Chapter Twenty-Four. Grace #2
Kath nods as she tucks the silk and carefully slides another pin in.
“It was like Em had a crush, almost. Like how a girl will talk about her steady at the beginning: Daisy this and Daisy that and Daisy says … I figured it would pass. At least Em perked up some. But then one day at lunch she told me how, after Daisy’s baby came and Em turned eighteen, they were going to Europe.
To Paris and Zurich … That’s in Switzerland, mind you.
I had to look it up. I told her she was talking crazy.
Joe wasn’t going to give her that money from her dad for some trip to Europe!
And Daisy’s people were from Rock Hall. They worked at the cannery!
Nobody had money for Paris. I told Em … well, I told her Joe was right, her dad had coddled her, and it was time to grow up. ”
Almost twenty years later, Kath has tears in her eyes.
“I was jealous. I hardly saw her and when I did, all she could talk about was Daisy. I was afraid she would get to Europe somehow, and when she came back, she’d look down her nose at me.
I was already seeing John. I had a life planned for myself here in Greeley.
It’s not a bad life … But I really botched things with Em.
She wouldn’t talk to me after that. I went by her place once or twice after graduation, but she wouldn’t come to the door. Nobody in town saw hide nor hair.”
My mind spins. Why would Dad keep her locked up like that all summer? Unless … “Was she seeing anyone? Any fellas, I mean.”
Is it possible that Aunt Em went a little wild after Granddad died? That she got herself in trouble? My heart hammers.
“No,” Kath says. “Not for lack of attention, but she wasn’t interested.”
“Are you sure? There was nobody she could’ve snuck out to see?”
“I’m sure. She was over at my place every day till Joe grounded her that spring.
We’d do our homework together at the kitchen table, then Curtis or my dad would give her a ride home.
I think Joe allowed it on account of my dad being sheriff, and pretty strict.
But there was no time for a boy.” Kath tucks another pin into my bodice.
“Turn. Oh, that’s real nice. Go look in the mirror. ”
“You look beautiful,” Rose says. “It really suits you.”
“Thanks,” I say, distracted. “Mrs. Johnson, do you have any pictures of Aunt Emmeline? Dad doesn’t keep any around.”
She beams. “I sure do. I’ll run up and get one, soon as we’re done here.”
I look in the mirror: blond hair, brown eyes, upturned nose, square stubborn jaw, long legs and waspish waist and barely there breasts.
The dress is pretty, but I hardly care about that now.
I’m waiting to see that photo. Maybe Kath is wrong; maybe Aunt Em could keep a secret. A big, nine-month secret.
“Thank you, Mrs. Johnson,” Rose says.
“It was my pleasure. And call me Kath. Mrs. Johnson is my mother-in-law.” She chuckles.
“Did you see Em again? Before she passed?” Rose asks.
Kath shakes her head. “When I heard what Daisy did, running off like that, I thought: Here’s my chance.
I called and Em answered the phone. ‘Daisy?’ she said.
Not even ‘Hello?’ She could hardly talk for crying.
I said I’d come right over but Em said no.
She hung up on me … I figured she needed some time. Three weeks later, she was gone.”
She blinks back tears. “I wish I’d gone to see her anyhow. Maybe I could have talked some sense into her. Maybe she wouldn’t have taken the boat out in that storm. Em was chock-full of life. She wanted to do everything, see everything … But maybe with Daisy gone, she couldn’t see any way forward.”
She thinks Em took her boat out in that storm on purpose. Knowing she wouldn’t come back.
“It’s the biggest regret of my life.” We’re all silent for a moment.
Kath swipes at a tear, and I feel a lump in my throat.
My aunt was strong. A fighter. But maybe she hit a point where she didn’t have any fight left in her.
“I’ve made other friends. Neighbors. I’m in a knitting circle at church. But it’s not the same.”
“I’m sorry,” Rose says quietly.
“So am I … Here, let me help get you out of there.” I feel Kath’s hands on my back, carefully unfastening the zipper.
I hold the sides up as I step behind the painted screen, then let it pool at my feet.
Standing in my brassiere and underpants, I hand the dress out to Kath.
I hear a rattle as she hangs it on a rack of alterations.
“I’ll run up and get that photo now,” she says.
“Do you think Em could be the ghost?” I whisper once Kath is gone, pulling my dress over my head. “She had unfinished business with Dad. Maybe that’s why the ghost’s angry with him.”
“Maybe,” Rose says. “But what about the letter D?”
“I don’t know.” I pace around the room anxiously till Mrs. Johnson returns.
“Here. The summer of ’29, Em’s dad let her come with us to the shore.
” Kath holds out a black-and-white photo.
She and another teenaged girl pose, arms flung around each other’s waists, in front of the ocean.
They wear old-fashioned one-piece bathing suits—dark tank tops and belted thigh-length skirts—and hold bathing caps in their outstretched hands.
Both girls have bobbed, waved hair. Kath’s is light, the other girl’s is dark.
It’s impossible to tell what color Em’s eyes were, but the shape of her mouth … her nose … her jaw …
It’s not her. My aunt Emmeline isn’t our ghost.
“She was a beauty, wasn’t she?” Kath says. I squint at the photo. Em is tall and slim-hipped, with an angular face. Her eyebrows are plucked and arched in perpetual surprise; her small nose is upturned; her mouth is open, her white teeth flashing. Is that my nose?
Maybe my parents are my parents, and this is my aunt, and I’ve been on a wild-goose chase.
“She was lovely,” Rose says. “Her vivaciousness really comes through in the photo.”
I feel half wild with frustration. I grab my pocketbook and rummage through it. “Do you recognize this bracelet? We found—”
“Oh!” Kath touches the old brass with such tenderness that I know it belonged to Emmeline. “Em’s dad gave it to her for her seventeenth birthday. Joe kept it?”
As though Dad has a sentimental bone in his body. “No.”
How did it end up under the floorboards in the Blue Room?
“We found it during the renovation. Do you think … could she have given it to Daisy?” Rose is two steps ahead as usual.
Kath makes a sour face. “Yeah. Em was generous that way. If you said you liked her lipstick or her gloves, she’d give ’em to you like it was nothing.
And the way she talked about that girl, she would have given her the moon.
‘Daisy has such a pretty voice, she should be a singer in a nightclub!’ That’s where she ended up, too, can you believe that?
That girl ran clear up to New York City and became a singer in some nightclub.
I wonder how she sleeps at night, knowing Em got so worked up over her leaving that she did what she did. ”
Rose shakes her head and tsks disapprovingly.
Kath turns the photo over. “She had such pretty handwriting, too. See?” The handwriting is perfectly slanted, with elaborate loops on the capital letters. July ’29. Rehoboth Beach. Love always, Em.
“Lovely.” Rose would care about a thing like handwriting.
“Thanks for indulging me, girls.” Kath puts the photo on her worktable. “I won’t keep you. The dress will be ready in a week.”
“Thank you, Kath.” I look her in the eye and hope she can tell I mean it. “I’m glad to know the whole story.”
But is it the whole story? The ghost pointed me to Em’s bracelet, but she also wrote the letter D on the mirror.
But Daisy Wheeler is alive and well in New York City. She can’t be the ghost.
We’re right back to square one.