Winnie's Web

  “Thank you, Jenny.”

  We sat in silence for a while. I hoped she was finding comfort in the ferry ride as I always did.

  She wanted to go to the cottage first. Still, we had to drive through town to get there. She pointed out all the changes—new buildings, new businesses, lost businesses. Several sighs later we arrived at my new home and what had once, a lifetime ago, been her home.

  She stood in the doorway, looking around the cottage. When tears welled up in her eyes, I realized very little had changed. The living room was still filled with Winnie’s antiques. The overstuffed couch and chair were new, but no doubt had the same feel of those of fifty years ago. And although many of my personal belongings were scattered about the room, Winnie’s hatboxes and diaries still sat on the table.

  And Maggie’s portrait was still standing on the fireplace mantel where I had recently set it. I had planned to ship it to Nellie.

  She gasped when she saw it. “It’s still here.”

  “Yes. It’s been hanging in the bedroom at the top of the stairs all these years.”

  “My room.”

  “Yes.”

  The first thing she touched was her lavender and pink paisley diary. Looking up at me she asked, “Is this how you knew about me?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t need to tell her that years later some of the islanders remembered her well. “And these,” I said, opening one of Winnie’s picture albums to a photograph of Maggie in her youth.

  “Oh my!” she was grinning. She still took pride in the fact that she was so beautiful.

  When she turned the page, her grin vanished. There was the photograph of the foursome. Martin and Antonia Williams, and George and Lilly Ewell. Maggie had still not forgiven herself.

  Her expression was like that of one of my children when they had sneaked a spoonful of ice cream from the freezer. “I didn’t mean to love him. I didn’t want to.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think it would be possible to see him?”

  “We’d have to discuss that with his doctors. It might set him back, I don’t know. Or it could help him. But I do think there is someone else you need to see.”

  She put down the diary and closed the photograph album. “Will you take me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Will you stay with me?” Despite the wrinkles and the bent shoulders and the white hair, she was still very much the woman-child of her youth.

  “If you want me to.”

  It was drizzling as we drove into town. Maggie sat in the car for several minutes, mustering the courage to get out. The bell rang on the door as I opened it for her.

  She gasped when she saw him sitting behind his desk. He did, after all, look very much like his father.

  “Jenny!”

  “Hello, Seth. I’ve brought someone to meet you.”

  Suddenly he noticed the old woman beside me. Always the gentleman, he stood up. Then he motioned for us to sit in the two chairs facing his desk. I helped Maggie into one, then sat in the other. I still hadn’t decided how to introduce her. I settled on, “Seth, I’d like you to meet Maggie MacBride.”

  His breath caught in his chest and his complexion turned white as though he had seen a ghost. “I—I thought you had died. I thought you had driven off the cliff . . . “

  She shook her head. “No. Your father helped me leave the island without anyone knowing.”

  “Then who—?”

  “Maybe you should tell him what happened,” I encouraged.

  She looked at me with a question in her eyes.

  “The whole story,” I answered.

  She looked away from Seth. It was easier that way. “I’m sure you know that I loved your father. We loved each other very much.”

  “Yes,” Seth said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “And George Ewell? Did you love him as well?” He wanted answers. He too wanted to know exactly what had happened on that day some fifty years ago.

  “No, I didn’t love him. I loved Martin, only Martin. There were rumors about me and many men. Some believed it was George who loved me.”

  “Did he?”

  “I think perhaps he did, but he never confessed his love to me. His concern was for Lilly, his wife, and for Antonia, the wife of his best friend. He was protecting them—at all cost.”

  How true. It was at all cost.

  “So, what happened that night?”

  “George tried to stop us, Martin and me, from running off together. He came after Martin, and when Martin defended himself, George fell backwards and struck his head on a stone.”

  “So it really was self defense.”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you there?”

  “Yes. I tried to stop it, but it happened so quickly.”

  “Then who drove the car off the cliff if you didn’t?”

  She looked up at Seth. “Martin, your father, pushed the car over the cliff to make it look as though George had died that way. He later regretted that, but he did it in a state of fear.”

  “Why didn’t he put George’s body in the car?”

  “If the body had stayed in the car, he would not have had a gash from a sharp object. He was afraid they would think there was some kind of foul play because of the blow to his head.” Her memory for details was still intact.

  “And people assumed you were with George, and they just never found your bodies, assumed they had washed out to sea.”

  “Yes.”

  “That must have been very hard for Lilly Ewell.”

  “Yes.” The regret still showed in her eyes.

  “And how was it no one knew you were still on the island? And how did you get off the island without anyone knowing?”

  “Your father helped me. He hid me in the backseat of his car and drove me off that night.”

  “But why?” Seth leaned forward as though he were beginning to see the missing pieces to the puzzle. “Why didn’t you stay and explain what happened, that it was self defense? Then my father wouldn’t have had to suffer all these years.”

  “It was your father’s decision. He wasn’t thinking rationally perhaps, but I deferred to his judgment. He was afraid no one would believe him, that it was just another fight over a woman. And he didn’t want to hurt Antonia. Either way Lilly would have been hurt, but he felt he was saving Antonia the anguish of knowing about us.”

  “That was the reason? The only reason?” He was a newspaper reporter after all.

  Maggie clutched at her purse, her eyes focused in her lap. “No. Not the only reason. He wanted to protect me and—”

  “From what? The islanders already hated— disliked you.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “What?”

  Her eyes met his once more. “It would have been much worse. For all of us. Because— because I was pregnant.”

  Seth exhaled the built up tension. “And in those days—”

  “Yes.”

  And then it occurred to him. I felt as though I were reading his thoughts like a book. “Was it my father’s baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to it?” In other words, did he have a sibling running around out there somewhere.

  “I gave it up for adoption.”

  “Oh. Of course. Do you know—?”

  Maggie looked up at me, pleading for help. “Seth, Maggie is your birth mother.”

  He sat there staring at me, his mind slowly grasping what I had just said. It felt like several minutes before he spoke.

  “No. Antonia was my mother.”

  “She wasn’t able to have children,” I said. “And so when Martin learned that Maggie was pregnant— He was going to divorce Antonia and marry Maggie, but after George died, Maggie wouldn’t let him. She felt she had already caused too much heart break.”

  “Was that why they were fighting? George and my father?”

  “Yes. George was furious that he had ‘gotten Maggie in trouble’. And he was trying to stop them from running away together
. He thought they should face the consequences,” I explained.

  He turned to Maggie. “Did he think he should marry you?”

  “I don’t know. I just know he was angry that one of us would be left alone. He cared about Antonia too.”

  “So, you went away and had the baby—me.” His eyes were glazed over as though he were trying to take all this in. He was no longer the newspaper reporter. This was not a random story he was investigating. It was his life, a life riddled with lies.

  “Yes. I went to Seattle. Winnie came and stayed with me until my sister could come to help look after me. And then after you were born, your father and mother came to Seattle to get you. They adopted you.”

  “Did my mother know?”

  “No. She didn’t know that I was your mother and Martin was your father. At least, we didn’t tell her.”

  “But she might have known,” Seth said more to himself than anyone else. He exhaled sharply and shook his head in disbelief, still staring at the woman who was sitting across the desk from him. “You—you’re really my mother?”

  Maggie’s eyes filled with tears as she nodded. It was time for me to leave. I gave Maggie a hug and stood up. They both suffered a moment of insecurity at the idea of being alone together.

  Seth walked me to the door. “Jenny, thank you. Thank you for bringing her to me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “How did you find her? How did you know she was still alive? And that she was my mother?”

  I smiled. “I was looking for her sister Nellie. She led us to Maggie. I didn’t know she was your mother until I found her.”

  He was nodding as he opened the door for me. More processing. The way he looked at me, I knew he was asking once again if there was any hope for us, somewhere in the future. But I wasn’t the one he needed right now. He needed a parent who would help him heal the loss of his other two parents.

  The question now was, should I pay Lilly Ewell a visit? If I did, what would I tell her? I couldn’t tell her it was her dear friend Martin who had killed her husband. She had said to let it go. It was her way, I suspected, of telling me that if I found out something she wouldn’t want to know, not to tell her.

  So, I suppose I had joined the Eleanor and Daisy club of protection. Was it the right thing to do? After meditating on it, I decided yes. It was not always necessary to share all the information. This was one of those times.

  Epilogue

  Seth helped Maggie relocate to Gael Island. It seemed ironic that both his parents would be living on the same island. I knew she would see Martin at some point, but I did not think he would know who she was. And if he did, perhaps it was the universe’s way of helping him find closure.

  I was glad I had found her, not just for Seth’s sake, but for hers. And mine, I had to admit. She had answered many unsettling questions for me, not the least of which was, “Did Winnie know about Martin and George?”

  “No. I never told her. I didn’t want to burden her anymore than I already had.”

  “But you knew Winnie. How could a friend be buried beneath her rose garden without her knowing?” The only explanation I had found was that my aunt’s intuition had been clouded by her emotions. She was in love. And she was suffering the loss of that love. She, herself, had called it the death of a love affair.

  “The soap in the koi pond,” Maggie said. “It must have dispelled the energy of the body.”

  I had more faith in my theory. “And killed the koi.”

  “Yes. But he wasn’t thinking straight. It was as if the moment his best friend died, his mind started to go. He was so frantic that day, he wouldn’t listen to reason. He just kept doing things. And I was not the kind of person who could stand up to him. I wanted him to tell the police. I didn’t want him to destroy Winnie’s rose garden or her koi pond. And I didn’t want him to push the car off the cliff.”

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “I couldn’t tell him anything. I could just—”

  “Regret.”

  “Yes. And I’ve lived with that all my life.”

  And so had he.

  * * *

  I gathered my friends around. Alistair had not yet left the island, so I invited him, along with Sasha, Frankie, and Sam. We stood around the rose garden holding hands. I said the prayer, asking for closure and for the highest and best good for all concerned.

  Alistair made the toast—to Winnie, of course. We sipped our mulled wine and stood in the garden in silence. The sun had come out just for us, I was convinced. After all, it crept back behind the clouds as soon as we left the garden.

  My suitcase was packed. My friends waited to see me off.

  As I drove onto Ned’s ferry, I turned around to say good-bye to the island. It was just for a little while. I was driving Alistair to SeaTac, along with myself. It was time to visit my daughter in Connecticut before her school term began. I hadn’t seen her since she had completed the dance program in New York and was gearing up for her first semester at college. I hadn’t seen her since she had learned of her parents’ divorce.

  “You’re not leaving us, now, are you, Jenny?” Ned asked.

  “Just for a week or two, Ned.”

  “Then you’ve decided to make the island your home.”

  “Aye, I have.”

  He winked at me. “Just like Winnie said.”

  “She knew me well,” I said. Better than I knew myself.

  – THE END –

  Felicity Nisbet is a native Californian, but when she moved to an island in the Pacific Northwest she fell in love with rainy days and the island lifestyle of reading and writing by candlelight and depending on a woodstove during power outages. She also writes children’s books, contemporary fiction, and adult romances.

  The Jenny McNair

  Cozy Mystery Series

  Book #1 - Unlawful Alliances

  Book #2 - Winnie’s Web

  Book #3 - Three Dog Island

  Book #4 - Saving Sharkey