The Secrets She Carried

by Davis, Barbara

  “Well, do you?”

  The words are so sharp my head snaps up. I blink at her, trying to think what to say as I work the stopper loose from the little brown bottle and carefully, carefully, count out fifteen precious drops.

  “He’s been hiring colored men!” she hollers, so loud I know she means for Henry to hear her clear down the hall. “Colored men to work at Peak, when hardworking white men need jobs! It’s a scandal, that’s what it is, and it’s going to ruin us if he keeps on.”

  I push the cup and saucer into her hands, praying she’ll send me away now that she has what she wants. But she’s not through.

  “He’s making a fool of me, Adele. Shaming me, and giving gossips like Celia Cunningham fat to chew in front of all my friends, and in my own house, too.”

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to say that she should be proud of Henry for what he’s doing and why he’s doing it, and that any decent wife would have told Celia Cunningham so. But in my mind I see Mama shaking her head, hissing at me to hold my tongue. So I do. It’s hard, though. There’s a whole lot I’d like to say.

  She takes a little sip from her teacup and closes her eyes as it goes down, then rattles the cup back into its saucer with a sigh. She must take my silence for sympathy, because she picks up her ranting again, like somehow since dinner we’ve become bosom friends.

  “I’d like to know what my daddy would say if he had any idea just what kind of man he married me off to. I’ll bet he’d say a man’s got a duty to care what people think of him, especially when his son’s about to be born. Don’t you think so, Adele?”

  I turn away, pretend to tidy the bed. I can’t say what I think, and I can’t look at her. I see her too clearly now, behind all the anger and the bootleg, too grasping and proud to care for a man who won’t be tucked in, polished up, or made over. It was Peak she was chasing after all those years, and Peak that she finally married. Henry was only part of the bargain, unworthy in her eyes—of her, or Peak, or even his family name. And I see, too, that she’s set all her store by the child in her belly, the son she means to bear and mold into all his father is not.

  She’s sipping hard from her cup now, rocking a little from side to side. I think about bringing a cloth to wipe the blood from her wrists, but I don’t. Instead, I pick her dress and stockings up off the floor, then tidy up the table by her bed.

  “I asked you a question, Adele. Have you nothing to say?”

  I can feel her eyes boring into my back like a blade, and I turn with her bottle of tincture in my hand, tightening down the stopper and praying she’s already swallowed enough to forget what I’m about to say, because suddenly the words are on my tongue and I can’t stop them.

  “I think Mr. Henry does a lot of good for folks, and that’s something a wife should be proud of.”

  Her eyes go hard as stone. “You’re taking up for him?”

  She’s fuming, but somehow I don’t care. It stuns me that she cannot see the good in her husband, and that for all her fancy airs she’s no better than Celia Cunningham. “I only said he does a lot of good, the kind of good they preach about on Sundays, and that not a lot of wives have that to be proud of.”

  “Proud?” Her eyes have gone funny, like they do after the tincture, like she expects something to spring at her from one of the corners. “I should be proud that my husband is willing to tarnish my good name over a handful of niggers?”

  I go numb all over when she says it. Not what she says, but the way she says it, like it came from the deepest, blackest part of her soul. I don’t mean to—or maybe I do—but I let the brown bottle slip from my hand. I don’t need to look down to know it smashed. I can smell the foul stuff splattered all over the floor, all over my shoes. And if that isn’t enough, the panic in Susanne’s eyes is. It’s her last bottle, all the more precious since the doctor cut her back.

  She’s on her feet now, flying across the room, and I steel myself for the crack of her hand. Instead, she collapses to her knees in all the sticky mess and broken glass, crying like it’s the end of the world.

  Chapter 8

  Leslie

  The door to Henry Gavin’s study moaned in oily protest as Leslie turned the knob and pushed inside. Even now, the sound brought a guilty pang. The study, still brimming with the prized collections of her long-dead great-grandfather, had always been strictly off-limits. In fact, in the eight years she lived at Peak, she’d been allowed into the study exactly three times.

  Aside from a ponderous mahogany desk and an old Victrola her grandfather had cranked up for her once, she had little memory of the room or its contents. It was why she had chosen to start here. She thought it would be easier than Maggie’s room, with its drawers full of old slips and nightgowns, its nightstand littered with eyeglasses and hand creams. Now she was beginning to wonder.

  Inside, all was gloomy and still, the quiet air thick with scents from another era—leather, tobacco, the musty breath of old books—as if she had breached the sanctity of some long-sealed shrine. And in a way she had. Toward the end of Henry’s life the study had become his sanctuary, the place he spent his days, took his meals, and sometimes even slept, until one morning Maggie had found him slumped behind his desk. After the funeral the room had been shut up and, as far as Leslie knew, had remained so.

  Now, as she drew back drapes of heavy brocade and took in her surroundings, it was easy to see why she’d been kept out as a child. This was no place for little hands. Banks of curio cabinets lined two of the walls, one wall dedicated to vintage clocks and antique pens, the other to Henry’s cherished pipe collection. A third wall was lined floor to ceiling with books, heavy leather-bound editions of Cooper, Twain, and Dickens, along with other names she didn’t recognize.

  But it was the ornately framed oils above the fireplace that intrigued Leslie most, perhaps because their less than subtle sensuality was at such stark odds with the rest of the room. There were five in all, each hinting at some scriptural event—Delilah with her dagger, Rebecca at the well—but always the same face, haunting and honey skinned, with heavy-lidded eyes and a mouth like ready fruit.

  Leslie gnawed at her thumbnail, letting her eyes move from painting to painting. It didn’t fit somehow, that a man who had surrounded himself with antiques and classic literature should have a taste for racy art, but then maybe they were worth something. Standing on tiptoe, she attempted to decipher the jaunty ochre strokes at the corner of each canvas but could make nothing of them. Not that a name would matter. If they weren’t van Gogh or Picasso, she was basically clueless. And these were neither, though they weren’t bad. In fact, they were quite good now that she looked at them. Maybe Henry had a better eye for art than she thought. Either way, she was ready to write them off to personal taste and move on.

  The massive mahogany desk was still where she remembered it, positioned at the center of the room like a stoic battleship. Leslie eased into the cracked leather chair, placing the flats of her hands on the scarred surface of the desk where the day-to-day business of Peak Plantation had been overseen and tallied. That the room was still furnished with Henry’s prized possessions didn’t surprise her. In his day he’d been something of a legend here in Gavin, the man who, with nothing but grit and bare hands, had created a tobacco dynasty and put a tiny town on the map.

  As she glanced around the room she thought of Henry, the rawboned man in the ill-fitting suit who had collected and cherished these treasures over a lifetime. She had never known the man who smoked the pipes or wielded the pens or read the books, but somehow, just by being here, Henry Gavin had become very real.

  With something like reverence, Leslie eased open the desk’s center drawer, fully expecting to find it empty. Instead, she found a smattering of loose change, a pack of old playing cards, a few dusty paper clips, and a wristwatch with a missing strap, as if Henry wasn’t dead at all but had only stepped away.

  The rest of the drawers and compartments housed more utilitarian items: a prehistor
ic adding machine almost as large as a typewriter, files stuffed with receipts for things like heating oil, truck tires, and plow blades. In the final drawer she unearthed a stack of cloth-covered ledgers, Peak’s accounts from the thirties. Not exactly riveting reading, but maybe the local historical society would be interested in how much bright leaf Peak yielded back in ’34.

  She was about to knee the drawer closed when she glimpsed what looked like a small book half-hidden behind the ledgers. It took some doing to work it free, but finally she had it—a volume of sonnets bound in dark leather. The embossing on the front cover had long since worn away, but along the spine the name Barrett Browning was thinly visible. Poetry too, then. It appeared Henry Gavin was truly a Renaissance man.

  When the pages parted unexpectedly to reveal a delicate spray of dried flowers, Leslie’s mouth parted in a silent O. Instinctively, her fingers sought the pale petals, paper-thin and long bled of color, trying to guess what their original hue had been—yellow, perhaps, or pink. It was impossible to say. Had they been placed between these pages for a reason, she wondered, or had the pages been chosen at random? Curious, she slid the flowers aside to read the marked passage.

  How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

  My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

  For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

  I love thee to the level of everyday’s

  Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

  I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

  I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

  I love thee with the passion put to use

  In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

  I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

  With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,

  Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,

  I shall but love thee better after death.

  The final lines echoed in Leslie’s head as she read them. She had never cared much for poetry, but something about the words of love and loss seemed to resonate deep down in her bones, and she knew as she closed the book on those faded petals that the words had not been so tenderly marked for nothing. Turning to the front cover, she found what she was looking for.

  For Henry, on his birthday.

  There was no signature, but the hand was almost certainly a woman’s, thin and delicately slanted, more than likely belonging to Henry’s wife, Susanne. Seeking confirmation, she flipped over to the back page and, instead, found a photograph.

  With ginger hands, she slid it free and tipped it to the light. It was a portrait, a woman stiffly posed with a baby in her arms. She wore neat white gloves with her simple dress, and a broad-brimmed hat that left most of her face in shadow. It was impossible to guess her age or to make out anything beyond a small glimpse of mouth, except to note that she wasn’t smiling. Leslie peered harder at the mottled image. Though there was no way to be sure, no writing on the back, and not enough of a face to pick out family resemblances, she knew she must be looking at her great-grandmother, Susanne, and a tiny version of Maggie.

  Her grandmother couldn’t have known it was here, or it would almost certainly have ended up with the others on the parlor table, rather than being left to disintegrate between the pages of an old book. Shaking her head, she studied the photo with a professional eye. It was badly deteriorated, 1920s, maybe thirties, gelatin silver, and in such bad shape that in places the image was almost completely silvered out. Worse than the chemical deterioration were the dog-eared corners and peeling edges, evidence of frequent and careless handling, and a heinous crime to any photographer worth her salt.

  Leslie lingered guiltily over the photo, wondering what to do with it, though whether her guilt was professional or sentimental she couldn’t say. It could probably be restored, but to what purpose? Susanne Gavin was little more than a name to her, and Maggie had ceased to be part of her life thirty years ago. She had no ties to her Gavin kin or to anything they’d left behind. Those doors had all closed long ago, rusted shut by time and distance.

  In the end, she slid the photograph back into the book and returned them both to the drawer where she’d found them. Sooner or later she was going to have to pack all this up, and the photo would be safer where she found it than floating around loose somewhere. She’d think about having it restored at some point, but right now she had other priorities.

  When the doorbell rang at twenty after three, Leslie swallowed a pang of annoyance. The Gavin Yellow Pages had offered a choice of exactly three Realtors, and somehow she’d managed to choose the one who didn’t own a watch. She’d set the appointment for three; showing up twenty minutes late hardly inspired confidence.

  Pasting on a smile, she opened the door, squelching the urge to glance pointedly at her own watch. “Mrs. MacLean?”

  Avis MacLean was nearly as round as she was tall, encased in a snug turquoise pantsuit and wearing enough jewelry to bankroll a small third-world country. She was past middle age, though precisely how far past, it was hard to say. Her skin was like saddle leather, her hair the color of unbleached cotton. When she smiled her small blue eyes all but disappeared.

  “You must be Leslie,” she said, poking a hand through the open door. “You don’t mind if I call you Leslie, do you? I’m Avis, Avis MacLean, but you just call me Avis. I hope I’m not late, though I bet I am. I thought I’d never get here. The roads are a nightmare these days with all the lane closings. I’ll be late everywhere I go until they get them finished. It’s like the time change. I never can get it right. Still, I manage. My, my, aren’t you a pretty thing. Now, when you called this morning you said you were thinking of selling this gorgeous place.”

  Leslie stood blinking in the doorway until she was sure it was her turn to speak. “It’s nice to meet you—and yes, Leslie’s fine.”

  Avis gave her a glossy, coral-hued smile. “I met your grandmother once, you know,” she said as she wrestled a planner from the jaws of her enormous handbag. “She was a friend of my mother’s. They were involved in some group together, the Ladies Heritage Society, I think it was, something like that. I never could keep up with all her groups. I heard she’d taken to growing grapes. Your grandmother, I mean, not my mother, of course. Is my car all right where it is, do you think, or should I move it? I don’t want to block the drive.”

  Leslie felt vaguely dizzy, like she’d been caught in a small dust storm. “It’ll be fine,” she said, eyeing the great white boat of a Cadillac, not so much parked as stranded in the middle of the drive, precisely where the idea to stop had obviously occurred.

  “Uh…would you like to start with the inside?”

  Avis stepped over the threshold and into the foyer. There was a clicking of bracelets as she flipped open her planner. “I’m all yours, honey. Lead the way.”

  She jotted notes as they moved from room to room, launching a series of rapid-fire questions. Had there been any additions, or was the whole house original? Did she know of any historic persons associated with the house, war heroes, that sort of thing? Was she aware of any structural problems? Did she know the exact year of construction or the name of the architect?

  When Leslie couldn’t answer a single thing, Avis patted her arm, undeterred. Such things could be researched.

  Twenty minutes later the tour was over and they were back downstairs. “Well, that’s the house,” Leslie said to prompt her. “There’s a smaller house too, out back, if you want to see it, though it’s probably a wreck after sitting empty for so long. I haven’t had time to check it out. So far, though, what do you think?”

  There was no missing the enormous diamond on Avis’s left hand as she closed her planner. “What do I think? I think it’s grand. In fact it’s breathtaking. But then, I don’t see many houses like this gorgeous monstrosity.”

  “Maybe you’d be interested?” Leslie suggested, only half kidding.

 
; Avis laughed—a hoarse, smoker’s laugh. “My husband would throw me out for sure. It’s an occupational hazard, you know. Last year I picked up three bargains. Then the bottom fell out.”

  Leslie blinked at her. “Bottom?”

  “From the real estate market, I mean. Now we’re like everyone else. Tapped out and sitting on a bunch of houses we can’t sell. Nothing’s moving.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Haven’t sold a property in eight months.” Avis shook her bleachy white head. “Plenty of listings, all just sitting.”

  “That’s not exactly what I was hoping to hear.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t, but the recession’s hit us hard here. Folks are having to leave to find work, and the banks just aren’t lending, especially on rural properties.”

  Leslie felt a lump form in the pit of her stomach. Thus far, Avis hadn’t given her a single reason to be optimistic. She was standing at the back door now, peering out at the rolling green lawn and the lake beyond.

  “Lord, but it’s a stunning piece of land. How much acreage did you say goes with the house?”

  “I didn’t, but it’s about forty-five acres. The rest belongs to Maggie’s former partner, who inherited it on her death, along with the cottage and lake.”

  “What do you call it again? The farm, I mean. I seem to remember it having a name, like Southfork in Dallas.” Avis glanced back over her shoulder at Leslie. “Or maybe you don’t call it that anymore since it’s been split up?”

  Leslie opened her mouth to answer only to find she couldn’t. She’d never really thought about it, but the idea that Peak should ever be called anything but Peak vexed her now. Since she was selling, she supposed it really shouldn’t matter one way or the other.

  It shouldn’t, but it did.