Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
It meant Elena would have to take things old-school and look her grandmother up in the paper’s archives.
Her heart pounded. It almost felt as though she were chasing a story again, but this time, the story was her family’s heritage; it was everything she’d never been able to know, if only because her grandmother had died so tragically, long before her birth.
When Elena padded back downstairs, she found both Jemma and her mother fast asleep.
It was later than Elena had accounted for, and when she glanced at her phone, she realized she’d missed a phone call from Maxine, the doctor.
Fear shot through her. She texted her old best friend: Is it too late to call?
Her friend called her immediately, reminding Elena of long ago, when they’d called each other about every mundane thing.
“Hey,” Elena said. “Thanks for calling me back.”
“Not a problem.” Something about her old friend’s voice was strained and made Elena take a sharp breath in.
From the doorway between the kitchen and living room, Elena watched her mother sleeping quietly, sweetly, as her ex-best friend told her the tests had come back positive.
“Alzheimer’s,” she said. “It’s early days, and there are things to be done.
Medicines to prescribe. She’ll live a long time, Elena.
But it’s going to be a strange road. And I know your life isn’t here. ”
Elena sank to her knees and put her head against the wall. It was the worst possible diagnosis, the worst possible thing to fathom when it came to her brilliant mother.
“It isn’t fair,” Elena muttered.
“It isn’t fair,” her friend echoed. “I’m going to do everything I can to help you both.”
Elena didn’t know what to say. The wind howled outside, threatening to tear her childhood home apart.
Suddenly, Jemma woke up with a start and got to her feet. “Carmen!” she cried. “Carmen, we’re missing it.”
Elena watched as Carmen shuddered awake, rubbing her eyes.
“I have to go,” Elena whispered to Maxine.
“Call to set up an appointment tomorrow,” Maxine told her. “The sooner we can get these meds going, the better.”
After Jemma retreated home for the night, Elena collapsed on the sofa next to her mother and watched the last few minutes of When Harry Met Sally, the buildup to New Year’s Eve, when Harry scampered across the city to tell Sally he loved her.
It was inconceivably romantic and like nothing that had ever happened to Elena in real life.
Even during her most “beautiful” love, the one she’d shared with Timothy, the most romantic thing he’d ever done was help her edit her articles.
(Admittedly, this was a rare thing from the likes of Timothy, who was so renowned and so cagey about his journalistic practices.)
When her mother slid her fingers through Elena’s, Elena’s eyes filled with tears. Such tenderness wasn’t her mother’s forte. It frightened her. Is this the disease? Elena wondered. Or is she getting soft in her old age?
Or did she miss me that much—like Natalie said?
“I read Grandma’s Christmas piece,” Elena said as the credits rolled.
“And?” Carmen’s voice was harder than Elena had expected.
“She was a wonderful writer,” Elena said.
“I was never as good as her,” Carmen said. “I always wanted to be, and I failed all around.”
Elena was startled. Never in her life had she imagined her mother saying that she’d failed her own mother (a mother who’d never gotten to know her own daughter!). She wondered how much of her mother’s hardness was a result of all she’d lost in losing her mother so young.
And they’d both lost Elena’s father. They’d never talked about it. Not really.
She thought again of the grief therapy sessions—and wondered if she wasn’t the only one who would benefit.
“Mom,” she said. “What do you say we go to the community center later this week?”
“Is it an article? An interview?” her mother asked, raising her eyebrows, as though her purpose was returning to her.
“Sort of,” Elena said. For what was a grief therapy session if not a time of conversation, of laying it all out there? It was the same honesty you’d hope for in an interview.
She just hoped her mother was up for it.
The following morning, Elena and Natalie watched as the newspapers were again taken out of the office and readied for delivery across all of Millbrook.
It was the first day of December, and it was twenty-three degrees.
The cups of coffee warmed their hands as they prepared for the day ahead, discussed future articles, conducted interviews, and edited articles.
For the first time, Elena thought to ask Natalie why the editor Sam had quit after so many years of working with Carmen, and Natalie winced and said, “Carmen was mean to him one too many times, I think.”
Elena’s heart sank. “It’s the disease,” she whispered.
Natalie’s face went pale. She touched Elena’s shoulder, and they stood like that for a long time, both stirring in their private sorrows.
After a hard morning of work, Natalie appeared in Elena’s mother’s office and closed the door behind her. Elena finished typing a sentence and adjusted her glasses.
“What’s up?” she asked.
Natalie sat across from her and wore a stern expression. “You remember that article I published yesterday?”
“‘Fraud in Connersville,’” Elena said. “Brilliant story. Congratulations again.”
“The thing is, I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Natalie said, speaking furtively.
“I encountered a few documents yesterday. Documents I missed during my original pass-through for the story. Documents that link Connersville with several upper-crush families here in Millbrook.” She swallowed.
“You know the mansions around Cranberry Cove?”
Although she hadn’t thought of them in ages, Elena knew the mansions well.
About a mile away from her mother’s place was Cranberry Cove, a glittering and mystical place that had once been set aside for a natural reserve of countless animals, trees, plants, and bugs.
But Elena had never known the site before the mansions had been built: massive and gaudy homes that were now filled with incredibly “important” millionaires who, mostly, worked elsewhere and did little to help the community.
They’d taken Cranberry Cove for themselves, and nobody had been able to stand in their way.
She was pretty sure the mansions had been built in the sixties.
Long ago, her mother and father had spoken of it as if it were the greatest tragedy to befall Millbrook in all history. But there was no fighting the prominent families on the cove.
So many years after the mansions had been built, Elena had imagined the fight was over.
“It sounds like promises were made to people in Cranberry Cove,” Natalie said.
“Promises to destroy the southern part of the cove to make way for an additional real estate project. They want expensive homes for wealthy people, plus a country club that they can all enjoy. In return, the judge who lives in Cranberry Cove promises to look the other way when the guy in charge of the building commits a crime. Something money-related. And there are so many others involved, people hiding where the money is going. I can’t make sense of it. ”
Elena’s jaw dropped. “Show me.”
Natalie snapped the file onto Elena’s desk, and Elena pored over the series of emails and text messages from several years ago, indicating that this conversation had occurred and was probably ongoing.
“How did you get these?” Elena asked, mystified. It was a good bit of journalism. It was also incredibly sneaky.
“I’ve been up to my ears in files and documents and secret texts,” Natalie said.
“I never imagined any of it touched Millbrook or Cranberry Cove. I thought, in coming here, that I was moving to a place that played by the rules. But my mother—and your mother—always said I was naive.” Natalie smiled sadly.
“I’m not naive anymore. Well, I’m working on it, at least, which is better than nothing. ”
Elena thanked Natalie for the information and promised to review all relevant documents that afternoon.
“But it’ll still be your story,” Elena promised Natalie. “You’ve done the work.”
Natalie got up and clutched the back of the chair. “I don’t know if I want it. Like I said before, you’re braver as a journalist than I’ll ever be.”
“But you’ve made it this far,” Elena protested.
Natalie raised her shoulders. “Maybe this is as far as I can go. Those people in Cranberry Cove scare me. But you’ve been to Syria, Elena. You’ve seen the world and all the evils in it.” With that, Natalie turned on her heel and left the office.
Elena collapsed back in her mother’s chair, her thoughts spinning.
Corruption in Cranberry Cove. It wasn’t so hard to believe, she guessed, especially given the tremendous wealth of that place and the slightly sinister people who lived there.
Entirely un-Millbrook-like people. After writing about Christmas parties and Christmas cookies and upcoming Christmas festivities, a story like this fascinated Elena, as it demanded of her the intellect and drive she’d thought had died out in Syria.
Maybe it was nothing. Perhaps it would lead her nowhere interesting.
But it didn’t hurt to dig around.
Many of The Millbrook Gazette's previous articles had been archived on the internet, which allowed a quick search on her mother’s computer.
She typed “Cranberry Cove.” Immediately, more than 300 articles appeared, written from 1957 onward, when the first of the mansion plans was proposed to the community.
Focusing on the more recent articles, Elena slid past topics like community gardens, Cranberry Cove parties, swanky rebuilds of already swanky homes, and Millbrook visitors who’d had their pictures taken at one of the gaudy mansions.
Elena seethed. There had to be some mention of what was really going on in Cranberry Cove.
There had to be something to sink her teeth into.
Maybe there was nothing. Perhaps Elena was on another wild goose chase.
Maybe Elena was not the incredible journalist she always thought she was.
Who had told Elena that she was good enough to be a war correspondent? Maybe she wasn’t even good enough to write about Christmas baking competitions.
It took a little more than three hours before Elena stumbled into anything of value.
Most of the articles seemed like propaganda, propping up the “beauty” of the Cranberry Cove mansions rather than echoing the sentiment of greater Millbrook (who resented that their beautiful cove had been privatized and, in their eyes, destroyed).
The first article that cited Cranberry Cove as the monster it so clearly was had been written by a familiar woman.
Incredibly, it was written by Rosa Tompkins.
Elena’s heartbeat quickened. She hadn’t realized she’d gotten to her feet.
Outside, the sky was inky black, and she knew it was nearly time to head home for dinner.
Jemma couldn’t sit with her mother forever.
Carmen might turn on her, like she turned on everyone.
It was probably the disease talking. Or it was just Carmen’s classic arrogance, which seemed to hide a broken heart.
But Elena couldn’t resist reading through the first of seven articles written by Rosa, all citing the Cranberry Cove as a “poisonous building idea that could very well unravel the fabric that stitches this community together.”
Rosa wrote: Cranberry Cove has been a favorite place for my family going on thirty years.
Sundays in the summer, we picnic at the water; we swim and sail.
In fact, there’s a photograph of all five of us at the cove—my mother, my father, and my two brothers—taken when I was no older than one or two.
The idea of ripping our favorite place away from us to build extravagant mansions is not in support of the greater good of Millbrook.
Elena sat back, her ears ringing. It was bizarre that she’d only just read an article from her grandmother for the first time last night. Now, she was up to her ears in Rosa’s writing and discovering a fantastic truth. Rosa had been a revolutionary woman who stood for what was right.
Could Elena do the same?
Still, it was strange that Rosa’s story of Cranberry Cove seemed to echo what was going on now: the corruption, the fraud, the seediness. It all seemed to have roots in Cranberry Cove, even so many years after its 1957 beginnings.
Time isn’t linear, Elena thought, reaching for her coat. It’s like my grandmother is trying to speak through her articles, telling me something.