Chapter 24
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If I were in a better mood, I might find the humor in having traveled all the way to Key West to wind up waiting around for Elsie’s great-niece in a generic strip-mall Starbucks.
But I’m obviously in the worst mood, so I’m mostly resentful.
Tammy is fifteen minutes late. That might not be egregious under normal circumstances, but I’ve had a really rough day.
Shortly after I arrived, I shoved a slice of banana bread into my mouth and gulped down a grande iced mocha in record time.
I’m now running solely on sugar, caffeine, anxiety, and the pain of betrayal.
It’s not exactly an ideal recipe for patient waiting.
A willowy woman in a mauve linen pantsuit strolls in and moves her sunglasses to the top of her head, inadvertently pulling a few strands from her blonde French twist. Her skin is almost as blindingly white as mine; I wouldn’t peg her as a local except that she’s otherwise the spitting image of Elsie.
Bake Tammy in the sun for a few days and it would be difficult to tell the difference between a picture of her and the one of her great-aunt that I found in the Naval History and Heritage Command archives.
Which is extra impressive considering Elsie was in her early twenties in that photo, and Tammy must be close to fifty.
Her eyes meet mine across the room, and I give her a little wave.
“Millicent?” she asks.
“Mhm. Hi, Tammy.”
“So sorry to keep you waiting. I was finishing up an offer—I’m in real estate—and I was trying to wait for the clients to send some info, but it wound up taking a lot longer than I thought it would and, anyway, I’m here now.”
I force myself to smile, even though I don’t feel very smiley. “No problem,” I say.
“So you’re Rose’s... great-granddaughter?”
“No, I—”
“Sorry, hold that thought. Let me just go order quick. Do you need anything? No?”
She hurries away to the counter. I let out a sigh. This isn’t going how I imagined. Then again, nothing today has, so why should this be any different?
“Okay,” she says, sitting across from me once she has her coffee.
She takes a sip from her venti iced double shot, which I overheard the barista warn her is made with five shots of espresso.
My heartbeat is erratic even looking at that much caffeine.
Apparently, Tammy is made of stronger stuff.
“You were saying about your great-grandmother?”
“Oh, no, there’s no relation actually. I lived with Mrs. Nash at the end of her life.
Sort of a caretaker.” If Mrs. Nash heard me refer to myself this way she would have a conniption.
She hated any insinuation she couldn’t care for herself; if I hadn’t needed to move out of the apartment I shared with Josh, I doubt she ever would have agreed to let anyone live with her.
I was always introduced to doctors, relatives, and whomever else we encountered while in the world together as either Mrs. Nash’s “good friend Millie” or “roommate” (or once, when she was mad at me for getting oat milk instead of her preferred almond, she referred to me as her “temporary tenant”).
But Mrs. Nash can’t protest now, and I did care for her in all the ways, so caretaker is the easiest explanation.
Besides, I’m starting to suspect Tammy isn’t that interested in these details.
My suspicion is confirmed when she gives me a tight-lipped smile and says, “I have to be honest with you, Millicent. When Aunt Elsie said I needed to deliver letters to Rose’s pigeon, I thought the pain meds they had her on were making her loopy.
It wasn’t until Rhoda called and told me you stopped by The Palms to see Elsie that I realized what she meant.
It’s just, well, she barely spoke of Rose. ”
I swallow the lump in my throat. Tammy must see because she lays a hand briefly over mine in an attempt to be comforting. Instead, it’s mostly awkward.
“Then again, she didn’t like talking about the past,” she says.
“Aunt Elsie was very private. Growing up, I honestly thought she was just an old spinster, married to her career. Then when she retired from medicine in ’83 and no longer had to worry what anyone would think, she started volunteering at a clinic for AIDS patients and living openly with Martina.
I was a teenager then, staying with them here for the summer, and I remember being like ohhh . ” Tammy lets out a little laugh.
“Martina?” I ask. It’s not that I expected Elsie to be alone for the rest of her life—Mrs. Nash had Mr. Nash, of course. But the idea that there was someone else who meant something to Elsie gives me this shameful pang of jealousy on Mrs. Nash’s behalf.
“Martina was a surgical nurse at the hospital where Elsie worked. They were together for almost thirty years.”
“What happened to her?”
“She moved back to Bulgaria to be closer to her family. That was in... ’05 maybe?
Elsie didn’t want to leave Key West, so they broke up.
It was all very amicable from what I understand.
They kept in touch. Martina wanted to come for the memorial service, actually, but she’s too old for that kind of travel.
” Tammy looks off into the distance and her lips move without making a sound, as if she’s doing some calculation in her head.
“She was a bit younger than Aunt Elsie, but she’s probably in her late eighties now. ”
This talk of Elsie loving someone other than Mrs. Nash feels dangerously close to Hollis being right. And Frederick Hollis Hollenbeck is the last person I want to be conceding anything to at the moment.
“You mentioned the memorial service?” I literally cross my fingers under the table, hoping that it hasn’t happened yet.
“Yeah. We did a thing yesterday afternoon at The Palms. Just a small gathering of close family and her friends at the facility.”
“Oh. Is she buried nearby?” Maybe if I visit her grave I’ll find some sort of closure. That’s all Mrs. Nash and I had originally planned to do anyway.
Tammy leans back in her chair and crosses her legs. “Aunt Elsie donated her body to science. Apparently, they might use it for up to two years, then they’re supposed to cremate whatever’s left and scatter the ashes over the Gulf.”
“That’s nice,” I say, trying to convince myself. “I know she loved the water.”
“Did she?” Tammy looks doubtful.
Did she even know her aunt? Or is the little I know not even true? I clear my throat. “Do you know anything about what happened while she was serving in Korea? When she was declared deceased?”
“Now that she talked about. Aunt Elsie loved to tell everyone how she was dead for a short time. It was one of her favorite stories.”
“Maybe you can fill in some blanks for me then,” I say. “I figured out from my research that it was some sort of clerical issue, but do you know how it happened?”
“There was a helicopter accident. Aunt Elsie and some other nurses were flying to help out at an understaffed hospital near... what’s that place called?
Inky... Inchy... Incheon! That’s it.
Anyway, she broke her leg and a bunch of ribs in the crash, but the pilot and another nurse were killed.
The nurse who died, her name was Elise Bruhn.
So Elise Bruhn and Elsie Brown both on the same downed helicopter, one dead and one injured—some wires got crossed somewhere along the line, and Elsie was administratively deceased for a week or so, until someone noticed the error. ”
Elsie Brown and Elise Bruhn, both Navy nurses, serving on the same ship, traveling in the same helicopter when it crashed. Geez. In college, I knew three Andrews who all lived in one dorm room and I thought that was confusing.
Tammy smiles politely. “Does that solve the mystery?” she asks.
I nod. “One of Mrs. Nash’s letters to Elsie was returned to sender with a stamp that said deceased. She never knew that Elsie was still alive.” That familiar guilt creeps up on me again. If only I looked into this sooner. If only I found Elsie before Mrs. Nash died, then maybe...
“I don’t understand. Wouldn’t Aunt Elsie have written to her to let her know what happened?”
“The letter that was returned said that Mrs. Nash’s husband got a new job, and they were moving from Chicago to DC. So Elsie never got their new address. She probably had no way of finding out what happened to Mrs. Nash. No way of knowing where she went.”
“How sad,” Tammy says, turning her cup a few degrees clockwise. “Well, if they were as close as you seem to think.”
I guess when she called and seemed so glad to catch me before I left town, I hoped Tammy might want to cry and reminisce with me, mourn our respective yet mutual losses.
I hoped she would be eager to share everything about Elsie that I wanted to share about Mrs. Nash, and that we could use each other’s memories to form a more complete picture of the love story that inadvertently brought us together.
But Tammy is apparently not the crying-and- reminiscing type.
She isn’t all that curious to learn about the woman who loved her great-aunt so much and for so long.
Our interaction feels businesslike and stiff, no matter how much she smiles and nods.
I want to get out of here. I don’t know where I’ll go since I can’t go back to Hollis. Another hotel I guess, somewhere else on the island.
“You said you have letters for me.” I mean to pose it as a question, but it comes out as a statement that sounds kind of rude. Honestly, my emotions are thoroughly shot; there’s not much energy left for pretending to be polite anymore, and Tammy isn’t making me particularly inclined to care.
Luckily, she doesn’t appear to care either. “Right, yes,” she says, pulling a large, yellow, clasp envelope from her briefcase. “Here you go. This is everything Elsie told me to give to Rose’s pigeon.”