Hildy takes a platter of tomatoes and a bowl of eggs into the dining room. Merle sits at the head of the table in Daddy’s old seat, Mother at the other end, her accustomed spot.
Hildy’s hands begin to shake, the platter quivering so that the fried green tomatoes jiggle. Two drop to the floor.
“Such a messy girl,” Mother says. “I’m sorry, Mr. Douglas, I thought I had Hildy trained up better than that. I’m sure she’ll be daintier by the time of your nuptials—”
Hildy freezes. Merle takes the platter and bowl and puts them on the table. “It is fine, Mrs. Cooper!” Firmness grips Merle’s voice, and he gives Mother a harsh look. Hildy knows she should be grateful for Merle coming to her defense, but the hard tone—he’d used it a few times with her at the grocery—sets her skin to prickling.
Hildy drops to her knees before the spilled green tomatoes, as if in supplication, and stares at the blue rose and vine pattern on the red Victorian rug—a point of pride for Mother, who would not want grease spots, even though the rug is thin and worn. She stares at the tomatoes, about to pick them up bare-handed, but then Merle kneels next to her, scoops up the tomatoes with his handkerchief—a kind gesture.
Dammit, how can he go so readily from harsh to kind? It was the kindness, the easiness, that drew her to him a year before, a kindness that reminded her of Roger. But Roger was also spirited and funny and smart. Like Tom.
“Well, don’t worry now, Mr. Douglas,” Mother is saying. “I’m sure Hildy will wash and press your handkerchief.”
Hildy reaches for the handkerchief—relieved at an excuse to go back to the kitchen—but Merle snaps, “It can wait!”
Hildy sighs. That hair-trigger anger—neither Roger nor Tom was like that. As she takes her seat between Merle and Mother, Merle also sits and puts the handkerchief-wrapped green tomatoes on the table.
Hildy clears her throat, starts, “It’s a light supper tonight—”
“You wore yourself out at that wretched jailhouse! Where was the sheriff all day?” Mother pokes at the eggs, inspecting them. “I myself will be voting for Perry Dyer for sheriff, such an unsavory job for a woman, and—”
“Shouldn’t we have a blessing?” Hildy’s voice, shrill and thin, cracks the room. Merle and Mother stare at her, and she looks down at her plate. “Daddy always prayed before meals.”
“Course he did.” Affront tinges Mother’s voice, as if Hildy were suggesting otherwise.
Her father’s sweet voice comes back to her, his simple unrehearsed prayers, thanking the Lord for food and work and health and family, going on too long, Mother always said, so the food got cold, but the coldness of the food isn’t what’s going to ruin this meal. Hildy opens her mouth to pray, hoping something simple but wise like her father’s words will issue forth, but then there’s Merle’s voice, booming in her ear, as if loudness is what draws God’s attention.
“Amen,” they murmur, and Hildy puts egg, the burned part, on her plate.
For a moment, they eat without conversation, just the sounds of chewing, fork tines on plates, Mother snuffling, the parlor clock ticking. Merle talks of a shipment of Campbell’s soup brought in by truck, all the way from Columbus, and Mother comments it’s such a shame that modern women—so spoiled!—don’t cook from scratch like they did in her day, and Merle says this is a sign of the economy growing, deregulation helping business, and thank God there will never be a recession again like 1893, and Mother says she remembers that, how awful it was.
Merle goes back to his food, shoveling in the fried green tomatoes and eggs, making smacking noises as he eats. Hildy pokes at her eggs. She forces herself to swallow a bite, spears another bit, but the fork feels too burdensome to lift.
“I had to be at the jailhouse today because Lily was called away,” Hildy blurts. “She got notice of an elderly woman who had fallen from the tunnel in Moonvale Hollow. There was no identification—”
“This is not appropriate dinnertime conversation!” Mother says.
“She had no identification on her, this woman. Lily had me write up a description of the woman. And draw a sketch.” Hildy realizes with a start that she hasn’t checked for the newspaper on the porch. “They should both be in the paper tonight, if you want to see.”
Mother looks at Merle. “Hildy always was good with drawing and crafts. I’m sure she’ll bring a bright spot of decoration to your home. Tatted pillow covers can really—”
“Did you hear what I said?” Hildy drops her fork to her plate, letting it clatter. “The woman fell to her death, onto the train! You wanted to know where Lily was all day so that I had to be at the jailhouse. That’s where she was—investigating—”
“The woman should have stayed where people take care of her. Just as I know that I’m going to be taken care of by you.” Mother looks at Merle, smiles.
Merle pushes back from the table. His plate is clean, other than some greasy smears from the eggs and fried green tomatoes.
“I’m hopeful there’s apple cake. You should know how much I like apple cake, Hildy—”
Hildy ignores Merle, stares at Mother, her thick face wadded into frowning twists and folds, crevices etched out of frustration with Hildy. And yet she cannot resist pressing. “I’d hoped you’d be more sympathetic, Mother—”
“Enough, Hildy!” Merle snaps. “Hildy, you will not be going to work for Lily anymore. Starting immediately.”
Hildy stares at him, wide-eyed. He is not her husband. He has no right over her. They have not even set a specific date for the wedding. And yet he is already presuming control. She wishes to argue back, but she is so weary, even after her fitful nap, and there is something fiery in his eyes, and his hands are now clenched on either side of his plate, and she shrinks back. She clenches her hands, too—then releases them. Her burned palm is throbbing.
Oh God. She is just like Missy Ranklin.
Tom’s words haunt her. You want to get what you want, upsetting nobody.
Merle regards Mother. “If I may say so, Mrs. Cooper”—his tone is more modulated for her—“you might gain more compliance from your willful daughter with a bit of sweetness.”
A bubble of hysterical laughter rises, an impulse tickling the back of Hildy’s throat. If she laughs, they will think she is crazy. But the idea that she is willful is itself crazy.
“Of course, Mr. Douglas.” A gentle smile settles Mother’s quivering features, but Hildy knows that the minute Merle leaves, Mother will harangue her for not being sweet and compliant enough, for risking losing Merle—the best prospect Hildy has, since she’s dithered away her time after Roger’s death and now she’s an old maid and who else would have her?
Tom. Would he? If she told Mother and Merle about him and went straight over to Rossville and told him she’d thrown over Merle—would it be enough? Or would he dismiss her, so she would indeed be an old maid, destined to live for the rest of her life with Mother?
Then she sees another face—the elderly woman. Even after the woman’s gruesome death, Hildy was able to find in that face more compassion and passion than she ever sees in her mother’s face. She looks down at her hands, sees instead the woman’s rose-pink nail varnish.
Merle and Mother stare at her.
“I—I burned my hand,” Hildy says, by way of explanation for her vacuous expression, her unusual outspokenness.
A sharp rap comes at the front door. Relieved by the distraction, Hildy rises and hurries to answer the knock. There, on the front porch, is Lily.
Hildy leans forward, propelled by a rush of relief at seeing her friend, about to collapse into her in a hug—though Lily isn’t much of a hugger—and confess, as she did when they were young, her confused, scared, swirling emotions.
She notes Lily’s stiff expression. The dirt on her face. Lily must have just now gotten back from wherever she’d been, wherever she’d traced the woman to.…
“I need to talk to your mother,” Lily says.
* * *
After Lil
y finishes speaking, silence gathers in the parlor. Holds them all stunned and mute.
Hildy looks first to Mother, but she stares at her hands, neatly folded in her lap. Merle is focused on the clock, as if entranced by each tick, tick, tick. Lily gazes at Hildy, and finally Lily’s face softens with concern for Hildy.
Hildy covers her burned palm with her other hand. She wishes for a cold compress, to ease the aching throb, but she can’t bring herself to move. She’s pinned in place by Lily’s news.
The dead woman—the woman she’d sketched. Thea Kincaide. The paperwork listing Mabel Kincaide Cooper as the next of kin.
Mother.
Hildy looks at Mother, searching for any resemblance between the two, beyond both being older females. She doesn’t see it.
Finally, Mother looks up at Lily with distaste, regarding her smudged face and dirty boots. “Yes. I have a cousin named Thea Kincaide. She was the only child of my father’s brother, Rupert Kincaide. We weren’t close. We had our differences. I have no idea why she would have listed me as her next of kin.”
“She didn’t,” Lily says. “The landlady where she was staying, a boardinghouse in Athens, did. The landlady’s name is Maryann Pothoulis. Did you ever hear anything from her?”
Mother shakes her head. “No. I had no idea Thea was back in the area. I haven’t seen her since I was a child.”
As Lily makes a note, something about Mother’s assertion that she hasn’t seen Thea since childhood niggles at Hildy. A shadow … a face emerging. Thea Kincaide … her first cousin once removed. A younger Thea entering this very room, about twenty years ago …
Hildy presses her left thumb into the burn on her right palm, pushing in the pain, as if that will stave off the image, as the conversation swirls around her.
“You visited often?”
Mother laughs, a sharp bark. “Hardly. Our fathers weren’t close.”
“She told her landlady about you. Surely there’s more to your relationship?”
“She wrote now and then.”
“From where?”
Mother sighs heavily. “I believe she moved to New York City. Later to Europe.”
“Europe is a big continent. Do you recollect any specific postmarks?”
“Paris. Rome. Maybe London.”
Paris. Rome. London. New York. These sound like dream cities, floating high above in gilded clouds.
“Would you happen to have those letters?” Lily is asking Mother.
“Of course not. I threw them away.” Mother says this as if it is a point of pride.
Oh. Hildy’s heart pangs—a bit of life, captured, tossed away. Dismay flickers across Lily’s placid features. Mother’s cavalier comment tickles a memory. Something about postcards. Lily’s father giving them to her quietly. Telling her to enjoy them—hide them away—and not let Mother know.
Lily lifts an eyebrow. “Do you remember anything she wrote?”
“Certainly not. Probably bragging about her exploits—unfitting for a lady.” She looks at Merle. “And certainly not a predilection that’s reached our branch of the family.”
Hasn’t it? Hildy feels heat rising in her face. She’d had exploits. Just to Rossville. Unfitting for a lady, certainly for a betrothed lady, a lady of her status in Kinship … A different heat rises in her as she recollects Tom’s hands running over her.
“Why does any of this possibly matter?” Mother asks.
“Thea Kincaide is dead. And possibly not by accident,” Lily says. “Everything matters at this point. So I must ask again—do you remember anything she wrote?”
Mother shakes her head. But Hildy remembers now.
Merle bounds to his feet. “Mrs. Ross, you are upsetting Mrs. Cooper—”
Lily squares her shoulders, stiffens her spine. “Mr. Douglas, I am here in an official capacity. You can sit quietly, if you insist on bearing witness, or you may leave. If you disrupt again, I’ll bring you in for interfering in an investigation.”
Merle sinks back down in the chair. He glances at Hildy, as if she might—given her position with Lily—speak up on his behalf, but she is gazing at Lily with admiration. Her coolness has hurt Hildy over the past months, and yet she wishes for some of that demeanor for herself.
Lily looks back at Mother. “The landlady of the boardinghouse where Thea Kincaide had lived said a man, about forty, claiming to be her son, brought Miss Kincaide there four months ago. Prepaid three months of Thea’s rent. The landlady didn’t take down his name. My guess is, he didn’t want to give it and she wanted the money. A month ago, Mrs. Pothoulis—the landlady—complained to the Athens police that Miss Kincaide was behaving crazily, and soon after a judge signed paperwork committing her to the Hollows Asylum.”
What a horrifying fate! Hildy puts her hands to her mouth, holding back a cry of sorrow.
But Mother laughs sharply. Lily’s carefully neutral face contorts with anger. Even Merle looks aghast. Hildy feels some part of herself disembodying, as if untethering at last. Everyone in the room looks and sounds so distant.
“Finally!” Mother says. “She was crazy, delusions of being a dancer in New York—of all things! An actress! And her claim that she was going to go to Europe!”
Lily’s voice is tight and hard. “I thought you barely remember her, Mrs. Cooper? And she was not committed for delusions of grandeur. Apparently, she sometimes thought she saw people who weren’t there, but in the main, confusion and memory loss were the sins that, officially, consigned her to the asylum.”
Lily’s unspoken point—Mother had claimed to be confused and forgetful of Thea—echoes in the parlor. Mother presses her lips together so tightly that her mouth seems sewn shut. She cracks it enough to speak, finally. “Well. She was quite a bit older than me. Fifteen years. She came to visit when I was five. I only have a vague recollection. That was when she said she was going to New York to be a dancer and maybe an actress.”
“A surprising thing for a five-year-old to understand.”
“I didn’t. My father”—at this, Mother looks down at her hands and, to Hildy’s surprise, a vulnerable look flashes over her face—“my father always brought her up as an example of what not to be. Referred to her as … well. As a vulgar woman.”
Hildy shudders, recalling her grandfather. He’d been a hard man, prone to outbursts and preachy rages. Once, upon visiting him, after Grandmother died, Hildy had, without asking, taken a piece of the cake that Mother had brought him. Grandfather had yelled at her, mocked her for crying, and Mother hadn’t stopped him, though she had looked horrified, even comforted her daughter later. Daddy hadn’t been along on that trip. Hildy was five.
A shadow moves in the corner of the room—the elegant lady. Hildy stares. It’s not a shadow she’s glimpsed—instead, a memory. A woman, entering the room, sifting back up to life from the dust motes. Gliding, graceful, like a dancer. In her long dress, with the cinched waist, and a wide-brimmed fancy hat. Doing a twirl. Here. After Grandfather’s funeral.
“She came here.” Hildy’s voice sounds so distant, as if coming from behind her, rather than from within her. “After Grandfather’s funeral. She was there—” Hildy’s hand rises, her finger pointing, but not in the room. To the back of a small gathering at the Kinship Cemetery. “At the back of the crowd. Not with the rest of us. I wondered…”
Hildy falters. She’d wondered who the beautiful lady was. Perhaps an angel come to reap Grandfather’s soul, but she had thought no—an angel would not have come for such a mean man’s soul—and she’d felt immediately guilty at thinking this. The lady had seen her stare, had stared back, smiled warmly, and Hildy had smiled, too. A connection made.
“I was six—maybe seven. Yes. My seventh birthday was a few days before. Same day Grandfather died.” Her birthday had been marred for years by her mother’s wailing that it was the anniversary of her father’s death, until finally Hildy’s own father told Mother to stop—the only time Hildy had overheard her father be cross with Mother.
/> “She was alone.” Hildy smiles, as if in a trance, seeing the beautiful lady, floating before her, a vision of the woman she’d sketched, but so much younger, plumper, filled out. Oh—as old as Mother is now, and yet she’d looked so much younger. Vibrant. Happy. An energy peeling off of her, filling the room. “Except for her driver. She had for some reason a driver for her carriage. She came to the funeral, then here, later that evening—”
“Nonsense!” Mother snaps.
Hildy looks at Mother. What an odd, shrunken little woman. So terrified and small. She smiles at Mother, benevolently. At the angry, tense quiver in the corners of the woman’s mouth. At the fear in Mother’s eyes. Why had she never seen Mother as she really is, before? A peaceful warmth spreads over Hildy. She feels like she is floating, floating.
“It’s not nonsense. She was at Grandfather’s funeral, then here—”
Mother stands up, fists clenched by her sides. “No, no—”
“Let her speak!” Lily says.
Hildy looks at her friend, sees Lily’s gaze, gentle, searching. Lily believes her.
“She came here.” Hildy looks past her mother to the chair where Merle is sitting. She sees Thea sitting there, in a blue silk dress, on the edge of the chair, her ankles primly crossed. And Thea smiles again at her, a little girl, snuck down from the upstairs, and Thea beckons her forward, and in spite of her mother’s dismayed cries, she crosses to Thea, enchanted.
“She was beautiful,” Hildy says. “And kind. And she seemed to like me. It’s like remembering … a feeling. A feeling of warmth.”
Yes, a feeling of warmth and a scent like cinnamon. Warm, spicy, enveloping. A real scent, right here, in her nose, and yet she knows it’s a memory. She hadn’t seen the much younger Thea in the maimed face of Thea’s corpse, yet she’d sensed a connection. The scent she thought she’d detected, lingering below all the sad, awful odors in the mortuary.
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