Breaking the Mould

by Victoria Hamilton

  “Away?” Jaymie asked.

  “Away,” she said firmly, flexing her hands on the handlebars. “I remember Valetta fondly. She was friends with Becca, as well as DeeDee Hubbard. I called them the Fates.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t remember now,” she said with a weary sigh. “Because there were three of them, I suppose, always together.” She turned and began walking again.

  “Mrs. Nezer, I’m so sorry about Evan. You know, I’m the one who found him—”

  The woman held up one hand in a stop gesture. Jaymie fell silent but stayed with her. They were heading toward the docks, but along the way she cut down a side street, picking up the pace as they descended the slope. There was only one neighborhood where they were headed, a narrow street near the docks where the houses, built in the late eighteen hundreds for workers, were small, rickety, and slightly off-kilter in many cases. There was a mixture of neat and trim cottages, alongside some that were decrepit, looking the worse for wear. Johnny Stanko’s was near the end, still painted a vibrant shade of lavender from when his sister, who passed it down to him, was still alive. In the last year or so some gentrification had taken place, and there was a creeping sense that this funky little section of town was on the upswing. Amos pushed a cart past them, looking steadily down at his feet.

  Sarah pushed through a leaning wrought iron gate and walked past her old Volvo in the drive up to a nicely kept home five houses before Johnny’s. It was painted a deep rose, with russet trim. She lifted her bike easily and shoved it into a bike holder, then bent to chain it in place. She straightened and turned back to face Jaymie. “So what do you want? Why did you follow me?”

  “I saw you last night,” she said. “In the bushes by your ex-husband’s front door. You handed me a note addressed to your son.”

  She looked startled for a moment. “Oh. You’re that girl! You look . . . different.”

  “I’m not wearing makeup and don’t have my hair up.”

  “Ah, that’s it. You were attending my dear ex-late-husband and his shiny new bride’s Christmas party celebrating an event he doesn’t—didn’t—even believe in.”

  Faced with that kind of asperity Jaymie had the urge to explain, but resisted. It was not this woman’s business why she went to the Nezer party. “So . . . what were you doing in the bushes? Were you waiting for Ben to come out? Why did you hand me the note?” Which she hadn’t delivered. It had been an eventful night, and she had completely lost track of it.

  “Are you going to tell the police I was there?”

  Jaymie paused and thought about it. “Probably.”

  “Then what’s my incentive?” she said sharply, shoving her fists into her parka pockets.

  “Why do you need an incentive? I’m just asking a question.” How could this be the same woman Valetta so looked up to as a student? She was tetchy and difficult. Jaymie checked her first reaction, and dug deep in her heart, considering what life must have been like married to a man like Evan Nezer, and then dealing with her own mental health, only to be dumped by him for a younger woman.

  And she didn’t know Jaymie; why should she answer her questions? “I’m sorry,” Jaymie said more softly, meeting her challenging gaze. “I don’t mean to pry, but last night you took me by surprise. Usually I can imagine a scenario for anything, but I can’t imagine one for you hiding in the Nezer bushes before a party waiting to hand your son a note. It doesn’t make sense.”

  She smiled at that. “You look cold. Do you want to come in? It’s not a palace, but it is all mine.”

  “I’d love that.”

  She followed Sarah up the drive to the back door, which faced a tiny pocket backyard, with a fenced enclosure that was mulched this time of year. It was fenced, Sarah said, to keep the rabbits and deer from eating her vegetables in summer. She had been there a year, she said. The kitchen was small, with a tiny table by a wall opposite a single line of kitchen cupboards, a window over the sink looking out at the neighbor’s house.

  “You’ve been here a year and you haven’t been into the Emporium in all that time?”

  “I have, but just for incidentals,” she said as the kettle came up to a boil. She poured boiling water in a teapot. “I’m a minimalist.”

  Jaymie stared at her uncertainly.

  The woman smiled. “I don’t buy packaged foods. Most stuff I have to purchase I buy in bulk at the organic store in Wolverhampton. And anything I need from the pharmacy I also get in Wolverhampton. Would I even recognize Valetta after all this time?”

  “Good question; I don’t know.” Jaymie paused a beat, then said, “I’m sorry about how you seemed to have heard of your husband’s death. It looked like it hit you hard.”

  She shrugged as she set down two mugs of lavender-scented tea and shoved a tray of sweetener, sugar and milk to the center between them. She sat down opposite Jaymie, took off her glasses and set them aside, blinking and squinting. She rubbed the corners of her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. “I was married to him for thirty-two years and we share a son. I didn’t like him, but he was a big part of my life.”

  All the questions Jaymie wanted to ask seemed off-limits, too personal, too nosy. “I’ve met Benjamin. He seems like a nice guy.”

  “No thanks to his parents.”

  “I’m sure his character is all you, Sarah,” Jaymie said.

  “Don’t coddle me,” she said, meeting Jaymie’s gaze straight on. “I wasn’t a good mother. I tried, but I had a lot of problems. Still do, but at least I recognize them now and do what I can to combat them. There was a time . . .” She paused and shook her head. “There was a time when I didn’t, when I blamed everyone else, including Ben, for my problems. I was a rotten mother, and Evan was a rotten father. Ben being as wonderful as he is, is all him.”

  In the face of such bald self-condemnation, Jaymie wasn’t sure where to go. There was an easy answer right in front of her. “I see you’re a reader!” Jaymie said, picking up a book from the top of a stack on the table. Feminism in Fiction and Poetry: Mary Wollstonecraft to Margaret Atwood. “A little light reading . . .”

  Sarah laughed, the first signs of mirth. “I know it sounds dry, but it’s fascinating. The author—she’s a friend of mine from college—traces feminist literature through women writers of fiction and poetry. She covers other authors in the book, but she picked those two to bookend her work. She asked me to give her a quote to add to her website.” She shook her head. “Nineteen seventy-three . . . that’s the year we started college. I was once that young. That hopeful. And then came Evan. We got married and almost exactly nine months later I had Benjamin.”

  Jaymie nodded, but then stopped. A quote? “Pardon me if I seem rude, but why a quote from you? Don’t authors usually want quotes from other authors?”

  The woman colored faintly. “Technically speaking, she is getting a quote from Brianna Hargreaves.”

  “As my grandmother would say, who is she when she’s home?”

  “Brianna Hargreaves is the name I go by in publishing.”

  Jaymie waited but the woman was silent. “Should I know that name?” she finally asked.

  “Not unless you read literary theory journals used for feminist literature courses. She’s hoping I’ll give her a good quote, and recommend her book for course syllabi.”

  “Can’t say I have taken a course like that.” Jaymie paused, considering her next comment, but then decided to throw caution to the wind, stiffening her resolve. “I read romance novels.”

  “You throw that out like a challenge.” Sarah smiled and picked up her glasses, polishing them on the edge of her tunic top. “You’re expecting me to be shocked? To berate you? To tell you to read serious fiction?”

  “Maybe.”

  She took a deep inhale of the fragrant tea and smiled. “My dear, many of us feminists believe we should include romance fiction of all stripes in the canon of feminist literature. After all, they are books written mostly by women for women. And a
few gay men. Does that surprise you?”

  “Yes, it actually does.”

  “Feminists, far from what online trolls will have you think, are smart, funny, and all-embracing. Apart from a few no-sense-of-humor fuddy-duddies, anyway. We recognize romance literature as a part of our . . . socialization. At the heart of most romance fiction is a woman’s right to a good time in bed.”

  Jaymie laughed out loud in surprise. “I never thought of it that way. The romance novels I read generally don’t have anyone going to bed.”

  There was a twinkle in the woman’s eyes. “Ah, but there is the promise that there will be extraordinary sex in the very near future, am I right? Perhaps right after the closing pages?”

  Jaymie acknowledged the truth of the woman’s remark with a smirk and blush. “I won’t let my nine-year-old read my books, that’s for sure. Do you . . . have you ever written fiction?” Jaymie asked, thinking of her ex-husband’s writing career, as explained by Jacklyn Marley.

  Her gaze went cloudy and dour. “You’re thinking about my eminent published author husband.” She clanked her spoon around in her tea. “My book-stealing wretch of an ex and now late husband, who stole my manuscripts while I was grieving, locked me up in a mental hospital ‘for my own good’ and published them under his own name.”

  Ten

  Stupefied, Jaymie sat, eyes wide, thinking of all the implications of that statement. “So those novels he wrote in the eighties were yours?”

  “You bet,” she said with relish. “Root of the Bitterfruit Tree and I Make This Solemn Vow. My work. My blood, sweat and tears poured out onto the page.”

  “How did he get away with publishing them under his own name? You should have fought him! You should have—”

  “Should have, could have, would have,” she said, and hammered the tabletop, making the spoons dance. “If I’d been sane and not grieving. If I’d been independent and not needing Evan. If I’d not been nursing a little boy whose baby sister died in my womb.” The last words were a groan of pain. She covered her face in both hands, her shoulders shaking, tears leaking from under her palms.

  “Oh, oh! Sarah! I’m so sorry!” Jaymie jumped up and circled the table and impulsively hugged the woman to her, holding her as she shook.

  The woman took a long shuddering breath and shrugged out of her grip. Taking another deep breath, like a fish gulping air, swallowing and choking back sobs, she steadied herself against the edge of the table and finally cleared her throat. “You’d think thirty years would have taken the edge off the pain, and usually it has, but learning Evan was dead . . . I guess it revived it.”

  She took another deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. Jaymie silently sipped her tea.

  “I got pregnant very soon after Ben was born,” she said, calmer, her voice reflective and soft with emotion. “The doctors tell you that’s unlikely; I’m here to say it happens. The pregnancy did not go well, but I didn’t know for a while. It was . . . it was the worst time of my life.”

  Jaymie held her breath, tears welling, feeling the woman’s pain, hearing it throb in her voice.

  “Everyone thinks I should be over it. That was thirty years ago, they say. Get over it already, they say. And most of the time . . .” Her voice broke. She blinked back tears, licked her lips and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear all this.”

  “No, Sarah, I’m sorry. I was . . . I was judgmental and unkind, saying you should have done this or that, and that’s not like me. I hope you believe that.”

  “I do believe that. You look like a kind young woman.” She wiped her cheeks with a paper napkin and squeezed it in her hand. “I had already completed Root of the Bitterfruit Tree before Ben was born. But I wrote I Make This Solemn Vow after he was born. In a way it was about me and him, about a mother’s vow to raise him to be a better man than his father. I finished it, kind of, but it never received a thorough edit. I was . . . I was in such pain, emotionally, and Evan was caught up with his work. I didn’t think he even noticed my writing.” She snorted and shook her head. “He noticed exactly what he wanted to notice. While I was convalescing, in no shape to do anything, he found the manuscripts and took them to a publisher.”

  “How did he justify stealing them?”

  “He told me we needed the money. My care had cost a lot. He said there was no way I was capable of approaching publishers, much less being with it enough to promote a book.” She sighed and rolled her shoulders, squeezing her eyes shut and opening them. “He wasn’t wrong about that.”

  Jaymie thought about her friend, Melody, who wrote romance novels, and gave everything she had to the process. It left her drained and weary, but she then held it in her hands to love and weep over. It was a deeply emotional process for her. To have all of that stolen away would be a crushing blow. Sarah might shrug off the pain, but it had to have hurt, and on top of the loss of her second child . . . it must have been a devastating blow. “None of that justified him stealing your work.”

  “I know. But it was a long time before I came out of my fog and saw how he’d taken advantage of me. Years before I was functioning again, years when poor Ben relied completely on Evan and Erla. I couldn’t afford to alienate Evan. And I had . . . setbacks. Months . . . years in a prescription fog.” She sighed. “Life goes on.”

  Of all the people who may have killed Evan Nezer, it seemed to Jaymie that Sarah’s motives were deepest rooted, a bitterness that may have soured into hatred over the years. “I think you’re being far too kind about Evan,” Jaymie said. She stood. There was more she wanted to know, but this had been a harrowing day for Sarah Nezer. And for herself; finding a murder victim would never be easy. “I should go. Have you ever thought of telling the world that those books are yours?”

  She shook her head. “The past is the past. It’s taken me thirty years, but I’m at peace with it all.”

  At peace. Was she truly? “You must still write. I’ve never known a writer to just quit. Do you write fiction, still?”

  “Not for publication anymore, just for myself. I’ve been broken so long that I want to heal and write and . . . be.” She smiled, tears welling in her eyes. “You don’t know how much pleasure there is in just being.”

  Jaymie hesitated. As much as she didn’t want to torment the poor woman, the conversation felt unfinished. “I’m still curious, Sarah,” she said, patting the tabletop. “What were you doing in the bushes by the front door of the Nezer house last night? Were you waiting to hand that note to Ben? Is that the only reason you were there?”

  “What did he say when you gave him the note?” Sarah asked, searching Jaymie’s face.

  Jaymie felt her cheeks burn. “I . . . actually, with everything that went on, I never got a chance to give him the note. To be completely truthful, I forgot. It’s still in my clutch purse.”

  Sarah’s eyes widened. “You didn’t give it to him. Oh.”

  “Does it matter? What’s in it?”

  Sarah shook her head. “Oh, dear.” She swallowed hard and looked up to Jaymie. “Could you do me a big favor? Could you return that note to me?”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Nothing important, trust me. But . . . I’d rather have it back.”

  Jaymie watched her; she was upset about the note. She couldn’t promise to return it to her. If it was evidence, if it had anything to do with the murder . . . it probably didn’t have, but how could she be sure?

  “Will you?” Sarah asked again. “Bring it back to me?”

  “Why, Sarah? What does it say?”

  She was silent.

  Every question she had asked sounded, in her mind, like an accusation. What had Evan had over her that she took such a rotten settlement in their divorce? Where had she been before she returned to the village a year ago? What was in the note, and why did Sarah need it back? As accustomed as she was becoming to asking the hard questions, and as important as this seemed, she did have limits and she’d reached hers. Her nerv
es felt frayed and she felt anxious exhaustion welling up within her.

  The woman didn’t have anything else to say. She seemed troubled, but didn’t appear guilty or worried, not as if she had killed someone, anyway, and she didn’t continue to press for the return of the note. She hadn’t been panicked, just concerned. Jaymie said goodbye and headed out, needed some solitude and time to reflect on what she would do with the note. Her phone dinged, and she answered as she walked. It was Nan Goodenough. In response to her editor’s questions about the murder, Jaymie said, “I can give you some info, Nan, but not everything. It is a murder investigation.”

  “Don’t be stubborn, Jaymie. At least give me a statement for the website. I’m recording.”

  Jaymie thought for a moment. “I was coming to set up my diorama; it’s a scene from A Christmas Carol, the one where Scrooge is looking in a window with the Spirit of Christmas Present and watching the Cratchits with their Christmas pudding. I opened the diorama and found the body of Mr. Evan Nezer. The police are investigating.”

  There was silence. Then Nan’s raspy voice and irritated tone: “Jaymie, come on. You must have seen the body. How did he die? Was his head bashed in? Or his throat cut? I heard there was a lot of blood; was there? What did you see? How do you feel?”

  Annoyed, Jaymie stopped and took a deep breath. Sometimes Nan was too much, too pushy, too . . . news-editorish. “This is off the record, Nan; yes, I know more and saw more, but I can’t tell you anything but what I just said. It could compromise the investigation.”

  There was silence from the other end for a long moment. Nan was tapping at her computer keyboard and scratching something down on paper. Conversations with her were often punctuated with silences, while the editor did several other things at once. The phone was muffled for a moment, and she heard voices in the background, probably Nan answering questions, or asking them of subordinates. Jaymie walked again, scuffing her shoes through leaves matted in clumps along the side of the road. She was in sight of the Emporium and could see police cars and people gathering.