Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Present Day
R ose was back in the library at the Grayson Estate. It was early morning, not yet ten, but the construction crew was already hard at work, hammers rocketing. Out the window, she could see a few men in hard hats circling the gazebo, gesturing with their thick arms. One of them had mentioned it was probably best to “rip the gazebo down and start over,” but Rose was adamant that they maintain the old structure. “Whatever it takes” was her mantra.
With a cup of coffee in hand, Rose wandered through shelves of books, reading their spines, trying to imagine Oren purchasing them on his adventures around the world—adventures he’d had before he’d met Rose. She stopped short in the B-section, mouth ajar at the sight of Jane Eyre. A chill came over her. There was only one copy. Carefully, she pulled it out and held it out in front of her. It felt like something from ancient Rome.
Inside the cover, Oren’s mother had written her name.
“It was my mother’s favorite,” Oren had told her when he’d first recommended the novel that night at the Walden Estate. Still roiling with a stomach bug, Rose had stayed awake all night reading it, trying to uncover the madness behind Oren’s eyes. A man who’d lost everything. A man who’d looked at me as though I could restore his heart.
Rose’s current plan was to go through the first-floor rooms, throwing away anything unrecognizable or worth nothing or too damaged after years of abandonment to be kept. She had trash bags; she had a truck that was ready to be filled. She’d even packed rubber gloves, just in case anything was too gross for hand contact.
Rose got to work that morning in the sitting room nearest the library. Half of the room had been greatly damaged in the fire, and she put on a face mask and gloves and shoved blackened items into bags—pillows and blankets and sofa cushions and pieces of art that no longer revealed anything. Sometimes, she allowed herself to imagine Natalie and Oren sitting here, perhaps reading together quietly or talking about their days. Oren had once maintained that Natalie was the true love of his life. It had always been difficult for Rose not to believe that. The one you lost was always the one you craved.
Rose broke for lunch at one and sat outside with the construction workers, chatting with them about their wives or their children and about previous jobs they’d worked on. It was clear that they weren’t accustomed to their clients going out of their way to ask them questions, and they soon loosened up and cracked jokes with Rose.
Rose knew, They thought I was wealthy and cold like Mrs. Walden always was with staff members.
But Rose was something else.
“I hate to say this,” one of them said, giving her a wry smile, “but there’s something in your accent I can’t place. You aren’t from the East, are you?”
Rose laughed. “It’s been a long time since anyone noticed!”
“What is it?” the worker asked, cupping his chin.
“You don’t want to wager a guess?” Rose asked.
The construction worker twisted around to address the others. “Who wants to bet on where Rose is really from?”
All hell broke loose after that. Rose ate her sandwich and listened, smiling, as the workers squabbled over where Rose might be from and how much they were willing to bet their guesses. They’d decided that whoever got closest in miles to the original birthplace was the winner, which meant they all got as specific as possible.
“I’m going to guess Nashville, Tennessee,” one said.
“I’m going with Atlanta, Georgia,” another said.
“Dallas.”
“Los Angeles. Look at that skin! She’s a California girl.”
Nobody said Mississippi, but one of the guys said “New Orleans,” and he eventually took the cash prize of sixty-two dollars. He grinned sheepishly, showing his dimples.
“How did you know she was from the Deep South?” one of them asked him.
“I didn’t,” he said. “But I always wanted to go to New Orleans. I figured I’d take my chance.” He blinked at Rose. “Have you been to New Orleans?”
Rose hesitated. “I always wanted to go.”
“It’s so close to where you grew up!” he said.
Rose remembered the dimly lit living room, her brothers and sisters screaming and tearing everything apart, her mother’s tired eyes, and her father’s cruelty.
“Traveling wasn’t really on my radar until I left home,” Rose said.
“But you’re well-traveled now,” the worker said. It was almost like an accusation.
“Yes. I suppose so.” Rose placed her half-eaten sandwich back in its foil. “I guess that means I’d better get down to New Orleans.”
“It’s waiting for you,” the man said.
Rose returned to her work with even more rigor—and an even deeper comprehension of the immensity of her task. She threw things away tirelessly, created piles of items that seemed worth something, and hunted for Oren in the small details, in the stopwatch on a dresser, in a painting that she thought might be of his mother when she was a teenager. She found an old note from Zachary to Oren, in which Zachary said he’d meet him at the horse barn at seven o’clock. Zachary called him “a rascal” in the note.
It was the first time Rose had thought of Zachary in a while. Where did he live now?
Rose pulled up Zachary’s name online and read a brief article about Zachary’s recent sale of a company for twenty-two million dollars. The featured photograph showed him as a typical sixty-something-year-old super-elite Manhattan resident. He was on his fourth wife.
Rose noted that he still had that bright smile. It helped him get away with just about everything.
The rest of that day and the two after that were the same. Rose worked and cleaned and piled, making sense of a space that she’d never dreamed would be hers. She ate with the construction workers and got to know them better, teasing them and baking their favorite treats.
All the while, Sean Slagle updated her on the search for her stone sculpture. “We haven’t found it yet,” he admitted.
It was the end of the third day that Rose discovered Natalie’s room.
Rose was on the second floor of the Grayson Estate, wearing a ratty white T-shirt and a pair of jeans with holes in the knees. Outside was stormy, gray clouds stirring and frothing as though they were in a blender. Rose listened to the construction workers arguing about something in the ballroom—something about whether or not the roof would really hold. She winced and said a brief prayer. Please save that gorgeous ceiling.
The room was at the opposite end of the house from where the fire had broken out and had been sealed, most of it covered with plastic and white sheets, its curtains closed against the sun. Rose entered, thinking it was just another guest bedroom at first. Another bedroom for the future bed and breakfast.
Rose pulled a thick plastic sheet off a piece of art on the wall. Her heart dropped into her stomach.
Natalie.
Here was a glossy portrait of Oren’s first wife, dressed in her wedding gown. She was probably twenty or twenty-one in the painting, so terribly delicate and young, her pretty hands crossed on her lap, her blue eyes crystalline. Rose’s eyes filled with tears. The woman who died in the fire. The woman who lost her life in this very home.
Oren’s great love.
Rose continued to remove plastic sheets and bedsheets to reveal a quaint little room with a secretary desk, a Turkish rug, and maybe two hundred books—Rose’s favorite books. Inside the desk were fountain pens and photographs from Rose’s life before Oren, photographs that weren’t pressed into any books and hung loosely in drawers. The photos showed Natalie as a beautiful and pale little thing, her arms around her girlfriends, her eyes alight. Based on her clothes, Rose guessed that Natalie hadn’t come from money, either. She didn’t know why that surprised her so much. She’d initially thought Natalie came from Oren’s world, that they’d met because they were blessed with families with deep pockets. But it looked like Oren had scooped Natalie out of nowhere.
She’s like me, Rose thought.
She cursed herself for never asking Oren where he’d met Natalie. She’d thought it better to avoid the topic at all costs.
Here I am, faced with the mystery of Natalie—the woman my husband could never get over.
Tucked away in the bottom drawer of the secretary's desk was Natalie’s diary.
It was the size of Rose’s hand. No lines. Soft pages. Her tight, feminine handwriting.
Rose’s heart thudded. She couldn’t believe this. Then again, wasn’t something like this part of the reason she’d wanted to buy the house in the first place? She’d wanted to dig into the undiscovered pieces of a past she couldn’t fully comprehend. She’d wanted to make sense of her life—and therefore Natalie’s life, cut too short?
Rose flipped to the last entry to find the date: June 16, 1993.
Tears filled Rose’s eyes. She stared at the date—the date of the fire—and felt as though she floated. She imagined herself at twenty-one on the opposite side of the forest, watching the smoke and the helicopter. At that very moment, a young and beautiful woman had been here. At that very moment, she’d been dying. Nobody had been able to save her.
Rose filled her lungs and read:
June 16, 1993
Sometimes I think back to my first days with Oren. I remember the way he held me, the way he kissed me, the way he promised me everything. The entire world and everything I wanted inside of it. His entire heart.
I never could have imagined this.
I live in terror of him.
It’s impossible to say what he’ll be like when he wakes up in the morning. On the rare mornings we wake up in the same bed, I peek over and watch his face, watch his mood come over him. If his eyes glint evilly, I make myself scarce.
If I don’t run away from him if I don’t give him space? There’s no telling what he’ll do. The bruises up and down my right arm are proof of that.
I don’t know if I’ll make it out alive.
Rose snapped the book closed, her blood pressure skyrocketing, her tongue scratchy. Slowly, she walked to the window and peered out at the construction workers, lined up in raincoats and smoking cigarettes. She breathed a sigh of relief. I’m in the year 2024, she reminded herself. Natalie has been gone for thirty-one years. I haven’t seen Oren in what feels like forever.
But Natalie’s words felt so prescient, so terrifying. They rattled through Rose’s mind.
Rose protected the diary with a plastic bag and left the Grayson Estate a few minutes later. Although she initially planned to drive straight to Hilary’s for a Salt Sisters dinner, she cut early and went into town, parking outside the police station. It was nearly five thirty. Sean Slagle had said he was in every day till seven if something didn’t take him out of the office.
Rose approached the front desk at the police station with the plastic-wrapped diary pressed against her stomach. She felt like a girl in the principal’s office. She wondered if anyone ever felt fully grown up or if it was always just an act.
“Hi! Is Officer Slagle still here?” she asked.
“Let me check,” the receptionist said. She dialed into his office, and the phone rang and rang and rang.
Rose felt despondent. She wasn’t sure she could wait another day before sharing what she’d found. It’s taken thirty-one years for anyone to dig deeper into this. Why?
“He’s not there,” the receptionist said. “But I can leave a note and have him call you back tomorrow?”
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Rose said. “Thank you.”
Rose left the office and wandered through downtown with her heart in her throat, thinking back to those long-lost days when she’d been a nobody-babysitter for the Waldens; when she’d hardly had a few pennies to rub together and had spent her days off stretched out on public beaches, eavesdropping on tourists. Everything had sizzled with magic. She’d been so curious about this world that she hadn’t understood.
The diner where she’d gone on her first day off in 1993 was still open all these years later. Rose didn’t go often; it was out of her way, and she didn’t eat as many greasy meals as she had at twenty-one. But sometimes she dipped in to have a slice of pie and chat with the servers, some of whom had worked there thirty-one years ago, too. It felt as though they’d gone through time together.
Rose grabbed her favorite booth and placed Natalie’s diary on the seat beside her. A server by the name of Brenda approached to say, “Rosie, darling! How long has it been?”
Rose smiled and asked Brenda about her grandchildren and the garden that remained her pride and joy. Brenda was frustrated about her grandson. She just couldn’t get him excited about mathematics. “Computers are everything these days. If he wants a job, he needs to learn how all that works!”
“He’s still young,” Rose assured her. “Little boys like running around and getting into scrapes.”
“I know. There’s still time.” But Brenda looked worried. “Do you want your usual?”
“Actually, I’ll have a burger today,” Rose said, surprising herself. She didn’t feel up for the Salt Sisters dinner. She knew it would be obvious how upset she was about Natalie’s diary, and she didn’t want to field questions from Hilary. Not today.
“Fries? Onion rings?”
“Can I get a mix of both?”
Brenda winked. “Anything for our girl.”
That was when the door sprang open, bell jangling. Brenda and Rose turned to watch as a familiar man dressed in uniform appeared, adjusting his hat.
It was Sean.