Элизабет Чандлер: Legacy of Lies

He nodded, unimpressed, then opened a different bottle and took another vitamin.

“Tell me,” I said, “what kind of supplement do you take to grow an attitude like yours?”

A crack of a smile, just a crack. Then he pushed both bottles toward me. “Help yourself, though I think your attitude’s developed enough.”

I glanced at the bottles, which contained ordinary vitamins, then sat down at the kitchen table to drink my juice.

I wished I had a newspaper to read, something to page through casually while waiting for him to leave. I grabbed a cereal box and studied that until I heard the screen door bang shut. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Grandmother mark a page in her Bible, then put it on a shelf by the window.

She returned to the table, resting her hands on the back of a chair. “You’re not at all like your mother.”

I glanced up, surprised. What an odd comment from someone who never forgot I wasn’t related by birth! “Did you expect me to be?”

“Children learn from the person with whom they live. Even as a teenager, your mother was always sweet-natured and gentle with people. She never had a harsh comment for anyone.”

“Still doesn’t,” I said, setting aside the cereal box.

“So where did you get that sharp tongue?” Grandmother asked.

I sighed and stood up. “Don’t know. Where did your child get her gentleness?”

I went for a run by myself that morning, following Scarborough Road away from town, passing field after field of harvested corn. I knew better than to expect an invitation to the football game that afternoon. After a long shower and a quick brunch, I asked Grandmother if she wanted to do some shopping in town. She informed me that she only mixed with “the riffraff” when absolutely necessary.

“I shall tell Matt to drop you off,” she added.

“Thanks, but I can get there myself.”

I figured it was only a twenty-minute walk to the stores on High Street, and I was too proud to accept any ride she had commanded.

In the early afternoon I crossed the bridge over Wist Creek. When I turned onto High Street, I saw a sign advertising “Sidewalk Saturday.” About four blocks from the harbor, the shopping district turned into one long sale.

Paperbacks were piled in wheelbarrows by the steps of Urspruch’s Books. Mobiles and wind chimes dangled from the sycamore tree in front of Faye’s Gallery. Teague’s Antiques had transformed its patch of bricks into a Victorian parlor with chairs and a sofa. Groups of people strolled in and out of the small shops, some of the crowd walking in the street. Cars crept along, apparently used to this weekend style of life.

When I arrived at Yesterdaze, Ginny barely had time to say hello. Her shop clerk had gone home ill, which left Ginny trying to guide shoppers and cover the register.

“Want some help?” I asked. “I work at Dad’s animal hospital. I know how to count change and do credit card purchases.”

“Oh, honey, it’s your vacation.”

“But I’d like to,” I told her. “Matt doesn’t want to hang out with me. Grandmother doesn’t want to hang out with anyone.

This would give me something to do.”

Ginny played with the amber beads around her neck.

“Well, I could sure use a hand,” she admitted, her eyes darting after a customer. “You’re on.”

Wearing a work apron embroidered with the shop’s name, armed with credit forms and a money box, I took my place at a table outside. I bagged and boxed. I read price tags and squinted at driver’s licenses, copying their numbers onto checks. Some customers were locals, but more were visitors, many from Baltimore and Philadelphia. I enjoyed watching the parade of people and listening to the conversations around me. I learned that shoppers are not as easy to deal with as dogs and cats.

A senior citizen with salon-molded hair argued with Ginny for selling a jacket she had asked Ginny to hold over two months ago. Her nurse companion, a heavyset woman, forty-something, picked through the lace handkerchiefs on the table next to me. “She’ll go on like this for another five minutes,” said the aide. “Maybe ten. We’ve argued our way down two blocks of High Street. Always do.”

“Sounds like you don’t have an easy job,” I replied sympathetically.

She shrugged. “Easier than the last one. Pay’s better too.

Mrs. Barnes thinks it’s still 1950.”

I looked up from the roll of quarters I had just cracked open. “Mrs. Barnes?”

“Out Scarborough House.” The woman kept wrinkling her nose and sniffling, while looking at the elegant handkerchiefs. I was afraid she was going to use one.

“Guess you’re not from these parts,” she said.

“I, uh, just arrived.”

“Well, let me put it this way. Mrs. Barnes makes ner”-she gestured toward the older woman-“seem like a saint to live with. As for that spooky old house on the Wist, where she’ll let you board ’cause she’s paying you peanuts, well, I wouldn’t live there for any amount of money.”

“How come?” I asked, curious.

“It’s haunted.”

My eyes widened. The woman saw she had an interested audience.

“My sister warned me,” she chattered on. “Said it wasn’t just the house. It was the family. None of them Scarboroughs was quite right in the head. That’s why Mrs. Barnes’s daughter ran off like she did. She had to get away.”

“From what?”

“Avril Scarborough, I suppose.”

I recognized the name from the gravestone.

“She was murdered, you know.”

“Murdered!” I repeated with disbelief.

The woman’s head bobbed. “The family covered it up.

Said it was an accident. It wasn’t.”

“How do you know it wasn’t?” I asked.

“I’ve seen the ghost. In the rear wing, the room above the kitchen, the only night I stayed there. Say what you want, but happy dead folks don’t come back to haunt.”

“Alice,” the older woman hissed. “I’m ready to go.”

“Never asks if I’m ready,” Alice muttered to me, then stepped forward to take the woman’s arm and guide her down the street.

I stared after them. My mother would have told me if someone in her family had been murdered. It’s just gossip compounded by Alice’s imagination, I thought.

For the next hour we were extremely busy. Still, as I ran my finger down a tax table and stuffed tissue in boxes, I found myself wondering what could have spawned Alice’s story. Small-town boredom? Jealousy of a family that had more money than others? Or was there a suspicious event that could be interpreted that way?

I became so lost in thought, I didn’t hear what a customer had just said to me. “I’m sorry. What?”

The red-haired girl gazed back at me with wide, clear eyes and smiled a little. “I didn’t say anything.”

I was certain she had, but perhaps it was the blond girl who had stopped with two friends to sort through items on our sidewalk tables. She looked like the passenger I’d seen in the front seat of Matt’s Jeep yesterday. Her two friends echoed whatever opinion she had. She liked the beaded purses, so they liked the beaded purses. She thought the jewelry was for old ladies, so they thought the jewelry was for old ladies.

I noticed that the redhead looked up at the girls once or twice, as if to say hello, but they didn’t acknowledge her.

Snobs, I thought. She seemed used to it and went back to her own browsing, lifting up a silver chain that dangled a clear blue stone. The gem had the same mystical look as her eyes.

“Try it on,” I told her. “There’s a mirror inside the store.”

She quickly put it down. “I can’t buy it.”

“So? Doesn’t mean you can’t try it on.”

She looked at me uncertainly, then smiled, picked up the pendant, and went inside.