Roses

by Leila Meacham

  “She mentioned it to me once,” William cut in, “but she didn’t explain what it was.”

  “And I mentioned it to you, Rachel, remember?” Alice said.

  “Didn’t I tell you she was crazy?” Jimmy declared. “Only crazy people talk about curses.”

  “Rachel, please…” Percy spoke as though shaken from a deep sleep. “I know what this is all about. I know Mary’s reasons. They’re not what you think. They’ll take some telling, but you’ll understand once you’ve heard her story.”

  “I believe I already know them, Percy. My mother is right. Aunt Mary wanted to clear her conscience before she died. This codicil is nothing more than atonement for past sins. She sold the farms to fulfill a promise she made to my father….”

  Alice shot her daughter an indignant look. “As well she should have!”

  “Alice…,” William hissed. “Shut up!”

  “And she left you Somerset to settle some obligation she believed she owed you, Percy,” Rachel continued. “I now know that the two of you were in love and would have married—should have married—if the plantation hadn’t come between you. So bequeathing Somerset to you was Aunt Mary’s way to say she was sorry and to ask your forgiveness, no matter what the cost to me. Her notion of a red rose, I suppose.” Her smile felt cold as death.

  Percy shook his head in stern denial. “No, Rachel. I know it seems like that, but you’ve got it wrong. Mary did this for you, not me. She gave up what she loved the most in the world out of love for you.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it, however misguided her sacrifice. Jimmy asked you a question a while ago. Will you sell Somerset back to me?”

  Despair flooded his handsome old face. “I can’t do that, Rachel. That’s not what Mary wanted. That’s why she left Somerset to me.”

  “Then we have nothing more to talk about.” She rose swiftly and slipped a copy of the codicil under her arm. Alice and William quickly followed suit. Rachel held out her hand to the lawyer. “Good-bye, Amos. I was certain something else was troubling you. I’m relieved that it had nothing to do with your health.”

  Amos clasped her hand between both of his, his eyes sad and contrite. “I was following Mary’s wishes, my dear. I cannot tell you how deeply sorry I am for your loss… for the loss to all of us.”

  “I know you are.” She slipped her hand away and turned to go.

  “Rachel, wait—” Percy stepped into her path, still a formidable figure despite his age. “You can’t leave like this. You must let me explain.”

  “What’s there to explain? Aunt Mary’s property was hers to do with as she chose. I had no claim of my own. I was only hired help and well paid for my services. There is nothing more to be said.”

  “There is much more to be said. Come with me now to Warwick Hall and let me tell you her story. I guarantee that once you’ve heard it, you’ll understand her reasons for this madness.”

  “Frankly, I couldn’t care less what her reasons were. What’s done is done.”

  “What about Matt?”

  “At the moment I’m not sure. I’ll need time to come to terms with his grandfather inheriting what I’d had every reason to believe would come to me. After that we’ll see.” She stepped aside, but again Percy blocked her way.

  “Don’t you see what you’re doing?” he cried, gripping her elbows. “You’re putting your love for Somerset above your happiness. Mary was trying to save you from that path.”

  “Then she shouldn’t have encouraged it.” She removed her elbows from Percy’s grasp. “Let’s go, everyone.”

  She marched out, the members of her family behind her, past Matt, lounging with his legs crossed and engrossed in a magazine, unaware of what had transpired in the other room. She did not answer when he called her name—she could not—and by the time he’d recovered from his confusion to pursue her, Jimmy had shot the limousine out of the parking space.

  Chapter Sixty

  On the return to Houston Avenue, the silence in the car hung as thick as fog. Jimmy drove with his hands tight on the wheel, William in the passenger seat, his heartache for his daughter evident from his sad profile, observable to Rachel sitting rigidly beside her mother in the back. She was conscious of Alice now and then stealing a wary glance at her but wisely saying nothing. For all her mother’s attempt to maintain an expressionless face, the slight twitching of her mouth betrayed the thrill of triumph.

  When Jimmy had parked the limousine in the garage, the quartet paused on the drive, no one making a move toward the house, the awkward silence of unspoken but clearly discernible thoughts continuing. William cleared his throat. “We’ve got to decide what to do,” he said, directing his comment to Rachel. “Should we stay or hit the road?”

  “I want to go home,” Jimmy said. “Like right now. I hate it here. I can’t breathe. Living in Howbutker is like swimming underwater with your mouth open.”

  “I want to leave, too,” Alice said. “If we stayed, I’d feel like a trespasser.”

  Beyond feeling, a block of ice wedged in her heart, Rachel said, “If you want to leave for Kermit now, go ahead, but I’m staying.”

  “Not without you, honey,” her father said.

  “It will have to be without me, Daddy. There’s something I must do here.”

  “You be sure to take everything you can, Rachel,” Alice said. “Every fur, every piece of jewelry, every knickknack you can get in the car. You deserve it.”

  “The witch! She was a witch, Rachel!”

  “Hush, Jimmy.” Alice swiped her son’s sleeve halfheartedly. “Don’t speak ill of the dead.”

  “That’s a whole lot less than you would have said if Rachel had got everything.”

  “Son!” William gripped Jimmy close to his collarbone. “That’s enough.”

  Rachel squeezed her lids shut and pressed her fingertips to her temples. The clamor ceased. When she opened her eyes, they were all watching her in chastised silence. “Let’s be clear about one thing,” she said. “I don’t begrudge you your inheritance. No doubt Aunt Mary believed she was being fair in leaving things as she did.”

  When Alice made to speak, William clamped a hand around her arm, and she remained silent.

  “But you can understand why I’m not full of congratulations at the moment,” Rachel went on. “Suit yourselves about leaving. It’s getting late to begin the drive back, and I’d advise you to wait until morning, when you’ve had a night’s rest. But you do what you want. I’m staying overnight and will leave for Lubbock tomorrow to… clear out my office.” Downcast eyes and a shuffling of feet met this sad intent, but no one protested. “So what is your decision?” Rachel asked.

  “We’re leaving,” Jimmy and Alice said in unison.

  William’s forlorn gaze begged her to forgive them. “Looks like we’re leaving, honey.”

  A half hour later, they were packed and ready to go. “We’ll stop at a motel somewhere along the way and give you a call,” her father said. “We won’t try to make it in one night.”

  Relieved by that decision, Rachel steeled herself to endure her mother’s customary gesture of farewell, but Alice’s hand remained around the shoulder strap of her handbag. “You think I’m happy only about the money, don’t you? I admit I’m thrilled that we’re going to have a better life—ecstatic, even—but I’m just as happy to know that now I have a chance to get my daughter back.”

  “You’ve always had a daughter, Mama.”

  With a jerk of her head, Alice indicated they step out of earshot of William and Jimmy. Softly, she said, “But you haven’t always had a mama—is that what those Toliver eyes are accusing me of? Well, maybe now you have an idea of how I felt when I believed Aunt Mary had gone back on her promise to your father… a promise that you influenced her to break, Rachel. When you find out how hard it is to forgive Aunt Mary for her betrayal, maybe then you’ll understand how difficult it’s been for me to forgive yours.”

  Her mother’s look dared her to dispute h
er. Rachel asked after a long moment, “Did you ever… forgive me?”

  Her answer appeared in the hard flicker of her eyes. No. Her long-hoped-for dream had been realized, the glimmer told her, but through no design of Rachel’s. “It doesn’t matter now,” Alice said. “What’s past is past. All I want is for you to shake off the dust of this place forever and come home so we can be a family again.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same, Mama, and you know it.”

  “We could try, Rachel. We could try to make it happen again.”

  “All right,” she said, but the look they exchanged carried no conviction.

  The trio climbed into the car. Her father started the motor while Jimmy adjusted his Walkman to his ears in the backseat and Alice secured a towel over the passenger window to block the strong setting sun. Her father made one last appeal before he closed his door. “Come with us, honey, at least for a little while. The sooner you disentangle yourself from this place, the better. What’s so important that you have to stay behind?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out, Daddy.”

  She kept the Dodge in sight until it had turned the corner, then sought out Sassie in one of the guest rooms, pulling sheets off the bed. “Leave that, Sassie,” she said. “You’re worn out. Wouldn’t you like to take the night off, have Henry drive you to visit your sister? There’s nothing that needs your attention around here tonight.”

  “Are you sure about that, Miss Rachel? Seems to me that you could use a little attention.” Sassie had obviously deduced from her refusal to take Matt’s calls and her family’s stamp down the stairs, bags packed, so soon after returning to Houston Avenue that something must have gone haywire in Mister Amos’s office. She and Henry were due to meet with him tomorrow to hear of the annuity they’d be receiving for life. They, too, would soon be forced to leave the home they had known all their lives.

  Rachel patted her plump shoulder and forced a smile. “I’m okay, just strung out from the past few days. I suppose I need some time to be alone.”

  Sassie untied her apron. “In that case, I wouldn’t mind gettin’ outta the house awhile. Neither would Henry. Might do us both good to go see his mama.”

  “Then by all means go. Tell Henry to take the limo and stay as long as you like.”

  When she heard the limousine drive away, Rachel locked all the doors to keep Matt from storming in on her when she did not answer the phone. She was of no mind—or heart—to see him right now, and she had a mission to complete before Sassie and Henry got back. Sassie had blamed the champagne for Aunt Mary’s frantic ravings to get to the attic in the final moments of her life. Rachel was now convinced that she had actually been fully lucid and aware that she was dying before completing one last and crucial task. She’d had Henry unlock Uncle Ollie’s trunk for a reason. It may have been to recover a diary or batch of love letters—probably from Percy—or some other ancient indiscretion she wished to keep out of the hands of the Conservation Society, but Rachel didn’t think so. Whatever she’d meant to retrieve had been so important that it had been the last thing on her mind as she was dying—that and the guilt that had caused her to cry Rachel’s name.

  And she intended to find it.

  The telephone shrilled again as she headed down the upstairs hall to a narrow door that opened to the attic stairs. Its insistent ring cut off abruptly, even angrily, by the time she’d climbed the steep flight. Ignoring a twinge of pity for Matt’s frantic concern, she creaked open the door and entered cautiously.

  It was a cavernous place, hot and airless and filled with the domestic cast-offs of over one hundred years of Toliver occupancy. Good luck to the Conservation Society pawing through this mass, she thought, a little short of breath from the climb. The stairs, not to mention the lack of air, would have been quite a struggle for an eighty-five-year-old woman in poor health. To make it easier to breathe, she propped open the attic door and levered a rusty andiron under the stuck frame of one of the windows, then looked around to assess where to begin. Her glance passed over an organized arrangement of household items, old books, vintage clothes, musical instruments, and sports equipment, landing on an assortment of trunks, packing cases, hatboxes, and wardrobes. She’d start her search there.

  Her guess was rewarded almost immediately. She found the army-issue footlocker behind a tall wardrobe, stacked on top of two other metal trunks. Its lid gaped open, and a pair of keys hung from the lock. Her breath caught. This is it.

  She peered inside, instantly assaulted by the stale odor of packets of letters long closed away, many of them tied with faded ribbons. A momentary aversion to what she was about to do made her draw back. Rummaging about in the trunk would be like pawing around in somebody’s underwear drawer, but every instinct shouted that something was here that it was imperative she find. Intuition conquered her squeamishness, and she glanced back into the trunk. A packet of letters whose handwriting looked familiar grabbed her eye. The top envelopes were a dime-store variety and bore the return address of Kermit, Texas. Her throat closed. Aunt Mary had kept every one of her letters, it appeared—from her grammar school years through college. They had obviously been read many times. She put them back, surprised at her great-aunt’s sentimentality. Or was it Uncle Ollie who’d preserved and tied them with the maroon-and-white colors of her alma mater? She picked up another group, skimpy in number, addressed in a childish hand. The thinness of the envelopes suggested they each contained no more than one sheet of paper. The return address listed a boys’ camp in Fort Worth and above it the name of the sender: Matthew DuMont. She held the fragile envelopes tenderly. Had these letters from her son been what Aunt Mary had been after? Maybe so. She laid them back carefully and drew out another bundle—two, actually, tied separately and then together. The initials PW were written above the lengthy U.S. Army return address of the first group. Percy Warwick. There were ten envelopes, postmarked 1918 and 1919, bound with a green ribbon. Or could it have been these she’d wished removed?

  The second group, double in volume and postmarked the same years, was secured by a faded blue ribbon. Rachel recognized Uncle Ollie’s finely penned characters and wondered if the fact that Percy’s had been placed on top had been inadvertent or a deliberate ranking of Aunt Mary’s affections. Well, what did it matter now? What did she hope to find here that would change by one iota what Aunt Mary had done? And written in whose hand? Matthew DuMont’s? Uncle Ollie’s? Percy’s? Her grandfather’s?

  Rachel paused. Her grandfather’s…

  She knew hardly anything about him. Her father barely remembered him, and Aunt Mary had spoken of him only once, when she’d asked why her grandfather had chosen to live in France. “Was it because your daddy did not remember him in his will?” she’d asked.

  Aunt Mary had grown stone still. “What makes you think he wasn’t remembered?”

  “Because my daddy said he wasn’t.”

  “Is… that the reason your mother resents your interest in your Toliver heritage—because he left Somerset and the house to me?”

  She’d been embarrassed that Aunt Mary had perceived the truth. “Yes, ma’am,” she’d said.

  Aunt Mary had looked stricken with some thought she’d appeared on the verge of sharing but had thought better of confiding. “Your grandfather had short roots for the land,” she’d wound up saying. “His passion was for ideologies and people, mainly the less fortunate, and he found them in France.”

  Rachel gazed thoughtfully at the piles of letters. Had Miles corresponded with his sister during those years in France… written of his son’s birth… his wife’s death? Had he enclosed pictures of himself and his family, especially of his wife, her grandmother? She knew virtually nothing of Marietta Toliver. Would his letters have reflected his feelings of being left out of his father’s will? Could his voice reach out to her even now, generations after his death, and help her deal with a similar pain?

  Carefully, she delved into the assortment of brittle keepsakes. If her gr
eat-aunt had saved these other letters, she’d have kept her brother’s. What was this? She removed a large, bulky bundle packaged in thick paper. Upon unwrapping it, she discovered a tight ball of knitted cream strips compacted around a wad of pink satin ribbons. It looked like an aborted attempt at an afghan or shawl, not Aunt Mary’s, she didn’t think. Aunt Mary had been averse to needles and thread.

  She rewrapped and tied the package and—her curiosity now fully off the leash—removed the lid of a long, slender box. Wow! Folded in tissue paper was a pair of lovely fawn leather gloves, exquisitely made but evidently never worn. The edge of a note peeked from inside one of the cuffs. She withdrew it and read, “For the hands I hope to hold for the rest of my life. Love, Percy.” She slipped the note back and reset the lid, moved in spite of herself. She took out another box from a florist’s shop and found inside the desiccated remains of a long-stemmed rose; the petals were brown as tobacco stains, but most certainly had once been white. Beneath the fragments, another note: “To healings. My heart always, Percy.”

  She had her answer now. These old letters and treasured mementos of an unrequited love must have been what Aunt Mary had wished to remove. Tomorrow, she’d perform one last family duty to her and sack up the whole lot to destroy when she returned to Lubbock. The light was fading. She was hot and tired and at the bottom of her emotional barrel. She wanted out of the attic. Quickly, she returned the items to the trunk, making room for the bundle at its base. Her hand struck something… the metal casings of a box, she thought. She paused. A box….

  Her heart beginning to race, she felt farther down and lifted out a dark green leather case. It was locked. She set it on the stack of hatboxes and grabbed the key ring from the lid of the army trunk, inserting the smaller of the two keys into the lock of the case. Despite its age, the top released instantly. She raised it and gazed inside. In the dim light, bold letters jumped out at her: The Last Will and Testament of Vernon Thomas Toliver.