The Deed in the Attic

by K. D. McCrite

  She gave him a sweet smile and agreed, but the loneliness on her face haunted his dreams every night. The worst part, of course, was leaving behind their sons and their granddaughter. He told himself that, for a time, Kevin and Bruce would likely bear the brunt of Joe’s retreat from the situation, but nothing like they would have had to endure if he had stayed for the media circus and finger-pointing. At least his family would be safe, and that was the most important part of all of it to Joe. Investigators would uncover the truth behind the corruption, and everyone would know he had been used as a pawn in his own undoing. His family would not have to watch the airing of dirty laundry Joe had not soiled.

  The only illegal thing Joe Harper had ever done in his life was to buy a new identity for himself and his beloved wife, and no one would ever know about that if he could help it.

  One evening in late autumn, she sat near the fireplace, working on a large cross-stitch. She stopped working and stared glumly into the fire. Joe turned from the television and watched her for a moment. She never moved, and he knew she was lost in yesterday again.

  “Honey?” he said quietly.

  “I’ve run out of the dark blue,” she said, not moving so much as an eyelash.

  “What? You mean blue thread?”

  “I’m out of it, and I can’t finish my piece.”

  Finally she looked across the room at him. Firelight played across her features and for the first time he noticed how she had aged. The shadows deepened the wrinkles around her mouth and eyes. Her hair, always a chic, short light brown hung loose around her face and showed its true gray. These days, there was no money for her weekly trip to the stylist. In fact, the cash they had brought with them was the emergency stash out of the safe at home, and it dwindled at an alarming rate, even with his careful eye on it.

  Joe tried with no success to find a job. No one wanted to hire a man in his late sixties, especially a man who could not prove a work history. Alta was too frail these days for work that was more than household chores and simple cooking. He gazed at her now, sweet and delicate, the love of his life.

  Elizabeth Alta Ralston, daughter of one of Ohio’s leading families, virtually cut herself off from that family to marry Joe, the penniless dreamer. Together, with hard work, determination and faith in each other, they had come up from the depths to achieve material gain beyond anything Joe had ever imagined.

  All that had been taken away from them in a matter of a few days, and now … now he was too old to recover what they had lost. His spirit was broken, his faith shattered. But a look at his wife’s face was enough to give him pause. She had given up everything for him. Everything. Surely, there was something he could do.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, “let’s go into town to the little craft shop. What’s it called—It’s Time to Stitch? You can buy some more blue thread.”

  Her face lit up, her smile trembling.

  “It’s called A Stitch in Time. But can we afford it, Joe?”

  “We’ll afford it,” he said stoutly. Even if he had to sell his blood, his darling would have that dark blue thread.

  The next day, Alta roamed A Stitch in Time, her face glowing and as relaxed as he had seen since they left their home in Ohio. Joe stood well back from customers and staff, his cap pulled low over his brow, though he knew no one would know him, especially in Maine after all this time.

  Alta stood next to an elderly woman who studied the stock of embroidery floss with the same intense reverence as Alta. Joe smiled, watching the women pick up thread, touch it, hold it out to the light, put it aside and look at another.

  The elderly woman spoke, smiling, and looked at Alta. For a moment, Joe’s wife simply regarded the friendly lady beside her with bright eyes, and then she replied. Within moments, the two were engaged in deep conversation, animated gestures, wide smiles, and a laugh or two. Together they looked at pattern books, exclaiming over whatever they found in them.

  After a bit, Alta turned, looked at her husband, and then beckoned the woman to come with her. They approached where he still stood, out of the way, near the entrance.

  “J-Jim, may I present Betsy Holden. Mrs. Holden, my husband, Jim—” A brief look of panic washed across her face, as if she had lost something, then she blurted, “Johnson! Jim Johnson.”

  Betsy Holden was a compact, neat-as-a-pin woman, her snowy hair perfectly styled and simple. Her smile was warm and friendly but not saccharin or fawning. She met his eyes squarely, her handshake firm. He liked the woman immediately, and from the shining expression on Alta’s face, he knew she had found a friend. He just hoped Betsy presented no problems to their anonymity.

  Over the next several weeks, the trio’s friendship blossomed, but Joe cautioned Alta against revealing their true identity to a woman who was such a moving force and minor celebrity in the small town.

  “Not that I don’t trust Betsy,” he said. “She’s become a good friend, and I’m glad we met her, but you know as well as I do that sometimes things just slip out in conversation. If she doesn’t know anything, she can’t reveal anything.”

  Alta agreed. Although it was easy for him to see how much she yearned to spill all her fears to someone, she guarded their secret well.

  That winter, their money ran out. Alta’s diamond-encrusted wedding band waited redemption in the pawnshop, and the few hundred dollars it brought them would not last long. A child of the Great Depression, Joe knew how to survive the rough times. The fireplace became the main source of heat once the oil ran out. Wood, at least, was plentiful. They brought their bed into the front room, tacked quilts and blankets over every doorway and lived in that one room. The old car they’d bought when they first moved to Stony Point stayed in the driveway except for rare trips into town.

  Rice. Ramen noodles. Beans. This became their diet, and who knew how long that would last? Joe often fished from the pier, and he caught mackerel, but he knew they needed more. He had to do something.

  The next day, he sat on the sofa of Grey Gables and watched Betsy Holden pour tea in a pretty blue patterned cup.

  “How’s Barb?” she asked. He still felt odd when anyone called Alta that name. Maybe if they had called each other Jim and Barb at home, the names would have become more familiar, easier to use, easier to hear. “She looked a little pale the last time I saw her,” Betsy continued. She handed him the cup. As he took it, Betsy’s eyes met his. “In fact, she doesn’t look well at all.”

  He nodded, sipped the tea too quickly and burned his lips.

  “I know. Things aren’t … good for us.”

  She settled back in her chair, ankles crossed neatly, gray skirt lying in smooth folds. Her red cardigan had a single, tiny cross-stitched snowbird. Alta had done that, and the fact that an artisan such as Betsy would wear his wife’s simple design filled him with pride.

  “And they have not been good for a while, I suspect,” she said, blowing gently across the top of her tea.

  “That’s true. That’s so true.” He blinked back tears and swallowed down rising shame.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He gulped another drink, let it scald his tongue and throat, hoping the pain would sideswipe his humiliation.

  “Betsy.” His voice had lost the authoritative timbre gleaned from years of being the controlling force of HarperTown. He couldn’t meet her gaze for a moment, but when he finally did, he saw her eyes were filled with compassion and patience.

  “I need a job,” he whispered. “I need work … badly.”

  She set her cup on the small piecrust table next to her.

  “Just how bad are things, Jim?”

  He took a deep breath. “We’re broke. Completely broke.”

  “Social Security doesn’t stretch far,” she said.

  He did not tell her they received no checks from the government. How could they? Jim and Barb Johnson had no previous life in which either had made any contributions to the system.

  “I assume you’ve looked for work i
n town?”

  He nodded. “No one wants to hire an oldster like me. Not that they said it in so many words. That would be against the law. But I know.”

  “You never have told me what kind of work you can do, Jim.”

  He shrugged. “I’m willing to do anything.”

  Betsy gave him a sharp look, and he knew his evasive reply was not what she wanted to hear.

  “Well, I do have a number of things you could help with around here,” she said after a bit, looking around. “Of course, many of them will have to wait until the end of winter. Would you be willing to wait until warm weather to do the work?”

  His heart dropped. Waiting another three or four months? How could they survive?

  We’ll just have to. That’s all. We’ll have to.

  “I’ll be happy to do whatever work you want done, Betsy.”

  She smiled and rose from her chair. “No, no. Stay seated. I’ll be back.” When she returned a minute later, she held out a check to him. “Do me a favor, and take this as a deposit on the work you’re going to do. You see, if I pay you now, you can’t change your mind later.” She smiled broadly as he took the check. “There will be more as the season progresses. Get your muscles toned up, Jim. You’re going to need them!”

  Betsy’s generous check saw them comfortably through the winter, and that spring, those years of hard physical labor as a young man flooded back to Jim. By mid-May he felt stronger and more vigorous than he had at the age of forty. None of that sitting behind the desk for him these days. Gardening, digging, weeding, planting. Repairing the porch floor, smoothing the rain damage from the driveway. Cutting grass with a power mower, not a rider.

  On Memorial Day, Betsy had dinner with them. The simple, traditional fare of grilled burgers, potato salad and chocolate cake suited them all, but when she started to clear the table, Alta unexpectedly burst into tears.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” Joe said, rushing to her side.

  She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. Joe and Betsy exchanged a look. Betsy stood on Alta’s other side and gently rubbed her back in small circles.

  “Let her cry,” she murmured to Joe. “Just for a bit. Then she’ll be ready to talk.”

  So they waited, Betsy with placid patience, Joe with his heart breaking to see his wife hurting. Alta finally raised her face, red and damp, looking as lost as Joe had ever seen her.

  “I miss my family!” she blurted. “I want to see my sons. I want to hug Trudy. I want to go home!”

  Joe had known Alta’s homesickness never fully abated, but he had been so busy these last few weeks rebuilding his pride that he had really given little thought to how alone she must feel with him away so often. She went with him to Betsy’s from time to time, but Betsy was a busy woman and Alta refused to encroach on her time. Joe had deluded himself, obviously, by believing she was settling in to this new world, growing used to such a drastic change in her life.

  Guilt engulfed him as he stared helplessly at his wife.

  “Then, my dear, you should go home,” Betsy said reasonably.

  Alta’s sobs hushed instantly. She and Joe stared at the other woman.

  “Why do you put yourself through this pain?” Betsy continued. “If you miss your home and your children, why are you here?”

  The silence that hung over them was so thick Joe thought he could grasp it with his fingers.

  “We … uh … we can’t go home,” he said quietly to Betsy.

  She met his eyes straight on. “Why not?”

  Silence hovered again, thickened with tension and need.

  “Tell her, Joe,” Alta whispered. “Tell her!”

  He looked at his wife’s red-rimmed eyes, her grief-ravished face, the pallor of her skin. With the violent suddenness of a summer thunderstorm, the knowledge of what his decision had done to her reverberated through every cell of his body.

  “Tell her!”

  And so he did. Leaving out names and places, he explained how he had built an investment business from the ground up, how he and Alta had raised two children in the home of their dreams, how life had been so good for them. He told her how he had listened to his partner, an old and trusted friend, enthuse over the vast possibilities of a lakeside luxury development being created by an up-and-coming real estate company. The partner vowed he would offer his mother’s eyeteeth to invest if he had to. And Joe listened to the man. Listened with such faith and confidence that he neglected to research the company or thoroughly go through their prospectus himself. Instead, he invested far too much capital and far too much faith—perhaps he had just grown old and gullible like a senior citizen falling for a high-pressure sales pitch over the telephone. He found out too late that the lake-front property was protected land, a wildlife refuge.

  It was collusion on his partner’s part—out-and-out fraud, but the damage had been done. Their faces were on TV and in the newspapers. There were late-night phone calls and threats. It had been more than good-hearted, trusting Joe Harper could take. In their attorney’s office, Joe and Alta quickly signed papers to sell everything they owned in an attempt to repair the damage, but it was too late.

  “Crooked schemers,” he said. “They tore it all limb from limb, destroyed everything and left my investors with nothing. My sons, my home, my friends—everything ruined.”

  Betsy listened to every word, intently, her heart clearly in her expression. But now she leaned back in her chair and regarded him dispassionately.

  “Running away was probably not your best option,” she said. He nodded miserably. “Why are you here, Jim?” She obviously had missed Alta’s use of his real name. “Why come all this way?”

  “We had to get away,” Alta told her. “I owned Fairview. My uncle willed it to me years ago, and Stony Point is a long way from Weston, Ohio. We knew if we weren’t around, the media would find a new story and leave our family alone.”

  “And did they?”

  Joe bent his head, more ashamed than any time in his life. He felt like a wretched, self-serving coward.

  “The truth came out shortly after we left home. I kept up with the story, and when it was buried on a back page, I knew it was over. My partner will go to prison, and our family has been cleared of all wrong doing. But our sons lost everything.”

  “Including their mother and father.”

  Joe felt like his insides were being ripped out.

  “Jim,” Betsy said, “you have to go back. You know that, don’t you? Stony Point, Maine, is no place for you and Barb.”

  He looked at Alta. He knew she would not last another year in Fairview. He knew they had to go back and face whatever music played for them upon their return.

  “Jim?”

  He looked up and into Betsy’s kind, warm eyes.

  “Yes. We’ll go back.”

  22

  “Grandpa said he was very careful not to tell Betsy or anyone in Stony Point their real names or where they came from,” Trudy told Annie that night on the phone. “He didn’t want any of us to be hurt any more than necessary. He asked Betsy to promise never to try to find them once they left and never to talk about them to anyone.”

  “Well, she certainly kept that promise.” Annie replied with considerable feeling. “I’ve found no one in the town who had ever heard of them. I suppose changing their names had something to do with that, but Gram was great about honoring the wishes of others.”

  Trudy gave a soft little sigh. “She must have been a wonderful woman. I wish I had met her.”

  “She was terrific.”

  “After Grandma and Grandpa passed away, Dad and Uncle Bruce talked about getting in touch with Betsy to thank her for all she had done, but they realized Grandpa’s wishes were to keep that part of his life out of the light. Coming back to Ohio, living a simple life in a small house was a far cry from the mansion they’d left in Weston. But they adapted to it well. In fact, all of us did. We went from ‘riches to rags,’ and while it wasn’t easy, it certainly wasn�
��t as awful as it could have been if they’d never returned.”

  “I believe I read an obituary for your father.”

  “Yes. Dad and Mom were killed in a boating accident in 1997, and Uncle Bruce died of kidney failure in 1999.”

  “I’m so sorry. It’s so hard to lose loved ones.” She thought of Wayne and felt the familiar stab in her heart.

  “Yes, so hard. But I have a wonderful husband and twin girls. Zoë and Beth. They’re twelve.”

  The women chatted briefly about their families, compared notes regarding twins, and then Annie brought the conversation back to Fairview.

  “I’ve been trying to find out why my grandmother has ownership of Fairview. Did you know why your grandparents signed it over to her?”

  “Grandpa said when they left Stony Point, they stopped at Grey Gables and gave Betsy the key to Fairview. They asked her to check on it in a month or so, just make sure things were okay. But Grandpa, always clever, had registered the deed in her name, and left it on the dining table for her to find. He left a note with it saying that giving her Fairview was their way of thanking her for getting them back on their feet and opening their eyes. He asked her to destroy the note and never tell anyone she met them. Until that moment, I’m sure Betsy never knew their real names.”

  Annie sat on her bed and stared into the darkness of the bedroom beyond the reach of her nightstand lamp. There was so much to assimilate after these many weeks of dead ends.

  “Have you ever been to Stony Point?” she asked Trudy.

  “No. But I would love to come someday, and see Grey Gables and Fairview. And A Stitch in Time—if it’s still there. Grandma loved it so much.”

  Annie smiled. “It’s still here and going strong.”

  “Then if I ever get to Maine, I surely want to see that wonderful shop.”

  ****

  Late afternoon shadows slanted across the land around Grey Gables. Annie stood a moment on the edge of her front porch, looking toward the road with anticipation.