Arrowood (12 page)

For years my mother had been taking pills, and as a kid I hadn't thought it unusual. She called them her vitamins, and Granddad was the one who prescribed them to her. As far as I knew, all mommies took Xanax in the morning and painkillers in the afternoon and a little something to help them sleep at night. I was too young to realize that she was self-medicating, or to understand why. Now that I knew about my father's affair with Julia Ferris—ostensibly, my mother's friend—I wondered if that had been the thing that had begun to push her toward the edge, if the twins' disappearance had been not the start but the end of her undoing.

Josh had said our neighbors were all potential suspects, and that would include Mrs. Ferris. Ben claimed his mother wasn't in the house that afternoon, and he thought she might have been in the carriage house, which stood between our home and theirs. I assumed that she had been questioned along with everyone else, and as far as I knew she hadn't seen anything that was helpful to the case, though I had never come out and asked her. Was it possible that her affair with my father had somehow made her want to hurt the twins? She had told him at the Christmas party that she hadn't forgiven him, that he would have to make it up to her somehow, whatever “it” was. Had he done something so terrible that she would punish him through his children?

Maybe she had coaxed Violet and Tabitha into the carriage house while I was gathering dandelions. She couldn't have kept them hidden there for long, though; all the homes and outbuildings were eventually searched. Would she have been able to move them elsewhere before they could be found? It was hard to imagine that she would have intentionally harmed my sisters, though that didn't mean it wasn't possible.

I remembered the time Ben accidentally got gum stuck in my hair, when we were ten or eleven years old. Mrs. Ferris offered to help get it out, and I sat down at the kitchen table, expecting her to rub peanut butter into my hair like Grammy would do. Instead, she had pulled my hair taut and sliced out the gum with the kitchen shears, letting it fall into my lap. She had dropped the scissors onto the table with a clatter, and I had jumped up, startled, pieces of my hair scattering over the spotless floor. Our eyes met, and a glimmer of understanding crossed her face as my hands began to tremble, both of us realizing that I was afraid of her.

Ben had arranged for me to talk to his mother about the holiday home tour, since Mrs. Ferris hadn't been home when I went to see Lauren. As much as I wanted to ask her about her relationship with my father, and the day the twins disappeared, I didn't know if I could summon the courage. I still pictured her as I'd known her in my childhood: severe eyebrows, pressed pants, headache-inducing perfume. Every time I had knocked on her door to see if Ben could come out to play, she had greeted me with a disdainful frown.

I picked through my work clothes looking for something decent to wear, and then I reminded myself that I was a grown-up, that I didn't have to dress to please Julia Ferris, and besides, even if I wore a freshly ironed blouse and khakis, she would probably still not like me. If I had to face an old enemy, I might as well do it in the comfort of my faded jeans.

I walked along the sidewalk instead of cutting across the Ferrises' lawn, atonement for my passive-aggressive wardrobe choice. Mrs. Ferris smiled primly when she answered the door.

“Come in, Arden, it's wonderful to see you,” she said, extending her bony arm toward the front parlor.

As I walked past her, I was engulfed in her familiar, dizzying perfume, the synthetic sweetness of gardenia strong enough to turn my stomach. I sat on an antique love seat that had been reupholstered in flowery chintz, and she sat across from me in a matching chair, a spotless glass-topped coffee table between us. The window air conditioner whooshed on top speed, pumping the room full of frigid air.

Mrs. Ferris was older than my mother, closer in age to my father, though you wouldn't have guessed from looking at her. Mom would have been irritated to know that her former friend and rival had aged so well. She was thin as a stick of gum, and her skin was almost supernaturally luminous, as though it had recently been peeled and polished by an aggressive aesthetician. Her thick coffee-colored hair was cut into a precise bob. I held a notebook and pen in my lap, and my thumb clicked the pen open and closed, over and over, keeping time with the pendulum on the grandfather clock in the corner.

“May I get you some tea?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” I said, trying not to be distracted by the curtains behind her. They were the same bold floral print as the upholstery, and they pooled extravagantly on the glossy floor in a way that I had only seen in magazines. I wondered if they ever got caught in the vacuum.

Mrs. Ferris's forced smile faded. “I want you to know how very sorry I am about your father,” she said. “He'd be so glad to see you back in the house.”

I nodded solemnly, though I couldn't imagine Dad caring what I did one way or the other. He hadn't been sentimental about Arrowood like I was. He mocked people who stayed still, living and dying in the houses and towns where they were born, a fate he had worked hard to avoid.

Mrs. Ferris plucked a Lee County historical society pamphlet from the coffee table and handed it to me, along with a flyer for a reception celebrating her contributions to the society and the Miller House Museum. “I suppose Ben already told you a bit about what's going on, though I'm not sure how well he explained it. Did he happen to tell you that Keokuk was recently named the worst town in the state of Iowa, and the second-most dangerous?”

I nodded.

“Can you believe that? I didn't. But the study was based on indisputable data—unemployment rate, median income, the number of vacant houses, crime. It was terrible news for the visitors bureau, and for all of us. I'm sure you agree that our town has a lot more to offer. This holiday tour is the first of our efforts to promote Keokuk as a destination for historical tourism. We're hoping, if it goes well, that we can make it an annual event and go on to add summer tours of certain homes and cultural attractions around town. The lock and dam, the Miller House, the steamboat museum. It could bring in some much needed revenue and improve our reputation.”

“Sounds like a great idea,” I said.

“You're probably aware that people are…interested…in Arrowood for various reasons, most notably, of course, for its connection to the Underground Railroad. The house has never been open to the public before, and I think it would make a nice draw if it were on our list.” She smoothed back her hair, which didn't need smoothing, the knob of her wrist and the thin bones of her hand clearly articulated beneath her pale skin. “There wouldn't be much required of you, really, aside from writing a one-page profile of Arrowood for the guidebook, which I'm sure you'll have no trouble with. You'd need to put up Christmas lights and decorations—some vintage or antique ones would be nice if you have them handy. We're asking the homeowners to provide hot cider or cocoa, and maybe some sugar cookies. Then as people come in, you'd answer questions about the history of the house and let them look around.”

“I'm not sure I can commit to that right now,” I hedged. “I mean, I've been here less than a week. I haven't even finished unpacking.”

“Oh, I know, but it's not until November. You'll have plenty of time to prepare, and I can help you if you'd like. I just need to know who's participating so I can get everything ready on my end.” She smiled expectantly. “You'd be doing so much to help our town. And it would truly honor the memory of your grandparents. They were so proud of the house, and such avid supporters of the community.”

I wondered how much good any fundraising efforts would really do, whether it was possible to slow down the rate of decay, let alone reverse it. Not that it mattered. She must have realized that mentioning Nana and Granddad would be enough to convince me. We both knew they would have wanted me to show off Arrowood.

“I guess it wouldn't hurt to open up the house for a few hours.”

Mrs. Ferris sighed. “Thank you so much,” she said. “Everyone will be thrilled to have you on board.”

I clicked my pen open and closed, open and closed. How hard could it be to ask her the questions I really wanted answered? What was the worst that could happen? I remembered the sound of her kitchen shears slicing through my hair, the cold kiss of metal as they slid past my ear.

“I wanted to ask you something,” I said.

“Of course.”

“It's about the twins. The day they went missing.”

Mrs. Ferris uncrossed and recrossed her legs, her navy-blue slacks rustling.

“Someone is trying to prove that Harold Singer is innocent, and thinks things may have been overlooked in the investigation. I wondered what you remember—any little details that might not have seemed important then. Ben said he thought you might have been out in the carriage house, so maybe you saw something from there that we couldn't see?”

Mrs. Ferris seemed to shrink into her chair, her mouth pinched shut. “No,” she said, her lips curling around the word. “I didn't see anything.”

“But that's where you were, in the carriage house, when they were taken? You didn't see the lawn crew, or anyone on the street?”

She shook her head. “I wasn't paying attention to anything that was going on outside the window.”

“What were you doing?”

“Arden.” She clasped her hands together, her eyes squinting and a deep vertical line appearing between her penciled brows. “I assumed you knew. I was with your father. It was kept quiet out of respect for your family, but it was known—your father and I were both questioned about our whereabouts and we told the truth.”

“You were right there, both of you?” My face burned, hot blood rushing to the tips of my ears. “You were
right there
when it happened?” Would things have turned out differently if they hadn't been together that day? If my dad had been home with us instead?

“Yes, and I've lived with that guilt every day since. It was hard to even look at you, knowing what I'd done. Every time you came over to see Ben, it brought the whole thing back.” She hinged forward in her seat. “You're old enough now that I can explain to you—your father and I didn't set out to hurt anyone. Eddie and I understood each other. We'd been involved off and on long before he met your mother. We weren't in love. It was just something that happened. He was a different man, though, after that day. We ended things.”

“Lauren told me about you and my dad talking on the phone, years later.”

She smiled wryly. “He asked to borrow some money from me. For an investment. That's all it was, later, when we were in touch. He needed the money, and I gave it to him.”

“I'm guessing he didn't pay you back.”

“No,” she said. “And I never asked. Your father and I had a long history—we were friends, growing up. We were close, like you and my son.”

Mrs. Ferris shut her eyes for a moment, and I wondered if she pictured my father through the same nostalgic lens I pictured Ben, if it had been hard for her to lose him even after so many years apart.

I closed my notebook, clipped the pen onto the front cover, and tucked the historical society pamphlet and flyer inside. I hadn't written down a thing. I stared at Mrs. Ferris's skeletal hands, the tips of her French-manicured nails an unnatural shade of white. Her wedding ring hung loose on her finger, the heavy stone tilting to the side.

“I thought you hated me,” I said, my voice muffled by the bright upholstery, the blustering air conditioner, the gardenia perfume that I could taste in the back of my throat. “And I never knew why.”

“I hated everyone for a while,” she said. “Including myself.”

Back at the house, my first piece of mail had arrived, a thick manila envelope from the lawyer. Now that I was the official owner of the house, I would periodically receive various documents related to the trust that supported it. The lawyer had promised that very little attention would be required on my part. I had the same problem with real mail that I had with email, tending to let it pile up unopened until it became too daunting to deal with. I forced myself to peel open the envelope and flip through the sheaf of papers, not wanting to look too closely at the details. There were property tax receipts, financial statements, and a list of expenses. My eyes caught on the last page, the balance of the trust, and my stomach hollowed out just as it had done when the lawyer first talked to me about it. It was far less than I had imagined. He had suggested that I let Heaney's contract expire at the end of the year as a cost-saving measure, since a caretaker wouldn't be necessary when the house was occupied. I could hire out any maintenance work as needed, to Heaney or someone else.

I stuffed the packet into a kitchen drawer, not wanting to think about what would happen if the trust ran out before I could find a decent job. I could survive on very little, especially now that I wasn't paying rent, but the house had needs of its own. My mother had warned me how greedy Arrowood could be, how impractical it was to live in a drafty relic with a million things waiting to go wrong; simply heating it through the winter would cost a small fortune. I, of course, hadn't listened to her. Already there were problems with leaks and moisture, the windows that refused to open. I thought of all the houses in town that were falling apart around the people who lived inside them and hoped that wouldn't happen to me.

I fixed my favorite childhood lunch, one I'd often prepared for myself and the twins when Mom was taking one of her long naps: slices of Oscar Mayer braunschweiger, which my father had kept stocked in the refrigerator at all times, and a bag of Sterzing's potato chips. I carried my lunch into the study and set it down on Granddad's desk, hoping to distract myself from thinking about the trust by working on the Arrowood profile for the holiday tour. I wanted to get it out of the way. I tied the heavy drapes back as far as they would go, to let in more light, and turned on my laptop.

It would be easy, I thought, to write about Arrowood. I knew most of the stories from memory—Nana would go on about family history in lengthy letters, before her arthritis made it too difficult to write, and every time she called on the phone—and now I also had access to all of her papers, including the documentation she'd used to get Arrowood on the National Register of Historic Places. She had kept it all in a box in Granddad's desk, and it was still there, nestled in the deep bottom drawer.

There were several articles detailing Arrowood's involvement in the Underground Railroad, all of which I had read before. The only new information I found among Nana's handwritten notes was the brief mention of a secret room in the basement that concealed the fleeing slaves who had sought temporary refuge at Arrowood. I'd never heard anyone talk about a hidden room, and I'd never found any hint of one while exploring the dirt-floored basement as a child. Most likely, it had been torn out at some point over the years as pipes and wiring were installed and updated beneath the house, the foundation repaired, the boiler replaced.

I sorted through pages of photocopied portraits of my relatives, many taken on Arrowood's front lawn. I had never understood my father's eagerness to sell the house. He was always too busy looking for the next big thing to see what he already had; he was the worst kind of gambler, never able to quit when he was ahead.

My dad came to visit me at college only once. He was passing through on his way to a sales convention, characteristically vague about what exactly he was selling. We ate gristly sirloins at a roadhouse on the outskirts of town, and he insisted that I drink a beer with him, scoffing when I reminded him that I was underage. He wore a cowboy hat and pointy-toed boots that looked like a disguise on him, though it was possible that that was who he'd become, someone who listened to country music and knew how to saddle a horse. I didn't ask, and he offered no explanation. I nursed my warm beer as he rambled on about a new boat he'd been eyeing, one I doubted he could afford. As far as I knew, he didn't live anywhere near the water.