The Blue Bottle Club (14 page)

"Stuart, I want to tell you something."

"Yes, ma'am?"

"We all have wishes—dreams and ambitions and longings—for our lives. some of them come true, and some of them don't. When they don't, try to remember that God may have something better for you than what you asked for."

His expression grew fierce. "Isn't God supposed to protect us from bad things?"

Letitia suppressed a smile. Where had such wisdom, such insight come from in a child so young? "Some people believe that," she said. "They believe that God is supposed to keep us from ever getting hurt. But think about this, Stuart. You have a little sister, right?"

"Uh-huh. She's five."

"Do you remember when she was learning to walk?"

He scratched his head. "Yeah. She was terrible at it. She kept falling down."

"Then why did your mother allow her to keep trying? If she fell down and hurt herself, kept scraping her knees and crying, why didn't your mother just pick her up and carry her?"

He looked at Tish as if this were the dumbest idea anyone had ever come up with. "Because then she'd
never
learn to walk! Somebody would have to carry her around for the rest of her life."

"Exactly." Letitia nodded. "And God doesn't always protect us from geting banged up and bruised, either. God doesn't always let our wishes come true. And sometimes that's for the best."

A memory surfaced, an image she hadn't thought about in years. A cobalt blue bottle, holding the dreams of four young girls, secreted away in the afters of Cameron House. A prayer that God would make those dreams come true. That prayer hadn't been answered—or had it?

Tish smiled and tousled the dark head. "You'd better be getting on home now." She peered at him intently. "Are you all right?"

He nodded. "Thanks, Miss Cameron. And I guess I don't really wish you were my mother, 'cause then you couldn't be my teacher."

He lifted the top of his desk, pulled out a sheet of art paper, and with a sheepish grin handed it over to her. "See ya," he said.

Then he was gone.

Tish took the paper to the window and held it up to the watery afternoon light. It was a rather good likeness, she thought. A picture of her sitting at her desk with the blackboard behind her and a big red apple in front of her. He had gotten the colors almost right—her hair a little more vibrant shade of strawberry blonde than its present faded color, her eyes a bit more brilliant than the natural gray-green she saw in the mirror every morning. But there was no doubt who it was.

And just in case she didn't recognize herself, a message printed in a careful, childish hand across the bottom:

My
Thanksgiving Blessing is Miss Cameron. Love, Stuart
D.

13

LETTIA'S DREAM

October 12, 1994

A
nd so," Letitia finished, "I guess that's all there is to tell. I don't know where the years went. They just slipped away, I suppose, while I was teaching all those children. I never felt old, not once, as long as I stood in front of a classroom and saw those eager little faces looking up at me. Then, out of the blue, they came one day and told me it was time to retire. And I was still. . . " She sighed. "Miss Cameron."

Brendan reached to turn off the tape recorder, then thought better about it and left it running. Sometime during the story—Brendan didn't know when—Gert had returned with the groceries and now hovered in the background like a protective angel. The light outside was fading, and all her muscles had gone stiff from sitting on the sagging couch.

Letitia reached over and patted her arm. "I suppose it's a pretty uneventful story, considering the kind of work you do. You know, murders and car wrecks and all that." She waved a trembling hand. "Quite a disappointment, I'd expect."

"Disappointment?" Brendan chuckled. "No, Miss Letitia, I wouldn't call this a disappointment. It's a fascinating story."

Letitia smiled. "They gave me a wonderful life, my children."

"I wonder whatever happened to little Stuart Dorn."

"Oh, you don't have to wonder, child. I know what happened to him."

Brendan sat up, her weary mind suddenly thrust into full alertness. "Well?"

Letitia rubbed at her forehead with one arthritic hand. "He was ten years old when he attended my class—that was in '43. Right out of high school he enlisted in the army and went overseas—Korea, I think. Yes, Korea. Anything to get away from home." Her faded green eyes took on a faraway expression. "Came back three years later"— she began to laugh—"with a Korean bride."

Brendan let out a gasp. "Not really!"

"Yes, he did. Prettiest little thing you ever did see. His father was livid."

"I can imagine, given what you've told me about Philip."

"Philip disowned him on the spot. The two of them eventually moved out to Washington state and never, to my knowledge, returned again. When Marcella passed away a year or two later, Brendan's little sister, too, shook the dust of this town off her feet and never came back."

"And Philip?"

"Philip died in 1982, all alone in that big house on Edwin Avenue. Liver disease, I think they said, from years of alcoholism." She let out a sigh. "He was a broken, bitter man."

"So you have no regrets about not marrying him."

"Heavens no, child. I came to peace about that a long time ago." Her head bobbed up and down. "As my children might say, I dodged a bullet. I say— well, that God kept me from making the biggest mistake of my life."

"Even though your dreams were never realized?"

Letitia's head snapped up and fire flashed through her eyes. "Haven't you been listening? I had my children—hundreds, maybe thousands of them. I loved them, I taught them, I helped them grow into good, upstanding men and women. God answered my prayers—well, most of them, anyway. All but one."

"And that was—?"

"You reporters can't help but focus on the negative, can you? It must be something in your constitution." She gave a little huff of disgust and went on. "After a while, I didn't care so much about being married. It was the other part of the dream that bothered me the most."

Brendan leaned forward. "Go on."

"The girls, of course. Adora and Ellie and Mary Love." She shook her head despondently. "We made a solemn vow always to be friends, to care for each other and support each other. But we lost touch. We drifted apart. That's the solitary thing I regret in this life—not keeping that vow."

Brendan looked at the old woman and saw in her face an expression of deep sorrow and longing. She wanted to comfort Letitia, to assure her that her God didn't hold her accountable for what had happened to the others. But the words wouldn't come. Instead she just moved to Letitia's chair, perched on the arm, and stroked the old woman's hair. It was soft and white, like cotton candy, and just touching it brought back memories of her grandmother, the love and safety Gram had provided when Mama and Daddy died, the years of encouragement for her to follow her own dreams, to fulfill her own destiny.

At last she said, "It must have been difficult for you when Adora Archer died. She was so young, and she had been your best friend—"

Letitia jerked around and stared at Brendan as if she had lost her mind. "Adora didn't die," she spat out venomously.

"But I was told that she died of influenza as a young woman, up east, where she went to—" Brendan stopped as the truth sank in. Adora hadn't gone up east. She had gone to
California.
There had been no body, no funeral, Dorothy Foster had said. Just a brief memorial service and a father who never again spoke her name.

"You mean her father—"

Letitia nodded. "Her father concocted the story about her going to college in an attempt to protect his own reputation. After all, what would people think of him if he couldn't control his own daughter? Then he lied and told people she had died—had a service for her and everything. I didn't go, of course—Mother and I had long since left Downtown Presbyterian and joined a little Methodist church where the people at least made an effort to act like Christians. I didn't even see the obituary in the newspaper until it was all over and done with."

Brendan closed her eyes and tried to imagine what kind of father would turn his back on his daughter like that. Then a thought struck her—a long shot, but a possibility nevertheless.

"Did you hear from her—Adora, I mean? Once she went to California?"

Letitia nodded. "Fairly regularly at first, long newsy letters full of her hopes for becoming a star. Then suddenly, a few months after she left, they stopped."

"Just like that?"

"Like turning off a faucet. I tried to write to her, but my letters kept coming back, so eventually I gave up. It was like she had dropped off the face of the earth."

Brendan's shoulders slumped. "And you never heard from her again."

"Did I say that? Child, you must stop putting words into other people's mouths. It's not an attractive habit for anyone, let alone a reporter." She waggled a finger under Brendan's nose and continued. "A few years back—maybe ten or fifteen years ago—I started getting Christmas cards, but with no return address. Then this—"

She motioned for Brendan to help her up and shuffled over to a small desk. After rummaging through a couple of drawers she came up with a picture postcard and handed it over. It had been forwarded three times before it finally got delivered.

"Flat Rock Playhouse?" Brendan held the card to the window and tried to make out the spidery writing. "It says—"

"Old
dreamers never die"
Letitia supplied.

"Do you suppose she's alive, living in Flat Rock?" Brendan's heart raced as she made two circuits of the small living room. "That's less than forty-five minutes from here!"

Letitia came back to the chair and eased herself to a sitting position. "I'm not stupid, child. I tried to call, but Information didn't have a number for her. And I'm too old to go wandering all over Henderson County trying to find a needle in a haystack."

Brendan grinned. "But I'm not."

Letitia's face brightened, and suddenly she looked ten years younger. "You'd do that? For me?"

"For you," Brendan said, squeezing Letitia's wrinkled hand. "And for me."

The old woman closed her eyes and let her head sag back against the chair. She was clearly exhausted. After a minute or two Gert came over and helped her to her feet. "She needs to rest now."

"I'll be going, then," Brendan whispered. "Thank you, Miss Letitia, for everything. I'll be in touch."

Brendan gathered up her keys and put her notebook, her tape recorder, and the cobalt blue bottle in her bag. She, too, was exhausted, her muscles tense and knotted. But none of that mattered. What mattered was that something—or Someone—had led her here, and for reasons that were probably beyond her comprehension. For her part, she was more determined than ever to follow.

She didn't know if it was prayer or instinct that had led her to Letitia Cameron. Her own feeble attempts at communicating with the Almighty paled in comparison with Letitia's down-to-earth faith.

But between the two of them, maybe God would listen one more time.

14

FLAT ROCK

November 17, 1994

B
rendan sat on a bench in front of the Park Deli and put her head in her hands. For the past month she had spent every free minute and most of her work time—except for one deadly boring story about deceptive practices of local auto repair shops—scouring Flat Rock, Hendersonville, and the majority of Henderson County for some clue to Adora Archers whereabouts. But the Playhouse was closed for the season, and the whole thing had turned out to be little more than an exercise in futility.

She kept seeing Letitia Cameron's face, remembering the hope that had flared in the old woman's eyes when Brendan promised to go looking for Adora. But she had let Letitia down. She had let herself down. And if she didn't find something soon, Ron Willard was sure to pull her off the story and send her to do one of those on-the-scene bits about some mother cat who was nursing orphaned baby possums or a rat frozen into a package of bagels.

"Miss Delaney? Brendan Delaney?"

Brendan opened her eyes to see a pair of enormous feet in gray wool socks and clunky Birkenstocks. Her gaze traveled upward past an ankle-length flowered skirt in shades of tan and black, past a black knit T-shirt and rag wool sweater, to the smiling, intense blue eyes of a rangy middle-aged woman with long straight hair, ash blonde mixed with gray. Brendan sighed. All she needed right now was the effusive cheerfulness of some granola hippie throwback. A big fan, no doubt.

"Yes?"

"You don't remember me, do you?" Granola asked. Without waiting for an answer, she plunked down on the bench next to Brendan and went on. "I'm Franny Carpenter-Claymaker. You interviewed me last year when you did that piece on the Carl Sandburg farm."

Ah,
Brendan thought,
the goat lady.
She should have remembered; after all, it was the first time in her life she had ever seen a human kiss a goat on the mouth. And the last time she ever wanted to.

"Well of course, Franny," she answered smoothly. "So good to see you again. How are the kids?"

Franny threw back her head and laughed. "Kids! Oh, that's a good one!" She even sounded a little like a goat, Brendan thought. And the kid joke wasn't that funny

"To tell the truth," Franny was saying, "I'm no longer at the farm."

She shifted to face Brendan on the bench and began to give a detailed account of how she had developed an allergy to goat hair and had to make a major life change because of it. "I just kept sneezing and sneezing, and my throat kept closing up until—well, until I just couldn't go on. It was very difficult, you know, leaving the goats in someone else's care. We had become so close, bonded—like family, you know."

"Terrible," Brendan muttered absently. The way this woman went on, you'd think that goat-hair allergy was on a level with cancer or AIDS or cardiomyopathy and that turning over the care of Sandburg's goats to some other granola-head was a tragedy equal to losing a child.