Keepsake

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  "And now he's gone again!"

  "Shh! I'm trying to concentrate." Mrs. Dewsbury kept her focus locked on the monitor as she moved the platform where the news piece from the Pittsburgh Courier lay. Slowly and methodically, she read the information being flashed so large on the television screen before her.

  ****

  HARRISBURG, OCT. 23—A bus traveling west on Interstate 76 from New York and carrying thirty-six passengers overturned and caught fire on an exit ramp just east of Harrisburg early this morning. Two unidentified men aboard the bus are credited with saving the lives of at least a dozen passengers who were overcome by smoke. Two other passengers died in the impact.

  Witnesses say that the younger man, strongly built and in his early twenties, pulled the dazed and sometimes unconscious passengers, most of them elderly or women with children, from the confines of the smoke-filled bus. The older of the rescuers, a middle-aged man, was seen to carry two children from the bus and administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation to one of them until the first of a dozen emergency vehicles arrived on the scene.

  Firefighters quickly put out the blaze, but the exit ramp remains closed until an investigation can be completed. The driver has not been charged.

  The identities of the rescuers are not known at this time. Rhyanna White, a passenger aboard the bus, stated to police that after the arrival of the paramedics, the two rescuers, who are believed to be a father and his son, flagged down a passing vehicle and left in it. The car was a two or three-year-old gold coupe, possibly a Chevrolet Camaro, with one occupant. Anyone with information is asked to contact either state or local police.

  ****

  "Oh, Quinn," murmured Mrs. Dewsbury after she finished. "Oh, Quinn."

  "Quinn was seventeen at the time, but you know how mature he looked. And he was a big guy, even then. He could easily have passed for someone in his twenties."

  "This is awful, this is tragic. This is so unfair."

  "I thought you'd be happy!" the librarian said.

  "So did I."

  After a moment the younger woman said hesitantly, "What do we do now?"

  "I wish I knew," said Mrs. Dewsbury, slumping in front of her CCTV. "I wish I knew."

  ****

  Quinn parked his truck in the cemetery lot and made his way on foot to his father's grave, dreading the moment as much as if his father were alive and anxiously awaiting news of Quinn's adventure out east.

  But he wasn't. Francis Leary was dead and buried, and the grass growing over his grave was well established. A patch of clover had sprouted near the middle of the mound. It drew a mournful smile from Quinn. His dad loved to see clover growing in grass he maintained; it was proof that the soil was herbicide-free.

  Quinn dropped down into a catcher's crouch, with his hands dangling loose between his thighs. In his state of despair, it was the nearest position to prayer that he could manage.

  "I blew it, Dad," he murmured, "I blew it big time. I went charging off to Connecticut like a stoned Crusader, convinced that I could unmask the villain in the piece and set your reputation right once and for all.

  "Well, guess what? The villain in the piece turned out to be me. You got it—your number-one, overachieving, underwhelming, self-destructive, star-crossed son.

  "I did manage to win one tiny little skirmish: at least three people are now convinced that you're innocent. The rest of the time I spent sacking and plundering an innocent woman's relationships with everyone she's ever loved. I was real thorough, Dad, even for me. By the time I left, there was nothing left standing, emotionally speaking, except her white-hot hatred for yours truly."

  He plucked some of the strands of grass that had escaped the caretaker's weed whacker and were growing tall beside the new headstone. "So here's where we stand," he continued, convinced he had to say it aloud. "Olivia's brother—or even worse, her father—killed Alison to keep her quiet. You remember her brother Rand: nice guy, bit of a charmer, family man now, active volunteer in town events. And Owen Bennett—still a ballbuster, to be sure, but holding Keepsake together single-handedly by keeping the mill in operation there. As I say, I make a hell of a better villain than either of 'em.

  "Did I mention that Rand has two great kids and a dynamite wife? She's Olivia's best friend. And Livvy adores the kids. Well, she used to be able to, anyway."

  Quinn ran his hand tenderly over the patch of soft clover. "Think there's a four-leaf version in there for me?" he whispered. "I could use a little of that vaunted luck o' the Irish."

  A puffy cloud scudded between the sun and the grave, subduing hope. The silence was overwhelming.

  Quinn sighed and said, "So! Heard any good undertaker jokes lately?" He laughed softly at his own lame idiocy, then stood up.

  "I'm sorry, Dad," he said, looking down at the grassy mound at his feet. "I'm sorry. I wanted to get this one thing—this one fucking thing—right. And I blew it. Oh, God, how I blew it."

  He felt a hard lump in his throat, and then tears. He closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the crushingly bleak life that lay ahead of him, and then suddenly he dropped to his knees and bent prostrate over the grave. His forearms prickled from the newly cut grass; he grabbed clumps of it in his fists and pulled, trying to open the door to eternity.

  He wanted advice; he wanted love; he wanted, in this most despairing moment of his life, to connect again with humanity.

  "Oh, Christ, Dad, I blew it," he said, his body riven with sobs. "I blew it ... I blew it ... I blew it ...."

  ****

  Olivia was sitting in front of her computer in the loft of Miracourt and grinding out numbers for her accountant when she heard sharp tapping on the storefront window below her. Determined not to lose her train of thought, she kept plugging away at her column of numbers. The shop was closed and tax day was looming. A sale wasn't worth it.

  The rapping continued, more urgent than before. Olivia stood up and peeked out the Palladian window. No UPS truck was parked below, but it was pouring out, which she hadn't realized, so she went downstairs to answer the summons. Whoever was there must be desperate.

  She was amazed to see Mrs. Dewsbury under the shop awning, peering through the door as she rapped on the window with the handle of her black umbrella.

  Olivia rushed to unlock the shop and let the old woman in, chiding her for being out in such awful weather.

  "I take my rides when I can get them," Mrs. Dewsbury said, using the umbrella as she would a cane. "Father Tom stopped by for tea, and he offered to give me a lift downtown. He's waiting in his car now, so I have to be brief." She glanced around her and said, "Where can I sit down?"

  Olivia ran for an old armchair that she liked to update every once in a while in a new fabric and keep handy for the weary, and she settled her old teacher in it. True to her word, Mrs. Dewsbury got right to the point.

  "I've agonized over this long enough. I know very well that Quinn wouldn't want me meddling between you two—don't look at me that way, my dear; I'm older and wiser than both of you put together—and up until now I've respected what I know would be his wishes. However."

  She unzipped her black purse and took out two sheets of paper that were folded in half and handed them to Olivia. "This is the man you're throwing away. If you read the article and can still do that, you're a lot less smart than I've always assumed. All right. I've spoken my piece," she said, using the armrests to push herself up with an effort from the chair. "Do you remember what I told you on the day before you took your SATs?"

  In a daze, Olivia stared at the silver-haired teacher in the porkpie rainhat. She shook her head.

  "I said, 'Don't disappoint us.' I'm repeating it now, Olivia. This is the most important decision you'll ever make! All this," she added, waving a hand at the shop, "is nothing. Not by comparison. Good night."

  She turned and began limping toward the door. Olivia rushed to hold it open.

  "I don't know—thank you," she mumbled in confusion. She had no idea what she was supposed t
o be grateful for. She waved at Father Tom as he emerged from his black sedan under another umbrella to get the door for Mrs. Dewsbury. The car drove off, puffing steamy exhaust into the wet, cold night, and Olivia locked up shop again. She sat in the tapestry-covered armchair and, with more dread than curiosity, she unfolded the pages.

  Harrisburg, Oct. 23—A bus traveling west ....

  Olivia read the article through, and then she went right back to the dateline and read it through again. She remembered Quinn's words when he was reading her the riot act back on pie day: a situation where my father could have—should have—been honored as a hero.

  This was that situation, without a doubt.

  With a deep sigh, made even more profound by the hormonal swings she was daily enduring, Olivia folded the pages and laid them on her lap. It didn't seem possible that one man could be so good, so brave, and so wronged all in one lifetime. And to have lived his life in hiding, and then to die without having been vindicated—it was almost unbearably sad. No wonder Quinn had been so determined to clear his father's name.

  No wonder.

  After a long and mournful moment, Olivia stood up and drifted over to the storefront window. She had replaced the spools of ribbon—finally—with bolts of frothy spring fabrics: pink organdy, pale lime chiffon and white netting bunched in makeshift tutus for all those sewing mothers whose little girls had dance recitals coming up.

  It hit her: Francis Leary had never lived to see a granddaughter in a tutu.

  She fingered an edge from the bolt of chiffon. It was such a delicate fabric. It would take a number-nine needle; anything bigger would leave holes. Her mother had sewn her a tutu once. Pink, of course; there was no other color for a six-year-old ballerina with dark curls, an attitude, and legs just a little too short ever to be called lithe.

  Mom, that was a really nice thing you did. You weren't very good with a Singer. Even I remember the seams you had to tear apart and resew. It was a labor of love, I know that now. Thank you.

  She sighed. Everyone around her seemed to labor from love. Even her father ... why else did he drive himself so hard, if not for the mill workers? He would never admit it, of course, but he felt a tremendous responsibility to every one of them. He wasn't fighting for that tax break to enhance his own wealth; he could easily move the mill to Mexico and make a lot more money. Keep it in Keepsake: it was the creed he lived by.

  And Eileen—Eileen had love to spare for everyone. She handed it out like candy. Rand? No father loved his children more than Rand did. That's what was so hard: to reconcile this Rand with ... that Rand.

  She couldn't destroy her family by turning Rand in. She couldn't. She was going to have to live in misery with the secret for the rest of her life.

  Which brought her back to Quinn. Everything that he had done, he had done for love. Olivia knew that. It was the most heart-wrenching fact of all. But it didn't change the impossible situation that the two of them were in.

  Oddly soothed by the steadily falling rain, she wandered back through the softly lit shop, looking at it with Mrs. Dewsbury's eyes. Did it have any worth? Any meaning at all? Olivia wasn't sure of the answer to that anymore. She paused at a bolt of Ultrasuede and slid her hand over the fabric: soft ... smooth ... like a baby's bottom.

  Quinn's baby. Francis Leary's grandchild. She was carrying good and honorable and heroic instincts, passed to yet another generation. She couldn't have Quinn. But she could have the best of him to love and to care for.

  Poor Mrs. Dewsbury. She had shown up with her black umbrella on Miracourt's doorstep like an elderly Mary Poppins, convinced that she could make things right between Quinn and Olivia. She hadn't done that; no one could.

  But she had made Olivia feel so much better about having the baby alone.

  ****

  After weeks of wet spring weather, the sun rushed in full of apologies and determined to make amends: The day was bright, benign, and deliciously warm, a perfect spring bouquet offered to sullen and sodden New England.

  Sometime during Saturday's downpour, Olivia had learned that Rand would be home with the kids all day on Sunday. She had made up her mind to see him then—but her mission would have been so much more fitting in rain.

  She drove with extra care to his house, which was built, like hers, high above the Connecticut River, upstream of the mill. That upstream view of the water was all that her house and his had in common, however. Olivia had opted for a place she could afford. Rand's reproduction Colonial was sited on a rolling lawn with mature trees, a guest house, a greenhouse, a chicken coop, a barn, a paddock in the making—and a mortgage that was mind-boggling.

  But on a day like today, who cared? Certainly not Olivia's brother. She found him running around with his children on the flat part of the lawn, engaged in a game of Frisbee made a little more tricky by the fact that Zack couldn't throw a Frisbee and Kristin couldn't catch one.

  The real star of the show was Samantha, their golden retriever. Sam caught the plastic disk perfectly in her mouth every time—whether it was whizzed to her or not—and then she ran down to the river with it, and the kids ran after her, and invariably someone slipped and fell and got even more muddy, which apparently was the real point of the game.

  It all looked a little too frisky for Olivia, who was still getting used to the idea of being pregnant, so she declined to play. Since she was wearing jeans, she dropped down on the damp ground and watched them go at it. Pretty soon Samantha ran up to her and knocked her over, and Olivia ended up just as muddy as everyone else.

  "Sorry about that, sis," her brother said, laughing, as he stuck out a hand to pull her up. "Sammy can't believe you're not playing. Frankly, neither can I. How're you doing?" he asked her as they walked back to the house over the children's howls of protest. It was obvious that he thought Olivia was still brooding over her breakup with Quinn.

  Right now, he couldn't have been further off the mark. "I'm fine, really," she said, rolling up her sleeves above the wet and muddy elbows of her white shirt.

  "You look good," he said with a quick sideways glance. "I guess your appetite's back, anyway."

  Automatically she sucked in her stomach. Not that it did any good.

  Rand kicked off his muddy moccasins in the mudroom and proceeded barefoot to the fridge. "Beer?" he asked her.

  "Oh, that sounds—"

  Alcoholic. She declined and said she'd rather have water.

  "Water? At least have a Coke."

  Olivia shrugged and said, "I don't need the caffeine." For whatever reason, she threw up less when she avoided it. The baby knew more about nutrition than she did, it seemed. She poured herself a glass of water and sipped while her brother took a long, satisfying slug of beer and then washed up at the sink, keeping an eye out the window at his kids as they romped in the yard.

  He was wiping his hands on a towel. His fair skin had great color from the sun and the exercise. He was smiling, relaxed, in a wonderful mood. He looked as happy as she'd seen him in half a year.

  Could she do this?

  "You know, it's no accident that I'm here today," she said, mustering every bit of her formidable resolve.

  "I figured," he said, cocking his head at her. "Normally I don't rate. What's on your mind, Livvy?"

  Most of the smile and all of the ease had gone out of his face. He knew, more than anyone else, when it was serious between them.

  Olivia looked away, then made herself look into her brother's eyes. She had rehearsed her opening line so many times, and now she couldn't remember a word of it.

  "I have some things of yours," she blurted.

  Chapter 26

  Rand's laugh was tight as he said, "Oh? You finally gonna return my ABBA tapes?"

  She said, "These go back to almost as long."

  Olivia had tucked the ring in the front pocket of her jeans, the folded letter in the back. She hadn't dared risk being knocked unconscious in a car accident and having some rescuer find them as he went through her
handbag looking for names of next of kin.

  Fishing the ring out first, she handed it to her brother.

  He looked at it and nodded. There was no shock, no dismay, no panic: only the simple, eloquent nod of recognition. She remembered it for the rest of her life.

  "You got this from—?"

  "Quinn. Who got it from Myra."

  "And you're wondering how Myra came to have it?" There was a glimmer almost of hope in her brother's eyes as he asked her. He so clearly wanted her answer to be yes.

  Olivia dashed that hope when she reached into her hip pocket and brought out the pale blue sheet with its charred edge. With downcast eyes she handed it to him. "This too."

  "Oh, Jesus."

  There went her forgery theory. She thought he would read it, or maybe rush to his big Viking stove, turn on a burner, and set it afire. Instead he stuffed the letter in the front pocket of his grass-stained khakis. He looked ashamed and embarrassed, as if it were a note from the principal.

  He didn't seem to know what to do about the ring. The ring was different. The ring was okay to have. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, thinking of—what? Alison? The big game? The path not taken? He surprised Olivia by slipping off his wedding band and slipping his class ring on that finger. Making a fist with his left hand, he rubbed the surface of the ring with the palm of his right.

  All the while, he was in some other place, during some other time. Olivia had no idea how to get to where he was, so she waited.

  After a while, he looked up and said, "Why give these to me?"

  She shrugged and said, "Too law-abiding to destroy them myself, I guess."

  "Why not give them to Vickers?"

  She blinked. "You don't know? You honestly can't figure it out?"

  "Zack? Kristin?"

  "And Eileen. Mom. Dad. Why do you think, you idiot?" She could feel all the horror come rushing up like acid bile. There it was, that sudden urge to be sick. Convinced despite her doctor's assurances that she was harming the baby every time she threw up, she made an intense effort to control the nausea.