The Evening Spider (28 page)

Haverton, Connecticut

December 20, 2014

I
nursed Lucy in the car and then drove in the direction of our motel. About halfway there, I turned into the Stop & Shop and idled the engine for a while, trying to decide what to do next. I couldn't bear to go back to the room just yet. It would smell of cheap lemon-flavored air freshener and stale coffee. And a salty residue of last night's dream would surely still be in the air.

No—I couldn't go back there yet, and what was the point, now that Lucy had already zonked out in the car anyway?

I drove up and down the length of Haverton's main highway, trailing a morning kindergarten bus for part of the way, and then eventually stopping for a coffee at a drive-through. After Lucy had slept for a solid three-quarters of an hour, I parked in the Haverton Public Library lot.

Once we were inside, I sat at one of the available computers. Wedging the still-dozing Lucy into the crook of my left arm, I fished my wallet out of my purse with my right. It had been a while since I'd used my library card, so that required a bit more digging.

“Can I help you?” Someone was standing behind me, watching me. I tried my best to turn without disturbing Lucy.

There stood a bone-thin woman in an admirably ugly corduroy skirt—dark green and maize floral down to her ankles.

“You look like you've got your hands full,” she said.

I pulled out my library card and repositioned Lucy in my arms so I could reach the keyboard.

“I'm fine, thanks,” I said.

The woman nodded and returned to the reference desk.

Once logged into the Connecticut historical newspapers database, I hunt-and-peck typed “Frederick Baines” with one hand.

Three articles came up. The first two were the articles Wallace had shown me earlier in the morning—from the McFarlene trial. The third was dated October 14, 1885—several years after the trial. I clicked on it.

SUICIDE IN NORTH CRANBROOK

My arms must have stiffened because Lucy seemed to sense my surprise. Her eyes opened, immediately alert and alarmed.
I stared down at her, knowing what was coming but praying, for a moment, that I could hypnotize Lucy out of it with my gaze.

“Lucy,” I whispered as my stomach dropped.

She'd
warned
me. At the historical society. She hadn't gotten enough sleep. It had been time to go home for a long, long nap. But I had ignored the warning, fed her on caffeinated breast-milk all morning, and cut her nap short—and was now going to get what I deserved.

Her mouth opened and a primal sort of scream came out. The woman typing next to me jumped. The reference librarian cringed. By the picture window, a familiar bald head lifted itself up from behind a
Wall Street Journal
.

The whole library stood still and waited for me to do something. I stood up and put Lucy to my shoulder. When I tried to grab my purse, I noticed that my wallet was still sitting by the keyboard. Attempting to grab it with the same hand, I dropped both. Lucy's cries grew more terrified—perhaps my clumsy movements had scared her even more. I secured her against my shoulder again and closed my eyes for a second.

There was no suicide note.

That feeling of near-blindness—from last night in the snow—was upon me again.

Shhhhh.

If I opened my eyes, each of the books in this library might open, and all of their secrets might fall out, covering me like snowflakes.

Swish. Swish. Swish.

“Hey, Amy!” I heard someone bellowing. “Or—Annie, was it?”

When I opened my eyes, the librarian was by my side, slipping my wallet into my purse and my purse into my open hand.
I could see Ralph Greer putting down his newspaper and struggling to his feet, but I was too rattled to greet him.

“Thanks,” I whispered to the librarian before heading for the exit. She walked with me, her earth-mother skirt fluttering around her calves. As she held the door for me, I thought I saw sympathy, rather than disapproval, in her eyes. But of course I couldn't pause long enough to determine that for sure. It was not until we were back in the car—and I was nursing Lucy yet again—that I realized I was still wearing my pajama bottoms.

Northampton Lunatic Hospital

Northampton, Massachusetts

December 21, 1885

W
hen Martha and I were back home, I held her in the rocking chair and told her a story. I began with a real circumstance from long ago: Father and you and me in the woods, looking at a layered, shell-like fungus that had grown on a tree. I realized, a few sentences into the story, that it was nothing more than a pleasant memory. It did not have a beginning or an end. A child might prefer something more fanciful, no? So in my story I had us walk deep into the woods, where the mushrooms grew more and more numerous. Until we were surrounded by mushrooms, growing ever larger, and ever brighter. None was of a type you or I or even Father could identify. We kept climbing until we reached a precipice. And there the mushrooms were an alluring periwinkle color. Father picked one and offered it to me. And then he picked one and offered it to you. We both ate them because we trusted Father. And we found that they could make us fly. We flew over the hills, admiring the changing color of the leaves, and the close view of birds in flight. We were so far from home, though, that I wasn't confident
the effect of the mushroom would last me long enough. So I landed in Haverton, while you and Father kept flying, more confident that you would get home eventually.

And that's how I ended up here,
I whispered to Martha. Thankfully, she was asleep. The story had not ended as happily as I had intended. Perhaps I'd tell it differently next time.

I laid her in her bed and took out that old journal you'd given me.

And then I wrote what I had been afraid to write for so long.

I wrote about my memory, of which I was now confident.

Haverton, Connecticut

December 20, 2014

I
nursed Lucy in the car until she dozed off. But when I tried to put her in her seat, she woke up and started screaming bloody murder again. So I curled her back onto my chest and let her sleep, closing my eyes and abandoning the idea of leaving the library parking lot any time soon.

I thought about the article I'd read just before I'd left the library.

There was no suicide note.

And yet there was—wasn't there?

Ralph Greer's mystery note. Signed with an F. Frederick Baines. Written by Frederick Baines but kept in Edward Cowan's possession and never brought out into the light of day. Why? To protect the family's reputation? It would seem a suicide would do enough damage that the fact of there being a note wouldn't make a great deal of difference.

Right?

It all depended on the contents. I wished I could remember the exact words of the note. Something about selling one's soul for a pittance? Something about righteousness being folly, or something like that?

Ralph had not come after me once I'd bolted with the screaming Lucy. Should I go back in and tell him what I had discovered?

There was no suicide note.

And yet there was.

It seemed the wrong thought for a woman to have while holding a milk-drunk infant to her chest. I popped in a lullaby CD. After three songs, Lucy was as floppy as a noodle and undeniably dead to the world. I got out of the front seat and buckled her into her car seat in the back.

After I returned to the front, I started up the car and turned up the next lullaby: “All Through the Night.”

I pulled out of the library lot. I got on the main road, heading south out of town. It didn't matter exactly where I ended up—as long as it distracted me from the words in my head.

There was no—

“Shut up,” I murmured. “
Please.
”

Gerard Barnett was hesitant when I suggested I come over, but I employed my authoritative teacher voice and talked fast.

“I'm in the neighborhood. Actually right by the Arby's where we met. And I'm wondering if I could come by and look at the books you have left from Matthew Barnett's collection?”

“Uh. There's only one left that I didn't sell, remember?” Gerard paused. “And it's not for sale.”

“But could I still look at it? And the trunk that they were stored in? Do you still have that?”

“Yeah. But it's a smelly old thing, really. Why?”

“Anything you have of his. Or his wife's. Anything. I want to look at it.”

“Well. Okay,” he said.

When he greeted me at the door of his modest brown ranch house, Gerard said, “The trunk's in the basement. You'd have to go in the basement. Is that going to bother the baby?”

“Why would it?” I asked, closing the storm door behind me.

“I don't know.” Gerard waved us through a dim den with a courtroom show playing on the television at full volume. “It's a little dark. It doesn't smell great.”

“I think she'll be okay.”

Gerard nodded and opened a door between the den and the kitchen.

Lucy and I followed as he clunked down the stairs. The predominant smell was of dryer sheets, and the place was no messier or danker than your average basement. There were two old electric guitars in the darkest corner—one with strings, one without.

In the opposite corner was a pile of white sheets and clothes jiggling on the vibrating washer—an enormous white bra dangling from the pile, swinging slightly.

“Now, what's this about, exactly?” Gerard said, leading me to a small wooden trunk by the dryer. It was about a foot high, with black metal bands and clasp. “Have you been talking to Patty again? Because I think maybe she tends to exaggerate. She probably gave you some idea that this thing was full of all kinds of old letters or antique treasures or whatever. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but—”

“I didn't talk to Patty. It's just that there were pages ripped out of Frances Barnett's journal.”

Gerard opened the trunk and motioned for me to look inside. It was empty but for one book.

“Her journal?” He repeated.

“Her cookbook. It was really a journal. If you read past the first few pages, it's not about cooking at all.”

“What's it about?”

“Her life. But there's a page missing.” I set down Lucy's car seat and reached for the single book in the trunk. “May I?”

Gerard nodded. “You read the whole thing?”

“It wasn't that long, actually.”

Bouvier's Law Dictionary,
said the gold lettering, difficult to read against the worn black spine. I opened the front cover to see a simple but elegant book plate:
Ex Libris Matthew Barnett.

“See,” said Gerard. “His name right there. Cool, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. I closed the book, turned it over, and opened the back cover. Just simple endpapers, yellowed with age. I opened the front again and flipped the first few pages carefully.

“You know anything about the law?” Gerard asked. “If it wasn't the last of the books, I'd offer it to you. But as I said at the Arby's, I've got a
little
bit of a sentimental streak, you know? Enough to keep the one book.”

Beside us, the washing machine was working up a lopsided rhythm.
Tha-THUMP. Tha-THUMP. Tha-THUMP.

“Uh huh,” I murmured.

Any second I'd here a
swish
and there it would be.

The sound of paper sliding against paper. Paper sliding out of a book, and into the open.

“You have a lot of that kind of old family stuff yourself? Your grandmother's wedding dress, or whatever?”

I shook the book.

“Easy, kid. Easy. That thing is worth a little bit of money.”

THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.

I gripped the book by both covers, pages hanging downward, and swung it back and forth.

“Hey,” Gerard snapped, stepping closer to me. “Honey. Stop that. Is this what you did to the cookbook?”

I backed away from him, gripping the covers tight.

“What's wrong with you?” Gerard demanded. “Didn't you say you were a history teacher? Don't you know this shit is fragile?”

Swish.

I stared at my feet, and at the clouded gray concrete around them.

“Did something fall out?” I whispered.

“No,” said Gerard, putting out both of his hands and closing them around the book.

I yanked the book away and shook it again.

“I think something did. Didn't it? She hid it and she wants me to find it.”

“Honey. Give that to me.”

Gerard reached out and touched my elbow for just a moment. I looked up at his face—perplexed, almost alarmed. His hand was an inch away from my arm, his fingers flexing. He wanted to reach out and grab me and pull the book from my hands, but he was too polite.

“Abby. I don't know what you were expecting to find. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but there's nothing in this book.”

Gerard gripped the book with both hands and wriggled it away from me.

“She wants
me
to find it,” I said again, but Gerard didn't seem to hear me, since the washing machine was continuing to batter itself into a frenzy.
THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.

“There was nothing extra in any of the books I found,” Gerard said, raising his voice over the noise. “I promise you, I checked each one for little treasures, like old cash or a deed to an old farmhouse somewhere.”

Lucy murmured to herself and then resumed sucking noisily on her pacifier. I watched her for a moment and then met Gerard's concerned gaze.

“And yet you didn't even read the whole cookbook,” I said.

“That's different,” he said. “I'm just not a big reader.”

“Not a big reader,” I repeated. I was picking up Wallace's odd conversational habits.

“Right.” Gerard went to the washing machine, leaned over the pile of clothes, and shut it off.

The thumping stopped. It was only then that I recognized how fast my heart had been going, outracing the washing machine. For how long, I wasn't sure. Since I'd started shaking Matthew Barnett's one remaining law book, or since I'd gotten to his house. Or since sitting at that computer in the library? How, precisely, had I managed to drive here?

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I hope I didn't hurt the book.”

Gerard glanced at the book, opening and closing the front cover, and patting it.

“Looks fine.”

I picked up Lucy's carrier and held it in front of my knees with both hands, swinging it gently. “I should go. I shouldn't have surprised you like this.”

I started for the stairs.

Gerard watched me for a moment, and then said, “Uh . . . you need help carrying that?”

“No,” I said. “I'm used to it.”

He followed me up the stairs—though at some distance, I noticed. Probably he thought I was nuts. Probably he was right.

As he opened his front door for me, he asked, “Hey, have you tried any of the recipes from the cookbook?”

“Not yet,” I said. “If I ever do, I'll bring you some.”

Gerard hesitated before closing the door, likely contemplating how to discourage me from doing any such thing.

Just what he needed: arsenic brownies.

“Thanks for letting me look,” I said and then lugged Lucy to my car.