There was something uncannily pleasant about following the progress of the shots, as if she were actually walking at her mother’s side as each frame was captured. But there was something else too, a niggling familiarity as she studied the play of light and shadow in each shot, a nudge toward something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. And then it came, the rush of recognition so startling it set her pulse thrumming. As she turned the page, she already knew what she would find—an empty space. It would be empty because the photo that used to be there was now on her bureau, the same photo Brendan Goddard had given her in his office. And her mother had taken it.
Leslie stared at the blank space on the page, wondering what it might mean. Maggie had handed the photo over to her attorney to ensure that it found its way into her hands—her hands, not Jay’s. But why? Yes, the shot was amazing, but if Maggie’s intent had been to make sure she never forgot her mother, why not leave a letter instead of a mysterious photograph whose origins she had only stumbled on by accident?
Groaning, she stood and brushed the dust from the seat of her jeans. She was sticky and tired, her head swimming with questions that seemed to have no answers. She wasn’t finished with this mystery by a long shot, but she needed something to drink and a little soap and water. Hoisting the carton of albums up onto her hip, she headed downstairs.
After a shower, she poured herself another glass of sweet tea and dragged the box of albums out onto the back porch. She had planned to bring A Letter Home down with her, to lose herself in a few chapters of mindless fiction, but she had changed her mind, deciding instead to go through the rest of her mother’s albums.
Settled in a rocker at the shady end of the porch, she lifted out each volume, laying them open in her lap one at a time, leafing through page after page of her mother’s work, stirring long-dead bits of memory—her mother’s voice, clear and quiet, as fresh to her as yesterday.
In her lap, the photo Brendan Goddard had given her was waiting to be returned to its rightful place. But the longer she stared at the lonely grave with its nameless stone, the less she wanted to part with it. Maybe because she wanted to understand why Maggie had removed it in the first place. Or because she longed to know how her mother had stumbled onto such an amazing shot. She would never know the answer to either, of course, but she wasn’t ready to put the picture away just yet.
Swatting at whatever was buzzing near her left ear, Leslie stood. While she’d been tripping down memory lane, the afternoon had slipped away and the mosquitoes had marshaled their forces. Stacking the albums in chronological order, she dragged the empty carton over with one foot, then went still as she saw the flat brown envelope lying at the bottom.
Surprised that she hadn’t seen it earlier, she lifted it out. There were no markings of any kind, the back flap tucked rather than sealed. Curious, and perhaps a little wary, she was about to drop back into her rocker when another mosquito whined by and changed her mind. Tucking the envelope between her teeth, she went back to repacking the albums. Whatever it was would have to wait until she was inside, where the light was better and the mosquitoes weren’t invited.
While her Lean Cuisine heated, Leslie spilled the envelope’s contents onto the kitchen table. She had expected more photos, but it was only a few bits of paper: an old magazine article, a dog-eared photocopy, and a small envelope of washed-out gray paper that might once have been blue.
She frowned at the magazine article’s title as she picked it up—“The Tortured Genius: Exploring the Myth of the Creative Martyr.” It had been torn from the March ’81 issue of the American Journal of Visual Arts and seemed to explore the links between creativity, addiction, and mental illness. There were plenty of examples—writers, sculptors, and painters who had struggled for their art against schizophrenia, addiction, and depression, only to die in poverty, obscurity, or both.
Some of the names were familiar: Toulouse-Lautrec, who suffered from both alcoholism and depression; van Gogh, whose epilepsy medications were now credited, at least partly, with his unique artistic style; and Sylvia Plath, who wrote brilliantly, and put her head in an oven one day while her children slept. There were other names too, names she didn’t recognize, Henry Darger, Karin Boye, Jeremiah Tanner—brilliant failures, all.
Shrugging off a head full of dark images, she folded the article back in half and deposited it in the envelope, baffled as to why her mother might have been interested in such an article. Was she depressed like Lautrec? Suicidal like Plath? The question lingered as she moved on to the single photocopied page and once again found herself reading about the art world, this time in Paris’s dark underbelly near the turn of the century.
Leslie ignored the microwave timer when she noticed two names that had also appeared in the journal article: Toulouse-Lautrec and Jeremiah Tanner, whose opium demon eventually leeched him of funds and friends until even his common-law wife had been forced to abandon him for the States, along with their unborn child.
Delightful.
By the time Leslie finished reading, her Swedish meatballs were cold and her head was swimming. Why her mother would have been interested in Toulouse-Lautrec and the opium dens of Montmartre, she couldn’t imagine. One more thing she’d never know. The thought made her sad. So many ghosts, past lives to be sorted and disposed of—lives she was beginning to realize she knew very little about.
Hoping for something less morbid, she reached for the small gray envelope. She couldn’t make out the postmark, and the address was in even worse shape, the ink strokes splotched and badly faded. The letter crackled like parchment as she teased it free. In the late-afternoon sun, the page was nearly translucent, its scratchy script a challenge to decipher.
My precious girl,
You are a woman now, a mother. And you say this man loves you. It is not what I prayed for, but then that has never made much difference for me. I only hope he will stand by you, whatever trouble comes, that he will need you more than he needs the world’s opinion. I was not so lucky. Still, I know now what I did was right, though we have both suffered for that passing. You did not understand then. I pray you do now, as a mother who loves her children more than her own heart. Even now that it has all gone off the rails, I cannot regret wanting a better life for you. Know that I love you always, and carry me in your heart, as I carry you. And carry your father too, in the legacy I sent with you when I gave you up to a new and better life.
Leslie blinked at the signature, a single, illegible letter scratched at the bottom of the page. No help there. They weren’t Maggie’s words, though; of that she was sure. The tone was wrong, the phrasing outdated—and something else it took a moment to put her finger on. The words felt…careful. As if the author was afraid she might reveal too much. But to whom?
It was possible that Susanne had written it to Maggie, but then why mail it? Maggie had never lived anywhere but Peak. Besides, it felt older than that. It was more likely that Susanne’s mother had written it after Maggie was born. But why would she have doubted that Henry would stand by Susanne?
Sighing, Leslie carefully folded the letter along its creases and slid it back into the small gray envelope, then eyed the carton of albums at the end of the table. It was a strange place to find an old letter. Almost as strange as finding Susanne’s portrait in the attic, hidden under a sheet of dusty canvas. But then it had been a strange sort of a day.
Chapter 16
Leslie stood and stretched, stiff and restless after three hours at the kitchen table with a sketch pad and her laptop. At Jay’s request, she’d spent the week brainstorming ways to market the winery on their scanty budget. She had come up with some ideas: offering daily tours, wrangling all the free media they could manage, and teaming up with local inns and restaurants. They’d need a kickass label and brochure, as well.
She’d given that last part a bit of thought. If she designed the label and brochure herself, it would save them a fortune. And why not? If she could peddle sports cars and cigars, why not a winery? She’d
been writing copy and working on a design for days and knew exactly what she wanted—the feel of antebellum lace and a sepia-washed shot of Peak standing high on its hill.
As she powered down her laptop, she tried to recall the last time she’d felt this passionate about work and realized the answer was never. At Edge she’d been driven, obsessed, even proud at times, but never passionate. A year ago she couldn’t have imagined a life other than the one she’d built around success, title, and a six-figure salary. Now that life was dimming, and much faster than she expected. She found herself suddenly eager to roll up her sleeves, to make this winery a success, not for the money it might yield, but for the creative challenge of it, something she hadn’t felt in years.
Just thinking about the prospect made her itch to get started. Pulling back the kitchen curtains, she peered at the sky. A little overcast, but that would probably work in her favor. She would need shots of the crush barn and the rows, and a perfect shot of the house. That’s where she’d start, with the house.
But after nearly two hours she still hadn’t gotten the shot she was after. The perspective was wrong. She was too close, too low, too something. Scanning the horizon, she considered and discarded several options, until her gaze settled on the sharp thrust of land known for generations as Henry’s Ridge, after Maggie’s father. She had ventured partway up once, when she was a girl, but had soon given up. It was hard going back then and didn’t look to be any easier now. But if it meant getting the shot she wanted, she’d find a way.
Still, she hesitated at the foot of the ridge. There had been a kind of road once, a crooked clay lane that cut up through the trees, but time had had its way, whittling it to little more than a footpath. Maybe she should wait until she had better shoes, but the promise of the perfect shot beckoned.
Her legs rebelled as she started up, then pressed on until the trail became nothing but a trickle of packed red clay. At intervals she stopped to rest, attempting to shake the sense of déjà vu that moved with her as she climbed. She’d been this way just once, yet each step felt familiar, as if she’d made the trek only days ago. And then she realized she had, in the pages of her mother’s album. It was here—the grave her mother had discovered and photographed all those years ago—somewhere on Henry’s Ridge.
The realization came with a prickle of goose bumps, a knowing that this moment had somehow been inevitable, that for reasons she couldn’t begin to grasp, Maggie had wanted her to come looking and had left the photo as a kind of treasure map. But why?
Suddenly, Leslie was covering large chunks of real estate, striding purposefully over ground strewn with pebbles and dead leaves, the Nikon thumping soundly against her ribs. By the time she reached the crest, she was drenched in sweat, a stitch nipping sharply at her side. How she’d ever make it down again she had no idea. And right now she didn’t care. She had to be close—unless she was wrong about the whole thing. But no, the tree was here, overrun by years of kudzu but still here, lightning struck and split down the middle, just like in the photo. If she had her bearings right, and she was sure she did, it should be here. Only she couldn’t find it anywhere. Had she been mistaken? Woods were woods, after all, and one tree did look like another. And then she saw the stone.
The years had done their best to reclaim it, the low iron fence so overrun with weeds and vines that it had nearly become part of the landscape. The top of the headstone was barely visible, crumbling and mealy with age. It bore no resemblance to her mother’s photo, but then after thirty years it was hardly likely to. An eerie kind of quiet filled her head, as if her heart had suddenly stopped. Until now, her curiosity had been about the image, the art and technique of the shot itself. Now she only wanted to know who was buried in this remote place, and why.
Sadly, it seemed there was no way to get at the inscription. Efforts to locate a gate proved futile, and yanking at the tangle of vines made almost no dent in the chaos. Still, she wasn’t ready to give up. It was crazy, she knew, maybe even a little macabre, but before Leslie could question her motives, she was down on her hands and knees. Now that she’d found the grave, she couldn’t just leave it to the whims of nature.
She worked until her shoulders ached and her hands were raw with broken blisters, tearing at ropes of kudzu and wild grape that seemed to lead nowhere and everywhere at once, unearthing all manner of crawly things in the process. Finally, she sat back on her haunches to survey her progress. It had taken the better part of the afternoon, but she’d managed to clear a sort of path that almost reached the gate.
A low growl of thunder suddenly caught Leslie’s attention. For the first time, she noticed the dark, flat-bellied clouds scudding in from the west, scented the breeze racing up the ridge’s west face, sharp with coming rain. Damn. She hated to quit now, when she was so close. The plan had been to work until the gate was free, then come back in the morning and finish the job. She was going to have to work fast to pull that off.
But before she could reach for another vine, the sky splintered into a thousand blue-white shards, leaving a wake of crackling ozone and opening the clouds. A second fork of lightning, even closer than the last, finally got her attention. Rain was one thing; wicked bolts of random electricity were quite another. Grabbing the Nikon, she scrambled for the path. She’d gone only a few yards when the rain came in earnest, an icy deluge that soaked her to the skin in minutes. Suddenly she was running, skidding and stumbling down the soupy clay slope slick with wet leaves and shifting stones.
Between the rain and her sopping-wet hair, it was nearly impossible to grope her way down, and more than once she landed on her knees or backside, torn between protecting her camera and saving her neck. The Nikon usually won.
By the time Leslie reached the foot of the path, all she could think of was a hot bath and an even hotter cup of tea. She was exhausted and chilled to the bone, so numb she could barely keep her teeth still. She’d nearly reached the house when she heard her name over the heavy thrum of rain. She winced at the sight of Jay leaning against the door of the tractor barn. Damn, damn, damn. Short of being rude, though, there was no way around it. Reversing course, she headed for the barn, shaking off like a wet dog as she ducked inside.
Jay scanned her with narrowed eyes, lingering on the puddle slowly forming at her feet. “Just out for a stroll?”
Leslie opened her mouth, fully intending to tell him where she had been and what she’d found, but somehow the words stuck in her throat. The discovery was too fresh, too curious. And so she held back, like a child with a new toy, unwilling to share until the novelty had worn off.
“I was scouting shots for the brochure,” she told him instead, holding up the Nikon as proof. “Before I knew it the storm blew up and I had to run for it.”
Jay took the camera and set it on the workbench. “Sounds like a good way to catch pneumonia, if you ask me. Your lips are blue, and you’re shaking like a leaf.” Grabbing a dubious-looking towel from a nearby hook, he wrapped it around her shoulders, pulling it tight and snuggling the corners in under her chin. “Better?”
Leslie nodded, relaxing involuntarily as his hands began to move over her shoulders in long, bone-melting strokes. The rattle of rain on the roof was faintly hypnotic, the heat of Jay’s body vaguely disturbing, so that soon she was aware of nothing but the smell of his soap and the sudden warmth kindling in his whisky-colored eyes.
To see it there was startling—startling, but not unpleasant. In fact, it felt a little like being drunk. Closing her eyes, she yielded to the tender assault, dimly aware of something warm and languorous stretching awake in her belly, hungry after a long, cold slumber. Would it really be such a bad thing? To let herself feel something for someone? But she already knew the answer to that. Jay wasn’t some stockbroker she’d bumped into at a cocktail party. Tomorrow would come, or next week, or next month. Something would go wrong—it always did—and then they’d be stuck, tiptoeing around each other every day, trying not to make eye contact.
&
nbsp; He was staring at her when she opened her eyes, probing for answers to the questions that hung unspoken between them. Leslie looked away first. Stepping back, she peeled off the towel. She needed to get away from him, from his warmth and his scent, before she did something they’d both regret.
“Thanks,” she said, reaching for her camera. “I’m fine now.”
“Did you get what you were after?”
“After?”
“The pictures you wanted for the brochure. Did you get them?”
No, she hadn’t, come to think of it. The minute she’d found the grave, all thoughts of the brochure had simply evaporated. “The pictures—oh, I don’t know, maybe. I won’t know until I go through them. Right now, I just want to get dry. I’ll see you later.”
Before Jay could respond, Leslie had ducked back out into the rain and was splashing blindly across the lawn, the icy drops a relief after the close heat—and the close call—of the barn. When she finally reached the shelter of the porch, she looked back, worried that he might have followed, and wishing just a little that he had.
Four days later it was still raining.
Leslie was going stir-crazy, itching to get back to the ridge and clear a path to the stone. Instead, she’d been stuck indoors, combing through her mother’s albums until she knew the order of the photographs like the back of her hand. When she grew bored with that, she had pored over the cryptic mother-daughter letter until the words were burned into her memory. And four days later, she was no closer to knowing what any of it had to do with anything.
When Angie called to suggest lunch downtown, Leslie jumped at the invitation, offering to drive, or to don flippers and a wet suit if necessary. Anything to get out of the house and away from questions that seemed only to breed more questions.
At the height of what should have been the lunch rush, Bishop’s was deserted. The brass bell over the front door jangled noisily as Leslie and Angie stepped into the empty lobby. Susan Bishop looked up with a blend of surprise and relief from the stack of menus she was wiping.
The Secrets She Carried Page 13