“So, why did you come here?” Arden asked.
Florence answered promptly, “To apologize.”
Laura made a sound that was difficult to interpret. Was it impatience? Disbelief?
Arden took a deep breath, though it didn’t help much in calming her, and finally closed the door behind her mother. Laura now came around the table, closer to the other women.
Florence touched her face with her bony right hand; it still wore the heavy diamond rings Arden remembered from long ago. “When I first learned that someone was asking around about what happened to young Rob Smith in the summer of 1984, I was—surprised. I hadn’t thought of that summer in so many years. At first, when I tried to remember what had happened, I couldn’t. It was all a blank.”
Florence swallowed hard. Arden waited. She both did and did not want to hear what her mother would say next.
“You see,” Florence went on, a bit pleadingly, “over the years I had largely succeeded in forgetting what I had done. When I did remember bits of that dreadful day, they seemed more like things I’d read in a book or seen in a movie, not something that had actually happened. But this time it was different. This time, I began to recover my memory. Slowly at first, just fragments, like bits of a dream remembered the morning after. Then, suddenly, it all came back.”
“What all came back?” Arden demanded. “What are you saying?”
Florence didn’t answer the question. “I began to be worried that—”
“That I would uncover the truth,” Laura interrupted angrily. “So, you sent me those threatening letters.”
Arden looked to her daughter in surprise. Letters? Had there been more than one?
“Yes,” Florence said.
“What did happen that day?” Laura pressed. “What do you remember?”
Florence swallowed hard again. “Your father had bought me a gun, for protection when he wasn’t around. I was always so frightened, you see. I had gotten used to carrying it with me in a silk pouch tied around my waist.” Suddenly, eyes bright, she turned to Arden. “You remember that pouch, Victoria, don’t you? It was blue, a peacock blue. It was made in Paris. I don’t know what happened to that pouch. . . .”
Arden did recall the silk pouch. She hadn’t known it had been used to carry a gun. “Mother, what happened that Sunday?” she demanded again.
Florence frowned. “Your young man came to the house to see you. You must not have heard the bell. Maybe you were asleep. You slept a lot in those days. So, Rob walked around the house. He found me on the patio. I didn’t recognize him; I’d only ever glimpsed him as he worked on the pool with the others. He was a stranger to me.”
“What happened next?” Arden urged, surprised her voice was so steady.
“He told me who he was and said he wouldn’t leave until he had seen you and talked to you. He wanted to know that you were all right. He said he was worried because he hadn’t heard from you in days.”
“Why didn’t you let him see your daughter?” Laura demanded. She took another step toward Florence. “Why did you continue to keep them apart?”
Florence startled and put her hand to her throat.
“Laura,” Arden said sharply. “Go on, Mother. It’s all right.”
“Your father was out playing golf,” Florence went on in that pleading tone of voice. “The staff all had the afternoon off. I was all alone. You have to understand! He was so young and strong. I told him he couldn’t see you, that you weren’t at home. He said he didn’t believe me, and that’s when he came toward me. I was frightened and I . . .” Florence shook her head before going on. “And then the gun was in my hand. I didn’t mean to shoot. I didn’t want to. I just wanted him to go away. I thought he was going to hurt me. And then he was on the ground. He was dead.”
Arden couldn’t speak. For so long she had so desperately wanted to believe that her mother was innocent of any wrongdoing. And all the while her beloved Rob was being threatened with a gun, she had been mere yards away, knowing nothing, oblivious of the danger.
“How could you be sure he was dead?” Laura demanded, her face dark with anger. “You might have saved his life if you’d tried, called 911, shouted, anything!”
Arden felt her heart break for her daughter, Rob’s child. She wanted to go to her, offer comfort, but found that she couldn’t move.
Florence didn’t answer Laura’s question. “I don’t remember what happened next,” she went on, almost wonderingly. “The next thing I remember is being in my bedroom and Herbert telling me that it was all taken care of, that everything was going to be all right. He brought me down for dinner. It was the three of us, like nothing bad had happened. I began to wonder if I had imagined it all, or if it had just been a bad dream.”
“But it was all too real,” Arden murmured.
“Your father and I never spoke of it again. I managed . . . I managed not to think about what had happened. Eventually, it all went away. Until you—Laura—showed up in Port George and started asking questions.”
Laura literally snarled. “You killed my father.”
“It was an accident. But no one would have believed me. I would have gone to jail.”
“That shouldn’t have mattered!” Laura cried. “You should have gone to the police immediately!”
Florence seemed to sink into herself. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice high and thin. “Please, it’s not as if I didn’t care. I did. If it’s any consolation, I knew in my heart the moment I saw you in Port George that you were my granddaughter.”
Laura laughed wildly. “It’s no consolation whatsoever. You threatened me in those letters! Your own flesh and blood.”
“I was only trying to protect you,” Florence pleaded. “You have to believe me.”
“Protect her from whom? From my father?” Arden pressed.
Florence turned to her, and the look of shame in her eyes struck Arden like a blow to the heart. “From all of it. From the truth.”
“You had me followed,” Laura went on unmercifully. “Was it your friend, the one who drove you here today?”
“Yes. I just wanted to know that you were all right. I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
Suddenly, Florence’s face turned gray and she began to crumble. Arden darted forward and grabbed her mother by the shoulders. As she took the weight of the woman who had given birth to her, she felt a rush of what she could only describe as maternal instinct. The daughter had become the mother.
It was the way of the world.
Chapter 77
Laura stood absolutely still as her mother helped Florence into a chair and then dashed to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water. As Laura watched impassively, looking down at the bundle of bones that was her grandmother, she felt ill at the thought of having to touch this woman. The very idea was repulsive and Laura was ashamed of herself, but she knew she could not deny that strong reaction against her own flesh and blood.
“Why are you telling us everything now?” Laura demanded when Arden had returned and Florence had managed to take a few sips of water.
Florence sighed softly. “I’m tired, so very tired. I want to put an end to all this.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself.” Laura ignored the look of reproach her mother shot at her. Maybe she was being self-righteous. So be it.
“I am,” Florence replied matter-of-factly, looking Laura directly in the eye. “I thoroughly despise myself. I have forever. Remembering that I was responsible for that young man’s death only confirms that I was right all along. I’m despicable. I killed my own son through neglect, I forced my daughter to give up her baby, and I killed the father of her child.”
“You didn’t kill my brother,” Arden said soothingly, “and it was Father who forced you to send me away.”
“But she did kill my father,” Laura retorted.
A pitiful wail broke from Florence then. “Poor Joseph,” she cried. “But your father took care of everything. I didn’t mean to shoot him. I
loved the poor boy.”
Suddenly, like a surprising rain shower on a sunny day, Laura’s attitude toward her grandmother shifted. The woman was ill. She was sad and hopeless and old. She had endured much. She was to be pitied, not punished. Maybe once, but not now.
Arden gently put her hands on her mother’s frail shoulders. “It’s all right, Mother,” she said softly. “You don’t have to say anything else.”
Florence shook her head. “Oh, but I do. A long time ago I became very good at not seeing what I couldn’t stand to see, in not believing what I couldn’t stand to believe. Ask your father. He knows what I am. Not that I asked to be this way. But I’ve always been too weak to be better.”
Suddenly, Florence broke from her daughter’s gentle hold and lurched from the chair. In spite of the pity Laura had felt for her grandmother only a moment earlier, Laura cried out and recoiled from the withered old woman. Florence Aldridge seemed like a macabre figure from an M. R. James ghost story, her eyes wild, her skin gray, her face a mask of crumpled linen.
“Mother!” Arden cried, dashing after Florence, who had torn open the front door of the cottage.
Laura forced herself to run after the two.
Clarice Brown was climbing out from the driver’s seat of the old black Cadillac, her face drawn with worry. Laura recognized her at once as the woman who had been following her around Port George.
“Florence?” the woman called out, taking a step toward her friend.
Florence shoved hard at her companion, and the woman cried out as she fell heavily to the ground. With an ease that startled Laura, Florence got into the driver’s seat and started the engine of the big old Cadillac.
“She shouldn’t be driving!” Clarice shouted. “She hasn’t had a license in years. Stop her!”
But it was too late to make a grab for Florence. Instead, Laura dashed forward to where Arden knelt beside Florence’s companion. Arden grabbed the woman under her arms and pulled her a safe distance from the car, which was now careening wildly in reverse. When it reached the paved street, it swung around, nearly flattening the mailbox, and tore off.
“Why didn’t you stop her?” Clarice cried as Arden helped her to her feet. Her stockings were torn and her knees scraped, as were the palms of her hands. Otherwise, she seemed unhurt, if distraught.
Laura dug her phone from the pocket of her jeans and called 911. She had made a note of the Cadillac’s license plate long ago, back when she had first seen the car in Port George. It was not a number she was likely to forget.
“What is your emergency?” the dispatcher asked briskly and dispassionately.
Laura opened her mouth and, for a moment, simply did not know where to begin.
Chapter 78
Clarice gave Arden the name of a friend in Port George who could fetch her. She refused to go to the local emergency care facility, though she silently accepted a warm wet cloth with which to wash away the worst of the dirt and bits of gravel that were sticking to her scraped knees, and she didn’t protest Arden’s assistance with affixing a bandage over the deepest of the scrapes.
After turning away an offer of something to eat or to drink, Clarice waited for her ride, sitting absolutely silently and motionless in a chair by the front window, her hands folded in her lap. Arden wondered what the woman was feeling. Anger at having been thrown to the ground by Florence? Worry for Florence’s safety? Possibly a combination of both and certainly something more. Arden had no knowledge of the relationship between the two women, nothing that might enable her to hazard a better guess.
“Nothing yet from the police,” Laura said, when Arden joined her at the table. Idly, Arden wondered if they would ever resume their puzzle. It didn’t seem important now.
Arden took one of Laura’s hands in her own. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you were subjected to that . . .”
“That confession,” Laura said quietly. “I’m not. It was awful, even terrifying, but I believe that Florence didn’t mean to kill my father.”
“I believe that, as well.”
After that, Arden and Laura fell silent. Two interminable hours later Clarice’s ride pulled into the drive. Clarice stood abruptly and Arden saw her wince in pain. With her knees slightly bent she began to walk toward the door of the cottage. Arden easily caught up with her, and with a hand on the woman’s elbow, she guided her out to her friend’s car. The friend did not introduce herself, but scowled as she helped Florence Aldridge’s companion into the front passenger seat of the vehicle. Neither woman said a word of farewell.
Arden returned to the cottage and sank into a chair. “Something’s become clear now. Remember Florence saying that my father brought her down to dinner the night she—only hours after she killed Rob? Until now I couldn’t get the timing right in my head. I remember a night when she hardly touched her food but drank more heavily than usual. After about twenty minutes or so she stumbled upstairs to her room. That must have been the day Rob—died.”
“I’m so sorry,” Laura said feelingly.
“It was that night, after my mother had gone to her room, that my father told me he’d reserved a room at the Two Suns. He said it was a ‘fine establishment’ where I’d receive the best of care. He told me there would be minimal contact with the outside world and that he and my mother would not visit during my stay. It would be too upsetting for her, he said. He told me I’d be leaving Port George the following week. I just sat there, listening to his words, numb. . . .” Arden almost laughed at the awful absurdity of it all. “And all the while, Rob’s body was somewhere on the property. . . . We don’t know what happened to him before my father ‘took care’ of things, do we? He wouldn’t have acted before nightfall.”
Laura shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t have. He would have hidden my father’s body until he could safely . . . until he could safely get rid of it.”
“And the very next morning Rob’s family reported him missing. I didn’t learn that until a few days later when my father told me that Rob had run off, left Port George and me behind. I didn’t want to believe him, and because I didn’t have access to the outside world, I didn’t know what other people were saying had happened. For all I knew my father was lying to me and there had been a terrible accident and Rob was in the hospital, wondering why I didn’t come to his side. It was so frustrating, the not knowing.”
Laura shook her head. “And not having anyone to talk to.”
“I didn’t tell you this before now. I guess I’ve been embarrassed to admit the depth of my cowardice. After I’d told my parents that I was pregnant and before Rob’s disappearance, I did try to reach out to him. Late one night I snuck down to my father’s study where the only landline was kept, determined to call Rob at home, beg him to come and rescue me.” Arden shook her head. “Oh, I don’t know what I hoped would happen. I was such a child, so naïve. Anyway, I got only a step into the study when I heard a noise. I was sure someone was approaching. I panicked and fled back up to my room. I don’t know, maybe I imagined the sound. It’s possible. I was so afraid. It took so much courage to sneak out of my room in the first place, down the stairs, and into my father’s study. I knew that if he found me wandering around the house in the middle of the night, he’d know I’d been trying to contact Rob.”
Arden, who continued to hold her daughter’s hand, looked for any shred of blame in Laura’s eyes and, yet again, found none. It gave her the strength to carry on. “I feel such guilt for not having tried again. If I’d gotten through to Rob . . .” Arden took a calming breath. “Even if it turned out that was the last time I heard his voice, at least he’d have known I still loved him. To think he might have died assuming I didn’t care . . .”
Laura shook her head. “No. I know he believed in your love.”
“It’s too late to know for sure,” Arden said sadly. “If only I’d heard the doorbell that Sunday. If only, if only!”
Both women startled at a loud knock on the cottage door.
“I’ll
go.” Slowly, Arden walked to the door and opened it to find two female police officers.
“Arden Bell?” the taller one asked.
“Yes.” Arden felt Laura’s hand slip into hers.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you that your mother, Florence Aldridge, is dead.”
“How did it happen?” Arden asked steadily. She realized she had been expecting this news.
“It seems she lost control of her car, went off the road, and hit a tree. The initial finding is that she most likely died on impact. She wouldn’t have suffered.”
Arden nodded. “Thank you.”
When the police officers had gone after what Arden supposed were standard proceedings when informing a family member of a death, mother and daughter settled in the living room. The cats, who had been absent since Florence’s arrival, now returned and settled at Arden’s feet as if to offer comfort.
“Are you okay?” Laura asked gently.
Suddenly Arden knew that she wasn’t okay. She wasn’t okay at all. “My mother... ,” she began, but could go no further. Wracking sobs erupted from deep within her and she buried her face in her hands. Perhaps wisely, Laura said nothing but simply came to her and placed a hand on Arden’s shoulder. The cats shifted closer, and through her terrible sorrow Arden could hear a calming purr.
After a time, Arden raised her head and gladly accepted the tissues her daughter offered. When she spoke, her voice was thick with emotion. “I loved her. For a long time, for all my childhood, I truly loved her. And now . . .” Arden sighed tremblingly. “Now she’s gone and I realize that I love her still.”
“I know,” Laura said softly. “I’m so sorry. I truly am.”
Arden raised her swollen eyes to her daughter. “She died not knowing that I forgive her. It’s awful. I—”
“If she didn’t know in—in that moment”—Laura took her mother’s hand—“she knows now. She knows that you forgive her. I’m sure of it.”
Laura returned to her seat and the two women sat in silence for some time. Arden felt her breathing return to an almost normal rhythm, and eventually, tears ceased to leak down her cheeks.
Barefoot in the Sand Page 28