Chapter 11
11
Although Madison tried to be prepared for everything, at all times, running into Liam, the children and Courtney outside Bailey’s had thrown her a little.
Her mind had been focused on the lunch meeting with Melba, and with the morning visit she’d made to Coralee, over in Silver Hills.
Her grandmother was still having scary episodes, and that morning, she hadn’t even known Madison was there—unless, and this was a horrible thought—Coralee was trapped inside herself, well-aware of her situation and unable to communicate.
Considering that possibility again—it had been haunting her all morning—made Madison squeeze her eyes shut for a moment, as if that would make it all go away.
“Madison?” Melba’s rich, smoky voice was gentle, the voice of a friend.
They were seated at a table next to the front window of the restaurant, coffee before them, salads on the way.
Madison opened her eyes, sighed, tried to smile and faltered. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s been a challenging morning.”
“How’s that?” Melba asked, stirring sweetener into her coffee, her expression pensive. “Anything to do with our little get-together here at Bailey’s?” A speculative smile twitched at one corner of Melba’s full mouth. “Or maybe it was the way that red-hot hunk of a cowboy, Liam McKettrick, was eating you up just now with those ridiculously blue eyes of his?”
Madison laughed. Blushed.
Both at the same time.
“He was doing no such thing,” she said.
“Whatever you say,” Melba replied.
The salads arrived, and with them came the memory of the way Coralee had looked that morning at breakfast time, when Madison had first stepped into her room at the care facility.
Nearly catatonic, her white hair sticking out in every direction, with patches of pink scalp showing through, Coralee had looked at once frantic and bewildered. Her rounded eyes seemed to be searching beyond her immediate surroundings for the approach of something extremely frightening.
Madison’s appetite receded like an outgoing tide.
“What is it?” Melba pressed, serious now. The woman was astute— too astute.
“It’s my grandmother,” Madison said, her voice small. Defeated. “She has dementia, and it’s killing her.”
And it’s killing me, too.
“I’m really sorry,” Melba said sincerely, her voice quiet now, and warm.
She reached across the table and took Madison’s free hand, squeezed briefly before letting it go.
“Thanks,” Madison said, equally sincere. Nothing had changed, of course—Coralee’s fate was sealed—but Melba’s strength and concern were powerfully soothing. “That isn’t what I wanted to ask you about, though.”
“Let’s hear it,” Melba urged. She took up her fork and stabbed it into her salad, so Madison did the same.
She knew that, even though she didn’t want food at the moment, her body needed it. She’d been running on coffee and a single slice of toast all morning.
Between bites, Madison told Melba what she knew about Bliss Morgan. How they’d first met, when they were both eight years old, in the overgrown family cemetery hidden away in the woods behind Bettencourt Hall. How they’d picnicked there, on subsequent days, and how hungry Bliss had always been.
She told Melba about the old camper Bliss had claimed to live in with her father, a drunkard whose name she’d never mentioned, at least as far as Madison recalled, and her mother, who apparently came and went.
She showed Melba the tattered friendship bracelet Bliss had left for her just before she vanished, along with the one-word note.
Goodbye.
And when she’d said it all, she sighed, all too aware of how little she’d given the chief of police to go on.
“Morgan is a fairly common last name,” Melba said, looking out the window as she mused.
“I know,” Madison said. “She’s probably fine. Her folks weren’t the kind to settle down anywhere for long, I’m guessing. It’s entirely possible that they simply moved on, taking Bliss with them.” She paused, bit her lower lip, went on. “But a big part of my brain doesn’t believe that.”
Melba met Madison’s gaze, raised an eyebrow. Her question, though unspoken, was entirely clear.
What do you think happened?
Madison pushed her plate aside. Answered. “I don’t know for sure.” Her voice was tentative. “But I believe there was something terribly wrong. That Bliss might have been kidnapped, or even murdered.”
She’d half expected Melba to declare that this was all speculation, that too much time had gone by, that the police were busy enough with current cases and didn’t have the time or resources to investigate crimes that might not have happened at all.
“I presume you’ve done some research on the web,” Melba said.
Madison nodded. “Yes, and I came up with nothing, so I’m going to the library this afternoon to check old newspapers and the like. I was just hoping that you—well, that there might be something in police records. Anyone named Morgan who might have been in Painted Pony Creek back then and gotten into some kind of trouble—”
“I’ll do what I can,” Melba told her. “But that might not be much. Lots of records are expunged after a certain length of time. Others are simply lost, even with all the modern technology that’s available now. You know, glitches, system failures and the like. And then, of course, there are always the hackers. Some of them really get a kick out of sabotaging entire databases for no other reason than that they can do it.”
“But surely most records survive?”
“I’ll check it out,” Melba reiterated, and Madison knew the chief of police wasn’t just brushing her off. If this woman said she would do something, do it she would, no matter what.
“Thank you,” Madison said.
A seasoned waitress—her name tag read Miranda—approached the table and asked if there was anything else they wanted.
Both Madison and Melba said there wasn’t.
Madison picked up the check.
“You planning to stick around town awhile?” Melba asked conversationally.
With the failed wedding growing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror now, Madison was more relaxed about staying in Painted Pony Creek.
She liked the community, liked being back in Bettencourt Hall.
Liked being with Liam McKettrick, accidentally or on purpose.
And, of course, there was Coralee.
Madison had already reached out to Audra via email and asked her to handle the sale to HammondCo, since she didn’t want to travel.
With her grandmother so obviously failing, there was no way she could leave the area. Besides, contracts could be signed digitally these days, and if a meeting turned out to be vital, well, that too could probably be done remotely.
Her mind had wandered again, back to that morning’s interlude with Coralee, and Melba’s next words presented such a contrast that she almost asked her to repeat them.
“We have a book club—well, several of them—but the one I belong to is the most flexible, time-wise, and it’s made up of half a dozen women around our age. I guess what I’m trying to get at is, we’d sure like it if you’d join us.”
Madison’s first reaction was a surprised and silent, Really?
She loved books, and she needed some local friends, since her posse was so far-flung.
But she was still a relative stranger in Painted Pony Creek, so the invitation surprised her.
In her experience, people wanted to get to know another person pretty well before they included them in social events, however informal. Especially in tight-knit communities like this one.
“I’d like that,” she managed after a few moments.
“Good,” Melba replied. “We’re meeting tonight at seven thirty out at Brynne Garrett’s place. You know Brynne, right?”
“We’re acquainted,” Madison said. She’d worked with Brynne putting last-minute touches on the wedding. “She probably thinks I’m crazy, though.”
Melba laughed. They were outside by then, walking across the sunny street toward their cars. “Not for a moment. I reckon she’d have thought you were crazy if you went through with that marriage, though.”
Madison blushed a little, hoped Melba hadn’t noticed.
Melba was a cop, though, and obviously a good one. Which meant she missed very little. “Like I said, we’d be happy to have you,” she said quietly.
“But what if I haven’t read the book you’re discussing?”
Melba laughed. “Well, then we’ll have to drag you over to Bitter Gulch and hang you,” she joked. “We just finished Kristin Hannah’s latest, and we’ll be picking something new tonight. By consensus, though I’m voting for a Debbie Macomber story. We don’t have a president or anything like that, and we rotate our meetings so everybody gets to host when their turn comes up.”
“I’d love to come, but—”
“But?”
“But there’s a lot going on right now. When’s the next meeting?”
“Two weeks out,” Melba replied.
“Maybe we could hold it at Bettencourt Hall? It would be a lot of fun to entertain again—I’ve been so rushed lately, and I’m seriously trying to shift gears. Get some kind of emotional traction.”
“I hear you,” Melba sympathized good-naturedly, and then smiled her approval. “I’ll suggest that to the group tonight,” she said. “I think the ladies would jump at the chance to get a look at the inside of that house. It’s famous around here, you know—even fancier than the old Worth place.”
Madison did know. “Back in the day, there were parties there all the time,” she recalled somewhat wistfully. “It’s almost as if the house itself is lonesome for the hustle and bustle of people coming and going.”
If Melba caught the whimsical nuance of that statement, she didn’t comment on it. Or maybe it didn’t seem out of character for someone who’d flee the scene of her wedding, after creating an uproar, for the surprising solace of the Hard Luck Saloon.
In other words, for a slightly crazy person.
The two women said their goodbyes then, and Melba drove away in her cruiser, tooting the horn as she passed the Bentley.
Madison, already behind the wheel, tooted back.
And something swelled inside her.
A sense of belonging, and of discovery, very similar to what she felt whenever she was with Liam.
The library was only a few blocks away—she could have walked—but since she was in the car anyway, Madison drove there, humming under her breath.
The town’s only source of books was housed in a low-slung brick building two blocks from the courthouse.
Madison parked in a shady spot—there were only two other vehicles in the lot—grabbed her purse, and headed inside.
The interior of the building was wonderfully cool, and the satisfying, dusty and unique scent of books permeated the quiet atmosphere.
The first order of business, Madison decided, was to sign up for a library card.
Maybe, she thought fancifully, her name was still in the system, since she’d been a loyal patron until she was twelve.
She approached the main desk and was greeted by an elderly lady in a floral dress. Her white hair was neatly arranged into a French twist, and she wore a string of pearls and matching earrings.
Her smile was welcoming—and vaguely familiar. Very vaguely.
“Good afternoon,” she said. “How can I help you?”
“I’d like a library card, to start, please,” Madison replied, feeling strangely shy, as though she were a child again, barely able to see over the desk. “And to check some newspapers, if you have them on file. They go back quite a way, actually—almost twenty-five years.”
“Don’t you recognize me?” the woman asked, not unkindly, but with mischievous interest, letting Madison’s request slide for the moment.
Madison studied the powdered, still pretty face, the bright blue-green eyes.
Something niggled at the back of her brain, then disappeared.
She shook her head.
“Why, Madison Bettencourt, I’m surprised at you! I’m your grandmother’s best friend, Althea James, and I’ve spent almost as much time at your house as my own.” A pause, a little tut-tut sound, crisp but entirely benign.
Her eyes grew misty, and before Madison could respond, she went on. “Poor Coralee. Such a bright, beautiful woman—why, to see her end up like this—”
Madison suddenly realized that she did remember Mrs. James.
She and Coralee had been bosom buddies back in the day, forever having lunch together, attending various meetings around town, participating in bridge and mahjong groups, exchanging favorite books, sometimes giggling like a pair of schoolgirls. They’d gone on art retreats and shopping expeditions and traveled to Vegas twice a year to see a few shows and play slot machines and blackjack.
Madison’s eyes burned, because it hurt to know that Coralee would never again be that lively woman, always up to something.
In the moment, she couldn’t speak.
“I try to visit her every Sunday, right after church,” Althea James confided sadly, “but it breaks my heart. The poor darling hasn’t a clue who I am.” She paused, sniffed, thrust her shoulders back a little, lifted her chin. Her smile was determinedly bright, if a little shaky. “Nevertheless, I’m there every single week, because she’s still my best friend in the world, and I’m lost without her, even though she isn’t gone yet!”
“I know it’s hard,” Madison said, and she did. She was already grieving the loss of Coralee, and of course there was her friend Olivia’s illness. Unlike Althea James, she couldn’t go and sit with her friend on a regular basis, because of physical distance.
Olivia wouldn’t have allowed it, anyway, but not being there still bothered Madison a lot. And she knew Audra, Kendall and Alexis felt the same way.
That kind of helplessness was painful.
Mrs. James fretted on, paying no apparent heed to Madison’s brief comment, shaking her head as she spoke. “Coralee and I were little girls when we met—we both attended the old one-room schoolhouse—it’s long gone now, of course—and we formed an alliance straightaway.” The librarian looked dreamily off into the invisible, smiling. “I don’t know why this should come to mind, but once there was a garden party at Bettencourt Hall—so lovely—but you wouldn’t remember that, of course. You came along much later.” She paused, looked away, and then looked back. “Coralee and I were playing hide-and-seek, out by the old cemetery, and she got lost. We searched for what seemed like hours, and when she finally came wandering along the road from town, she was pale, and wouldn’t talk at all. Not for days .” Althea stopped, huffed out a breath. “Forgive me, Madison. I’m rambling. I seem to do that more and more lately.”
“That’s all right,” Madison said, all her senses on red alert now.
Again, Althea didn’t seem to register her response. She busied herself preparing the library card, handed it over. She hadn’t asked for identifying details, and why would she?
Althea James was an old friend of the family.
She knew all about Madison; Coralee, before her dementia took hold, would have filled her in.
And she’d always been kindly, and a marvelous storyteller to boot.
Now that she’d been reminded, Madison recalled coming to the library as a very small child, and sitting among a circle of other children at Mrs. James’s feet, absorbed in story hour.
Much younger then, obviously, Mrs. James had been an attractive woman, full of laughter and high spirits.
But Madison’s mind was awhirl as she went back over the story of Coralee getting lost during the long-ago garden party at Bettencourt Hall. There had been a careful search that ended only when she came “wandering back,” as Mrs. James had put it.
“That day—the day of the garden party, I mean—did Coralee ever tell you where she’d been during the time she was missing?”
Oddly, Althea laughed, waved a cheerfully dismissive hand. “Yes, but it was nonsense. Everyone thought she’d made it up—including me. She was a very imaginative child, you know. Used to come up with the most complicated games of pretend you’ve ever heard of.”
Madison was vaguely angry on her grandmother’s behalf.
Why did people always assume that children made everything up?
Yes, they had active imaginations, most of them. They played make-believe, drifted off into daydreams sometimes, lost themselves in books and games and movies.
But to have made everything up?
To Madison, that seemed like a stretch.
“What did she tell you?” she asked very carefully, all but holding her breath.
Mrs. James sighed, shook her head again. “She said she’d stumbled into another place, where everything was different.”
“Different how?”
“Different as in, Coralee truly believed she’d found her own personal wrinkle in time. We’d just read a similar book the previous week, so I guess that much made sense—”
“But...?”
“But Coralee swore she’d seen the old Painted Pony Creek, complete with wagons and buggies and strange buildings. Her description was quite detailed, actually, but then again, she was a fanciful child, just as I said before.”
Coralee had never mentioned that experience to Madison, though she’d loved regaling her grandchild with tales of the good old days.
So why hadn’t she told that one?
Madison felt strangely lightheaded and at the same time breathless with excitement. She was also more than a little annoyed with her grandmother, since she’d brushed off every mention of Bliss Morgan and her strange and sudden disappearance.
You’re making it up, Madison , Coralee had accused her, each and every time. You spend too much time alone, and now you’re inventing imaginary friends for yourself. I guess I don’t blame you for that, but it’s not safe, wandering the countryside the way you do.
After a while, Madison had given up asking, out loud, anyway.
She’d pondered the situation plenty in each of her five-year diaries, small plastic-covered books with a little lock and key to protect her secrets.
Such as they were, in those days.
She recalled now that she’d received a brand-new one every Christmas—a familiar square bulge in her stocking.
Where were those diaries now?
Had she tossed them?
Maybe. Maybe not.
All thought of spending the afternoon scouring old newspapers on a computer screen, relics of a time nearly a quarter of a century in the past, fled her mind.
If anything official had happened concerning Bliss or her family, Melba would find it.
Madison’s job was to go home and turn Bettencourt Hall inside out, if she had to, to locate her own humble journals as well as Coralee’s.
For she had been a journal keeper, too, once upon a time.
Another option would be to sit with Coralee until a lucid moment presented itself—and how unlikely was that ? — so she could pounce and ask about her grandmother’s alleged visit to the Painted Pony Creek of yesteryear.
She’d definitely ask, if and when she got the chance, but for now, in the state Coralee was in, it would be a waste of time and energy.
No, Madison would go straight home to Bettencourt Hall and search high and low, from the attic to the basement of that old house, a place full of stories of its own, and she would ferret out those journals.
If there was an account of Coralee’s experience the day of her disappearance recorded anywhere, she would locate it.
“Thank you, Mrs. James,” she said, and hurried out of the library, clutching her library card in one hand and her car keys in the other.
Fifteen minutes later, she was back home.
She parked the Bentley in the detached garage and hurried around to the back of the house, letting herself in by way of the sunporch and the unlocked door leading into the kitchen.
The house offered a silent, familiar welcome, very much like a hug, though, naturally, there was no pressure of strong arms, no firm solace of a warm, muscular chest.
Liam.
In that moment, Madison truly craved his presence. She wanted, even needed, to tell him what had happened to Coralee when she was a child, and what might have happened to Bliss as well.
It sounded impossible, even ludicrous.
But what if...?
Madison brought herself up short.
Probably, being a rational man, Liam would say what Coralee had always said.
That Madison was imagining things.
Even in that case, though, she would have been comforted just by the act of confiding in him. He’d told her before that he was a good listener, and it was true.
She’d told him so much the previous night, before the kissing had started, sweeping them both up into a sweet storm of passion that never came to fruition.
In some ways, Madison regretted their mutual restraint.
Lovemaking would probably have been downright therapeutic, if ill-advised.
She shook that off, along with the idea of texting Liam, just to maintain some kind of contact, however limited.
Liam been separated from his children for too long, and she wasn’t about to get in the way of any bonding that might be happening, now or later.
She set aside her purse, hung the Bentley’s keys from their appointed hook beside the pantry door, and shifted her focus to the mission of the day: searching for her childhood diaries, and for Coralee’s journals.
She began the search upstairs, in Coralee’s massive bedroom, with its deep carpeting, its beautifully papered walls, its bay windows and balcony.
Standing in the middle of the room, hands on her hips, Madison fought down a rush of guilt—she was , after all, invading someone’s private space—but she was committed to her purpose.
There were bookshelves along one wall, and Madison inspected them carefully, tome by dusty, well-thumbed tome, without finding anything that resembled a journal. She even felt for a hidden catch, in case the shelves could be moved aside like the ones downstairs.
Perhaps there was another hidden room here, like the one in the library.
But no. There wasn’t.
A search of the dresser and bureau drawers was fruitless, as was her careful examination of the contents of Coralee’s vanity, desk, nightstands, blanket chest and closet.
The bed itself was gigantic, as though built for an Amazon queen rather than a tiny, elegant and very mortal woman living alone for most of her long life.
There was nothing hidden under the mattress, or stuffed behind the headboard, or gathering dust under the bed itself.
Madison ran a hand through her hair and sighed.
Then she remembered the boxes she’d dragged out of the secret room downstairs just the day before, pronounced herself at least marginally an idiot, and set out for the library via the broad, curving stairs at the front of the house.
The thought struck her, apropos of nothing, that even though her grandmother’s will would not allow her to sell Bettencourt Hall, she ought to do something constructive with it at some point.
Turn it into a bed-and-breakfast, perhaps, or a retreat center.
Or a home for wayward armadillos.
Get a grip, Madison , she thought. You’re getting carried away.
The tattered but otherwise sturdy cardboard boxes were right where she’d left them after cleaning out the hidden space the day before.
After Liam had gone home, she’d been too tired, and too caught up in steamy fantasies, ones that made her ache in private places, to bother with whatever was inside them.
She had to fetch a box cutter to open the first and largest of the containers; all of them had been duct-taped shut, wrapped in the stuff, as though they contained top secret documents or maps leading to a buried treasure, like in a pirate story.
She smiled, because when she thought of pirates, she thought of Johnny Depp, and when she thought of Johnny Depp, well, she smiled.
The box contained old clothing— very old clothing—women’s shirtwaists fronted with about a million tiny buttons, heavy woolen skirts and bombazine dresses, long and all in drab grays and browns. All ridiculously tiny.
The combined smells of mildew, mothballs and generations of mice indicated that the duct tape—added years after the boxes were filled—hadn’t kept out vermin.
Madison coughed and wished she could open a window.
She couldn’t, unfortunately, because this was the library, and the floor-to-ceiling windows were sealed in their frames.
Madison went through the box, however unpleasant that was, garment by garment.
There were no journals.
She wondered who the contents had belonged to—certainly not Coralee; these items of clothing had been fashionable in the late nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries, well before her time. And why had they been hidden away in the secret room at some later date? They definitely hadn’t been there when Madison was a child, spying on cocktail parties.
Where was Trixie Belden when she needed her? Where was Nancy Drew?
Madison laughed to—and at—herself. Maybe she really was losing her marbles, trying to solve a dusty old mystery that really had no bearing on her present-day life.
Still, something compelled her to learn what had happened to Bliss, something powerful.
Wasn’t it worth searching for lost people even when they’d been gone for more than two decades, and no one else seemed to care?
To Madison, it was.
Bliss had been a living, breathing human being, not a fantasy, whatever Coralee might have believed. And she’d been Madison’s friend, if only for part of one childhood summer.
Bliss was important, if only to her.
She tackled the next box, and then the next.
More clothing, a few books, a packet of very old letters, bound by the time-honored ribbon, fading and frayed at the edges.
Finding the letters, Madison felt a little thrill, examined them briefly, then set them aside. They had been special to someone, written long, long ago, and clearly cherished through the years, but they’d been written well before Coralee’s birth, never mind Bliss’s.
They’d been postmarked between 1870 and 1885, and addressed to one Katherine Bettencourt in a strong, clearly masculine hand.
That name was familiar to Madison, of course. Katherine had been her great-great-grandmother. She’d lived in this house, borne several children here and died here.
The letters were family history, and Madison intended to preserve them carefully, and certainly to read them, but for the time being they would have to wait.
The last and smallest box, bound tightly with twine instead of duct tape, finally, finally yielded journals, bound in scuffed leather, embossed with flowers, each one tied shut with a tasseled black cord.
A quick—and breathless—examination of the first volume revealed that these, like the letters, had belonged to Katherine, not to Coralee.
Madison scanned a few pages, penned in splendid copperplate handwriting, the ink a faded, almost ghostly blue.
Katherine had begun the journal at the age of nine, with an account of her cousin Lucy’s wedding. She’d been the flower girl, and delighted by her assignment.
Madison smiled at the essence of childhood joy, which came through so clearly, even after more than a century had passed.
Because Katherine’s journals almost certainly contained a lot of interesting information about the Bettencourts of days gone by, they were naturally important to Madison. She decided to have them scanned, as soon as she could arrange for that to be done, so that their contents would never be lost. Perhaps she would have them transcribed, as well.
As fascinating as the handwritten books were sure to be, they, like the letters, were filled years before Coralee was born, including the latest one, dated 1906.
She lifted each of the leather-bound volumes gently, almost reverently, from the darkness that had housed them these many years, and stacked them on the end table, alongside the love letters.
Presently, Madison cleared away the ancient clothing, placing the garments on the sunporch bench to air out, then carried the fusty, falling-apart boxes out to the burn barrel, to be set alight at another time. Maybe the clothing could be donated to the local historical society, or a museum.
She poured herself a tall glass of ice tea, with a slice of lemon added for pizazz, and sat down at the kitchen table to rest for a few minutes and figure out what to do with her discoveries, such as they were.
She’d tackle the attic next, she decided, daunting though the prospect was. The space extended across the entire width and breadth of the house, and it was doubtless draped in spider webs and gauzy fabrics that would shift and flutter like ghosts when disturbed.
A sweet thrill went through her at the prospect of opening the attic door and stepping into the realm of memories.
There were mysteries tucked away in this grand old house, just waiting to be brought to light.
And Madison was ready to get busy doing just that.