Tea and Primroses

by Tess Thompson

  “Oh, Declan, yes.”

  “I’ll find you a ring. A big giant one worthy of your finger. We’ll dance at the wedding—all night if you want. And there’ll be rose petals and white chairs on the lawn.”

  She smiled, wiping more tears from the corners of her eyes, just as the doorbell rang.

  Declan rose to his feet. “That’ll be Patrick. You ready for this?”

  She nodded, looking at the clock on the desk. “I am. I truly am.”

  He picked up the manuscript. “I’m going to make a copy of this for Peter on your mother’s printer. I’ll run it out to him while you and Patrick talk. I’ll leave out the back door so I don’t interrupt you.”

  “Good idea.” But she wasn’t really listening as she headed toward the front door. Patrick. My father.

  She yanked open the door, her heart beating fast in her chest and her stomach clenched. He stood there, just as he must have two months ago when he came to see her mother after all the years apart. She couldn’t speak, staring at him.

  He blinked and took a step toward her. “Are you all right? You’re pale.” He put his arm out as if to steady her. “And you’re trembling.”

  “I’m a little shaky but come in,” she said.

  Patrick handed her the bottle of wine he held. “I brought your mother’s favorite, as promised.”

  Sutton, feeling like she was in a trance, opened the bottle of wine at the bar and poured it into two glasses. After handing one to Patrick, she settled on one end of the couch, pulling her legs under her, suddenly cold. Her hands shook so she set her glass on the coffee table. The sun was setting, with orange and streaks of yellow. “You taught her about wine,” she said.

  His eyes went bigger as he sat. “How did you know that?”

  “My mother wrote a manuscript for me in the last several months of her life. It’s about the two of you. Everything.” She stood, standing in front of the cold fireplace, as if for warmth. Her voice shook. “She never told me one single thing about you. Your name was never even mentioned in this house, like you never existed. But you were here all along because she never stopped thinking about you. It must have been so heavy for her, this secret she carried and how much she loved you. God, how she loved you.”

  “I know.” Patrick’s eyes glistened in the light.

  “I know who you are.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes.”

  Sadness and then resignation crossed his face. “I’m sorry.”

  She started to cry. “Me too.”

  “Please don’t be angry with her. That matters to me the most. It wasn’t her fault. None of it was. It was my mistakes that caused everything.”

  She stared at him for a moment, wiping her eyes. “You’ve spent a lifetime protecting her.”

  “I wanted her to have everything she ever wanted. From the moment I met her that was true. But in the end, when it counted, I couldn’t.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. Bad people did this. Not you. It’s all in the manuscript.”

  “I have no right to have you in my life. But it’s been an honor to see you, to get to know you just a little. You look so much like my mother and yet you remind me of Constance and my father and me.” He wiped tears from the corners of his eyes.

  “I want you to be in my life.” She said this softly. “Very much. If you want.”

  “If I want? It’s all I want.”

  She smiled, a sob escaping from deep in her chest. “There’s so much I want to tell you.”

  “I’ve missed so much. Your mother showed me every photograph she had of you and told me every story she could think of but it’s not the same, as you know.” He stopped, his breathing labored, and then he coughed, the same deep cough she’d heard the other day.

  “I know you’re sick.”

  Patrick flinched. “You do?”

  “Yes. She wrote about it.” She paused. “How much time do we have?”

  His face softened. “I don’t know.”

  Into the ensuing silence she said, “She dedicated the manuscript to me.” For Sutton, my lottery.

  “The first book was for me, the last for you.”

  “It gives me a little comfort. Does it you?”

  His eyes seemed far away. “Not really, unfortunately. I’d just gotten her back and I had a lot of dreams for the months to come. I wanted to have my family with me for my last months. It was supposed to be me, not her.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “But think of it this way. She suffered so much loss over the years. Perhaps this was less cruel for her. She didn’t have to say goodbye to you. Instead she died happy, having spent the last two months of her life with the man she loved.”

  He smiled and turned his gaze to her. “We tried to make up for all the years we missed when we were together in those two months. We loved one another without any restraint and were completely vulnerable. That’s how we love when we think we’re dying. Pride is forsaken.” He paused. “You know, she wanted that for you and Declan. That’s why she wrote our story for you.”

  “Yeah, well, it worked.” She smiled through her tears. “I wish she was here to see us together.” The tears came. She brushed them with her fingertips.

  He got up and joined her at the fireplace, taking her hand. “Seems I’ve spent half my life missing her. Now all I have are my memories.”

  “And her work.”

  “I’m reading all her books one more time. I’m on the fifth one already. She got better and better. I’m so proud of her.”

  “She always said she had a great editor. I always thought she meant Janie but it was really you.”

  “She gave me too much credit.” He squeezed her hand. “Sutton, what would you do if you knew you were on borrowed time?

  The answer came to her mind instantly but she hesitated for a moment before responding. “I’ve wanted to open my own shop since I was a little girl but I’ve been afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Failure.” Sutton looked away, embarrassed. “When you have a mother as successful as mine it makes the fear of failure that much stronger.”

  “I’ve learned this now, at the end of my life, that it’s the choices you didn’t make, the chances you didn’t take, that you regret. Not the failures. They pile up as experiences to learn from. And you know, regardless of the outcome, you tried.”

  “But it will be such a public failure if the shop’s a flop. People will say how I’m a just a rich, bored girl wasting her mother’s inheritance.”

  “Do you think that’s what you are?”

  “No. I’ve worked hard to learn a craft. I’m good at it and I have the entire business plan all worked out.”

  “Sounds like you’re ready to me.”

  She smiled. “I guess it’s time to do it. No more excuses.”

  “No more excuses. Time to fly instead.”

  Sutton examined the cuticle of her left thumb, feeling shy. “What shall I call you?”

  “Anything you like,” he said.

  “Anything?”

  “Yes.”

  Dad, she thought. I’ll call you Dad. But she was too shy to say it. Instead she drew away, looking up at him. “Will you take me to Vermont? To your house?”

  He smiled. “Of course.”

  “Declan’s going to make us steaks when he gets back from an errand. You like yours rare, right?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “She wrote about that too.”

  “She had a freakishly good memory.”

  “I know. Totally.”

  They laughed and then walked arm in arm into the kitchen.

  ***

  During dinner, Sutton asked Patrick to stay with them at the house. “We can get your things from the hotel,” said Sutton. “I want you to stay here.”

  After Patrick was settled in the master bedroom, Sutton and Declan went into his room. She sat on the bed, looking at him.

  “What’re you thinking?” he asked.

>   “I can’t stop thinking about my mother and Patrick.”

  “I know, me either.” He pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly against him. “I’m never going to let you go ever again. If Constance and Patrick taught us anything, it’s that.”

  She smiled, cupping the side of his face in the palm of her hand. “For as long as we have.”

  He kissed her and in the kiss was the sorrow and the joy and all the years between them and the now. Her heart fluttered and jumped and grew bigger.

  Against her mouth, he said, “Say you’ll marry me.”

  “I already told you yes,” she said, wrapping her arms tighter around him. “Only you have to ask my father for permission first.”

  He chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING SUTTON AWOKE to Declan’s cell phone ringing on the bedside table. Picking it up, she saw it was Peter and handed it to Declan. He took it, and after a moment, nodded into the phone, running his hand through his hair. “Yeah, okay…Patrick’s here, too…We’ll see you in a bit.” He hung up and rolled over to look at her. “He has something. He’s on his way over from the station.”

  “Now?”

  “He’s been up all night reading the manuscript. He said to wake Patrick as well.”

  “I’ll make the tea.” Sutton reached for her bathrobe.

  “Green, for Peter.”

  “Right. Green tea for Peter.”

  ***

  Patrick was already in the kitchen when Sutton came downstairs. He was at the kitchen table, sipping tea and looking out the window. The manuscript was there, face down. He smiled when she came in and rose to his feet. She went into his open arms. “I’ll never tire of looking at you,” he said against her hair.

  “Did you read it?”

  “Every word.”

  “Was it hard?” She pulled back to look at his face.

  “It was both glorious and excruciating.”

  “For me too.” She moved out of his embrace to the stove and turned the kettle on. “Peter called. He thinks he might have something.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Something he noticed from his copy of the manuscript.”

  When Peter arrived, Sutton gave him a cup of tea and sat at the table, nervous to hear what he had to say. Declan took the chair opposite her; Patrick stood near the stove; Peter paced in front of the kitchen island as he talked. “I read the entire manuscript last night and I agree with Declan that Sigourney Templeton is responsible for Constance’s death.”

  She looked at Declan, surprised. “That’s what you think?”

  “I do.”

  “But she’s in an institution,” said Patrick. “She has been for years.”

  Peter shook his head. “I made some calls this morning. Her mother died last month and her oldest sister was left in charge of her care. Her sister signed her out two weeks ago.” He turned to Patrick. “How long has it been since you’ve seen her?”

  “Thirty years.”

  “So after you came back from New York, referenced in Constance’s manuscript, you never saw her again?”

  “That’s correct,” said Patrick. “I had my attorney handle everything. The last thing I knew was that her father had her checked into the institution.”

  “How serious did you take her physical threats?” asked Peter. “Against you and Constance?”

  “Very seriously. Constance doesn’t say this in the manuscript but I was quite sure when she was almost killed by the car thirty years ago that it was not an accident and was surely arranged by Sigourney or Maurice. I wasn’t sure which. I don’t know what prompted Maurice to put her in the institution but it was over a year from the time Constance came back here to Oregon.”

  “How did you know this?”

  “Her youngest sister told me.”

  “Why do you think Maurice was convinced to put her in a year later and not when she cut you and threatened you?”

  “Her sister said she attempted suicide,” said Patrick. “I don’t know if that’s true or not.”

  Peter looked over at Sutton. “What do you know about your grandmother’s death?”

  “Nothing really, except what’s in the manuscript. Mom never talked about her. Why?”

  Peter took out his notepad. “I’ve traced all of the dates to when Sigourney Templeton was out of the institution. They line up with every date of the deaths of your family members.” He pushed the paper toward her. But she didn’t need to read it. She knew it was true.

  “Are you saying none of our family’s deaths were accidental?” asked Sutton.

  “I am. Including your mother’s, Dec,” said Peter. “I believe she arranged them all, during the times she was out of the institution.”

  “But my mother was on a date with some grifter,” said Declan. “She met him here in town.”

  Peter tossed his notepad on the table. “Yes, and I believe he was hired by Sigourney to lure your mother in and then kill her. Listen, take the deaths one by one.” Peter held up his fingers, counting off. “First, your grandmother dies from no known cause. Back then they wouldn’t have thought to do the kind of tests we would now but I suspect she was poisoned somehow. There’s a brief mention of it in your mother’s manuscript that a salesman came by selling chocolates, of which she ate two. This was before Sigourney was institutionalized the first time. Then your father and Clara are killed in a house fire.”

  “But they found faulty wiring,” said Sutton. “It wasn’t set by anyone, according to the authorities.”

  “Faulty wiring could’ve been arranged by someone coming into the house. They were traveling for a year. Surely there was someone hired to look after things. Could that person be bought off to let someone inside to mess with the wiring? Very easily. Again, I checked the dates. Sigourney was out of the institution and staying with her parents for a month that same summer they were killed. Miller’s death appears to have been an unfortunate accident, but your mother, Dec, was clearly murdered. In the book, Constance quotes her as saying the man ‘fell out of the clear blue sky.’ How likely is this, really? Unless it’s a killer hired to make it look like a grifter who has a car accident? Constance’s death was after Maurice Templeton was dead. I made a call to the institution this morning. Her mother had let Sigourney come home for a period of time before sending her back, the exact same month Declan’s mother was killed.”

  “This doesn’t seem possible,” said Sutton. “Why would she go to such lengths? The Templetons got what they wanted, which was for my parents to be parted.”

  “I thought about this all morning. But what’s the ultimate revenge?” asked Peter. “Kill everyone you love. Make you suffer loss after loss.”

  “It that’s true, though, why didn’t she kill me?” asked Sutton. “Or Declan?”

  “Or my mother?” asked Peter. “I can’t figure that part out. Because it would seem she’d want the three of you dead before she killed Constance. My only thought is that she planned on it but couldn’t figure out how to do it without getting caught. She’s extremely crafty. And she was rich, with family ties to organized crime, so it was easy for her to arrange things as long as she wasn’t locked up.”

  “Oh my God.” Patrick looked gray. He held onto the counter with both hands, taking in deep breaths.

  Alarmed, Sutton got up from the table and went to her father, leading him back to the table and helping him into a chair. Declan brought him a glass of water.

  “If this is true, what have I done?” Patrick said, no louder than a whisper.

  “This isn’t your fault,” said Sutton. “The woman’s sick.”

  “How does a person devote their life to something like this?” said Declan.

  “I ask myself that question every day of my career,” said Peter. “There are no answers.” Peter began to pace the room again. “As of now, Sigourney Templeton is nowhere to be found. The police in New York went to the family home and none of the sisters claim to k
now where she is. The oldest one, responsible for her care, said she disappeared several days after she came home last month. Everyone, including her doctors, were convinced she was well enough to return to normal life. However, they thought that once before and it proved to be wrong. Here’s the thing. None of you are safe until I figure out where she is. You must stay here. No walks on the beach. Don’t go into town. Just stay here behind the gate.”

  “How will you find her?” asked Declan.

  “I’m going to fly across the country tomorrow. Pay a visit to her oldest sister. If she’s responsible for her care, perhaps she’ll know where she is.”

  It came to Sutton then. Louise. She wasn’t safe either. “What about your mother, Peter?” asked Sutton.

  “I have police guarding her house in Portland, don’t worry,” said Peter. “I told them the same thing I’m telling you. No one sets one foot out of this house until I locate Sigourney.”

  ***

  Both Declan and Patrick were asleep upstairs, napping in the late afternoon. Sutton, although she would have loved nothing more than the release of sleep, was restless and jittery. She wandered downstairs and sat at her mother’s desk, looking out to the ocean, her heart aching. Mommy. She’d lost almost everyone she ever loved.

  The phone rang. It was Gigi.

  “Sutton?” Her voice was faint and breathless.

  “What’s the matter? You sound weird.”

  “I’m sick. Really sick. I think I ate a bad egg. It’s been coming out both ends for almost twenty-four hours.”

  “Have you been able to keep any water down?”

  “No. I feel like I’m dying.”

  “You need to go to the hospital.” She heard the sounds of Gigi’s retching. What if she’d been poisoned? What if Sigourney had decided to kill her as well? “Hang in there. I’ll come get you.”

  Sutton hung up and ran to the kitchen, remembering seeing Declan’s knife on the counter. Just to be on the safe side, she thought, as she jotted down a quick note to Declan. She hated to wake him, knowing how little sleep he’d gotten recently.

  “Gigi’s really sick. I’m headed to take her the emergency room. Will call you from the hospital.”