Aunt Dimity's Death (19 page)

“Go ahead and read it aloud, then,” I said.

“I think you’ll want to read this one to yourself. Here, take it.”

“But what’s so special about—”

“The date, Lori. Look at the date.”

The letter he was holding had been written by my mother on the day after my birth. I took it from him, bent low over the page, and inhaled the words.

     
D
,

The rain slashed the windowpanes as the echoes of my mother’s voice faded into the distance. Staring into the fire, I examined my feelings gingerly, the way you explore a cavity with your tongue.

“Isn’t it great?” Bill said. “She sounds so happy. It’s just blazing off the page. I especially like the part about Reginald. We’ll have to go through your mother’s photographs when we’re back in Boston. Maybe we’ll find a picture of the rabbity Lieutenant Lawrence …” Bill’s voice trailed off.

I glanced at him. “You’re right, this is a wonderful find. I never knew that about Reginald.”

Bill looked at me for a moment, then got up and cleared the ottoman of boxes. He pushed it over next to my chair and sat on it, waiting for me to speak. I had the feeling that he would wait patiently for hours, if that was how long it took me to find the words.

I pointed to the closing lines of the letter. “My father died of a stroke. He worked too hard, he smoked too many cigarettes….” I shrank from an irony I had been shrinking from my whole life: a man who had survived Omaha Beach had been killed by a briefcase and a bad habit.

“I’m sorry,” said Bill.

“I never knew him,” I went on. “I was only four months old when he died, and I never … asked her about it.” I knew so many things about my mother. I knew her favorite color, her shoe size, her thoughts on the French Revolution, but about this central experience in her life I knew next to nothing. Of all the things I had never asked her, this was the one I regretted most. “When she spoke of my father, she spoke of his life, not his death.” I brushed a hand across the letter. “I suppose she thought it wouldn’t help to dwell on it.”

Bill nodded slowly. Then, his eyes fixed on the fire, he asked, “How can you avoid dwelling in the past when the past dwells in you?” He sighed deeply, still gazing into the flames. “Dimity said it to me one night while we were staying with her, when I told her about the way the boys at school had acted. She disapproved. She told me that the past was a part of me, and that trying to avoid it was like trying to avoid my arm or my leg. I could do it, yes, but it would make a cripple of me.” Turning to me, he said, “I don’t think your mother was a cripple, was she?”

“No,” I said, “but I don’t know how she managed to get over this.” I held up the letter. “Here, she’s on top of the world, and four months later her world collapsed. How does anyone get over something like that?”

“Would you mind another quotation?” Bill asked.

“From Dimity?”

“It’s something else she said that night. She told me that losing someone you love isn’t something you get over—or under or around. There are no shortcuts. It’s something you go
through
, and you have to go through all of it, and everyone goes through it differently. I don’t know
how your mother did it, but I do know that you’re wrong when you say that her world collapsed. She still had you—”

“A lot of good I was to her,” I mumbled.

“And she still had Dimity. Look around you. What do you see?”

“Her letters.” I felt my spirits begin to lift. “Oh, Bill, how could I be so stupid? Dimity must have been her lifeline.”

“I can’t think of a better person to turn to at a time like that,” Bill agreed. He reached over and pulled a box onto his lap. “Let’s go on reading. We’ll soon find out if I’m right.”

*
**

It was nearing midnight when I put the letters aside, rose to my feet, and left the study, too upset to speak. There had been no phone call from the Harrises, and we had yet to find the unsent letter we were searching for, but that wasn’t what bothered me. Bill had warned me of the dangers of digging into the past and I had expected to learn some disturbing truths about Dimity—but I had not expected to learn them about my mother.

Bill caught up with me in the solarium. I stood with my hands on the back of a wrought-iron chair, and Bill hovered behind me, an arm’s length away. It was pitch-dark outside and the rain was still falling steadily.

“I know it’s not what we expected, Lori, but—”

“It doesn’t make sense.” My hands tightened on the wrought iron. “My mother wasn’t like that.”

For four months after the joyful announcement of my birth, the letters from my mother had continued without interruption. Then they stopped cold. She sent one short note informing Dimity of my father’s death, and that was it. For three years, not a Christmas card, not a birthday greeting, not so much as a postcard came from my mother. When I realized what was happening, I went back to that brief note in disbelief—I could almost hear the portcullis crashing down, could almost see my mother retreating behind walls of sorrow and self-absorption.

Dimity, on the other hand, had continued to write. And write. And write. For months on end, without response, Dimity sent off at least a letter a week—and I don’t mean short, slapdash notes, but real letters: long, lively missives written —it seemed to me—solely for the purpose of letting my mother know that she was not alone.

And how did my mother respond to this outpouring of affection? With silence.

“She wasn’t like that,” I insisted. “She didn’t crawl in a hole when things went wrong. She was strong; she faced things.”

“Dimity said that everyone goes through it in their own way. Maybe your mother had to go through it alone.”

“But that’s why it doesn’t make sense. She didn’t have to go through it alone. She didn’t
believe
in going through things alone. She …” Aching for her, I looked out into the darkness, searching for the words that would explain it all to Bill, “She was a schoolteacher, the kind whose door was always open. Her students used to come back to visit her all the time, no matter how old they got. You should have seen her funeral —the church wasn’t big enough to hold everyone, and they all stood up and talked about her, told how they wouldn’t be where they were if it hadn’t been for her.” A faint scent of lilacs took me back to that day. “Do you know the one thing they all remembered? That they could bring their problems to her, and she would
listen
to them, really listen, with her heart wide open. If anyone knew how important it was to reach out, it was my mother. So you tell me why, for three of the worst years in her life, she didn’t—” I choked on the lump in my throat, swallowed hard, and went on. “And what about Dimity—left out in the cold for all those years?”

“I think Dimity must have understood,” said Bill.

“Well, I don’t,” I said. “I keep thinking of my mom all alone with a crying baby, and the bill collectors banging on the door. There wasn’t any Starling House for her, but she could have turned to Dimity.” I rubbed my forehead. “God, I never knew.”

“Lori,” said Bill, “it’s late, and a lot has happened to you today. Why don’t you go to bed? We can go on with the correspondence tomorrow, when we’re fresh.”

“I don’t know if I want to go on with it.”

“Then I’ll go on with it for you,” Bill said soothingly. “For now, you just try to get some rest, okay? I’ll see you in the morning.”

I was too tired to protest, but I lay awake late into the night nonetheless, curled forlornly under Meg’s blanket, listening to the wind howl mournfully across the rain-slicked slates. I was haunted by my mother’s silence, afraid to imagine the kind of pain that would bring it on. The letters had thrown me into a world of hurt I was not prepared to face.

As I gazed through the living room windows the following morning, I began to suspect that some local druid had objected to my arrival and conjured this unceasing rain to drive me away. The weather was not what anyone would call auspicious. The storm had continued almost without pause throughout the night and seemed likely, from the look of it, to continue into the next century. As a rule I was very fond of rain, but this kind of endless, cold, driving downpour was enough to put me off the stuff for the rest of my life. Dispirited, I went over to light the fire, hoping that a cheerful blaze would dispel the gloom.

The bedside phone had awakened me bright and early. It had been Emma, returning my calls. She and Derek hadn’t gotten home from the vicarage until after midnight, and Derek had returned first thing in the morning to put the finishing touches on his repairs. She asked me to come over later that morning, after she’d dropped Peter and Nell off at school. Bill and I had breakfast, then filled a manila envelope with the items I wanted to show to Emma: the journal, the photo, my mother’s letter to me. I threw in the topo map for the heck of it, and Reginald sat atop the envelope, ready to testify on my behalf. Bill stayed in the study to continue reading, while I filled a blue ceramic bowl with oatmeal cookies for the Harrises and killed time watching the storm. I had just finished lighting the fire when Bill called me into the study.

He was sitting on the desk when I came in. “It’s occurred to me,” he said, “that we haven’t asked Dimity about the missing album.”

“Why bother?” I replied. “I doubt that she’ll discuss anything related to her problem.”

“But we don’t know for sure if the album’s related to her problem,” Bill pointed out. “If she evades the question, however …” He nodded toward the manila envelope. “It’s worth a try.”

I took out the journal and opened it to a blank page. “Dimity?” I said. “Hello? It’s me, Lori. Do you have a minute?”

I always have time for you, my dear.

Wide-eyed, I glanced at Bill and nodded. “So, uh, how are you?”

As well as can be expected.

“You know, Dimity, Bill and I have been trying to figure out why you’re … stuck wherever you are, instead of moving on to where you’re supposed to be.”

It is a very long story.

“I always have time for you, Dimity.”

And I would prefer not to discuss it.

“Come on, Dimity, we want to help, but we don’t know where to begin. Couldn’t you just give us a hint? Like about the photo albums, for instance—”

Lori, I must insist that you drop this line of inquiry.

“You know me too well to think that I’ll do that, Dimity.”

In that case

Nothing more appeared on the page. I looked up at Bill and shook my head.

“Try again,” he said.

I tried again, several times, but not another word was added. Finally I closed the book and put it back in the envelope.

“I guess that answers our question,” said Bill.

“Or raises a few more,” I said.

“Such as?”

“What if we’ve gone too far? What if Dimity’s gone for good?”

Bill had nothing to say to that. With a pensive sigh, I left him to his reading. I brought Reginald, the manila envelope, and the bowl of cookies to the living room, and as I approached the hall closet to get my jacket, the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” I called, and went to open the door, wondering who would come visiting on such an awful day.

Evan Fleischer was standing on my doorstep. He shook his greasy locks from his shoulders and sniffed. “Nice little place you have here,” he
said. “It’s a shame about the modernization, but I’m sure that doesn’t bother you.”

Stunned, I took an involuntary step backward. The door flew past me and slammed in his face. If I’d had any presence of mind, I would have left it that way, but my politeness reflexes kicked in and I opened it again without thinking.