The Amber Photograph

by Penelope J. Stokes

  What else?

  She closed her eyes and sent up a silent prayer for strength, then drummed up the nerve to open the second letter.

  April 1979

  Dear Mama,

  This will probably be my last letter from Raleigh. My doctor seems very happy with my progress and is recommending that I be given early release in the next few weeks. Five years is a long time to be hospitalized, and the world outside will probably seem very foreign to me. I hope I'm ready.

  I don't think it's a good idea for me to come home when I get out. A friend of mine has offered me a place to live and work, a place where I won't be bothered. I'll change my name and start over, hoping this time will be different. God knows I'm different.

  Try not to worry about me, and give D a hug and a kiss. Wish I could be with her—maybe someday. I'll try to keep in touch.

  Diedre sat back on the bed, stunned, and her eyes focused on selected phrases from the letter: my doctor . . . hospitalized . . . released in a few weeks. Daddy had led her to believe that Sissy was dead; even Mama, at the end, had said she was gone forever. But here it was, clear as day—her sister had been in a hospital. For five years.

  Was it possible she had died after her release? Was that why Diedre's parents had been reluctant to talk about her, to give Diedre any details about her sister's life and death? Yet in the letter, she didn't sound sick. She seemed perfectly well and in control. She appeared to be resigned to her past and determined to make the future better. And she had loved the little sister she barely knew. Give D a hug and a kiss. Wish I could be with her—maybe someday . . .

  Tears stung at her eyes; Diedre blinked them away and bit her lip. Someday had never come. She had never had a chance to know her sister.

  The sister who knew the truth about Mama, and about the circumstances surrounding Diedre's birth.

  Only the two letters; no more. Precious little information about one whose presence had invaded Diedre's dreams for twenty years. Once she got over the initial shock, it was disappointing, really. She had hoped that when she finally did learn something about her long-dead sister, it would bring her more comfort and closure than this. But all it brought was more questions.

  She stared at the letter again. There was something wrong, something about—

  The date.

  1979?

  In 1979, Diedre had been nine years old. But from what little her parents had told her about Sissy, the girl had died when Diedre was very small. Diedre's only memory of her sister had been immortalized in the Spinning Dream, in which she was three or four and Sissy was a teenager, perhaps. But at the time of this letter—she did a quick mental calculation—her sister would have been twenty-four, nearly as old as Diedre was now. A grown woman, not a confused young girl on the brink of adulthood.

  Suddenly everything crystallized, like the colors of a kaleidoscope falling into place. The pattern fit, and hope descended upon Diedre in a breathtaking rush.

  Her sister was still alive.

  7

  Truth in the Inward Parts

  "Daddy, are you in here?"

  Diedre stood at the door of her father's Inner Sanctum and knocked on the half-open door.

  "Come on in, honey."

  Diedre entered, and her heart constricted with anguish when she caught a glimpse of the man behind the desk—the man she had called "Daddy" for the last quarter-century. His eyes, usually bright with mirth, were now deeply shadowed and rimmed with red. His thick, gray hair needed washing. He looked as if he hadn't slept in a week. Bereavement was taking a heavy toll on him—a grief he apparently could not let his daughter share.

  Then she remembered: she was not his daughter.

  "I—I need to talk to you," she faltered.

  She watched as her father's gaze cut to the corner of the room, and suddenly Diedre realized they were not alone. She turned.

  "Uncle Jack!"

  "Good morning, Diedre." Jack Underwood came to her and enveloped her in a massive hug. "You doing all right, sweetie?"

  "I—I guess so. I didn't realize anyone was here."

  "Your father and I had some business to discuss. I can leave if you'd prefer to—"

  Out of the corner of her eye, Diedre caught a movement, a quick jerk of her father's chin, as if to tell Uncle Jack, No, stay.

  She shook her head. "That won't be necessary. As close as you've been to our family all these years, you probably know all about this anyway."

  Jack paled visibly, but he managed a smile. "All about what, Diedre?"

  Diedre went over to her father's desk and laid the cigar box down. "Mama gave this to me right before she died. Sort of a parting gift of truth, I suppose. I guess she figured it was time I knew."

  Her father—Duncan, she corrected herself—opened the box and flipped through the contents.

  "Yes. A little going-away present, it seems." His voice shattered over her nerves like falling icicles. "I wish she hadn't done that."

  "Daddy—" Diedre's voice choked on the word. "Why didn't you tell me? How could you keep this quiet all these years?"

  "Your mother and I had . . . an agreement."

  "An agreement?"

  "Yes. We—" He groped for words. "We thought it would be best if you didn't know. We wanted you to have a . . . a normal life."

  "A normal life?" Adrenaline shot through Diedre's veins, and her voice jumped an octave. "A life based on a lie? I don't know who I am anymore! I feel like the earth has opened up under my feet, and I have no firm place to stand. I need to know the truth, Daddy—all of it."

  Uncle Jack stepped to Diedre's side and put an arm around her. "Duncan, I think the girl deserves to have her questions answered. Why don't we have a seat and talk about this calmly?"

  "That's a good idea, Jack." Daddy motioned to the two leather chairs in front of his desk. "Let's all sit down."

  While Diedre and Jack settled themselves, Duncan went to the sideboard and poured coffee. He handed Diedre a cup. When she took it, her hands were shaking.

  He sat behind his desk. "Now, Diedre," he said softly, his eyes meeting hers, "why don't you tell us what this is all about?"

  "I think you both know what it is about." She leaned across the desk and took a folded sheet of paper from the cigar box and handed it to Jack. "Here, you're the lawyer. Is this or is it not my birth certificate?"

  Jack scanned the paper and passed it on to Daddy. "It appears to be."

  "Then this man—" Diedre pointed at Duncan, "is not my real father."

  Daddy looked at the certificate, then back to Diedre. He glanced at Jack, who raised one eyebrow quizzically.

  "Honey," he said finally, looking into her eyes, "it was not our intention—your mother's or mine—to deliberately deceive you." He spread his hands, palms up, a gesture of contrition. "At the end, I'm afraid Cecilia wasn't thinking clearly, else she would not have burdened you with this. But since it's out in the open now—" he leaned forward entreatingly, "ask anything you want, and I'll answer it."

  Ask anything. The words reverberated in Diedre's head and she felt herself relax a little. Finally, she was going to get some answers. But there was so much she needed to know, so many gaps to fill in. She wasn't quite sure where to begin—or how.

  She took a deep breath. "All right, let's start with the birth certificate. It says Mother: Cecilia McAlister. Father: Unknown. I assume that to mean you, Daddy, are not my real father. That Mama had—" she balked at the word, then summoned her strength to finish, "an affair. That you decided to raise me as your child, and that you, Uncle Jack, complied in the deception so that no one would ever find out the truth."

  Neither man said a word, but an inscrutable expression passed between them.

  "I suppose I should thank you," Diedre continued, conscious of the need to remain calm, to keep her voice down. "You had no real responsibility to support me, but you did it anyway. My upbringing, my education. Why did you do it?"

  Duncan shifted in his chair. "As I said, y
our mother and I came to an agreement. We wanted to protect you, to do what was right for you, and we thought it was in your best interests to keep the past in the past."

  An odd sense of detachment came over Diedre, as if she were looking down on the scene from a great height. "But you are Sissy's real father."

  Duncan nodded. "Yes."

  "I should have realized," she said, trying to keep her voice from trembling. "It's so obvious in the picture, how much you loved her. And you loved me, too, I know that, but I always suspected something wasn't quite right—I felt it, instinctively. Mama was so loving and nurturing, but you—you were always a little—I don't know. Tentative."

  "I—I just—" He stopped abruptly and ran a hand over his eyes.

  Diedre stared at him. Was he . . . crying? Clearly, he had cherished his elder daughter, and something—something terrible—had happened. And then, at age forty, he had taken on responsibility for a child who wasn't even his.

  "I know this is difficult, Daddy—" She stumbled over the word, uncertain whether she should use it any longer. But she pressed on. "It's hard for me, too, finding out after all this time that my family has lived a lie for the past twenty-five years. Sissy knew the truth about the, ah, circumstances of my conception."

  "Is that what you think?"

  "I think she knew who my real father was. And I think you do, too."

  A shadow passed over his weary countenance. "Don't do this, Diedre. Please. Don't smear your mother's memory. Don't exhume old skeletons. Leave the past buried, where it belongs."

  "I can't, Daddy. Don't you see that I have to know?"

  Uncle Jack fingered the letters that lay in the pile on Duncan's desk. "What do these letters say?"

  Diedre turned in his direction. "That Sissy didn't die when I was a very young child, as I have been told. That she was still alive—at least in 1979. That she spent time in a hospital in Raleigh." She swiveled around to confront her father. "Is she alive, Daddy? What happened to her? Tell me the truth."

  Her father shrugged. "I honestly don't know. It's been years—"

  "But you loved her! You adored her. I know you did. I can see it in your eyes!" She picked up the photograph and waved it in his direction. "What could she possibly have done to cause you to turn your back on her—your own flesh and blood?"

  "Yes, I loved her." Duncan sighed heavily "But tell me, Diedre—if you were a parent, and one of your children was, well, troubled, would you want your other children—especially an impressionable young girl who idolized her big sister—to be exposed to that kind of influence? Is that the kind of role model you'd want for your own daughter?"

  Diedre closed her eyes and took in a ragged breath. "She was—unstable? And that's why you'd never talk about her—why you let me believe she was dead? You wanted to keep me from finding her—from discovering the truth—even after I was old enough to handle it?"

  "I had no choice."

  "Of course you had a choice!" she choked out, fighting the tears. "Did you think I was unaware of those hushed conversations that were cut off midsentence as soon as I entered the room? Didn't you listen when I told you about the dreams, the vague memories of a sister who had just vanished into the shadows? How am I supposed to decide now what to believe?"

  "You adored her, Diedre. Even as a baby, you worshiped her. We had to protect you. We couldn't take the chance that you might—"

  "Might grow up to be like her? Might find out what secrets she held about Mama and my real father?"

  He shook his head. "Might disappear and never be seen again."

  An icy finger ran up Diedre's spine. "What did she do, Daddy? Besides knowing the truth about my birth, I mean?" She braced herself for the answer, not sure if she really wanted to hear it.

  He rose from behind the desk and came over to where Diedre sat. Kneeling down beside her, he took her hand and stroked it gently. "She snapped, honey. Just went over the edge."

  Diedre frowned at him, her heart a lump of lead in her chest. "If she was mentally unstable, Daddy, she needed help, not condemnation. Why did you send her away? Did she threaten to expose Mama's infidelity? To ruin your reputation?"

  He leveled a chilling gaze on her.

  "She tried to kidnap you."

  Vesta held on tight and prayed for the Good Lord's wisdom. "Honey, you got to stop this. You're gonna make yourself sick."

  Still weeping, the poor girl shifted on Vesta's bed and allowed Vesta to cradle her like a little child. Vesta rocked back and forth, singing under her breath. "Calm yourself, now," she murmured. "Everything's gonna be all right."

  "Vesta, you've got to tell me what you know," Diedre sobbed.

  "All right, baby." She stroked the girl's back and kissed the top of her head. "Reckon it won't hurt anything now that your mama's gone."

  "What was she like?"

  "Your big sister? She was God's own sweet child."

  "Was she very ill? Crazy? Violent?"

  The old woman pulled away and frowned at Diedre. "What do you mean?"

  "Daddy said she snapped. Went over the edge. She was in some sort of hospital for years. Was she—you know, not all right?"

  Vesta shook her head sadly, hesitating. The memory gnawed an empty hole in her stomach, and she pressed one hand to her belly. "Till she was 'bout twelve, thirteen, she was a regular angel. Loved everybody. Had a laugh like heavenly chimes. Then something happened—I ain't quite sure what. She changed."

  "Changed how?"

  "She got sullen. Withdrawn. Almost never smiled. Started sneaking out at night, disobeying. Your mama and daddy couldn't deal with her anymore."

  "But what about you, Vesta? Couldn't you help her? You loved her."

  "I did love her, child. But I wasn't here."

  Diedre swiped at her eyes and stared at Vesta. "But I thought you had worked for Mama and Daddy since long before I was born."

  "That's right. After your daddy built this fine house, when your sister was just a little bit—maybe eight or nine—I come to work for your folks. By the time she was gettin' on toward a teenager, though, I wasn't needed so much anymore, and my own mama was sick with the cancer and needed tending. But I couldn't rightly afford to quit. That's when Mr. Duncan gave me a leave of abstinence."

  "You mean leave of absence?"

  "That's it. He told me to go on home and nurse my mama, and he'd keep on paying my wages, long as I agreed to come back if they needed me again. I felt kinda funny about it, like it was charity or something, but Mr. Duncan, he's a generous man. He made me feel like I was doing him a favor. I was gone nigh onto a year, and he paid my salary every month, just like clockwork."

  "So you weren't here when she was sent away."

  Vesta shook her head. "I heard about it, though, and I was real sad. Then, after my mama went on to heaven, your daddy called and asked could I come work again. I'd heard that your mama nearbout died of sorrow when that little girl went away—kept to herself for months on end. Then the Good Lord gave them another little baby to take that poor child's place. That was you, honey—kind of a late-life surprise, I guess. And Miss Celia, she needed help. So I come back."

  Vesta paused. There were some things she couldn't tell—like how Miss Celia didn't seem too happy about the baby, how she just cried and cried. For a while Vesta had thought it was just what Mr. Duncan called "post-partial depression"—the blues a woman sometimes gets after a baby is born. But it went on so long, and Miss Celia cried so much. Just like her heart was breaking, or like she had some big old sin weighing her down—something she could never get forgiveness for.

  "And when you returned, my sister was gone," Diedre prompted.

  "Yes, bless her heart. They sent her down to Charlotte, Miss Celia told me, to stay with your Aunt Edith and go to some clinic there. She stayed gone a long time. Then, when you were about three or four, I guess, she showed up again—just appeared at the door, out of the blue." Vesta stroked Diedre's hair. "She adored you. And you took to her like a baby duck t
o a puddle."

  Diedre closed her eyes and felt herself relaxing, just a little. "I took to her," she murmured.

  Vesta leaned back and held the girl at arm's length. "But then she was gone again—and everyone was all angry and scared—your Mama, your Daddy. Scared she'd hurt you, maybe. I don't even know what happened, sweetie. I just know she never came back. Your daddy said she snapped. Maybe. I don't know."

  Vesta exhaled a deep sigh. For the better part of twenty-five years she had done her best to protect this child from the danger and ugliness of the world. But it hadn't worked. Not money or privilege or love or even faith could shield the soul from truth.

  Diedre flexed her shoulders and took a deep breath. "Vesta, in that box was my real birth certificate. Everything seems the same except that it doesn't say who my real father is. It says, 'unknown.'"

  "Your real father?" Vesta felt a shock run up her spine, just like the time she touched a frayed light cord that was still plugged into the wall.

  Diedre nodded. "When Mama told me, right before she died—or at least gave me the box—she wanted me to know. Daddy's not my real father. You didn't know?"

  "I never heard a word breathed about it."

  "Sissy knew. She knew everything. But she's either dead, or so far gone I'll never see her again."

  Vesta got up from the bed and went to the dresser. With her back turned to Diedre, she blinked back her tears and screwed up her courage. For a minute or two she rummaged in the top drawer, then found what she was looking for and handed it to Diedre. "Maybe she's not as far gone as you think."

  Diedre stared at the picture postcard.

  Her hand trembled so violently that she could barely read the words: Vesta—Settled and happy—or at least content. Thanks for believing in me when I couldn't believe for myself. Merry Christmas.

  "It's from her? You're sure? There's no name."

  Vesta nodded.

  Diedre looked at the picture. The front of the postcard showed a parade of boats on the water, illuminated with holiday lights, and a caption that read, Christmas on Puget Sound.