Gail Godwin - Flora

“But there’s nothing about her ,” I said to Father McFall.

“There’s a separate item in ‘Deaths and Funerals.’” Father McFall found the page for me, folded the paper in half, and handed it back. ALABAMA WOMAN FOUND DEAD. Flora Waring, of Birmingham, Alabama, presumably hit by a vehicle, found dead on upper Sunset Drive. Body at funeral home awaiting burial arrangements. Authorities say accident is still under investigation.

“But we know what happened!” I said. “Why isn’t it in here?”

“We think we know, Helen, but nobody saw it. Until your father is able to tell us what he remembers, authorities can’t speculate, at least not on the record. There are legal deterrents.”

“You saw my father this morning?”

“I did.”

“You said there were ‘some problems,’ but you didn’t say what.”

“Why don’t we wait till we see which ones go away before we make a list?”

“Take it a day at a time,” I said.

“Exactly, Helen.” He looked pleased, not seeming to realize I was only quoting back his own hedging answer when I had asked whether Brian was going to be a cripple.

FINN DROVE UPlater that morning in a strange car. I had been more or less watching out the window since Father McFall left.

“You’re in a car,” I said stupidly. He was wearing his dress-up clothes from the first time he came to dinner.

“I am,” he said, not appearing to note this infantile greeting. “Kindly lent by Mr. Crump, but it has to be returned to him within the hour. Ah, Mrs. Jones.” He stepped over to the sink, where she was washing up, and offered his hand. “Devlin Finn. I didn’t introduce myself very well last time.”

“Oh, Mr. Finn,” she said. “My hands are all wet.”

He waited while she dried them to her standards on her apron and then clasped them firmly between his, which I could see flustered her a little. “How is everyone doing up here?” he asked in a confidential voice, as though he and she were by themselves.

“It was a shock, Mr. Finn, but we’re managing. Is there anything I could get you? A glass of water?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Jones, but all I need is Helen here. I’ve come to pack up Flora’s belongings to take with me on the train to Birmingham. It leaves in a little over an hour and I’m going to need her help.”

It was the first time anyone had said her name.

I LED THEway upstairs, past Starling Peake without saying anything about whose room I hoped it would be, and on down the hall to the Willow Fanning room. There were important questions I was aching to ask, but something about Finn’s countenance held me back. If this had been in a fairy tale, a magician might had encased Finn in a lifelike mask and said, “You are safe behind this mask unless someone says something that can crack it. You need to guard against this happening or you’ll be destroyed.” I must have wanted Finn not to be destroyed more than I craved to have the answers to things only he could tell me because I held back, though it was very hard.

There was the old carpetbag in which she had carried the filled mason jars, Uncle Sam’s apple-cured ham, and her special flour (“I never go anywhere anymore without my self-rising flour…”), and there was the suitcase that, aside from underwear and some sanitary napkins discreetly concealed in hand-sewn wrappers, had contained the sack of cornmeal, tea bags, a cake in a tin box, and the wax paper parcels of Juliet Parker’s herbs.

Without the food, all the clothes that had arrived later in the box fitted easily into the suitcase. We did the closet first, and Finn showed me how to fold blouses in three parts, Army-style.

“You remember, Helen, that day on the walk, when we were telling our family histories, and I said I had a brother?”

“Yes.”

“And you asked me whether he was jealous when I got to go to America, and I cut you short.”

“You said, ‘That’s another story,’ and that it was enough about you.”

“What a memory you have! Well, now I want to tell you about Conan. When he was fourteen, Bill and Grace, my adoptive parents, invited him to come to Albany for a long visit. I was sixteen by then and had been with them for six years. Things weren’t good back in Ireland, my father was ill and unlikely to work again, and it was sort of assumed by all in an unsaid way that if Conan wanted to stay on with us in America he could. Well, he was over the moon with joy. Now I’ll get to the sad part quickly because there’s no use drawing it out. A week before he was to sail, he went into town to buy presents for us, and he was gunned down on the street.”

“You mean he was killed?”

“Shot right through the heart.”

“But why?”

“Because Ireland’s just that way now. It’s like your Civil War, only the two sides don’t wear uniforms and fight out in the open. They mistook him for another man’s red-haired son. All of us were heartbroken, but then as time went on I became sure I was the one responsible for his death.”

“How could you be?”

“Ah, because I had written letters praising everything, bragging about my good fortune, making him want my life.”

“But that doesn’t make you responsible—”

“Don’t rush me, darling. It doesn’t, but I felt that it did. Then the war started and I joined up and things got better until I lost my friend Barney, or until his mother came to see me and said she wished her son had been clever enough to get out when I had. After that, the two sorrows linked up—or, no, a better way to put it is that the weight of Barney’s death piled on top of Conan’s death made me feel so unworthy I didn’t want to live. Of course I didn’t understand the mechanics of all this going on inside me until the mind doctors explained it after my little failed attempt to extinguish myself. Now you’re wondering why I’m telling you this story, I can see it all over your face, Helen.”

“Why are you?”

“Because it may be useful to you if ever you start feeling that something bad that happened is all your fault. Fate is far more complicated than that, and thinking you’re in charge of it is egotistical and will only make you sick and waste your life. Are you hearing me?”

“Yes.”

“Now, where are the rest of her things?”

“There’s just what’s in those drawers.”

I had been dreading the drawers because I hadn’t decided what to do about the top one. I wanted to keep Nonie’s letters, but I also wanted Finn to respect me and I hadn’t figured a way to achieve both things. So I started with the bottom two drawers, leaving the top for last. Her stockings and lingerie and the hand-sewn wrappers in which she stored her sanitary pads. She hadn’t used up the second supply, which had come with her box of clothes. I was pleased with my tactfulness as I took charge of these very personal items, tucking them away in the suitcase with my own hands so he wouldn’t have to touch them and be embarrassed.

Finn glanced at his watch. It could no longer be postponed, the top drawer. But it was not as I had last seen it. On the left was Juliet Parker’s faithful stack of summer letters, but on the other side, where Nonie’s letters had been, was a package done up in gift paper I recognized from the stash of old wrappings from Nonie’s deep desk drawer. My first thought was that if Flora had gone snooping in our drawers, even in the interest of wrapping a present for me, then it sort of equaled out my intrusions into hers.

“These are letters from Juliet Parker.” I handed over the stack to Finn. “She wrote every single week.” I still couldn’t say Flora’s name aloud. “This other… I don’t know.” For me to say there used to be another pile of letters in here would be to admit I’d been snooping.