The Secrets She Carried

by Davis, Barbara

  “What brings you two out in this slop?”

  Angie peeled out of her raincoat and hung it on the rack near the door. “I didn’t care if I had to swim. I had to get out of the house. Young Buck’s about to run me crazy, moaning about the rain and the threat of bunch rot setting in.”

  “Let’s not talk about rot,” Susan shot back over her shoulder as she grabbed two menus and walked them to a corner table. “I just had to toss an entire shipment of salmon. It’s been like a ghost town all week. I’d tell you the specials but I didn’t bother planning any.”

  “Actually, I think we were both going to do salads,” Angie told her. “And pick us out a good bottle of Chardonnay. We’re celebrating.”

  Susan disappeared, promising to return with bread and the requested wine.

  Leslie spread her napkin in her lap and leaned in. “So what are we celebrating?”

  “You. Staying. Jay told me the news yesterday. I’m glad.”

  Leslie made a face. “I couldn’t come up with a reason not to. At least I’ll have a roof over my head. Pretty pathetic, huh?”

  “Sometimes that’s the way it works. So what’s new on the getting-settled-in front? I don’t guess it’s much fun sifting through all that old stuff.”

  Leslie thought of her recent discoveries, the letter and old photographs, articles her mother had clipped and saved for no reason she could think of. And she thought of the ridge and the stranger whose name and story she still didn’t know.

  “I keep finding…things.”

  “Good things?”

  “Confusing things. Did you know someone was buried up on the ridge?”

  Angie’s expression made it clear she hadn’t.

  “I found it the other day, an old stone, all fenced in by itself.”

  Angie waited while a waitress dropped off their wine and a basket of bread. “Honey, there are graves like that all over North Carolina. You can drive down the highway and count them. Hell, I heard once that in Greenville there’s a bunch in the mall parking lot.”

  Leslie sipped her wine, suddenly reluctant to tell Angie any more. It all seemed a little silly now, a mystery pieced together from a series of unrelated clues. Angie was right—there were graves all over North Carolina. She’d seen them, basking in the shade of an ancient oak or hiding in a field of corn, belonging to God knows who, erected God knows when—and every one with a story to tell.

  Whether there was anyone left who knew those stories was another matter. Luckily, the arrival of lunch saved Leslie from further response. When they were alone again, she decided to steer the conversation onto a new topic.

  “I know about Jay. Or maybe I should say J. D. Hartwell.”

  Angie put down the knife and fork she’d just picked up. “He told you?”

  “No, but the sign in the Poison Moon was hard to miss.”

  Angie grinned as she picked up her fork again. “Deanna’s quite a fan of our Jay.”

  “It’s a weird thing to hide, don’t you think?”

  Angie’s expression sharpened along with her tone. “He isn’t hiding it. It’s just not something he likes to talk about. Maggie used to pester him about writing again, but it never did any good. He’s hell-bent that part of his life is over.”

  “But he was so successful. I don’t get it.”

  “He’s stubborn, and maybe a little afraid, too. He blames himself for a lot.”

  “He told me. I know about his wife and the money.”

  Angie speared a cherry tomato but paused before popping it into her mouth. “Sounds like you two had quite a talk.”

  “Only to a point. He clammed up after the first few questions.”

  Angie nodded knowingly. “That’s Jay. Get too close and he’ll run every time.”

  “I’m not sure I blame him. I’ve done a bit of running myself when things got…uncomfortable. It’s partly why I’m here.”

  “Then I’ll tell you what I told Jay. There’s a difference between running away and starting over, and only you can decide which one you’re doing.” She paused, leveling keen green eyes on Leslie. “Do you know which one you’re doing?”

  Leslie dropped her gaze to her plate, toying with her croutons. “I thought I did, but the longer I’m here, the less I’m sure. The day I left New York I would have bet everything I owned that I was running away. Now I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing with the winery, but things feel right somehow.”

  “Jay said he asked you to handle the marketing. How’s that going?”

  “I’ve got a few ideas, small things we can handle ourselves. I should have the brochure mock-up done by the end of the week.”

  “Sounds like you know exactly what you’re doing. I can’t wait to see what you’ve come up with. Hey, maybe we could all get together on Friday to celebrate, go out to dinner or something.”

  “Dinner?”

  “Sure, we could go to Colaizzi’s, make it a double date.”

  Leslie put down her wine and eyed Angie squarely. “It wouldn’t be a date, double or any other kind. It would just be a business meeting that happened to include dinner.”

  “Two boys, two girls, no children. Sounds like a double date to me. And would it be so bad to have a little fun, maybe wear something alluring?”

  “Alluring?”

  “You know, show off your legs and anything else you’ve got worth showing off.”

  “You think Jay’s going to like my ideas better if I flash a little leg?”

  Angie rolled her eyes. “It’s not your ideas I was hoping he’d like. In case you haven’t noticed, Jay isn’t exactly a bad catch.”

  Leslie threw her a withering glance. “That might be true if I were actually looking to catch someone—which I most definitely am not. I don’t think dinner’s a good idea. I think it’s best if we just keep things…professional.”

  “Why?”

  Leslie went back to picking at her croutons. “Because we’d both be uncomfortable, and I don’t want any more friction between us.”

  Angie lifted her glass, grinning wickedly. “You know what they say about friction, don’t you? Best way to start a fire.”

  “Or an explosion,” Leslie shot back darkly. Yet she couldn’t deny the dangerous flicker in her belly whenever her thoughts strayed to the moment she and Jay had shared in the barn. Fire, indeed. “Trust me, Angie, it isn’t a good idea.”

  Angie huffed back in her chair. “Fine, have it your way. Oh, speak of the devil, here’s Deanna.”

  Leslie turned to see Deanna heading for their table. She wore a pink slicker and matching wellies over her jeans but still managed to look curvy and beautiful.

  “Hey, you two, I just popped over for some soup. Can you believe this weather?”

  “Yes, unfortunately, I can.” Angie pointed to an empty chair. “Stay and eat with us.”

  “I wish I could, but I’m by myself today at the shop. I just wanted to say hey. If you’ve got time later, stop by.”

  Leslie held up the bottle of Chardonnay. “You can at least stay for a glass of wine.”

  Deanna eyed it wistfully but shook her head. “I better get back. I didn’t put a sign on the door. If there’s any left, bring the bottle when you come by. I’ll scare us up some Dixie cups.” She had almost reached the lobby when she turned and tossed Leslie one of her broad pink smiles. “If you can’t get by, be sure to tell that good-looking man I said hello.”

  Angie grinned as she topped off Leslie’s glass and then her own. “I don’t suppose she was talking about Buck, do you?” When Leslie didn’t respond, she let it drop. “Now, what were we talking about? Oh, yes, your legs.”

  “I’ll thank you to leave my legs out of the conversation and to channel your matchmaking efforts elsewhere. Maybe you should focus on Deanna. God knows she’s taken with the Master of Heartbreak.”

  “Is that jealousy I hear?”

  “Just an observation,” Leslie answered coolly. “Would he be interested, do you thi
nk?”

  Angie shook her head. “I believe that ship would have sailed by now if it was going to. Deanna’s a little…wide-open for Jay. Still, you never know. He’s a man, and she is cute as a button.”

  Leslie’s eyes slid to the door as Deanna retreated. “Yes, she is,” she murmured softly into her wineglass. “Cute as a button.”

  Chapter 17

  The next morning dawned sunny and cool, the air and earth washed clean after days of drenching rain. Leslie tipped her face to the breeze, reveling in the mingled scents of wildflowers and damp earth. But she was frustrated, too. She had stripped away the last of the vines, unearthed the fence, and breached the gate, all with one mission in mind—to reach the stone and put a name and date to this mystery. But when she had finally reached the stone late yesterday afternoon, she had found it so weathered and splotched with lichen that the inscription was indecipherable.

  The disappointment stung. Somewhere along the way, through all the hours on her knees, yanking weeds and vines, curiosity had ripened into a kind of fixation, a dim but insidious awareness of nameless bones grinding to dust. But whose bones? Without an epitaph, she would never know. Then, this morning, she remembered a documentary she’d seen once on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C. and it had given her an idea.

  The iron hinges wailed drily as she pushed through the gate with her paper and crayon. It was a long shot, she knew. The stone’s engraving might be so far gone that she wouldn’t be able to lift anything at all. Still, it was worth a try. Dropping to one knee, she pressed the sheet of white paper to the stone and started to rub, anticipation quivering in her belly as letters began to emerge, light against dark, like a photographic negative. After a few moments she sat back on her haunches and spread the tracing over her knees.

  I shall but love thee better after death.

  Leslie felt the air go out of her lungs as she blinked at the waxy words. They were from the book of sonnets she’d found in Henry’s desk, the book she assumed had been a gift from Susanne. But Susanne was buried beside her husband in the yard at First Presbyterian, which meant this grave belonged to another woman entirely—a woman Henry had loved.

  Folding the tracing carefully, she stuffed it into her shirt and scrambled back down the path, not bothering to close the door as she entered through the mudroom and hurried to the study. She’d forgotten about the photo tucked between the back pages of Barrett Browning’s sonnets. Now it was all she could think of.

  Extricating the small book from Henry’s desk, she slid the photo free and carried it to the window, squinting hard at the mysterious woman in the wide-brimmed hat. The longer she stared at it, the more impossible it seemed that she could ever have mistaken the woman in the photo for the pale bride in the attic. The chin was too strong, the mouth too full, and the fringe of dark curls peeking from beneath the hat was completely wrong.

  The implications made Leslie vaguely dizzy. If this woman wasn’t Susanne—and clearly she was not—then who was she? The infant in her arms seemed to tell the story. Henry Gavin had kept a mistress, and she had borne him a child.

  Lifting the book of sonnets from her lap, Leslie turned to the spray of dried flowers and began to read. The words weren’t new, but they held a fresh poignancy now, an ache that seemed to twine itself around every heartbreaking line. She’d known from the first reading that the passage had been a treasured one; she just hadn’t known why. Now she had her answer.

  Her fingers crept to dried petals, pale and papery against the yellowed page. Had Henry picked them, or had she? And who had pressed them and placed them here for safekeeping? It seemed a woman’s gesture. Had she loved Henry, then, as he loved her?

  Because he had loved her.

  It seemed strange to be so sure of something she couldn’t possibly know, and yet she was sure. Henry had died in this room, had, toward the end of his life, spent all his time here, alone and deep in drink because he had never stopped mourning her. What would it be like, she wondered, to love and be loved that deeply? She wasn’t ever likely to know. Nor was she ever likely to know what it was like to lose such a love.

  Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine them together, Henry, tall and lean with his head of heavy dark hair, the woman dressed as she was in the photo, but her face was only a shadow. Had Susanne known? It certainly seemed that Maggie had, or had at least suspected, though it didn’t explain why she’d gone to such lengths to make sure Leslie found out about the grave. Why expose her father’s infidelity after so many years? And the child—what had happened to the child?

  More questions, only this time they were about Henry.

  Leslie let her head fall back against the chair and let her eyes roam. Sitting in Henry’s chair, surrounded by his things, his pipes and books and artwork, she could almost smell his pipe tobacco in the air, the bourbon from the glass at his elbow. Finally, her eyes settled on the paintings over the mantel. The first time she saw them, they had seemed out of place, at stark odds with her image of Henry Gavin, stalwart pillar of the community. Now that image was rapidly unraveling, and given what she had discovered—an unmarked grave, a mysterious mistress, and an illegitimate child—a few racy paintings might not be as out of place as they seemed. Henry was a man, after all, presumably with a man’s appetites, and yet the thought of him burying a woman in secret, with nothing but a line of poetry to mark her passing, left Leslie wondering what kind of man her great-grandfather had truly been.

  Sadly, there was no one left to ask.

  Chapter 18

  Adele

  Lies sometimes become truth.

  It is late August, scorching and dusty; market time in North Carolina. Henry has been away a full week, gone to the auctions at Wilson. Without him Peak is an empty, soul-grinding place. In the evenings, when Susanne has finished with her tray and Lottie has gone home, I slip into Henry’s study and sit in his chair, breathing the scent of him—leather and Pinaud talc, tobacco and bootleg bourbon.

  I have never mentioned the men outside the barbershop, or the way Celia Cunningham looked back at me that day. I didn’t want it on his mind while he was away at market, but he’ll need to hear it when he gets back, need to know what’s being whispered. Not that they’d ever have the guts to spout their pack of lies to Henry’s face. They wouldn’t. They’ll just keep pecking at it like seed corn, until they’ve got it scattered all over town. And nothing on this earth would delight Celia Cunningham more than to see that their talk finds its way to Susanne, even if it means having to pay a personal call.

  Meanwhile, I am certain Susanne will drive me mad. From sunup to sundown I am forced to sit with her in that airless room, with its sealed windows and drawn curtains, listening to her talk of the child she insists she will soon have, the son who will one day inherit Peak. I pray it does not happen, now or ever. For Henry’s sake and for mine.

  The day Henry is scheduled to return, Susanne orders me to draw a bath, telling me to be sure to add a few drops of her favorite oil to the water. I know what she’s up to, but I can’t allow myself to think of it. I have let myself believe—made myself believe—that because Henry and Susanne do not share a room, they do not share a bed. It is a silly thing to believe, a girlish thing, I know, when the memory of Susanne’s swollen belly is still so vivid.

  Susanne is pink and fragrant when she steps out of the bath, trailing a sickly-sweet cloud of gardenia in her wake. She makes me brush out her hair and curl it, then lay out a nightgown I have never seen her wear. Her husband is coming home, and tonight, because there is something she wants, she will play the wife.

  As I slide the sheer gown over her head, I sneak a look at her wrists. The welts are still there, some scabbed over, most fresh. She is still rail thin, though she’s been eating a little, for the sake of the baby, she says, as if the thing has already been done. But there is an air of decay about her, like a house that has been vacant for a very long time, and I am amazed that she could believe herself capable of bearing a child, l
et alone mothering one.

  It is well past dark when I hear Henry’s truck cough its way up the drive, and my heart begins to knock against my ribs. I take a deep breath and peer over Susanne’s shoulder at my reflection. I wanted to look my best for him. Instead, I look like what I am, hired help. I’m wearing the navy blue dress that was once my best, limp as a rag now, and faded with too much washing. And I’ve had no time to fix my hair. It’s a fright, escaping its pins and sticking damply to my neck. I only hope Henry is too weary to notice.

  I breathe a sigh of relief when Susanne sends me away, but it is short-lived. I am to go down and tell Henry she is waiting. My throat goes dry when I hear the heavy clomp of his boots on the porch. And then he’s through the door, dusty and stiff after the long drive back. Our fingers brush as I take his hat and smooth out the rumpled brim. Has it really been only a week that he’s been gone?

  “Hello, Adele.”

  The words are like a tonic, rough and sweet and deep. But before I can answer, Susanne’s voice floats down, thin and shrill with impatience. Henry’s eyes shift to the top of the stairs, and he shuffles his boots. There’s no need to give him my message. He knows what is expected of him and will do his duty. I turn away, fighting the sting behind my eyes as I hear the first step groan beneath his weight.

  He is with her nearly an hour.

  I am in the kitchen with Lottie when he finally comes down. That he has missed me is all over his face, but he smells like her now, the cloying scent of gardenia clinging to his clothes like a poison. It is not a betrayal. How can it be when he is not mine? But it is a bitter pill to swallow.

  Even Lottie can feel the tension, though it’s clear she’s glad to have him home. At the table she fusses over him like an old hen, heaping his plate with sweet potatoes and fried chicken, hovering at his elbow to top off his tea every time he takes a sip.