Chapter 34
HIDDEN SCANDAL
After float building, Jude and I head to the family archives only to be chased away by a team from the FHPS. We retreat to the study, a private room behind the library, accessible via a paneled door that blends into the wall like part of the wainscoting.
I sit at the commanding desk of Amos Vandenberg, which we’ve already checked for keyholes.
I imagine him here in quiet retreat, the stone fireplace crackling behind him, the tall windows before him offering a view of the hedge maze and part of the orchard as he dips his feather quill into a silver inkwell to draft his mostly boring letters.
Outside, the orchard is nearly unrecognizable.
Rows of trees with thinned branches, now pruned and shaped, boast a few stubborn apples and pears.
The grass between is neatly trimmed but scattered with leaves, a mixture of russet and buttery yellow.
Early evening sunlight pours through the windows, casting Jude in an angelic glow.
He sits on one of two leather armchairs with a chess table in between, tinkering with the gold-plated pocket compass.
“I don’t know what business they have in the library,” he says. “We’re opening the east wing to the public, not the west.”
“Does it bother you—the changes she’s making to the estate?
” Which is, in actuality, his. Held in trust by Isabel until Jude turns twenty-one, or twenty-five, or thirty.
I don’t really understand the particulars of his inheritance.
Only that it will be released to him in stages upon his twenty-first birthday.
He shrugs and sets the opened compass on the chess table. “If it keeps her occupied and away from me, I don’t particularly care.”
I pull the chain of a green glass banker’s lamp and a warm pool of light spills over the items on the desk. An elegant fountain pen in a carved wooden stand. A tarnished, antique inkwell. And a glass ashtray without cigarettes or residue, as if Tulane cleaned it after John Vandenberg vanished.
“This compass spins like it’s drunk,” Jude says.
“Given the readings we got last night, I’m not sure it’s the compass.”
“I tried it at the fairgrounds. It didn’t work there, either.”
I open the desk drawers and find nothing revelatory.
Paperwork mostly—mortgage statements, tax receipts, a property survey from 1991, timesheets for the former groundskeeper and the housekeeping staff.
There’s a Foggy Hollow phone directory, circa 1994.
Estate letterhead. And a leather rolodex.
I flip through the handwritten contacts.
Landscapers, home repairs, pest control, a family physician, a list of lawyers, and interestingly, Walter Jensen, reporter.
“So, are you brave enough to survive Hollow Screen Horror Night tonight?” It’s finally here, and the forecast looks perfect. “There’s nothing quite like Poltergeist outside in the fog.”
“Isn’t that something you and Twig do together?”
“It is, but you’re welcome to join. Ten bucks will get you three movies and a full tub of popcorn.”
He frowns.
“Do you have something against popcorn?”
“I have something against third wheels.” He turns the compass one hundred eighty degrees. “And since I’m already taking you away from him for the ball, maybe I should let him have this one.”
Let him have this one.
It’s an interesting turn of phrase.
“You know we’re just friends, right?”
“I know you think of him that way.”
“He thinks of me that way, too.”
Jude looks doubtful.
I can’t help but laugh. “Trust me when I tell you, Twig thinks of me as a sister. If he has non-platonic feelings for anyone, my bet’s on Naomi.
But she despises horror movies, which makes me question Twig’s taste.
” I set my elbow on the desk and twist the gold stud in my ear. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”
He seems to consider for a moment, and I hold my breath. The prospect of sitting next to him at night, surrounded by fog while a scary movie plays on the big screen makes my skin prickle.
“Isabel scheduled a dinner with the Bogaards. I should probably attend.”
Disappointment hits hard. The tantalizing prospect of Jude beside me in the dark, our arms touching, is replaced by Jude and Sterling at the Bogaards’ dining table, sitting stiffly across from one another.
“You sure you’re not just sick of me?”
“If that were the case, I wouldn’t have spent the afternoon building floats for a parade I don’t care about.” He holds my gaze. “And we wouldn’t be here right now, either.”
A flush creeps into my ears.
With a shaky breath, I look away first, returning the rolodex to the bottom right drawer. I slide open the shallow one in the center.
It’s filled with the standard office supplies—pens, pencils, paperclips, pushpins—along with a pack of playing cards, a matchbook from The Cobbler, return address labels, and a tin of long-expired mints.
I try to open the tin, but the lid is stuck.
When it finally pops off, tiny mints scatter everywhere.
I gather them into a pile, then reach toward some strays in the back of the drawer, when the ring on my finger snags on something.
I pull the drawer open a little farther and notice a faint separation in the back corner.
I press on the spot and the bottom shifts downward, like there’s space underneath.
Curious, I peel up the corner. It’s a false panel, and it lifts easily, revealing a hidden compartment where two letters rest side by side.
“Great Scott,” I whisper.
“What is it?” Jude asks.
“I found something.” I set the false panel aside and pick up one of the letters. It was written on September 7, 1822, four short days before fire would consume the town. Jude has come to his feet. He stands behind me, reading over my shoulder.
My Dearest Amos,
I ought not to write. A thousand times, I have told myself so. But here I sit, pen in trembling hand, compelled by a heart that refuses to yield.
You are not mine. I have known this from the first. And yet, the moments we have shared, stolen though they were, have rendered this truth more cruel than ever.
I dream of a different life, one in which our love is not forbidden. But such dreams are cruel companions. I wake each morning to a reality I cannot bear.
You are bound in marriage, however loveless you claim it to be, and you have children who shall carry your name. What have I but fleeting moments, and a longing that grows with each passing day? Tell me, Amos, can any solace be found in so hopeless a circumstance?
Forgive me this letter. I shall not write again.
Yours in secret,
Florence
My heart pounds as I reach the signature.
Florence …
Why does it strike such a familiar note?
Florence?
The recollection snaps into place.
Florence!
It comes like a shout, a cry in my mind, a memory of another dream. Smoke and flames everywhere as a man yelled for a woman with this very name.
Jude reaches past me to pick up the second letter, much shorter than the first. He clears his throat and reads it out loud.
“Dear Father, I pray you will forgive me and the Lord will still take me. Is it a sin to protect those I love? I know of no other way to stop this curse. Please tell Isaiah everything. Yours most sincerely, Elijah.”
Elijah.
The scorch mark on Jude’s family tree. A man with no record of death, nor a headstone to mark his grave.
Have we just come upon his suicide note?
“To stop this curse?” Jude says, repeating the line. He turns the letter over, like there might be an explanation on the other side. But of course there is none. With a shake of his head, his troubled eyes find mine. “What curse?”