Paperquake (30 page)

 

"It's exactly the same," said Violet, wonderingly. "Except for the crossed-out words."

"Go on," said Jasmine. "Keep reading!"

 

 

Violet tried to puzzle it out as she read. "Here it comes," she said after another two paragraphs. "This is where the part about Laela comes in:

 

 

"But this means Laela was writing it herself—and pretending to be Verity." Jasmine looked puzzled. "Why would she do that?"

"
Shh,
wait a sec. Listen to the end," ordered Rose.

 

 

Violet closed the ledger. She looked at her sisters. Rose was frowning. Jasmine looked bewildered.

"The draft is in Laela's diary," said Violet. "In her own handwriting—the same handwriting that wrote all the other diary entries. So she must have written it."

The identical sisters stared at each other, reminding Violet of how they looked when struggling to solve other puzzles.,
The man in the mask,
thought Violet. This puzzle was no less confusing.

"But what about the letter Air. Koch gave Vi?" Jasmine asked after a long moment. "That's in
Verity's
handwriting."

"Is it?" Rose reached for the letter Mr. Koch had given Violet. "Look how funny and cramped the writing is."

Violet leaned over and studied it, too. "I thought at first it was messy because Verity was so ill and weak she couldn't hold the pen. But now I think—" She hesitated a moment, then went doggedly on. "I bet Laela faked it. She wrote the draft herself, then copied it over, trying to disguise her handwriting so Hal would think the letter was from Verity."

"But
why
?" demanded Rose, and at the same time Jasmine asked, "But wouldn't Hal notice that the handwriting wasn't Verity's?"

Violet just sat there, her thoughts tumbling around in her brain like acrobats. She tried to hold them still, tried to fix them in place so she could understand what seemed so close....

"Why?" she repeated, echoing Rose. "Why? Because she loved him and didn't want him to marry Verity. She knew Verity was dying anyway, but Hal had said he wouldn't marry anyone else if he couldn't have Verity. So Laela must have decided that if Hal believed Verity hadn't loved him, and that Verity wanted him to marry Laela—well, then, maybe he would."

"But the handwriting—," began Jasmine.

"Faked," said Violet firmly. "And Hal would never know because, remember, Verity had always dictated her letters to him through Laela. So every letter he had from Verity was actually in Laela's handwriting. When he got this one—all messy and hard to read—he would have thought it was Verity's own writing. Just as Laela meant him to."

"Pretty crafty," said Rose admiringly.

"I don't know," objected Jasmine. "I think it's creepy. I don't like Laela very much. And how could she just send on this letter? Wouldn't Verity find out what she'd done?"

"Not necessarily," said Violet slowly. "Not if she was dead by then."

The strange story from the past, learned in slivers through the bits of paper that had fallen into Violet's path, was coming clear now. Violet sat quietly, trying to sort it all out in her head. Hal had loved Verity, and Verity had loved Hal. But Laela had loved Hal, too. And she'd taken the job as companion to Verity as a favor to Hal. How it must have hurt her to have to take dictation from Verity and write love letters to Hal—all the things she probably longed to write to him herself but couldn't. How relieved she must have been at the fact that despite Verity's love for Hal, she was too ill ever to marry him. That left the way clear for Laela—that is, except for Hal's vow never to marry.

So Laela would have thought of a plan. She would have ■ written a letter, making it seem as if it were a letter from Verity. Laela would have given that letter to Hal while Verity lay dying—or perhaps
after
she had died—saying it was Verity's deathbed letter to him, and an expression of her truest wishes.

Violet could almost
see
it. Laela writing this letter by lamplight, sitting in her big armchair by the side of Verity's bed, then sealing it, and later giving it to Hal, trying to hide her feelings as she told him it was a last letter from his beloved, sealed with a kiss, for his eyes alone.

And then, since Hal loved Verity so much, he would want to honor the wishes expressed in her last letter, and grant her dying wish that he marry someone else. And that someone else was Laela.

Violet told her sisters what she thought had happened, finishing up, "And so Hal did marry Laela, and she got what she'd always wanted."

"And they lived happily ever after." Rose smirked.

"Unless she felt guilty," said Jasmine. "I think I would. Wouldn't you, Vi?"

"Yes, I would," said Violet. And then she realized what Laela's guilty secret had been. It was this faked letter. Laela's conscience would always have plagued her, even after long years of marriage to Hal.

Violet scrabbled through the pile of pages on her bed until she found the diary entry she had discovered in the old suitcase from the cellar. It was dated May 10, 1906—
after
the earthquake, and after Verity Stowe's death. She read from the entry aloud.

 

"
For so long I have been wounded by the irony of it all. Small wonder, then, that I have been driven to desperate measures.

 

"The 'desperate measures' being a faked letter to make Hal turn to her." Everything was coming clear to Violet now.

 

"
The facts remain unalterable. I have done a terrible thing. She is dead and I am wracked with guilt.
"

 

"Laela must have written her letter right after Verity died—or even while she was dying," said Jasmine. "That's pretty horrible."

"She was desperate," Violet said. "I don't know," said Rose. "It still sounds like murder to me."

"No, listen to this—it fits with what we know happened later," cried Violet eagerly, and read the next lines.

 

"
She is dead, but I am not. And Hal must never know how we have come together. Indeed, I shall endeavor all my life to ensure he never discovers the truth.

 

"She and Hal came together—just as she says—because she tricked him into believing Verity's dying wish was that they should get married!" Violet continued. "Remember, he had said he'd never marry anyone if he couldn't have Verity. But then Laela always felt guilty because she had tricked him—
not
because she had killed Verity. I guess Verity died of what it said in the newspaper. A wasting disease."

"Maybe leukemia," Jasmine said softly. "Like Nana had. She got so weak she couldn't lift her spoon, either. Just like Verity."

"You might be right, Vi," Rose conceded. "If Verity was too weak to hold a spoon, she was bound to be too weak to hold a pen. So she died—and then Laela sat there at her side and wrote the fake letter. It still doesn't make Laela look very good, does it? Sort of cold and unfeeling."

"Yeah, maybe," agreed Violet. "But she got him, and I'm glad. And Mr. Koch said they had a happy marriage as far as he could tell. And if Laela and Hal never married, they wouldn't have had a daughter, who had a son who turned out to be my science teacher. And if he hadn't given me the earthquake assignment, maybe..." Violet's voice trailed off as the chain of events overwhelmed her.

"Are you going to show Mr. Koch the draft of this letter?" asked Jasmine practically.

"Yeah," said Rose. "Don't you think he should know what his grandmother did?"

Violet smiled at her sisters as she gathered all the letters and diary pages together in a single pile. There they were, the three of them, sitting together as equals, talking just as she'd always longed for them to do. And she felt her heart beating steadily in her chest, felt her lungs expand healthily as she sucked in the crisp breeze from the open attic window, and she knew her body was strong and young, with a full life ahead. The other two girls were wearing matching blue sweatshirts and she, Violet, was wearing a purple one. But being part of a matching set was no longer one of her goals. She marveled that it ever had been, and such a short time ago, too. So much had changed since that first earthquake only two weeks ago.

She felt a tickle at the back of her neck, the sort you might feel when someone is staring at you from behind. She turned, half expecting to see again the figure of the russet-haired young woman in the long skirt. But no one was there.

Violet shook her head. "I won't be telling Mr. Koch a thing," she said, as much in answer to her sisters' questions as to reassure the ghostly presence.

Laela's guilty revelation wasn't the only secret Violet was determined to keep.

That evening the Jackstones ate a simple cold supper of tuna salad, bread, and fruit, then set to work tidying up the house. The electricity was still off, but Lily set candles on all the tables and handed out flashlights. She used a broom to sweep up the worst of the dirt from the fallen plants, and Greg walked around checking the walls for cracks or other damage. While upstairs, he measured the space where the new staircase would be installed. Violet and Jasmine cleaned and refilled the fish tank while Rose replaced the scattered books and papers. When everything was again in order, the family sat together by candlelight and listened to the news coverage of the earthquake on their battery-operated radio.

The situation was not as bad as people might have thought, the newscasters reported optimistically. Though electricity had been interrupted throughout most of the Bay Area, very few gas mains had broken. The fires were all under control at this time. The main damage was to property— tumbled chimneys, cracked walls, broken furnishings—and to roads. And, of course, there was the broken cable on the Golden Gate Bridge and the damaged roadbed. That would take several weeks to repair, but in the meantime commuters could take the Bay Bridge, the BART, or the ferry across the bay. Slower traffic seemed a small price to pay for such a large earthquake. There had been a few oversize waves sighted, but no tidal waves, and now people who had left their homes along the coast were returning.