Almost Home (32 page)
"I wonder why she didn't tell me," Katherine
said slowly. "Why all the lies? I was her child. How could it have hurt
for me to know the truth?" She looked over at Claire. "Why did she
leave home in the first place? Why did she run away? Do you know who my father
is?" The questions shot out of her like bullets from a gun, a rapid fire
that left Claire shaking her head.
"One at a time, Katherine. Please. I'm not
thinking clearly either. This has been a terrible shock for me as well as for
you."
"You—you must be my grandmother." Katherine
now understood the familiarity she'd felt with Claire that first day in the
garden. The scent of lavender had drawn her to the garden, drawn her to Claire,
just as it had originally drawn her to the chest.
"I guess I am." Claire bit down on her lip,
her eyes watering once again. "I can't believe I'm looking into my
grandchild's face. And it's such a beautiful face."
Claire touched Katherine's hair. "You're
a lovely young woman, and you're Margaret's baby. I can hardly believe it."
"I'm having a little
trouble myself." Although
Katherine had to
admit the thought of having Claire Stanton for a grandmother was very
appealing. She'd liked her from the start. And she'd never had a grandmother
before.
"We're going to get to the bottom of this,"
Claire promised, putting her hand on Katherine's arm.
"There are still things I don't understand. Where
is my mother buried?"
Claire's expression turned troubled and somewhat
angry. "I swear if Harry lied to me about Margaret's death, well, I just
don't know what I'll do. He sent a private investigator to look for Margaret a
few years after she left. We kept hoping she'd come home on her own, but she
never did. I was beside myself with worry, imagining her alone in the world,
trying to raise a baby all on her own. So Harry hired someone to look for her.
A year later, he showed me the investigator's report saying that Margaret had
died a few weeks earlier and had been buried in a cemetery in
"
My mother never lived in
Claire took in a breath and went on. "According
to the report I read, Margaret's landlady had paid for the burial and told the
investigator that Margaret had lived alone and had given her baby up years ago.
Harry had the casket dug up and flown home, so we could bury her here in
"Then you never saw her face, her body?"
Katherine hated to ask the question, but it had to be brought out in the open.
"No." Claire paused, meeting her eyes. "What
about you?"
"Mitchell woke me up in the middle of the night
to tell me that my mother had been killed in a car crash. She was buried three
days later. There was a closed casket. But—I did see her that day, the day of
the crash. She was alive when I was twelve years old. If this is a photograph
of Margaret, then there's no way she's buried here in
Claire stood up and paced restlessly around the room. "Harry,"
she said. "He did this. I can't believe he did it, but there's no other
explanation."
Katherine looked back at the photograph. Her mother
was Margaret Stanton. Unbelievable. She'd come to
Claire, who stood by the window, gazing out at the streets of
"Do you know who my father is, Mrs. Stanton?"
Claire glanced over her shoulder. "I'm afraid I
don't. Margaret refused to say. She thought her daddy might bring out his
shotgun and force a wedding."
"Is that why she left town?"
"Yes.
She
had confided in me that she was pregnant. Actually, I'd begun to suspect
because she was so pale, and she never felt like eating. When I caught her
throwing up her breakfast one morning, she broke down and cried right there on
the bathroom floor, her hair matted down with sweat, her eyes huge and filled
with fear. I took her in my arms and I promised her it would be all right."
Claire turned back to the
window. "But I hadn't counted on Harry's reaction. He was horrified,
ashamed, angry. He screamed for three solid days that she could not have a
bastard child. That she could not flaunt her sin in front of the town and God.
Harry told her she either had to marry the father, give up her baby for
adoption, or leave town. She was barely nineteen years old, but just as
stubborn as her father."
"So she left."
"I let her go, Katherine. I stood by my husband's
side and watched my pregnant daughter load her suitcase and that chest into her
car and drive away. I never saw her again. And my last image is of her crying,
looking at me as if I'd betrayed her. And I guess I had done exactly that."
Claire turned to Katherine with a pained expression on her face. "She
hated me when she left. I'm surprised she never told you any of it. I would
have thought…"
"Thought what?"
"That she would have made sure you hated me, too."
"My mother told me she was born in
was Evelyn Jones and that her parents were dead. She said she was all alone in
the world, save for me. Until she met Mitchell, of course."
"Mitchell?"
"My stepfather. She married him less than a year
before she died. When she died, Mitchell agreed to raise me, since I didn't
have any other relatives. Otherwise, I would have gone into foster care."
Claire shook her head. "If only we'd known about
you. I don't understand why the private investigator didn't find you. Or why he
said Margaret was dead."
"Maybe Harry wanted you to stop looking."
A light dawned in Claire's eyes. "Yes. That's it,
of course. Harry was tired of my crying and moaning, so he decided to put me
out of my misery like he'd shoot a sick horse. By telling me Margaret was dead,
he forced me to let go of her, to grieve, but not to anticipate a reunion. My
God! I can't believe he did that to me. You know, I would have kept looking,
and I would have had five more years to find her." Claire leaned her head
against the window. "I might have seen her one more time. I might have met
you when you were a child. I might have been able to help you when Margaret
died. It's not fair. It's just not fair."
Katherine didn't know what to do. This was her
grandmother, and she was in terrible pain. Part of Katherine wanted to comfort
Claire. The other part was still angry about what she'd just heard, about how
Claire and Harry had sent their supposedly beloved daughter out in the world
pregnant and alone. Maybe Claire deserved this pain.
"I have to get out of here," Katherine said
abruptly. "I can't do this right now. It's too much." She grabbed her
purse and left the room before Claire could try to stop her.
She had no idea where she was going, but somehow she'd
get there.
* * *
An
hour later
,
Claire Stanton stormed up the walkway to her house,
fury fueling every step that took her closer to Harry, closer to the truth. She'd
treated her husband with respect for fifty years. She'd stood by him the way
she'd promised on her wedding day. And twenty years ago she'd stood next to him
when they'd buried their daughter. But what had they really buried? An empty
box of dreams?
A tiny voice inside of her told her to slow down, to
tread carefully. Harry's heart couldn't stand too much shock. But she couldn't
listen to the tiny voice, because it was overridden by the thundering roar of
her anger.
"Harry," she cried. "Where are you?"
She looked in the study, but it was empty; so were the
living room and dining room. She took the stairs two at a time and crossed the
hall into the master bedroom. Harry came out of the bathroom as she entered the
room, a comb in one hand, a wet towel in the other. A tall slim man with gray
hair, piercing brown eyes, and an unforgiving chin, he suddenly seemed like a
stranger to her. When he saw her face, he stopped in midstride.
"Claire, what's wrong?"
"Everything is wrong. Every damn thing. Who did
we bury in the
The blood drained out of his face and he reached out a
hand to the bedpost to steady himself. "Margaret. We buried Margaret."
"Did we?"
Harry didn't answer right away. He couldn't lie, not
when he sensed she already knew the truth.
"Why would you ask me such a thing?"
"Because I met someone today, someone who has
Margaret's smile and Margaret's walk and even Margaret's quilt."
"No," he whispered, shaking his head in
disbelief.
"Oh, yes."
"That's impossible."
"Her name is Katherine Whitfield. When I showed her
a photograph of Margaret, she told me that Margaret was her mother. Her mother,
Harry." Claire paused, letting the words sink in. "Her mother,
Margaret, who died when Katherine was twelve years old, fifteen years ago, not
twenty."
"It's not the same person."
"I knew you'd say that. I told myself the same
thing. But Katherine has Margaret's hope chest. She has the quilt. She has
letters Margaret wrote."
"Maybe she got them from somewhere else."
"You wouldn't have any doubts if you'd seen Katherine."
Claire's voice broke and her eyes filled with moisture. She didn't want to cry,
not until she'd gotten it all out, not until she'd made him tell her the truth.
"Maybe you just want to see Margaret in this
woman. Maybe it's in your imagination."
Claire shook her head in bewilderment. "Why are
you still lying to me?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Katherine
identified the woman in my photograph as being her mother, and her mother died
in
Harry. Her mother is buried in a cemetery near
Whitfield's mother is our daughter, Margaret, tell me how Margaret could be
buried in the
Harry sat down on the edge of the bed and rested his
face on his hands. He no longer looked strong and stern and powerful, just old
and tired and scared. Finally he lifted his head, his own eyes moist.
"I'm sorry, Claire. You don't know how sorry I
am. I just wanted you to stop hurting."
"So you faked Margaret's death?"
"It didn't start out that way. I hired Walter
Simmons to find Margaret. But he couldn't pick up a trail. It was as if she'd
vanished. He spent more than a year looking for her, a year in which I watched
you grow thinner and thinner. You never ate. You rarely slept. Some days you
didn't even get dressed. I couldn't stand watching you die in front of my eyes."
"So you killed off Margaret instead." She
felt an overwhelming sense of rage. "How could you do that?"
"I had to do something. You wouldn't let go of
her, and she wasn't ever coming back."
"So you paid Walter Simmons to write up a phony
report and fly an empty coffin back from
My God! I can't believe you could be so devious. We had a funeral, Harry. The
whole town came. We all grieved, every one of us. And you pretended to grieve
with us. How could you do that? How could you look at yourself in the mirror?"
"It was clear that Margaret wasn't coming back,
Claire. The only way you were ever going to stop suffering was by acknowledging
that she was gone. Since we couldn't find her, I figured she might as well be
dead."
Claire couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"Might
as well be dead?
Do you know how much worse it was to think that my baby
was dead?" Her voice rose to a shrill piercing tone. "Do you know how
I grieved for her, how I wished she could have had a few more minutes on this
earth? It was fifty times worse imagining her dead than imagining her somewhere
else. You not only killed her, you almost killed me."
Harry's eyes filled with pain. He reached out a hand
for her but let it drop to his side when she refused to take it.
"I did keep looking off and on even after…"
Harry's voice drifted away. "As recently as the
last two months I've had Walter looking for Margaret, just to see if there was
any slim hope."
"And what were you going to tell me if you found
her?"
"I figured seeing her again would make up for
what I did. I'm sorry if I made your pain worse. I thought it was the right
thing to do."
"It's not enough to say that you're sorry. It's
not enough. Damn you!" She paced around the room, restless and reckless
and wanting to break something. She saw their wedding photo sitting on the
dresser, and couldn't stop herself from picking it up and throwing it against
the wall. The glass shattered as it fell to the ground. But it wasn't enough to
break just her picture. So she reached for the vase filled with water and
flowers and sent it hurtling across the room. She moved on to the other dresser
and the bedside tables, sweeping off the lamps and the knickknacks and all the
things that filled her life. And when she was done, she collapsed on the bed. "I
hate you, Harry. Why did you do this? Why?"