Chapter 22 #2
Tears sprang to her eyes. He was the one who should be suffering right now. He was the one who had lost Allison. He was the one Traeger Hall had wounded. Yet here he was, reassuring her because—why? Had he somehow seen past her own bricked-up doors and windows?
Zane ran his fingers through her hair along the side of her head, tucking it carefully behind her ear.
It was a familiar gesture, and Jennie wasn’t sure he’d earned the right to show such intimacy after only a brief time of getting to know her.
But somehow it felt safe. Right. It was a gesture of comfort, not of want. A gesture of giving, not of taking.
“Go see Gladys, Jen. See what Allison still has to tell us. To tell you.”
“Me?” Jennie whispered.
“Open your door, Jen,” Zane said. “Just a crack. Let us in.”
A man not much older than Zane opened Gladys’s door. He was quite paunchy around his waist, and he moved slow, but he had a friendly face and ruddy cheeks. “You must be Jennie!” he greeted and held out a hand. “Grandma Gladys told me you were coming. I’m Todd.”
“Hi.” Jennie took his hand.
Todd welcomed her inside the stuffy, small ranch house. The windows were all closed to shut out the fall coolness. In fact, it seemed that the heat was on too, and Jennie was immediately overcome by the smothering air.
“Gladys is your grandmother?” she asked, trying to make conversation as Todd led her into the house.
“Yeah, she is.”
Jennie wondered if Percy Wellington was Todd’s father, but she didn’t ask.
Gladys sat comfortably in a recliner. She was dressed up to receive a visitor, her flowered blouse buttoned, with a string of red beads at her neck. Her hair had been carefully curled and tended, and she had lipstick on again. She reached out.
“Jennie! I’m so grateful you came.”
Jennie smiled. “Thank you for having me.”
“You’ve met Todd, then. He is Allison’s brother,” Gladys explained.
“Oh.” Jennie offered him a conciliatory look. “I’m sorry about . . . about—” She fumbled for what to say.
“You’ve nothing to be sorry about.” Todd motioned for her to have a seat, and Jennie did so.
She sank gratefully onto a green sofa with bright orange throw pillows.
Todd continued, “In fact, we’re grateful to you for finding her.
After all these years.” He shook his head, his lips pursed.
Then, snapping out of his momentary remembrance of his sister, he gave his hands a light clap.
“Well, I’ll leave you two to it. Whatever it is.
” He bent and dropped a peck on Gladys’s cheek and then exited the living room.
Gladys watched him as he left. “He’s been a good boy to me.” She turned back to Jennie. “He lives here with me so that I don’t have to go into assisted living and leave my home. Todd is a nurse at the local hospital. When he’s not working, he’s here.”
“He seems nice.” Jennie didn’t know what else to say.
“He and Allison were—” Gladys winced as if she felt guilty about something, then lowered her voice.
“Well, my son raised Todd and Allison right. God-fearing, service-minded, and so on. But my daughter? She married Percy, and I’ll tell you, those two let my grandkids run wild.
I have another grandson, Rick. He used to get Allison into all sorts of trouble.
They were close as cousins growing up. But then she started dating Zane Harris, and all that changed.
Zane got Allison back on the straight and narrow, for the most part.
That and her upbringing kept her from letting her wild streak run free. ”
It was an interesting thing for an elderly woman to say, considering Allison had borne a child with Zane. But maybe the “wild streak” as Gladys called it had more to do with something else.
“Do you like Zane?” Jennie asked before she could censor her words.
Gladys looked surprised. “Well, yes. I always liked Zane. My son, Allison’s father, might have something else to say about him. But then, well . . .”
“You have to blame someone,” Jennie finished for her.
Gladys lifted her eyes. “Yes,” she agreed solemnly. “And my son wasn’t fond of Zane getting Allison pregnant. He didn’t like that Zane didn’t up and marry her right away. Of course, there was also the argument.”
Jennie frowned. “What argument?” She still didn’t know why Gladys had invited her here, but this trip down memory lane was proving interesting.
Gladys raised thin, almost invisible eyebrows.
“Oh, Zane and Allison had a dreadful fight the night Allison disappeared. Everyone knew about it. They were at the Duck Blind, and Allison told Zane she was going to petition the town to have Traeger Hall opened. She believed it was owed to the town’s citizens after all these years.
She’d been adamant about it for days leading up to their fight, and it was all escalating. ”
“What happened?” Jennie was thoroughly invested now.
Gladys’s voice grew distant as she recounted the events.
“Well, Allison had figured something out about Traeger Hall, or at least she thought she had. And she wanted to prove it. That was why she was so upset with Zane that night. He told her she needed to give up on the idea, to focus on their newborn son. I can’t say as I blame him for that, but it was what happened after that we’ve had a hard time forgetting. ”
“What happened?” Jennie breathed.
Gladys fingered a button on the cuff of her sleeve. Her voice grew watery and went up a pitch as she explained. “Zane gave Allison an ultimatum. Him and Milo or Traeger Hall.”
“And Allison picked Traeger Hall?”
“No.” Gladys shook her head. “No, Allison refused to pick. She said Zane was being closed-minded or something to that effect. Anyway, she left the Duck Blind that night in tears, and that was the last anyone saw of her. Until you came.”
Until she came face-to-face with Allison in the muck of the creek eight years later. Jennie would never forget that moment for as long as she lived.
“That’s not why I asked you here, though.
” Gladys waved it all away like a bad dream.
Jennie struggled to pull her attention back from the story she’d just heard.
Gladys was lifting a shoebox from the floor beside her and set it on her lap.
She eyed Jennie. “Percy says you are indeed the true owner of Traeger Hall, so I believe this should be yours.” She held out the shoebox.
Jennie took it cautiously. “What is it?”
“Paraphernalia that Allison had collected about Traeger Hall. It’s of no use to us and—well, don’t ask me how she got some of it, but she did.”
Jennie shifted her attention to the box in her hands. She lifted the lid and looked inside. There were scribbled notes in feminine handwriting that had to be Allison’s, a piece of paper that appeared to have a diagram of a family tree written on it, and tucked into a corner was a locket.
Jennie lifted the locket out of the box, its chain dangling between her fingers.
Gladys jabbed her index finger at it. “Allison told me she found that locket the same day she had the big fight with Zane—the day she disappeared. She didn’t tell me where she found it, but she said it proved everything she’d always suspected.”
“What’s that?” Jennie carefully pried at the locket’s clasp to open it.
“That there’s treasure inside Traeger Hall,” Gladys declared.
“But isn’t this just a cheap antique locket?” If Allison had thought it was a piece of expensive jewelry, well, it didn’t make sense.
Gladys nodded. “Oh, she knew that. It’s what’s inside the locket.”
Jennie’s thumbnail finally popped the locket open. “I don’t understand.”
“That right there.” Gladys pointed at the locket. “Take a good look.”
Jennie focused on a tiny lock of chestnut-colored hair and a miniature painting that matched the portrait in Traeger Hall. The portrait with the woman Jennie thought had whispered, Come, know my secrets. “This is proof of treasure?”
“Yes,” Gladys confirmed solemnly. “Allison believed that miniature was painted by an artist who was growing in popularity back near the turn of the century. If that was the case, Allison believed there would be more paintings in the Hall by the same artist.”
Jennie had studied art in school. She’d toured Europe and visited the best museums the world had to offer.
This was not a miniature portrait that stuck out as even vaguely reminiscent of a well-known artist. Not to mention the large version she’d seen with Zane in Traeger Hall had declared the name of its artist: Vallée.
An unknown artist. “I know a few things about art, and this”—Jennie held up the locket—“doesn’t resemble any famous artist’s work.
It wouldn’t carry much monetary value even if the Hall was filled with them. ”
“Allison had a name.” Gladys seemed unwilling to give up.
Jennie cringed inwardly but didn’t stop the elderly woman from her passionate pursuit to prove Allison correct.
She leaned forward toward Jennie and pulled out an index card from the shoebox on Jennie’s lap.
“See there?” She tapped on a name written on the card.
“Louisa Theophilus. Now, Allison did some research on that girl, and she discovered some old records online for a girl’s boarding school.
The man who had paid for her room and board, at least on record, was Leopold Traeger. ”
“That still doesn’t prove anything about the Hall having valuable art inside . . .” Jennie began.
Gladys stiffened, her features straining with annoyance at Jennie’s argument. “Allison was out to prove that there was valuable art inside the mansion. She thought the locket with the miniature was just the tip of the iceberg.”
Jennie bit back another protest.
Louisa Theophilus . . .
What about the name Vallée? Perhaps it wasn’t at all like Allison had suspected. Perhaps the miniature and the portrait in the Hall were of a woman named Louisa Theophilus, and she wasn’t an artist—she was the artist’s muse. That was possible, wasn’t it?
Jennie offered Gladys a kind smile and prayed it wasn’t patronizing.
In the end, the artist’s signature said Vallée, and no matter how badly someone wanted art to be worth a fortune, sometimes an artist drifted into obscurity with the passing years, leaving their works—or their singular work—no more valuable than the tarnished locket in Jennie’s hand.