Autumn's Child

by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

  She looked for a moment as if she might refuse, but then thought about it. “Actually, that would be nice. I mean, good,” she added quickly. “Good.”

  The church in the village was small and built of rough-hewn stone; dim light came through the small stained-glass windows. Colleen paused inside the door to light a candle. After they took places in one of the wooden pews, she clasped her hands and bent her head. The window near them showed the Adoration of the Magi, and a ray of blue light, filtered by the Virgin’s dress, touched Colleen’s cheek.

  He had always liked this about church, the peace. Mass had been the one time each week that the noisy Healys were quiet for an hour. His liking that silence had led his mother to think he should become a priest when, in truth, he hadn’t been paying any more attention to the service than his brothers.

  The service opened with words that were deeply familiar. There were few other worshipers, so he and Colleen didn’t have to share a hymnal. He was sorry about that. As soon as Ryan and Kate had been old enough to keep order among the rest of them, his parents would sit side by side during church, holding hands. Then when they would stand for the hymns, they would be so close together that his mother’s curling red hair would flatten against the sleeve of his father’s dark suit.

  Maybe that was part of why his dad liked going to mass.

  He had made a dinner reservation at the historic inn that proudly displayed the bullet holes and scorch marks made during a Civil War skirmish. The hostess escorted them to one of the original rooms, small and away from the noisy family groups.

  At each place setting, the utensils were rolled inside the napkins. Colleen unrolled hers and carefully placed the fork on the left and the knife and spoon on the right. She flipped the knife over so that the straight edge was next to the spoon. She was still adjusting the handles, making them line up perfectly, when she spoke. “I wish I had gone to confession. I am not proud of how I have been this week.”

  He wasn’t sure that was a mortal sin. “You’ve been dealing with a lot.”

  “I’m so full of resentment.” Now she was looking around the room. “I feel like Grannor was treating me like the paid help. All through Christmas I unpacked the crystal and silver. She told me the history of the pieces, but not once did she indicate that I wasn’t her ‘real’ granddaughter.”

  “She probably thought that she was being generous including you in the will at all.”

  “Like I said, paid help. She left her former maid money too. And it’s not just her. It’s all of them. My father is too angry to care about what is happening to me. He’s still refusing to be executor of the will. And my brothers. They work together; Patty and Liz are best friends. I felt left out. My whole family is falling apart. We weren’t like this when Mother died. I remember at her funeral feeling like we were all so close, that we would go on being a family even without her, but now…”

  “Does that make Autumn Chase seem like a tempting option?”

  “Well, sure, sometimes. If they don’t want me, I’ll find someone who will. But also no. All that stuff about second families. That’s not me. I just want my own family not to make me feel like an afterthought.”

  “Have you told your father how you feel?”

  “I don’t want to hurt him.”

  “Colleen!” This was what was so frustrating about her. “I know this is going to sound super-critical”—he really did suck at emotional support—“but there is a consequence to spending so much time keeping from hurting other people’s feelings. They may not have any idea that they have hurt yours.”

  “I’m not a victim, Ben,” she spoke firmly. “I don’t let people push me around. But I don’t want to make my problems a big deal for everyone else.”

  She started to sound a little defensive. She wasn’t used to being criticizing. People didn’t criticize her, not because she was some kind of Queen Bee bitch whom people were afraid of, but because she really didn’t do much that was wrong. Her mistakes came when she acted from a quick impulse of her heart—which was what was worrying him about this search for Ariel.

  He felt like he was stumbling through a jungle without a map. “Okay, but it ends up with people not understanding you. Or even resenting you.”

  “Resenting me? Why would anyone ever resent me?”

  “Leilah did.”

  Oh, shit. He really should have called AAA for a TripTik before starting on this conversation. At some point he knew he needed to talk to Colleen about Leilah, to try to explain a little of what had happened. But now? What kind of timing was this?

  She was waiting for him to say something. Finally she spoke again. “You have to say something, Ben. You can’t get away with the strong, but silent act, not after saying that.”

  He nodded, acknowledging that she was right. “Because you don’t want to make a deal over your problems, you make it seem like you don’t have any, like everything comes easily to you. You’re always so pleasant; everyone always likes you. It seems as if you are sailing through life.”

  The waiter arrived with their salads, and Colleen could only glower at him through the freshly-ground-pepper routine.

  “You know that’s not true,” she said as soon as she could.

  “I’m saying that’s the appearance you give.” There must be a lot of vinegar in the salad dressing. Ben could smell it without having picked up his fork.

  “Okay, but why would Leilah care one way or the other about me and my life?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know enough about her to be able to tell you why, but you saw how she acted like you were too spoiled to ever help with anything.”

  “That drove me nuts, and it wasn’t like that at all when I was there at Christmas. I helped her with everything then. Wait.” She suddenly sat back from the table. “The two of you didn’t talk about me, did you? Oh my God, I do not want to hear about those conversations.”

  “No. Never.” At least he had clear road here. “We didn’t talk about much, but certainly never you. I don’t mean to excuse myself here—”

  “You don’t have to make any excuses. You didn’t owe me anything at that point.”

  He ignored that. “The first moves were hers. It was a surprise, let me tell you. Your grandmother must have told her that you and I had been together, and she wanted to take away something that you might want.”

  “Maybe.” Colleen didn’t sound convinced. “But, Ben, you are a very good-looking man. Maybe she just wanted you for yourself.”

  He never knew how to respond to comments about his looks. He’d made a lot of money off of them, but the other guys were earning because of their success in the sport. He would have rather had that kind of money.

  “It was more than that. Even though we never talked about you, I think the relationship was a whole lot about you.”

  She stared at him, then slowly shook her head. “That makes me very uncomfortable.”

  She looked as if she wanted to grab her purse and run. Some women did things like that. But she wouldn’t. She was a whole lot tougher than most people gave her credit for.

  “Let me finish. You nailed it the other day, taking about my self-destructive tendencies, making sure that something good isn’t going to happen. I was as drawn to you as I was four years ago, but this time I knew that it wouldn’t be ‘something good,’ not in the long run. Your grandmother tried to fix us up without having a clue if I could make you happy. I don’t think that I could. We would end up just as before, and it would hurt more this time.”

  Colleen looked at him with another one of her schoolteacher looks. That was something else that was different about her, everything she had learned from being a teacher. She picked up her fork. “Not thinking you can do something is pretty much a guarantee that you can’t, isn’t it?”

  * * * *

  Colleen had not liked hearing that anyone thought things
came too easily for her. Okay, she didn’t have student loans, and maintaining a healthy weight wasn’t the nightmare that it was for some women, but still…especially now with her mother dead and her grandmother having disowned her, what was easy about that?

  She hoped that Ben remembered what he had always said about his friend Seth, that no one worked harder or practiced more to make his tricks look effortless.

  And Ben…was he correct about them not being right for each other? It was an awful thought, but they were both so quick to criticize the other, she accusing him of self-destructiveness, he accusing her of not having any backbone. Neither one of them was critical by nature. They weren’t bringing out the best in each other.

  On their way to mass, they had picked up the mail and the newspaper from the end of the driveway. Colleen put the junk mail in the recycling bin and took the bills to the front room, where Leilah had kept Grannor’s checkbook.

  They weren’t the first bills that had come in, and something was going to have to be done about them. The utility bills were coming due, and the semi-annual payment for the insurance on the house had to be paid by June. So far no medical bills had come; they must have first gone to Medicare and Grannor’s supplementary insurance, but eventually some percentage of them would need to be paid. Colleen had learned from the internet that Grannor’s estate would pay for all of this; the executor would have to set up a new checking account. But at the moment there wasn’t an executor.

  Ben was definitely right about this—she needed to call her father and try to make him understand. Her father was entitled to be angry. Genevieve had been right about that. But if he let the anger block out everything else, he would cause more pain than he would ever allow a patient in his dental chair to feel.

  She and Ben had gotten back from dinner at a little after eight. It was only seven o’clock in Chicago. There was no excuse not to call.

  She got straight to the point. She wasn’t going to let this be just about the practicalities of paying the bills. “Dad, I know what is in your heart, but your actions are saying that you aren’t looking out for the three of us.”

  “Have you been talking to Genevieve?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “She’s been saying that my refusing to be my mother’s executor may seem like I am abandoning you three.”

  In her uneasiness about her father’s remarriage, she sometimes forgot that Genevieve Sisson had been her mother’s best friend. Genevieve probably knew more about Colleen and her brothers than anyone except their parents. “Yes, Dad. Yes, it does.”

  “And she says that maybe this isn’t the best time to be neglectful of you.”

  Genevieve must have been talking about Autumn Chase. “I know that you love me, Dad.”

  “That isn’t something that should be ever called into question. I’ll call Tim Healy on Monday and tell him that I will handle the estate.”

  He must have told his siblings first because Sunday morning Colleen got a call from Aunt Laura. “Colleen, dear, you do know, don’t you, that much of the jewelry is actually mine? Mother gave it to me on various occasions. She was just holding it because I travel so much.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Why would you? But there’s no reason to go to the expense of appraising the things that belong to me. I’ll send you a list. If you send those pieces straight to me, they won’t have to go through probate and any nonsense about ownership and taxes.”

  “We all have to do what the executor and the lawyers say.”

  “What do they know about what my own mother said to me? I have pictures of myself wearing the pearls. There are three little rings in a small tin box, Mother gave them to me, and—”

  Colleen stopped listening. Laura was lying. First of all, the stones in those rings were not little. Moreover, Grannor had said that she might give two of the rings to Will and Jeff. She had not given them to Laura.

  A few hours later Colleen got a carefully worded message from Genevieve. Genevieve had offered to help Colleen’s father with the estate. There were a few things that had to be done at the lake. Would Colleen be agreeable to the two of them working together?

  Colleen didn’t mind in the least. Genevieve was an interior designer with a successful business. Colleen’s mother had always said that Genevieve was the best person to be on a committee with. She always did what she said she was going to do and never complained about the way you did your share.

  Colleen called her and told her that.

  “What a nice thing to remember. I loved working with her too.”

  The most urgent thing was to get the jewelry to a safe deposit box. Genevieve would work on finding one as soon as the banks opened on Monday, if Colleen would take the jewelry in.

  “What about the house in Georgia?” Colleen asked. “Mr. Healy said something about having the fence and the chandeliers appraised separately.”

  “I thought that the minute I saw the house. I am already getting some names together.”

  Colleen decided to go look at the jewelry. Grannor’s triple-drawer walnut jewelry case was locked, but the key was in a small china dish on the other side of her dressing table. Colleen began unloading it, wanting to make a list of what was there. The pearls were in their own dark green padded velvet folder. Stamped in gold on the outside of the case were the name of a jewelry store and a street address in Paris. Colleen took the pearls over to the window and looked at them in the light. The silk thread had stretched enough that there were little spaces between a number of the pearls and the hand-tied knots. In some spots the thread was clearly fraying.

  Just as she was putting them away, her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number, but of course she answered anyway.

  “Hi, it’s Kim. My mother gave me your number.”

  Kim? Oh, Cousin Kim. Colleen couldn’t remember when they had last seen each other.

  “She wanted me to talk to you about the jewelry, but as I see it, she’s trying to cheat both of us. She doesn’t want me to have it or for you to get paid for it.”

  What a family. “I can only do what my father and Mr. Healy tell me to.”

  “That’s good. I may not want any of that stuff, but I don’t want my mother getting it.”

  “Grannor was very proud of the collection.” Colleen didn’t try to keep the reproof out of her voice. “Some of the pieces are beautiful.”

  “Oh, God, I suppose I must sound awful, don’t I?” Kim apparently had some sense of decency. “But it was a surprise, my getting all this. For years Mother has been fussing that you might get more than your share because Grannor liked you so much. Every time she’d hear about you visiting her, she’d call me and say that you were sucking up, and that I needed to get in there too.”

  Sucking up? All the time that Colleen was doing things that a daughter, that Laura herself, ought to be doing, and it was called sucking up?

  “That’s why Mother made such a big deal out of me joining the DAR and the Daughters of the Confederacy because you couldn’t.”

  Colleen had never given joining either organization a minute’s thought. “Why couldn’t I? Don’t adopted children count?”

  “Apparently not. You have to have the blood. Mother always said that that was the one thing I had going for me in all this. I have Ridge blood. You don’t.”

  If this was what Ridge blood amounted to, then her father might have been right. Colleen was lucky not to have it. “Kim, I hope you remember that the pearls absolutely have to be restrung.”

  “What does that mean? Do you have to take them in to a jewelry store or something?”

  “You should probably find a specialist. Seriously, Kim, that was one of the last things Grannor talked about.”

  “Okay, sure. I’ll do it.”

  Colleen didn’t believe her.

  She felt uneasy.
What if Laura tried to go to court to prove some of the jewelry was hers? How messy would that be? What Colleen needed to do was protect herself. She didn’t want there to be any question about what she was taking to the safe-deposit box.

  Her grandmother had subscribed to the area newspaper. It wasn’t much of a paper. Some days she and Ben forgot to go to end of the driveway to pick it up. But it did have a Sunday edition. Colleen locked the jewelry back up and went outside to get it. She spread out the front page on Grannor’s bed and carefully photographed each piece of jewelry, making sure that the date was in the picture.

  As she was taking a picture of the fox-head brooch, Ben knocked lightly on the frame of the open door. He looked at what she was doing. “I don’t know much about these things,” he said, “but isn’t that kind of ugly?”

  “It’s hideous, but the eyes are diamonds.”

  “Can you pry the diamonds out and sell them?”

  “You’ll have to ask Kim about that. It’s hers.”

  “Why are you photographing it on top of the newspaper?” he asked. “Wouldn’t it show up better on a blank background?”

  “I’m establishing the date that I took the picture. People always talk about how time stamps on digital files can be altered.”

  “That’s true, but all you’re doing is establishing that you didn’t take it yesterday. You could reproduce that shot any time from now on.”

  He had a point. She slipped the brooch back into its little bag. “You know what, Ben? I don’t care. I agree that this might not make any sense, and I don’t really know why I am doing it, but I don’t think my relatives are very nice people. I’m circling the wagons.”

  She didn’t usually worry about much. She used the same password on everything from her online banking to a junky cosmetics website. Circle the wagons? Pioneer Colleen would have gone out to greet the Indians with a potted plant and a tin of homemade cookies.