Buried Secrets

by Kate Anslinger

  By the time Grace got into the reception area, Ellen was back to her old sitting position, flipping through the Oprah magazine. “Oh, there you are. Are you done talking about my health? Can we get on with it?” Ellen shot up from her chair.

  Grace knew Ellen was mourning the absence of her sharp mind, knowing this would be the slow decline of her memories.

  Chapter Twelve

  By the time Mark pulled into the small lot at the Bridgeton Yacht Club, it was packed with cars. He slipped into the last remaining spot, smoothed back his hair and looked over at Grace.

  “You look unbelievable.” His words were genuine, and Grace could feel herself slipping deeper into love as he said them. He leaned in for one final kiss before they made their way into the club. Grace slid out of her seat, landing on a pair of the highest heels she’d worn in months, maybe years. She smoothed out the long, navy blue dress she’d bought for the occasion. It was simple and hugged Grace’s curves just right, and she even felt comfortable in it, which she had not expected from a dress that revealed the top half of her back and dipped low enough in the front to reveal the start of her cleavage. She wore a simple necklace, a silver chain with a small, round diamond that shined against her olive skin just enough to jazz up the quietly elegant dress. Mark came to her side of the car as she was plucking one of Brody’s hairs off the dress.

  “Just can’t get away from that dog,” she said as she shook her hand to get the hair off.

  “I just can’t get away from you. You look beautiful, Grace… You really do,” Mark looked her in the eyes and reached for her hand. “Are you ready, madam?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” Grace accepted his hand and they made their way to the door of the club, where a line of dressed-up members was already forming. Guests clad in their finest attire filed through the aged, wooden door, making for a contradicting sight.

  “I think we are meeting Scott and Christie inside.”

  “I hope you don’t get any of those old high school feelings back when you are sitting across the table from your old flame,” Grace teased as she gripped Mark’s arm for balance. She could already feel the sweat blanketing her palms. She was technically off-duty, but this night could give her the answers she had been seeking about Miriam, Judy McNeil, and Annabelle. Every time she said the name in her head, she was bombarded with an image of the innocent little girl’s pale face covered in dirt. An eerie feeling swept over her and she braced herself for what she would see in Miriam’s eyes tonight as she and Mark stepped over the threshold and into the club.

  Mark’s gym hadn’t been open that long, yet he was already on the receiving end of so many perks of the job. It was a no-brainer when Scott asked Mark if he wanted two tickets to the annual sailing gala. Knowing Miriam was on its board and that this could be a way to get even more insight into the mystery case, Grace urged Mark to accept the tickets, even if it meant sitting at the same table as his high school girlfriend.

  “Yeah, I’m really turned on by those extremely pregnant women,” Mark whispered as they made their way across the entryway, passing members of all ages.

  A group of younger women mashed together in one big group hug. They assessed each other’s dresses and headed to the bar, leaving their significant others behind in a newly formed group of men.

  “There they are.” Mark waved a hand at Scott, who was talking animatedly to an older man, Christie smiling beside him and nodding with excitement. One hand rested on her belly, which was concealed by a perfectly fitted black dress that clung to her curves. Even at the heart of her pregnancy, she was undeniably beautiful, her skin with just a touch of shine that made her glow. Her hair was pulled back into an effortless bun with the right amount of tendrils framing her face.

  The man Scott was talking to moved to the side when Mark and Grace approached, and Grace nearly fell back when he revealed his face. It was Michael, wearing an impeccable tuxedo, his skin looking like it had been touched by the sun. His clear, blue eyes bulged in recognition when he saw Grace.

  “There you are!” Amy approached the newly made circle and handed Michael a soda water with lemon. “Is it weird that my date is making me do the standing around in line for drinks while he chats?” Amy giggled and gripped her father’s arm.

  “Grace!” Amy turned to see what Michael was looking at. “I didn’t know you were a member.”

  “I’m not, but I happen to have a boyfriend who has connections,” Grace giggled. “It’s so nice to see you both.”

  “It’s nice to see you too, Grace.” Michael’s words were laced with peace and Grace could tell he was getting closer to happiness again. He may not ever be whole since his wife’s death, but it looked like he was on the mend.

  A waiter who looked no older than sixteen stopped in front of Grace with a tray of champagne glasses holding red and blue signature cocktails, accurately matching the color of the club’s signage.

  “Ma’am?” The waiter gave a slight bow, like Grace was the guest of honor.

  “Oh, um…sure,” Grace tried to wrap her hand around a glass elegantly but ended up almost knocking the entire tray over. She looked around to see if anyone was watching her little misstep, feeling even more uncomfortable in the stuffy environment. Mark had his one hand in his pocket and his other patting Scott on the back as Christie laughed so hard her belly looked like it was bumping up and down to the beat of the music in the background.

  “Well, now that we are all here, maybe we should head to our table.” Scott looked down at the oversized silver watch on his wrist before grabbing Christie around the waist and leading her to the table inside the ballroom, Mark and Grace following behind.

  “You’ve met my mother, right, Mark, Grace?” As soon as Scott said the word “mother,” Grace’s heart began to race. Across the table, sitting with another woman about her age, was Miriam in a sparkling, navy-blue jacket and a crisp, white shirt peeking out. Her hair was pulled back at the nape of her neck in a neat bun, unlike the usual disarray Grace saw sprouting from her head. She was in deep conversation with the woman beside her until she looked up and saw Grace. Scott went about his business, pulling a chair out for Christie, as if nothing alarming was going on, as if his mother was an innocent woman going about her innocent life. If he only knew.

  “Yes, nice to see you, Miriam.” Grace’s eyes shifted to Michael and Amy, who were holding up nametags, trying to decipher which seats they were assigned to at a nearby table.

  Grace could feel Mark’s eyes on the back of her head, as if he was absorbing the visions right along with her. The rocking of a boat, back and forth, the trickling of water, and for the first time, Grace saw what looked like a lobster trap. Blue bars criss-crossing here and there, with yellow-mesh netting inside. Clam shells scattered around Stephen Cassidy’s head, several crabs crawled along his neck and into his mouth, like a thousand spiders.

  “I, um… Mark, do you need something to drink? I’m going to the bar.” Grace felt a wave of nausea and the need to run away from the table before she made a scene.

  “You have a drink in your hand.” Mark pointed to the signature cocktail she had yet to take a sip of.

  “I need another.” Before he could respond, Grace barreled toward the bar.

  “Grace, Grace.” Mark met her in the line that wound along a row of tables and ended in the entryway.

  “I don’t want to make a scene. Please just go back there and be normal. Talk to Scott, schmooze like you need to. But I’m not going to let my visions get in the way of this night, so just let me ‘get a drink’ and I’ll meet you back at the table.” Grace threw a set of finger quotes in the air and Mark understood why she left the table and that she wasn’t on the verge of taking advantage of the open bar, but instead simply needed to get away from Miriam before she went blind with assaulting images.

  “Okay, okay. But let me know if you need me. I’ll just tell them you saw someone you knew and…”

  “Hi, Michael.” Grace cut him off, an
d with perfect timing, settled her eyes on Michael, who got in line behind her.

  “Hey, gotta get Amy one of those mocktails. She told me she would support me and not drink.” Michael wrapped a hand around one side of his neck, as if smoothing it out in a nervous gesture.

  “Well, that’s nice of her.”

  “I told her she could drink as much as she wanted and it wouldn’t bother me one bit.” Michael paused and looked around the busy room before settling his eyes on Grace. “To be honest with you, Grace, I’m not really up here for a mocktail. That lady, the one I almost hit…she’s at your table. It’s like more memories are coming to me lately.”

  “Like what?” The glass in Grace’s hand almost went flying across the room when a panicked lady bumped her arm as she charged by, making demands at one of the young waiters. Grace looked around as more guests poured in the ballroom, the voices growing louder. Every conversation seemed to be accentuated with a loud laugh or a grabbing of an arm. “Do you want to go somewhere quieter?”

  “Follow me.” Michael turned on a heel, maneuvered his way through the crowd and entered a room that seemed to serve as storage for the club. He led her down a long, narrow hallway and pushed open a heavy, wooden door, as a wave of fresh ocean air crashed into them. Grace had never been out on the club’s dock at night, and an eerie feeling accompanied the sound of boats tapping the wooden docks as they danced with the waves. In addition to the lights from the airport and the Boston skyline, there was a spotlight fixed to exterior of the club that cast an added glow onto the dock, spilling out into the water. Michael guided Grace to a line of lockers alongside the wall of the club. He pulled out a flashlight for extra light and led them down to his boat. Without asking, Grace followed.

  “You know how, after a night of heavy drinking, you get flashes of your memory, but nothing is completely clear?”

  “Um, yeah,” Grace hesitated to agree. She seldom allowed herself to have more than a glass of wine.

  “Well, the boat, and that woman…”

  “Miriam?”

  “Yes, Miriam. I keep getting these flashes.”

  The more Michael talked, the more Grace thought about what Dr. Wexford told her after Ellen’s appointment: people with dementia tend to bring back memories from long ago, sometimes reliving their childhood, while they can’t remember something that happened 20 minutes ago.

  While Grace was certain that Michael didn’t have Alzheimer’s, she did remember Dr. Wexford mentioning the part of the brain called the hippocampus. “When the hippocampus, which is essentially the brain’s storage bank, is damaged or deteriorated, it has trouble retrieving memories,” he had said. It suddenly dawned on Grace that if Michael had been drinking heavily enough, he may have blacked out, which would mean he wouldn’t completely remember what happened to Miriam. In turn, Grace was left to decipher the facts of a night on the boat, with only the help of a smattering of her visions and what Michael could recall, all of which were starting to blend together.

  Michael extended his hand to Grace as she stepped onto the boat. The sight of the white floor pierced her mind.

  “What exactly are the memory flashes you are getting?”

  “Well, I remember the lights out here and walking to the boat, and I know I was

  with someone, maybe several people, I’m just not sure who. I also remember it being the night of a fundraiser, but the last time I came to a fundraiser here, it had to have been like two years ago. It was right after my wife died. I remember I wasn’t ready to be out in public, but my liquid courage got me out to the club, and I remember stumbling around inside and being held by the arm while I walked down here on the docks.”

  “Michael, when is the last time you took your lobster traps out?”

  “Geez, not since before my wife died that I can remember.” Michael sank into the captain’s seat of the boat, and for the first time Grace could see how at ease he was sitting there. “But now that you ask, I remember one day I came on my boat and I saw a lobster trap with nothing in it, no bait, nothing. I never leave my traps just sitting on the boat like that, even when I was drinking. I remember it wasn’t long after my wife died, and I hadn’t been trapping because I wasn’t doing much of anything but drinking. So, needless to say it was pretty odd that the trap was out here, but you don’t really think of little details like that when you are consumed by when your next drink will be.”

  “Where are your traps now?”

  “Oh, they are all stacked up by the lockers over there, where I always leave them. Michael pointed to a mound of identical traps, formed into one giant square on the corner of the dock.

  “So, are you saying someone brought one of your lobster traps out to your boat without you knowing?”

  “Well, that, or I was in one of my many drunken stupors and maybe I got the trap and didn’t even remember. Someone, maybe that woman, Miriam, was with me. I don’t know why she would be with me, though; besides this club, we have no common hangouts, no common friends.”

  Grace heard a door slam followed by soft giggles, accented by a high-pitched laugh and heels clacking on the ramp that joined the door and the main dock.

  A man with an untucked shirt and a tie thrown over one shoulder led the giggling woman down the ramp. From where Grace was perched on the boat, she could make out the two silhouettes approaching.

  “Let’s call it a night for now and go back inside before Mark and Amy start to wonder where we are,” Grace said. She grabbed onto a silver bar that lined the top of the boat before taking one giant step up and onto the dock.

  The couple had grown silent as they passed Grace and Michael. The woman wore red lipstick that was too bright and applied in such a haphazard way that it extended beyond the side of her mouth ever so slightly. Her dress hung off one shoulder in a way that suggested sloppiness instead of purpose. She leaned into the man, as if needing his body to keep herself upright. The man looked away, embarrassed.

  “Dirt bag,” Michael said under his breath as he walked up the ramp behind Grace.

  “Do you know them?”

  “I sure do. That’s the commodore, and that is certainly not his wife.”

  “Yikes, so the rumors are true around here?”

  “They certainly are. It’s like this club is the Melrose Place of town.”

  As soon as Grace opened the door, she felt a crash.

  “There you are!” Mark said, just in time for a glass of red wine to spill down the front of her dress as Michael crashed into her back.

  “Oh no, honey…I’m so sorry, I was just looking for you, I was bringing this to you.” Mark pulled a tissue out of his pocket and tried to dab at the liquid now settling into the fabric of her dress and at the wine now funneling down her cleavage.

  “Oh boy, should I go get some napkins?” Michael diverted his eyes from the front of Grace’s dress to the nearby wall, landing on nothing in particular.

  “Nope, it’s quite all right…it was inevitable.” Grace plucked the top of her dress as little sprays of wine hit her in the face. “This would’ve happened whether you had been on the other side of the door or not. You know how much of a slob I am. It’s just a little earlier in the night than I had planned.” She pulled Mark’s head toward her lips. “It’s okay, I’ll go get cleaned up. And the restrooms are….”

  “Follow me.” Michael led the three of them, happy to be past the awkward moment.

  “So, I guess you don’t want the last drop?”

  Grace turned around, took the glass from Mark, tipped her head back and swallowed the remaining splash of Cabernet.

  ***

  The line in the ladies’ room ended right at the door, so Grace had to stand in the doorway, holding it open.

  “Oh no, did you have a little spill?” A plump woman in a bright pink dress turned toward Grace. “Well, you certainly don’t have to wait in this ridiculous line…go on…go clean yourself up.” She waved Grace toward the front of the line, where a double sink sat in fro
nt of three stalls. “I think I might have something in here for that too.” The woman left her spot in line. “Now, Darcy, you best be holding my spot, young lady… Lord knows you owe me one.” She waddled toward the sink where Grace was standing and plopped a massive purse on the countertop.

  “Now, it’s in here somewhere.” Her chubby hands went to work in the purse as if she was stirring a bowl of porridge. She pulled out several different lipsticks, a blend of what she apparently had on that evening. “AHA! Here we go, here it is! Now you know why I don’t leave home without this?”

  Grace wasn’t sure whether the woman was talking to herself or to her as she set a clear, travel-sized spray bottle down beside her line of lipsticks. Like a child taking directions from her mother, Grace stood patiently as the woman went to work spraying the concoction on the front of her gown, the smell of vinegar instantly hitting her nose. “I usually don’t give away my secret recipes, but since you seem like a fairly clumsy gal, I’ll tell you: this is a mixture of baking soda and vinegar, and let me tell you, it will get the peskiest of stains out. Been using this recipe since I moved in with my husband all those years ago.”

  Grace, mesmerized by her confidence and natural caretaking tendency, couldn’t take her eyes off the woman. She instantly felt comfortable before this stranger who was now dousing her chest with a homemade substance. Her eyes managed to move from the woman’s face and onto her nametag. Lottie, Events Committee.

  The rest of the women went about their banter, discussing who was wearing what and whose kid was excelling in what sports, immersed in the details of their lives, as Lottie stood close enough for Grace to kiss her for helping a complete stranger.

  This woman was the type that Ellen McKenna often read about in her spiritual magazines. The type who didn’t just sit around and talk about things happening, but instead made things happen. It dawned on Grace that she happened to be on the events committee, another secret path into Miriam’s life.