“When does it start?” she asked, leafing toward the front.
“Sometime in 1955. From what we’ve seen, it’s not a daily thing, and sometimes there are years between entries.”
Lacey found the first page, dated October 23, 1955. The one word beginning was written in violet ink.
Pregnant!
I’m thrilled. I’ve so looked forward to this day. Vern’s not happy about it, but I am. He’s worried about the expense. I don’t care. To have a child, my child, to love, to raise, to share life with. All my own. This is what I’ve dreamed of.
Lacey finished reading the entry just as Vicky and the girls came outside. Vicky joined Price and Lacey while the girls ran out into the yard, each with a small plastic bottle of bubbles and a wand.
“Good morning,” Vicky said. “That’s quite a surprise, isn’t it?”
“I’ll say. I’ve just looked at the first page. I’m going to jump ahead to the day Lynette died.”
She paged ahead to entries in 1961, peripherally aware of the laughter of the girls as they blew bubbles and chased them. The irony was bittersweet.
Feb. 7, 1961
Vern and his petition! As if I would ever betray my faith. He and his whore can burn in Hell for all I care. I hate to say it, but my mother was right. She knew he was worthless. And she warned me—it was forever. But I’ll never tell her that. Anyway, I have my two girls, my two beautiful girls. That’s all that matters.
Lacey paged further. The date of Lynette’s death, April 17, did not appear. Instead, many months passed with no entries at all. Finally, in November of 1961, there was one.
Gray day, to match my mood. Mood. As if this will pass. As if this is a fleeting thing. I’ve lost my girls. My beautiful girls. Gone.
Please, God, if you are truly merciful, take me. I am in Hell.
Lacey sat back in her chair and sipped her coffee thoughtfully. “Listen to this,” she said. “’I’ve lost my girls.’ Not girl—girls. She was grieving the loss of both her daughters.” She looked up at Price and Vicky. “Yvonne told me her mother blamed her and sent her away. But if she did, if she was angry at Yvonne, would she grieve the loss? Would she grieve both girls the same way?”
Vicky shifted uneasily, as if just the thought of losing two daughters was too much to contemplate. She watched Melody and Tansy chasing each other about the yard.
“I wonder if having Yvonne there alone just reminded her too much. It was too painful to see her without her sister. The contrast, you know?” Vicky swung her gaze back to Lacey, her brow creased, but her eyes wide with compassion.
“I think I know what you mean,” said Lacey. “And that’s certainly possible.” She flipped through more pages, noting the jumps between months, then years. Finally she found the last entry, dated April 17, 2001.
“Forty years. How can so much time have passed? How have I lived through so many days? Lived. That’s a joke. I understand now. This is my punishment. This is my purgatory. Marrying Vernon. Leaving Illinois. My mother has had her revenge. Taking my baby. Making sure I ended up alone, just as she said I would. Not God. Her. God is love. She never was.”
Lacey let the last words fall away into stillness, and exhaled heavily. “Her mother took Yvonne. Jean didn’t send her away.”
“That makes more sense,” Price said. “That’s why she’s grieving both girls. She lost Lynette, then Yvonne. She had nothing else.”
“Her mother sounds like a monster,” Vicky said quietly.
Lacey nodded. “Yes, she does. Controlling, vengeful. Certainly not loving and supportive.” Lacey closed the diary with a sigh. “Would you mind if I borrowed this? I’d like Sam to see it. This could be the piece we’ve been missing.”
“Certainly,” Price said. “I was already thinking we should try to get all the items we found to Yvonne. They’re hers by all rights.”
“And the letters,” Vicky added. “They’re addressed to Yvonne.”
Lacey’s head snapped up. “They are?”
Vicky nodded. “Mailed, but returned to sender. Never opened.”
“Could… could I see those, too?”
“Sure.” Vicky stood and called to her daughters. “Come on, girls. We’re going inside.”
Inside, Lacey carefully settled the diary in her pack as Price retrieved the letters. There had to be thirty or forty, all bundled together with twine. The postmarks showed the passage of time.
“Do you mind if I open one?” Lacey asked.
Price shrugged. “Not at all. That’s the only way we’re going to understand this whole thing.”
Lacey found the first one, postmarked April 25, 1961. The envelope was a plain white one, the stationary inside a pale peach with no decoration. She sank down on the couch to read.
“My darling Yvonne,
I’m so sorry about all that has happened. I know it’s difficult to understand, but as your grandmother will tell you, this is just temporary. You’ll stay and visit with her for a short while, then come home to me. It’ll just be the two of us—Lynette is gone forever—but you and I will be together again soon. Be brave, my darling girl. I’ll see you soon.
Love always, Mother.”
Lacey lifted her eyes to Price and Vicky. “She thought her mother was taking Yvonne just for a while, probably while she dealt with her own grief. But these letters returned unopened… Her mother had no intention of sending the girl back. She basically kidnapped her.”
“It certainly sounds like it,” Price said.
Lacey leafed through the other envelopes. “She sent many at first, but then less and less as time went by. I mean, what was the point?” She checked the last one in the stack. “Nineteen seventy-four. Yvonne would have been graduating from high school. All those years, never seeing her daughter, never hearing from her. And Yvonne never knew her mother had tried to reach her. I’m guessing it was her grandmother who told her Jean blamed her and sent her away.”
She shook her head sadly. “No wonder Jean won’t leave. What a tragedy.” She stared down at the sheaf of letters. “Can I borrow these, as well? Sam and I need to go through all of this and pull it together, then I’ll get in touch with Yvonne. She needs to know what’s here. She needs to know the truth.”
“That poor woman,” Vicky said softly.
Amen, thought Lacey. She began to gather the letters together again to take them home to Sam. Price brought her a plastic bag to put them all in.
“By the way,” he said, “we were all on the news last night.”
Lacey glanced up, puzzled. “We were? Oh, the open house. Jeez, I forgot about that. Did they have the whole thing? I know Herb was filming every chance he got.”
“He got most of it, that’s for sure. The chaos, the window shattering. He even got the cops putting the guy in a squad car. So that was someone you two tracked down last year?”
“Not him; his brother. The older brother was a major drug dealer in Vegas, and he actually had Sam’s former brother-in-law killed. Kyle appeared to Sam in dreams, and led us to his body—and the drug dealers. The shooter Friday night was apparently trying to get revenge on Sam for that.” She grinned. “Lucky for us he just happened to make his move while we had a good chunk of the police force around. But that reminds me.” She looked to Vicky. “How’s your arm?”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Vicky said. She lifted the short sleeve of her blouse to reveal the Band-aid. “You did a good job.”
Lacey had to agree. The color looked good, and the laceration was small.
“I’m glad. That was a little more excitement than we’d planned on.”
“It was certainly memorable,” Price said, nodding.
“That’s for sure.” She finished gathering up the letters and piled them neatly in the sack. “Well, let me get all this to Sam and we’ll see what we figure out.” She stood and pulled her pack onto her shoulder, then patted the bag with its cargo of letters. “We’re going to do this,” she said with conviction. “We’re going to f
ree Jean.”
Vicky nodded. “I know you are.”
~~~
TWENTY
Lacey came home to an empty house. Still at the pool, she figured. She glanced at the clock: almost noon. They’d be back soon, and hungry. She set her bundles on the dining room table and looked in the pantry for ideas for lunch.
Twenty minutes later, she heard Kenzie’s laugh and the door burst open, half-naked brown people—and one white—spilling in. Lacey was putting the finishing touches on chicken salad and was immediately surrounded by the bathing suit-clad group.
“That looks good,” Sam said, planting a chlorine-scented kiss on her lips. His long hair, loose down his back, shone wet under the lights.
Tori giggled. “Hi, Mrs. Firecloud.”
“Hi, Tori. How you doing today?”
“Good.” She grinned at Daniel.
“You’re getting almost as dark as the rest of the family,” Lacey said, noting Tori’s tan. Lacey, with her Irish ancestry, never tanned, just burned, so she spent the summer under the protection of long sleeves and sunscreen.
“My mom had her DNA done,” Tori said. “We’ve got a tiny bit of Native American in us.”
“Really? That’s cool. No wonder you tan so well.”
Daniel snaked an arm around the girl and pulled her close. She nestled against him, smiling in contentment.
“Okay,” Lacey said. “I made the chicken salad. You guys figure out if you want it in a bowl or a sandwich.”
Leaving the kids to jostle at the kitchen counter as they customized their lunches, she followed Sam to the bedroom. He was pulling on a t-shirt, then raking his damp hair back into a ponytail.
“How’d you do at the church?” he asked.
“Oh, that.” She dismissed it with a wave. “No luck. The priest was happy to help, but couldn’t remember any of Jean’s friends who aren’t dead.”
Sam frowned. “About what I figured. Too bad.”
“But…” Lacey teased.
Sam glanced up. “But…?”
She grinned. “Price called me just as I was leaving the church. Remember that creaky step he said he needed to replace?”
“Yeah.” Sam arched an eyebrow at her.
“He decided to do that this morning. And he found Jean’s secret stash.”
“Secret stash? Not drugs?”
“Nope. Letters.”
“Letters?”
“And a diary. I haven’t read it all, but I’m betting it tells us everything we need to know. Jean didn’t send Yvonne away. Her mother took the girl, and then cut off all contact between the two.”
“Why?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but it sounds like Jean’s mother was an overbearing, controlling old bat. And Jean either wasn’t willing or able to fight her. Anyway, we’ll find out. Do you want a sandwich or salad for lunch?”
Lacey moved her pack and the bag of letters to the bedroom so the five of them could gather at the dining room table for lunch. It felt good to have all the kids around. After the drama she’d been concentrating on all morning, just a quiet, unassuming family meal was heaven.
“Price said we were all on TV last night.” She glanced around the table.
“Your buddies at ABC News?” Sam asked.
“Yup. He said Herb caught the most of it on camera.”
Daniel blanched. “Was I on it?”
Lacey noted his dismay. “I don’t know. He didn’t say. I would think Herb was concentrating more on the action outside than us on the inside.”
“My parents saw it,” Tori said. “They didn’t say anything about seeing us.” She put a comforting hand on Daniel’s arm.
“I think your part in it will be pretty much overshadowed by everything else,” Lacey said. She guessed if it wasn’t, however, he’d find out at school tomorrow.
“I hope so,” he grumbled.
Lacey glanced at Sam. He met her eyes and shrugged. Daniel would simply have to come to terms with his gift in his own time; they couldn’t do it for him. She knew that, but just hoped it was soon.
“But, Mr. Firecloud,” Tori asked, “weren’t you worried about that guy coming for you? Trying to kill you?”
To Sam’s credit, he didn’t pass off her question lightly. “Concerned,” he affirmed, “but not worried. It wasn’t the first time Lacey and I had bad guys after us; probably won’t be the last.”
Tori was patently shocked. “But he could have—”
Sam held up a hand. “The bad guys can’t win. That’s all there is to it. If our only concern is staying safe, then the criminals win, and innocent people suffer.” He shook his head. “Not gonna happen.”
Tori looked from Sam to Lacey. Lacey smiled reassuringly. “We are careful,” she said, “don’t worry about that. But we won’t back down. Like Sam said, that’s just not gonna happen.”
Kenzie sat up tall, her fork in her upraised fist. “Fighting for truth, justice, and the American way!”
Lacey chuckled. “Which reminds me, I need to take our capes to the dry cleaners.”
Daniel just groaned.
~~~
TWENTY-ONE
That evening, after taking the kids back to Christine’s, Sam and Lacey sat at the table with Jean’s diary and letters spread out before them. Lacey also had her notebook, a pen, and a plan.
“Here’s what I’d like to do,” she explained. “I want to make up a timeline of sorts, jotting down pertinent points in chronological order. I think that way we’ll be able to see, not only how things unfolded for Jean, but also her mental and emotional process as time went on. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, it does,” Sam said. “So how do you want to divvy it up?”
“How about if I read the diary, and you read the letters? If either finds a clue that seems important, we can share it.”
“Okay.” Sam looked at the pile of letters. “Let’s go.”
Lacey re-read the first entry, how thrilled Jean was to be pregnant with her first child, and she noted that. She also noted the discord between husband and wife which would, apparently, grow.
“So this first letter,” Sam said, “shows that Jean thought the separation was only temporary. And she thought Yvonne would read her letters.”
Lacey started a separate timeline for the letters, since they came so much later than the early diary entries, and noted the date of the first.
“You know,” she said, piecing it out, “Yvonne was only five. I doubt she could read well, or read cursive. I’ll bet Jean thought her mother would read her letters to Yvonne.”
“I think you’re right,” Sam agreed. “She even says, ‘as your grandmother will tell you…’”
The process was slightly fractured as Lacey read the earlier notes and Sam read the latter, but the picture stitched itself together. Lacey read how Jean devoted herself to her firstborn to the exclusion of almost everything else, including her disinterested husband. The gap between the two of them widened as Jean poured all her love and attention on Yvonne.
Vern’s working late—again, she wrote. Does he really think I don’t know? Well, he knows I don’t care. It does still sting, but not enough to cause a scene. I won’t be the shrew my mother was.
Bit by bit, Lacey picked up clues about the relationship between Jean and her mother. She’d been right; Henrietta tried her best to control her daughter across the miles, but her influence was clearly diminished by the distance—no doubt the reason Jean and Vern made the move to California.
I thought once I had the baby, she and I would finally have some common ground, a sharing of experiences, of the joy and wonder, but no. She’s a bitter, dried-up old hag with no joy in her. She hasn’t even seen her granddaughter, won’t come for a visit. As usual, it’s up to me to bridge the gap. Well, she can wait til Hell freezes over.
More disturbing was the increasing mention of glasses of wine and Vern’s disapproving eye.
My sacrament, she wrote. After a long day with no help from him,
I deserve a bit of ease.
Jean’s second pregnancy was a clear surprise. Lacey guessed marital relations came few and far between for the couple.
I wasn’t prepared for this, she confessed. Hadn’t thought beyond Yvonne. I do hope it’s a girl. I don’t want a boy. Yvonne is all I need.
Luckily, it was a girl—Lynette. At first Lacey feared Jean would not even welcome the baby girl into her close bond with Yvonne, but little by little, the infant won her over. The two girls became Jean’s whole world, to the exclusion of Vern and her parents. She had no need of anyone else.
Finally Vern left. Good riddance, she wrote. As a devout Catholic, she would not consider divorce, so Vern was forced to support her and the girls as well as himself and his girlfriend. Her mother’s criticism only hardened her resolve.
So what if he moved out? Does she really think if he stayed, it would make it okay? Dad stayed, but they have no more of a marriage than we do. Miserable, both of them. Well, I have my girls.
The drinking progressed. Some entries were hard to read, no more than scribbles. Lacey could see the cementing of the dysfunctional family. Jean eschewing everything but her girls and her church, exalting in the love she could share with her daughters, the love she had not gotten from her parents or her husband. It was a fervent, unbalanced love, just teetering on the edge of tragedy.
Tragedy that struck sooner rather than later.
The diary went conspicuously silent for months after Lynette’s death, but the letters filled in the gap. Jean’s assurances to her remaining daughter that they’d be together again soon. Her declarations of love that became more and more shrill over time. Sam even found a couple of letters Jean had written directly to her mother—also returned—that did not disguise her rage and fear.
Revenge Walk Page 11