“When was this road closed? Or was it?”
“Forties, I think? I don’t know. It is closed, though, and we’d appreciate it if you didn’t draw too much attention to the fact that it’s not private property.”
“Afraid they’ll open it again?” he asked.
“It’s a possibility,” I said. “The back property is untouched, hemmed in by the surrounding properties. Right now, the owner doesn’t want to sell - but if some bright developer discovers that he has access just by opening the road, he may make an offer the owner can’t refuse.”
“Do you think Darlene would sell?” he asked.
“Darlene?”
He gestured to the land on our right. “I thought your aunt said that Darlene Winters was your neighbor.”
“She is. She owns all that land on the west side of the trail. Her husband bought it decades ago.”
“They aren’t into development, I guess?”
“He had a plane and built an airstrip on the property. He liked to keep the trees up to keep the plane and the strip hidden. I don’t know if he was afraid of theft or nosy neighbors or what, but it works for us. Being surrounded by woods on three sides gives the farm a nicer feel and keeps things quiet.”
“I wonder,” he said thoughtfully, “if Winters would be willing to give me an aerial tour.”
“She doesn’t fly,” I said. “And before you ask, Rich took the plane with him in the divorce. Darlene kept the land and Allison and turned the strip into a tennis court.”
I smirked at the memory. Darlene, true to form, inaugurated the court with a “Freedom Party”, celebrating her finally-official divorce. Uncle Michael and Aunt Susanna were invited, and since I was staying with them at the time, they’d brought me along. I was young and overwhelmed by the crush of people. I remember Aunt Susanna telling Uncle Michael that she didn’t want me around people who’d been drinking so much.
“No one’s fallen in the pool yet,” he’d said, which confused me very much.
But what remained sharpest in my memory was Allison’s face when she came over to talk to us. She was older than me and much taller, and I looked at her in awe.
She resembled her father, but had her mother’s dark hair, and she was nervously fingering the necklace she always wore, a rustic looking accessory with a blue stone. The contrast between her black hair and her pale complexion was striking. I couldn’t hear much in the din of the party, but I remember her saying, “It doesn’t seem right, you know? We’re celebrating the death of a relationship. It’s weird…”
“Who’s Allison?” Randall was oblivious to my ruminations.
Now I was the one who stopped, looking at him in disbelief. “Allison Winters? Daughter of Darlene Winters?” When he shrugged, I shook my head. “You haven’t heard of the Allison Winters case?”
“Should I?” he asked.
“It was only the biggest story around here until the great and ongoing traffic light debate,” I said. “Allison Winters, the girl who disappeared just after she had gotten accepted to Oxford for graduate studies. I can’t believe you don’t know – there was a nationwide search. The FBI got involved and everything.”
He tapped his tablet meditatively, nodding slowly. “It’s starting to sound familiar… That was about ten years ago, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, very slowly. “Ten years.”
In some ways, it still felt like it had happened yesterday. Cloaked in the security of our landlocked existence, we didn’t realize anything was wrong until the news came over the radio. Allison disappeared while on a road trip to visit a friend in California. No one even knew that she was missing until a friend called Darlene, who was overseas, and asking where she was. Knowing Allison’s wanderlust, Darlene didn’t immediately call the police, hoping she’d show up. By the time the authorities got involved, Allison hadn’t been seen in eight days. The trail was cold.
Naturally, the press made much of the “absentee mother” angle. Darlene was a celebrity travel columnist then - a shining star in the dying art of reporting, as she liked to put it - and a regular on the talk show circuit. Allison was the bright, neglected daughter, with all-American good looks and a friendly, down-to-earth manner that made everyone like her. She’d just finished her degree and was working towards her Doctorate, eying a future in Forensic Pathology. Naturally, some friends reported that she was unhappy with her mother’s frequent absences, and from this came the suggestion that Allison may have harmed herself.
Darlene staunchly denied the allegations, stating that her daughter was far too intelligent to be upset by her mother’s career. She never stopped insisting that her daughter had come to harm, and pushed the authorities hard. But there was nothing to find - and eventually, other, newer cases took priority.
Like my uncle’s death, Allison’s disappearance left deep scars. The fight for her daughter and her own reputation sapped the strength out of Darlene. When the authorities informed her that the search was suspended, she responded by quitting her column, cancelling her appearances, and moving home, beginning a decade-long self-imposed exile from the world. She’d become convinced, she told my aunt, that if Allison were to turn up, it would be at home. She hasn’t spent a night away from the house since.
“Darlene Winters!” Randall exclaimed now, again ripping me out of my memories. “I remember. She was that globe-trotting columnist-turned-hermit, right? I met her a few times when I was starting out, but I never would have recognized her.”
“Time does that to people,” I said shortly, and began walking again.
Randall caught up with me and matched my stride. “I wouldn’t have known, to look at her,” he said. “The hermit life seems to agree with her.”
In a way, he was correct. Darlene refused to act the martyr - or the saint - and took great pains to dress and maintain a normal level of activity.
Nevertheless, I shot him a disapproving look. “She has never forgiven herself for Allison’s going missing,” I said. “For all her bold displays, she’s still a grieving mother.”
He nodded.
“It shows, however, in her writing,” he said softly.
I was startled by his observation, and yet he was correct. The time alone, the soul searching, and the crush of grief produced a remarkable vintage, if you will. Darlene’s books were dedicated to and based partially on Allison, and the prose was poetic and achingly beautiful. Even readers who did not know Darlene’s story would review the book with words like “haunting”, “soulful”, and “tragically gorgeous”. The carefree divorcee might have been a good columnist; but the grieving mother was a novelist of the highest order.
Randall met my gaze with a sad smile. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I occasionally read fiction too, you know. All work and no play, and all that.” After a pause, he observed, “Tragedy has seemed to hit this neighborhood rather hard.”
He walked forward a few paces, kicking at the weeds. The stalks swayed and bent under his strikes, but they always stood again, bright green, without a kink in their straight lines. I envied that.
A pall seemed to have fallen over the warm day. We’d kept a brisk pace, and the sounds of the farm had given way to that of the woods, and gloom weighed on the otherwise pleasant atmosphere. Randall seemed to feel it too, for he walked with his head down and a pensive expression on his face. Only Trusty seemed unaffected. She loped up and down the trail ahead of us, like a puppy who’s just discovered the great big world for the first time.
Watching Trusty play, the gloom dissipated. We came to a bend, where the trail separated from the road. Randall lifted his head, then his tablet, and snapped a picture.
“All right, Warwick,” he said. “Before we get into another fight, tell me something about your family history.”
After the heaviness of the earlier conversation, both of us made a concentrated effort to keep our discussion strictly on the historical puzzle he was trying to solve. I pointed out the areas that Mark Dulles’ film crew visited,
and showed him the paddock that we thought used to be the wheat field. I showed him where the orchard had been, where Alexander and Reuben Hill used to climb the trees and steal the apples, more to upset Obadiah than to enjoy the fruit. I showed him where the fields were, pointing out the one that Avery’s body had been discovered in.
“He dropped dead of a heart attack, apparently,” I said.
“Dulles covered that,” Randall nodded. “Some said that he was digging a hole, looking for his brother’s treasure.”
I snorted. “More likely he was digging up yet another stone. They don’t call this ‘The Granite State’ for nothing.”
Like most old New Hampshire farms, finding the outline of old fields is often as simple as following the rock walls that the farmers built around them. They were built as much to get the stones out of the way as to divide the properties. New Hampshire is rocky, hilly country that prefers trees to wheat, bushes to potato plants, and the early colonists led a hard, meager life. Once land opened out west or down south, and trains began to freight food into Boston, the farms in the area closed up and were left to go to seed.
The trees were quick to move in. Walk through any woods in Southern New Hampshire and you find pines, maples, and birch trees, most about the same age, growing amidst broken threads of rock walls and abandoned foundations. For all the lush greenery of the summer, this part of New England does not like the farmer.
When we were finished and heading back to the house, Randall said, “This has been very helpful, but I may call on you again for more information or another tour.”
“Fine,” I shrugged.
“You don’t object to taking long walks in the woods with me?” he teased, but I shut him up with a look that was impossible to misinterpret.
Chapter 18:
Aunt Susanna had lunch ready, but I had time only to grab a sandwich before running back to the barn to relieve Jacob and take on my next lesson. I spent the rest of the day teaching and readying the release forms for the upcoming camps. I completely forgot to warn Aunt Susanna about crowding Randall.
Despite the busyness of the afternoon, time dragged. I was impatiently looking forward to the evening, even while dreading the spectacle of dressing for a night on the town and leaving under the watchful eye of Randall and my aunt. But when I came in, Aunt Susanna was in the living room, moodily watching TV, and Randall’s car wasn’t in the driveway.
“Where’s the professor?” I asked.
“He had a meeting or something,” she said. “He won’t be back until late.”
I was relieved and so eager to get out of the house that I barely noticed her subdued state. I showered, pulled on one of my little-used and almost out-of-style dresses, pulled my unruly hair back into a bun, and applied a little lip gloss. When I came back downstairs to say goodbye, Aunt Susanna was in the kitchen, frowning at the contents of the fridge.
“Going out?” she asked.
“Yes. I’ll be back late.”
“Joe Tremonti again?”
“Yes,” I said, trying not to let her make me feel defensive. “Will you be all right tonight? You seem kind of down.”
She sighed and shut the fridge door. “Oh, I’m fine. Darlene is coming over to keep me company.”
She really didn’t seem to want to talk to me, something that both worked in my favor and made me feel guilty at the same time. Both feelings melted away when I walked into Ranalli’s Italian Restaurant in Salem and caught sight of Joe, studying the menu with a look of concentration on his handsome face. He rose when he caught sight of me and pulled out my chair.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said, consciously trying to keep my hands from pressing against my stomach, which seemed to house a dozen fluttering butterflies.
“I get it – you’re a working girl,” he said. His breath was on my neck as he pushed in the chair and I couldn’t repress the shiver of electric excitement that went down my spine. Then, with his mouth close to my ear, he murmured, “Besides, you’re worth the wait.”
That held me tongue-tied for the next few minutes.
The waiter came to take our wine order, and I let Joe pick the wine and the appetizers, claiming - a little incoherently - that I didn’t have the expertise that he did for such things. He chose a hearty red with a dry finish, and it paired perfectly with the dinner that accompanied it.
I didn’t need alcohol to induce a heady feeling. Just being in Joe’s presence was enough to make a girl need a designated driver.
Our talk, at first, was platonic. I asked about his work and he talked about his summer courses, the students he had, and the twists and turns of his book project - which reminded me uncomfortably of the writer back home. He was looking for a new house, as the one he was renting now was starting to feel cramped, and he’d rented a little Catalina in Boston harbor and was looking forward to taking it out.
“Of course,” he said, focusing on the ruby liquid in his glass, “I’ll need a first mate. You can’t run a proper ship without one. It just isn’t as much fun.”
His eyes, hazel green in the soft light of the restaurant, shifted to mine. Time had chiseled his face, sharpening the strong jaw line, weaving delicate patterns around his eyes, and dusting his hair with just the right amount of white. He could easily have graced the cover of any magazine - and I, with my wild hair only just contained in its bun, my hands hardened through outdoor work, and my figure maintained only by stress and physical labor, could not understand what on earth he was doing here with me.
But good fortune came rarely enough that I wasn’t about to question it now.
His smile deepened, and my heart rate rose in response. It was only with great difficulty that I managed to say, “Are you still accepting applicants?”
“Yes, from a very narrow pool,” he murmured.
We ordered dessert, even though I could barely eat, and a sweet wine to go with it. Then over coffee, he mentioned that he was considering moving out here permanently. That piqued my interest, naturally.
“You’re ready to leave Braeburn?” I asked. “But I’ve heard that you were being considered as head of your department.”
He laughed, stirring sugar into his mug. “Where did you hear that?”
For a moment, I panicked. Was it something that Randall had said? I couldn’t remember, so I said, “I don’t know. Just picked it up somewhere. It isn’t true?”
“I think I did make the short list, but since Amber left…” He shrugged again and took a sip. After a moment, he said, “I guess, I just feel like it’s time for something new. Leave my old life behind. Find something else to do with it.”
I took a deep breath and leaned back against my chair, staring at my china cup. Around us, the din of the restaurant had died down as pair by pair, patrons finished their meals and left. Joe and I had lingered longer than most. The fire flickered low in the reproduction brick oven, the hostess by the entrance yawned and checked her watch, but I wasn’t ready to leave yet.
Joe was leaning back, too, regarding me with those intense eyes of his.
“That sounded,” he said, “like the sigh of Atlas, groaning with the weight of the world on his shoulders.”
I laughed self-consciously. “Sorry. I was just thinking… I know this isn’t what you wanted for your life, but I wouldn’t mind a chance to leave everything behind.”
“Oh? Has there been more trouble?”
I shook my head, then decided to come clean. “We – I thought I spotted someone digging out on the trails the other night.”
“Near the house?” He sat up straight.
“Down the trail behind the house. You know, the old road. Anyway, when I went out to check, they’d gone. They heard us and ran off before they could do any damage.” I paused and looked at my hands. Without suppressing the bitterness, I added, “I keep thinking that they’re going to stop, you know? But they don’t. They just keep coming back. They just keep digging.”
“Did you call the police?” he asked
sharply.
“No. I didn’t see the point.”
He hesitated, then said, “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
We sat in silence for a moment. I broke it with another sigh and an apologetic smile.
“Sorry, Joe. Just thinking about leaving it all behind, to start again with a clean slate, shaking off old responsibilities sounds like – well, like heaven sometimes.” I reached past my mug and took my wine flute instead. There was still a few ounces of the sweet wine left – I’d been pacing myself for the drive back home. “But it is what it is,” I said, and drained the glass.
Joe leaned forward. “Why don’t you?”
I shook off the effects of the wine, and wished I’d eaten more and stared less. I blinked at him. “What was that?”
“Why don’t you start over? Sell the farm, move… Somewhere else. Start again. Or just start. You never got a chance to go out on your own, to do what you wanted to do with your life. Why not start now?”
I stared. “Start over?”
“Why not?” He covered my hand with his warm one and my heart nearly stopped. “Maddie, let it go. That place is consuming you and giving nothing back. Sell the farm, let your aunt find someplace to live, and go and live. Do it now. Do it before you get too old, before it’s too late.”
The ice in my fingertips was giving way to the warmth of his grasp. He didn’t just hold my hand: his fingers roamed over it, stroking and caressing.
I was confused, even without his touch complicating matters. Joe understood, if anyone truly did, why the farm was so important. Although I didn’t like to talk about business matters with him, I’d thought I made it clear that the farm stood for more than just a family business that needed rescuing. Here he was, pressing me to give it up, with touching urgency. He was concerned, truly concerned about me - and I’d rarely felt so conflicted.
Necessary Evil Page 17