Chapter 25
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F inding out where the coffee shop was located took a bit longer, and, by the time Doreen pulled up, she watched an older woman walking slowly but steadily toward the front door of the café. Doreen smiled as she stepped toward her and asked, “Sandra Brown?”
“Yes.” The woman smiled. “Come on in with me. I could use a cup of tea.”
They quickly ordered tea for two and headed to a table in the far back corner. The other woman sat down a little heavily, as if it had been a long day.
“Are you doing okay?” Doreen asked.
“Surely you know that you’re bringing up memories I’m not very comfortable with,” she replied. “Did you talk to Lily Dale?”
“I certainly did, and she told me all about her heartache,” Doreen noted.
Sandra sighed. “That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through in my life. You don’t know what it’s like, until all these people you thought were friends suddenly step away, or worse, pretend to be your friend, then lead the distribution of gossip about you. When the people you thought you could rely on are suddenly nowhere to be found, it changes you.”
Doreen smiled at her. “I do understand.”
Sandra eyed her for a moment and nodded. “Maybe you do. I did hear some rumors about you too.”
“Of course,” Doreen noted. “Apparently I’ve gained a fair amount of notoriety in the area.”
“You sure have.” She looked around and whispered, “I so wish you had the animals with you.”
“If I hadn’t been to the retirement home to see Lily Dale earlier, I probably would have brought them along. As it was, that home had so much paperwork to even apply to bring in my animals, I would still be trying to fill it all out,” she quipped, with a smile. “Speaking of which, I need to get home to them soon.”
“Of course, of course. So, what is it I can help you with?”
“You can tell me what you know about this man Bartlet Jones, who went missing fifty years ago, yet another man who Rose had an affair with, plus more about Rose and her sister.”
“Ah, for one thing, Rose and her sister looked very much alike, almost identical twins in fact,” she stated, “and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they hadn’t gotten up to some shenanigans by trading places.”
“But they weren’t twins, right?”
“No, they weren’t twins at all, but they had an uncanny likeness that was quite striking. It’s just that Rose knew how to work it, I guess, whereas Poppy wasn’t worried about working it. She was calm and happy just being herself.”
“Which is always nice,” Doreen noted.
“It is nice, but it’s not necessarily a very workable scenario when your own sister is out to get you. Rose stole many a boyfriend from Poppy.”
Doreen didn’t say anything for a moment, then nodded. “That would have been very difficult for Poppy, I would think.”
“Exactly, and it was, indeed. I did see her every once in a while, and we smiled, you know, both victims of the avalanche called Rose that swept through our lives and destroyed everything, then moved on. Unfortunately that was how you had to look at Rose.”
“Which is very interesting,” Doreen muttered, “because I wouldn’t have thought that people would speak of Rose’s sister as fondly as many do.”
“The only reason they wouldn’t speak about Poppy like that was because she didn’t destroy their lives. Rose did,” Sandra declared, frowning at Doreen. “For those of us who paid the price of having Rose in our world, believe me that there was a high price to pay, and that included Poppy too.”
Doreen winced at that. “I am really very sorry to hear that and sorry that you went through that.”
“It was a long time ago now,” Sandra stated, “but thank you. The day I found out remains one of the worst of my life.”
“What did you do?” she asked her.
“I screamed and railed at my husband and basically kicked him out of the house. Then I called Rose and yelled at her.”
“And her response?”
“She laughed,” she shared. “She just laughed.”
“Ah.” Doreen winced. “And that would have been the worst thing.”
“Absolutely the worst,” she agreed. “So many things went wrong in our world back then, and we had so little recourse.”
“Did you ever go on to have a family?” Doreen asked her.
“I already had a family when Rose blew it apart. That was another reason for taking my husband back again,” she shared. “We had two daughters, and I had no idea how I was supposed to raise them on my own. I didn’t have any money and no job skills, so it was all I could do to survive while he was out of the picture. When he came back, there was a certain amount of relief, knowing I could get some help,” she explained.
“There was no child support, or even courts for that thing. You were left to rely on help from the people around you, neighbors and friends, but having been ostracized the way I was, I didn’t get much in the way of assistance. Plus, by then, I made such a pitiful picture, I didn’t want anybody to see me.”
“That must have been terribly frustrating, since you had done nothing wrong,” Doreen stated.
“In the eyes of many, my crime was clear. I simply wasn’t woman enough to keep my man. So, they somehow felt justified to talk about it endlessly among themselves.” Sandra shook her head.
Doreen frowned. “When it came to Rose, you mentioned that you thought she dressed up as Poppy every once in a while?”
“I know she did because Poppy told me so. She was devastated because Rose had gone out with somebody Poppy was dating and had completely destroyed things ever after because he was suddenly so enamored and so in love and wanted to get married, except it wasn’t Poppy he wanted to marry. It was Rose. Yet he hadn’t realized it was Rose he’d been out with instead of Poppy. Rose went out with him several times because it was just a big lark to her,” Sandra muttered.
Doreen stared at her. “Nobody really wanted to say that Rose may not have been a very nice person.”
Sandra laughed. “That’s because people don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, but, once you’ve been brutalized by someone like Rose, you stop having any concern or worry about that,” she muttered.
“What Rose did to her own sister sounds so awful. Such an awful thing to have happen to Poppy or to Lily, or to you.”
“It was. It absolutely was,” she muttered, “but what could I do about it? It happened, and I was devastated. Just as Poppy was devastated. But we had no better options, so we all moved on.”
“What about Poppy, did you stay friends with her?” Doreen asked.
“I did, and then she up and left, a long time ago.”
“Interesting,” she muttered. “I wonder why?”
“I think her sister pulled even more games on her, and finally she’d had enough of it. I did see Rose every once in a while after that, but I never spoke to her. I wouldn’t talk to that woman. She was the scarlet woman, yet somehow she became a scarlet woman everybody was jealous of, which I never understood. Yet that’s how it was. Men showered her with attention. They gave her gifts, gave her jewelry, took her out to the nicest places, and did all kinds of things, all to find favor and to win her hand, yet nobody ever really won over Rose.”
Doreen wasn’t even sure what to say after that. “And you’ve never spoken to Poppy since?”
“I lost track of her quite a while ago. She moved back east, I believe,” she muttered, with a wave of her hand. “But who could blame her? It’s just one of those things.”
“Right,” Doreen said. “Do you know anybody who would have any information about this man Bartlet Jones who went missing fifty years ago?”
“Times were different fifty years ago, and we didn’t have the same law enforcement as we do now. We had no way to keep in communication. We had phones, of course, but landline phones. Depending on what time you were talking, the lines were even shared with neighbors.”
“Right,” Doreen muttered. They talked for a few more minutes, and then Doreen added, “Sandra, I want to thank you very much for your help.”
The other woman laughed. “I’ve hardly been of any help.”
“If you get bored, you may want to go say hello to Lily Dale,” Doreen suggested. “I got the distinct impression that she’s in that home, just waiting to die, and she could really use a friend. All her family is dead, and she’s the last in line.”
“That’s what those homes are all about,” Sandra grumbled, “and frankly that’s why I refuse to go there.”
“And yet probably a lot of people you know are there or are visiting someone else there. Surely you don’t count them among your enemies at this point, do you?” Doreen asked.
“The only true enemy I ever had was Rose,” she stated. “Poppy was wonderful, but we were tied together by nastiness that neither one of us wanted to recall.” Sandra shook her head. “So, it’s not as if we wanted to remember.”
“No, of course not,” Doreen agreed, with a knowing smile. “Understood.” With that, she got Sandra’s phone number, in case Doreen had any other questions. Then as she stood to leave, Sandra stopped her.
“How did you get over your husband?” Sandra asked.
Doreen turned to her and smiled. “I found Mack, and that gave me a whole new perspective on life.”
“Good for you,” the other woman replied. “I guess I should have tried someone new, but I just couldn’t see it. My good-for-nothing husband was the one person I’d always loved all my life.”
Doreen nodded. “You don’t need to feel guilty about that. The only person who gets to make choices about your life is you. And you chose to accept him back. I presume he was good afterward?”
“As good as gold,” she said, with a nod. “I think he realized that life as a single man wasn’t exactly what he thought it would be.”
“Then it worked out for both of you,” Doreen noted, and, with that, she turned and left.