Secrets of the Greek Revival

by Eva Pohler

  “I’m so sorry to disturb you,” Ellen said. “Should I come at another time?”

  “It’s okay,” the woman said. “I’ll let you two talk. I’m going back to bed.”

  The woman left the threshold and was replaced by a handsome young man, in his mid-twenties. “Hi. What’s up?”

  “Hi, Nick. I’m Ellen Mohr. Bud told me you and Jason sometimes help him with his yard work.”

  “That’s right.”

  When he didn’t correct her use of the name “Jason,” she filled with hope and excitement and asked, “It is Jason, right? Or is it Jay?”

  “Jay.”

  “Is that short for Jason?”

  “No. It’s just Jay.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Her heart sank.

  “No, worries.”

  “I might have some work for you and your brother at the Gold House. Interested?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Just let me know what you need and when you need it, and we’ll be there.”

  “You’re not worried about the ghost?” she asked, fishing.

  “Nah. I don’t believe in that stuff.”

  “But a lot of people around here seem to,” she said.

  He shrugged.

  “Can I let you in on a little secret?”

  His face lost its color and she suddenly realized he knew something. “A secret?”

  “There’s a girl who’s been living in the attic, but she isn’t a ghost. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  “What? That’s crazy. How would I know that?”

  She wasn’t buying it. “You’re not a very good liar, Nick.”

  He glanced behind him before stepping out onto the porch and closing the door behind him. “She’s an orphan. She don’t ever hurt nobody. And now you and your friends are making her homeless.”

  “She’s been missing. Do you know where she is?”

  “Maybe the Forresters’.”

  Ellen folded her arms at her chest. “Bud hasn’t seen her in many weeks. He’s worried, and he’s sick. He might not have a lot of time left.”

  “If I see her, I’ll tell her. But listen, my mom…she don’t know about Amy. Amy made us promise not to tell.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “I let her stay with us Thanksgiving night, like when we were younger. She used to come and stay with me and my brother, especially when it got cold. My mom never knew. We snuck her food, too. She’s not a criminal or anything. She just don’t have nobody looking out for her.”

  “Do you know anyone named Jason?” Ellen asked.

  “I think that’s the dude who got her pregnant.”

  Ellen gasped. “How do you know she’s pregnant?”

  “Dang!” He smacked a palm against his forehead. “I wasn’t supposed to say nothing.”

  “Now it’s more important than ever that I find her.” Ellen took a pen and piece of paper from her purse and wrote her phone number down. “If you see her, please have her call me.” She handed him the paper.

  He stuffed it in the front pocket of his jeans. “I doubt she will, ma’am. She thinks you want to take away her baby.”

  “Me?” Ellen pressed her hand to her chest and pulled in her chin. Surely he was mistaken. Amy had seemed to understand that Ellen and her friends were trying to help her find her mother. She’d defended them on Halloween from the egg bombers. “No. I didn’t even know about the baby. Listen to me, Nick. I’ve found Amy’s mother. I want to take Amy to see her.”

  Nick narrowed his eyes. “She’ll think it’s a trick. She won’t believe you. She won’t go nowhere with you.”

  “Do you have any idea where I can find Jason?” Ellen asked.

  “Nah. Sorry. Now I gotta go check on my mom.”

  Ellen watched the young man return indoors. She stood there on his porch, wondering.

  Then her phone buzzed. It was Sue.

  “Hey,” Ellen answered.

  “We’ve found something!” Sue cried into the phone.

  Ellen half-ran down Alta Vista Street from the twins’ house toward her Greek revival, where a huge truck and trailer were pulling away with the dismembered old tree. As she reached the front lawn, she found Mitchell Clark and Tanya each holding an end of a wooden chest about two and a half feet long, two feet wide, and one foot high.

  Her heart hammered against her ribs, and it wasn’t just from the running.

  “Put it down on the porch,” Sue was saying. “Don’t take that dirty thing in the house.”

  Ellen met them on the porch where Mitchell was trying to wedge a crowbar beneath the lid of the chest.

  “Did you find out anything about Amy?” Tanya asked.

  Sue kicked a clump of dirt off the porch. “Was the twin named Jason?”

  “The twin isn’t Jason,” Ellen said, “but they do know Amy. They just saw her last week. Apparently they’ve helped her throughout their lives without their mother knowing.”

  “You talking about Nick and Jay Aresco?” Mitchell asked as he continued to work the crowbar.

  “The twins who live down the street,” Ellen said. “Yes.” She hadn’t known their last name, but she assumed she and Mitchell were referring to the same twins.

  “Did the twins know a Jason?” Sue asked.

  “Nick couldn’t give me any information about Jason’s whereabouts, but he had heard of him.”

  “Maybe he knows more than he’s letting on,” Tanya suggested.

  “Well, there’s something else,” Ellen said as her friends waited for an explanation. “According to Nick, she’s pregnant with Jason’s baby.”

  “Oh, no!” Tanya said.

  “She thinks we want to take her baby away,” Ellen said. “Just like she was taken from her mother.”

  Sue shook her head. “We have to find her.”

  Ellen folded her hands together as a feeling of helplessness washed over her. “Cynthia Piers has got to be wondering why I haven’t brought Amy to see her.”

  Mitchell suddenly stopped trying to pry open the chest. He looked from one woman to the other before asking, “Cynthia Piers? Did you say Cynthia Piers?”

  “Yes,” Ellen said. “Why?”

  He dropped the crowbar on the porch at his feet and brought a hand to his chest. “Cynthia’s alive?”

  Ellen exchanged glances with Sue and Tanya. “Yes. She’s a patient in the San Antonio State Hospital,” Ellen said.

  Tears filled Mitchell’s eyes. “Those bastards! I should have known!”

  “Mr. Clark, what happened?” Sue asked. “How do you know Cynthia?”

  “She was Johnny’s girl,” he said as he stared off into space. “Johnny and I used to run around together. Sometimes the three of us went out together. She was Johnny’s girl, but I was in love with her.”

  Ellen tried to hide her surprise, but if the expressions on Sue and Tanya’s faces were any indication of her own, she was failing. Mitchell Clark had been in love with Cynthia Piers?

  “Amy’s her daughter,” Ellen said. “Cynthia told Amy to hide when the doctors and the police came to shut down the asylum. They took Cynthia to the state hospital, and she hasn’t seen Amy since.”

  “And now Amy’s missing,” Tanya said. “We haven’t been able to find her.”

  “And she’s pregnant,” Sue added.

  “All these years, I’ve been trying to get her to leave,” Mitchell said. “Casting spells with my goofer dust. And I guess now I need to help you find her. For Cindy. There’s a spell for that, too.”

  “No animals can be harmed,” Ellen said.

  “They were strays,” Mitchell said defensively. “The shelters don’t ever have enough room for them, and only a few have no-kill policies. They were going to be destroyed anyway.”

  “Please promise us,” Tanya said. “We can’t accept your help to find Amy if it means animals are going to die. We don’t agree with that.”

  “The cat powder is only used in casting against evil spirits,” he s
aid. “I was desperate. Marcia’s ghost…”

  “Marcia isn’t an evil spirit,” Ellen said. “We found letters in the attic written by your great grandfather, Joseph. His parents wanted her to give up her teaching career. She refused.”

  “They didn’t agree with her decision,” Sue added. “That’s why they took her baby away.”

  “If she’s been haunting you, it’s been to help you.” Tanya pointed to the chest. “She helped you find this.”

  “So why don’t you open it?” Sue prompted.

  He took up the crowbar and thrust it beneath the lid. After another few minutes of rattling the bar back and forth against the old wood, he finally pried the chest open.

  They leaned over and peered inside, where they found three rows of ten gold bars stacked at least three bars high.

  Ellen plucked one from the chest with trembling hands. Embossed were the words Degussa and Feingold, along with a set of numbers. There was also an interesting seal at the top—a diamond shape with a sun on one side and the moon on the other.

  Ellen held her breath and rubbed her eyes. She wanted to pinch herself.

  Mitchell pulled out a leather pouch that had been wedged between the rows of gold. He opened it and found documents folded inside. Although written in German, the name Friedrich Ernst Roessler and the date 1843 were easily recognizable.

  “I think we hit the mother lode,” Mitchell said beneath his breath.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Last-Chance Meetings

  Ellen drove her vehicle up to the gated entrance of the state hospital with Mitchell Clark in her passenger’s seat. She could tell during the drive over—since he’d spoken in an uncharacteristically animated voice about what their attorneys were reporting back to them about the gold—that he was nervous.

  It had been two weeks since they’d removed the dead tree and pulled the wooden chest from the ground in front of the Gold House. During that time, both of their attorneys had confirmed that the bars had been sold to Theodore Gold in 1843. The attorneys also had the bars valued at $30,000 each. With 90 bars in total, the chest of gold was worth 2.7 million. After considering the income tax, their attorneys had estimated that Mitchell and Amy would receive $500,000 each and Sue, Tanya, and Ellen would receive $170,000 each. That wouldn’t buy Ellen a vacation home and houses for her children, but it would mean that they wouldn’t have to sell the Gold House. They could fulfill their dream of turning it into a museum, where all the women in the shoebox of photos would be visible.

  In fact, over the past two weeks, Ellen’s art studio had seen a lot of action. Each morning, she painted for at least three hours, losing herself and finding herself in the process, and when she met Tanya and Sue at the Gold House each afternoon to continue their work in the attic, she often had a new painting to show them of another of the women who’d once been invisible—Hilary Turner, Victoria Schmidt, and Regina Piers. Seeing their faces prominently displayed in the very house that had once imprisoned them somehow gave Ellen and her friends hope that Amy would be found and reunited with her mother.

  Ellen’s attorney also helped them to set up a trust fund for Amy. It was set up so that if Cynthia were ever discharged from the state hospital, she would be entitled to half the fund.

  As Ellen parked her car in front of the main building, she said to Mitchell, “Keep in mind that she’s hardly spoken in twenty years. She’s not the same woman you knew back in the late 80’s and early 90’s.”

  He gave her a curt nod and followed her to the entrance.

  After checking her and Mitchell in at the front office, a nurse escorted them through the building to the Extended Care Unit. Ellen glanced around the ward for a sign of Betty Johnson, but Jan’s old friend didn’t seem to be on duty today. Then she remembered that Betty didn’t work in Extended; she was stationed in Acute Care.

  The nurse tapped on Cynthia’s door and said, “You have visitors today, Cynthia.”

  Cynthia was in her bed. Her pale hair was mussed and the covers pulled up to her waist. When her bright eyes turned to her visitors, her mouth fell open, and she covered her head with her blanket.

  Ellen hadn’t expected that reaction. She stood, stunned, near the door, as Mitchell crossed the room toward the bed.

  “Cindy?” Mitchell said. “Is it really you?”

  “No!” the woman cried. “It’s not!”

  Mitchell pulled one of the chairs to the bedside and said, “Can I please have a look at you?”

  Ellen was surprised by the change in his voice. He was actually capable of being gentle?

  “I look awful right now! I don’t want to be seen!” Cynthia cried from beneath her covers.

  “You could never look awful,” Mitchell said. “Besides, I’ve already seen you. I know it’s you. I just can’t believe it, but I know it’s true. And I am so damned happy to see you.”

  Tears flooded Mitchell’s eyes and rolled down his cheeks. His voice was even choked by them.

  Slowly, Cynthia slid the blanket away from her head. Her eyes were also full of tears. Mitchell was right: the woman could never look awful. Her bright eyes and pale hair and smooth features would be beautiful under any circumstances.

  Mitchell leaned forward and took both her hands in his. He couldn’t stop staring at her as the tears continued to fall.

  And then something else unexpected happened that shocked Ellen to her core: Cynthia smiled and said, “I’m so damned happy to see you, too, Mitch.”

  Sue’s mother, Jan, had struck up a real friendship with Millie, and so she’d asked Sue if she and Tanya and Ellen would join her for a little Christmas gathering at the Forresters a week before Christmas. According to Jan, the Forresters didn’t have a tree or anything festive in their house, and she thought it would be fun to do a little decorating for them. Tanya had a small, table-top tree in her attic, so she brought it along. Jan had some ornaments and garland. Sue had made a beautiful wreath for their door. And Ellen had baked some breads and pies. Sue had also made her famous dip and brought along a box of crackers. Tanya had made eggnog.

  Although Bud could get around, he was dramatically altered. Since his surgery, he hadn’t regained his pink complexion or his full strength and endurance. He was thinner, frailer, less jovial. He did smile, though, and he thanked them for bringing them some Christmas cheer.

  Two days later, however, Bud took another turn. Ellen found out about Bud from Jan, who now spoke with Millie daily. Jan said that Millie had called for an ambulance after Bud had passed out on the sofa and wouldn’t wake up.

  Kidney failure. That’s what would kill Bud Forrester. But it would happen in his home. He’d refused to go to the hospital, and Millie had respected his wishes.

  The day before Bud died, two days before Christmas, Ellen went to visit him, hoping to reassure him that she would find Amy. She would never give up the search, no matter how long it took.

  He was lying on a sheet on the sofa in the back of the house in a sunroom that resembled the one in Mitchell Clark’s Italianate. Although floral, the sofa even appeared to be from the same era as Mitchell’s. Bud’s head was propped up on two pillows, and a light wool blanket covered him from his chest to his toes. Sue and Tanya had come along, but they remained in the front of the house with Millie, because they knew what Ellen wanted to say to Bud, and Millie wasn’t to hear it.

  “I will find her,” Ellen said in a low tone. “I promise you, Bud.”

  “She came to see me,” he said through ragged breaths. “Last night.”

  “What?” Ellen wondered if he’d imagined it. Millie had said he’d been in and out of consciousness.

  “At first, I thought she was an angel,” he said. His voice was scratchy and harder to understand than usual. “Wearing one of her white dresses, she looked just like an angel.”

  “Did you tell her about her mother? About the gold?”

  Bud shook his head. “I didn’t have a chance. She was too quick.”

  Now Ellen really did th
ink he’d probably imagined it, but that was okay. It was good for a dying man to have his illusions.

  “She thanked me for all I’d done for her over the years. She kissed my cheek and told me I was the best father a girl could hope for.” A tear slipped from the corner of Bud’s eyes and ran toward his ear.

  “I’m so happy to hear that,” Ellen said.

  “Do you think our lord God will forgive me for my transgression?” he asked.

  Ellen bit her lip and nodded. “I believe he already has.”

  “She told me she wanted to give me something to take with me, to hold close to me,” he said. He struggled for a moment to breathe before he continued, “A long time ago, we picked a day to make her birthday, and every year, I gave her a little gift. One of the first gifts I ever gave her was a gold-plated necklace with her name on it.”

  “That was so kind of you,” Ellen said.

  “This morning, when I woke up, I thought I’d probably dreamt it all up, or imagined it.” He met Ellen’s eyes and gave her a smile. “You probably think the same thing.”

  Ellen smiled back but didn’t say one way or the other.

  “But look what I found clutched in my hand.”

  He opened his hand, which was resting on his chest. Ellen peered over him to get a closer look. In the folds of his wrinkled palm was a dainty gold chain, and on the chain, in gold-plated script, was the name Amy.

  Ellen sucked in a gulp of air. Amy had been there. Bud hadn’t imagined it.

  “Remember to keep our secret from Millie,” Bud said. “She doesn’t know how to keep them, but you do, don’t you?”

  Ellen nodded as she held back tears. “Of course.”

  A few minutes later, when Sue and Tanya had gone to say their goodbyes to Bud, Ellen sat in the front living room with Millie, making small talk. Millie had asked how she would be spending her Christmas, and Ellen told her about having her brother and his family on Christmas day.

  Then, Millie gave Ellen a peculiar look and said, “I want you to know something, Ellen.”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  “I am good at keeping secrets,” Millie said. “I’ve kept Bud’s for twenty years.”