Chapter Nineteen. Rose
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ROSE
I’m behind the wheel of Auntie’s cadillac convertible coupe, a green silk scarf tied over my curls to match my jade-green shirtwaist dress. I feel like a Hollywood starlet, a character in a detective film—except instead of playing the femme fatale, I’m the private eye.
Grace and I are on our way to question Sadie Haddaway about her summer at the Harrow Home—if she still lives in the same town where she lived as a teenager, if we can locate her, if she’s willing to give us the time of day.
Grace’s plan has more ifs than I’m comfortable with. But I don’t have a better one.
Grace is wearing a light blue dress with white piping.
With ruffled white socks and penny loafers and a white pocketbook, her honeyed hair tied back with a blue ribbon, she looks a treat.
Like Alice in Wonderland. But she’s tapping her pink nails against the side of the car and jiggling her knee as I drive across the bridge into Chestertown.
I suppose if the ghost had suggested I bash my father’s skull in, I would be anxious to get some answers, too.
Are her violent urges coming for me next? In the last few days, I’ve seen the ghost in the brass mirror in the lobby and in my bedroom mirror when I woke from a nightmare. I’ve taken to dozing with the lamp on. Even my five-year-old sister doesn’t sleep with a lamp on!
I take a deep breath. It’s a sunny day and I’m driving this beaut of a car past a small-town post office, on my way to solve a mystery. We will figure this out.
“You told your mother we were shopping in Chestertown, right?” I ask. Not that Auntie is particularly strict regarding my whereabouts. When I asked if I could borrow her brand-new car, she said, “I don’t see why not. Have fun, darling,” before turning her attention back to a catalog of draperies.
“I did. Ma said what a sweet girl you are. ‘Such fine manners, but she never puts on airs.’ You really have her fooled.” Grace smirks. “She’s going to tell Dad I went shopping with Kitty, though. ‘No need to go looking for trouble,’ she says.”
She sighs as though she wishes her mother would go looking for trouble sometimes.
I haven’t seen Mr. Harrow since Grace told him that I found the bracelet and he ordered the twins to stay away from me. I haven’t talked to Coop, either. Grace says he’s been working a lot down at the feed store.
Yesterday morning he ran past the terrace while Auntie and Ella and Lou and I were eating breakfast, though. I wondered if he knew we would be there. Perhaps it’s arrogant to think I had anything to do with it. He smiled and said hello, but he didn’t stop to talk.
It was a very nice smile. The sort of gap-toothed grin that made me feel like I was napping in a puddle of sunshine. He can’t smile at everyone like that, can he?
“Who are you getting all moony-eyed over? Are you thinking about my brother?”
“What? No,” I lie. “Look, a parking spot!”
I pull Auntie’s car into a spot on High Street. Grace and I walk down the uneven brick sidewalk through a little park with a fountain. Ahead of us, at the corner of Lawyers Row and High Street, is a redbrick building with a bell tower. Across the street is a drugstore called Stam’s.
I point. “Shall we try there?”
Bells chime above the door as we enter. The soda jerk has a white mustache and a suit to match. “Hello, girls. What can I get for you?”
“We’re looking for Sadie Haddaway?” Grace squeaks.
He chuckles. “Sadie George, now. Hasn’t been Sadie Haddaway for a decade.”
“Oh.” Grace stares at her loafers. It’s strange to see her nervous, out of her element.
“Of course. She’s an old friend of my mother’s.
” I pull out some stationery—a letter from Nanny, but it will do in a pinch—and look at it with feigned dismay.
“I’m such a silly goose, I’ve gotten the directions all wrong.
Mama will be positively furious with me if we don’t see Mrs. George.
We’re only in town for the afternoon.” I sniffle performatively.
“Now, hold on, there’s no need for all that!” The man—as allergic to the tears of a pretty girl as I suspected—gives us an address on Queen Street. “You girls go on and see Mrs. George and then come back here for lunch. I’ll make you fresh cherry Cokes, on the house.”
I brighten. “Thank you, mister. You really saved my bacon!”
Grace elbows me as we walk out. “You’re a better actress than I thought.”
I think of all the times I had to be respectful to Millie even though I hated her guts.
All the times I snuck away to meet Thea and lied to Clara about studying at the library.
All the times my friend Jo’s father brushed past me at a crowded soiree, his hand a little too low on my back, and I just smiled politely at the old lech.
Grace doesn’t know the half of it.
We walk past the Lyceum Theater and the Imperial Hotel.
As the bells sing twelve o’clock, we turn onto Queen Street and look for the house number.
The Georges have a white Victorian row house with two dormer windows set into the green roof and a white-columned front porch. I hang back while Grace knocks.
A trim blonde in a gingham housedress comes to the door. “Hello. How can I help you?”
“Hello. Are you Sadie George?” Grace’s voice doesn’t shake this time.
The woman is about Auntie’s age, with a middy haircut. “Yes, I’m Mrs. Walter George.”
Grace steps closer, and I come up onto the porch behind her. “We want to ask you about your time at the Harrow Home.”
Mrs. George’s smile cuts off like someone’s unplugged her.
“How—?” She looks over her shoulder, then steps out onto the porch, closing the door.
My heart sinks. Mrs. George clearly isn’t alone.
And whoever is inside—her husband, her mother-in-law, a neighbor—doesn’t know about her teenaged pregnancy.
I’m sure of it from the panic on her face, and the way she blurts, “You can’t be here! ”
Grace doesn’t budge. “We only want to ask you a few questions. Please.”
Mrs. George glances up and down the quiet street. There are no neighbors in sight, but the house on the left shares a common wall. Who knows who could be lurking—listening—eavesdropping at an open window?
“May we come back at a more opportune time?” I suggest.
Mrs. George grabs at the suggestion like a lifeline. “I—yes—all right. Come back at two.”
The door opens behind her. “Who is it, dear?” Mr. George is handsome, with dark hair and the deep tan of an outdoorsman. I’d bet my lunch money that he sails.
“Oh, just some girls fundraising for the college glee club.”
She’s a quick liar, I’ll give her that. Washington College is right up the road.
Mr. George reaches for his wallet, draws out a five-dollar bill, and hands it to Grace. When he smiles, he reminds me of Gregory Peck. “Here. From Mr. and Mrs. Walter George, Esquire. Will you sing a little tune for us?”
“Oh, we couldn’t!” I sound coy but honestly, I couldn’t; I have no ear for music “But thank you ever so much.”
“Thanks, Mr. George,” Grace says sweetly, pocketing the money.
Sadie’s gaze is fastened on Grace. Is she afraid we’ll give her away?
No, there’s something else. Her glance roves over Grace’s blond hair, her slender build, her brown eyes. Sadie’s hair is a few shades darker; her eyes are a bit farther apart; her nose and jaw are a different shape. But there are enough similarities that one would wonder.
I bet that seventeen summers ago, Sadie gave birth to a baby girl. Now she’s wondering if Grace is that baby, grown and come to find her.
I didn’t think this through. I never considered what heartbreak we might cause, what old wounds we would be prodding. Driving into town, it felt like a lark. A distraction. Like something out of Mrs. Christie’s novels.
But Sadie George née Haddaway isn’t a character in a book; she’s a real person. A woman whose life we might be unstitching at the seams.
“Thank you again.” I link my arm through Grace’s and pull her toward the sidewalk. “Have a good afternoon!”
We head back to Stam’s and sit at the lunch counter.
We order cheeseburgers and get those cherry Cokes.
It’s delicious. But it might as well be sawdust. I can’t help wondering what Sadie George is thinking as she serves her husband a hot lunch.
Does she hope that Grace is her daughter—or that she isn’t?
Are we going to break this stranger’s heart?
Grace kicks my ankle. “You’re awful quiet.”
I shrug and toy with my straw, stabbing a maraschino cherry, popping it into my mouth. The soda jerk is at the other end of the counter, but I lower my voice. “Sadie George thinks you’re her daughter.”
“What? Why?” Grace swears. “I didn’t think—my showing up on her doorstep like that, out of the clear blue. Of course. If she had a girl, she would be my age!”
“You look a bit alike. I know the dates are a little off, but—”
“Do you think she’ll speak to us once she knows I’m not hers?” Grace is not overburdened with empathy.
“I don’t know.” I sip my cherry Coke. “I hope so.”
We tarry over our Cokes, killing time. At two o’clock we walk back to Queen Street.
Mrs. George opens the door before we knock and ushers us into the parlor, where the velvet drapes are thrown wide.
The wallpaper is a leafy green over gold.
My wedges sink into plush green carpet. The Georges are clearly comfortable.
Despite her teenaged scandal, Sadie Haddaway married well.
!
“Sit, please.” Mrs. George gestures to the tufted green chesterfield.
She perches across from us in a wingback chair with a basket of sewing beside it.
A pair of men’s slippers waits beneath the other armchair; the newspaper is folded on the end table.
A child’s wooden rocking horse rests in front of a built-in bookshelf stocked with leather-bound naval histories and all of Austen’s novels.
“We’ll get right to the point, if you don’t mind,” Grace says.
“Please.” Mrs. George’s voice is strangled.