Autumn's Child

by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

  “Ben went back to Charlottesville to get your cousin Will. Your brothers are in the cellar. Your father was with them for a while, but I heard him go up to his room.”

  “The cellar? Why?”

  “Apparently your uncle asked your brothers to install the outlets for cable.”

  No wonder they hadn’t been back to the hospital. “I thought you had people coming to do that.”

  “I did, but your uncle said that your brothers could do it.”

  Her brothers were both electricians, having their Class A Master Electrician licenses. Clearly they could install outlets.

  But they wouldn’t want to. They were happy to come to family homes and be guys, figuring their way through auto repairs, odd plumbing noises, and other things that they didn’t know a lot about. But to spend a Sunday afternoon doing what they did all the week, working on projects that hadn’t been carefully thought out, never having quite the right supplies…they hated that. Once their St. Paul–based business got established, they made it clear to all their relatives—to the O’Connells, their in-laws, and their birth families—that they would work for them without a labor charge, but the jobs had to be scheduled through the business and completed during normal working hours.

  So this, being put to work by an uncle they didn’t respect, having only substandard tools…Colleen wished that they had refused, although if she had been in their shoes, she probably wouldn’t have refused either. All three of them had been brought up to treat their elders with respect even when they couldn’t actually respect said elders.

  At least her father had gone to bed. As neat and precise as Sean and Finn were, they weren’t dentists, they didn’t need to be dentists. Having Edward B. Ridge, DDS, as their unlicensed helper tripled the amount of time any project took.

  Leilah returned to her grocery list while Colleen ate. The phone rang. Leilah answered with her usual “Mrs. Ridge’s residence” followed by “Are they saying how late?” and then “No, I won’t wait up. There’s food in the refrigerator.”

  Colleen stood up to put her dishes in the dishwasher. “Was that Ben?” Who else would Leilah talk to about waiting up or not? “Is Will’s plane late?”

  “Yes, but it should be in by eleven. Ben’s going to stay at the airport until it lands.”

  “That’s nice of him. I guess I will tell my aunt and uncle.”

  “Then I will do a few more things in here and go to the boathouse,” Leilah said. “In case anyone needs me, you know where the intercom is, don’t you?”

  Colleen nodded that she did and went to find her aunt and uncle. Both the library and the sitting room were now empty, but the door to Grannor’s bedroom was open and the lights were on.

  “Ah, Colleen,” her uncle called as soon as he saw her in the doorway. “Do you know where your grandmother keeps her checkbook?”

  Laura was opening the door of the nightstand. Norton was in front of the dresser, one of its drawers only partially shut. Colleen didn’t like this. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Leilah must know,” Laura said. “Whenever Mother sends me a check now, Leilah has written it and Mother has only signed it. Go ask her, would you, Colleen?”

  “Why don’t we wait until tomorrow?” It was time to stop giving her aunt and uncle power that they didn’t deserve. “Then we can ask Grannor herself.”

  “No.” Norton was firm. “We need to do this tonight. It appears as if a great deal of money has been spent on this place in the last six months.”

  That was certainly true. “But Grannor has the resources for it, doesn’t she?”

  “Of course, but the opportunity for…for, well, you know…”

  Were they questioning Leilah’s integrity? Colleen might not like Leilah or the magazine-perfect repairs, but surely Leilah had far too much dignity to embezzle from an employer.

  Norton and Laura, however, could be impossibly stubborn, and Colleen was too tired to bicker with them. “I’ll go ask her where it is.”

  The kitchen lights were off, and Leilah was at the side door, ready to open it. Colleen stopped her. “My aunt and uncle want to know where Grannor’s checkbook is.”

  “It’s in the front room.” This was a formal room across the hall from the dining room. “In the top drawer of the secretary. The bills and invoices are in the credenza. Is there a problem?”

  “Oh, no. Not at all.”

  Everything was right where Leilah had said. The checkbook was a ledger-style notebook, and the bills were neatly sorted in an accordion file. Colleen’s aunt and uncle were still in Grannor’s bedroom. Norton was opening more drawers while Laura was sitting on Grannor’s bed, looking at a chip in her nail polish. Colleen knew that Grannor would not like them being in there. She took the checkbook into the library. After her aunt and uncle settled themselves at the library table, she returned to Grannor’s room to close the drawers and straighten out the wrinkles in the bed’s coverlet.

  She heard some hammering in the cellar. The sound was the high, tinny tap of a hammer against a nail head. It must be her brothers at work. She thought about going down to join them, but she wasn’t going to leave Norton and Laura alone with Grannor’s financial records. She went into the library.

  She was already too late to save Leilah’s careful organization. The bills were now spread out all over the library table; some had fallen to the floor.

  Norton was shaking his head as he paged through the checkbook ledger. “Money is gushing out of here. Look at this.” He thrust it in Colleen’s direction, his finger pointing at an entry. “Can you explain this?”

  She refused to look at it. “I don’t think that it is any of my business, Uncle Norton.”

  “That’s just like your generation. You duck responsibility. But someone has to be sure that the elderly aren’t taken advantage of.”

  Colleen didn’t trust herself to answer. Her brothers stopped hammering, and a minute later she heard the whine of a power drill.

  Laura was at the table, stirring through the bills. “That woman needs to come and explain herself. Colleen, go tell her that we need to speak to her.”

  “She’s already gone back to the boathouse.”

  “I don’t know why Mother didn’t have her sleep in the house. What did she do if she needed help in the night?”

  “There’s a wireless intercom, but surely this can wait until morning.”

  “She’s the paid help, Colleen. There’s no reason to be afraid of her.” Laura marched into the kitchen and after a few attempts managed to work the intercom.

  “Leilah, dear.” Her voice was syrupy. “This is Mrs. Davenport. Mr. Ridge and I would like to speak to you. We are in the library.”

  Colleen cringed. Why was her aunt talking this way to a woman who was better educated, more intelligent, and more refined than she was? Colleen sat down in one of her grandfather’s chairs and picked up a magazine. It was this week’s issue. Leilah never let magazines pile up. The minute a new issue came, the previous one went in the recycling bin.

  The drilling started and stopped. The hammering started and stopped.

  “I wish those boys would stop that infernal banging,” Laura fussed. “They’ve been at it all afternoon. They are giving me a headache.”

  Colleen turned the pages of the magazine. Norton fretted about the new furniture on the terrace and the cost of putting in the dock even though the dock was put in by the same people every year. Laura continued to be unhappy about the noise from the cellar and the chip in her manicure.

  It was another ten minutes before Leilah appeared in the door of the library. She didn’t greet anyone or sit down.

  Aunt Laura had gotten more and more annoyed while they had been waiting. She started right in with the accusations. “You had the groceries delivered.”

  As if Leilah had willed it, the hammering stopped. She stood in
the oak-framed double doorway, wreathed in silence. “Yes,” she answered, her voice as cool as ever. “The big weekly trips were delivered from Staunton. Mrs. Ridge said that she always had her groceries delivered. She preferred it that way.”

  “Didn’t she know that the delivery charge was more than triple what it was at home?”

  “I believe that she did.”

  “And why did you pay the gardener to plant the window boxes? Why didn’t you do it yourself?”

  “Forget that,” Norton snapped. “That’s trivia. What about resurfacing the driveway? What was wrong with gravel?”

  From the cellar came the vibrations of seven or eight quick hammer blows. Sean and Finn seemed to be directly under the library now. Leilah waited for the silence to return. “What precisely are you accusing me of? Padding the bills? Or are you assuming that I have some kind of kickback scheme with the local vendors?”

  “More like a general lack of economy.” Norton waved a stack of invoices. “Spending more money than was necessary.”

  Colleen had to say something. “Don’t you think Leilah has run the house exactly as Grannor wanted her to? If she had done one single thing that Grannor didn’t want, Grannor would have been all over her. Grannor loves to catch people in the wrong.”

  Maybe that wasn’t the nicest way to defend her grandmother, but it was the truth. Eleanor Ridge was neither trusting nor easily manipulated.

  Colleen glanced at Leilah, hoping to see the other woman acknowledge what she had said. Leilah returned her look with narrowing eyes. Clearly she did not want Colleen defending her.

  Why not? What’s wrong with having me on your side? I’m a good team player.

  “I consider myself answerable only to Mrs. Ridge.” Leilah’s voice was tight and controlled. “You will also find that I did not have a contract with her.”

  “Well, see here, young woman,” Norton blustered, “don’t you be—”

  Leilah held up her hand. “No.” When Laura started to speak, she did it again. “No.”

  And then she left.

  “Well, I never.” Laura sniffed.

  “Did she just quit?” Norton asked.

  “I think so.” Colleen was on her feet, halfway to the door.

  “Don’t dash off and try to get her to stay,” Norton ordered. “Your grandmother will probably need a skilled nurse when she gets out of the hospital. There’s no reason to have excess staff.”

  “But someone needs to run the house. This place is huge. Leilah has kept on top of everything. We aren’t going to get a nurse to do that.”

  “For what we’ve been paying, of course we can.”

  “And we can take over managing her bills,” Laura added. “We’ll put our names on her accounts and set up auto-pays.”

  Grannor didn’t trust cell phones. She would never consent to online banking. And giving Laura and Norton access to her money? That would never happen. Colleen turned to leave the room.

  “Where are you going?” Laura demanded.

  She didn’t answer.

  The lights on the second floor of the boathouse were on. Leilah came to the apartment door in answer to Colleen’s knock.

  “Leilah, I am so sorry. Please understand. My aunt and uncle…they aren’t nice people.” Words were gushing out of her. “You have to ignore them.” If her aunt and uncle were her allies in a fight for Ben, then she was doing something wrong.

  Leilah said nothing. Over her shoulder Colleen could see an empty cardboard box sitting by a bookcase.

  “You aren’t really leaving, are you? Please. Won’t you reconsider?”

  “I don’t choose to be questioned.” Leilah turned, moving back inside the apartment.

  Not choose to be questioned? How could you choose that? People questioned other people all the time.

  Colleen followed. She hadn’t been in here since it had been refurbished for Leilah. The apartment was small, neatly furnished with soft Pottery Barn–like neutrals. It was immaculate except for a familiar green sweater draped across the back of one chair.

  It was Ben’s sweater. If Leilah left, would Ben go too?

  Leilah was in the bedroom, lifting a neat stack of clothes out of a drawer. Two lightweight nylon duffels were on the bed. One already looked half-filled.

  “You’re packing already? Isn’t there something I can do?”

  “No.” Leilah placed the garments in the duffel, added a few more things, then zipped it up. “You could carry this to my car on your way out.”

  “Your car? Now? You aren’t leaving tonight, are you? Right now?” This was so fast. “What about Grannor? What about Ben?”

  “Your grandmother and I understand each other. She would not say goodbye to me.”

  “But Ben?”

  Leilah paused and looked down at her. Her height made Colleen feel childlike and powerless. “Relationships occupy a different place in my life than they do in yours.”

  What did that mean? That she was leaving without saying goodbye to Ben?

  “Leilah, could you please wait until morning?”

  “No. And you have no right to ask me that.”

  Maybe I don’t. But Ben does. You have to let him have a voice in this.

  Colleen didn’t want to “win” like this. In fact, it wouldn’t be winning. It might be losing. With this sudden departure, Leilah and her pale, drifting clothes might swirl through Ben’s memory as The One Who Got Away.

  Because that should be me. I should be The One.

  She stood there for a moment, watching Leilah packing her clothes. Knowing that nothing she said could make any difference, Colleen went to the bookcase and started packing the books. Most were about Buddhism and other Eastern religions. Some of them were in French. Two were in Italian. The ones in French looked well-read. The Italian ones were pristine.

  I could have helped you with the Italian. Colleen didn’t think of herself as being able to speak Italian, but she could read it. Why didn’t you ask me?

  How unimaginable that was—Leilah asking for help. Colleen was surprised that she was even letting someone else pack her books.

  Three books lay on their side; all were technical. Colleen opened the cover of one, and as she expected, it had Ben’s name. She left them there. He would have taken his laptop to the airport with him, but the stack of papers in the printer was clearly his work. She put them next to his books. She supposed that he had clothes in the bedroom and toiletries in the bathroom. She was glad not to be in there. She didn’t want to think about what had been happening in that bed.

  The two duffels of clothes, the one box of boxes, a laptop computer bag, and a printer—that was all Leilah had. She and Colleen could easily carry it to the car. Leilah removed Grannor’s keys from her key ring and handed them to Colleen.

  “Do we owe you any money?” Colleen wasn’t sure what else to say.

  “None that I want.”

  “What about a forwarding address for mail and such?”

  “I don’t get mail here.”

  “But won’t we need to send a W-2 or something? How will you file your income tax without one?”

  Leilah waved a hand. She was not going to engage with that issue. It was too trivial.

  Come next April, see if you think it is all that trivial. But Colleen stepped back, and without either of them exchanging another word, Leilah got in her car. A minute later the little car went around the bend in the driveway. Colleen could catch one more glimpse of the headlights flickering through the trees, then nothing.

  The keys felt heavy and cold. Colleen put them in her pocket and looked at her watch. It was after eleven. Ben and Will should be here by midnight. As tired as she was, she had to stay up. She couldn’t let Ben walk into an empty boathouse.

  Chapter 6

  For someone named Norton W. Ridge VI, Will Ridge was
n’t such a bad fellow. While waiting for his much-delayed connecting flight to take off, he had sent Ben a text, offering to rent a car so Ben wouldn’t be stuck waiting too. When he finally arrived in Charlottesville, he was gracious, telling Ben how much he appreciated having a ride. He hadn’t been looking forward to trying to find his grandmother’s house in the dark. Clearly, there was an advantage, when Norton W. the Fifth was your father, to growing up with a stepfather.

  Will was surprised that his grandmother had asked for him. “She hardly knows me.”

  “You’re the oldest son of the oldest son, going back however many generations. That’s why you have a number at the end of your name.”

  “But that doesn’t mean anything anymore, does it?”

  “It does to some people.”

  Will shook his head. “Mother always told us that because we lived so far from everyone, never spending holidays with any of the Ridge family, we shouldn’t expect a lot. I always felt a little guilty about the big checks Grannor sent when we graduated from high school and college.”

  “You’re her grandsons, no matter what, and it’s hardly your fault if you didn’t see her when you were growing up.”

  “We aren’t kids anymore. We could have come on our own. I did talk to my brother. He’s not inclined to come, but he will if people think that he should.”

  “That’s not for me to judge.”

  Ben did know one thing. If Jeff Ridge were coming, he could rent a car. Ben had driven to Charlotesville once on Friday and twice today. That was enough.

  He and Will reached the lake shortly after midnight. The front of the house was dark except for the yellow globes of the exterior sconces. A faint pool of light fell on the asphalt beneath the kitchen portico. Leilah must have left the kitchen lights on. Ben led Will to the side door, the one that opened directly into the kitchen. It was the one she would have left open.

  Surprisingly it was Colleen, not Leilah, who came to greet them. The kitchen light was harsh; she looked tired. Smudged shadows under her eyes made her look fragile, and he was suddenly aware of how small, even delicate, she was. At least physically.