Bennett Sisters Mystery, Volumes 1-2, page 30
They were quick to introduce themselves and find her a chair to join them. “Gavin Towne, and this is my wife, Gloria.”
“The fifties?” Gloria said. “Gavin lived here.”
“Yes, ma’am. When in particular?”
“Nineteen-fifty, fifty-one.”
“I was in school then.” He looked over his teacup at her. “Sorry.”
Merle told them the memorized fiction, that she wanted to find the woman her father married after leaving her mother. “They divorced after only a couple years, I never saw him again. But I think I might have half-brothers or sisters.”
Gloria’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, wouldn’t that be lovely? Is your father gone now?”
“Sadly, yes. And Mother too.” The story of all the related parties being passed and gone had worked at the convent so why not here? But she could feel her mother’s fingernails on her neck.
“Isn’t there somebody around here who knew everybody?” Gloria wondered aloud.
They consulted the waitress who suggested the vicar. But Gloria knew he’d only arrived five years before, just as they moved back.
The waitress slapped her cloth over her shoulder. “You should ask Tulliver.”
William Tulliver owned the store across the street, and apparently knew everyone. Gloria and Gavin introduced her, telling the shopkeeper of the search for lost relatives. He scratched his head and said, “There’s the Westchesters, but I think the old man’s gone in the head. Or maybe Lloyd Acres down by Tinsley.”
The names flowed out of him. Merle scribbled them down. There seemed to be something wrong with each of them, they were infirm, recently died, or had begun to forget their kin. Then he said, “What about Annabelle Gallagher? She doesn’t get out much, but I hear the old girl’s still with us.”
Gloria had seen the woman several Christmases back — a tough old bird. Liked to talk. Probably knew everyone.
The shopkeeper drew a map to the Gallagher place called Three Oaks, a reference to long-gone trees. The sun came out, scorching the green hills with color as she drove. The old manor house, down a narrow drive, looked neglected, with missing shingles, broken shutters, windblown tree limbs on the shaggy lawn, a tire-less car rusting next to the carriage house. A few decades back the owners of Three Oaks had thrown in the towel.
The knocker was a huge brass lion. A middle-aged woman opened the door — thin, bad dye job, pale skin. “Miss Gallagher?”
“She’s in the sunroom,” the woman said sullenly, opening the door wider before she remembered to ask, “And who may you be?”
“Merle Bennett. Mr. Tulliver in Hockingdon told me Miss Gallagher was the person to talk to about relatives of mine.”
The woman looked her up and down. “Wait here.”
Merle looked around at the wide, empty yard, trying to imagine lawn parties and elegant sculpted boxwood and men in top hats. It looked like there hadn’t been parties for a long time.
The door opened again. Merle was escorted through the dark house, echoing rooms empty of life and furniture, to a large glass Victorian conservatory with a two limp palms hanging onto life. Under a red tartan blanket sat a shrunken old woman, white-haired and wizened as an apple doll, with bright blue eyes. She wore a pilled green sweater buttoned up to her chin.
Merle introduced herself as a dining chair was dragged in. Jenny dismissed herself to make lunch. Merle pulled the photographs out of her purse. “I’m looking for someone who might remember my father’s second wife, in case I might have half-sisters or brothers.”
“What’s her name?”
“That’s the problem. All I know is her first name, Emilie.”
“You don’t know your father’s name?” Merle had a new facial expression, the Montrose deadpan, which she wore now. It was her favorite response to questions she preferred not to answer, something her new job was rife with. The woman squinted at her. “You have a photograph?”
Merle put the photo in her hand, the small, blond Emilie with Weston against a brick cottage. Three Oaks was limestone, not brick, so this was probably the first of a hundred dead-ends. Annabelle Gallagher stared at the photograph, her hand trembling a little.
She handed it back with a sneer. “An awful little man, but she loved him.”
Somewhere a clock was ticking. Jenny banged pans in the scullery. Merle blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Never saw the appeal myself,” she sniffed.
“You—you know them?”
“I’ve forgotten his name.”
“Weston.”
“Ah. ‘My Wes,’ she called him.” Annabelle looked at her sharply. “He wasn’t your father. Who are you working for? Are you a collection agent?”
Merle shook her head. “He was my father-in-law. He died a long time ago.”
“Look around. This is all I have left, a few plants and my chair. There’s nothing to collect but these old bones, you know.”
“Miss Gallagher, I only want information about Weston and Emilie.”
“Emilie? Huh.” She waved a hand and looked out the greenhouse to the dry yard as if seeing into the past. “He took her away, against all our wishes except her batty mother, and we never heard from her again. End of story. Ran off to France, I suppose — he talked about his business there — or America. I often wondered what became of poor Virginia.”
“Virginia?” Merle looked at the photograph. The tiny, yellow-haired woman: not Emilie but Virginia.
“My mother’s name. Dear Virginia. Lovely really. An angelic little child, all golden hair and rosy cheeks. My sister doted on her. Until the day she died she fretted about never hearing from her little Ginnie. Tiny, like a child, she was. My sister tried to find her in the States, even hired one of those men, those —”
“Private detectives?”
“Nothing came of it.” The old woman stared at her spotted hands. “Is she alive?”
“Sorry, no. She died, a long time ago too.”
“In childbirth? I always thought she was too small to have children.”
“A car accident. They were together.”
The old woman nodded, accepting the facts. “I told my sister it would come to no good. No one ever listened. She’s dead then.” Annabelle sucked in her lips as she blinked to keep her eyes dry. She tried to say something but covered her mouth with a gnarled hand. Merle waited, the way she did in depositions, for silence to build and emotions to settle. Finally the old woman gasped angrily, “All of them gone. It’s so unfair. Two of us left. Me in this wicked old house as good as a jail, and one in a real prison.”
“Prison?”
“Very sad the way he’s turned out, but after his father’s appalling life —” Annabelle looked sharp again, squinting at her visitor. “You want to hear it? Of course you do. It’s made the entire countryside squeal with glee. Me, buried alive in this tomb. Do you know we eat onion soup six days a week?”
Merle bit her lip as the woman rambled on. “It started with my brother. Departed this earth these thirty years. A spoiled, thoughtless man. The heir to this grand estate. He thought he was a fancy chef, or at least could employ one. Bought a lovely old building in London, in the West End. He spent thousands of pounds and lost it all. Terrible business man. And his son is worse. Does something dodgy for a living.” She lifted her hands to the glass ceiling. “And that is the legacy of my grandfather, the wise and wonderful Armstrong Aloitius Rogers. Who built this house and had such dreams for all of us.”
“Rogers?” Merle blinked, trying to engage this new information. “Your brother’s son, your nephew — is he named Hugh Rogers?”
Annabelle narrowed her eyes. “So that is why you’re here, to squeeze blood from this old stone. Many have tried to recover the money he’s swindled out of them. You won’t be any better at it. All you’ll winkle from this old body is onion soup, I told you.”
“No, I — I met him in France. This man, Weston Strachie. Hugh says he swindled his father out of some wine. A long time ago.”
A dry laugh came from the old woman’s mouth. “Hugh’s been barking about that wine for years. Well, don’t worry, I want nothing to do with him and his dirty dealings. I’m sure it’s some tale Armstrong made up to make himself feel better for throwing away all those pounds. Throw the blame off his own stupidity. Now Hugh appeals to me from his prison cell in Paris. ‘Help me, Aunt Annabelle.’” She snorted. “Not likely, laddie.”
Merle let her rankle subside. She had more questions.
“Weston came here, did he?”
“Oh, yes. We were all young then. He was a friend of Hugh’s father. The restaurant business, always a poor way to earn money, if one must. Let’s see. He came several times, I believe. The year Virginia was here, though, she had just come back from school. It was winter, I recall. He stayed for the season, six or eight months.”
“What year was that?”
“Virginia was nineteen, I believe. Sometime after the war. 1950, maybe.”
“Why did he stay so long?”
“Armstrong enjoyed having a pal around. Pudge and I were married then but — well. They didn’t get along. Wes had energy. He loved to shoot and drink and all. He wooed silly Virginia right from the start. Poor wretched girl. I tried to warn her about men like him but she did love him.”
Merle looked at the photo. “Was she wrong, do you think? To run away with him?”
The leafless trees across the back garden made stark designs on the sky. Annabelle’s voice was soft. She glanced at Merle then disappeared into her memories.
“Love is never wrong. But where it leads you, that can be the biggest mistake, one you pay for all the rest of your life. I fell in love with Pudge Gallagher against everyone’s wishes. He was a buffoon, they said, but I didn’t see that. I was blind. I found that out later, to my sorrow. He spent my money and that was that. So were they right about Pudge, about my mistake? The heart doesn’t hear that. I couldn’t tell Virginia she would be unhappy, that she would, as you say, meet a painful end with him, could I? She would have been unhappy if she’d stayed — although we all liked to think we could have picked out someone better for her than that slimy American. We always like to think we know best for others, don’t we.” Annabelle sighed. “She was happy, for awhile, do you think?”
“I suppose,” Merle said. “Maybe that's —” She stopped. To be happy for awhile seemed like such a small thing.
“All we get. Yes,” Annabelle said. “Life is long, I can tell you. It has moments you cherish and those you wish you could forget. You know what the poet said, ‘he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise.’”
The smell of boiling onions wafted in from the hall. Merle said goodbye. The Widow and her Gothic Mansion had come to life. The bitterness, the loneliness, the empty rooms and dashed dreams crashed in on her. She shivered, closing the heavy door behind her.
In the car Merle tried to feel the coursing of life through her veins, blood sending oxygen to her brain. I am alive. Would she end up bitter and alone like Annabelle Gallagher? No. She would not ruminate on her failures, on her faults, on her losses. She would not. But she would send Annabelle some money, a ham every Christmas, something to atone for the sins of Weston Strachie. Wait, she had money now. Of course she did. She’d send Annabelle a ham every week. She would stop into that butcher shop in Hockingdon.
Yes, and then — she would move on. She sat straighter and said it aloud: “I will move on.” Was this the release she’d been looking for? Had she forgiven herself for her blinders and blunders?
The sky was so blue suddenly, the clouds blown off to the west. If this wasn’t forgiveness, it was a decent stand-in. It would do. It was reality. She hadn’t loved Harry; he hadn’t loved her. With any luck she would grow old, he would not. She would hold her grandchildren, he would not. It was a hard bargain but she had no choice. Accept death, she’d told herself. But what about life? Was she ready to accept all it offered, good and bad? To open her arms, her heart to anything and everything?
She opened her bag — that much she could do — to put away the envelope of photographs and memories. There, tucked into a side pocket, was the purple marble little Sophie had given her. They had all met one Saturday in early October, Harry's extended family: Courtney, Sophie, Tristan, and Merle, at a pizza parlor on the Lower Eastside. There were nerves, lots of them, except for Sophie who danced in wearing her red party dress and pink tights. The little girl brought gifts, a marble for Merle and a rabbit’s foot for Tristan. It had been so hard to tell Tristan about them. He had cried, pounded his bed with his fists, and cursed his father. Then the next week he sent her an email from school that he wanted to meet Sophie. She was his sister. She was a connection to his father, he wrote, a way to keep him in his life. Tristan was so much wiser than she was, in so many ways.
The marble was smooth, veined with white. She rolled it in her palms. Now that she didn’t have to worry about Tristan’s future, she was concocting a plan to put aside money for Sophie from the auction proceeds. But first she would invite Courtney and Sophie for Thanksgiving dinner at her dark, shadowy house. It would be awkward, difficult. There would be more nerves and probably tears. But she would be brave. She wasn’t afraid of the future now.
She shut her eyes and thought of Pascal. Was that love? Probably not. She went days without thinking about him when she was busy. But she could love again, it was possible. Her heart wasn’t cold and dead. There was something left inside her, a yearning for more. Another chance. A richer life. A second half.
Possibility. Was that all that it took to feel alive? Could it be that it wasn’t getting the thing you desire itself but the anticipation, the struggle, the dream of it that makes living so amazing? Was it that simple?
The noon sun peeked out again from the clouds, glinting off the car’s chrome. The old woman’s poem echoed in her head. ‘Kisses the joy as it flies’— she got that. Annie would be proud: enjoy the moment. But ‘eternity’s sunrise’— what the hell did that mean? Hope? A new day? Always living in that moment when the sun comes up, a new day begins and anything is possible — or — or —
Merle touched a finger to her forehead and smiled. The engine roared back to life. She didn't have a clue what the poet meant.
And that was all right.
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The Girl in the Empty Dress
©2014, Lise McClendon
Published by Thalia Press in the United States of America
All rights reserved.
Prologue
a Bennett Sister’s blog
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Lawyrr Grrl
Where a woman can grrowl about the legal profession
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BLOG ➪Sistrrs in Law
tagged family matters, vacation, kvetching, screaming inside, ulcer time
Posted June 13
Grrls, it’s confession time. You may have guessed from posts over the past year that I have four sisters and all of us are trained attorneys. Kinda crazy, but there it is. Our father and his father before him were also lawyers. The law is in our blood. We grew up debating, arguing, holding mock trials over dishwashing duties, deposing each other, trying to best one another around the dinner table, running to Daddy’s law books if we were stumped.
We sisters are all different and use our legal training in various ways: profit, non-profit, corporate, non-traditional. I’m not going to tell you exactly what we do or where we live. I will tell you this: being a non-lawyer in this family was a non-starter. Eventually we all fell into lock step. Some are happy troopers, some not so much. Some enjoy cracking the whip, some like taking a beating. We all have our strengths.
So we’re going a trip together! No lounging around five-star hotels or cruise ships for us. No, we’re walking through the countryside, reading maps like explorers, getting spider webs in our hair, perspiring like champs, losing our way. Sounds like a bonding experience, huh. I mean, what the hell? We don’t wear zip-off pants and hiking boots. We wear power suits and stilettos. We’re lawyers: we have manicures for f••kssake!
And yet. Grrl sigh. Not going is also a non-starter. I will report in, or lose my shit, or both.
Chapter One
Cresting the hill on the dirt road, Merle Bennett felt the ache of her calf muscles and paused to adjust her backpack. She wasn’t breathing that hard, just needed a second to catch her breath. Four days on the trail in the French countryside, plus all that jogging she’d done this spring made her feel strong.
Her oldest sister pulled up next to her, a little red in the face but smiling. Annie was fifty-four, bearing down on Social Security, she joked, but looking fit in cargo shorts, hiking boots, and a tie-dye T-shirt from a CSNY concert. “This is so great, isn’t it? Look at that old ruin up there, all Castle Grimly.”
Merle followed her gaze. “It belonged to Lord Byron, they say. Very gothic.”
Francie arrived puffing, auburn tendrils stuck to her face and freckles blurred by exertion. Sister number four, she was too young to be a reluctant hiker. Forty-three was nothing. Just wait until she turned fifty.
Fifty. It had hit Merle hard. Fifty and alone: the words circled her brain. Even with James. Somehow he didn’t change things where it counted, deep in her heart. Was James not a keeper? No, no mind games today, not today on the top of a beautiful hill in the Dordogne surrounded by orchards and vineyards and cows with the sun on her shoulders and the scent of lavender and roses on the breeze. This was a good day. Her sisters were here, helping her celebrate being a big, fat fifty.
