“I know,” Julie said.
“Are you thinking he…that he was the one who…” He couldn’t seem to finish the sentence.
“I don’t know, Ethan,” I said. “I don’t know what to think.”
“I need to talk to him,” he said. “In person. How do you feel about going with me?”
I thought of how I had Lucy to share the burden of the past with me. Ethan had no one. I didn’t want him to go through this alone. “Of course I’ll go with you,” I said.
So here I sat, while my mixed-up daughter was out somewhere with her baby’s father and Lucy comforted our distraught mother.
I saw Ethan’s truck turn into the lot, and I got out of my car as he pulled up next to me.
Once out of his truck, he drew me into a hug. “Thanks for agreeing to meet me here,” he said into my ear. He held on to me for a minute and I pressed my palms flat against his back.
“You okay?” I whispered.
He let go of me. “Not really,” he said. I could see the frown lines between his eyebrows and the tight set of his jaw.
“Does he know we’re coming?” I asked.
He nodded, taking my hand as we walked toward the entrance to the large brick building. “I called him and ended up telling him nearly everything because he kept asking questions. I said that your mother told you about her relationship with him and the possibility that he had been Isabel’s father,” he said. “And I told him about the note in the giraffe.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing for a minute. Then I could hear him crying.” Ethan shuddered, squeezing my hand tightly. “I’ve never seen my father cry,” he said. “I’ve never even seen him near tears, not when my mother or Ned died. He couldn’t speak, and I told him that I was coming over and not to worry. That we’d work everything out.” We were in the lobby now and Ethan pushed the button for the elevator. “He said ‘all right.’ I swear, Julie, he sounded like a scared little kid.”
A couple of the residents—two elderly women using walkers—got on the elevator with us, so we said nothing as we rode to the fifth floor. We got off the elevator, and Ethan led me down the hall at a quick pace. He knocked on a door bearing a small, faux-ivy wreath. We could hear noise inside. A thud. A squeak. But no one answered Ethan’s knock.
Ethan leaned close to the door. “Dad?” he called. Still no response.
He looked down at his key chain and sorted through the keys until he found the right one. Slipping it into the lock, he pushed open the door.
We were in a small, neat living/dining room combination, with heavy, dark cherry furniture and rich leather wingback chairs befitting a former chief justice.
“Dad?” Ethan called toward what must have been the bedroom. He took a step in that direction, but froze at the sound of a scream coming from somewhere outside the building. We looked toward the living-room windows. One of them was open, the screen missing.
“God, no!” Ethan rushed toward the window.
I followed him and rested my hand on his back as he leaned out the window to look at the ground below.
“No,” he wailed. “Oh, my God, Dad! No.”
Now there was a chorus of screams coming from the ground far below us and I started to tremble. I did not want to see what he was seeing. Ethan pulled away from the window and dropped to the floor, his hands covering his face. I sat down next to him and wrapped my arms around him, and I rocked him, as we waited for the sound of sirens.
Mr. Chapman had used the second bedroom in his apartment as an office, and it was there, on an otherwise empty desktop, that one of the police officers found the letter addressed to Ethan.
Dearest Son,
On August 5, 1962, Isabel Bauer approached me in our backyard and slipped a note to me. That was the note you found, in which she threatened to tell her father about my indiscretion with her mother. I suppose all these years later, it’s hard for you to understand how threatening that was to me. Charles Bauer could do irreparable damage to my career. He had power and plenty of friends in high places. He could easily have ruined me and my political aspirations.
I knew that Ned was in the habit of meeting Isabel on the beach at midnight. I forbade him to meet her that night, but I overheard him talking to her on the phone, telling her he might be able to sneak out after all. I saw that as my opportunity to talk to her alone. I lit into Ned, telling him he could not go out. Then I went to meet her myself. Please understand, I had no intention of killing Isabel. I merely wanted to talk to her in private so that I could dissuade her from speaking to her father about me. I found her on the platform. It was dark and I think as I swam out to her, she may have thought I was Ned. She was furious when she discovered I had come to speak with her. She tried to jump in the water to get away from me, but I grabbed her arm and we struggled. I guess that’s when her sister heard her scream and yell for help, although I don’t remember everything that happened. All I know is we argued and she fell into the water. I did not push her. I had no idea that she’d hit her head or that she’d drowned. I thought she was simply swimming underwater to get away from me. I didn’t know she’d died until the next morning. I told the police I’d spent the night stargazing with Ned in our yard, knowing that Ned would think my lie was meant to protect him, but it had really been to protect myself and my career.
I’ve struggled with my guilt all these years, not only over Isabel Bauer’s death but over Ned’s descent into depression and alcoholism as well. I am quite certain that Ned found the note from Isabel, as it disappeared from the cigarette box in which I’d placed it, though he never said a word to me about it. I’m sure that he put two and two together and realized my role in Isabel’s death. I feel as though I killed them both.
Don’t grieve for me, Ethan. I’ve had far more joy in my life than I’ve deserved and much of that has come from watching you become the skilled carpenter, wonderful father and honorable man you are today. I love you.
Dad
CHAPTER 47
Maria
Lucy left about eight last night, once I’d convinced her I was fine—which I most certainly was not. Then Julie called at ten-thirty, just to check up on me, she said, but her voice was strange. A little too falsely chipper. She told me she wouldn’t make it to church this morning, but she asked me to come over to her house after mass for brunch with her and Lucy and Ethan. I accepted the invitation. I kept trying to still my mind, telling myself the truth would come out in time and that I couldn’t change it by thinking about it, but despite my efforts, my thoughts raced and I barely slept a wink all night long. I knew something was up. I was not an idiot. I suspected Julie was going to tell me what I’d already guessed: Ross Chapman murdered my child.
The sermon at church this morning was about repentance. Aha, I thought, this sermon is custom designed for me. I was prepared to give the priest all my attention, and yet my mind still wandered. I was glad when mass was over, and I actually ran a yellow light in my rush to get to Julie’s.
I arrived before Lucy and Ethan and let myself in the front door. I heard shouting coming from the kitchen. Shannon’s voice, then Julie’s. I was about to walk into the middle of an argument. Shannon screamed an expletive at her mother, and I cringed. Not an argument, I thought. A down-and-dirty fight.
Julie was yelling about cutting Shannon off from her health insurance if she moved to Colorado with her young man.
“And forget about me paying for college if you ever decide to go,” she yelled. Julie was not a yeller, and I knew she had reached the point of desperation with my granddaughter. “Forget about any monetary support from me, period!” she shouted.
Shannon gave as good as she got, calling her mother manipulative, conniving and cruel before I’d even taken six steps across the living-room floor. She was crying, though. I could hear the tears in her voice. I walked toward the kitchen and quietly observed from the doorway. Julie was at the granite counter using a melon baller on a ripe cantaloupe, going at it as
though she was cutting out her daughter’s heart. Shannon paced around the island punching numbers into her cell phone as she hollered ugly words at her mother. I watched the two of them perform the dance I remembered all too well.
Shannon was first to notice me. She closed her phone, dropped her gaze to the floor, then walked past me out of the room.
“Bye, Nana,” she muttered beneath her breath, and I heard the front door open, then slam shut.
Julie set down the melon baller and raised her hand to her forehead. Her eyes were closed and she looked as if she had a headache. I wasn’t sure what to say. What words would have helped me when I was in her position? What words would have gotten through my thick skull?
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Julie wiped her hands on a paper towel, then leaned against the counter, arms folded across her chest. “She insists she’s leaving in a week with Tanner,” she said. “They had a big party here while I was out of town, Mom. Dozens of kids. Alcohol and who knows what else. She and Tanner slept in my bed.”
Petty little things in the big picture, I thought. I felt tired. I thought of Isabel on the bay at midnight with Ned. Of me out in the blueberry lot with Ross. “It’s a never-ending circle,” I said, “and Shannon is doomed to face it with her own child in another seventeen years or so.”
Julie looked at me as though she didn’t understand a word I’d spoken.
We heard the front door open, and in a moment, Lucy and Ethan came into the kitchen. Ethan didn’t even acknowledge me as he walked over to Julie for an embrace. Julie shut her eyes tightly as she held him. Then she backed away, her hands on either side of his face.
“How are you?” She looked into his eyes, and I knew there was something strong growing between the two of them. I’d suspected it at the barbecue, but now I knew it for sure.
Lucy put her arm around my waist. “Did you tell her?” she asked Julie, who shook her head.
“Tell me what?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
Ethan looked at me. “My father killed himself last night,” he said.
My God. I wasn’t sure if I’d said those words out loud or to myself. That was not what I’d expected to hear. I felt light-headed, and Ethan grabbed a chair from beneath the kitchen table and slipped it under me. I held his arm as I sat down, then I looked into his red-rimmed eyes. “I’m so sorry, Ethan,” I said.
He nodded.
“You sit, too,” Julie said to him, and he didn’t argue as she led him to a chair. He looked as numb as I felt.
“He confessed, Mom,” Julie said. “You were right. Isabel had written that note to him. After he read it, he told Ned not to meet her on the platform that night so that he could meet her himself to try to convince her not to tell Daddy about…about you and Mr. Chapman. He said it was an accident, that Izzy lost her balance and he tried to grab her arm to keep her from falling. He didn’t realize that she’d hit her head. He didn’t know until the next day that she drowned.”
“At least that’s what he claimed,” Ethan said, rubbing his eyes.
“Poor old soul,” I said. If I’d agreed to see Ross, might I have prevented his suicide? That was something I could never know. I looked at Ethan. I wanted to lift a bit of his sorrow. “Your father was as flawed as any human that ever walked the earth,” I said, “but I believe him. I don’t think he was capable of premeditated murder, especially not of a girl he believed was his daughter.” The thought of Isabel’s last minutes came to me again, as it did too often, and I brushed it away. I would deal with that later. Not here. Not now. “The person I feel the worst about is poor George Lewis,” I added.
Julie suddenly started to cry. Ethan got to his feet and pulled her gently into his arms again, and I felt grateful to him for coming back into her life the way he had. Despite my earlier misgivings about the two of them getting together, I liked seeing the comfortable intimacy between them and I was glad something good had come out of this mess. But although Ethan was sweet in his attempt to comfort her, Julie was inconsolable. She couldn’t seem to stop crying. Ethan looked past her at me. “She’s always felt as though everyone blamed her for Isabel’s death,” he explained.
Oh no, I thought. Was that my fault? I stood up and moved next to the two of them.
“Sweetheart,” I said, rubbing Julie’s back. “I never blamed you.” That wasn’t precisely the truth. In the beginning, I did blame her, but it was a short-lived anger. I knew in my heart she’d never meant to hurt her sister. My anger toward her had evolved into a grief that had consumed me for a long time. It never occurred to me to take back the cruel things I’d said to Julie in the hours and days after we lost Isabel. Julie had seemed fine to my grief-blinded eyes. I saw now how she’d suffered, and I also saw my opportunity to address the mother-daughter strife that seemed to plague our family.
“Julie,” I said, “if anyone besides Ross is to blame for Isabel’s death, it’s me.”
Julie was quick to shake her head. Pulling away from Ethan, she brushed the tears from her face with her hands. “No, Mom,” she said. “Don’t even think that.”
“It’s the truth,” I said. “I pushed Isabel away from me by trying to hold on to her too tightly.” I looked hard into my daughter’s face. “Do you hear me, Julie?” I asked. “Do you? I don’t want to see you make that same mistake with Shannon.”
CHAPTER 48
Julie
I had prepared plenty of food—melon and strawberries, bagels and cream cheese, scrambled eggs and sausage—but none of us ate more than a bite. We sat in the dining room, since it was too hot to eat on the porch. The eggs and sausage grew cold as we talked, as we washed the air clear of things never before said. If I’d only had the courage to talk to my mother decades ago about Isabel, my suffering—and I am sure hers, as well—would have been far less. Instead, I grew into adulthood nursing my guilt, still holding on to a twelve-year-old’s version of all that had happened. Why had we spent forty years tiptoeing around the elephant in the room? Did we think it would go away, that if we starved it by ignoring it, it would shrink until it was skinny enough to slip out the door? I vowed to never again make that mistake. Bringing things out in the open when they happened could be painful, but it was like getting a vaccination: the needle stung, but that was nothing compared to getting the disease.
After brunch, Ethan went upstairs to my room for a nap. His daughter, Abby, and her husband and baby were coming over later and together, we would make the arrangements for Ethan’s father.
Lucy left after helping Mom and me clean up a bit; she had a ZydaChicks rehearsal to go to. My mother stayed with me a while longer, though. Once the kitchen was clean, she sat with me on the sofa in the living room, holding my hand. Or maybe I was holding hers. Either way, I liked the way it felt.
“There’s one other thing we never talk about,” I said to her after we’d sat that way for a few minutes. “Something I never tell you.”
“What’s that, Julie?” she asked.
“How much I love you,” I said. “I always told you that when I was a kid, and then somewhere along the line, I got out of the habit.You’re going to hear it from me a lot from now on.”
“I knew it even when you didn’t say it,” she said. “But it would be wonderful to hear.”
“Also,” I was on a roll, “I think you’re smart and beautiful and vibrant. And I feel lucky to have you as my mother.” I couldn’t believe how good it felt to get those words out! “I hope I’m just like you when I’m your age.”
She chuckled. “I’ll ask Micky D’s to hold a job open for you,” she said, but then she sobered. She gave my hand a squeeze. “I…I made light of what you just said, didn’t I?” she said, shaking her head with a sigh. “That’s what we do in this family. When we get too close to the honest truth, we start squirming and back away.” She turned to face me. “I heard every word you said, Julie, and I’ll treasure them always. I love you, dear.”
We hugged, and I could have sat
with her arms around me for hours. I felt blessed, my happiness at that moment marred only by my thoughts about the man sleeping in my bed upstairs. He would never have the chance I was having to heal his own family with truth and forgiveness.
When my mother left, I sat in my office—it seemed like months since I’d actually written in that room—and began making phone calls to funeral homes in the Lakewood area. I wanted to gather information to give Ethan when he woke up. I didn’t really know what I was doing. This was the first time I’d ever been in the position of handling such arrangements. For Ethan, it would be the third time in less than two years.
I was hanging up the phone when I heard Shannon’s car in the driveway. She came into the house through the front door and headed up the stairs, probably to do some more packing.
“Shannon?” I called.
Her footsteps stopped.
“What?”
“Could you come here, please?”
She didn’t budge. I could picture her standing there, debating whether to continue to her room or come to my office. I heard her sigh. In a moment, she was standing in my office doorway. She didn’t look at me directly. I guessed that she expected me to continue our argument from earlier in the day.
“Sit down, honey,” I said, trying with my tone of voice to let her know I had no intention of fighting.
She hesitated, then walked over to the love seat and sat down. I rolled my chair closer to her.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this morning,” I said. “I love you very much.You know I don’t want you to go to Colorado, but if you want to go, I won’t stand in your way.” The words nearly choked me, but I got them out.
Shannon looked puzzled for a moment, as though she wondered if she’d stumbled into the right house.
“Are you kidding?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I won’t lie to you, Shannon. I’m sick about you leaving. I want to lock you in your room and keep you here. I’ll be so worried about you, because you are the most important thing in the world to me.” My voice broke ever so slightly. I doubted she’d even noticed. “But you can go if that’s what you want,” I said. “Just remember that you’re always—always—welcome to come home, with no recriminations. Okay?”