Chapter Five
Lynette opened one eye to check the alarm clock on the bedside table. At first, the steady tick-tock beat of it threatened to drive her crazy after she’d picked it up at a rummage sale down the block, but she’d liked the look of it. Now she was used to it. But she had to move it closer to her face to make out the actual time without her contacts in.
Six a.m. and cheerful rays of sunshine already peeked around the edges of her curtains. It would be a beautiful morning. She’d planned to work in the shed again, but she’d already skipped her morning walk the day before. It would be too easy to fall out of her daily walking routine if she missed multiple days in a row.
She’d walk, then work. Besides, an idea had come to her in the bathtub last night.
When she got down to the kitchen, she ignored the full pot of coffee Donna must have made. She pulled on her tennis shoes and headed down the back steps. She spotted her mom bent over the rose bushes in the back garden.
“I’m going for a walk!”
Donna kept right on with her gardening. Lynette noticed the white wire running from her ears. She was probably listening to an audiobook while she cleaned up the mess left behind from yesterday’s storm. Since Lynette walked early most mornings, Donna wouldn’t worry if she discovered her daughter was gone.
She turned left at the end of their driveway and headed down Breconwood Road. No one was out and about yet, given the early hour. She passed her old friend Owen’s house. All was quiet. Owen’s SUV sat in the driveway. He’d used it to bring a Shop-Vac over when she’d reached out to him in a panic after accidentally allowing the upstairs tub to overflow.
She walked on, enjoying the summer beauty and still-mild temperature. It felt good to stretch her legs. Muscles she didn’t even know she had felt stiff from her work in the shed. If she’d remembered her own earbuds, she might have found a podcast to listen to on the walk. But nature made its own beautiful music, and she was as guilty as most people of not tuning in to it often enough.
Her route took her through several neighborhoods; some were familiar to her, others not at all. She walked past Jackie’s parents’ place, wondering how Charlotte was getting along on her own now that Glen was living in a memory care unit. She’d half expected to catch Jackie’s mom outside, too, tending to her prize tomato plants, but no one was about.
Eventually her feet carried her past the old pizza parlor where she’d worked as a kid. When she’d come back in 2018 for her class’s thirtieth reunion with her then boyfriend, Wyatt, she’d been sad to discover the old booths were gone, replaced with rows of washer and dryer units. But now, as she rounded the familiar corner, she discovered that only the laundromat’s sign remained. At some point—probably during the pandemic shutdowns—someone had boarded up the windows and secured the front door with a chain. Tall weeds in the parking lot added to the air of neglect and abandonment.
She paused on the sidewalk that rimmed the pitted lot and closed her eyes. She remembered the echo of long-ago voices; the laughter of unruly children, impatient for their pizza, coupled with scoldings from harried parents. Then there was the banter in the back between the kitchen and wait staff. When she was a senior in high school, this was a special place for her. She’d done her best to avoid spending time at home. It wasn’t her mother she had been trying to avoid, but Donna’s boyfriend at the time. The grown man who couldn’t keep his hands to himself whenever he encountered Lynette alone.
She hated how na?ve her mother was back then. If it hadn’t been for Storm, her manager and eventual boyfriend, Lynette wouldn’t have found the courage to stand up for herself and report the man’s inappropriate behavior.
She’d lied to her friends when she told them she never thought about Storm over the years. She thought of him often. She’d even tried to look him up online once, but she didn’t find anything. “Storm” probably wasn’t his real first name, and she might not have remembered his correct last name.
The effort behind her search was half-hearted, anyway. The last few months of her senior year had been turbulent ones, and her own terrible choices came with serious repercussions for both her and Donna.
Even though they’d moved back to Ruby Shores, the town she’d always considered home, there were some things that were better left in the past.
A garbage truck rolled down the street behind her, and the stench that emanated from it knocked her back into her fifty-year-old self. She turned to continue on her walk and noticed a uniformed woman in a blue top and shorts delivering mail across the street.
“Hey, Carol,” she yelled in greeting.
She could tell from the hitch in the woman’s step that she’d heard Lynette, but she didn’t return the wave or look her way.
What is it with the women in this town?she wondered. Some people seemed so stuck-up, especially the women. Weren’t people supposed to be friendly in small towns?
Had she been too abrupt with Carol last month when the woman failed to close the door on their mailbox and their mail fell into the bushes below? Surely the woman wouldn’t hold her own incompetence against Lynette, would she?
Her phone vibrated. The incoming text from Kit, about how excited she was getting for their upcoming trip, brought a smile to her face. Screw Carol and her attitude. And screw Lynette’s old memories that always made her feel guilty for long-ago mistakes she couldn’t change.
The temperature was climbing, and she picked up her pace. She wasn’t quite to her destination yet, and she wanted to get home to work on her shed again before it got too hot outside. After three more blocks, she passed below the graceful metal archway that marked the entrance to Shady Acres. The old cemetery didn’t actually cover acres of land on the edge of town, but this was where Donna said the family had buried Sybil.
If she could find Sybil’s grave, her husband would likely be buried beside her, so Lynette could get his name. She might also find the graves of Raven’s parents. Maybe even a headstone for her twin brother.
The photographs they’d found had left her so curious.
She could have simply waited for Donna to reach out to Raven, but Lynette had a thing for cemeteries. While the state of the old restaurant where she’d worked depressed her, she felt different anytime she wandered around old graves. She’d read once that people who found cemeteries fascinating were called taphophiles.
Donna wouldn’t enjoy knowing her daughter was a taphophile any more than she liked her fascination with tarot.
Groundskeepers sometimes maintain listings for graveyards to make it easier for loved ones, or even grave hunters, to locate specific burial plots. Sure enough, Lynette located a binder in a cubby near the entrance. It contained an alphabetical listing of the dead and their corresponding locations within the cemetery. She turned back to the W’s, quickly locating the name Sybil Wall. She took a picture of the coordinates listed for Sybil’s grave and the map of the whole cemetery.
It didn’t take her long to locate Sybil’s headstone. She remembered that Sybil and her husband were wealthy benefactors of various institutions in town, so the imposing size of the stone wasn’t a surprise.
Someone was doing an excellent job maintaining the grounds here, unlike the weed-infested lot at her long-ago place of employment.
She dropped to her knees on the velvety green grass in front of the Walls’ headstone. She ran her fingers over the years below Sybil’s name: 1899–1994. So Sybil lived to be an impressive ninety-five years old. She’d have been eighty-nine when Lynette and Donna left Ruby Shores in 1988. Her husband—his name turned out to be Clifford—was born four years before Sybil, but the poor man died in 1930. Lynette couldn’t help but wonder what killed a thirty-five-year-old man. Maybe Donna could ask Raven about that, too.
She sat on the soft grass and allowed her mind to drift back to the times she’d spent around Sybil. Her memories were understandably vague, given it was more than thirty years ago now. Still, these snippets of time, locked in her brain, were happy ones.
How long had it been since anyone came here to visit this grave? Did Raven come here before she moved away?
Thoughts of Raven reminded Lynette that she was also here to see if she could find the other graves. She rested a hand on Sybil’s headstone, initially as a sign of respect but then to help her get back up on her feet. If Sybil was high above, looking down, she probably smiled at Lynette’s grunt.
She checked the tombstone to her left, but those names seemed unrelated. To the right of the Wall tombstone was a more modest headstone, flat on the ground.
“Bingo.”
The names matched those penciled on the back of the bridal photos.
According to the granite carvings, Evelyn Wall Gage was born in 1921 and died in 1954. Lynette gasped. Poor Evelyn was even younger than her father was when he’d died. Oscar Gage also died in 1954. He was thirty-six.
Gage must be a common surname around Ruby Shores.
Something else was carved into the stone below the birth and death dates of Evelyn and Oscar, but dried grass clippings and dirt made the inscription impossible to decipher. Lynette tried to clear the debris away with her hand, but the dirt was hard and caked. She was about to try kicking it away when she noticed a nearby water spigot with an empty ice cream pail hanging from it.
Luck was on her side. She hurried over to the spigot and turned the knob, delighted when icy water shot out in all directions. It spattered the front of her tank, but she didn’t mind cooling off.
Between the splashes of water and the toe of her shoe, she cleared the stone enough to read the last line.
Beloved parents of Gideon and Raven.
This was the confirmation she’d hoped for. Raven would surely appreciate the bridal pictures of her parents and grandmother.
Feeling proud of her sleuthing skills, she returned the ice cream pail and checked other nearby graves in case they had buried Gideon here, too. But it seemed that, in this regard at least, her luck had run its course.
Was Gideon buried in this cemetery, but in another section? She’d check the list up front again, this time under G for Gage. Or had he died far from here? Maybe he’d been married when he passed, and his body was buried in his spouse’s family plot somewhere.
Just before passing under the iron gates of Shady Acres again, she rechecked the list of graves. There was nothing for Gideon Gage, so she tucked the binder back into its protective box and turned toward home.
Her home that once belonged to Sybil and Clifford and their family.
How many people walking the earth today even remembered the Walls?
Who will remember me, and why, when I’m nothing more than a name carved into granite?
Thoughts like those felt too heavy for such a beautiful summer morning.
As her feet retraced the path she’d followed earlier, her mind wandered. Had Raven done any genealogy for her own family? Did the woman have any other close living relatives? While Lynette had always harbored a fascination with graveyards, especially old cemeteries she’d visited in Europe, her interest hadn’t extended to genealogy. But digging into Raven’s family tree helped Lynette understand how interesting it might be to trace lineages, too.
Raven’s situation reminded Lynette of her own sparse family tree. Raven had lost both her mother and father while she and her twin were still kids. Lucky for them, Sybil was there to raise them. Lynette had Donna, of course, but she’d had no kind of relationship with others in her family. Her mother refused to speak of her own parents, saying only that when they’d kicked her out as a young, unwed woman, their cruel stance meant they’d lost all right to call Donna and Lynette family.
She knew nothing about her biological father.
Growing up, Lynette never pressed Donna on the subject because it had felt disrespectful to do so. As she got older, she rarely thought about the father she’d never met or grandparents who had so easily turned their backs on them.
But a twinge of curiosity, of wanting to finally learn more, had blossomed.
Maybe she’d broach the subject with Donna again. The worst that could happen would be Donna’s ongoing refusal to tell her anything. Which would leave Lynette no worse off than she was today.
Besides, she still had Donna, and she’d always known she hit the jackpot with her mother, even if the woman drove her batty some days.
The screen door slapped shut behind Donna.
“I’ll love you forever if that lemonade is for me.”
Her mother grinned down at Lynette from the top of the back steps. “You better love me forever, regardless. But, yes, I poured this for you. Sorry if it’s a tad watered down. You aren’t usually gone this long for your morning walks. The ice started to melt.”
Lynette reached for the glass. “As long as it’s wet and cool, I don’t care what it tastes like.”
Donna sauntered down the stairs to hand her the lemonade, then sat. She patted the bottom step next to her. “I was getting worried about you.”
Lynette joined her mother, thankful for the cool shade provided by the canopy of leaves above. “What could possibly happen to me out for a morning walk in Ruby Shores?”
With a shrug, Donna took back the glass, helped herself to a drink, and returned it. “Not as many terrible things as in New York, but you just never know. Or you could have suffered heatstroke. When will this heat break?”
Lynette set the lemonade on the step between them. “Maybe tonight. More rain is in the forecast. Not that it helped much last night. I can’t wait to cool off in the lake out at Whispering Pines.”
“What’s wrong with the lake right here in Ruby Shores?”
Lynette realized her feet felt like they were on fire. “Nothing is wrong with it,” she said, grunting as she worked one tennis shoe off with the toe of her other foot. Then she peeled her sweaty socks off and jammed them inside the shoes. “I just meant it will be fun to hang out with the girls and splash around in the water, like we did when we were kids.”
She used to love hanging out with her friends at the lake on the edge of Ruby Shores, too, but one terrifying night stole that sense of peace from her. It was a nightmare she’d shared with no one.
Donna nodded, then picked up the sweating glass of lemonade. “Do you mind?”
“Now you ask?” Lynette laughed. “Go ahead, I don’t mind. I’ll get more. I need to go in and shower before I melt. Sorry if I stink.”
After another sip of lemonade, Donna waved her free hand toward the garden shed. “I thought you planned to work out there all day today. Why shower now? You’ll just get dirty again.”
“Mother. I’m hot. And gross. If I started in there right now, the dust would stick to me and I’d come out looking like a shadow at the end of the day. There’s one of those big box fans up in the attic. Once I shower and change, I plan to take it out there and set it up on low. The work should be more pleasant that way.” She got up from the step but dropped back down when she remembered her trip to the cemetery. “Oh! My walk took longer today because I headed down to the cemetery on the edge of town.”
Donna whistled. “No wonder you were gone for so long. Why did you want to go to the cemetery on a beautiful morning like this? That sounds depressing.”
Lynette shook her head. “I don’t think cemeteries are depressing. I think they’re fascinating—unless I have to go for someone’s service. Besides, wouldn’t you rather go there on a sunny, bright morning versus a dark and dreary evening?”
“I’d rather not go at all,” her mother pointed out.
“Fine. Whatever. But I wanted to tell you that the bridal couple in those pictures we found in the box last night were Raven’s parents. They’re buried next to Sybil and her husband. His name was Clifford, by the way.”
“That’s right,” Donna said with a snap of her fingers. “His name was escaping me. Did you pay any attention to how old her Clifford was when he died?”
Lynette reached for her tennis shoes. “In his thirties. So were Raven’s parents. That’s way more tragedy than one family should have to bear. Oh, I also looked to see if I could find a headstone for Raven’s brother, but I didn’t see one. You said he died, too, right? Either they buried him somewhere else, or your memory is faulty.”
Donna got to her feet ahead of Lynette, using the handrail for leverage. She picked up the empty lemonade glass. “For Raven’s and her brother’s sake, let’s hope it’s my memory. I think I’ll give Raven a call, though. I want to tell her about the box, and if I don’t do it now I might forget.”
Lynette followed her mother up the stairs and into the dim hallway that connected the kitchen to their dining room. “Tell her hello for me. What are you up to for the rest of the day? I’d try to convince you to help me in the shed, but it might get too hot for you, even with a fan.”
“You forget I used to dream of living on a tropical island somewhere. The heat doesn’t bother me, but I’ll leave the dirty work out there to you. We could use some groceries. Why don’t I pick up the ingredients for a nice chicken salad for dinner? You’ll be hungry later, after all of your walking and work in your shed.”
Lynette’s stomach growled at the mention of food. If she ate nothing between now and dinner, she’d need more than a salad. But Donna didn’t seem to have much of an appetite these days.
It wasn’t until she trudged up the stairs to her en-suite bathroom that she remembered her desire to get her mother to tell her more about her grandparents. Maybe even her father.
Doing a little digging into Raven’s family history was fun. She’d be turning fifty-one years old in a week. Maybe it was about time for her to know more about her own lineage, too.