Barefoot in the Sand

by Holly Chamberlin

  “Like a Viking princess, all that pretty blond hair and those bright blue eyes. And she was tall, too, like she could have been a model.” Kathy laughed. “If she wasn’t so nice, I might have hated her!”

  Though Laura knew that not every daughter looked like her mother, she felt a teeny bit let down. She was not tall or blond. Nor did she have blue eyes, bright or otherwise. And why should this Victoria Aldridge be her birth mother, anyway? Victoria couldn’t have been the only teenage girl in this small town who could have gotten pregnant in the summer of 1984.

  “Nothing like me, then.”

  “You’re pretty enough. Now, get on and eat your breakfast!” Kathy scolded good-naturedly before hurrying off to serve another customer.

  Chapter 17

  The cats had been fed, their water bowls refreshed, and their litter boxes cleaned. Arden had eaten breakfast; showered; and dressed. Her bag was packed for work.

  Yet all she wanted to do was go back to bed. Ever since the strange dream the other night she had felt tired and out of sorts. The sense of being pursued had translated itself into her waking life, appearing at the oddest, most ordinary moments—while she was crossing the street to grab a coffee at Chez Claudine; reshelving books a customer had misplaced; even loading the dishwasher after dinner. If only she knew exactly what that ambiguous figure wanted from her.

  Who it was. What it was.

  Arden sank into a chair at the kitchen table. No matter how you tried to put the past behind you, it was never entirely gone. The past might be another country to which you could never return, but it was still right there on the map, stuck with pins to mark the location of the life-changing moments.

  Like the summer of 1985. The summer she had finally escaped from her parents—the pursuing figure in her dream?—and from Port George.

  So long ago! Arden had almost forgotten what her parents looked like, not the broad outlines but the details. How tall was her mother, exactly? Had her father’s hair begun to turn gray before she left home? Her parents would have changed over the years, maybe drastically, but Arden felt sure she would recognize them. Of course, she would. They were her flesh and blood.

  The better question might be, would Florence and Herbert Aldridge recognize their only surviving child? Would they want to?

  Gently, Arden touched the silver charm that hung around her neck, one of a very few items from her past in Port George she had managed to hold on to through the years. Of course, along with the charm, she had succeeded in keeping her precious copy of Villette, the gift Rob had given to her on her eighteenth birthday.

  There had been a scary incident once, many years before, when she had been working in the bakery department of a large grocery chain. She had brought the book to work with her, intending to read during her lunch break. Needing to use the ladies’ room, she had gone off, carelessly leaving the book next to her half-eaten sandwich. When she returned only moments later, the book was gone. Arden remembered all too clearly the sense of panic that had overcome her, her heart racing, an acid taste rising in her throat.

  Then a coworker appeared, holding the book in her hand. “I figured you wouldn’t mind if I gave it a quick look,” she said with a smile. “It’s pretty old, huh?”

  Arden had resisted the urge to yank the book from the other woman’s hands. Still, her coworker had caught on to the depth of Arden’s distress pretty quickly.

  “Sheesh,” the woman said with a frown, extending the book to Arden. “Excuse me for living. Take your stupid book.”

  After that incident, the book never left a locked apartment. Arden had even kept its existence a secret from Margery, her beloved friend and mentor, wary of questions she could not and would not answer. Where had she come by the book? Had someone given it to her? Why was it so special?

  And who was Arden Bell, really?

  It had been fifteen years since Arden had fetched up in Eliot’s Corner and seen the hand-lettered sign in the window of Arden Forest: ASSISTANT WANTED. She had applied for the job the very next day, after concocting a personal backstory to go along with her generally unimpressive résumé.

  She had been born in Ohio, she said. She had been orphaned when only a baby and sent to live with a much-older aunt and uncle who lived in a tiny town in upstate New York. They were not happy to become caretakers of a child and did the bare minimum—provided a roof over her head, clothes to wear, food to eat. She had moved out of their house when she was seventeen. They died when she was nineteen. She knew of no other family. The end.

  Arden had been careful to keep her story bare of details that might catch her up in the retelling. She had rehearsed the delivery of this abbreviated tale in front of a mirror. A direct stare, no prevarication, no emotion, no room for questions. When someone did ask a question—”I have family in upstate New York. What town did you say you grew up in?”—Arden had a ready response at hand: “My childhood was not a happy one. I prefer not to talk about it.”

  This sort of closed behavior might have resulted in unpopularity, but it hadn’t. Within months of her arrival in Port Eliot even those whose curiosity about the newcomer had taken the form of suspicion had accepted Arden Bell. So, the woman had secrets. Who didn’t? And if Margery Hopkins liked her, she was okay. People hadn’t seen Margery so energetic in years, and Arden knew her stuff when it came to books.

  A lump of fur butted her leg and Arden shook herself back to the present, away from troubling dreams and bittersweet memories. Tired and out of sorts she might be, but the shop needed to be opened, and as Brent had a doctor’s appointment this morning, the task was hers.

  Arden got up from the table and put her satchel over her shoulder. “See you later,” she told the kitties. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  Chapter 18

  Laura Huntington was frustrated. She was also angry. Everyone had a story to tell. People needed to be heard. They wanted to be believed. That was okay. Really. What was not okay was when people chose to slander someone simply to aggrandize their own paltry importance or to fulfill a pathetic need for attention.

  Her first stop that morning had been at the home of Renee Wilson. The house was singularly without charm or style, and that wasn’t entirely the fault of the architect. The mistress of the house was no better. Renee immediately struck Laura as a vain and rather stupid woman, full of her self-worth but having little with which to back it up.

  She was also unattractive, and it had nothing to do with the ill-fitting, garishly colored clothing she was wearing. If her personality had been warm and bright, or her manner of speaking smart and witty, one would easily overlook the rather bulbous nose, the too-small eyes, and the low forehead. One might even be tempted to call Renee Wilson a jolie laide, a magnificently ugly woman with her own strange attraction.

  But her personality was not warm and bright, it was cramped and mean. And as for smart and witty, after about three minutes in the woman’s presence, Laura was convinced Renee Wilson didn’t know the meaning of either word.

  But Renee was eager to talk to someone making a podcast. She had, she claimed (falsely), a famously melodious voice and would be more than happy to make time for the director when he needed an interview.

  “I was told you knew Victoria Aldridge,” Laura said, ignoring the woman’s self-serving offer.

  It was all the prompt Mrs. Wilson needed. “I knew the poor girl very well. From first grade on. I think she probably had autism or maybe some other disease that made her socially awkward. I mean, not just shy but, you know, like pathologically nervous around other people.”

  Laura kept her expression bland.

  “Naturally, when I saw how backward she was, I made it my purpose to become her friend and help her to change. I knew she’d never be as popular as I was—not by half!—but at least, I thought, I could fix her enough so that she wouldn’t be made fun of the way she was.”

  “And did you succeed?” Laura asked with a bright and false smile. Backward? Disease? Was this
woman for real?

  Renee seemed to consider. “You know,” she said after a moment in a manner of great humility, “I think that I did. Better than anyone else could have, anyway. I have a gift with backwards people.”

  “Yes,” Laura said, snappy replies racing through her mind. “I’m sure you do. And what about when Victoria went on to high school?”

  Renee leaned forward and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “The poor thing. If you could have seen how miserable she was all through high school without me by her side to guide her.”

  “When was the last time you actually spoke to Victoria Aldridge?”

  Renee frowned elaborately. “Let me see,” she said, thinking hard, “I think, yes, I think it was the day we graduated from our school. Back then the Catholic school was the only private grammar school around. It’s sad to think the school was forced to shut down years ago. I—”

  “So, you’re saying that after graduation when you were about twelve or thirteen, you never spoke to Victoria again? You never actually knew her in high school, if she was miserable or not?”

  Renee shifted in her seat. “Well, that’s right. But I heard things.”

  “Like the fact that Victoria Aldridge was dating Rob Smith?”

  Renee put her hand to her heart in mock horror. “Never! Rob would never have given Victoria the time of day! He was . . . Well, I don’t know what he was, but he certainly wasn’t dating anyone in Port George or I would have known.”

  “I’m sure you would have,” Laura said, rising as she did. “Well, thank you for your time. It’s been interesting.”

  Renee’s practiced smile returned. “You’ll let me know when I’m needed for my interview,” she said, self-consciously touching her hair.

  “Of course,” Laura lied. “I’ll call you myself.”

  She left the Wilson house feeling the need for a hot bath or a stiff drink. Maybe both.

  Her next stop had been to McDonald Landscaping. Located on the outskirts of Port George, it looked like every other landscaping enterprise Laura had ever visited. Lots of greenhouses. The smell of fertilizer. Carts for customers to use as they collected their purchases. An office, located in an old clapboard structure, which doubled as a shop selling a variety of clippers, shears, hoses, and other gardening tools.

  Laura went inside. She explained who she was and why she was there. At the word podcast the young receptionist sat up straight in her chair. Old Jack McDonald, Laura was told, had dementia and was unable to communicate with anyone and didn’t even know who he was anymore, which was why he was in a nursing home up in Augusta. His son, Jack junior, however, might be able to help. If Laura would wait a moment, the receptionist would send him a text.

  Jack junior appeared about three minutes later. He was overweight with a florid complexion; clearly, Laura thought, he wasn’t doing any of the physical labor required of a landscape professional. She wondered if he ever had, or if he had always enjoyed the privileges of being the owner’s son, overseer rather than worker.

  Jack junior was more than happy to tell Laura what he remembered about the Aldridge family. He suggested they go outside. “That girl is as nosy as they come,” he said, nodding back toward the receptionist.

  Laura made no comment.

  “I didn’t know Victoria Aldridge,” Jack junior said right off. “I mean, I knew who she was, everybody did. But it wasn’t like she was hanging out with the other kids our age Saturday nights. Her parents were loaded. She was pretty aloof and stuck up.”

  “How do you know that if you didn’t know her personally?”

  Jack junior shrugged. “It’s what everybody said about her.”

  “Everybody?”

  Jack junior looked annoyed. “Yeah, you know, the people in town. Victoria Aldridge would go to pay for something in a shop and wouldn’t even look the cashier in the eye. Too good for the likes of us.”

  “Maybe she was shy,” Laura said, with a real effort at keeping her temper. She remembered that Kathy had considered her former classmate shy, not pathologically reclusive as Renee Wilson had opined.

  Jack junior smirked. “Nah. My father said the mother was the same way. She’d stay in that big house and send someone out to tell him he was doing something wrong with the lawn or the flower beds, the maid or the housekeeper or whatever she was. Never spoke one word to my father in all the years he worked on their property. Too good for the likes of us.”

  Laura smiled blandly. “I’m guessing you don’t have the Aldridge account now.”

  Jack junior’s complexion grew even redder, if that was possible. “I wouldn’t work for Herbert Aldridge if he paid me a million dollars a month. He fired my father back in 1986 or ’7. No reason, just told him he wasn’t needed. As far as I know, Aldridge never hired another landscaper. Could be a wilderness up there now for all I care.”

  Loath as Laura was to continue the conversation with Jack junior, she needed to ask more questions. “Did you ever hear of what happened to Victoria? Where she went after college or why she never came back to Port George?”

  Another, nastier smirk appeared on the man’s fleshy face. “Friend of mine who lives in Portland told me about, oh, fifteen or twenty years ago, that he saw Victoria Aldridge on line for a handout at one of the homeless shelters. Said he was one hundred percent sure it was her. She looked awful, a real mess. Serves her right is what I say.”

  Resisting the impulse to throttle the repulsive man, Laura forced herself to ask what Jack junior remembered about Rob Smith.

  “He was a popular guy with just about everybody”—Jack junior stuck his thumbs in his belt—”but I saw through his act. Nobody is that nice and means it. No, underneath all that please and thank-you garbage Rob Smith was a schemer, out for his own good. What I think is he began to buy his own bullshit, got too big for his britches like my father used to say, went one step too far, and wham.”

  Laura knew in every fiber of her being that she should not encourage this weasel to go on, but a sudden sense of perversity forced her to open her mouth. “Wham?”

  Jack junior nodded. “Wham. Someone taught him a lesson. Dumped the body somewhere out of town. End of Mr. Goody Two-shoes.”

  Laura could not get away from McDonald Landscaping and its pathetic owner quickly enough.

  Now she was on her way to see the third person Kathy Murdoch had suggested she see regarding Victoria Aldridge. Hopefully Miss Thompson would prove at least a halfway reliable source of information. If she began to babble outrageously, Laura wasn’t sure she could control a scream.

  Finally, Laura turned onto Whippoorwill Way, literally around the corner from Fern Pond Road where the Smith family made their home. The small two-story house had seen better days; it was badly in need of a paint job, and a few of the window shutters were missing. The grass in the tiny front yard, however, had recently been mowed, and a pretty bed of blooming pink flowers was on either side of the front door. A mat on the tiny porch, perfectly free of any stray leaves or twigs, read WELCOME.

  Laura knocked on the door. Almost a full minute later, the door was opened.

  Miss Thompson, Laura thought, was a faded woman. It was an old expression but it was apt. Her clothes, though immaculately clean and pressed, were out-of-date—a dress a housewife in the 1950s might have worn while cleaning her home; a cardigan, the top button buttoned; her shoes, the sensible brogues of a screen Miss Marple. Her silvery hair was sparse; what there was of it was neatly arranged and held in place by small pins. Her eyes were a pale blue.

  Laura introduced herself and explained her reason for being on the doorstep. Miss Thompson knew what a podcast was. She made a point of living in the present as well as in the past.

  “Why do you want to talk to me?” Miss Thompson asked warily.

  “Kathy Murdoch gave me your name. She attended Wilder Academy and graduated with the class of 1984.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t really remember her. So many students, so many years.”

&nbs
p; “Of course. Kathy works at the North Star Diner on Main Street. She was one of the scholarship students and remembers Victoria Aldridge with fondness. She thought you would remember Victoria, as well.”

  Miss Thompson suddenly became animated. “Oh, my, yes!”

  “Do you think I might come in and we could talk a bit about what you remember?”

  Miss Thompson ushered Laura inside. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  Laura didn’t but felt that to say no would be rude. While her host scurried off to the kitchen, Laura glanced around the tiny living room. The decor was as faded as the inhabitant and as neat and tidy. China figurines of dogs lined the mantel above the well-swept hearth. Table lamps with frilly shades of pink and white were in abundance. On the walls hung framed prints of famous paintings—A Girl with a Watering Can by Renoir; Madonna of the Chair by Raphael; a landscape by Turner. The two armchairs were overstuffed and covered in a chintz pattern of blooming cabbage roses.

  Miss Thompson emerged from the kitchen carrying a battered silver tray on which sat a tea service. The tea service was old; Laura was no expert on china but could tell that much. The cup Miss Thompson handed her was nearly translucent and painted with tiny sprays of pink roses. On an equally delicate platter were five plump sugar cookies. Laura wondered if Miss Thompson had baked them herself.

  Laura settled in an armchair across from Miss Thompson. The cushions were surprisingly firm and comfortable.

  “So, tell me what you remember about Victoria Aldridge,” she began, hoping Miss Thompson wouldn’t question why Victoria Aldridge had anything to do with the subject of missing persons. Miss Thompson might be old but she clearly wasn’t stupid.

  “Victoria was my star pupil,” Miss Thompson said promptly. “She wanted to be a professor of literature or a writer one day. She was an avid reader, always with her nose in a book. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t at all like either of her parents, certainly not in temperament.”