“Maybe,” the officer said, a defensive note in his voice. “We don’t have enough to go on. The Fenns’ car showed no sign of impact with another vehicle.”
I left the matter there. Clearly he didn’t want to pursue it, and what good would it do in any case? What mattered was that the two people who had been my parents for over forty years were gone, taken from me without warning. I tried to convince myself that in some way I was glad. After all, Aunt May and Uncle Stan had been spared the horrible deaths I had seen take so many of my friends’ parents. There had been no lingering cancer, no senility, no progressive degeneration.
There might have been a moment of fear or shock, followed by a tremendous impact that their aging bodies could not take. Pain … . The coroner assured me that death had probably been nearly instantaneous. They had even been spared the pain of being separated from each other. I knew Aunt May had wondered how she would cope without Uncle Stan. She had occasionally talked about it with me as women do, knowing the statistics favor them surviving their husbands. Uncle Stan had never said anything, but he must have feared it, too. He’d have feared leaving May alone, if not for himself.
It really had been a good death, as such things go, but I found little comfort in this. I sat in the living room of the comfortable ranch house into which we had moved when I was thirteen, alone once friends and neighbors had returned to their routine, wondering what I should do.
The accident had come just as the school year was ending. I had intended to take the summer off, travel a bit, do some stuff for my parents around their house. I had my own house on the other side of town, near enough, but far enough to give us all some privacy. Should I keep it or this place? Certainly a spinster didn’t need two houses, especially in the same town.
I sat there, unaware that I’d leaned forward to rest my head in my hands until there was a knock at the front door. I came upright with a jerk that caught my neck. Massaging the sore spot I rose and went to the door.
I knew the woman who stood there: Betty Boswell. She and her husband, Alan, were good friends of Aunt May and Uncle Stan. They’d met at some fund-raiser for the church a few years after we’d moved to town. Their eldest son was close to my age, but the Boswells themselves were younger than Aunt May and Uncle Stan by a good six or seven years. They’d been at the reception at the church hall earlier that day, had been among those who had come back to the house after.
“Mrs. Boswell,” I said, trying to keep an odd mixture of relief and dismay out of my voice, “did you forget something?”
Betty Boswell smiled. She and Alan were the popular choice to play Mr. and Mrs. Claus most years, but tonight her expression held nothing of its usual easy affability.
“No, but if you aren’t too tired, I would very much like to speak with you. Privately,” Betty added, lowering her voice. She was usually round and comfortingly amiable, but tonight she reminded me of a rabbit who has heard an owl. “I didn’t think anyone had stayed, but …”
Frankly mystified, I stepped back to admit her.
“I think there’s still some coffee,” I said, “and enough sweets to make sure even if I do forget to eat I won’t lose any weight.”
I ran my hands over my waist and over my hips for emphasis. No one would cast me as Mrs. Claus, but I was far from svelte. Days spent teaching at as many as three separate schools, grabbing lunches and dinners from fast-food restaurants, had not been kind to my figure. I was sturdy rather than plump, and stronger than many women my age. I took comfort in that last—most of the time.
Today, dressed as I was, still in the black dress I had worn to the funeral, I felt myself for what I was: dumpy, middle-aged, plain, and now very, very alone. I had never realized how much that was positive in my own self-image had come from the loving pride I saw in the Fenns’ eyes whenever they looked at me. Now that was gone, and I knew how all those fairy-tale princesses who found themselves transformed into unspeakable things must have felt.
I said nothing of this as I led Mrs. Boswell through the living room and into the comfort of the kitchen. Almost without speaking, we took chairs across from each other at the table. The coffee was still acceptably fresh, and neither of us had much appetite for anything, but I set out a tray of pecan cookies just the same.
Betty Boswell seemed to be using the motion of stirring her coffee to focus her thoughts. Now she set the spoon aside, and left the coffee untasted.
“You have already spoken to the executors of your parent’s estate,” she said.
I nodded. The same lawyer who had helped Uncle Stan set up my trust all those years ago was still alive, though mostly retired. He and the accountant had told me they would deal with the details—and I needn’t worry about a bill.
“Liven up the next few weeks,” the lawyer had assured me, and I heard in his voice the same note I had learned to recognize on that long-ago train trip. He needed to be kind to me to ease his own pain, and so I gratefully accepted.
“Good,” Mrs. Boswell said. “They’re good men. Reliable.”
“Yes,” I said, mystified. “They have already gone over the basics, and say they’ll have something together for me next week.”
Betty took a deep breath. “You might say that your parents appointed us executors of another sort. At least your Aunt May did—me.”
She stopped, frowned at herself, and sighed.
“I’m doing this very badly,” she admitted. “Let me start over.”
I nodded, rather stunned. What was going on here?
“May and I were good friends,” Betty said, “and one day we were talking about keeping diaries. Did you know she kept one?”
I frowned slightly. “I don’t think I did. I knew she kept trip journals and such, is that what you mean?”
“No. May kept a diary in the more usual sense—a book in which she wrote down her thoughts and what was happening, and things like that.”
“For how long?” I asked, rather astonished.
“I think for most of her life,” Betty replied. “She said she’d lost track of how many little blank books she’d filled.”
“And she kept them all?”
“All,” Betty agreed. “She showed me where. There’s a locked box at the back of one of the closets.”
I thought I knew where this was going.
“And she wanted them destroyed unread,” I said, thinking that’s what I would have wanted.
“Actually,” Betty said, reaching into her purse and coming out with a ring from which a single small key dangled, “she thought that might be your reaction. What May wanted was for me to make certain that you would read through those diaries—especially the ones since you came to live with her and Stan. I think she thought it might be a comfort to you.”
Betty’s tone as she said those last words made me think she was guessing at Aunt May’s motivation, but I nodded.
“I guess I understand,” I said, though what I felt was closer to confusion.
“Would you like me to show you where she kept them?”
I nodded.
Betty got up with a briskness that almost concealed her own discomfort. “They’re upstairs.”
She led the way to the small room that had once been my studio. After I had moved away, Aunt May had converted it into an all-purpose workroom. Betty opened the closet, bent, and lifted a box filled with fabric remnants.
“Hold this,” she said, her voice muffled from the closet’s confines. “It’s down here.”
I stood holding the box, letting my gaze rest on the assortment of color swatches within. Aunt May had taken up quilting about twenty years ago, and this box contained only a portion of her hoard. Idly, knowing I was distracting myself, I made a mental note to find out if her club wanted her supplies.
“Here!” Betty said, emerging, her neatly styled hair a little awry. She dangled a square, grey, fireproof document box from one hand. It was clearly heavy, and I moved to take it from her.
Betty made the trade with me, setting the fabric scraps back in the closet before turning to inspect the document box.
“This key will open it,” Betty said, handing me the little key she’d pulled out downstairs. “There’s another one about somewhere, but I had the impression May hid it so well that she didn’t think you’d find it—or if you did, you would just think it was a lost key.”
I nodded. I was doing that a lot this evening, but words seemed to have failed me.
“One more thing,” Betty said briskly. “These are her older ones. She showed me where she kept her current one.”
She left the room and I followed her, thinking as I did so that Aunt May apparently had not wanted Uncle Stan to know about these journals. Otherwise, once I was grown she could have given up hiding them. What secret was she protecting? Had she a lover? An illegitimate child? Some crime in her past?
Betty turned into the master bedroom, then moved to Aunt May’s side of the bed. She hefted the mattress and slid her free hand underneath, bringing it out a moment later holding a slender, fabric-covered journal in an elegantly pretty russet and gold pattern of Japanese chrysanthemums.
“Here,” Betty said, a faint note of triumph in her voice. “That’s the current one. Now, do you promise me you’ll take the time to go through them?”
Her tone had become very serious, and I ducked my head in a wordless promise.
“I will,” I said. “Tell me, Betty, did Aunt May tell you anything about what was in them?”
Betty shook her head. “No, she didn’t, and I didn’t ask. We had a promise between us, the two of us. It came up when Lacey died a few years ago, all so suddenly. Apparently, she’d kept her love letters from before her marriage and her husband found them. Poor fellow took it hard, for some reason. May and I decided that it would have been better if some kind soul had known about them and slipped them away and, well …”
She shrugged. “I have a few letters and things. May had these journals. She wanted to make sure they came to you and that you would know without a doubt it was all right for you to read them.”
I understood, feeling sad. Now Betty would need to find another confidante. I wondered who it would be. We walked downstairs then, talking too deliberately of other things. Betty promised to look into whether the quilting club would want the supplies, and who might benefit from a gift of clothing.
“Are you staying here tonight?” Betty asked as she was heading out the door.
“No. I’ll go home. Too many ghosts here. I’ll be back tomorrow though.”
“Call me,” Betty said. “Especially if you get lonely. Remember, the only ghosts here are memories, and with Stan and May, they’ll be good memories.”
I smiled weakly. “I know. That’s what keeps undoing me.”
I left a few minutes later, taking with me the box containing Aunt May’s journals. I didn’t want to read them just yet, but I felt responsible for them. It wouldn’t do to have her private thoughts sitting around out and available to any of the friends and neighbors I knew would be helping me over the next few days. What if the box was bundled off to some charity by accident? I shivered a little at the thought.
I met with the estate’s executors a few days later. After they finished running over what had been done, what still needed to be done, and the like, Mr. Patterson, the lawyer, cleared his throat.
“There’s only one thing left, Mira. We found out something rather surprising when we were going through Stan’s papers. It seems that your trust from your mother contained one item he chose not to let you know about.”
“What?”
I meant this as an expression of surprise, but Mr. Patterson took it as a request for information.
“It seems that your mother owned a house and some property in New Mexico. This came to you along with her other assets.”
I blinked, remembering the tall, Victorian house on the treelined street.
“It must be a ruin, by now,” I said, “if it wasn’t sold for taxes long ago.”
“Actually not,” replied Mr. O’Neill, the accountant. “It seems that although Stan didn’t want you to know about the house, he took care to make certain it remained your own. He established an escrow account that covered taxes and repairs. Then, for reasons that I cannot fathom, he chose not to note the existence of this account in the otherwise meticulous documentation of your trust. The annual review of your trust also never mentions this, making me believe that someone at that time must have agreed to this connivance.”
Mr. Patterson nodded, “Agreed to it—maybe even suggested it.”
“Whatever the reason,” Mr. O’Neill said, “the house not only still exists, but remains yours. We have made several phone calls and ascertained that the property is in good condition. A photo was e-mailed to us at our request.”
He pushed a glossy printout over to me, and I fumbled for it, not really seeing what was there for a long moment. Then I focused and saw a multi-storied Victorian standing behind a wrought-iron fence. It was painted pale grey with subdued rose-colored trim on the closed shutters.
“It should be white,” I said, not aware I was speaking aloud until I did so. “And the shutters should also be white.”