Time Is a River

by Mary Alice Monroe

  Their eyes devoured him as he came forward and smiled. “Ladies.”

  Mia moved her hand to indicate the tall man beside her. “Stuart MacDougal, meet Becky Shaffer, Flossie Barbieri, and Phyllis Pace.”

  “You’re the fellow who’s setting up that Orvis shop up at the lodge, right?” Becky asked.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “It’s coming along, thank you.”

  Mia saw Phyllis’s eyes narrow in speculation. Flossie, she was shocked to see, was tongue-tied.

  “Y’all having a coffee break?” Mia asked. It was unusual to find all three women sitting together for coffee midmorning.

  “I guess you haven’t heard,” Becky said.

  “Heard what?”

  “Mrs. Minor passed away yesterday.”

  Mia felt a stab of regret. “Oh, no. I hadn’t heard. I would have liked to see her again.”

  “She was feeling poorly,” Flossie continued. “Her granddaughter said the doctor had been out several times in the past few days. At her age, you never know when the Lord’s going to call.”

  “She lived a good life,” Phyllis added. “No one can say she was cut down before her time. God rest her soul.”

  “When is the service?” Mia asked.

  “Saturday morning at ten o’clock,” said Phyllis. “My father and I will be there.”

  “I’ll be there,” Mia replied.

  “I’ll go with you,” Stuart told her.

  Hearing this, the three older women shared a knowing glance and reached for their coffee, smiling.

  The white, Gothic Revival Presbyterian church was the bulwark of the western side of Main Street. At ten a.m. the church bell in the spired tower tolled mournfully for Louise Minor. The small church filled slowly with family, friends, and acquaintances of a woman who had lived all of her ninety-two years in Watkins Mill. When the tolling ceased and the church quieted, the eulogy told of a woman who had witnessed her small town endure the poverty of the Depression; the long, lean years during which the town struggled to pay back its debt; and the recent resurgence of popularity and new wealth as tourists returned again to the area. She had seen the final horse-drawn carts replaced by cars, electricity put into all homes, and her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren grown. It had been a full life.

  Mia sat with Stuart in the back of the church and looked at the pointed, arched windows, saddened to have learned that Kate Watkins had not had a public funeral in this church that her father had served so many years. She’d talked briefly to Phillip Pace outside the church and he had informed her that Kate had a small, private service attended only by Mrs. Minor’s family and his own immediate family. Afterward, she was laid to rest beside her father in the Watkins family plot. Mia thought of the young woman who had walked so proud on these streets during her young life, who sat in the front pew on Sundays watching her father preach. Had she fallen so low that she was quietly buried, an outcast, forgotten or ridiculed by the town that once celebrated her fame?

  A tear fell down her cheek. Stuart, misunderstanding her grief, reached over to hold her hand.

  After the service Mia stood at the back of the church with Becky and Skipper. It was the first time she’d seen Becky not wearing her pink uniform. She appeared solemn in a dark brown suit. Skipper held her arm and was exceedingly attentive to her, worried lest she stand too long. Mia was moved by their tenderness toward each other. She looked up to Stuart. He stood separate from the group, staring out the double doors toward the sky. The sun shone clear and sunny, like a light at the end of a tunnel.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Landan?”

  Mia turned her head toward the voice. Lucy Roosevelt stood beside her, looking regal in a black suit and a large black hat with a silk rim and bow.

  “Lucy, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you. My grandmother enjoyed her visit with you. She mentioned you several times before she died. She wanted to see you. She had something she wanted to give you.”

  “Give me?” Mia asked. She couldn’t imagine what Mrs. Minor had for her, unless it had to do with Kate Watkins.

  “Well, not for you, exactly. For Miss Carson. Theodora’s daughter. Will you be seeing her?”

  “Yes. I’m sure I will.”

  “Good,” she replied with relief. “See, a long time ago Miss Watkins gave my grandmother a letter and asked that she send it to her daughter if she died. I reckon she tried to mail it to her, except she didn’t know where to send it. Well, after Miss Watkins passed, my grandmother and my mother both tried to find Theodora. But they didn’t know where to begin to look. They called people and looked in phone books. We’re simple folk. We don’t have the means to hire a detective. So my grandmother just hung on to the letter, hoping that someday she’d find out what happened to Theodora, or hoping that she’d come back to town. That was a while ago and to be honest, we kinda forgot about that letter. Then you came by and my grandmother had me go up in the attic where I keep her things that she brought from her cabin. I went through all her stuff. Lord, there were a lot of knickknacks. There are some old pictures of her and Miss Watkins and Theodora, too, that she thought Belle might like. I found this.”

  Lucy handed an envelope to Mia. It was thick, and yellowed from age. Mia looked at the writing on the front. In bold script was written the name: Mrs. Theodora Watkins Carson.

  Mia ran her fingers over the script. She turned it over and saw that the envelope was sealed.

  “Would you please deliver that letter to Miss Belle Carson when you see her?” Lucy asked. “My grandmother wanted to ask you to do that favor for her but she took sick before she could. She loved Miss Watkins and was a true friend to her. She never felt right that the letter wasn’t delivered. It’s too bad it never reached her daughter, but she’d be grateful to know that at least it reached her granddaughter. It’d mean a lot to all of us.”

  “Of course,” Mia replied. “I’ll give it to Belle. I promise.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Knots are important in fly-fishing. Anglers must take care to seal the knot tight and secure. Many anglers rue the day they lose a fish because of a poorly tied knot.

  —KATE WATKINS’S FISHING DIARY

  “Poor Theodora…”

  Mrs. Amanda Rodale was a large woman. She filled the upholstered chair by her front window. The soft rose and blue floral pattern matched the fiery sunset Mia could see lowering over the distant mountain. Flossie sat on the chair next to her mother, and Mia sat on the striped sofa across from them. It was Thursday night and they’d feasted on a home-cooked meal with the family and were enjoying coffee and the famous peach pie in the living room. The husbands had muttered excuses after dinner and conveniently disappeared, leaving the women alone to talk.

  “Why do you call her poor Theodora?” Mia asked Mrs. Rodale. “Was she mistreated?”

  “Heavens no! My mama used to say Theo was likely the best-cared-for child in town. She ate fresh food and had plenty of exercise with all that walking.”

  “Then why do you say poor?”

  “Because I’ve never known any child who wanted to be part of the norm as she did. I guess part of it was the old grass-is-greener thing. But it’s more than that. See, she was a Watkins, with all the baggage that name carried. Good and bad. Her mother, Kate, didn’t come to town much. The Minor family did a lot of shopping for her and folks were kind and did deliveries out to her place. But when she did come in it was like she parted the waters. Nobody got in her way. It wasn’t that she was uppity. Though she had that upper-class air about her. She was born to class so she came by it honestly. No, it was more that she had this shell around her that she didn’t let nobody get through. ’Cept maybe Phillip Pace and Mrs. Minor.

  “Theo, though, she was different. More a shadow of the woman her mother was. Where Kate was strong and regal, Theo was weak and flighty. I’ve heard folks say Theo was more like her father, though I never met him so I
can’t say.

  “The way my husband puts it is Kate Watkins was hardwired for being alone in the woods. But her daughter, Theo…she was wired different. Theo liked being in the town and wearing pretty dresses. The times she was allowed to come to our house, all she wanted to do was stay inside, listen to our radio, and try on my dresses. And eat candy. Oh, she loved her sweets. Every time she came my mama went to the grocer’s and stocked up. We all used to wonder if she’d get sick, she stuffed so much in. I think if she’d lived in town, she would’ve been normal. For sure she would’ve been a real socialite if the family hadn’t lost their money and position. It had to be hard on a girl like her to live way out in the middle of nowhere knowing what the family once had. I remember once she cried and begged my mama to let her live with us. She didn’t want to go back to the cabin.”

  “Did your mother ever look into why? Did she talk to Kate?”

  “Of course she did. My mother was about the only friend Kate had in town. Like I said, Kate did a fine job raising her child all on her own. She lived modest but decent out there. They weren’t starving or anything like that. And this is important to know. Theo loved her mother. Loved her something fierce. If anyone said anything bad about her in Theo’s face, she’d tear into them. Though she might’ve blamed her mother some for choosing to live so far out. If there was anything like abuse at all, I’d say it was the town that was at fault. We weren’t neighborly, not the way we ought to have been to that child. Especially seeing how things were. I still feel badly that me and my friends didn’t go out there to see her when we were old enough, or invite her into town for parties.”

  “I thought Theo came to your house?”

  “When we were little she came by after school. I pretty much did what my mama told me to do. But as we got older, well, you know how teenage girls are. They form cliques. Country girls are no different than city girls in that way. By the time we were old enough to learn the gossip about Theo’s mother, we excluded her from our circle.”

  “You mean she was an outcast?”

  “That’s a strong word, but yes, I reckon I do mean that.”

  “What was the gossip back then about Kate?”

  “No different than it is today, only it was fresh and the stink of it was stronger. First off, there was the tittle-tattle about how Kate had an affair with a married man and got herself pregnant. That would’ve been enough to make Theo unpopular. The boys called her the b word for illegitimate when she was little. But it was the scandal about the murder, and worse, that maybe it happened out there in that cabin, that shot Theo out from just being different to weird.”

  Mrs. Rodale’s pale blue eyes stared out vacantly for a moment while her mind searched her memories. Flossie looked a lot like her mother. They both were overweight and pale yet looked lovely in the summer dresses they wore for the occasion. The sweetness to their expressions mirrored their affability, no doubt also passed down. Mia imagined Mrs. Rodale’s mother had been very much like them.

  “To be totally honest,” Mrs. Rodale continued, “we girls had another reason not to like Theodora Watkins. She had to be by far the prettiest girl in town. Now, there’s pretty and then there’s so pretty you just stop and stare. Theo was that kind of pretty. The boys started calling after her like tomcats. The problem was, none of them would have married her on account of her reputation. Or, rather, her mother’s reputation. Do you get what I’m telling you? You could say those rascals hoped the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “Did Theo fool around?” Mia asked, thinking that certainly would have been a cause for mother-daughter fights.

  Mrs. Rodale laughed, then shook her head. “No. I don’t think she could have even if she wanted to. For all the stories those fool boys heard growing up, I reckon none of them heard the story about what a crack shot Kate Watkins was. Come one night she fired off a few rounds and sent them tomcats running, which only served to spark more talk about how Kate Watkins was crazy and a killer. You know how that kind of talk spreads in a small town. Looking back, we all knew that if she’d wanted to shoot one of those boys, even nip ’em, she could’ve. She was just sending them a message they could understand.”

  Mia smiled to herself, thinking that even a formal letter written on thick vellum with the Watkins crest would hardly have had the same effect. “I imagine by that point Kate was beyond caring about protocol and reputation.”

  “Oh, sure. She wrote us all off. Some said she’d gone wild out there alone.”

  “And you? What do you say?”

  “I say Kate was as far from wild as any woman I’d ever known. She was an outdoors woman. That’s different from wild.”

  “Yes, it is,” Mia replied, understanding the difference now. “And Theo? How did she respond to all that shooting and gossip?”

  “She run off. I have to reckon she just couldn’t stand living out there. One day some guys came through town and they weren’t familiar with the rumors about ol’ Kate. One of them, a fella by the name of Daniel Carson, took one look at Theodora and fell head over heels in love with her. His friends moved on but he stayed for a few more days. When he finally left on the three o’clock train headed north, Theo went with him. We’ve never seen her in this town again.”

  “And Kate? What did she do?”

  “That’s the saddest part of this whole story. When Theo didn’t come home that evening Kate came driving straight into town in her old motorcar, worried and scared like any mother would be when she discovers her young’un is gone missing. She went to our house first and talked to my mama. After all, I was the only one who was Theo’s friend. My mama called me into the living room and I’ll never forget as long as I live the night I had to stand in front of Kate Watkins.”

  “So you did meet her,” Mia said, leaning forward. “What was she like? Was she striking?”

  “She wasn’t striking. She was…exotic. There was no escaping her gaze.”

  “Go on.”

  “It was late fall. I remember it was unusually cold that day. She had this long, black men’s coat that went clear down to her ankles. It was old and worn but it was good quality wool, you could tell. I thought it might’ve been her father’s or that DeLancey fellow’s. And she wore this white silky scarf looped around her neck. Her hair was dark and pulled up into a loose bun and though she weren’t wearing a shred of makeup her cheeks were reddened by the cold. Most of all I remember her eyes. They were dark and seemed to snap at me. Even though I was right nervous, I remember her face like it was yesterday. Thinking on it—” Mrs. Rodale counted on her fingers. “She had to be in her late forties, and that’s not old, hear? Anyway, Kate had a way of looking at you that could see right through nonsense. I remember how she pinned me with those dark eyes.”

  March 1948

  “Amanda,” Kate said in her clipped voice. “Do you know where Theodora is?”

  I clutched my skirt and looked away. “I, uh, I’m not sure.”

  “Tell Miss Watkins what you know,” my mother prodded. She stood next to me and in her eyes I saw that she was nervous, too.

  “Yes’m. Well, some guys came to town about a week ago. On the train. They stayed at the Riverside Inn. One of them was quite taken with Theo.”

  “How old would you say he was?” Kate asked.

  “Older than us, but not old. Maybe twenty?”

  Kate’s expression grew wary. “Go on.”

  “He and Theo started hanging out a lot in town. She skipped school and I saw her with him.”

  “What were they doing?” Kate asked in a sharp tone.

  “Nothing bad. Just walking and maybe having something to eat. They went to the movies once. You could see she was sweet on him, too.”

  “Do you know this young man’s name?”

  I hesitated, not wanting to get Theo in more trouble. There’s an unspoken loyalty the young have, especially when confronted with an angry parent.

  “Amanda,” Kate said, and her voice was tinged with p
leading. “Please understand. Theo is gone. She’s only seventeen years old. She could be in serious trouble. Please, tell me everything you know.”

  “Tell her everything, dear,” my mother urged.

  “His name is Daniel Carson. Miss Watkins, I saw them get on the train together.”

  “When?”

  “Today. The three o’clock.”

  Kate’s face paled and I saw a vulnerability in her expression that I didn’t think her capable of.

  Kate drew up, trying to compose herself. “Thank you, Amanda,” she said, and I could tell it was from the heart. I…I felt sorry for her.

  She spoke with my mother by the door for a few minutes more. Then, before she left, my mother, who was an emotional woman, burst forward and hugged Kate. It was one of those quick, spontaneous hugs I’d seen her give other women in tough times. I knew then that my mother had been a better friend to Kate Watkins than I had any knowledge of.

  It was already dark outside. My mother stood by my side and watched Kate walk down the street, her head bent to the wind and her hands clutching the coat around her neck. My mama’s hand tightened on my shoulder and though she was still looking out the front door she said to me, “Don’t you ever leave me like that, hear? You’d break my heart same as Theo just broke her mother’s.”

  Mrs. Rodale’s index finger rose to swipe a tear from her eye. “I never tell that story without getting emotional myself. I get that from my mother, I reckon.”

  “Did you ever see Kate Watkins again?”

  “Yes. After that visit she came to town often to talk to the sheriff to see if any word came about Theodora. She opened up a post office box in hopes Theo might write, and she’d always check that. As the weeks turned into months and no word came, she didn’t come in so often. The town gave her wide berth, knowing how things were. She’d come in to check her mailbox at holidays, like Christmas. It was real sad. Anyone who looked at her couldn’t help but feel her pain. Before Theo left I wouldn’t have said she was lonely. But after?” She shrugged.