The Fragrance of Her Name (53 page)

The Captain shook his head. “Blinded by another woman’s vision in my mind, I guess.”

“
We did speak with Carissa.” It was all Lauryn could bring herself to say for a moment. And then she added, “She says she doesn’t know anythin’.”

The Captain sighed and smiled regrettably. “At least she has her family again.”

“
But we’re movin’ from Connemara, Captain! Permanently! What…what am I to do?” Lauryn buried her face in her hands and cried quietly for a moment. Then with a deep breath, and a brave resolve she answered herself. “I’ll still live nearby…and the family has unlimited visitin’ rights to the property and…”

“
Carissa said nothing? Nothing to help?” the Captain interrupted.

Lauryn shook her head. “No. But…but I have hope still. Someday…” Lauryn looked at him then. His face was grave, hope draining from his handsome countenance. Lauryn knew he needed to know.

“
She saw Laura…the day she disappeared. They met, one last time, in the cellar to…” Lauryn stopped. Something had made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

“
It’s the last place anyone alive saw her,” Lauryn mumbled. Her mind told her that she’d checked the cellar a thousand times over the years. Never to find a clue…any evidence at all that Lauralynn’s life had ended there. But something urged her on now. Something in her memory of the way Carissa had spoken of the cellar…of the last moments she and Laura had spent together there. Suddenly, a flood of more recent memories enveloped her mind.

When Brant had asked Carissa how she came to possess the tiny tea set, her answer had been,
“I…I…took it from Connemara that day…it had been left in the cellar…in a little basket.”
And Carissa had said she and Laura had played with the tea set in the cellar.

And, there was something her Nana had said. Something about having played with the tea set in the cellar with her older sister. Then there was the fact that Laura had always been so adamant about Brant playing tea party when he was a little boy! She’d always thought that it seemed against Laura’s loving, nurturing nature to torture a little boy so by insisting he play at tea party.

Lauryn’s mind began to smolder with thoughts and emotions coming together like storm clouds, pointing to one place and one item….the missing teacup from the set Carissa had given to Penny, and then to the cellar.

“
Come along, my Captain!” she said, taking his hand and racing toward the cellar.



The root cellar was as dark and as musty as ever. And as always, it caused Lauryn to sniffle several times until fresh air entered through the open door. Standing just inside, Lauryn paused, looking up at the cellar’s dirt ceiling covered in wisteria roots. She thought that it had been some time since anyone had cut them back. She wondered if the Historical Society left them unattended, would they perhaps fill the cellar one day obliterating the ancient part of Connemara? Had other things been hidden in the cellar, covered by some sort of camouflage the way the roots had disguised the ceiling?

The air being somewhat fresher, Lauryn bent down and lit the kerosene lamp sitting just inside. This was it…the very last place Carissa had seen Laura. The cellar itself, seemed more intriguing, more important than it ever had to Lauryn at that moment. There had been too many references to the cellar in recent months, too many hours spent by Brant agonizing over the existence and then unexplained disappearance of the tea cup Laura had carried when he was a child.

She thought of how she and Penny had spent hours of their girlhood each summer in this same cellar, having pretend games of knights and princesses, secret lovers who were reformed highwaymen and such things that are the imaginative dreams of young girls. And now…now it was easier for her to imagine the O’Halleran girls at play there as well. It was even possible for her to visualize Carissa’s and Laura’s last moments together, there in the cellar that they had played in as children.

As she made her way into the belly of the cellar, stepping over various kinds of rubble, Lauryn was even further overwhelmed with sentiment. She was reminded of the excursion she and Brant had first taken together into the cellar which now seemed so long in the past. And she thought of all the other times she had hoped to find Lauralynn hidden in there. She smiled at herself, remembering how, as a young adolescent, she’d found the courage to finally peer into each and every barrel, afraid of being startled by the sudden discovery of a skeleton. That was before she realized the barrels were placed in the cellar long after Lauralynn had disappeared. Even now, as always before, there was an impression of mystery in the cellar. A sense of something hidden.

“
Ow!” Lauryn exclaimed as she stubbed her foot on something. The toes on her left foot were stinging. Bracing herself against the planked wall, she looked down to see that she had tripped on an old ax handle. Upon further inspection, she found her foot was unharmed other than the uncomfortable throbbing from her stubbed toe. Brushing her hand on her dress, for the planks of the wall were filthy, she gasped, as a tiny mouse popped out of a knothole near her head and plopped to the ground scurrying off.

“
For pity’s sake!” she exclaimed, her heart hammering madly. “You scared the syrup out of me, you little rat!” She glared at the knothole in the planking from whence the mouse had appeared. It was only the size of a nickel, just big enough for a mouse to pop through. Lauryn frowned, knowing her father had sealed up the knotholes in the planking years before. Apparently the rodents had worked diligently at undoing his hard work.

It angered her momentarily that her father’s hard work should be destroyed. Bracing herself against the planking with her hands, Lauryn started to peer into the knothole. She caught herself quickly…for what woman in her right mind would want to peer into a dark hole in some rotting plank when a mouse had only just popped out? Where there was one mouse there were hundreds of others. Shaking her head at her stupidity of even considering looking in the hole, Lauryn looked back into the throat of the cellar intent on completing another investigation of it.

However, she paused an instant later, her attention arrested by something else. Just where her right hand pressed against the planking, she could see something…a mark or an odd grain in the wood perhaps. It wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen before…but it was something she hadn’t noticed. Hadn’t really pondered or had the knowledge that she did now, only recently, to use to determine exactly what the thing might be.

A cold chill ran the length of her spine, and the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood erect as she looked at the darkened area on the wood planking. There, just near the knothole where her own hand now pressed, was indeed an oddity…a marking of some sort, several in fact, but one particular mark catching her attention. Brushing at the dirt and years of dust on the planking, she endeavored to uncover the darkened area. Frustrated, she lifted the hem of her dress and rubbed frantically at the spot, even spitting on the fabric and rubbing harder. When she succeeded in somewhat cleaning the area, she stepped back, her hands going to her mouth in horror as she whispered, “Oh, no!”

Lauryn could not believe what she was seeing! Surely her mind was playing tricks on her! There, next to the knothole from which the mouse appeared were several dark stains. One was almost the exact shape of a hand. Not an entire hand, perhaps…but definitely a palm mark with four fingers and a thumb print at appropriate distances to perfectly match the placement of a small hand…just as if someone had leaned against the planking, as she had just done herself. Someone whose hand was covered in blood! For the discolorations were dark and eerie…exactly like the blood stains in Connemara house. Except these had been hidden under decades of dust and dirt. They simply were not as discernable as the ones in the house because of neglect had caused harsher deterioration. No one had painted carefully over these stains, or refinished these seemingly worthless wood planks. And as Lauryn reached out, matching her palm and fingertips to those on the ancient paneling, she knew. She knew whose hand had pressed there long ago.

Frantically, Lauryn turned and ran up the cellar stairs and into the light. “Brant!” she screamed! “Brant! Come quickly!” In the next moment, she remembered he had just left her at Connemara to fetch her Nana home. “Captain? Captain!” Where had he gone? She’d left him just outside the cellar doors. She was alone at Connemara and she was frantic! A sort of panic set in! What should she do? She’d found a clue! The most important of her life! Then a warm calm begin to wash over her as she thought, she had touched Laura’s hand in a manner. There was hope renewed that the mystery, the tragedy of Laura would be solved.

Again she called, “Captain. Captain?” Where was he? Why did he not appear to her? Had her neglect of him caused him to be unable or unwanting to appear to her? “Captain? Please!” After long moments, she heard his voice from behind her and turned to face him.

“
You’ve found something,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.

“
I…I think so,” she answered. The Captain was even less visibly tangible than he had been only minutes before. Was it the afternoon sun?

“
What have you found, Lauryn?”

“
I…I…think it’s a blood stain. A hand print. There…in the cellar. It’s small like a woman’s. Just the size of my own,” she told him excitedly.

“
Then…you think Laura was there?” He asked. His face looked so hopeful, suddenly. So pleading! It broke Lauryn’s heart. For although she had found a clue…and it surely was an important one…she had not yet found Lauralynn! She did not want to give him false hope.

“
I…I don’t know. But it seems that … It seems possible. Don’t you think?” she asked.

The Captain smiled. A sad sort of smile. A smile that Lauryn had seen many times over the years. It told her he was not convinced her discovery was important.

“
Here!” She said reaching out, taking his hand and urging him toward the cellar. “Let me show you. Once you see it…you’ll believe me.”

But, as they reached the cellar door, the Captain stopped. “I can’t enter there, Lauryn.”

Lauryn turned to him tugging at his hand. Then she remembered. Long ago, as a child she had begged the Captain to play in the cellar with her. It had been such a place of mystery to her, and she wanted to share it with him. But he had been unable to enter.

“
The earth,” she whispered. The Captain nodded.

“
You remember now that I cannot enter the earth. My body…the earthly part of me is already there and I…”

“
Cannot return into the earth,” Lauryn finished for him. “But it’s there!” she exclaimed suddenly! “I swear it! I’m not imagining it! A stain in the wood. Just like those that are in the house. And it’s a handprint! It makes since, doesn’t it…that if Lauralynn was wounded in the stomach…she would’ve clutched at it with her hand? And then…being weakened, would’ve used her hands to support herself against a wall.”

The Captain’s eyes filled with tears. His face grimaced in pain. “My Laura,” he whispered. “And I wasn’t there! I wasn’t….I should’ve been here. I ….”

It was only then, after ten years of knowing him, sharing his deepest hopes—only then did Lauryn realize that all the while the Captain had felt guilt as well as deep heartache over Lauralynn’s disappearance.

“
You were a soldier, Captain. Doing your duty, fighting for a just cause. That was your place,” she said.

“
My place was here! At her side! Protecting her! Had I been here she may not have…” he raged.

“
You may have had to watch her die,” Lauryn finished. “Could you have endured watching her die? Would that have been easier?”

“
No,” he admitted. “But it would’ve been an end. None of this roaming…her lost, me searching…you and Brant…your young lives destroyed by ghosts and worry.”

“
Our lives have not been destroyed! Don’t you see?” she pleaded. “You…you and Lauralynn have given us each other!”

“
Perhaps,” he said, forcing a smile.

Lauryn dropped his hand and turned toward the cellar. “There’s something here. I know it,” she called to him.

“
Wait for Brant to return. He’ll help you. He’ll know where to look from here perhaps,” the Captain suggested. “Wait for Brant.”

But Lauryn paid him no heed. She was close! She felt it! If she was close…if she could somehow find Laura’s body, find an end to the torture that both lost spirits had endured…then would Brant be hers? She felt that he would. Their moments on the train home from Memphis…something had changed. Brant seemed to have been letting go of Laura somehow, looking toward the future and his own life.

“
I couldn’t leave you upset like that, Lauryn,” Brant said as he stepped into the cellar behind her.

“
Brant!” Lauryn exclaimed, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly. “You perfect, perfect man!”

“
Well, I doubt that…but your Nana will just have to wait at the station a little longer until I’m certain that you’re…”

“
Look! Look what I’ve found!” Lauryn released him and taking his hand, led him to the place where the wood was stained. “I was talking with the Captain…thinking about things and I realized…Carissa said she took the tea set from the cellar that last day she saw Laura! Nana said they all used to play tea party down here! And you! Why do you think Laura would torture you so as a child…making you play at dolls and tea parties?”