The Secrets She Carried

by Davis, Barbara

  “I haven’t decided yet. It doesn’t seem right to shut them up somehow.”

  They had come to the door of the study. Leslie opened it and led Jay inside. “I was thinking that maybe you could write in here. Maggie would like it, I think, and it seems fitting to write the end of Adele and Henry’s story here, where they spent so much time.”

  Jay ran a thoughtful eye about the room. “I don’t know. Walking into this room has always felt like stepping back in time. I’m not sure how I feel about dragging a bunch of electronics in here.” He crossed the room then, to the trunk that until yesterday had doubled as a display table for the old Victrola. He reached for the lid, then pulled back. “Mind if I have a look?”

  Leslie shook her head. “It’s household stuff mostly, tablecloths and curtains and things. Henry must have packed it all after she died.”

  As Leslie had done the previous afternoon, Jay pushed aside sheets of old newspaper, wrinkling his nose as he explored musty layers of sheets and blankets, old clothes, and even old shoes. Finally, he held up a yellowed square of lace-edged linen.

  “He kept it all—even her handkerchiefs.”

  Leslie took the hanky from him, tracing the fragile lace with one finger. “I suppose her things were all he had left.”

  “Hello—what’s this?”

  Something in his tone caught Leslie’s attention. By the time her head came up, Jay was already down on one knee, probing a tear in the trunk’s cloth lining.

  “What are you doing?”

  He said nothing at first, his lips thin with concentration as he continued to probe the opening. After several minutes he teased out what appeared to be several sheets of folded brown paper and handed them to Leslie.

  “I noticed a rip in the lining. When I slid my hand in, I felt these.”

  They weren’t paper, Leslie realized as she began to unfold them. They were too stiff, oily smelling and musty. Instead, she found herself holding three unfinished paintings. In each, the face was the same.

  “It’s her,” Leslie breathed, staring at the ripe mouth and honey-colored limbs, younger and more crudely rendered, but unmistakable. “It’s Vivienne—the woman who posed for the Rebecca. My God, how could I have missed it?”

  “I barely saw the tear myself.”

  “Not that,” she said, rolling her eyes as she handed him the paintings. “Look closely, and think of Jemmy in his uniform. She’s the spitting image of him.”

  Jay studied them carefully, shuffling the canvases and holding them to the light. “You’re right,” he pronounced at last. “The likeness really is uncanny.”

  “The first letter, the one I found in the attic, spoke of a legacy from Adele’s father. Those canvases had to be what she meant. Which means—”

  “Tanner was Adele’s father, and the woman who posed for all these was her mother.”

  “Vivienne,” Leslie said, her voice hushed with astonishment. “Her name was Vivienne.” Her gaze settled on the Rebecca then, ripe and lovely above the mantel. “Henry bought the paintings because they looked like Adele, because having them on the wall made him feel like she was still here. At some point she must have told him about Tanner.” Her eyes went wide suddenly. “Of course she did. They named their son after him.”

  “Jeremiah,” Jay supplied. “Jemmy, for short.”

  “Yes.”

  Leslie dropped into the nearest wingback, letting this fresh insight settle into place. “The story really has come full circle, then. I could never understand Henry’s fascination with those paintings. Now it makes perfect sense. It wasn’t Tanner’s work he admired, but what, in his mind, they represented. It’s sad in a way, but beautiful too.”

  Jay was carefully folding the canvases along their creases, preparing to return them to the trunk. “We went all the way to Charleston and put Emilie Fornier through her paces, and all the time the answers were right here under our noses.”

  Leslie looked up at him, trapping his hand a moment in hers. “I’ll never be sorry we went to Charleston.”

  Jay dropped a kiss on the top of her head, then pulled her to her feet. “No, me either. Now, what do you say we leave all this for the night. There’s a perfectly good fireplace going to waste in the parlor, and I think I spotted a bottle of Merlot in the kitchen.”

  Leslie nodded, standing back while Jay closed the lid on all that remained of Adele Laveau’s brief life. They knew it all now. And yet, somehow it wasn’t quite finished.

  “What do you think happened to Jemmy, Jay? Do you think he ever came back?”

  “You mean to Peak? I don’t know. It doesn’t seem likely. If he had any memories of this place at all, they couldn’t have been very happy ones.”

  “It would be an interesting story—don’t you think?—to know what happened to him after he left Peak, to know if he was…happy.”

  “Leslie—”

  “I was just thinking it might make a perfect—”

  “The answer is no. I know where you’re going, and I can assure you, you’re wasting your time. I have the ending I was looking for.”

  “For this one,” Leslie said softly.

  Jay’s expression was one of astonishment. “I haven’t even finished this one, and you’re already plotting a sequel?”

  She shrugged, pouting prettily. “Never mind. It was just a thought.” Turning off the desk lamp, she beckoned from the doorway. “Are you coming? Someone said something about a fireplace and a bottle of wine.”

  Chapter 49

  Adele

  It’s time at last to tell the truth.

  Maggie is mine—or was—relinquished a week after she left my body. I do not think often of that terrible day, but I must think of it now. It is an awful thing to have to tell, and yet I find I must tell it. There will be no rest for me until I do. I made a devil’s pact all those years ago, and the misery of it lives with me still, so fresh and raw it feels like yesterday.

  To this day I cannot believe Henry could ask such a thing of me, to deny the mother’s heart already beating in my breast, to surrender my flesh and blood to the very woman who stands between us. It is her way of getting back at me, I know, of getting her hands on Henry’s child at last, and punishing me with the taking. I can think of no other life but the one I have here with Henry, however, and do what he asks.

  Two days later I am summoned back to the study. Henry is there, but it is Susanne who sits in the large chair behind his desk. Her eyes gleam sharply as I step into the room, lingering greedily on my belly. She does not ask me to sit down, only slides two neatly typed sheets of paper across the desk and holds out a pen.

  “Your name at the bottom,” is all she says, and for a moment I think of running from the room. I think about it, but my legs won’t move.

  The pages are identical, I see, and I wonder as I take the pen from her thin, cold fingers, who typed them out. Who else knows I do this vile thing? A voice in my head, perhaps Mama’s, warns me to be on my guard, not to trust a woman who could propose such a bargain, or a man who could stand by while it is done.

  I force myself to read the words. They blur and swim before my eyes. Contract to Secure Legal Adoption. It is more terrible on the page, more wrenching because it has become more real now that the pen is in my hand. When I have signed both copies, she ends the meeting, warning me not to mistake this offer as anything but an attempt to protect the Gavin name. She will not have “her child” born under a blanket of suspicion. I only nod my head, too miserable to speak.

  Maggie is a week old when Henry comes for her, soft and pink and unimaginably perfect. I wonder, as he takes her from my arms, if one day she will see me and know—somehow down in her bones—that I gave her life. His eyes are shadowed as they slide away from mine, his voice gritty as he vows that nothing between us will change. He could not see, even then, that all had changed already.

  He is nearly to the door when I reach for my scissors. He says nothing, only watches as I snip a tiny wisp of dark hair from
her head—all I am meant to have of her. And then she is gone.

  After a while I make myself get up. I turn on the lamp and reread the horrid paper with my smudged signature at the bottom, then fold it into an envelope. I hide it in the bottom of my sewing box, where no one ever goes. I’m hiding it from myself because I cannot bear to see it. And because there is a part of me that does not trust Henry to stand strong in a storm.

  Chapter 50

  Leslie

  The wind at the top of the ridge was stiff, and so cold it made Leslie’s eyes water. It had snowed again during the night, not heavily but enough to cling to the scrubby weeds and bits of grass still dotting the rocky ground. Her boots crunched over the frozen earth as she walked the last few yards to the low gate and pushed it open.

  Behind her, Jay cleared his throat. “Leslie, what are we doing up here? You need to leave for the airport in less than an hour.”

  Leslie clutched the nylon tote dangling from her shoulder. “You’ll think I’m silly, but I woke up knowing there was something I had to do before I left.”

  “And whatever it is…is in that bag?”

  “Yes.”

  Turning back to the grave, she went down on one knee, brushing a dusting of snow from the face of the stone. She didn’t bother trying to read the words. She knew them as well as she knew her own name, knew them so well they almost echoed in her bones—words meant to bridge death and distance. And somehow, they had. That she was kneeling here now was proof of that.

  Sliding the tote from her shoulder, she withdrew a rusty trowel she’d found in the tractor barn.

  “Leslie?”

  “It’s all right,” she said, stabbing at the frozen ground.

  “Honey…what are you doing?”

  “I’m making things right.”

  “Can I help you, at least, with whatever you’re trying to do?”

  Leslie shook her head. “This is my part.”

  She could feel Jay’s frown aimed at her back, could sense his apprehension that she’d gone round the bend and was trying to exhume a long-dead relative with nothing but a trowel. To his credit he said nothing more, just hunched deeper into his jacket and shoved his hands in his pockets.

  She should try to explain, she knew, but she wasn’t sure how to even put into words what she was trying to do, and so she kept silent and kept digging. When she was satisfied she set the trowel aside. It had taken nearly twenty minutes to dig a hole less than one foot deep.

  The wind rose suddenly, humming through the bare branches and sending her hair swirling about her face. She pushed it back, dimly aware of the gate creaking open and shut behind her, of Jay’s boots scraping closer. She heard his breath catch as she slid the cigar box from the tote and opened it.

  Jemmy’s photos and Henry’s book of sonnets lay inside, along with the green velvet locket case. She had intended to open the locket, to look one last time at Adele with her children, but somehow it felt intrusive now. Instead, she closed the box and laid it gently at the bottom of the freshly dug hole.

  “Leslie…honey, what are you doing?”

  He was only a silhouette when she glanced over her shoulder. “I’m going to bury it, the locket, Jemmy’s pictures, the sonnets, all of it.”

  “Why?”

  There were tears in her eyes when she met his gaze. “Because she’s alone up here, and has been for eighty years. This box is her family: Henry in the book, her children in the locket. Nothing will ever make things right for her, but I can do this. I can give her this.”

  Jay intercepted a tear as it slid down her cheek. “What did you mean when you said this was your part?”

  “You’re telling her story. This is what I can do. I know it won’t change how things ended. It won’t erase all the terrible things that happened. But I need to do it.” She reached into her pocket and held out a photo. “It’s the shot I took for the label.”

  She lifted the lid and placed the photo in the box, aware of Jay’s hand on her shoulder as she began to scrape the mound of earth back into place. When she finished she stood and wiped her hands on the front of her jacket.

  “It’s done.”

  Jay caught her wrists and pulled her close, planting a kiss on her forehead. She leaned into him, content to let his warmth seep into her bones and to share the rightness of the moment.

  “Thank you for coming with me,” she said into the collar of his jacket. “And for not thinking I’m crazy.”

  “Can I ask you something?” His chest hummed as he spoke. “Why include your photo? With the exception of that picture, everything in the box belonged to the past.”

  She stepped back but kept hold of his hands. “I’ve never been very sentimental, but I wanted there to be something of mine. I’m here because of her—all of this is. It was Adele who gave Henry his children, Adele who’s responsible for Peak still being in my family. I didn’t want this to just be about the past. I wanted it to be about the future too. I wanted her to know that something good finally came from all that love and pain.”

  Jay smiled and wiped a streak of dirt from her cheek. “For someone who’s never been very sentimental, you’re certainly making up for lost time.”

  “I know you’re teasing, but I’ve been thinking. Most of my family’s problems occur because we never stop trying to run away from home. Maybe we don’t all pack knapsacks and hitch a ride out of town, but we find ways to do it. Adele left an entire race behind. Maggie spent years pretending to be someone she wasn’t. Jimmy drank himself into a stupor trying to drown the voice of his conscience. And I ran off to the big city, hoping I’d forget I was ever here at all.”

  Jay lifted a strand of hair out of her eyes. “And yet, here you are, back for good.”

  She kissed him then, a warm, brief graze along his lower lip. “That’s the thing. That’s what I finally figured out. The past never dies. And no matter how hard you try, you can never really run away from home.”

  Epilogue

  The Poison Moon was standing room only, the air humming with idle chatter. It seemed half the town had turned out. Leslie’s stomach knotted. She’d expected twenty, maybe even thirty, but nothing like this. As she scanned the sea of familiar faces, the bell on the front door jangled and another string of guests filed in.

  She took a deep breath and tried to focus on the strains of Celtic holiday music drifting through the shop. The place looked amazing, a wonderland of twinkle lights and evergreens and gold and silver ribbon. Deanna had gone all out, but then she wasn’t likely to skimp when it came to a reading by Gavin’s own Master of Heartbreak.

  Young Buck had already found the refreshment table and was filling a pair of plastic cups with something pink and frothy, a star-shaped cookie stuffed into his mouth. Beside him, Angie looked vaguely frazzled, shooing Sammi Lee from the cookie tray with one hand, holding her rounded belly with the other. Sammi Lee’s baby brother was due at the end of February and, if Young Buck had his way, would likely end up being called Baby Buck, despite his mother’s strenuous objections.

  The front door jangled open again. Leslie checked her watch. They’d be starting soon. Heading back to her seat in the front row, she dropped down beside Jimmy, grateful when she felt him give her shoulder a squeeze.

  If Jay was nervous, he gave no sign, standing in the small clearing amid the sea of folding chairs, chatting with Deanna, resting one hand on a table groaning with copies of The Secrets She Carried waiting to be autographed. He must have felt her eyes because he turned and shot her a wink. Deanna snuck a look at the clock behind the checkout counter, then leaned in to whisper something in his ear. When he nodded, she stepped away, moving to stand beside the stool.

  “Everybody,” she called over the low drone of guests. “If you’ll take your seats I think we’re ready to start.”

  After several moments of rustling coats and clanking metal chairs, a hush fell over the room. Deanna smiled her bright pink smile and cleared her throat.

  “First, I
’d like to thank everyone for coming out tonight. I’m sorry about not having enough chairs, but we’ve never had this kind of turnout before. I hope we’re not breaking any fire codes, but if we are, I’m counting on Sandra Toomey to smooth things out with her hubby, who is on shift as we speak.”

  She paused until the chuckles subsided. “As most of you know, we’ve had a bona fide celebrity living right here in our little town. Seven years ago, Jay Davenport—sometimes known as J. D. Hartwell—honored us by choosing Gavin as his home. I doubt anyone missed the recent notice in the Gazette announcing his engagement to Maggie Gavin’s granddaughter, Leslie, who finally came home to us last summer. But what most of us didn’t know is that for quite a while now, he’s been working on his eighth novel, called The Secrets She Carried, and now, after years of silence from one of the country’s most beloved authors, it’s finally here—hot off the presses and sure to sell like hotcakes.”

  There was a premature smattering of applause. Jay smiled tightly, tugging at his collar as if it had suddenly grown too tight.

  Deanna gushed on. “The best part is we have him here tonight to read an excerpt from that new book.” She held out an arm, beckoning him forward. “So now, without further ado, please welcome our own…Jay Davenport.”

  Jay took a seat on the stool, nodding graciously while he waited for the applause to die down. When it did, he opened the book to the last page and began to read…

  It’s a soul-wrenching thing to live a lie.

  God knows I’ve lived more than my share—but not with Henry. From the beginning he knew who I was, and what I was. There are lots of names for what I was. Quadroon, high yellow, colored—and lots more polite folks don’t say in company. Henry knew them all. He knew what loving me might mean, but loved me anyway. If the good people of our little town ever guessed the truth about me—about us—it would have finished him. Not the breach of his wedding vows; plenty of folks overlooked that transgression. It’s the other they would never forgive.