Yesternight (19 page)

December 23, 1925

W
e rolled into the Brighton, Kansas, train station at 9:35 in the morning, two days before Christmas; three days after the O'Daires, Tillie Simpkin, and I boarded the first train of our excursion. During the connection in Utah, I had dispatched a telegram to Mrs. Rook, in which I passed along our approximate arrival time. I also asked if her husband might still pick us up.

The locomotive slowed to a stop, and I peeked out my window, finding a dozen or so people waiting beneath the overhang of a depot a bright canary yellow. They were all bundled in layer upon layer of winter clothing, and only their eyes and their noses peeked through heaps of wool. Even if I knew what Mr. Rook looked like—which I most definitely didn't—I might not have recognized him in the small crowd.

He had one of those
lines
in his chin,
Janie had said of
her
Mr. Rook.
And he carried a pocket watch with an etching of a castle on the back.

I stepped off the train and landed in a prairie world imbued with far more color than what L. Frank Baum had described in his writings of Dorothy's “gray” Kansas. Snow powdered the slanted rooftops of a row of red brick storefronts, and the scents of clean air, of winter wheat and horses, blended with the grease and steam of the locomotive. No mountains blocked the view of the white earth in any direction, and yet the land stretched to the horizon in gentle, rolling hills, not with the ironed-bed-sheet flatness I'd expected.

Down the tracks, Janie and her mother and aunt climbed down the stairs of another passenger car, their bulky luggage in hand. Woolen hats concealed their red hair, and scarves engulfed their necks and chins. Beyond them, Michael walked our way with a single leather suitcase, his tweed cap pulled down over his forehead, his long black coat fastened around the rest of him. I bustled toward everyone, relieved to find familiar faces.

Rebecca squinted at me through sunlight that glared down from the pale sky. “Where are we to go now?”

“Well,” I said with a lift of my shoulders, “we're to hope that Mrs. Rook's husband, indeed, received our message saying we'd be arriving this morning.”

“Do we know what he looks like?” asked Michael.

I strove not to wince; not to betray my lack of confidence. “Unfortunately, no. All I know is that his name is Mr. Rook.”

Rebecca sighed. Tillie cringed.

What on earth have I done?
I thought.
What are we all doing out here, smack-dab in the middle of the country—two days before Christmas?

“That man over there looks like Mr. Rook,” said Janie, pointing toward a somewhat older-looking fellow in a gray cap who stood at the edge of the awaiting greeters. “He's got that same line in the middle of his chin, although his cheeks sink into his face more than I remember. He used to shave much better and didn't look so whiskery.”

Rebecca pulled her daughter to her side and squeezed her close. Michael, Tillie, and I shifted our gazes between the man in question and each other, all of us seeming to ask,
Should we believe her?

“Well . . .” I readjusted my grip on my bags. “Let's go ask if it's him.”

“Yes, let's.” Michael picked up Janie's pint-sized suitcase for her and led us toward the fellow, who warmed his hands in his coat pockets and rocked back and forth.

I caught up to Michael. “Do let me speak to him first. I've got Mrs. Rook's letter right here. Is the journal nearby?”

“It's in my suitcase.”

“I recommend taking it out in case we need it. Keep it handy.” I fumbled with the clasp of my briefcase and rummaged around for the letter. With a semblance of authority, I then marched straight up to our potential host, who withdrew his gloved hands from his pockets.

“Good morning, sir,” I said. “Might you be Mr. Rook?”

He nodded. “Yes, ma'am. That's me.”

“So nice to meet you. I'm Miss Alice Lind”—I lifted the letter for him to see—“the school psychologist who wrote to your wife.”

“Oh.” He shook my right hand, his face pinking up. “We thought you'd be a man.”

“No, I'm not.” I swiveled on my heel toward the rest of my group. “I'm delighted to introduce to you little Janie O'Daire and her family. This is her mother and father . . .”

“Pleased to meet you.” Michael reached out to the chap and imparted a brusque handshake. “Michael O'Daire.”

“And this is her aunt, as well as her schoolteacher,” I continued with a gesture toward Tillie, “Miss Tillie Simpkin.”

“How do you do?” she said with a polite nod. She then picked at her lips and looked as though she craved a smoke. I think we all needed a cigarette.

Mr. Rook fussed with his cap, rocking again. “The missus is back at the house. We didn't think we could fit all of you into the car if she came along.”

“It's so kind of you to fetch us,” I said. “And so wonderful of you to agree to meet with us so close to the holidays. I know this is all a bit last-minute . . . and somewhat shocking—”

“Oh, it's shocking, all right.” Mr. Rook eyed Janie. “Eleanor's not quite sure what to think of all this.”

“
I'm
still not sure what to think of all of this,” I admitted. “But I've never come across anything like this in all of my experiences of working with schoolchildren.”

“Well . . .” He pulled out a gold pocket watch and checked the time. “It's mighty cold out here, and the missus will be expecting us. I reckon we should get you folks into the car and try to warm up.”

“Is that an illustration on your watch case?” I asked.

“Well, yes.” He tilted the watch so I could view the front of the case and its etching of a Medieval-style building that may have been a castle or a church.

My heart beat faster.

I closed my mouth. “How lovely. Thank you.”

“How far is the house from here?” asked Rebecca.

“About twenty minutes. Will any of you require a drink or a trip to the powder room before we set off?”

None of us indicated that we did.

“All right.” Mr. Rook nodded for us to follow him to a half-dozen cars parked near the depot, most of them black Model Ts with windows half iced over. “Let's head to old Friendly, then.”

W
E BOUNCED ALONG
on an unpaved country road, our luggage knocking against the roof above our heads, the windshield wipers straining to scrape away particles of ice. I had squeezed in next to Mr. Rook in the middle of the front seat, and Michael sat on the other side of me, the journal tucked inside his left coat pocket, which bulged against my right side. Janie, Tillie, and Rebecca occupied the backseat, with Janie sandwiched between the two ladies.

Mr. Rook, a soft-spoken man, pointed out some of the local points of interest, such as the farm that had raised the dairy cows that won first prize every county fair, and a house that had been the home of two young bushwhackers who participated in the bloody 1863 massacre in Lawrence. I found myself nodding at everything he said, and Michael kept responding, “Now, isn't that interesting?”

The occupants of the backseat rode in silence during the first five minutes, until suddenly, out of nowhere, Janie piped up and
said, “
Ohhh
, you're
Vernon
Rook, not William Rook. That's why you look different. You grew up and got old.”

Mr. Rook snapped his face backward. The car swerved. A roll of hay the size of a shed shot up in our path in a field.

“Look out!” I shouted, and grabbed the man's arm.

The car skidded and jumped through the snow and tall grasses, but, somehow, Mr. Rook regained control and maneuvered us back onto the road, where we again jostled across frozen dirt.

Michael and I had clutched each other's hands, I realized, but I let him go and instead clasped my knees.

Sweat bubbled on Mr. Rook's brow. “What did you just say, little girl? H-h-how do you know me?”

Janie laughed the way one would with old friends. “I recognize your voice. You still sound like you, Vernon. Is your father still teaching?”

Our driver slammed his foot against the brake and threw us all forward in our seats.

“Jesus! Are you all right, sir?” asked Michael, rubbing his neck. “Do you need someone else to drive?”

Mr. Rook gripped the steering wheel and refused to look back at Janie, his face as white as the snow surrounding us. “Is this some sort of joke? Did you people come here to laugh at us?”

“No.” I nudged at Michael with an elbow. “Show him the journal. Show him precisely why we're here and how we're just as stunned as he is.”

“Did I say something wrong?” asked Janie, on the cusp of crying.

“No, darling.” I turned toward her. “You're doing just fine. It's just that we adults aren't always as brave as you when it comes to you recognizing people like Mr. Rook.”

“We shouldn't have come here,” said Rebecca, her arm around Janie. “I knew in my gut this might lead to trouble.”

Janie's eyes shone with tears. “Aren't we still going to Friendly?”

“Of course we're still going,” said Michael. He stretched his arm across me to pass the journal to Mr. Rook. “Sir, these are the notes we've been compiling since Janie was two. She's been telling us about her life as Violet Sunday ever since she could first speak, but, I swear to God, this is the first time she's ever been east of the Coast Range in Oregon.”

Mr. Rook's neck muscles tautened, and he refused to touch the book.

“Please, sir,” I pleaded. “Read it. We've come so far. We've given up everything to travel here this Christmas and share this child's story with you.”

Another fifteen seconds passed. Mr. Rook panted through his open mouth, as though he'd just sprinted across the field, but I nodded to urge him along.

He swallowed and accepted the journal from Michael, his lips now fixed in an expression of both doubt and terror. The thick thumbs of his tan gloves cupped the front cover, and I wondered if he felt that same sensation I experienced when I first encountered the journal—the sense of preparing myself to dive headfirst into ice water.

“Take your time,” I told him, even though I shivered from the car's lack of heat. “I know this isn't easy.”

Without a word, right there in the middle of that empty Kansas road, Mr. Vernon Rook opened the journal compiled by the O'Daires and embarked upon the fantastical tale that had bewitched the rest of us in that car. He cried silent tears, and he pored over at least twenty pages of Janie's life as Violet Sunday, while the rest of us huddled together to stay warm.

J
anie passed the remaining ten minutes of the car ride by singing kiddie songs, accompanied by her reluctant-sounding aunt who half-sung at
mezza voce
. During the final stretch of the journey, they entertained us with “Animal Fair,” an oddly catchy ditty that involved an elephant collapsing upon and killing a drunken monkey.

Mr. Rook steered us onto a gravel driveway that led to a white farmhouse parked in the middle of a field blanketed in three inches of snow. Tillie's voice fell off, but Janie continued singing about “the end of the monkey monk.” The car swayed us back and forth, and gravel crunched beneath the tires with a sound not unlike the breaking of bones.

Windows framed by worn black shutters watched over us, and I spotted a woman's face peering through one of the panes on the second floor. A moment later, she dashed away. My stomach tightened.

“Is this where she lived all her life?” asked Rebecca from behind Mr. Rook. “Violet Sunday, I mean. Was this the house in which she grew up?”

Mr. Rook shifted the parking brake into a locked position. “Ask the girl.”

Michael twisted around in the seat to face his daughter, who now sang “Lavender Blue.”

“Janie,” he said, interrupting her, “we're here. Do you recognize where we are?”

I swiveled around as well and watched Janie suck her bottom lip inside her mouth and peek out the window next to her mother.

“No.” She sat back in the seat.

My heart sank.

“No?” asked Michael. “Are you sure? Did you get a good enough look?”

“I'm getting hungry.”

“Janie, you ate on the train, not long ago,” said her mother. “We're not here to eat. We're here to visit Mrs. Rook, whom you've repeatedly told us that you want to see.”

Mr. Rook stepped out of the car and opened Rebecca's door for her. Michael spilled out of his side and held the door open for me.

“Why doesn't she recognize the place?” he asked me through gritted teeth. “She's been talking about this damn house all of her life.”

“Maybe it's not the one Violet grew up in. Mr. Rook never did answer the question of whether it was.”

Tillie swung her door shut, and, through her own clenched jaw, she said, “I'm sorry—I shouldn't have sang all those songs with her. It pulled her too far into the world of Janie.”

“Hello,” called a woman from up by the house.

I turned to find the same face I had witnessed in the upstairs window. It belonged to a petite woman with gray-streaked hair who
looked to have been in her late forties or early fifties. She evaluated us with cautious eyes, and her thin lips formed a tentative smile. She had the type of deeply angled eyebrows that made a person appear perpetually concerned, so I wasn't entirely sure how to gauge her level of comfort with our arrival.

I approached her. “Mrs. Rook?”

“Yes.” She nodded, those eyebrows still worrying. “I'm Eleanor Sunday Rook, Violet's sister.”

“Oh, what a pleasure it is to meet you.” I climbed the porch steps to where she stood and thrust my hand her way. “I'm Alice Lind, the psychologist from the letter. I heard that you and your husband were expecting a man.”

“We were, but that's all right. Welcome to our home.”

“Thank you. I'm so pleased to be here. Now, let me introduce you to the whole reason why we are here. Janie”—I beckoned to the girl with my right hand—“please come up here so that you may meet Mrs. Eleanor Sunday Rook. Bring your family along with you.”

Janie stood closest to Michael now. She hooked one of her hands around his, and with cautious footsteps, walked toward us at his side. Her mother and aunt followed, gazing up at the house as though they expected to recognize it as well.

“Mrs. Rook, this is Miss Janie O'Daire,” I said when the girl climbed up to the topmost step, the soles of her little boots scraping against the wood. “This is the child whom I told you about in my letter.”

“Hello, Janie,” said our hostess. “I'm Eleanor Rook.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Janie with a tone of trained politeness.

Disappointment clouded Mrs. Rook's eyes. I could tell she had quite hoped for another sort of response. As did I.

I introduced the rest of the O'Daires and Tillie, and the Rooks invited us inside. We landed in an entryway wallpapered in a feminine pattern consisting of red flowers printed against an ivory background—just as Janie had described Violet's walls to her parents, according to the journal. We unwound scarves from our necks and shed gloves and hats, and I focused all of my attention on Janie's reactions to the surroundings.

“Would you like anything to eat or drink?” asked Mrs. Rook.

Janie's eyes lit up, and her mouth stretched into a smile that revealed a new gap between her teeth.

“I wondered,” I said, “if I might perhaps speak with you in private, Mrs. Rook, before you and Janie even have time to interact. I would like to ask you a list of questions and see how your answers compare to the information Janie has told her parents about Violet.”

Janie's smile faded. Her hand wilted out of Michael's.

Mrs. Rook exchanged a glance with her husband, who was removing his coat and gloves.

“If you think that would be the best way to proceed,” she said, “then I'm certain Vernon could serve everyone else coffee and milk, or whatever they'd prefer.”

“Sure.” Her husband nodded. “I'll help.”

I pulled my arms out of my coat sleeves. “Thank you. That's splendid of you. Are the rest of you comfortable with that plan? We can reconvene after my short interview with Mrs. Rook and share the journal with her.”

The O'Daires nodded and voiced their agreement, and before long, I found myself following Mrs. Rook into a little back sitting room inhabited by a dozen pieces of taxidermy—stuffed ducks and geese mainly. The disembodied head of a buck hung above a
fireplace, and his bulbous glass eyes glowed from the flames with unsettling flickers of life.

“Vernon likes to hunt,” said Mrs. Rook.

“Ah, I see. That's an impressive pair of antlers on the fellow.”

Mrs. Rook smiled, and I worried that my words had sounded dirty.

I brushed my bangs out of my eyes and sat down across from her in one of two checkered armchairs, angled in front of the fireplace. Quilted scenes of migrating ducks adorned the walls, and a plump mallard stood on a small end table, near my right elbow. Thankfully, the only smell to permeate the room derived from the logs burning in the hearth, and not the animals.

“Now . . .” I drew my notebook and fountain pen out of my briefcase on the floor. “Let me start by saying that I can't tell you how grateful we all are that you've allowed us to visit you today. As we already told your husband, Janie has been asking to visit Friendly ever since she was a child of two.”

“Is that so?” asked Mrs. Rook, crossing her legs beneath a periwinkle skirt. “Two years old?”

“I'm so eager to speak to you right now, Mrs. Rook. Do you mind if I simply jump into my list of questions?”

“Please do. I'm eager to get on with things, too.”

“I'm sure you are.” I opened my notebook and pressed out a crease in the page of questions. “Are you ready, then?”

“I am.” She wrapped her hands around her right knee and leaned forward. Her eyebrows persisted in conveying concern.

“All right.” I took a breath and poised the nib of my pen above the paper. “So that I may record the basic information in my notes, please start by telling me the names of you and your sister.”

“I am Eleanor Rook, born Eleanor Jane Sunday in 1872. My sister was born Violet Julia Sunday in 1870, but she married at the age of eighteen and became Violet Jessen.”

I wrote down her answers, then asked, “Where were you both born?”

“Right here in this house.” Mrs. Rook beamed at the room around her—the wallpaper peppered in those distinctive red flowers, the quilts, the knickknacks, the taxidermy. “When Vernon and I first married, we lived in a house in downtown Brighton, but I couldn't bear to part with this place after I lost both of my parents. I moved back here about fifteen years ago, when my children were almost old enough to head out on their own.”

I nodded and made notes about the passing on of the Sunday house to Eleanor. “Did Violet ever live in any other house?”

“Yes, she lived in a small cabin on the edge of the property. ‘The other house' we always called it.”

I continued to write as though I hadn't ever heard of the “other house.” My deteriorating penmanship betrayed the unsteadiness of my hand.

“And did she live with someone in that other house?” I asked.

“Yes, her husband, Nelson.”

I lost my grip on the pen, which clattered to the floor and spit a drop of ink across the wood. “Oh no. I'm so sorry . . .” I bent over and erased the black dot with a thumb. “Did . . . did you say her husband's name was Nelson?”

“Yes, Nelson Jessen. His family was Danish.”

“Really? Danish?” My eyes watered. I picked up the pen and righted myself in the chair, but my posture felt crooked and awkward. “Mrs. Rook . . .” I put a hand to my chest and struggled to
catch my breath. “I must ask you, have you ever in your life met Mr. or Mrs. O'Daire?”

“You mean the girl's parents sitting out there?”

“Yes. The couple—or former couple. You don't already know them, do you?”

She swung her knees toward the room's closed door. “No. Why?”

“I want to ensure that none of you have ever spoken with each other—exchanged information.”

“Did the little girl know about Nelson, too?”

“As a matter of fact, she spoke of a man named Nel who lived in a place she called the ‘other house.'”

Mrs. Rook froze. I observed the dilation of her pupils and a purpling of her lips, as though oxygen failed to flow properly through her blood.

“When we're finished here,” I said, “I'll show you those details in my notes, as well as in the O'Daires' journal. Did Nelson ever go by Nel?”

“We called him Nels with an
s
, but Violet sometimes called him Nel, or, jokingly, Nelly. He was the same age as Violet, but we all knew each other since we were little children. Vernon grew up with us, too. His father was the teacher at our schoolhouse.”

“Vernon's father, the older Mr. Rook, taught Violet, then?”

“Yes, he taught all of us.”

I shifted about in my chair, edging forward, switching which leg I crossed. “Did you and Violet have any other siblings?”

“No, it was just the two of us. We lived here with our mother and father and occasionally a dog or two, like the aforementioned Puppy.”

“Tell me more about Violet's fondness and talent for mathematics,” I said. “When did that start?”

“Early on in school. Violet was always calculating the prices of crops for our father, always helping him out. That's why it infuriated me when he wouldn't allow her to attend college. The girl was a genius; there was no doubt about it. She just happened to be a genius with a woman's body.”

“You said she jumped into her marriage instead of going to college?”

“Yes, there was nothing else for her to do. She and Nels loved each other dearly, and he promised her he would help her earn money for tuition, even though they started with absolutely nothing.” She sat back in the chair and stroked the armrests with slender fingers. “Violet and Nels married after they both graduated from school. He found himself a nice job as a clerk at a law office in Brighton.”

“And you said he was the same age as Violet?” I asked, jotting down notes as I spoke. “He wasn't an older gentleman dangling money in front of a girl in need?”

Mrs. Rook laughed. “Oh no, it wasn't anything like that. Violet and Nels
adored
each other. She worked in the daytime, cleaning houses for a family in Brighton, just down the street from where Nels worked. And at night she'd scribble away in notebooks, formulating equations, sometimes even writing on the walls to map everything out on a larger scale. Oh my goodness”—she clapped her hands together and smiled—“you should see how much calculating that girl used to do on those poor walls. Nels would just shake his head and grin and say how proud he was of her. He excelled in math, too, but not quite like that.”

“She—she wrote equations on the walls?” I asked.

“Yes. Shapes and numbers and all sorts of mathematical symbols that I never could quite understand. We left her writing up there in the other house, as a matter of fact. My parents never rented the place out to anyone else, and it seemed almost sacrilegious to erase all of her work.” Mrs. Rook settled back against her chair again. “It's funny, I always imagined her coming back here one day, evaluating what she wrote, finding the answer staring straight at her.”

I glanced at the door, listening for the sound of Janie among the low murmurs that filled one of the other rooms. “Janie O'Daire writes on her bedroom walls, too,” I said in a voice more whispery than I'd intended.

Mrs. Rook gulped. “Does she, now?”

“Yes.” I cleared my throat. “I think perhaps we ought to take her to the other house in a short while.”

Mrs. Rook rubbed her thumbs along the edges of her armrests and nodded, her face doughy white. “Yes, I think I quite agree.”

I recorded her statements about Violet's work as a housemaid, her equations on the walls, and her marriage to Nelson. My insides squirmed and burbled. The time to address Violet's death had at long last arrived. Time to unearth Nelson “Nel” Jessen's involvement.

“Mrs. Rook . . .” I swallowed and laid the notebook across the length of my lap. “Janie has given us several details about the day Violet died, but some key facts are missing.”