Jan Burke - Bloodlines

I stood outside the passenger side of the Jeep for a moment, a sensation of being watched suddenly coming over me, causing goose bumps to prickle along my skin. I spun around, as if I might catch some watcher unawares, but saw nothing. I looked around me. The street was quiet. No faces stared back from windows in the few houses I could see from here. There were trees and shrubs planted for privacy all along the borders of Lillian’s property. I scanned them, looking for a glimpse of a face, a sign of movement.

Behind me, the passenger door to the Jeep opened. I didn’t need to fake being startled.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I thought I heard someone call my name,” I said. “I was mistaken.”

“Liar,” she said, and shut the door. It didn’t close all the way. She reopened it, on an impressive list of expletives, and slammed it shut again.

The ride to her home was silent. She let me help her out of the Jeep. She gave me a big hug and said, “You’ve endured a morning with two stupid, querulous old women. I’m sorry, Irene.”

“Oh, one of those women is dumb as a fox, getting me to tag along,” I said. “What aren’t you telling me?”

She touched a dry, thin hand to my cheek and said, “I’d tell you everything if I could. I meant what I said to Lillian-you and Lydia make me very proud. But I’ve made promises, Irene. I intend to keep them, at least for now. But you keep digging, and don’t be discouraged or afraid of what you may find, and my little promises won’t matter at all.”

“All right, I will.”

I walked her to her door. “Helen, I just remembered something I wanted to ask you about.”

“Yes?”

“In 1936, you left the paper for a while.”

A look came into her eyes, one I had seen a few times before. In college, if I turned in something she especially liked, she got that same look. “Yes. Come in for a moment, won’t you? I won’t keep you, but it’s too brisk out here for this talk.”

We went inside and shed our coats. We sat together on her sofa.

“I did leave the paper,” she said. “For about a year. How do you know about that?”

“O’Connor’s diary mentioned it. Why did you leave?”

“Several reasons. I’ll give you a few of them. First, I wasn’t being paid the same wage my male counterparts were making, even though I was supporting myself.”

“Wrigley the first was still in charge?”

“Yes. An old man by then. I went in to ask for a raise, he told me he couldn’t give me one-didn’t I know there was a Depression on, and there were men who wanted my job, and so forth. Take it or leave it, he said.”

“So you left it.”

“Yes. That’s why everyone thought I had left. But you see, I knew what his reaction would be, so it served as a way for me to disguise my other reasons for leaving.”

“Which were?”

“First and foremost, I was madly in love with a man who felt a great deal of affection for me, but whom I could plainly see was not ready to settle down.”

“Jack.”

“Jack. Gorgeous as all get out, and a devil to boot. He was younger than I, and still sowing his wild oats.” She smiled. “You can’t change them, you know. They have to outgrow it.”

“You knew about Lillian?”

“Oh yes. Lily was as beautiful as he was. They made a striking couple. And of course, her old man was loaded, so she thought that would keep Jack chasing after her. What he liked about her was her spirit, not her father’s money.”

“Is Lillian why you left?”

“No, being jealous or angry of Jack’s women would have been exhausting and useless as well. He also had a way of-oh, at the time I was convinced it was some rogue’s trick of his, but he made me believe I was something special, that he might flirt here or there, but that I truly mattered to him. Besides, I liked Lillian. I admired that spirit in her, too. She was barely out of high school, but she could put a woman twice her age in her place. A bit spoiled, but she’s smart and if you get her interested in something other than herself, she can surprise you with her generosity and drive.”

“She was married by the time you left the paper, right?”

“Yes, although Harold was never much of a husband. They weren’t married a month before he moved to Europe without her. He traveled all over the world. He was involved in the sale of supplies to military groups, including ammunition-just barely kept his nose clean as far as the government was concerned, but many American companies profited from wars in other countries during those years. Barrett Ducane was one of his business partners. I think he even did some business with Mitch.”

“Lillian was pregnant when Harold left for Europe?”

“Yes. She had lost both parents not long after her wedding-a car accident. She wanted to get away for a while after that happened. It was summer and terribly hot, so she decided to go up to a huge cabin owned by her family-a lodge, really-in the mountains. She later told me that she felt alone and abandoned and began to think about women who were less fortunate than she, and that’s when she got the idea that she’d start a place for unwed mothers.”

“I didn’t know about that.”

“It’s still in existence. She purchased another, smaller cabin nearby. If the Vanderveers had known of the scandalous use she had made of the lodge, they would have come back to haunt her. But she made the right choice. I think it kept her occupied, kept her from dwelling on her problems. And away from Thelma Ducane, who was a terrible influence on her. Those unwed mothers were better women than Thelma, who had the morals of a jackal.”

“How did you get involved?”

“She heard that I had left the paper and was looking for a job. She was Wrigley’s godchild, and he was fond of her.” She smiled. “Dear Lillian. She gave the old man a great deal of misery over letting me go, and told him that she was going to hire me just to spite him. So she invited me to come up there to help her run her home for unwed mothers. And fiercely refused to let me consider coming back to the newspaper. We got along famously.”

“Wasn’t that frowned on back then, a single woman working around unwed mothers?”

She laughed. “Irene, what do you think they thought of women who worked for newspapers?”

“Oh. The cabin-the smaller one? That’s the place where Katy was born?”

“Yes.”

“No wonder you were so close to her.”

“Yes, I was a part of her life from the very beginning.”

“And later, Lillian gave the cabin to Katy, and Katy willed it to Jack?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve always wondered about that will. Do you know why she wrote it?”

Helen hesitated, then said, “I can answer that, but-I can answer it more fully if you will first call Lillian and tell her that you want her to give me permission to tell you all about the day Katy made the will.”

I looked at her as if she were nuts.

“Courage failing you? She is younger than I am, but I still think you’d beat her in a fair fight.”

I pulled out my cell phone and pressed redial.

Lillian answered, and when I told her what I wanted, she said, “Put her on the phone.”

I handed it to Helen.

After a moment, Helen said, “Yes, of course I forgive you. And you forgive me, I hope?”

There was another long pause, during which Helen rolled her eyes. “Yes, it was a terrible thing to say to you.”

Another pause. “Yes, I will… this will be for the best. You understand that?…I’m glad… Thank you… Yes, I’ll see you then. Good-bye.”

She looked at the phone, handed it to me, and said, “You’ll have to hang up. I can’t stand those things. And the buttons are so small. Who designs such things?”