The Mill River Redemption (12 page)

With her son upstairs reading in his room, as usual, Rose looked around at those boxes she had yet to open, trying to figure out which one held what she was looking for. She began hefting them around, restacking and shaking them, until she heard a faint
clink
inside one of them. Her hands trembled as she ripped open the tape across the top and dug through the folded linens inside. Two bottles of gold rum were nestled safely together under the towels.

Rose grabbed the bottles and headed into the kitchen. There were two full ice cube trays in the freezer, thank God, and she still had a few cans of Diet Coke left over from the drive from the city. She opened the kitchen cupboards methodically until she found one that contained drinking glasses. Rose felt giddy and slightly frenzied as she twisted ice cubes out of the tray and opened one of the rum bottles. She could make a rum and Coke in her sleep.

With the first sip of the drink, Rose felt a wave of relaxation
roll over her. She downed the rest and poured herself another before returning to the sofa. It was odd, how the temperature in the house seemed to decrease as she savored the sweet burn of the second drink.

Rose let her head fall back against the sofa. She was finally feeling comfortable when the doorbell rang. She ignored it at first, but after the fourth ring, she scowled and hauled herself to her feet.

At the door, Rose peered through the peephole.

Her sister stood on the stoop.

Rose muttered a curse, but she knew that ignoring Emily would only delay the inevitable. She unlocked the dead bolt and opened the door, leaving the screen door in place.

Emily’s expression was one of surprise and uncertainty. For a long minute, they stared at each other, but neither of them spoke. Finally, Rose broke the silence.

“Well?”

Emily crossed her arms. “We should put what happened yesterday behind us and talk about how we’re going to do this.”

“All right. Talk.”

Emily looked pointedly at the screen door that separated them. Rose sighed and rolled her eyes. She stepped out onto the stoop and raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the setting sun.

“Look, I don’t want this to be any harder than it has to,” Emily said. “Do you have a copy of Mom’s letter?”

“Yes.”

“So do I. I’ve read it a bazillion times, and I assume you’ve done the same thing. The letter says we each have a clue hidden, and the clues are different from each other. I think we ought to take inventory of everything in our houses and then compare.”

Rose thought about that. It was a reasonable, logical course of action, but the mere thought of trying to make sense of the jumbled
mess inside her house—to “take inventory”—gave her a headache. It was annoying, how a conversation of twenty seconds with her sister had completely killed her buzz.

Emily shifted her weight from one foot to the other, waiting for her response. “Do you have a better idea?” she finally asked, with an edge to her voice.

“I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to, but I’ll need a few days,” Rose said, raising her chin. “This whole place is full of the crap Mom put in here, and I’m not even close to unpacking my own things, much less going through all her stuff.”

Emily’s jaw tensed. “Fine. Today’s Monday. Take the next few days and make a list of everything in there that you didn’t bring with you. We can meet Thursday morning, at my house, to go over the lists. With any luck, we’ll figure out the clues and find the key quickly. We could be done with this whole thing by the end of the week.” She looked Rose full in the eyes before she turned and left.

Rose went back inside and shut the door. She was surprised to find Alex standing in the living room.

“Was that Aunt Emily?” he asked. Alex held a thick book under one arm. He shoved his glasses further up on his nose as he looked at her.

“Yes, sweetie.”

“Why did she come over?”

Rose sighed. She walked back to the sofa and picked up her nearly empty glass. There were three tiny pieces of ice left in it, floating in the last diluted bit of her drink. “She wanted to talk about how we’re going to find the clues that Grandma left us.”

“Oh.”

Rose swirled the remaining liquid in her glass before taking it all into her mouth. Alex didn’t move from the place where he stood. “What is it, honey?” she asked once she swallowed the mouthful.

“Why don’t you and Aunt Emily like each other?”

It was a question she’d expected to have to deal with at some point, and she sighed before responding. “Because of something that happened a long time ago, something you wouldn’t understand right now. I’ll explain it once you’re a little older.” Rose watched Alex’s face as he thought about her answer, and she was thankful when he didn’t try to argue the point.

“Don’t you and Aunt Emily have to find the clues to get Grandma’s safe-deposit-box key?”

“That’s what the letter says.”

“How are you going to do that if you don’t like each other?”

“Your aunt and I are going to make a list of everything in these two houses. Once that’s done, we should be able to see what’s different on the lists. Two of those things should be the clues.”

“Oh. Well, can I help make the list of stuff that’s here?”

Rose felt a little spark of glee at her son’s offer. She smiled at him, and the grin that stretched across his face went straight to her heart. For a minute, he was a baby again, smiling at her, toothless and blissfully happy. His nine-year-old smile was bigger and had teeth but was otherwise unchanged. However, she had changed.

“Sure! That’d be great! We’ve got plenty of time, though. We don’t have to show our list to Aunt Emily until Thursday morning.”

“That’s cool, Mom.” Alex said. “I can’t wait to figure out what the clues are! Can I start working on it right now?”

“Knock yourself out,” Rose said. “Oh, and what do you want for dinner? I haven’t gone food shopping yet, but I could call in an order to Pizza Hut.”

“Okay,” Alex said. He was examining a stack of boxes in the far corner of the living room. “Hey, Mom, this box has Aunt Ivy’s name on it,” he said. The top of the box was closed with the flaps tucked beneath each other, but it pulled open easily. “It’s full of books! They look like they’re really old.”

Alex brought several of the books from the box to show her. They were paperbacks with faded, worn covers and yellowed pages.

“Huh,” she said as she glanced down at the titles. They were all classics—
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird
, and
The Count of Monte Cristo
. “Have you read any of these yet?”

“Nope.”

“Well, you should. It’s been years since I read them, but they’re all great. I loved
The Count of Monte Cristo
. It’s like, the
ultimate
tale of revenge.” She paused and looked over at the opened book box. “You know, every once in a while when your aunt Emily and I were growing up, Aunt Ivy would give Grandma a big box of old books. They were the ones she couldn’t sell and that the library didn’t want. Sometimes the covers were ripped off, and a lot of them had pages that were falling out. Grandma still read them to us, though. As long as she could see the words on the page, that’s all that mattered.” Rose smirked. “I’ll bet these are all rejects from The Bookstop.”

“Can I have them, then?” Alex asked. “I could take the whole box up to my room.”

“Sure. Just be careful with the box—it’s heavy. You should probably take the books out and make a few trips.”

Alex cleared out the books in no time and disappeared back to his room. Rose called in an order to Pizza Hut. She had actually made progress unpacking some of her clothes by the time the doorbell rang again.

That was fast
, Rose thought. She pulled her wallet from her purse and hurried to the door.

Instead of the pizza delivery person, Daisy Delaine glanced up at her and nervously fingered a jar that was filled with some sort of bright orange liquid and wrapped with a matching ribbon.

Rose squeezed her eyes shut as she processed the identity of
her visitor. It didn’t take her long to remember where they had last met.

“Miss Rose,” Daisy said with a slight stammer, “I heard you were back in town for the summer, Miss Rose.” She swallowed hard, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “I still feel awful about what happened at your mom’s house. I decided to come tell you again how sorry I still am for what I did to your mother’s ashes. I made this special, for you,” she continued, holding up the jar. “It’s a forgiveness potion.”

Rose kept her hands close to her chest to avoid touching the jar. She could see how the contents left a film on the inside of the glass. There was no telling
what
was actually inside it.

“Uh, thank you, but no,” Rose said. All the warm feelings she’d had talking with her son vanished. “I know accidents happen, but you really
are
an idiot if you think that people actually want these potions you make, or that they actually work. Because of that crap you brought to my mother’s wake, her remains were ruined. We couldn’t even salvage any to have a proper burial for her. So, you can keep whatever the hell is in that jar.”

Rose took a last look at Daisy’s shocked face and closed the door firmly. She didn’t care if she ever saw that weird little woman again.

1985

A
FEW WEEKS AFTER SHE HAD SAVED
E
MILY
’
S HAIR FROM
Rose’s scissors, Josie awoke before her alarm clock rang. Her sleep had been fitful, so it was almost a relief to get up. She looked at the new navy suit hanging in plastic on her closet doorknob. She’d bought matching pumps, too, and she was grateful to have gotten the whole outfit at clearance prices. Trying to control the nervous energy that flowed through her, she took a deep breath and went to wake the girls for school. Today, she had an interview at a real estate agency in Rutland.

Josie moved automatically through her morning routine and got the girls off to school. With Rose on the bus and Emily safely at St. John’s, she raced back home to get ready. It felt strange, wearing such a formal outfit, along with hose and heels, but she didn’t dwell on it. She wanted to get to Rutland with plenty of time to find the Circle Realty office and collect herself before the interview.

Of the many offices to which Josie had written, only one had responded positively to her inquiry about a possible trainee position. Circle Realty was a small agency in the southwest, floodprone area of Rutland City that locals referred to as “The Gut.”

As she drove into Rutland and down the street where the office was located, Josie felt right at home. True, there was nothing fancy
about the houses and shops she was passing, and the few people walking outside were dressed plainly. But, there was absolutely nothing wrong with that.
These are just regular, hardworking people
. The Gut reminded her of her old Bronx neighborhood, and it was certainly far nicer than many areas in the Bronx that she used to avoid.

At precisely five minutes before ten, Josie pushed open the door to the Circle Realty office. A small bell rang to signal her entrance. Inside, the front room smelled of old coffee, mildew, and the moist, steamy odor of radiator heat. The gray carpeted floor creaked beneath her feet. An unattended receptionist’s desk and a freestanding coatrack were to her left. On her right was a small seating area and a table that held a pot full of coffee, a stack of Styrofoam cups, and a bowl of individual packets of sugar and creamer. A closed door directly before her presumably led to other offices.

For the moment, she was the only one in the room.

Josie hung up her coat. She smoothed her skirt and removed a small piece of lint that was stuck to one of her sleeves. She was wondering whether she should sit down when the door in front of her swung open.

“I thought I heard someone come in,” a man said as he entered the room. He seemed to be a few years older than she, maybe in his mid-thirties. He had black hair and dark brown eyes and wore a black and white houndstooth sport coat. “I’m Ned Circle. You must be Josie.” Ned held a piece of cold, half-eaten pizza on a napkin in one hand. He wiped his other hand on the side of his pants leg and extended it.

“Yes,” Josie said as she shook his hand. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. Come on back,” he said, motioning to the open door with his pizza. “Oh, and I hope you’ll pardon my late breakfast.
I meant to finish before you got here, but one thing led to another, you know how it goes.” He took a bite of pizza and continued talking. “This is from Ted’s, by the way, the pizza place up on State Street. Best in Rutland, hands down. I’ve got a few pieces left, if you’re hungry.”

“Oh, no thank you,” Josie said, as she followed him into an office. She was slightly put off by Ned’s casual manner and greasy handshake.

“Here we go,” Ned said. They had entered a crowded, disorganized office. Ned sat down behind a desk covered in papers and a paper plate full of hard pizza crusts. He motioned for Josie to sit in a chair facing the desk as he quickly slid the plate into a wastepaper basket. “Sorry about the mess,” he said. “My secretary quit three weeks ago, and I’ve been trying to keep things afloat by myself.” He picked up two papers neatly folded together on top of the chaos—Josie’s letter and résumé. “Now, Josie … wait, is it all right if I call you Josie?”

“Yes. May I call you Ned?”

“Please do. So, Josie, tell me why you want to become a real estate agent.” Ned took another bite of his pizza and stared at her while he chewed.

Because my savings are running out and I need a job, something that will let me keep my two babies fed and clothed and warm
. Josie looked Ned squarely in the eyes. “Because I would enjoy helping people find the perfect places to live. I also have extensive sales experience.”

Ned looked down at her résumé. Josie followed his gaze, watching as his eyes swept across the page.

“You sold jewelry.”

“Yes.”

“What makes you think your skill in selling jewelry will translate to real estate?”