“A twin sister?”
“I didn’t call her that, but of course she was my age.” I didn’t tell him that Polly had sometimes been a guiding factor in my life. She could make up her mind more quickly than I could, and she always knew what I ought to do. When I grew up and began to publish my stories, I turned Polly into a model for my strong, clever heroines. Then Douglas Hillyard came into my life and became my wise counselor and guide—at first for my fiction, and then for me. Romantic love was another dream that I’d never really experienced, but I could use it in my writing.
“Am I at all like her?” I asked, looking again at the picture. “If she is my twin.”
“Yes—and no. I can’t help watching you and trying to figure out the difference.”
“From this picture, she must be very beautiful. I would look like her only superficially.”
“Dressed alike, with your hair long, or hers short, I don’t think anyone could tell you apart. Not until you moved or spoke. You’re more animated than Amelia, and quicker in your gestures. She has a lovely serenity, an acceptance of herself and her place in society. Of course, there have always been men at her feet—it’s an old southern custom when you’re born a belle like Amelia Mountfort.”
“I’d never fit into that sort of life.”
Perhaps I’d sounded a bit scornful, for he raised his eyebrows, though he didn’t comment. “Mr. Hillyard says you’re a writer.”
“Yes—of mystery novels.” I always explained this quickly, lest anyone expect me to be “literary.”
“My favorite kind of reading, though I lean toward the Elmore Leonard type of mystery. I gather you are more—that is, more—”
“Romantic? Yes. You needn’t be afraid of the word, though sometimes it’s used as a put-down. I have to be careful not to wear a chip on my shoulder. The way I like to think of the word is in its older definition, meaning something strange and exotic and mysteriously beautiful. Mystery without detectives. I suppose I go my own way in what I write, as every author must.”
I wondered why I was explaining this to Charles Landry. Somehow he had begun to disarm me, even to win me over a little.
“I’m sure you don’t need to carry a chip about your writing, Molly. One of your many cousins, Daphne Phelps, runs a bookstore in Charleston. When I get home I’ll go straight to her store and buy your books—for me as well as for Amelia.”
I could see why women would like Charles Landry. He knew how to reach past my defenses. However, his next words shocked me all over again.
“Molly, come to Charleston with me. Just for a few days. You can make up your own mind after you meet your family. Shouldn’t you know who you really are?”
I rejected this at once, backing away fearfully. “I’m not ready for that. I didn’t grow up with these people you’re talking about, and I have a life I enjoy.”
“You needn’t be so prickly.” He was teasing now, and I hated that. I felt cross and confused.
“Mr. Hillyard told me you usually visit some new place for the setting of each book. So why not Charleston? There’d be a rich background there for you to write about.”
“I like to choose places I feel sympathetic toward. I’m a Northerner—I wouldn’t fit in.”
“What if every drop of your blood is southern?”
I’d heard enough, and I couldn’t finish my salmon. I set down my fork. “May I have coffee, please? Then I’d like to go.”
“Of course.” Landry signaled the waiter and asked for two coffees.
I found myself watching him now, as he had watched me. His movements were graceful, and his classic good looks matched my notion of a typical southern gentleman. He would have come from old family, old wealth. I could easily imagine him in the dress of the 1800s. Perhaps in uniform—Confederate gray, of course.
“You came to see Norman Hillyard about a book—what is your connection with Mountfort Hall Plantation?” I asked directly.
He answered without embarrassment, collapsing my fantasy of his position and wealth.
“Your family owns Mountfort Hall and my mother was—still is—housekeeper there. Her name is Evaline Landry and she’s quite a woman. She and your mother were good friends when they were young girls. I know the family has hushed up an escapade or two indulged in by Valerie and Evaline. It’s going to be nice for my mother to step out of her role as housekeeper when Amelia and I marry. It will be her home then too, although she will go right on supervising everything, since Amelia won’t want to take over and no one else can manage the Hall better. I don’t know if she’ll want to live in the main house.”
“Why not?”
“She still lives in the little cottage I grew up in. It was originally a slave cabin on what they used to call Slave Row. The other cabins are gone now. My father enlarged this one into something comfortable and attractive.”
“Tell me about your father.” I was revising my conclusion about Charles—in part, at least.
“Jim Landry was a bricklayer. An artisan who could make his own beautiful bricks from clay on the land and match what was used on the plantation originally. When Porter Phelps, your mother’s cousin, renovated the wing at Mountfort Hall that was shelled by Sherman’s army during the War, it was my father he hired to do the work. Of course, I grew up with the Mountfort and Phelps families, and after we marry I’ll be living at the Hall with Amelia.”
For some reason I sensed a hint of uncertainty, and wondered why they hadn’t married when they were younger. Yet, I liked the open way he spoke of his mother and father, with no suggestion that he was anything but proud of them.
I could imagine that young boy he’d been, growing up with the Mountforts, yet never quite part of the family. It was interesting, too, the way he spoke of the “War.” For the South, there was still only one War that would receive the capital letter which I heard in his voice when he used the word.
It was at this moment when I really began to relent toward him, that a devastating realization hit me. Perhaps I wasn’t the person I’d always believed myself to be. Charleston, the South—all that plantation world I’d read about, and that whole dim war the North sometimes forgot, could be my history too. Though I would always be an outsider, something I hardly recognized stirred in anticipation. I’d never thought I’d have real blood ties, since my own blood was a mystery. What if my mystery were solved and I became—what? Who would I be? Did I really want to know?
Worst of all, though I had friends, there was no one close enough to whom I could turn to for counseling about any of this. Doug was gone—Norman was only my editor. My father, under the circumstances, would be worse than useless. My mother would have known immediately what to do; I had lost her recently and I missed her. I suspected Charles would welcome my leaning on him, but that was out of the question.
I plunged into safer waters. “Tell me about this book Norman Hillyard is interested in.”
Our waiter poured more coffee and I sipped it black, listening to Landry’s answer.
“It’s Porter Phelps’s project—your second cousin. He and your mother are both Mountforts on their mothers’ side. Your father, Simon, carried the Mountfort name, as does Amelia. And you. Your mother is very much alive, but Simon Mountfort died about ten years after you were kidnapped.”
He had made up his mind about me fully. But I hadn’t made up mine. So why, when I wasn’t sure of anything, did I feel a pang of loss for a father whom I would never meet? And why feel something that was almost a longing for the mother who had lost me?
I made myself pay attention to what Charles Landry was saying.
“Since your mother has never lifted a finger out at the plantation, everything has been left to Porter to manage since your father died. Porter has always been fascinated by the history of the house and the family. He’s a proud, tradition-bound old South Carolinian. But he’s no writer himself,
so the book will be ghostwritten.”
“Are you doing that?”
“Hardly. My work is restoring houses. As my father’s son, I suppose that’s what I had to do. I was too young to help restore Mountfort Hall, but there’s still plenty to be done, both at the plantation and in the Historic District of Charleston, where we have a strong preservation society. The man who’s working on the book is, oddly enough, from the North. He had a job with a Charleston paper—the Courier News—when Porter got to know him. Garrett Burke has become nearly as obsessed with Mountfort Hall as Porter is, even though he moved south only two years ago. I wouldn’t have given him the assignment, but Porter didn’t ask for my opinion.”
“Why wouldn’t you have chosen Garrett Burke?”
Charles Landry looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure I can explain. Perhaps I don’t trust him, though I must say he’s thrown himself into this work as if he’d grown up in our Low Country. That can happen, you know. Strangers visit us, fall in love with Charleston and the whole peninsula, and become its greatest champions. Perhaps this will happen to you, Molly, if you give it a chance. After all, you have roots you never dreamed of.”
He used my first name easily, though I still couldn’t call him Charles.
“Your mother needs you,” he went on. “She’s never stopped grieving over the child she lost. And I know that your sister will be beside herself with joy at the prospect of knowing you. Besides, both Simon and Porter always believed in cultivating dependency when it came to women. You, I suspect, are a whole other breed—and that may come as a shock. Perhaps you’ll be good for all of them.”
I must have been better at bluffing than I’d thought! If I wasn’t as dependent as Amelia, it was only because there was no one around to lean on.
“You’re going much too fast,’’ I objected, needing to step back from this tide that seemed to be sweeping me along. My ties were here. I loved the picturesque little village of Bellport, with parts of it dating well into the past. This was my history. It meant more to me than that of the South ever could, and I said so emphatically.
“I’ll always be a Yankee.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Famous last words.” He took a card from his wallet and handed it to me. “Here’s where you can reach me—whether I’m in Charleston or at Mountfort Hall. I’m not going to say anything to your sister or anyone else until you’ve had time to adjust. Then I think you’ll come—if only for a short visit. You’ll need to know. When I’m sure that you’re coming, I’ll break it to the family. It won’t be easy for them either, you know.”
I didn’t argue with him. I would take his card, but I would never use it. I wanted no borrowed trouble in my life.
When we left the restaurant, Charles Landry put me into a cab to Penn Station. I wouldn’t let him come with me to the train. It was a relief to be on the way to Patchogue, where I’d left my car. All I wanted was to reach Bellport and home. I knew very well where my real home was.
Historically, Bellport had always held a charm for writers and artists. Now theatrical and movie people were discovering its quiet seclusion, though perhaps their presence might eventually threaten the very qualities they sought. My father constantly complained that there was too much traffic these days on South Country Road.
My drive home from the Patchogue station took less than twenty minutes, and I turned off South Country down the blind side-road that ended at the house I’d lived in since I was a baby. A stolen baby?
Our home wasn’t one of Bellport’s historic houses, but it was old enough to look down on the upstarts that were springing up everywhere. I loved the big frame structure with its wide porch and generous, welcoming rooms. When I was little it had been painted yellow, but I preferred its present shining white.
As I climbed the front steps I realized how utterly weary I felt, yet I knew I couldn’t rest until I’d talked to my father and put a pressure on him that I’d never exerted before. I couldn’t let go of the things Charles Landry had told me, after all.
Several years ago Dad had retired from teaching English Lit at a local college. Mostly these days he puttered in the garden, took long walks to the village, and visited the Sou’wester bookshop, where he bought more books than he would ever read. He also wrote a little, mostly reviews or articles for scholarly magazines. I suspected that it pained him that his daughter dabbled—he never quite considered me a writer—in such a commercial field as mystery fiction.
I loved him dearly, though I’d never given up the make-believe dream father who would be really mine. Of course, that father would read my books with pleasure and be proud of what I did. Now, thanks to the man from Charleston, not even he existed.
Dad was in his small study at the back of the house—a room he had long ago partitioned off from what had been a rear parlor. He still used an old, manual typewriter, and the very thought of an electric machine, or a word processor, distressed him. He preferred a good fountain pen. Perhaps some of his prejudice had rubbed off on me. Although I wrote on an electric typewriter, I enjoyed the feeling of a pencil in my fingers when I was thinking and jotting down notes for when I came to revision.
I tapped on the door and he looked up as I came into the room, his smile warm and loving as always, and as always a little absent.
“Did it go well in New York?” he asked. He and Douglas had been good friends, and he knew how I felt about visiting New York.
I dropped into a big shabby armchair—one of two in front of a fireplace that he never used anymore. He hadn’t recovered from my mother’s death, and I hated what was happening to him; his loss of interest in life. Sometimes his memory failed these days, and I couldn’t bear it if that happened now. Today I had to get him to remember and talk to me, as he’d never been willing to do before.
There was no way to soften what I had to tell him, so I plunged in abruptly. “Someone seemed to recognize me in New York today, Dad. A man who believes that I am the natural daughter of a family in Charleston, South Carolina. Please—it’s time for me to know the truth.”
He put down his pen and looked at me sadly, though without surprise. Perhaps he’d always known that someday I’d ask questions in a more searching way than I had in the past.
“I wish I knew more. When you were adopted it seemed best not to ask too many questions. All the adoption agencies knew we were looking for a baby, and once we had made up our minds, we didn’t want to wait. We’d never had children of our own, and we were afraid we’d soon be too old to think about raising even an adopted child. You were already more than a year old, but as we’ve told you, from the moment the agency woman brought you here, Florence knew that you were our daughter.”
“What agency, Dad?”
He looked uncomfortable. “I—I’m sorry, Molly. I can’t remember now. There are papers somewhere. I do know that when we tried to get in touch with them later—just to fill in your medical background a little more—we couldn’t find them. They had told us a few things about you. That you were born in Chicago and your mother died at the time of your birth. Your father had a daytime job and couldn’t keep you. There were no relatives to help.”
Dad had never told me this much before, and I wondered if he hadn’t always been a little suspicious of the story they’d been given.
“You came from a good middle-class family—we were assured of that.”
“Assured?”
“I don’t know how it is today, but back then laws could be very strict, Molly, when it came to revealing details about an adopted child’s birth parents. It wasn’t unusual to know very little.”
“How much money did you pay for me?”
I hated the sound of those words, and hated myself for the tears that came into his eyes, but I had to go through with this.
He answered softly. “It took most of our savings at the time, and all of your mother’s inheritance. A pret
ty large sum, but we never thought about the cost. We weren’t buying you—we were sacrificing.”
I wanted to put my arms around him and ease his pain, but I couldn’t stop now.
“Didn’t the amount you had to pay tell you anything?”
Agitation drove him to push his chair back from his desk and get shakily to his feet. “Babies weren’t available quickly, Molly, darling. And Florence wanted you more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life.”
I remembered how strong my mother’s desires could be, though I knew they would surely pale in comparison with Valerie Mountfort’s devastation over the loss of one twin daughter.
“Did you ever suspect that I might have been stolen?”
“No—of course not!” He answered so vehemently that I guessed the thought had certainly occurred to him, and that he hadn’t dared to spoil my mother’s happiness by voicing it.
I put my arms around him, aware of the frailty of his body, sensing his trembling. “I’m sorry, Dad. Please don’t be upset—it doesn’t matter. You and Mother gave me a wonderful, loving home, and you will always be my parents. I feel reluctant to go to Charleston, but perhaps I need to clear the record. There’s probably nothing to any of this, but I ought to find out.”
Somehow I had made up my mind without being aware of it. I helped my father into his armchair, and took his weight as I lowered him into it. He walked with a cane these days, and I put the ivory knob close to his hand.
“You must do whatever you need to do, Molly,” he told me bleakly. “I understand. Go along now. I’d like to be alone.”
Alone with thoughts of my mother, with whom he would talk about what had happened. Once more I sensed that in spite of his tears, he didn’t care about much of anything since her death. My adoption belonged to a dim past, and his interest in recalling it was gone. I didn’t think he would remain upset for long about my going to Charleston.
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