by Skylar Finn
“Why?” Emily didn’t have to feign her bewilderment. She couldn’t understand why everyone was so eager to scapegoat Matilda. Sheriff Oglethorpe used her as a fall guy and the townspeople believed him, but what was Ray Harkness’s agenda?
“Cynthia and I spoke once, by phone, shortly before she disappeared,” said Harkness. “And she was so worried about money, but of course too proud to accept any help from me—we were still married! I don’t see what difference it would have made, but she was stubborn. She told me how that woman concealed all kinds of things from her—about the house, her financial situation. Cynthia’s checks bounced constantly. She was barely getting by. You ask me,” said Hawkins, narrowing his eyes, “I think she sold those kids and got rid of Cynthia to keep her quiet about it.”
Emily was shocked. It was the first time she heard someone make such an open accusation about Matilda to Emily’s face.
“Yes, I do,” Harkness repeated, defiant at the expression on her face. “I’d testify to it in any court of law. I think she’s out there somewhere, in hiding, with whatever money she got, while Cynthia—” All his audacity left him like air leaking out of a balloon and he slumped over his desk, suddenly defeated. Emily watched with horror as he buried his face in his arms and sobbed.
Jesse reappeared at the doorway, fake glasses askance, clutching a tiny paper cone of water. He looked from Harkness, still weeping, to Emily, watching him as her tiny reading glasses nearly fell from the tip of her nose.
“Uh…is everything all right in here?” Jesse asked.
“Um, I think we’d better go,” said Emily.
She jumped to her feet without saying anything to Harkness—at this point, it didn’t seem like there was much left to be said—and Jesse gently set the water cup on his desk, which promptly tipped over and spilled.
“Oops,” he said, slowly backing away from the desk while Harkness cried. He eyed the spill as if determining how to best clean it up.
“Come on!” Emily grabbed his arm and pulled him from the office. They hurried by Mollie in reception, who called after them, “Did you need to make another appointment?” and then, leaning further over her desk, “Do you need me to validate your parking?”
They ran to the truck outside and peeled out of the parking lot.
“What did you say to him?” Jesse demanded as he practically stripped his gears flying off the entrance ramp onto the highway. “He went from normal to sobbing baby in the five minutes I was gone.”
“Nothing! Well, I mean, first I asked him if I had upset him, then I told him that the rumors weren’t true, then I lied and said no one in town would sell us insurance, and he was our only hope.”
“That’s pretty dirty,” Jesse said admiringly. “And then he cried?”
“No, then I asked him if he was related to Cynthia. He got really mad and kind of scary, going off on this tirade about how Matilda was crooked and screwing her over. Then he cried.”
“Because he was so mad?” asked Jesse.
“No, I think he just misses Cynthia. He said he loved her and he blamed Matilda for her disappearance. He thinks she kidnapped the kids and murdered Cynthia to keep her quiet. I was getting a little bit worried he was going to do something crazy, but then he just lost it. I feel bad for the guy.”
“Well, at least we can rule out Harkness as a suspect,” said Jesse. “Which only leaves us with the rest of the town.”
They exited the highway and coasted down the hill when Emily saw a black BMW with tinted windows parked at the end of the lane that led up to their house.
“Jesse, stop right here,” said Emily. “I think someone’s here.”
“While we’re not?” said Jesse. “How convenient.”
Jesse pulled the truck into a nearby copse and cut the engine. They crossed the lawn and approached the house, scanning it for any signs of the most recent invaders. Emily tugged on the sleeve of Jesse’s suit jacket and pointed.
The front window was opening from the inside.
10
Jesse tugged Emily behind the forsythia bush in the front yard and they crouched down, watching as the window slid open and revealed a set of dangling legs, clad in pressed gray trousers: Roger Oglethorpe. The legs were followed by the rest of Oglethorpe’s body as he dropped to the porch, then reached back for the person inside. Darla Chinn appeared only slightly more gracefully, straddling the windowsill in her charcoal skirt while Roger offered her his hand.
“Aw,” said Jesse sarcastically from the bush. “He’s being chivalrous.”
Emily pulled out her phone and filmed the pair as they exited the house. She didn’t think having evidence of this would do much good where the sheriff was concerned, but at least it was proof that the property managers were up to no good.
Darla held his hand and dropped neatly to the porch below in a highly practiced fashion, as if it wasn’t the first time the two had executed this particular maneuver. She dusted off her skirt, and they scurried down the front steps past the bush and down the lane to their car.
Jesse’s fists were balled and his shoulders were tense as he and Emily exited the bush and stared after the retreating figures of the Three Star Properties team.
“I want to chase them, but I don’t even know what I would do when I caught up with them,” he said through clenched teeth. “Punch them? So they could get me thrown in jail and then kidnap you and get their greedy little mitts on the house?”
“I’ve confronted Darla before,” said Emily with a sigh. “Somehow she made it seem like my fault. If we confront them now, they’ll just come up with some excuse about how they were supposedly stopping by to chat about the house and thought they smelled smoke or something. Something obviously ridiculous and contrived that we’d still have no way of arguing with or proving otherwise.”
“There has to be something we can do!” Jesse pounded his fist on the porch railing as they walked to the front door. “They just can’t break in like this and get away with it!”
“I’d suggest we take this video to the police, but I have a feeling it wouldn’t do much good,” said Emily.
Jesse reached for the door and Emily rested her hand over his, stopping him.
“Jesse, wait,” she said. “What if they left something for us?”
“Like what?” he asked. “Do you think there’s a bomb?”
“Widget!” said Emily. She ran inside.
The little dog scampered across the wooden floor, paws sliding, and leapt into Emily’s arms. She was so relieved to find Widget unharmed that she didn’t realize anything was wrong until she looked up to see Jesse staring at the wall in shock.
Spray painted over the couch in enormous letters were the words:
LAST CHANCE
GET OUT NOW
Jesse sighed. “I just painted in here,” he said.
Richard scratched his head over a steaming cup of tea. “Never known them to outright vandalize property, but it doesn’t surprise me,” he said darkly, shaking his head as he stared at the writing on the wall. “They’re devils. Always after Matilda to sell to them. She made it abundantly clear it was never going to happen. Maybe they think if they lean on you enough, you’ll cave.”
“Richard, you mentioned when we moved in that you thought that Three Star might have something to do with the disappearance of Matilda and the kids,” said Emily. “And Cynthia, of course. Do you think they were behind it?”
“Yes, I most certainly do,” said Richard. “With that Roger being brother to the sheriff, they can get away with whatever they want to, can’t they?”
“So, you think they’re capable of violence?” Jesse clarified.
“I think they’ll resort to anything if it means more money for them,” said Richard. “Money makes people do terrible, crazy things. Money, and also love. You look at most murders you see on TV or read about, it’s hardly ever just strangers fighting at random. It’s always about something. Something people want but can’t have.”
&nb
sp; “Well,” said Jesse glumly, “I guess I’ll get to repainting in here.”
“I’ll help you,” said Richard. “Got a nice shade of off-white in the back of my truck.”
“Thank you, Richard,” said Emily gratefully.
Emily took Richard’s mug and went to the kitchen. The refrigerator was woefully empty. Their recent hijinks hadn’t left much time to go to the store.
Emily grabbed a canvas bag from the pantry, clipped Widget’s leash to her collar, and went out the back door.
In spite of the cold, Emily felt the awe she always did when she left the house and saw the mountains right across the street. In spite of their troubles, it was truly beautiful here. Emily could only imagine what their lives would be like if they hadn’t had to deal with the drama that came with inheriting Matilda’s house.
Emily walked into town. It was the day of the farmers’ market, and she thought it might be nice to buy something she could cook. They’d been eating an ill-advised amount of take-out, and Emily thought that a home-cooked meal could contribute some sense of normalcy to their currently upside-down lives.
The park was crowded with weekend shoppers. She browsed the various tents, studying their offerings. She walked by a tent near the teahouse and stopped. It was filled with art, not food, but something about the art looked familiar.
Emily walked back to the tent and stared at the paintings for sale: a ship on a storm-tossed sea, a dead ringer for the ones in J.R. Watkins’ office. A family portrait: one of a family Emily had never seen, but something about the style it was painted in reminded her very much of the painting hanging over the fireplace in the living room.
“Can I help you?” A short bald man with a pleasant voice and a pointed goatee approached Emily in the tent. His eyes were shielded from the winter sun with steampunk goggles.
“Oh, hello,” she said. “Can you tell me who painted these paintings?”
“I did,” he said, looking pleased. “Nolan Sawyer’s the name. Do you like them?”
“Oh, yes, they’re lovely,” she said. “I’ve been seeing them all over town. My lawyer has a few in his office.”
“Watkins!” He fairly lit up at the name. “Great guy. I do work for him all the time. That assistant of his comes to pick up my work, always with a look on his face like he smelled something bad. He doesn’t seem to like it too much, but who cares about him, right?” He laughed. “Where else have you seen my work?”
Emily hesitated. She had grown so tired of fielding the reaction to Matilda around town. After the Ray Harkness episode, she didn’t know if she could handle another outburst. But maybe he knew something.
“Well, there’s a painting in my aunt’s house that I think you might have done,” she began cautiously. “Matilda Meade, and the children she took care of.”
“Oh, yes, Matilda,” he said solemnly. He didn’t react the way Emily feared he would: with shock, horror, disgust, or wild accusations. He spoke in the hushed, near reverential tone of those who don’t wish to speak ill of the dead. “I remember her well. Nice lady. Well, seemed like it, anyway. Who knows what to believe? She had a very lovely picture she commissioned me to paint for her home, so I did.”
Emily thought of the picture hanging above the telephone table behind the old gramophone in the parlor. “That picture…there was another person in it, wasn’t there?
A woman?”
“Indeed there was. I remember every picture I’m given to paint, because I stare at them for so long, you know? There was another woman in the photo, about your age, I’d say, but your aunt asked me not to include her in the final portrait.”
“Did she say why?” asked Emily.
Nolan shrugged. “Nothing specific. She just said the woman wouldn’t be working for her for much longer, so there was no sense including her in the painting.”
A sea of questions flooded Emily’s mind: was Cynthia planning to leave? Had she given Matilda her notice? Was Matilda planning on firing her? Or maybe even…something worse? Against her will, Emily remembered the words of Ray Harkness: I think she sold those kids and got rid of Cynthia to keep her quiet about it.
“Actually,” he said, holding up a finger as if just remembering something. “I have something for you.”
Emily felt bewildered. What could he possibly have for her? She’d only just met him.
“Your aunt commissioned another piece from me,” he said, rummaging through a nearby box under one of the folding tables in his tent. “About a month before she disappeared. She was very proud of the house. You could almost say she was obsessed with it. She asked me to do this one of when the house was first built.” He found what he was looking for and handed Emily a small square wrapped carefully in tissue paper. Emily unwrapped the paper and looked at the small painting inside.
It was a replica of the picture from the book in the library, the house as it had looked in 1927. Meade House, 1927 was painted in miniscule letters in the corner of the painting.
“Oh, it’s beautiful,” said Emily.
“I never got a chance to give it to her,” he said. “I finished it the night before she disappeared. It was very sad. I’d never had a patron go missing like that. I didn’t know what to do with it, and I didn’t feel right just throwing it away. I feel like it’s only right that you have it.”
“Thank you so much,” said Emily. She reached into her canvas tote bag. “How much would you like for it?”
He shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything. Matilda already paid for it. I think she’d want you to have it, don’t you?”
Emily looked at the painting again before wrapping it carefully in the tissue paper and tucking it carefully into her bag. “Yes, I think she would like that.”
She smiled at Nolan a little sadly and offered him her hand. He shook it.
“Thank you again,” she said. “I appreciate it.”
“Of course,” he said. “You seem like a very nice person.” Emily couldn’t help but wonder if this indicated that he assumed Matilda hadn’t been. She pushed aside this troubling thought as she waved good-bye to him and headed out of the park. Widget trotted along beside her, straining her leash in the direction of the occasional squirrel. She was so preoccupied by her thoughts, she was all the way back at the house before she realized she’d forgotten to buy anything for dinner.
She could hear Jesse and Richard in the living room, painting over the latest round of graffiti defiling their home. She went into the parlor and took the picture off the wall, studying it: Matilda, the kids, Cynthia. Matilda and the children looked happy enough, but Cynthia looked serious, as if concerned the camera might steal her soul. What had caused Cynthia’s plan to leave? Was their parting amicable or was it, as Ray Harkness implied, the result of something more sinister?
Emily reached into the drawer of the telephone table where she’d placed Matilda’s journal for safekeeping. Opening it to where she’d last left off—when Matilda hired Cynthia to work for her at the house—she began to read.
September 28th
I must admit, Richard was right: I badly needed help running the house and taking care of the children. My mother always said I was too stubborn for my own good and my father told me I didn’t know when—or how—to ask for help, even if I needed it.
Cynthia has been a dream. She’s a superb cook and can always calm the children down no matter what the situation. While she doesn’t come off as affectionate or approachable at first, I think the children respect her sternness. Her habitually taciturn nature leaves them uncertain as to what her boundaries are, so they’re hesitant to test her. To be perfectly honest, I feel the same way. I’m careful never to press her regarding her personal life or question her too intensely about anything. She doesn’t seem to like it and I can’t risk losing her. I’m beginning to think she should take over this place someday. I’m getting older and I have no children of my own to leave it to, so who better than Cynthia?
I brought up the idea the other day in
passing, in a casual sort of way, to see what she thought of the suggestion. She was preparing supper, much to the children’s relief (my menu consisted largely of chicken nuggets, Spaghetti-Os, grilled cheese, and tomato soup on rotation). Her back was to me, so I couldn’t see her expression when I said how much she’d turned things around and that I hoped she wasn’t planning on leaving anytime soon.
She gave a non-committal shrug and said, “Oh no, I’m planning to be here for a while.” I think she may have smiled, but I couldn’t tell. I hope so. I don’t know what I would do without Cynthia.
11
October 14th
It’s getting worse. I really thought I could keep this place afloat between the loan I took out from the bank and all my credit cards, but I’ve used all the money I borrowed and am getting dangerously close to going over the limit on all my credit lines, with no real way to pay my monthly balances. Even with the money from the state for the children, there’s upkeep on the house to be done, and most of the money goes to feeding and clothing everyone, anyway. I sometimes worry that I’m in over my head. No, that’s not true: I always worry that I’m in over my head, and not just worry, I’m certain of it. What will I do if I lose this place? Where will the children go? I can’t imagine the guilt and shame I would feel. No one in my family will be surprised. And I can’t imagine how disappointed Grandpa Hershel and Grandma Delphine would be if they were here to see that I lost the fruit of their life’s labors: the most valuable prize they owned, which they entrusted to me.
Worst of all, I can barely afford to pay Cynthia. Her check bounced again, and while she acted patient and forgiving, I could tell she was both troubled and annoyed. Cynthia has enough problems of her own without being subject to mine.
I made another excuse, which she seemed to accept for the time being, but how much longer can I conceal what’s happening? And what will happen if she finds out how deep in the hole I really am? I can’t afford to lose good help, but I can’t afford to keep it.