Nancy Atherton: Aunt Dimity's Good Deed

Peter, Derek’s seventeen-year-old son, wasn’t at home, either. He wasn’t even in the country. Peter was studying medicine at Oxford and spending the summer in a rain forest in Brazil, battling Amazonian rapids and jungle fevers while searching for the cure for cancer. To someone like me, who’d spent every summer of her adolescence shelving books at the local library, Peter’s adventures seemed just a tad exotic. A letter from him had arrived the day before, postmarked Manacapuru, and bearing his ritual apology for not being on hand for the harvest.

My offer of help had been hastily, though politely, declined, Emma having learned through painful experience of my inability to tell a ripe radish from a rotten rutabaga; and twelve-year-old Nell, Emma’s golden-haired step-daughter, had strolled over to the cottage, with Emma’s blessing, to continue her ongoing chess game with Willis, Sr., who was, as far as I knew, where I’d left him: in the study, comfortably ensconced in one of the pair of tall leather chairs that sat before the hearth, with a cup of tea at his elbow and a first edition of F. W. Beechey’s A Voyage of Discovery Towards the North Pole in his hand. He’d been sitting, in fact, precisely where Bill should have been.

The thought filled me with gloom, and I heaved a woeful sigh as I watched Emma pluck radishes from the ground and toss them deftly into the wheelbarrow at my side.

“That’s the third time you’ve done that,” Emma noted. She tucked up a long strand of hair that had escaped from her straw sunhat, and adjusted her wire-rim glasses. “That’s the third time you’ve blown a great tragic sigh all over my radishes. They’re beginning to droop, poor things.”

“Sorry.” I thrust my hands into the pockets of my jeans and paced carefully to the eggplants and back before taking a seat on the lip of the wheelbarrow—between the handles this time, so it wouldn’t tip over again—and staring crossly at the oak grove that separated the Harrises’ property from my own. I wasn’t feeling very generous. I’d spent the last hour pouring my heart out to Emma, and her only advice had been to fly straight back to Boston and smack Bill in the kisser.

“I’ll bet you’ve never smacked Derek in the kisser,” I grumbled.

“That doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to,” Emma responded airily. “I have it on good authority that a smack in the kisser is the only reliable way to get a man’s attention. I mean, really, Lori, a second honeymoon? You’ve only just gotten back from your first. Bill probably thought you were being frivolous.”

“I wasn’t being frivolous,” I retorted. “I wanted this trip to be special. I wanted to get Bill away from the office so he could relax a little and—”

“You’re the one who needs to relax.” Emma climbed slowly to her feet and brushed dirt from the padded knees of her gardening trousers. As she peeled off her work gloves and tucked them into the pocket of her violet-patterned gardening smock, she came a step closer, eyeing me shrewdly. “Been to see Dr. Hawkings already?”

I felt my face turn crimson, and dropped my gaze. “You said you wouldn’t mention that again.”

Emma put a hand on my shoulder. “Calm down, Lori. Pressure never helps.”

Dr. Hawkings had said the same thing in London, and so had my gynecologist back in Boston. Even Emma had said it once before, when I’d foolishly confided in her. Relax, they all told me. Let Nature take its course. Everything will be fine. But I had my doubts.

“What if I’m like my mother?” I said, still avoiding Emma’s knowing gaze. “She took ten years to have me.”

Emma shrugged. “Then you’ll have ten more years of peace and quiet. Is that so bad?”

I smiled wanly. Medical experts on both sides of the Atlantic swore that nothing was wrong with me or Bill, but how could I believe them? I’d been to see Dr. Hawkings almost as soon as I’d arrived in London, given him permission to shout the news from the rooftops if the test results were positive, but I knew they wouldn’t be. I didn’t need Honoria or Charlotte to remind me that Willis, Sr., still had no grandchild.

“You don’t seem to get the picture,” I said stubbornly. “Bill’s working all the time, and when he’s not, he’s so tired he can hardly hold his head up, let alone—”

Emma suppressed a snort of laughter as she gave my shoulder a shake. “You’ve got to get your mind off of it,” she said firmly. “Why don’t you give Stan Finderman a call? Better still, why don’t you go into the village and have a heart-to-heart with Mrs. Famham? She was forty-three years old, you know, before she had—”

“Stop!” I said, wincing. “If you dare mention Mrs. Famham and her miraculous triplets again, I’ll pelt your house with radishes.”

“I was only trying—”

“Thanks,” I said shortly, “but I fail to see how the idea of waiting until I’m forty-three years old to start a family is supposed to cheer me up!”

At that moment the phone in the wheelbarrow rang and, glad of the interruption, I dug through the radishes to find it. It was a durable cellular model, a Christmas gift from Derek inspired by Bill’s comment that Derek would have less trouble getting hold of his wife if he installed a phone booth in the garden.

A phone booth would have been more practical, since Emma, a former computer engineer, had a somewhat cavalier attitude toward high-tech toys. The cellular phone had been hoed, raked, fertilized, and very nearly composted, so finding it buried at the bottom of a barrow ful of radishes was par for the course. I pulled the carrying case from a tangle of greens and passed it to Emma, then strolled over to the cucumber frames, out of earshot, where I waited until she’d finished her conversation.

“That was Nell,” she called, dropping the phone back into the wheelbarrow. “She says William’s not at the cottage.”

“He was there when I left,” I said, picking my way back to her.

“Yes, but Nell says he’s not there now. In fact ...” Emma bent to pull a tarp over the barrow, looking thoughtful. “When was the last time you heard from Dimity?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, coming to an abrupt halt. “Aunt Dimity’s not at the cottage anymore.”

Emma straightened. “Yes, but Nell says that William’s. disappeared. And she seems to think Aunt Dimity’s gone with him.”

My stomach turned a somersault and the tilled earth seemed to shift beneath my feet. “Aunt Dimity?” I said faintly. “How—?”

“I have no idea,” Emma replied. “That’s why we’re driving over to the cottage right now. Let’s go.” She pulled off her sunhat and tossed it onto the tarp, letting her dishwater-blond hair tumble to her waist as she hurried toward the central courtyard of the manor house, where her car was parked.

I blinked stupidly at the barrow for a moment, then ran to catch up with her. “If Nell’s pulling my leg ...” I began, but I left the sentence hanging. If Nell Harris was pulling my leg, I’d have to grin and bear it. Nell wasn’t the sort of child one scolded.

Even so, I told myself as I climbed into Emma’s car, it had to be some sort of joke. My father-in-law was a kind and courtly gentleman. He was also as predictable as the sunrise. He wouldn’t dream of doing something as inconsiderate as “disappearing.” He simply wasn’t what you’d call a spontaneous kind of guy.

I said as much to Emma while we cruised down her long, azalea-bordered drive. “William never even strolls into Finch without letting me know,” I reminded her. “And as for Aunt Dimity going with him—impossible.”

“Why?” asked Emma.

“Because she’s dead!” I cried, exasperated.