how hard you and Ron work to take care of your kids and each other.” Jeanie put her arms around her boys and looked as if she would cry.

Father O’Brien looked again at the little round woman. “Miss Delaine, you are one of the few who actually got to know Mary. She was a fan of your potions from the beginning. She always made sure I bought them for her.” Daisy’s face lit up like the bright circle of her floodlight on the snow. “Mary always felt that you and she had something in common, too. She told me once that you were both a little eccentric, and misunderstood by most. Late in her life, when she finally met you in person, she was touched by the kindness that you showed her.” Daisy nodded and wiped at her eyes.

“I could stand here and say similar things about each one of you. Through her knowledge of you, Mary felt as if she were a part of Mill River. She appreciated that so much. Even though her condition prevented her from personally interacting with you, knowing about you gave her a sense of belonging, of community. And for all those years, she tried her best to give back to the community the only way she could, in a way that I’ll explain shortly. But when Mary learned that she was dying, she decided she hadn’t done nearly enough.” He blinked rapidly as he pondered what else he should say. Finally, he made a decision and continued.

“This,” he said, holding up the envelope, “is a letter from Mary. She wrote it on the day she died. It explains, in her own words, a decision that she made. She also gave me this small package to give to all of you. These things are the reason I’m up here right now. I promised her that I would read her letter and present this package to you on Town Meeting Day. I suppose I’ll start with the letter.”

He put on his reading glasses and ripped open the envelope. His breath caught as he unfolded the fine linen stationery. The lines of tentative handwriting on the page were far fewer than he expected. Nevertheless, he said a quick prayer for strength and began to read.

To the dear people of Mill River,

I first intended to write a letter that would explain everything. But then, I decided that there was a better way to go about it, a way that might finally permit you to see me and know me better, much as I have seen and known you for all of these years. I’ll ask Father O’Brien to open the small brown package now. Once you see what is inside, all will become clear.

Sincerely,

Mary Hayes McAllister

That was all that was written on the paper. With his brow furrowed, Father O’Brien looked up from the letter. The people staring back at him appeared to be confused as well. “I’ll just open it, then,” he said, briefly holding up the package. It took only a moment to tear away the brown paper.

The small package was a DVD.

For a moment, Father O’Brien stared down at it, knowing what must be on the disc and yet not believing Mary could have done it and kept such a secret from him. How had she done it? Mail-ordered a camcorder and discs and recorded herself, perhaps.
That would have been the only way
, he thought, before he suddenly remembered that everyone was watching him expectantly. “It’s a DVD recording,” he said, raising it again for all to see. He turned to Fitz. “I don’t suppose we have some way to watch this, do we?”