Something Borrowed, Something Bleu (3 page)

_____

My former bedroom was larger and had a king-sized bed, so Anna Belle put Meghan and Erin in there. That left Bobby Lee’s old room for me. I found the prospect less than thrilling, but kept my mouth shut in the name of common sense. Our childhood rooms were both run-of-the-mill guest bedrooms now. Had been for years. There wasn’t a trace of either of us in the entire house anymore, except for the cluster of photos on the bookshelf in the great room. My inner child found that disconcerting, but the grown-up part of me said to stop being such a big baby.
Still, while I unpacked I expected a vestige of my brother in his old room, if only in the feel of the air against my cheek. But there was nothing—just taupe walls, blue Venetian blinds, a navy chenille bedspread, and a distressed pine dresser with a stinky fake gardenia candle on it. A cheap framed print of Picasso’s
Don Quixote
dominated one wall.
Kitty Wampus, my parents’ orange Abyssinian cat, sprawled on my pillow, shedding at will. I shooed him off and tried to shake some of the fur off, but it clung like Velcro. I sneezed and tossed it back on the bed. From the floor, the offending feline began to purr and do that cute squinty thing they do. Then he jumped back up and curled on the pillow again.
I sighed. Sneezed again. And sighed again.
Leaving the cat to his snoozing and shedding, I unpacked my toiletries in the bathroom I would be sharing with the Bly girls. I smiled when I saw the bar of Winding Road Alligator Soap, so named because it contained extra oils to soften dry skin, awaiting us in the shower. Then I peeked into my parents’ bedroom, thinking Anna Belle might be in there.
I wanted to know about that note. But all I found was a perfectly neat and uninhabited room.
From the bottom of the stairs I could see through a corner of the kitchen to the big sliding glass door that led to the back patio. Out in the yard, my parents were showing their kitchen garden to Meghan and Erin, who seemed to be listening with interest. I slipped around the corner of the stairwell and down three more steps into the great room.
Over the last eighteen years Dad and Anna Belle had updated the furniture to light earth tones and rearranged everything a multitude of times. They’d painted the walls a dusty mushroom color, and the front yard, visible through the two plate-glass windows, had changed and matured since the time when I’d lived there. Long ago, sleek maple blinds had replaced the heavy brocade drapes. The light fixture had changed from a brass-and-glass chandelier to an artsy, blown-glass affair. The slightly sunken living space, open to the kitchen above except for a long counter, felt airy and light, relaxed and welcoming.
But when my eyes followed the cord up from the overhead light, it affixed to that same wooden beam. The one that stretched across the vaulted ceiling all the way into the kitchen. Stained dark, as it always had been.
Stop it, Sophie Mae. Just stop it. It’s only a beam. Only a room. Dad always told us that things don’t have meaning unless you assign it to them.
Ha. Great in theory. Not so easy in practice, though.
Perhaps I had a more vivid imagination than Dad and Anna Belle. Or perhaps over time they’d simply grown used to living with it.

_____

“You have to promise to keep this between us for now.” My mother held an envelope between her first two fingers, over her shoulder as if I were a little kid who might try to grab it away from her.
“Too late,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t tell Dad, if that’s what you’re worried about, at least not yet. But I can’t fathom why you haven’t.”
She ignored my implied question. “You told Meghan.”
I nodded. “Of course I did. Didn’t know it was such a big secret.”
“Well, I’m glad she came. And that she brought Erin. That girl is smart as a whip. She’s really growing up.”
Meghan, Erin, and my father were downstairs in the kitchen putting together bison-and-bell-pepper kabobs to grill on the patio. When my mother had touched my arm and jerked her chin toward the stairs, Dad had been mixing up a marinade and chatting with my housemate about the necessity of balancing oil with acid to elicit the most tenderness from the lean red meat. Anna Belle had a few signature dishes, but Dad had always been the real cook in the family.
Now my mother and I sat on my bed. Kitty Wampus had moved on to deposit his fur elsewhere, so we were truly alone. The scent of garlic wafted up from downstairs, vying with the cloying scent of the faux floral candle on the dresser.
I eyed the envelope. “So why haven’t you told Dad? Is there something in the letter you don’t want him to see?”
She pressed her lips together. “I have my reasons.”
I got up and removed a Winding Road clove-and-cinnamon air freshener from my suitcase and put it next to the candle. Sat back down. “Like what?”
“I do my best to keep your father’s stress level down.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Anna Belle. He’s a grown man. Besides, he’s the most easygoing I’ve ever seen him. Or is there something about his health I should know?”
Her lips compressed again. “He’s fine. Been doing some … experimentation lately, but that’s his business.”
My eyebrows climbed up my forehead. Experimentation? My thoughts bounced from Timothy Leery to gravity boots to Xanax. I opened my mouth to ask more, but Anna Belle shook her head. “You should ask him about it. He can explain it much better than I.”
“But—”
She held up the letter again, still by the corner. Like a dog being offered a piece of bacon, I shut my trap and waited expectantly.
At least I didn’t drool.
A moment of hesitation, then her hand shot toward me. Gingerly, I took the envelope. Stared. It was addressed to Tabby Atwood. She’d been Bobby Lee’s girlfriend at the time he’d done the deed. It looked like the top had been carefully slit open with a very sharp knife.
I looked back up at Anna Belle. “Tabby gave you this? I thought you two weren’t speaking.”
Anna Belle’s tongue crept out to her lower lip. “Not exactly.”
I squinted. “Meaning?”
“She never received it.”
Bending closer, I examined the envelope. “It’s been postmarked. Oh, wait. I see:
Return to sender
.” The scrawled words were small and nearly unintelligible. I met my mother’s eyes. “The postage is only twenty-nine cents. It’s postmarked the day Bobby Lee died.”
“I know. The postman brought it with the rest of the mail a week ago Saturday. I imagine it’s been in the dead letter office this whole time, and they finally got around to delivering it.” She licked her lips. “Now that we’re ready to see it.”
I gaped at my mother.
Now that we’re ready to see it?
Did she just invoke fate? Acknowledge an order to the universe that went beyond science?
Good Lord. So to speak.
Shaking off my wonder, I turned my attention back to the envelope. “But this was returned. It was addressed to Tabby, and you’ve opened it. Does that count as mail fraud?”
She shrugged. “Fraud schmaud. Those Atwoods didn’t want it, and if you think I wasn’t going to read what may have been my son’s last words, you’d better think again.”
Good point.
Downstairs a clatter of dishes warned of an imminent call to dinner. A sense of urgency overcame me. With shaking hands I extracted a single sheet of paper from the envelope and took a deep breath. I swore I could hear my brother’s voice as I began to read.
Dear Tabby,
Don’t worry, I haven’t told anyone. And I know it wasn’t your fault. It was a stupid thing to do, and I don’t know why either one of us went along with it. Still, we did. I know this is a strange way to say it, but I don’t want you to blame yourself. I’m doing more than enough of that for both of us. I can’t handle the guilt. I can’t handle what would happen if my parents found out. I couldn’t bear the look in their eyes. I’ve thought this out very carefully, and this is really the best thing. For all of us.
I love you.
BL
That was it. Not much of a letter after all. Just a note. A suicide note, sent to his girlfriend. I stared at the paper without really seeing it. They had done something. Something bad. Something so secret that he’d couched his last words to Tabby in such a way that no one else would know what he was talking about.
But Tabby would.
I returned the note to the envelope and handed it to my mother. “Does she know about this?”
Anna Belle shook her head. “As you said, we’re not speaking.”
“But this—don’t you think it’s worth burying the hatchet to find out what Bobby Lee meant?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. After the, uh, incident at the funeral, Tabby hates me. I’m certain she wouldn’t be interested in helping me, even with finding out what this note means. Maybe especially not with finding out what this note means.”
I chewed on a cuticle, considering. “You’re probably right. It implies Tabby was a part of whatever happened that made Bobby Lee—” I stopped. Looked closely at my mother. This was the most we had really talked about my brother in eighteen years.
Her return gaze was clear, if a little irritated. “That’s why I want your help.”
Uh oh. “No …”
“You have to find out what happened.”
“That’s why you hornswoggled me into coming out here? What on earth do you think I can do?”
“The same kind of thing you’ve done in your little town up there in Washington. You always were an inquisitive girl. Took after your father that way.”
“I haven’t seen Tabby since the funeral. Now you want me to just march up to her and ask her what crazy trouble she and Bobby Lee got into way back when?”
“Of course not. She wouldn’t tell you anything then. You have to come at her sideways.”
“Sideways.”
“You know—roundabout. Be her friend. Gain her confidence.”
“Right. In a week.”
“However long it takes.”
That sounded ominous. “You know what a ridiculous idea this is, don’t you?” I asked.
Her face pinched. “Maybe. But I don’t know what else to do, and I want to know why he—” she took a deep breath. “I need to know. We need to know.”
I nodded and heard myself say, “I’ll try.”
“And once we understand what happened, we can tell your father,” she said.
My eyes narrowed. “You have another reason for not telling him, something besides shielding him from stress. What is it?”

A layer of worry
deepened the lines in my mother’s face. I waited. She seemed to make a decision. “Back when it happened I kept trying to figure out why Bobby Lee would do such a thing. Finally, your father told me we’d never know for sure, and to stop making myself crazy. And more pointedly, to stop making him crazy.”
“Really?”
Dad had always been the curious one, the one who needed to get at the truth no matter what the cost. He’d built a career on it.
As if she’d read my mind, Anna Belle said, “It’s different with family, you know. And, of course, he was right. It was all second guessing and imagining terrible scenarios. But now we have this. This is real. I just … I guess I don’t want him to tell us to let it go, to try to stop us from finding out what happened.”
I protested. “He wouldn’t do that.”
Silently she searched my face, looking for compliance.
This time I pressed my lips together.
Dad’s voice drifted up the stairs. “Anna Belle? Sophie Mae? Where did you two—oh, there you are.” He stood in the doorway. “Catching up?”
“Exactly.” My mother stood and smoothed the bedspread. The letter had disappeared. “Are we ready to get cooking?”
“Ready, willing, and able,” he said. “The risotto is nearly done.”
“Yum,” I said. I’d sorely missed Dad’s Parmesan risotto.
On the way out of the bedroom I grabbed the gardenia candle and put it on the hall table. Following my father down the stairs, I asked Anna Belle in a low voice, “Do you know how to reach Tabby Atwood?”
Dad apparently had ears like a wolf. He turned around on the bottom step. “Tabby Atwood is Tabby Bines now.”
“She married Joe?” I asked in surprise.
He nodded.
Beside me, my mother murmured agreement.
Dad continued. “They own a dairy east of town. No hormones, all organic. Tapped into the whole community-supported agriculture movement.”
“Good Lord,” I said.
“Pretty good milk, too.” He continued around the corner into the kitchen.
I turned to Anna Belle. “A dairy.”
Her lips crept up in a satisfied smile. “And you are about to learn more than you ever wanted to know about cheese making.”
“Mmm. Cheese. I love cheese.”
“An added bonus.”
“They give classes?”
“They don’t. Tabby does. And, as Sophie Reynolds, you’re registered for one tomorrow morning.”
I shook my head, amazed at my mother. Oh, well. If nothing else, at least I’d learn something.
“And when you get home we’ll go over some ideas I have for the wedding.”
“Anna Belle—”
But she was already around the corner. Boy, my mother could really move when she wanted to.
As we carried the kabobs out to the grill on the patio, I still couldn’t get over the fact that Tabby had married Joe Bines. Joe and Bobby Lee had been best friends since junior high school, managing to get into trouble fourteen ways from Sunday. Back then I’d found him to be a real pain in the behind. No doubt he’d grown up like everyone else and had turned into a nice, normal guy.
At least I hoped so.

_____

Monday morning I came downstairs to find Meghan and Erin packing bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches, fresh peaches, and lemonade into a soft-sided cooler.
Meghan looked up when I entered the kitchen. “Morning! Anna Belle left the granola out on the counter, and there’s yogurt in the fridge. She and your Dad had some work to do at the university, so they’re already gone. They rode their bikes and left us their cars—wasn’t that nice?” She grinned. “I’ll flip you for the Audi.”
I waved my hand at her. “Take it. I’m fine with the Subaru. But right now, I’m starved.” I opened the refrigerator door and stared at the contents. Packed stem to stern with all manner of comestibles for the visiting hordes. “Sleep well?” I reached for an apple to round out the granola and yogurt on offer.
“Sure did,” Meghan said.
I peered over the top of the door at Erin. “You?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
I continued to look at her.
“What? It’s sleep, not rocket science.”
Just ignore her, I told myself. This sudden crankiness is just a phase.
Meghan broke the minor tension hanging in the air. “I wish you could go hiking with us.”
“Me, too,” I said, swinging the door closed. “But duty calls. You’ll just have to try to have fun without me.”
Erin snorted under her breath. I ignored her some more.
After Meghan and Erin left, I crunched through some breakfast while considering how to approach Tabby Bines. Anna Belle had suggested “roundabout” as the technique of choice, but that would take time—and someone better at prevarication than I was. The other problem was that if I got into Tabby’s good graces, even developed a friendship, I’d be shown up as a big fat liar as soon as I tried to casually ask about the contents of the letter. That would only blow up in my face.
No. Better to be straightforward about it if things went well. I’d show the letter to Tabby today if I got the chance. For all I knew, she’d tell me what the heck Bobby Lee had been talking about, and my mission would be accomplished. We would finally know the truth behind my brother’s death.
Problem was, I didn’t have the letter. Anna Belle did. And my parents had already left for the university.
The door to Anna Belle’s den was closed, but not locked. A psychological barrier only, but she had always believed it to be an effective one. She thought no one in the family went in there when she wasn’t around.
Of course, she was wrong.
When I was a child, Anna Belle’s den had been a source of hidden treasure in the form of her secrets—with the added excitement that I’d have been grounded or worse if she’d ever caught me. Bobby Lee and I had sneaked in on dares a number of times, though never together: Someone had to stand guard. And we’d snooped—in drawers, behind books, under cabinets. Bobby Lee found the racy romance novels tucked under the seat cushions of the loveseat. I discovered a packet of love letters from a high school boyfriend in a flat metal box behind the ancient set of Encyclopedia Britannica. But my find had seemed too personal to share with my little brother, so I’d professed utter failure that day.
I opened the door and went in. Bright stripes of sunlight spilled through the half-drawn wooden blinds, alternating with bands of shadow across sofa, desk, chairs, and floor alike. Particles of dust danced in the narrow shards of light. The air smelled of lemon furniture polish and another one of those phony flower candles, this one trying to be rose but not quite succeeding. I wrinkled my nose at my mother’s jaded sense of smell.
The sudden caw of a crow on the other side of the window gave me a start, and I realized I was tiptoeing. Anna Belle would still have a fit if she knew I was in her den, especially if she knew what I was about to do.
First I checked her desk drawers. No letter. Nothing in the file cabinet, either. Hands on hips, I considered the shelves of books. Once I’d found a credit card in a book with the title
Your Money or Your Life
. Another time I’d discovered a picture of my grandmother, arms folded and a frown on her face, in
My Mother, Myself
.
I looked at my watch. At least a thousand books lined the walls. Then my eyes lit on the ancient set of Encyclopedia Britannica.
Well, duh.
The box with the old love letters was still there. The envelope with Bobby Lee’s letter wasn’t.
Damn.
I replaced the box and stood back to scan the rows of book spines. Mostly nonfiction, loosely grouped by subject matter. Self-help titles dominated one long shelf.
There.
Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
. I took it down and flipped through the pages.
Nothing.
As I slid the book back into place, the one next to it caught my eye.
The Empty Chair: The Journey of Grief After Suicide
.
Bingo. My brother’s letter was tucked inside the front cover.
I replaced the volume and slid the envelope into my tote bag, thinking about all those self-help books. Could they have anything to do with the changes I’d seen in my mother on this trip home? As acerbic as ever, she nonetheless seemed less aloof, more accessible than usual. It struck me that Anna Belle might have been dealing with my brother’s death all along with the aid of books like these. She always had been a do-it-yourselfer.
As was I. Finding out what had tipped Bobby Lee over the edge would be my self-help.
My closure.
At least that was the plan.