Chapter Nine #2
Kit tucked the scrap of paper into the pocket of her jeans and set the two photographs next to each other on the top of the bedside table.
Beth’s assessment had been correct: If, in fact, these were Maxine and her guy, they’d made a stunning couple.
She picked up her phone and called the number for Banks’s office, expecting Caroline to pick up, but the phone was answered by someone Kit hadn’t yet met.
She was told that both Banks and his daughter were out of the office but were expected back by one, that he had a meeting at that time but would be available at two thirty if Kit would like to see him then?
She would.
She grabbed the two photos and turned off the overhead light.
On the landing, she closed the door to Maxine’s room and glanced around at the others, all closed as well. One room would have been her mother’s.
There was one way to find out.
Kit suspected her mother’s room had been next to Maxine’s, so she went to that door and pushed it open.
Definitely the room of a young girl, with its pink walls and two twin beds and posters of rock stars on the wall.
She stepped inside for a closer look. Most of what she’d thought were posters appeared to be pages taken from magazines.
Elvis in bad-boy black leather. The Everly Brothers with their mile-high pompadours.
Bespectacled Buddy Holly. Several groups—bands—she didn’t recognize.
“Mom, you were an early rocker. Who knew?” An amused Kit surveyed the rest of the room.
Of course there was a bookcase loaded with books and other random belongings.
She scanned the titles and was not surprised at what she found.
Cherry Ames. Anne of Green Gables. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
An entire shelf of Nancy Drew mysteries.
A volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry—well worn—and one of Robert Frost’s.
All the same titles that had once sat on the bookshelves in Kit’s own room growing up.
She wondered why her mother had bought all new copies of the same books for her and Beth when she could have simply shared the very ones she’d read as a girl.
On the bottom shelf was a stack of larger books—four in all—and Kit knew without looking at the covers what they were.
She knelt down and picked them up, then sat on the pink-and-green plaid spread that covered one of the single beds.
Putting them in order by date, she opened the one with “1957” in raised white print on the cover.
In the space beginning This yearbook belongs to . . . her mother had handwritten her name neatly. Barbie Meadows, Freshman Year.
Kit turned the pages of the Tolerance High School yearbook, noting the names of the teachers and administrators. A history teacher named Alma Banks caught her eye, and she wondered if that might have been Banks’s mother. She studied it for some resemblance to the lawyer but failed to find one.
Next came the group class photos, then the activities. She searched and found her mother in the freshmen library aides and freshmen field hockey team, but that seemed to be the extent of Barbie’s participation in extracurricular activities that year.
The 1957 yearbook was basically the same, except for the addition of Maxine as a freshman.
How could that be? She should have been in seventh grade, not ninth.
But there was no mistaking the face that all but jumped off the page.
Maxine was right smack in the middle of the photograph, a beautiful smile set in a beautiful face that the camera had easily found and focused on.
As pretty as her mother had been as a teen, Kit had had to search the class photo to locate her. Not so with Barbie’s younger sister.
As she leafed through the pages, Kit discovered that Maxine was much more of a joiner than her older sister had been.
Maxine had played field hockey well enough as a freshman to play on the JV team, the same team as Barbie.
She’d also played on the freshman basketball and soccer teams. She had earned a small part in the school play, and she’d been the freshman member of the student council.
And she’d been voted the freshman attendant to the prom queen that year.
Kit closed the yearbook quietly, wondering if she’d discovered the source of the animosity between her mother and her aunt. Every teenage girl wants to shine in her own light, but how could Barbie have, given her younger sister’s mega-glow? A sister that should have still been in junior high?
She returned the two volumes she’d gone through to the bottom shelf, then stacked the photos she was taking with her atop the last two yearbooks.
She didn’t have the stomach right then to watch her mother fade into the background against the sparkle of her aunt.
Maybe something happened in the last two years to bring out more of Barbie, less of Maxine, but she doubted it.
Some women—some men—just have an aura of beauty and competence that draws everyone else into their orbit.
There’s never room for more than one at the center of it, but maybe Barbie came more into her own.
Leaving her mother’s room with even more questions than she’d had coming in left Kit dispirited.
She’d had enough of this scavenger hunt for one day.
She went back downstairs and put on her coat, then paused at the thermostat.
The pipes wouldn’t burst overnight if she lowered the temperature by ten degrees, so she did so.
She turned off the lights, locked the door, and took her findings with her.
The rental car took a few minutes to warm up, and she spent those minutes wondering what it must have been like to grow up in the shadow of your younger sister.
If their ages had been reversed, how would she have felt if Beth had been the rock star of the family, and Kit had found herself in the also-ran position?
Not that she considered herself in Maxine’s league—far from it—but still, what kind of resentment might she carry if Beth had been closer to her age but outshone her at every level that had mattered back in high school?
Granted, she’d graduated several years before Beth had entered.
The seven years between them had been enough to make Beth her “baby sister” but never her rival.
Kit drove back into town wishing there were some way to get Banks to tell her what he knew.
She still had an hour to kill before she was to meet with the attorney, so she might as well grab a bite while she waited. She parked in front of Ruthie’s and went inside.
The lunch crowd had started to disperse, so an empty table was easy to locate. She had just seated herself when she sensed someone approaching. Looking up, she saw Banks headed her way.
“I thought that was you,” he said as he drew closer. “How are things up at the camp?”
“About as I’d expected. I’m still getting familiar with the house.”
“Good, good.”
“Actually, I have an appointment with you at two thirty.”
Banks frowned. “I don’t recall your name on my calendar this morning, but I’m always happy to see you. Have you run into a problem?”
“Not a problem, but—well, we can discuss it when I come in.”
“Why don’t we discuss it now?”
“Because you have a one-thirty appointment.” Kit glanced at her watch. “And it appears you’re already late.”
“Who told you I had a one thirty?”
“When I called, the person who answered the phone said . . .”
Banks’s grin turned him into a geriatric elf.
“That was Elsie. If I’m out of the office when someone calls for an appointment, she always sets appointments for an hour later than necessary, just in case I want her to cancel when I get back in.
” He removed the plaid scarf he’d just started to wind around his neck and pointed to an empty chair at her table.
“May I? Unless you would rather wait until we had more privacy?”
“I think we can save any sensitive discussions—should there be any—for the office.”
Banks sat and the harried waitress came to the table with a menu in hand for Kit.
“Banks, didn’t I just serve you? You really think you need a second lunch?” Mary Gail chided. “Not that I’d be one to point out that you’ve put on a few pounds over the winter.”
“You’d be just the one to do it, and if I may say so, any weight I’ve gained can be traced back to the meals I’ve been eating here.”
“Touché.” Mary Gail laughed and turned her attention to Kit. “What can I get you, hon?”
“Burger, medium, lettuce, fried onions, no tomato.” Kit handed back the menu. “And I’ll have a Moxie, please.”
“And I’ll have a coffee,” Banks added.
“Coming up.”
“So, what’s on your mind, Kit?” He placed his forearms on the table in front of him and leaned slightly in Kit’s direction.
Hesitating for only a minute, she half twisted in her seat to reach for her bag, which hung from the back of her seat. She opened it and took out the photo she suspected was Maxine.
“Is this my aunt Maxine?” she asked.
Banks took the photo from her hand and smiled. “Oh, yes, indeed, it is. A real beauty, wasn’t she?”
Kit nodded. “She’s gorgeous. What was she like?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Maxine lit up a room simply by entering it. Oh, I know that’s a cliché and people say that about just about anyone these days, but Maxine was the real deal.
It wasn’t just that she was stunning in her appearance.
She had an aura about her. When she spoke with you, she always looked in your eyes and gave you her full attention.
You knew she was focused on you, and it made you feel like you were the most important person in the room.
She had a great sense of humor and was one of those people who never minded if the joke was on her.
Which as you can imagine, it rarely was, unless it was perhaps coming at the hands of some jealous girl. ”
“Did that happen often?”
“I guess for a time when she first got to high school, it happened often enough, but I don’t recall that Maxine ever got her nose put out of joint because of something someone said about her. She knew her worth.”
“Was my mother one of the girls who made jokes about her?”
Banks shook his head. “Not that I recall.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”
“I found my mother’s high school yearbooks in her old room, and I noticed that Maxine was a year behind my mom, which doesn’t make sense because I thought my mom was three years older, not one.”
“Well, you’re correct in that. Barbie was three years older, but Maxine had skipped first grade, then fourth.”
“She must have been pretty smart, then.”
“Smartest girl I ever knew. Straight A’s every marking period. The very top of her class.”
“And judging from the photos, she was quite the athlete, too.”
He nodded. “Excelled at every sport she played and every class she took.”
“That must have been hard on my mother.”
“I don’t recall ever hearing Barbie say a mean word about Maxine. They were very close, if my memory serves me.”
“You sound as if you knew them both very well.”
“I did.”
“Were you sweet on my aunt, Banks?”
He laughed quietly. “Wasn’t a boy in Tolerance who wasn’t, Kit.”
Mary Gail stepped to the table, Moxie in one hand, a plate holding the burger in the other. “Here you go, hon. Do you want . . . oh, lookee here.” She set the plate on the table and leaned forward toward the photo. “She sure was a beauty, that Maxine.”
“So I understand,” Kit replied.
“She taught me how to swim up at camp when I was six. Seems like only yesterday.”
“I can assure you, it was not,” Banks said.
“Oh, you.” She swatted half-heartedly at Banks, catching him on the shoulder. To Kit, she said, “Anyway, that’s a real nice photo. She had that megawatt smile for sure.”
“Mary Gail, phone,” someone called from the direction of the kitchen.
“Let me know if you need anything else,” the waitress said as she sped away.
Kit took a few bites from her burger, and when she finished chewing, she removed the photo of the unknown man from her bag and handed it to Banks. “Do you know who this is?”
He stared at the photo for a long moment, then looked at her. “Don’t you? He’s been in the news lately.”
Kit put down her burger and picked up the photo to take a long look, then shook her head. “No, I don’t know who he is.”
He paused momentarily while Mary Gail served his coffee.
“That is Miles David Easton.”
“Miles David Easton . . . the writer?”
Banks nodded. “Yes.”
She turned her attention back to the photo. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a photo of him.”
“I believe in his early days his works were printed without his picture on the back cover. His publisher thought his too-good looks would distract from the seriousness of his works. He’s been much talked about recently, since the announcement that the movies made from his old books are being remade with all A-list actors. ”
“Were he and my aunt . . .”
Banks nodded. “Yes, indeed, they were.”
Kit frowned, trying to remember something she’d read. “But didn’t he die young . . .”
Another nod. “In a plane crash, yes, in late 1969.” His gaze returned to the photo of Maxine. “He was on his way to Maine.” His eyes lifted to meet hers. “For their wedding.”