Chapter 6 #2
As the sky began to brighten outside, I was staring at the ceiling, thinking about the bucket and the glasses and the ring and the book and the history of this land and how it all might hang together.
I’m feeling sluggish and exhausted, but I pull on my active wear and promise myself I’ll be glad once I’m in a routine again
and this walk becomes a habit. It’s a relief to step out the front door of the house into the cold morning air, with the pink-gold
of the dawn before me.
And half an hour later I’m walking back through those double doors, a little sweaty beneath my hoody, even though my fingers
and my ears are freezing, and I do feel clearer. Brighter.
After a shower and some coffee, I’m ready to tackle the day. I go straight to Tad’s storage room because that’s where I might
find answers to my questions about the book, and that is a lot more fun to think about than whatever moved the bucket last night.
The storeroom is in the western wing of the first floor, right next to Tad’s bedroom, right opposite Jon’s. It’s just a bedroom—the
same size as the other seven, but it’s laid out differently. There are heavy wooden shelves lining the walls, so it feels
more like an archive room at a library than a bedroom. And Jon was right—every single box is labeled in Mum’s careful script,
denoting the contents and the date. There are boxes of tax paperwork and boxes of contracts and boxes of reader letters. Good
grief, so many reader letters, at least one box for every year from 1960, and then a little cluster of boxes that just say Pre-1960. I open one of the pre-1960 boxes first and there’s utter chaos inside—just papers stuffed into it in no apparent order. Some
are crinkled, as if they’d been crumpled into a ball then straightened out.
A glimpse into Uncle Tad’s working life before Mum arrived, I guess.
I open the 1960 box next, and this is clearly Mum’s work.
There’s dozens or maybe hundreds of clusters of handwritten and typed pages in here, each carefully paper-clipped in the top left-hand corner. The first is dated January 1960.
Dear Mr Winslow,
I read your remarkable book Forgotten last week for a college class on creative writing. My professor said this book would change our lives and I was skeptical
at the time but I felt like you had looked into my family and captured us . . .
The writer goes on with effusive praise for several pages, and then there’s a faded carbon copy of a typed reply from Tad.
Dear Annaleigh,
Thank you so much for taking the time to write me about Forgotten. When I first had the idea for this book in 1953, I had just returned home after a long stint away and I was so overjoyed
to be home with my family again.
And then he goes on for a whole page, answering some of her questions, giving her advice about her creative writing course
and her college career. My eyes mist over as I read the letter—it’s such a generous exchange. But as I flick through the other
boxes, it occurs to me that there are thousands of letters like it here. What am I supposed to do with all of this? I decide to text Jon.
I am in the storeroom looking for letters from Charity Wilkie. Do you understand how much paperwork is in here? I just found
all of Tad’s fan mail over the years and it looks like he’s kept copies of all of his replies too.
Yeah, Jon texts back. I knew there was a lot there. We’ve been approached by a few libraries and museums over the years interested in setting up
a collection in his honor. Ginny has the details.
I look around the room and sigh. I was hoping I’d quickly find letters between Tad and Charity Wilkie that would shed some
light on the book, but it’s not going to be that simple. I’ll figure out the rest of the house in time, but now that I’ve
seen what’s here, this room feels too important for me to sort through myself. And of course there’s been interest in a Taddeus Winslow collection
over the years—now that I think about it, that only makes good sense.
I’m not the person to figure out how to make that happen, but I do know who is, and she lives just down the road. Fortunately
for me, she managed every aspect of Tad’s professional and personal life, so she probably also knows exactly who Charity Wilkie
is.
“Hello, love!” my stepfather, Alan, bellows, waving with surprised delight as I step from my car at the farm he shares with
Mum. It’s fair to say she caught me off guard in 1976 when she told me they were getting married. I knew they were acquaintances,
but everyone along this road and in this district knew Alan. Mum didn’t even tell me they were dating until they were setting
the date for the wedding.
She’s always been the kind of woman who holds her cards close to her chest. Even back then, that was frustrating and sometimes
baffling to me. I’d often talk to Tad about it and he’d listen calmly and empathize, then tell me I absolutely had to be patient
with her. It was one of the only areas of my life where he didn’t give me any useful advice, but I still knew it meant everything to him that Mum and I cared for one another.
He always acted as mediator when things between us were rocky and when too much time had passed between calls or visits; he always seemed to find some vitally important reason for us to all get together.
I’ve always wanted to understand Mum but she holds more of herself back than she ever reveals. It must have been different
with Tad, because it’s only since he died that her reluctance to open herself up has become a giant, insurmountable barrier
between us.
“Hi, Alan,” I say, and he approaches me to kiss me on the cheek.
“It’s so good to have you back in town, love. I’ve been meaning to come down and say hello but we’ve been sowing the mid-season
wheat, you know how it is. Are you settling in okay? I hope you won’t be lonely in that great big house all alone.”
I bet I’m going to hear those words dozens of times over the next few months as people realize I’ve moved back into Wurimbirra.
Alan means well, and he’s always been kind to me, so I just smile and shrug.
“It’s going to be a lot of work but I’m sure it will be worth it in the end. Is Mum home?”
“Yes, cooking up some scones for the boys, I think.” Alan has a few farmhands employed here—two or three at a time, usually.
There’s a cluster of worker’s cottages and a large work shed a few hundred metres away from the house he shares with Mum.
Their roles on this farm divide sharply along traditional gender lines. Hers is to feed the menfolk and keep the books. He
handles the labor, the machinery, the crops and the livestock.
Alan leaves me to drive his farm truck up to the big shed to “the boys,” and I let myself into the house, calling out so I
don’t startle Mum.
“Is that you, Fiona?” she calls back. “I’m in the kitchen.”
I follow the sound of her voice through the house.
The scent of baked goods hangs heavily in the air, and the digital timer on the oven is counting down six minutes.
Mum is wearing an apron over her chinos and collared shirt—today, it’s patterned with tiny polka dots in purple and blue.
She looks at me warily, then asks, “Would you like a coffee?”
It’s clear she’s still adjusting to the news that I’ve moved home—her lips are thin, her nostrils flared, her shoulders locked
tight. It’s probably just habit and good manners pressing her to invite me to stay for a drink, but actually, coffee does
sound good right now after the rotten night’s sleep.
“Yes, please,” I say, and I pull out a stool to sit at their breakfast bar. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“I’m not sure I want to talk about that right now.”
I hear the words she doesn’t speak at the end of that sentence—or ever. Even once she forgives me, she still won’t want to talk about it, because it will be tense and awkward and Virginia Edendale
does not handle such things well at all.
I let silence descend as she makes two coffees, both black and strong, because we take ours the same. She comes to sit beside
me at the breakfast bar, sliding the coffee across as I murmur thanks.
“How have you been?” I ask her hesitantly. She flicks me a glance.
“Fine. Everything here is fine. And you and Lucas . . . it’s all unwound now?”
I called Jon right after Lucas left that day in February. I couldn’t stop crying, and my cousin dropped everything to come
and sit with me, while I told the story ten times, trying to get it to make sense in my head. Later that day, once I’d calmed
myself down a little and Jon had gone home, I found myself missing Tad so much I couldn’t bear it.
He’d have fixed this for me—not my marriage, of course, but he’d have had advice and words of comfort that would have soothed the ache of pain and rejection and humiliation.
With Tad gone, I had an overwhelming instinct to call Mum.
If I’d been less distressed, that might have surprised me.
She and I sat in near-silence for most of that call. I’d been crying all day and my voice was so hoarse it hurt to speak.
Mum was apparently so shocked she couldn’t think of a single thing to say except I’m sorry.
But she called me every Sunday night for the first few weeks after he left.
They were brief phone calls—Are you okay?
Yes. Of course you are, you’re very strong—but at the time I was exhausted from dealing with the fallout and breaking the news to people and I actually appreciated how
simple those calls from my mother were.
“They bought me out of the business,” I tell her now. “We have to live apart for a year to finalize the divorce but we’ve
already agreed on a financial settlement. He’s moved in with her already, so we’re selling the house at Waverly.”
Mum nods, then blows on her coffee before she takes a sip.
“You had no inkling . . . ?”
“Not a hint of suspicion.”
Lucas didn’t even seem anxious the morning he ended our marriage. It was an ordinary Monday, after an emotional Sunday afternoon