“No you haven’t,” I said.
She lowered her hands and regarded me dubiously.
“You may not be aware of it,” I said, “but you’ve surrounded yourself with hope.” I pointed at her book bag. “Tolkien threaded strands of hope through all of his stories.” I motioned toward her neck. “The pendant you’re wearing is a koru, a symbol of new life and new beginnings.” I jutted my chin toward the Scott Memorial. “You didn’t come here to dwell on death. You’re sitting with your back to the boulder, facing trees arrayed in the rainbow colors of spring.” I fixed her with a level gaze. “I don’t deny that you’ve been through hell, Bree, but it’s not in your nature to give in to despair. Your spirit is too strong.”
“And look where my strength has gotten me,” she retorted. “No car, no home, no friends, and no future. I don’t know where to go from here.”
“If I might make a suggestion?” I said, with a tentative smile. “You may be impervious to the cold, but my bum is numb and I’m starving. Why don’t we pick up Cameron and have a hot meal, preferably in front of a roaring fire? It’s getting dark, anyway, so unless you have a flashlight, you won’t be able to read the letter.”
“What letter?” she asked.
“Didn’t I tell you about your great-grandaunts’ letter?” I hit myself in the forehead. “My brain must be frostbitten. Let’s go somewhere warm before I lose consciousness. You can read the letter there.”
Bree kept still for a moment, curled in upon herself like a frightened child. She closed her eyes and released an exhausted sigh, then unfolded like an opening fern frond, got to her feet, and walked with me through the blossoming trees to Cameron.
Eighteen
We ate at the Bathhouse Restaurant because it was close at hand, open on Sunday evening, and heated. The elegant decor, the excellent service, the creative menu, and the unmatched views of Lake Wakatipu were pleasant bonuses. Had we been in England, or even the United States, I might have hesitated to enter such a sophisticated establishment in grass-stained trousers and a wrinkled rain jacket, but New Zealand’s restaurateurs had a refreshing come-as-you-are attitude toward attire that put me at ease.
Another advantage to the Coronation Bathhouse was that it, unlike many eateries in youth-oriented Queenstown, did not feature a live band. The muted atmosphere allowed Bree to concentrate on her great-grandaunts’ letter while Cameron and I ordered a sumptuous dinner for our party of three.
When she finished reading the letter, Bree asked to borrow my cell phone and stepped away from the table to make a call. She returned a short time later, handed the phone back to me, and maintained a preoccupied silence throughout the meal. How she could refrain from cooing ecstatically over the braised pork dumplings, the kumara and feta gnocchi, and the manuka honey sorbet was beyond me, but she didn’t make a sound until the Valrhona chocolate cake arrived at our table.
“The lawyer didn’t tell them that the money came from Aubrey,” she said.
“Lawyer?” I managed, through a mouthful of chocolaty goodness. I pondered her words for a moment, then asked, “Are you referring to Fortescue Makepeace?”
She nodded. “Mr. Makepeace’s grandfather agreed never to mention Aubrey’s name again after Aubrey was disinherited, so he couldn’t tell Ruth and Louise about the trust fund Aubrey set up for them. His son and his grandson were bound by the same agreement. The Fortescues managed the fund for nearly a century without ever telling Ruth and Louise where the money came from. My great-grandaunts believed all along that their father had made canny investments for them.” She gave a shaky laugh. “How could anyone be so naive?”
“Don’t judge them by today’s standards,” Cameron advised. “When Ruth and Louise were growing up, women weren’t expected to deal with financial matters. Money was a vulgar subject best left to the menfolk.”
“It sounds as if they know about the trust fund now,” I said. “What happened? Did Fortescue Makepeace break his vow of silence and tell them the truth?”
“No,” said Bree. “He told the truth to someone named Nell Harris, who told it to Ruth and Louise.”
“Why did he spill the beans to Nell?” I asked.
“Because she helped Ruth and Louise to draft a new will.” Bree gazed at me wonderingly. “My great-grandaunts have left everything to me. Everything. Not just the income from the trust, but everything they own—the house and all of its contents, the land, the car—”
“I wouldn’t get too jazzed about the car,” I cautioned. “It might have been a top-of-the-line model when it was first produced, but it’s a museum piece now.” I saw that Bree was trembling and added bracingly, “Of course they’re leaving everything to you. They’ve spent most of their lives being honorary aunts. If you hadn’t come along, they would never have known what it’s like to be real aunts. I’d say you’re just about the best thing that’s ever happened to them.”
Bree clasped her hands together, as if to steady herself. “They want to meet me. They say there’s an open-ended ticket waiting for me at the airport in Auckland.”
“Excellent,” I said, toasting her with a forkful of cake. “You can fly back with me.”
“Lori,” Cameron said oppressively, “you’re forgetting that Bree has unfinished business here in New Zealand.”
Bree’s entire demeanor changed. The excitement drained from her face and her posture became rigid.
“I don’t have to decide what to do about Ed, if that’s what you mean by unfinished business,” she said. “I spoke with Bridgette Burkhoffer before dinner. The hospital buried Ed two days ago. They ran out of room in the morgue, so they laid him to rest in the public cemetery. He’s not my responsibility anymore.”
“Will they send his personal effects to you?” Cameron asked.
“I gave Bridgette my permission to throw them into the hospital’s incinerator,” Bree said coldly.
Cameron looked taken aback, but I caught his eye and shook my head minutely, as a signal to leave well enough alone. If Bree had to answer one more question about her late, unlamented father, I was certain she would lose it.
“There’s the apartment in Takapuna,” he went on hesitantly. “The family photographs, your computer . . .”
“I don’t want them,” she said stiffly. “I copied the files I need and I have the photographs I want. I don’t care what happens to the rest. I’m never going back to the apartment.”
“Leave it to me,” said Cameron with a casual wave of his hand. “I’ll call the landlady in the morning and instruct her to donate the flat’s contents to an op shop. Though it pains me to give her a reason to smile, I’ll also let her know that she’s at liberty to rent the dump to another victim—er, I mean, tenant.”
“Thank you,” said Bree, defrosting slightly.
“Do you have a passport?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I needed one for a class trip to Australia.”
“Use it again for a personal trip to England,” I said. “It would mean an awful lot to Ruth and Louise.”
“I don’t know.” Bree rubbed her tattooed arms self-consciously. “What if I scare them?”
“Scare them?” I scoffed. “They’re gardeners. They see a hundred things scarier than you every time they poke a spade into the dirt.”
Bree managed a weak smile but she still looked doubtful.
“It must feel like everything’s coming at you at a hundred miles an hour,” I said gently, “and heaven knows I don’t want to pressure you, but the simple truth is that Ruth and Louise may not have a whole lot of time left. They’ve been improving steadily for the past few days, but if you ask me, it’s a temporary reprieve. No one lives forever. I think they’re holding on because of you.”
“No pressure there,” Bree said dryly, leaning her chin on her hand.
“You don’t have to move to England permanently,” I said. “You can make your visit as long or as short as you like. God’s own country will be waiting for you when you come back�
�unless it explodes, or cracks into pieces, or blows away.”
Bree’s smile widened infinitesimally.
“I don’t want to pressure you, either,” said Cameron, “but when someone pulls you from a burning building, you don’t stop to say, ‘Wait. This is all so sudden.’ You let yourself be rescued, then say”—his eyes found mine—“ ‘Thank you for saving my life.’ ”
My jaw dropped as his words clicked into place.
“Is that what happened?” I cried, making heads swivel in our direction.
Cameron nodded. “An electrical short started a fire in our dorm. I tried to escape down a stairwell, but I was overcome by smoke. If Bill hadn’t found me and dragged me outside, I would have burned to death.”
“Who’s Bill?” Bree asked.
“My husband,” I said, gazing across Lake Wakatipu. “My heroic husband.”
“Bree,” said Cameron, “your great-grandaunts have thrown you a lifeline. I suggest you grab hold of it. Lori and I are staying at the Novotel. You can reach us there when you decide—”
“I’ll come,” she said abruptly.
“You will?” I said, caught off guard by her sudden change of heart.
“Yes,” she said. “I’d like to thank my great-grandaunts in person. And I . . . I need to get away.” After a tremulous pause, her manner became businesslike. “I’ll pack tonight and call Holly in the morning. I’ll be ready to leave by half past eight. Shall I meet you at the hotel?”
“Meet us for breakfast in the hotel restaurant,” I told her. “You can stash your gear in my room until we check out. If for some unforeseen reason we have to stick around for an extra night, you can crash with me.”
“At the Novotel?” Bree said, her eyes widening. “It’ll make a change from the youth hostel.”
“A nice change, I hope,” I said.
“A very nice change,” she assured me.
“I’ll make the travel arrangements tonight,” said Cameron with a decisive nod. “If I can snag seats for the pair of you, you’ll be on your way to England tomorrow evening.”
We sent Bree off in a taxi after dinner, then hurried through the frigid night air to our hotel. I gave Cameron a synopsis of Bree’s story over steaming cups of hot cocoa in the bar.
“Ironic,” he said when I’d finished.
“What’s ironic?” I asked.
Cameron rested his folded arms on the bar. “Old man McConchie struck it rich mining gold ore. The site of his original claim is in Skipper’s Canyon—only a few miles from where we’re sitting.”
“So Bree wound up living within a stone’s throw of the source of the fortune she might have inherited,” I said. “I wonder if she knows?” I sipped my hot cocoa. “Did New Zealand have its own gold rush?”
“Yes indeed,” said Cameron. “If you take a jet-boat ride up the Shotover River, you’ll see old mining equipment rusting away in the water. Our gold rush happened later than the one in America, but the results were the same. Boom and bust. Camp sites became towns that became ghost towns when the gold ran out. Old man McConchie was cleverer than most, though. He used his earnings to build freezer works.”
“Forgive me,” I said, warming my hands on my cup, “but I have no idea what freezer works are.”
“New Zealand was England’s abbatoir back then,” Cameron explained. “Most of our sheep ended up as mutton on English dinner plates. Because of the distances involved, the meat had to be stored in refrigerated buildings and shipped in refrigerated ships. The McConchie family owned half the freezer works in the country for a time, but they went bust shortly after the Great War.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“The usual,” said Cameron. “When old man McConchie died, his oldest son took charge, but he wasn’t as clever as his dad. He put his faith in the wrong people and the business fell apart.”
“Which is unfortunate,” I said, “but not terribly ironic.”
“It’s ironic that the McConchies looked down on Aubrey Pym as a gold digger when their own fortune was based on . . . digging gold.” He looked through the bar’s glass walls to Lake Wakatipu. “What a long, strange trip it’s been, eh? Up and down the country, and back and forth in time. You’ve got to be pleased that it turned out all right in the end.”
“I couldn’t have done any of it without you,” I said. “And Donna’s biscuits.”
Cameron chuckled, finished his cocoa, and got to his feet. “I’m going up. It’s getting late and I promised Donna I’d call her as soon as we found Bree.”
“Tell her I said hello.” I turned to look up at him. “And Cameron, I want you to know—”
“See you in the morning,” he interrupted. “Breakfast in the dining room at half past eight.” As he walked away, he called over his shoulder, “Good night!”
“Good night,” I called back, feeling mildly deflated. I’d wanted to thank him from the bottom of my heart for going out of his way to make the Pym sisters’ dream come true, but it looked as though I’d have to hold on to my thanks a little longer. I shook my head, finished my own cocoa, and repaired to my room to deliver the good news to my husband.
The aftershock hit toward the end of my phone call with Bill. I thought at first that a heavy truck had driven past the hotel, then that it had been buffeted by a strong gust of wind, but as my bed continued to jiggle, I realized what was actually going on.
“Earthquake in progress,” I reported dispassionately.
“Really?” said Bill. “What’s it like?”
“Weird,” I said, “but not terrifying. Imagine lying atop a quivering bowl of Jell-O. Something’s rattling in the minibar, but nothing has fallen over. I guess that’s why the lamps are attached to the bedside tables. They’ve been like that in every hotel room, but I didn’t realize it was a safety measure. There. It’s finished.”
Bill gave a low whistle. “Ten points for sangfroid, Lori.”
“I’m turning into a Kiwi,” I said. “Nothing fazes me. Lake Wakatipu could flood its banks and I wouldn’t turn a hair. It’s all about living in faith, not in fear. I hope Bree can learn to live like that.”
“She’s taking an enormous leap of faith by coming to England with you,” Bill said. “I don’t know if I’d have the courage to step into the unknown at a moment’s notice.”
“I think you would,” I said. “In fact, I’m absolutely sure you would. When I first met Cameron he said he’d walk through fire for you. Now I know why.”
“Ah,” said Bill, after a short pause. “He told you.”
“I’ll give you a hero’s welcome when I come home,” I said.
“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” he asked.
“No,” I said, smiling. “We both know who the hero is in our house.”
I held the cell phone to my heart after we said good night, then plugged it into the charger and opened the blue journal.
“Dimity?” I said. “The search is over. We found Bree.”
I spent nearly an hour recapitulating the day’s events and Bree’s far-reaching revelations. My voice was hoarse by the time Aunt Dimity’s handwriting curled across the page.
Your tale is full of twists and turns I had not anticipated, Lori. As always, truth is stranger by far than fiction. I would not have expected Aubrey to provide for his sisters.
“He may have done it in order to humiliate his father,” I pointed out. “What could be more satisfying than to prove to the old man that a punk can be as charitable as a parson?”
A more charitable view would be that Aubrey was making amends as best he could. His father wouldn’t have accepted a penny from him, nor would he have allowed Ruth and Louise to do so if he could have prevented it. He certainly failed to enlighten them about the source of their income. He probably considered his son’s gift to be tainted.
“In a way, he was right,” I said. “Don’t forget that Aubrey married an heiress for her money. He was a gold digger, plain and simple.”
There is noth
ing plain and simple about the human heart, my dear. Aubrey’s initial instincts may have been mercenary, but if they’d remained so, his wife’s death would not have affected him so deeply. You said that the laughter had left his eyes in the baptismal photograph. It seems to me that he was a broken man after his wife died. He may have turned to drink in order to dull the pain of losing her. It’s entirely possible that he loved her as well as her money, Lori. Such things do happen.
“I’ll grant you that Aubrey may have had some redeeming qualities,” I conceded, “but you can’t say the same thing about Edmund. Ed brutalized his parents, his wife, and his child, and thought he could make it all better by saying he was sorry.”
Perhaps he was sorry. Nevertheless, I’m glad that Bree was spared the task of burying him, and that his grave is far removed from those of her grandparents. Edmund did nothing to earn his daughter’s grief, and his presence will not spoil any visits she might make to the final resting place of those she loved.
“Let’s hear it for overcrowded morgues,” I muttered grimly.
I wonder if Bree will sleep at all tonight? She must be overwhelmed by the prospects that lie before her.
“I may be the only person in the universe who knows exactly how she feels,” I said. “I was lost and alone once, and angry at the world. Then a fictional character from my childhood came to life and helped me to see that I wasn’t lost or alone and that I didn’t need to be angry. If Bree’s great-grandaunts do for her what Aunt Dimity did for me, she’ll be just fine.”
You still have a bit of a temper.
“I guess you’re not finished with me yet,” I said, smiling. “And I hope you never will be.”
Good night, my dearest child.
“Good night.” I closed the journal, turned out the light, and snuggled under the covers, but a moment later I hopped out of bed and ran over to peer through my balcony door.
Aunt Dimity Down Under Page 17