“I had a bad experience with fireworks once. I must have been about five or six. My parents and brothers and I were at a neighbor’s house. One guy got pretty drunk, and before anyone could stop him, he blew his hand off with some sort of incendiary device. I remember people screaming and my mother grabbing me and running toward the street. I don’t think I understood exactly what had happened until years later, but from that moment on I’ve never been a fan of fireworks, near or far.”
Brent shivered. “Yikes. What I remember most about Fourth of July when I was a kid were those cheap, paper Uncle Sam hats my mother would buy and make us kids wear, the hats and the red, white, and blue streamers and the bunting. What my mother lacked in taste she made up for in enthusiasm. Kurt?”
“Red-white-and-blue-iced cupcakes,” he replied promptly. “Red punch. Blueberry ice cream. In my house, every holiday focused on theme food. And that’s not a complaint! At Thanksgiving, my mother would dye the mashed potatoes orange, as if the pumpkin pie and the sweet potatoes weren’t enough. What about you, Arden?”
Arden shrugged. “My Independence Days were uneventful.” Except, she thought, for the one she had spent with Rob. “My parents might attend a dance at their country club. Very sophisticated, from what I was told. Sit-down lobster dinner, cocktails. There were fireworks over the golf course at the end of the evening.”
“What did you do while your parents were at play?” Kurt asked. “Watch Jimmy Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy?”
“I don’t remember,” Arden said honestly. “I probably spent the night in my room reading.”
“Tell me you at least went to the town parade?” Brent asked. “There must have been one. The single fire truck, the local Boy Scouts troop, members of the Rotary Club? A lot like our parade this morning.”
“I did, when I was old enough to go on my own. My parents never got involved in the more pedestrian town events. Pardon the pun! I remember my father being asked one year to be a judge in a baking contest sponsored by the church we occasionally attended. He and my mother got a big laugh out of that and declined the offer.”
Deborah turned her eyes heavenward. “Judge in a baking contest! My dream job.”
Only when Brent and Kurt had gone on to another party did anyone mention Laura’s investigation.
“Hardly an investigation,” she said ruefully, in answer to Gordon’s question. “More like aimless meandering. You can’t get very far with rumors and innuendos.”
“Tell that to the tabloids,” Deborah said. “The general public is all too willing to believe any hint of juicy scandal.”
Suddenly, the sound of distant fireworks broke the relative peace of Gordon’s backyard party. Gordon and Laura flinched. Deborah looked up again as if in hopes of seeing a flash of color in the night sky.
Arden thought again of that one and only Fourth of July she had spent with Rob, of their meeting in secret, of the sparkler he had lit for her before going off to help out at the town’s official celebrations. She hadn’t known it at the time, but the sparkler had been a metaphor for their love. How quickly ignited, how beautifully it had burned, and how quickly it had died.
But that wasn’t quite right. The love between Victoria and Rob hadn’t burned out; it had been denied the oxygen it needed to live. A wave of sadness threatened to overwhelm Arden, and she wished it were still light enough to warrant sunglasses. They would hide the tears she was sure would soon be falling.
As suddenly as the fireworks had begun, they ended. Gordon turned to Arden and frowned. “Did the noise bother you that much? You look shaken.”
“Yes,” she lied. “But I’ll be fine now.”
Chapter 55
Laura mopped her forehead with her bandanna. The temperature was near ninety and the humidity at 85 percent. She felt swollen with heat, as if her skin would burst open and release great waves of fire, but Arden had suggested this walk on the beach and Laura hadn’t wanted to disappoint her.
“You don’t really feel the heat much, do you?” Laura asked now, noting that her mother appeared almost as fresh as the proverbial daisy.
Arden shrugged. “I’m not a big fan of hot weather, but it doesn’t really bother me the way it does some people. My father was like that, I remember. It just occurred to me that maybe that’s why we didn’t have air-conditioning when I was growing up.”
“What about your mother?” Laura asked, using the bandanna to wipe the back of her neck.
“She was hypersensitive to both heat and cold, but if I remember correctly, she was tolerably comfortable in the spring and fall.”
Laura couldn’t help but imagine those two elderly people in that big house on top of the hill, rattling around in empty rooms, the woman, her grandmother, wrapped in a heavy shawl, while the man, her grandfather, went about in his shirtsleeves, his baggy pants held up by ancient suspenders.... She smiled to herself. She really did have a flair for the dramatic.
“I’ve been thinking about getting in touch with Lenny Tobin,” she told her mother, “the reporter who covered the story of my father’s disappearance.”
“How do you think he could help? You’ve been through the Chronicle archives twice now.”
“I’m not really sure. I told you it turned out he never believed my podcast cover, but he was nice enough to help me that second time I approached him. And he didn’t charge me for asking a few questions, like a psychic would. But maybe you’re right. I guess I’ll spare Mr. Tobin another call.
“Hey,” Laura went on after a moment, “I’ve been meaning to ask about that necklace you’re wearing. I don’t think I’ve seen you without it since I showed up in Eliot’s Corner.”
Arden touched the small silver charm that hung on a delicate chain around her neck. “You haven’t. I wear it always.”
“Was it another gift from my father?”
“Yes. I’ll never forgot the afternoon he gave it to me. It was just after we had tried to go to a movie in another town. I say tried because before we’d even reached the theater, I got too scared to go on. Rob understood—he always understood—and took me home, careful to keep to back roads so as not to draw attention to ourselves.” Arden paused to sigh. “I felt so bad for having ruined our time together, and Rob knew that. The next time we managed to sneak away to meet, he gave me this necklace. I’ll never forget what he said as he fastened it around my neck. ‘Our time will come to walk together barefoot in the sand. Our time will come to be together always.’ All we wanted was to be a normal couple, free go anywhere we wanted to go, to the beach in summer, ice-skating in winter, to Boston to see a Red Sox home game.” Arden smiled. “Rob loved the Red Sox. He played baseball in high school. I never saw him play, of course. Our worlds hadn’t yet collided.”
Laura shook her head sadly. “The whole thing is heartbreaking. Such prejudice, in this day and age!”
“And such a simple dream, to walk barefoot together on the beach. But it never came true because of the need to keep our relationship a secret. As long as we weren’t seen together in public, our romance was just a rumor.”
Laura linked her arm through her mother’s. “Try not to be too sad. Try to be grateful for what time you did have with Rob. My father.” Laura laughed quietly. “I’m certainly grateful. I wouldn’t have a life if you and Rob Smith hadn’t found each other.”
“I am grateful. Being able to walk on the beach with my child—barefoot or not!—makes up for every moment of pain Rob’s disappearance caused me.”
“Did your parents ever question you about the necklace?”
Arden laughed. “I’m pretty sure neither of them noticed it. I suppose if they’d asked, I would have said I’d bought it at one of the shops in town.”
“I can’t imagine the courage it took for you to make the decision to leave home and take your chances out in the world,” Laura said after a time. “And you never wavered in your determination.”
“Oh, I wavered lots of times. Like whenever I was feeling particularl
y vulnerable, when my boss at whatever awful job I had was harassing me or when I was sick with a bad flu. But I could never stomach the idea of putting myself back into the hands of the two people who had shown me so little support or compassion. Assuming, of course, they would have accepted me back.” Arden paused for a moment. “As for leaving Port George, it was more of an impulse than a well-thought-out decision. I suspect if I’d taken a day or two to really consider what being on my own might entail, I probably wouldn’t have gone at all. I probably would have sagged back into the inertia and sadness that had come to define me and done whatever it was my parents wanted me to do with my life.”
“I’m so very glad you didn’t think things through,” Laura said feelingly. “I’m so glad you found the strength to make such a fine life for yourself.”
“Me, too.”
Laura felt a drop of rain on her shoulder. Thank God, she thought. Now maybe the air would cool down. “We should get back to the house. It’s beginning to rain.”
Arden smiled. “I actually like walking in the rain.” A clap of thunder immediately followed. “But not in a thunderstorm.”
A flash of forked lightning caused Laura to wince. “Yikes. Let’s run!”
Chapter 56
Prospero, like his namesake, was undisturbed by the storm; Arden wondered if he had summoned the tempest for his secret feline reasons. Falstaff was hiding under a chair and probably wouldn’t come out until hours after the storm had passed. Ophelia was slinking around the perimeter of the first floor, nose working furiously, as if seeking the source of the disruption. “I call her the director of Homeland Security,” Arden told her daughter.
Laura, who, like her mother, had gotten a good drenching before she had reached the car, was drying her hair with a towel. “I’d trust Ophelia more than I’d trust any human appointed to the role.” She laughed.
Only after the women had finished dinner and were settled in the living room with cups of ginger tea did the conversation return to the Aldridge family.
“Where did your parents meet?” Laura asked. Ophelia was taking a well-deserved break from her security duties and was curled up on Laura’s lap.
“They met in college and got married right after my father graduated. My mother didn’t go on to her senior year. Probably fairly typical at the time. My father, though, went on to earn an MBA, and after that his career really began to take off.”
“So, what went wrong?”
“I’m not sure anything went wrong.” Arden took a sip of her tea. “My parents stayed together when lots of other couples of their generation got divorced.”
“And we know they’re still living in the same house. Too big for them now, I’d think.”
“It was too big when I was living there. Perfect for parties, but not for much else.”
“What did your parents do for fun, besides give fancy parties?”
It wasn’t lost on Arden that Laura never claimed Florence and Herbert as family members. It was never “my grandparents,” but always: “your parents.” Arden thought she could understand why that was.
“My father loved golf. When he wasn’t working, and he worked an awful lot, he was at the country club. My mother joked she was a golf widow. Not that she seemed to mind when he was gone. Well, maybe she did and she just didn’t tell me.”
Laura frowned. “No doubt he did a lot of business deals over drinks at the clubhouse after nine holes. Isn’t that the cliché?”
“I suppose. I remember being out on the green with my father once when I was small, sitting in the golf cart where I would be out of the way. I remember feeling so proud of him. He was taller than the other men and more handsome. At least, I thought he was.”
“Meanwhile, your mother was probably back at the clubhouse sipping martinis with the other golf widows.”
“Probably,” Arden said sadly. “She did a lot of that over the years.”
Arden took another sip of her tea and considered. She and Laura had grown so close these past weeks. Surely, there was no reason to keep back another strange aspect of the Aldridge family’s dynamic.
“I’ve been reluctant to tell you something else about my family.”
Laura nodded encouragingly. “Go on.”
“I’ve told you how the death of my brother haunted my mother. And I told you that her mother blamed her for what happened to Joseph.”
“Did your father blame her as well?”
“I don’t think so, no. He treated my mother with kindness, with a sort of exaggerated gentleness.”
“That sounds demeaning.”
Arden frowned. “Please, just listen before judging too harshly. This is difficult for me to talk about.”
“I’m sorry,” Laura said sincerely.
Arden took a breath. “My mother commissioned portraits of what my brother might have looked like at the age of five, and then ten, and finally, at the age of eighteen. I don’t know where she found an artist to undertake such a strange project. I imagine she paid well. And she probably provided photographs of other family members as a clue to what Joseph might have looked like, photos of my father as a child and young man, her own photos, maybe pictures of her parents, as well.”
Laura’s expression betrayed her shock. “Wow. So, were the portraits hung in a private room, a place where only Florence could view them? Sort of like a shrine?”
“Oh, no. That might have been—acceptable. The portraits—they were oil paintings—were hung in the big entrance hall where they couldn’t be ignored.”
“I should say not. What did your father think of your mother commissioning so strange a project? Was that one of the times he was exaggeratedly gentle with her?”
“I don’t know what he thought in the beginning, but I remember when my mother told us one night at dinner that the newest addition to her gallery was going to be finished soon. Joseph at eighteen. My father suddenly got very angry. He slammed his glass on the table and asked when this nonsense would end. I don’t remember my mother’s reaction, but a week later the newest portrait was hanging in the front hall. If she commissioned more after I left home, I don’t know.”
“I think the whole dynamic is pretty macabre. Your father’s complicity feels almost cruel.”
“He couldn’t very well forbid an expression of his wife’s grief.”
“Maybe not. Do you think your mother ever talked to anyone outside the family about Joseph?”
Arden shook her head. “I’m pretty sure she never saw a therapist. As for my mother’s friends, I could tell that she wasn’t close to any of them. No, I think my mother was a very lonely woman. I wouldn’t be surprised if she still is.”
“Maybe her husband forbade her to talk about the tragic loss of her baby son,” Laura suggested grimly.
“He wasn’t a demon, Laura. And he loved my mother, he really did.”
“Maybe so,” Laura replied after a moment. “I know very little about romantic love, or domestic love, or whatever you want to call it. I mean, I had the example of my parents, but sometimes an example, good or bad, just doesn’t stick. You know what I mean?”
Arden nodded. “I do.”
“Where is your brother buried? My uncle.”
At least, Arden thought, Laura could claim one other member of her family without hesitation. “In the Montgomery family plot in a cemetery a bit further north. I never visited the grave. I don’t know if my father did, either, after the funeral, I mean. My mother used to go alone. You didn’t approach her when she got back to the house, not if you knew where she’d been. She’d go straight to her room and not come out until the next morning.”
“She had her own bedroom?”
Arden nodded. “Yes. I don’t ever remember my parents sharing a bedroom. It was only years later when I realized that most couples did and that some parents actually let their children sleep in bed with them.”
“Were you allowed to ask questions about your brother? About what happened?”
“I l
earned early on not to ask my mother about my brother. If she wanted to talk about him, she did, but if I mentioned him, she’d get upset. It didn’t take me long to figure out it was a topic I shouldn’t bring up.”
“What about your father? Did he ever talk about the son he lost?”
“No, at least not to me, except for one occasion when my mother was in a particularly bad way.” Arden paused. “I was about twelve at the time,” she said finally. “My parents had gone to a party at the house of one of their friends, and something happened to upset my mother—I never knew exactly what—because they came home early and I could hear my mother sobbing. I was worried, so I crept down the stairs. The door to my father’s study was closed and they were inside. What I managed to hear made me think someone at the party had mentioned a child who had recently died, maybe from SIDS, and that the remark had sent my mother over the edge. My father was trying to calm her down, but her hysteria went on and on. And then I heard a crack. My father must have slapped my mother’s face to get through to her. It worked. There was silence. I dashed back to my room before my parents could find me eavesdropping. I felt sick to my stomach. I’d never seen or heard either of my parents raise a hand to the other.”
Laura’s face looked drained of color. “How terrible.”
“The next morning my mother didn’t appear for breakfast. It was a Sunday and my father hadn’t gone off to the golf course yet. I remember sitting in my usual seat at the table, feeling miserable, when suddenly my father blurted that it was my grandmother’s fault my mother was such a wreck. I was shocked, but somehow, I found the nerve to ask him what he meant. He told me that my grandmother had blamed my brother’s death on my mother; she said my mother had been neglectful. But she hadn’t been, not according to my father.” Arden took a deep breath. “Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, my father stopped speaking and left the table. He never mentioned the subject again.”
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