One Year

by Mary McDonough

  Anne Tribble, the next board member, was a gracious, good-natured woman who owned a very successful boutique called The Sophisticated Lady. Her husband, Joseph, a retired optometrist, had been confined to a wheelchair for some time after a car accident had left him partially paralyzed. That they were a devoted couple no one could doubt. Mary Bernadette had great respect for Anne, as a business owner, as a wife, and as a member of the board. The fact that no matter how trying things were at home, Anne always managed to be perfectly turned out only raised her in Mary Bernadette’s esteem.

  Leonard DeWitt, the aforementioned CEO of the organization, was a large man, tall and robust, with perpetually flushed cheeks and bright blue eyes. He was an honorably retired and highly decorated police chief from the D.C. area who had moved to Oliver’s Well six years earlier. Within his first year of residence he had proved to be one of the most dedicated citizens Mary Bernadette had ever encountered. He lived in a small, very charming house that had been built in 1845, on what was one of the prettiest streets in Oliver’s Well. All he would say of his personal past was that he had been married once but that his wife hadn’t been happy married to a cop. He was an unabashed fan of Mary Bernadette and had been heard to say that she would have made an excellent law enforcement agent, given her unswerving ethical conduct and her ability to “grasp the right end of the stick.”

  Neal Hyatt, seated next to Leonard, was owner of the Hyatt Gallery, specializing in contemporary American art. He held a doctorate in twentieth-century American painting from the University of Chicago and was a guest lecturer at several area colleges. His dedication to the past of Oliver’s Well was fierce—interesting, Mary Bernadette thought, given his professional specialty—and he was brilliantly suited to his job as the board’s secretary. He was in his early forties, as was his life partner, Gregory Smith. As with her friends Katie and Bonnie, Mary Bernadette treated the men with great respect without formally acknowledging the complete nature of their relationship.

  Finally, there was Norma Campbell, a very expensively preserved fifty-five-year-old woman. She lived on her own in an enormous house on an enormous estate, complete with a stable full of horses she didn’t ride and a tennis court she never used. Rumor had it she was visited regularly each Saturday night by a gentleman in a large black sedan with Florida plates. Mary Bernadette had no time for such an obviously theatrical tale (concocted by Joyce Miller?), and as far as she was concerned, Norma’s personal life was none of her business. Norma rarely showed much enthusiasm for the OWHA’s projects and causes, and Mary Bernadette wasn’t the only one to suspect that Norma was a dabbler, a lonely woman who saw holding a place on various boards and clubs around Oliver’s Well as a way to pass the time of day. Still, she wasn’t a troublemaker and she did contribute generously in a financial way to the upkeep of the historical Oliver’s Well, so Mary Bernadette saw no reason to object to her presence.

  Now Mary Bernadette cleared her throat and called the meeting to order. Neal, in his capacity as secretary, read the minutes of the last meeting. There followed a discussion of old business. When that had been satisfactorily concluded, Leonard announced that he was still investigating a new paint supplier and went on to describe his findings. Mary Bernadette listened attentively.

  CHAPTER 16

  Alexis bounded into the Wilson House. The day was warm and bright and she was feeling happy and energized. She wished PJ weren’t at work. If he were free she would steal him away for a long drive with the windows down and music blaring.

  The day before, Richard Armstrong, who usually conducted the OWHA’s Haunted Oliver’s Well Tour, had asked Alexis if she might fill in for him, as he was suffering a terrible cold. “Just follow the script,” he said between sneezes. “And try not to be too dramatic. No gore or guts. We don’t want anyone having a fit along the way.”

  “What should I do if someone does freak out?” she had asked. To which Richard had replied, “Run.”

  So she had taken on the task and had enjoyed it immensely, everything from the visit to Oliver’s Well’s oldest cemetery, which dated from the seventeenth century, to the stately Kennington House, supposed residence of at least three ghosts, one of whom was believed to be the spirit of a notorious rake named Nehemiah Jones, who had met an ignominious if just end when he had been run through by the irate husband of one of his conquests. Leading the tour had suited her love of theatre—she had been a member of the theatre club in high school and in college—a love that hadn’t had much opportunity to make itself known since moving to Oliver’s Well. There was an amateur theatre group in town, but Alexis hadn’t ventured to join. She was reluctant to devote a chunk of time to other people that might better be spent with her new husband.

  “There you are.” It was Mary Bernadette, come in just ahead of Alexis and still wearing her classic, belted trench coat. “How did you succeed with the tour?” she asked.

  “Great,” Alexis said. “Everything went perfectly. Well, I did accidentally miscount the give-away pamphlets before I left. I was short three, but no one complained.”

  Mary Bernadette shook her head. “You must learn to check your supplies twice before beginning any tour.”

  “I did check twice. But . . .”

  “Well, you’ll know better next time.”

  Alexis felt chastened, as no doubt she was meant to be. Why did Mary Bernadette always have to find fault? Anyone could have miscounted a stack of pamphlets printed on slick paper, even the illustrious Mrs. Fitzgibbon. And if Mary Bernadette had ever miscounted, Alexis wondered, would she have admitted her mistake?

  “That tour is ridiculous, anyway,” Mary Bernadette was saying. “No one is rising from his grave until the Judgment Day. Of that, I am completely sure.”

  “Yes, but it brings in an awful lot of money. I mean, the tickets are thirty dollars each. We made, let me see . . .” Alexis did a quick mental calculation. “We made three hundred and sixty dollars today.”

  “Well, we all have to make sacrifices for the greater good. For the sake of the OWHA, I allow the tour to continue.”

  Alexis wondered if allowing the tour to continue really was Mary Bernadette’s decision to make. True, she was the chairman, but wouldn’t every member of the board have a right to vote on such a decision? “Anyway,” she said, “the tour does no harm. I’m sure half the people who sign up for it don’t really believe in ghosts.”

  “And the other half are desperately hoping to have their wits scared right out of their heads, if they had any wits to begin with. Bodies rising from the dead indeed.”

  “But what about Lazarus, in the New Testament?” Alexis asked. “He rose from the dead.”

  Mary Bernadette frowned. “That was a miracle, performed by Jesus for His own good reasons.”

  Strictly speaking, Alexis thought, couldn’t you call Lazarus, and Jesus, for that matter, a zombie? And what about the Holy Spirit? He was a spirit, if not the sort that went around in torn sheets and rattling chains. But she held her tongue. She didn’t want Mary Bernadette to accuse her of blaspheming. Still, to stir the pot was so tempting....

  “While I have you here,” Mary Bernadette was saying now, “I want to talk to you about a project I think you’d be perfect for.”

  “What’s that?” Alexis asked.

  “It’s called A Day in the Life. Most of the best historical societies have a version of it. You can research their attempts and make changes for the better. There’s no reason the OWHA can’t be number one in this enterprise.”

  “But what exactly is the enterprise?” Alexis asked.

  “It’s quite simple. You’ll take a photograph every day at the same time and in the same place, say, at the corner of Main Street and Market Street, and post them on our website. The pictures will be a permanent record of life in Oliver’s Well over time.”

  Alexis felt flattered. And for a moment she felt badly that she had been so harsh in her silent criticism of Mary Bernadette.

  “I don’t know w
hat to say,” she professed. “I’m not sure I’m qualified. I’m not a professional photographer.”

  “You’ll do just fine,” Mary Bernadette said firmly. “You’ll be the official Contemporary Archivist of the OWHA.”

  “A picture every day? Even on holidays?”

  “Even on holidays. Same time, same place.”

  Alexis thought about it. The project could be fun, and the title—Contemporary Archivist—was kind of cool. “Sure,” she said. “When would I start?”

  “How about first thing tomorrow? You can do some research tonight.”

  “Okay. Well, I guess I’d better get on home now so—”

  Mary Bernadette sighed. “Just look at the condition of this room. Alexis, would you mind dusting the display cases before you go?”

  Alexis did mind, but she found herself saying, “No, I don’t mind at all.”

  Mary Bernadette bestowed one of her dazzling smiles. “The cleaning supplies are in the hall closet by the public restroom.”

  Mary Bernadette left, and Alexis went to the closet to retrieve a roll of paper towels and a bottle of glass cleaner. She wondered if other Contemporary Archivists were also unpaid housekeepers. And as she cleaned the tops of the display cases containing crumbling old letters and deeds, dented buttons, and tarnished flatware, Alexis hoped that the next time Mary Bernadette was in one of the supposedly haunted homes in Oliver’s Well, she encountered something wrapped in a smelly shroud and covered in cobwebs and crawling with worms and spiders. The thought made her smile.

  CHAPTER 17

  Alexis and PJ were in the kitchen of the little cottage. It was almost six o’clock, and a pot of soup was simmering on the stove. Alexis was sorting through the mail, and PJ was texting a client.

  “That smells great,” PJ said, without looking up from his phone.

  Alexis smiled. “Thanks. It’s split pea with ham. Look,” she said. “Another anniversary card. This one’s from Craig and Anna.”

  “That was nice of them.”

  “Well, Craig was your best man,” Alexis pointed out. “Anyway, I’m sure it was Anna who sent it. It’s always the woman who sends the card.”

  PJ laughed. “That’s a bit sexist, isn’t it?”

  Alexis shrugged and continued to go through the day’s mail, which, per usual, Mary Bernadette had brought to the cottage. She smiled as she opened a card from her maid of honor, Diane DeLaurentis. “One year down,” Diane had written. “A lifetime to go!” It had been Mary Bernadette’s idea that PJ and Alexis marry on St. Patrick’s Day, and though Alexis hadn’t been keen on a March wedding (she had always envisioned an autumn wedding), she had agreed readily enough. The truth was, she had been so eager to marry PJ she would have married him in a garbage dump with a couple of howling cats for a band if his grandmother had wanted it.

  PJ put down his phone and joined Alexis at the counter. “Ali,” he said, taking her hand in his. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  Alexis stood Diane’s card next to Craig and Anna’s. “Sure. What’s up?”

  “I know we planned to go to Charleston for our anniversary, but I really think we should spend it in Oliver’s Well.”

  Alexis was surprised. “But you were so excited by the idea of getting away. And we booked a room at that gorgeous old bed and breakfast.”

  “I was excited,” PJ said. “I still am. I mean, excited to go someday. Look, Ali, we’ll go to Charleston next year, I promise.”

  “But you promised we’d go this year. I don’t understand. What’s happened?”

  PJ sighed. “Nothing happened. It’s just that, well, Grandmother asked what we were planning, and when I told her we were going away for a few days she was disappointed. She’d been hoping we could all celebrate together.”

  “But it’s our anniversary,” Alexis said, “yours and mine, not hers. My parents always celebrate their anniversary alone, just the two of them.”

  “Grandmother is old, Ali. I know it will make her very happy to have us with her on our first anniversary. Who knows if she’ll be around for next year’s?”

  Alexis laughed. “I think your grandmother is going to be around for the next twenty years!”

  “Well, it’s true she’s never been sick a day in her life, but you never know. Please, Ali. This means a lot to her. It means a lot to me.”

  Alexis sighed. When PJ looked at her in that way, his bright blue eyes so wide and intent upon her, she could never say no. “Oh, of course it’s okay,” she said.

  She had let him have is way. Rather, she had let Mary Bernadette have her way. And how, Alexis wondered, as her husband kissed her, had she allowed that to happen, again?

  CHAPTER 18

  “Ow.” Megan had been trying to retrieve a dust ball from under the couch when her back began to protest. “All right,” she muttered, slowly climbing to her feet. “The dust ball can stay.”

  There was no good reason for Megan to be chasing dust. The Fitzgibbons had a housekeeper, the daughter of one of the legal assistants in Pat’s office. She came in once a week to give the house a thorough going-over, but Megan was not comfortable paying someone to clean up after her and had a tendency to do half of Sandra’s job before the young woman arrived. Pat had argued that there was no reason for Megan to do any of the housework, what with her job, her role as family cook, and her chauffering the twins from pillar to post when Pat wasn’t available. “Besides,” he had pointed out, “we can afford the help. And Sandra appreciates the money. It’s a win–win situation.”

  All reasonable arguments, but Megan knew—as did her husband—that she would continue to do most of the housekeeping. “You sound like my mother,” Pat had said, “intent on being insanely self-sufficient. What are you trying to prove? And to whom?”

  “Nothing,” Megan had replied. “Nothing to no one. Just don’t tell your mother, or mine for that matter, that we hire someone to clean our bathrooms.”

  Megan stowed the broom and dustpan in the kitchen closet and put the teakettle on to boil. Her dentist had advised her to cut down on the amount of tea she drank—it caused staining—but it was no use. She was addicted to the stuff, as was her formidable mother-in-law. Said mother-in-law had invited the Annapolis Fitzgibbons to Oliver’s Well for St. Patrick’s Day dinner. As much as Megan loved seeing her older son, especially on an important day like his wedding anniversary, the holiday fell midweek. And there was no suggesting to her mother-in-law that they postpone the celebration until the weekend. Megan had tried that once before. Mary Bernadette had reacted as if she had suggested they abandon Catholicism for the practices of the ancient Druids.

  Well, the important thing, Megan thought now, was that PJ and Alexis had successfully negotiated the notoriously difficult first year of marriage. And that year had flown by. It was a cliché, but Megan doubted that anyone throughout the history of mankind had ever said, “Last year passed just at the right speed; it neither flew by nor did it drag.” People were never going to be comfortable regarding the issue of time and never were they going to accept that it acted according to its own mysterious agenda. If, indeed, it had an agenda other than confusing and frustrating human beings, who might have created the crazy concept in the first place.

  Anyway, it really did seem like only yesterday that PJ and Alexis had stood before the congregation and taken the vows of Holy Matrimony. It was a lovely wedding, and Megan would have considered it to be perfect if at any time during the weekend she and Pat had had the chance to speak privately to Olivia and Lester Trenouth. They had come to Oliver’s Well the day before the wedding and put up at a B&B. They had chosen to host the rehearsal dinner at Le Petite Versailles, a chic and very expensive restaurant in Lawrenceville, a little over an hour’s drive from Oliver’s Well. Placecards indicated that Alexis was at one end of the table, her parents on either side of her. PJ was seated at the other end of the table, with his parents on either side of him. Mary Bernadette was seated next to Pat; Paddy next to Megan; Davi
d next to his grandmother; and Danica next to her grandfather. Megan had wondered if the seating plan had been designed to eliminate the necessity of the families getting to know each other. She had been disappointed. Mary Bernadette had been insulted.

  And of course, no real conversation was possible on the day of a wedding but for the requisite comments at the reception (held in this case at the Wilson House, thanks to Mary Bernadette’s exalted position on the board of the OWHA) on the bride’s loveliness (“Isn’t she the most beautiful bride you ever saw?”), the groom’s manly demeanor (“He looks like a prince!”), and the quality of the food (“These are the best shrimp puffs I’ve ever had.”).

  Megan smiled as she remembered how Mary Bernadette had sailed around the reception like the QE2 among a sea of lesser vessels, greeting guests and accepting congratulations as if she had orchestrated PJ and Alexis’s relationship from the start. At the time Megan had felt a bit annoyed. In retrospect, she found her mother-in-law’s behavior amusing. And she would never forget watching the bride and bridegroom as they danced to “The Twelfth of Never.” They had made such a romantic pair, so beautiful and so madly in love it was almost disquieting to watch them, as if they were too perfect, too much the ideal to be anything but temporary and fragile.

  Megan finished her tea, put the cup in the dishwasher, and headed upstairs to her office. It was time to abandon the reminiscing and get to the kind of work that paid the bills. Not the kind that made her back protest.

  CHAPTER 19

  Alexis had never paid much attention to the statue of St. Patrick that stood on a small table in a corner of Mary Bernadette’s living room. In fact, she wasn’t entirely sure she had even noticed it before now. It was a nice-enough statue, even though St. Patrick looked as if he had a bad headache. Then again, she had never seen an image of a saint smiling. She supposed saints didn’t have much to smile about, what with all the self-sacrificing work they had to do, the miracles they had to perform, the sick they had to heal, and the gruesome, agonizing deaths they had to suffer.