Chapter Twenty-Five
“Come in,” Willamena said, taking a deep breath through her nose and exhaling slowly through her mouth. She felt so unwell today that it bordered on numbness. She’d put on more rouge than usual to try to hide it, but pretending you weren’t in pain was sometimes more difficult than the pain itself.
The sunroom door opened and Tug entered with the tea tray.
“No costume today?” she asked him.
“I told you yesterday, you win.” Then he added dramatically, “For now.”
Bailey was lingering by the door. She was radiating a sense of urgency edged with expectation. Jack was in the hallway, so Willamena gave him a questioning look.
“All I know is that she’s seen him in the backyard again,” Jack said.
“Tea, milady,” Tug said.
She moved her eyes to Tug, then down to the cup. “Oh, thank you,” she said, taking it. Tug glanced in the direction of the hallway, trying to catch what she’d been staring at. “That will be all.”
As soon as he left, Bailey closed the door.
“No, please keep it open today,” Willamena said. “I’d like some air in the room.”
Bailey opened it, and when Jack appeared he said, “Am I one of the girls now?”
Willamena lifted a corner of her mouth.
Bailey stuck her head out to look down the hall, making sure her father wasn’t there before taking her seat.
“I wanted to tell you this last night when I found out, but Daddy said you were tired,” she said, the words rushing out the way they sometimes would when she was a child, when she had waited all week to tell Willamena something exciting.
Willamena missed those days. She missed all the days.
Bailey was an adult now, and she had even missed watching her turn into one.
“Clutch Vallow’s wallet was found downstream on Tasha Keller’s property yesterday.
There was also a bone. I know it can’t be his, but I saw firsthand that it’s going to be the assumption.
And if everyone believes he’s dead, that makes him more dangerous.
I won’t know how to handle him after you’re gone.
I know you don’t want the scandal, and I know it will hurt Daddy, but maybe I should get this out in the open, like I should have done eight years ago. I don’t know where the finish line is.”
Willamena closed her eyes. A bone. There were always bones.
“The finish line was long ago, Bailey,” she assured her.
“What you did to him evened out what he did to you. You ceased to have anything to do with each other after that. When he and I crossed paths, it became between the two of us. If you believe nothing else, believe that I would never let him hurt you again. You have nothing to fear.”
Bailey leaned forward and said confidentially, “What if I told you I’ve seen him?”
“Then I would say what I always said to you as a child. Save yourself from a lifetime of trying to get answers when there are none. Sometimes we’re better off believing it’s all in our imaginations.”
Bailey sat back with a quick laugh. “You didn’t say it like that, Mim. When I told you things I thought I saw as a child, your response was that I wasn’t special.”
“I worded that very, very poorly. I’m sorry. You’ve always been special, Bailey. Always. What I meant was, despite the heaviness that came with being a member of this family, there was nothing wrong with you.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Bailey said wryly. “But thank you.”
She needed to stop all this Clutch talk before Bailey asked any more questions, so Willamena set her cup aside and grabbed her umbrella.
She limped over to the shelves, where she shook out the Polaroid from her Andy Smooth album.
She handed it to Bailey before she sat again.
“That photo you found was taken at my senior prom. Tug’s father was my date, but Jack was there to play.
I’ll never forget that night. He sang ‘Time in a Bottle.’”
Out in the hallway, Jack put his hands behind his neck and sighed in a hedonistic way. “Man, that was a great song.”
“If you start humming it, I won’t be able to do this.”
“I couldn’t hum it if I tried,” Bailey said, staring at the photo. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”
“She knows who Andy Smooth is, but not Jim Croce,” Jack said. “Oh, the humanity.”
Willamena focused on Bailey. “Jack was an accomplished guitar player, but his voice was going to be his ticket to something big. Everyone who heard him that night knew it. But he never got the chance before he disappeared. In fact, I believe that’s the only photo that proves he ever existed.
It was taken on May 15, 1976, moments after our first kiss.
I obviously didn’t know we were seen. Jani had followed me outside and taken it, then she mailed it to my grandmother because she didn’t like the hold our family had on the town, and this was her way of getting even.
It’s taken me a lifetime to realize she wasn’t an inherently bad person.
She was a teenager, just like I was. Our emotions weren’t regulated and we did careless things.
But because of that photo, my grandmother invited Jack here and confronted him about our secret relationship.
She offered him a check to leave town and to never come back. And he took it.”
Bailey had been completely engrossed in the story until that point, and Willamena saw the moment that she lost her. “He took it? That’s your great love story? But I was beginning to think I could…” She paused. “Never mind.”
Willamena looked to Jack for guidance.
“I’m not sure, but she’s mentioned the grandson of the owner of an ice cream shop? She was with him yesterday.”
“Ah,” Willamena said. “That’s not the end to this love story, Bailey.
There is no end. Yes, I was crushed at the time that he thought so little of our relationship that he would cheapen it like that.
I thought he was just like everyone else, after all.
Instead of seeing me as something more than I was, all he saw was my grandmother’s money.
But that rainy night he snuck into the house, into my bedroom, and he told me he took the money so we could leave together.
That’s when he asked me to run away with him.
My grandmother only saw me as her legacy.
My friends weren’t who I thought they were.
I was going to marry a man I didn’t love.
I’d never seen the world beyond a television screen.
I was scared to go with him, because I had always been ruled by fear.
But my life was hopeless without Jack. He was my destiny, and I was his.
So I packed a bag and we left my room. We only got as far as the staircase.
My grandmother heard us, and ordered Jack to leave.
I was holding his wet umbrella, and she tried to take it from me.
We struggled, but she was angry and drunk, so she lost her balance and fell into Jack, which sent him falling down the stairs. ”
“Mim?” Bailey said slowly. “You said he disappeared. You didn’t mean he died, did you?”
“Yes, I did. And my grandmother covered it up.”
“She covered it up?” Bailey repeated. “How?”
Willamena shook her head. She wasn’t going that far. “I was hysterical that night, and she sedated me. When I woke, Jack, his possessions, and the car he stole that was sitting outside waiting for us were all gone.”
Bailey was quiet for a while, working through it.
Finally, she crossed her hands in her lap and said gently, “I don’t want to diminish what was obviously a traumatic experience, but if you don’t know exactly what happened to him, how do you know he’s dead?
He could have been all right, and he just took your grandmother’s money, after all. ”
Willamena couldn’t point to him and prove it without consigning Bailey to a lifetime of knowing she could see ghosts.
And she would accept being misunderstood forever, if it meant sparing Bailey that.
“I know because he never would have left this behind.” She set the umbrella on her lap. “It meant more to him than anything.”
“Not more than anything, Wills,” Jack said. “Not more than you.”
“The cover had been off the foyer register that night, and the umbrella slid in after he fell. I left it there, terrified my grandmother would find it, the last thing that belonged to him. But even after she died, I couldn’t bring myself to take it out. It became my rule to keep it there.”
“So you’ve been living with this guilt all your life? Mim, it wasn’t your fault.”
Willamena smiled. “I wish I could believe that. I could have taken what Jack taught me, what he showed me, and lived a different life. But I didn’t.
I’ve held on to him here, the last place he was alive, even though I know he didn’t want me to.
What I’m trying to tell you, the whole purpose of this long-overdue story, is please don’t let your past define you like it defined me.
Experience the moments, even the bad ones, then leave them behind.
And most importantly, when you find happiness, don’t hesitate. Run with it.”
Bailey stared at the photo. She finally sighed and said, “I love you, Mim.”
Willamena tilted her head curiously. “But you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you told me for me. And that’s enough.”
“I love you, too. Although that’s probably hard for you to believe, as well.”
Bailey got up and kissed her on the cheek. She extended the Polaroid, but Willamena shook her head.
“My grandmother used to call photographs paper ghosts, the only ghosts everyone can see,” she said. “Keep that to remind you to focus on what’s real.”
Bailey nodded and walked away. She passed Jack in the foyer, and he looked at her fondly.
He reached out as if to touch Bailey’s arm and Bailey stopped suddenly and turned.
When she didn’t see anyone, she looked back into the sunroom at Willamena.
Willamena only smiled. The veil was thinning between her two worlds.
As soon as Bailey was gone, Jack extended his hand to her. “Come with me, Wills,” he said, his exact words from that long-ago night. It had such a lovely symmetry. The beginning, the end.
“Is it really time to go?” she asked. “Don’t tease me.”
“Almost.”
“Thank goodness.” She got to her feet, exhausted. “I was about to get cranky about it.”
“About to?”
She gave him a look that made him laugh as she stepped out of the sunroom, leaving only a door full of sunshine.
Bailey had just finished washing the dishes from dinner when her dad walked back into the kitchen five minutes after he’d left with Mim’s food. He still had the tray, the contents untouched. “She wasn’t hungry?”
“No.” He set the tray on the counter. “She wanted to take her nighttime meds early. I think it’s because that storm is about to blow in, and she hates rain.
” He motioned outside the kitchen window, where the evening sky was bright orange, the clouds like long peels of tangerines.
Off in the distance, the dark edges of the storm could be seen.
He poured Mim’s soup down the drain and handed Bailey the bowl to wash. “I couldn’t help but notice that you’d bagged up all your things in your room. Are you taking them with you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “They’re donation bags.”
“Is there anything you’d like to keep here?”
She rinsed the bowl and set it in the dish rack, then wrung out the dishcloth. She didn’t want to disappoint him, but she was sure he knew the answer. “I don’t think so.”
“Not even the cloche?”
“I’d probably be checking it for the rest of my life for some magical communication from Mim if I took that.” She turned around and leaned against the counter. “What about you? Do you want anything?”
“Don’t tell your grandmother, but those recipe cards are now mine.” He went to the high cabinet above the fridge, opened it, and pointed to an old plastic recipe box. “I’ve hidden them here so she won’t throw them away.”
“And you trust me with this knowledge?”
“If they’re gone in the morning, I’ll know it was you.”
She shook her head. “All I can say is your friend in Chapel Hill is going to be very lucky. Or very scared.”
Silence. She watched a bloom of color make its way up his neck. He turned and put the rest of their leftover dinner in the fridge. “You know, she never wanted any of this stuff in the house, either,” he said. “I don’t think it ever made her happy.”
“I will keep one thing—the photo albums that were in my closet. And speaking of photos.” She took the Polaroid out of her sweatshirt pocket and handed it to him. “Mim gave me this at tea today. I thought you’d like to see it.”
Tug smiled. “What a blast from the past.”
“That is Jack. She apparently told me something about him as kid, and I named my imaginary friend after him.”
He looked at it more closely. “Is this a guitar case by his feet?”
“Yep. He was a musician.”
Tug laughed. “So the rumor was true! She was involved with someone in a band before my dad. One mystery solved, a thousand more to go.” He handed it back to her as they left the kitchen and he turned out the light behind them. “Did she say what happened to him?”
Bailey didn’t have a reliable answer, so she just shrugged. “It didn’t work out, I guess.”
They went through the dining room and into the foyer. At the base of the staircase, Tug paused awkwardly. “I’m going to tell you about my friend soon, Bailey. I promise.”
Bailey smiled and nodded. “I’d like that. You go on up. I’ll get the living room light.”
She crossed the foyer to the living room and reached in to flick the wall switch. As soon as the room went dark, a single note chimed from the piano.
Tug stopped halfway up the stairs. “Was that the piano?”
Bailey immediately turned on the light again. The grand piano stood large and elegant in the center of the room like a ringmaster in a spotlight. A childhood scene tinged the edge of her memory and she laughed. “Or maybe it was the piano man.”
“Good night, Jack,” Tug called in a singsongy voice as he disappeared around the corner at the top of the staircase. It was a testament to how used to the quirks of this house they were that neither one of them thought any more of it.
“Yes,” she said, turning off the light again. “Good night, Jack.”