* * *
There it was. The lavender and pink paisley diary that reminded Matthew of an Easter egg. This time it was so obvious.
“The rain has not stopped for many days. I do not know how much longer I can take this.”
Matthew was right. These were not Winnie’s words.
“I must do something. Paint perhaps. Something so that I can stay here.”
Paint perhaps. Had that thrown me off because Winnie was a painter, when really it should have tipped me off? Painting was Winnie’s passion, not something she would consider doing to keep her from boredom.
“I have not seen him for days. I think it is the rain that keeps him away. Another reason I do not embrace the rain. But I cannot think this way. I must be grateful. I am grateful. He will come soon. Whenever he can. I know this. I know too that he wants to come to me. That keeps me going. That, and my gratitude.”
Whenever he can. Whenever he can get away from his wife. I felt sad. Sad for this woman and sad for the other woman. Was that other woman Lilly Ewell?
Gratitude. Was that for Winnie?
“Oh, how I love this lighthouse. If it were not for this lovely lighthouse. . . How funny that something I hardly noticed has become so important to me.”
How had I missed that one! Winnie would never fail to notice a lighthouse, especially one on her property. Thank goodness my son’s senses had been more keen than my own.
“If not for this lighthouse, I would not be able to see my love.”
It made so much sense. Now that I knew. That was where they met in secret so that no one discovered them, including Winnie.
I scanned the last pages of the diary, searching for Winnie’s name. Matthew was wrong about that. She had not used Winnie’s name or anyone else’s name. But I understood why he thought she had. A few pages from the end, she might as well have said it.
May 2, 1951
It has been so long since I have written in my diary. I only write now because I have no one else in whom I am able to confide.
I am so worried. I do not know what to do, to whom to turn. I cannot burden my dear friend with this. Not after all she has done for me.
I was glad this woman had appreciated my aunt, especially considering the scorn she apparently had brought upon her as a result of her actions. I was beginning to think she was the reason for the snubbing my aunt had received for many years, the snubbing I was still receiving some fifty years later.
Did Eleanor and Daisy believe that Winnie was the other woman? Had they seen their father sneak off to Winnie’s property? Or did they know it was a friend of Winnie’s? But they blamed Winnie for bringing her to the island.
Who was this woman anyway? What was her name? And why had Winnie taken her in for so long?
The adrenaline was flowing again and I took three deep breaths to slow myself down before making another trip to the attic. This time it was a cloth covered stationery box that I brought back down with me. Several letters were bundled together. Four were from relatives—one from Winnie’s mother, three from her sister. I read those over and over again. They were, after all, written by my great grandmother and my grandmother back in the late nineteen forties. Before I was born.
There was another letter from someone called Nellie. She must have been a friend of my aunt’s.
November 5, 1949
Dear dear, Winnie,
You are the dearest of creatures. But I tell you nothing you do not already know. Thank you so much for your kindness and your generosity. I know of no one else who could have saved her from this loveless marriage. I am forever in your gratitude.
Nellie.
I set the fragile sheets of paper beside me on the couch and grabbed the hatbox that had found its way back to my coffee table. One by one I removed the diaries from the box until I reached a bundle of letters. They were among the first letters I had read upon discovering the treasure in my aunt’s attic.
I reread the white linen letter first.
. . . She is coming to you directly. By train, then boat. . . With love and gratitude, N.
I held the two white linen sheets of paper together. It had to be the same person. The paper was the same. The writing was the same. The signature on one was a single N, which I was certain stood for Nellie. Who was this Nellie and why was she so grateful? And who was coming to her?
I was shivering by the time I found the blue letter with the old and faded 1949 postmark, the letter I had read that first day that now seemed so long ago.
. . . Did Nellie tell you when you saw her in Seattle? I know she told you of my impending marriage . . . but did she tell you that I do not love him? . . . I truly believe that your letter arrived in order to prevent me from making a mistake that I would regret forever. But what shall I do? . . . I am a coward . . . I need you, dear Winnie. . . . Love, Maggie.
Reading the letter did not quell my shivering. It only increased it. The energy from this letter felt as though it might burn my hand. How had it not impacted me like this the first time I read it? And how had I not remembered Nellie’s name? And Maggie’s? I set it on the table in an attempt to distance myself from it and that time period. But I couldn’t. I had read it for a reason.
Maggie. She had come to Winnie. She had lived here, painted in the garden, crocheted by the fire, made love in the lighthouse, and written in a diary.
Who was she? Where was she? Where had she gone when she left the island? Or had she?
My breathing had sped up and my heart was thumping so loudly that I could hear it. She was the other woman, the woman who had met her lover in the lighthouse. Was that lover George Ewell? And if it was, had Maggie been driving his car when it went over the cliff? The chills running up and down my arms validated my theory. Or was I simply feeling such a strong connection to Maggie and the past, that her energy was running through me?
Finally, feeling as though I were making some headway in this mystery, I snapped up Maggie’s Easter egg diary and read the pages that I had scanned, clear through to the end.
May 6, 1951
What shall I do? How could I have let it go this far? I am an ingrate. Who can help me now?
I cannot endure this fighting any longer. I am destroying a lifelong friendship. I must leave this island. But how, now that— Where shall I go?
I closed the diary and set it on the table. Just when I thought I finally had a clear picture of things I was more bewildered than ever. Who were these fighting friends? Was it Maggie and Winnie? Or were there two men in Maggie’s life? She did not mention a second love in any of her entries.
And so, the unanswered questions remained. Who had killed George Ewell? And who had driven over the cliff in his car? And a new question: Who was Maggie and where was she now?
Chapter 21
Car keys, purse, jacket, and diary in hand, I was ready to leave. I swung open my cottage door. “Roxie! What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry, Jenny. I know I should have called first. I was just so upset. I jumped in my car and started driving and this is where—” Sobs obliterated the rest of her sentence.
“It’s okay. Come in, come in.” I set my things down on the chair near the door and guided her into the living room. “Tell me what happened.”
As I handed her a box of Kleenex, she settled onto the couch. The only words I understood between sobs were, “I can’t take it anymore” and “I’ll never understand him.” Her dark brown hair hung limply on her shoulders. She was wearing no make up today or perhaps it had been washed away by the tears. Her face was red from crying. She wasn’t just hurt. She was angry.
I didn’t say anything until the sobbing had subsided. “Take some deep breaths, Roxie.”
“I don’t understand, Jenny,” she said between her gulps for air, “Why doesn’t he appreciate me?”
“Your father?”
“He always says how nothing good ever happened in his life. He is so bitter! He is still angry at my mother for leaving him. How does h
e think I feel! I hurt too, you know. He doesn’t seem to know that.” She lowered her voice. “Or care.” She looked up at me. “What can I do? I can’t bear to be around him.”
And yet she was still seeking his love and approval.
“Tell me what to do, Jenny. Please.”
“I can’t tell you what to do, Roxie, but I do encourage you to tell him what you’re telling me.”
“He won’t hear me!”
“Then write him a letter.”
“A letter?”
“Sometimes people hear a letter better than spoken words. They can’t interrupt you that way and argue, or even defend themselves. There’s nothing left to do but hear you. They tend to read a letter over and over—even when they don’t want to.”
“What should I write?”
“How you’re feeling. How it hurts you when he says nothing good ever happened in his life.”
“Yeah.” Her energy had risen with that one word. “I’ll tell him that, and I’ll tell him, ‘what about me, aren’t I something good that happened to you?’ That’s what I’ll tell him.” She was almost smiling. Then she wasn’t. “But do you really think he’ll hear it?”
“If he doesn’t, it’s his loss, Roxie. You’re a wonderful, loving daughter and a beautiful person, and if he doesn’t let you into his life, he’s the one who’s missing out.”
“Then why does it hurt me so much?”
“Because you haven’t learned to love and appreciate yourself either. It’s time to come out from under that cloud he’s created and to start living your life.”
When she finally spoke, she stood up at the same time. “I think I have a lot of work to do.”
“We all do. It’s called life.”
“Yeah. I’ll keep writing in my journal. I think it’s helping. Thank you, Jenny. Thank you for listening.”
“Any time,” I told her as I escorted her to the door.
As soon as she drove off, I scooped up my things, including Maggie’s diary, and left the house.
* * *
“Do you remember the woman who wrote this?” I asked Alistair as he scanned the pages of the diary. I had not told him her name.
“Maggie,” he said as though it were yesterday. “It has to be hers.”
“What do you remember about her?”
He looked up at the sky as though it reflected the answers that might have slipped from his memory. “She was very beautiful—in a different way from Winnie. Her beauty was more fleeting, the kind that might be gone by the time she reached thirty.”
“Because it wasn’t as deep?”
He smiled. “Your aunt was a rare beauty because of the depth of her feelings and the size of her heart. Maggie was a sweet girl, mind you. Just a bit self absorbed. Very romantic. I can imagine she dreamed of a prince rescuing her from her life and carrying her off on a white steed to a castle filled with flowers and laughter and sunshine.”
So, Matthew had been accurate in his assessment of her. “She doesn’t sound like the kind of person Winnie would have been great friends with.”
“They were childhood friends, I believe. They grew up together. Winnie was like a big sister to her. Although, as I recall, she did have a sister.”
“Nellie?”
“Hmm, that might be the name. I believe she and Winnie were very close, closer in age as well, and Maggie tagged along after them.”
“What happened to her, Alistair?”
“I dinna ken, Jenny.” He stared off into the distance that, judging from the dazed look in his eyes, seemed to blur with time. “I’m trying to remember. Did she leave the island before I did? Oh!”
“What? You remember something?”
“Aye, I do. At least I remember the rumors on the island. I believe she ran off with someone. Who was it now?”
“George Ewell?”
He shook his head. “I really can’t remember. Might have been, I just have no recollection of the name. I’m sorry. Is this important?”
“It could be.”
“It sounds as though you have a theory brewing.”
“It’s not clear. Although, I do think she was running off with a man, perhaps another woman’s husband.”
If we were sitting on this park bench in a comic strip, a light bulb would have been drawn over Alistair’s head in the next box.
“I think I do remember. They drove off a cliff in the middle of a foggy night.”
Only she was alone. The man she would have been with had been killed and buried beneath my aunt’s rose garden. But I couldn’t tell him that, at least not until we knew more. “But hadn’t you left the island already?”
“Actually, I had. As I recall it happened the day after I left. I was staying on Gael Island.”
“I thought you went home to Canada.”
“I was on my way. I missed the last ferry that day. And the following day when I reached the state ferry, I spotted your aunt’s car in the line.”
“And you couldn’t face seeing her, so you stayed another day.”
“Yes.” He bowed his head in shame. “Oh, how that decision has haunted me. If I had only taken that ferry, I would have—”
“Cleared your conscience?”
“Yes. And my life would have been a lot less empty as a result.”
So might have been my aunt’s.
* * *
I peered through the window of Seth’s office, disappointed that he was not at his desk. Due to my incessant need to dwell on this fifty year old mystery, things were a bit strained between us the night he’d come to my house for dinner. I would have liked to know we were still okay, but it didn’t look as though that was going to happen today. I stopped at the Crown and Anchor and peeked in to make sure Eleanor was at work. Then, I walked across the street to the market and spotted Daisy through the window. Determining that I was safe, I headed out to Lilly Ewell’s house.
“Why are you showing me this, dear?” she asked, after reading the key pages in Maggie’s diary.
I looked at her, hoping she would answer that question herself. Was she that naive or did she have that much faith in her marriage?
“It was written by a woman who lived with my aunt for a couple years. Do you remember her?”
Her wrinkles increased with each thought. “Why, yes, I do remember. She was a very beautiful girl as I recall. Turned more than one man’s head.”
“Including your husband’s?”
She looked up at me and seemed to understand that I wasn’t asking this lightly.
“I suppose George was entranced by her, as were most of the men on the island. But what are you getting at, Jenny?”
“Did Maggie leave the island, Lilly? Or did she drive off a cliff—?”
She sat upright as though I had jolted her with a knife between her shoulder blades. “You’ve heard the rumors. I thought they had stopped.”
“They did. No one who lives on this island will tell me anything.”
“Then how did you—?”
“Someone visiting the island remembers hearing about Maggie and her lover going over the cliff.”
“It wasn’t George. He was buried beneath the pond, remember?”
“But was he her—?”
“No! It could not have been my George. He loved me!”
“I’m sure he did.”
“But you believe he loved her as well.”
“I don’t know what to believe, Lilly. I’m just searching for answers.”
“Well, I’ll give you an answer. I know my George. He was not the kind of man to be unfaithful. He was devoted to me.”
I wanted to believe her. I wanted to think she wasn’t just being naive and remembering only the good things about her husband. But there were still so many unanswered questions. Why was George killed? Why did Maggie drive off a cliff? Who was the one person on this island or earth who could answer those questions? And was that person still alive?
“Why are you doing this, Jenny? Why are you so determine
d to solve this?”
“I suppose because I don’t like leaving things unresolved. Someone was killed, Lilly. Your husband! Wouldn’t you like to know who did it?”
“I don’t know if I would or not.”
“Wouldn’t it give you some sense of relief? Closure? I suppose that’s what I’m looking for too. Closure.”
“Yes, but don’t you think perhaps you might make today worse by dwelling on yesterday? Maybe it’s time to let the past go, Jenny. To let the dead rest in peace.”
“I suppose, but—”
“No, Jenny. Not only do we need to let the dead rest, but we need to let the living live in peace as well.”
Her words followed me home. She was right. There was no sense in dredging up any more of the past, especially a past that was bound to hurt someone now. Even if the person who had committed this crime fifty years ago was still living, what had their life been like, living with this guilt? And if they weren’t still alive, what was the point?
I made two phone calls when I got home. One to Sasha, the other to the pub where Alistair was likely to be in the late afternoon.
“I think it’s time,” I told them. “Would you like to join me?”
Sasha put down her paintbrush, and Alistair, his cup of tea. Sasha arrived ten minutes ahead of Alistair. That was long enough for me to explain who he really was and what his relationship had been to my aunt.
“Did you decide where?” Sasha asked me after Alistair had arrived.
“I think we should each pick a location, a place that had meaning to Winnie.”
“Her garden,” Alistair said as though he had already given this a great deal of thought.
“Definitely,” Sasha agreed. “She loved painting in her garden.”
Alistair smiled sheepishly. “And other things.”
“Anywhere else?” I asked.
“The water. We can walk down to the beach and spread them in the water.”
“Yes,” I pulled on my jacket and walked over to the fireplace mantel. As I took down the urn of ashes, I whispered, “It’s finally time.”
As I turned from the fireplace, I realized Alistair was standing directly behind me, staring at Winnie’s painting of her lighthouse.
Winnie's Web Page 20