The Unforgettable Guinevere St. Clair Page 16

  I sat on the edge of the tub, alert, listening.

  “I’m sorry,” Vienna said.

  “You don’t need to be sorry, Vienna. Accidents happen.”

  “It’s my fault,” Vienna whispered.

  “No, it’s not,” Gaysie said firmly. “We had good times, didn’t we? Even if it didn’t work out so well in the end.”

  I bit my nail. Poor Vienna. She was confused, sad about the accident that claimed the life of her friend, taking the blame.

  “Look in the toilet!” Gaysie yelled to me. “Wonderful way to get rid of something.”

  “You are so weird,” I whispered, wondering if Gaysie had done just that when it came to Wilbur. Was she flaunting her guilt in front of me? But I looked down at the closed toilet lid anyway, slowly opened it, and peered in. Nothing.

  “Look down that deep, dark hole,” Gaysie yelled.

  “Deep, dark hole,” Vienna echoed.

  Jimmy and Micah came to the bathroom door. I scrutinized the hole, getting closer with my face, trying not to breathe.

  Something.

  There was something way down deep. I held my breath then plunged my hand down into the small hole and grasped it. I brought my hand up. I was holding Vienna’s diamond ring, dripping with toilet water.

  “Sick,” Jimmy said.

  “Awesome,” Micah breathed.

  “How . . . ?” I asked.

  “She always knows,” Jimmy said, tapping the side of his head. “She just knows.”

  “Well, hello, birthday girl,” I heard my father call.

  Relief flooded hot through every vein in my body.

  “Jed!” Vienna screamed. “Jed! Jed! Jed!”

  “In the nick of time,” I said, quickly washing the ring and my hands with lots of hot water and soap.

  We went out into the room to see my father kissing Vienna on her forehead, her face aglow. Gaysie continued to brush Vienna’s blond, shiny curls.

  I walked to Vienna’s bed and gave her Love-a-Lot.

  I hesitated, but then put the wet ring in my father’s hand instead of on her finger.

  “Gaysie found it,” I said, conflicted on whether or not to feel slightly more grateful.

  “I most certainly did not!” Gaysie boomed.

  “She did. She told me where to look.”

  I turned reluctantly to face Gaysie, who was looking at me, chin raised.

  “Thank you,” I said stiffly.

  “Gaysie Cutter saves the day,” my father said. “Not the first time, and probably not the last.”

  He looked down at the wet ring in his hand, shoulders drooping ever so slightly before slipping the ring into his pocket.

  After that day he never put it on her hand again.

  I jumped up and took my cape off the fan. Vienna giggled.

  Miracles happen every day. And I’ll tell you what, not going crazy was one of them.

  • • •

  We walked to Petey’s Diner for Vienna’s birthday lunch because it was next door to the care center and because it was her new (and old) favorite place in the world. Really, the whole world. It had food and it had Jed.

  Petey was a large man who had a shiny, bald head and a loud laugh, and Nana called him “a meathead,” but not to his face. He was always wiping his greasy paws on the dingy white-and-red-checkered apron around his big belly, which looked like it never made it to the washing machine. You can imagine what Nana thought of that.

  Annabelle came in after Bitty, Jimmy, Micah, and I were sitting down on the barstools. Jimmy practically drooled.

  “You’re ridiculous,” I said.

  “Lucky you,” Jimmy said. “That could be your new stepmother.”

  “She’ll never be my stepmother and don’t ever say that again, Jimmy Quintel!”

  “I—”

  “You must be real stupid if you don’t know I already have a mother.”

  “I didn’t mean . . .”

  I settled back into my chair, my hands shaking.

  “You should feel lucky,” he said, shoving a french fry he found on the counter into his mouth. “You have a nice mom. And you have Annabelle, too.”

  “Well, you have a mom . . . don’t you?”

  He looked at me and considered.

  “If she had a choice between me and anything else, she’d choose anything else.”

  It was the biggest admission he’d ever made.

  “Ah, Jimmy.”

  “Ain’t no thing,” he shrugged. Of course I didn’t believe him. It was a thing. I had learned a lot because of my mother—some good, some bad. But perhaps the thing I had learned to do best of all was hide how I really felt about the person who was supposed to love me most.

  Petey set our milkshakes down with a flourish, rubbing his big belly with pride. “Atta girl,” he said when I finally smiled. “And look who’s coming through the doors—the birthday girl!” Vienna was hanging on to my father’s arm, slow and uncoordinated, but upright.

  Gaysie trailed behind, equally uncomfortable in public, lips pursed, chin up, hands held tightly together. That’s when I noticed the blue flyer on the wall by the door: HAVE YOU SEEN WILBUR TRUESDALE? it said in bold letters with a picture of Wilbur on the Blue Mistress. Gaysie barely glanced at it, like she didn’t care at all.

  “My wife is having a birthday,” my father announced, helping Vienna into a booth seat. She alternated between grabbing for my father’s hands and kissing his cheek. I saw Dottie and Lavinia in the back, old friends of Nana’s, give a wave and call, “Happy birthday.”

  “Ah, Ms. Guinevere, did I tell you how glad we are you came home to Iowa?” Petey asked me, calling my attention back to the counter.

  “You can tell me again,” I said.

  Petey laughed. “Funny, like your mom. You know, I knew her way back when. Prettiest girl in the whole town. Everyone said your dad was the luckiest guy in the world before . . .” His voice trailed off as he grasped for words.

  “Well, I’d say he’s still pretty lucky,” Gaysie said loudly, as the silence stretched uncomfortably.

  My father chimed in, “Well, I sure am!”

  Nana came hustling into the diner then with cake and apologies for being late. Dottie and Lavinia hurried over and kissed Nana on the cheek, nodding stiffly at Gaysie.

  Annabelle sat next to Vienna to help feed her, across from Gaysie, who dwarfed even my father.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Bitty whispered.

  I went into the stall with Bitty, and a few minutes later we heard a door open. I peeked through the crack to see Dottie and Lavinia. Dottie pulled out a lipstick, opened her mouth into an O, and began to apply a shiny pink.

  “Vienna’s birthday,” she said, patting her silver hair on both sides. “Still so sweet and pretty. My goodness.”

  “I’m surprised to see Gaysie out in public with them,” Lavinia said flatly. “It’s just an appalling reminder for the rest of us.”

  Dottie waved her hand. “A reminder of what?”

  “Dottie!”

  “I mean, I know what you’re talking about, but at some point we have to move on. They were all just kids, and you know how kids are.”

  “Well!” Lavinia said. “Jed has a true heart of gold. See the way he dotes on his wife and includes Gaysie, bless his heart. But I don’t know why he allows his children to play with hers.”

  “Gaysie’s harmless. Though I am surprised Nancy allows it.”

  “Exactly,” Lavinia said, blotting her lips together. Bitty put her hand on the flusher, and I shook my head. “Jed’s a saint,” Lavinia swooned. “Can you imagine living with a wife who doesn’t know who you are?”

  “Roy says Jed should have checked under the hood a little more with that one.”

  “Oh, Dottie!”

  It wasn’t his fault, I wanted to say. No one knew Vienna’s heart was a ticking time bomb. But I suddenly wondered, if given the choice again, would my father have made the same one?

  The bathro
om door creaked open.

  “Nancy Eyre!” Lavinia said, quickly. “What a wonderful idea to celebrate Vienna’s birthday here. I remember her sitting in a booth like it was yesterday!”

  “I’m looking for the girls. Gwyn? Bitty? Are you in there?” I unlocked the door and led Bitty to the sinks. I scrubbed especially well, rubbing my hands together.

  “Good girls,” Nana said, smiling and raising her eyebrows expectantly. “Did you say hello?”

  “Oh, hello,” I said, turning back to a speechless Dottie and Lavinia. “I hope you have a very good day.” I smiled so sweetly that Nana beamed and let us have an extra scoop of Moose Tracks ice cream with our cake.

  CHAPTER 24

  SOMETIMES I STILL WAKE UP and reality is like a sharp pinch on my arm,” my father said to Annabelle. My father was not the spill-your-guts type of person, but he sure liked talking to Annabelle. We were at the care center the next week, and Vienna was napping, her arms wrapped tightly around Love-a-Lot. She wore a soft red Christmas sweater that made her cheeks bright, even though the holiday was weeks away. I was reading my Peter and the Starcatchers book while eavesdropping.

  “Sometimes,” my father said, “I wonder if I’m going crazy. I actually pause and think—Am I dreaming, or is she always going to be this way?”

  The words on the page blurred. It was the first time I could ever remember hearing even a smidge of doubt in his voice. I carefully glanced at Bitty while she drew pictures using new smelly markers Annabelle had given to her. Outright bribery had worked brilliantly on my little sister. I stole a peek as Annabelle reached over Vienna’s sleeping body and patted my father’s hand.

  “You’re so good to her,” Annabelle said softly.

  My father exhaled, his whole body wilting.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t know her before. She was the small-town, sweet-tempered girl everyone adored—most of the time, anyway,” he laughed. “She was incredibly bright, curious, and loved learning. She was a lot like Gwyn that way.”

  I let my heart soften when he spoke about her this way, imagining her as I had the day I read her notes in the piano book.

  “She loved children and children adored her. She was never mean. Not ever . . . until after. We all wonder,” my father said, “how such ugly things can come out of such a beautiful head.”

  “It’s common,” Annabelle ventured, “with her type of brain injury.”

  “Yes,” he said. “There were bound to be impairments, but . . .” I was so absorbed in my eavesdropping my book fell slack in my lap.

  “She was such a wonderful mother, just adored her babies. She was, simply, the most amazing woman I ever knew.”

  “I just don’t know how you do it every single day,” Annabelle said.

  “A few months after it happened, I came home to Crow, to get some of Vienna’s old things so she could see and remember. Gaysie Cutter came to see me.”

  “Gaysie?” Annabelle asked. “That . . . woman that brings her flowers?” I forgot to be discreet and looked up. I had never heard this story.

  “I forget you’re new to town. Yes, Gaysie brings her flowers because Vienna always loved them, for as long as I can remember. Anyway, she told me to give it time,” he said. “She said that perhaps my idea of love would be something I had to unlearn and relearn.”

  “Unlearn and relearn,” Annabelle repeated. “And . . . have you?”

  “Well, I’m a realist and an optimist at the same time. A man of science, a man of faith. I know I must adjust my vision and still be hopeful. My idea of the old Vienna might be a fool’s dream, but you see I have to try, don’t you?”

  “And if it doesn’t turn out the way you hope?”

  He drooped slightly. “I don’t know what it feels like not to be fighting for her. And yet for all the years of studying and learning and pushing, the brain is still such an incredible mystery to me. The heart, it seems, is far easier to understand.”

  Annabelle looked at my father like Willowdale looked at me when I came toward her with an apple.

  My father gently leaned over to Vienna. He gave his wife a kiss.

  “It’s been a long time,” Annabelle said.

  “It has,” he answered. “It has.”

  CHAPTER 25

  IN EARLY DECEMBER, JUST AS Crow was moving into high gear for Christmas, there was a candlelight vigil held for Wilbur Truesdale. Bundled in down coats, hats, and gloves, we stood in front of the gazebo on the town green, right in front of a giant lifelike statue of Santa Claus and a drop box for children’s wish lists. As light snowflakes fell, Pastor Weare suggested that instead of gifts we ask for Wilbur’s safe return. Micah shut his eyes and wished so hard, his candle blew out.

  I liked the gazebo, decorated with twinkling white lights. Music played day and night, and the festive feeling of Christmas was so strong and comforting that Bitty and I had begun to visit almost every day after school.

  I didn’t write a Christmas letter and put it in the drop box for the Crow Service Club to read. I had my heart set on the one present no one could know anything about: the fingerprint results. Though I was sure Lolly had delivered my letter to Georgia Piehl, I had heard nothing back yet. The waiting continued to be excruciating.

  On Christmas Eve, Nana said she had something to tell me. I leaned forward expectantly, searching her hands for signs of a white envelope with Georgia Piehl’s return address.

  “Guinevere,” Nana said gently, “Ms. Myrtle expired last night. Bless her heart.”

  “Expired,” I repeated. Nana made Ms. Myrtle sound like a Diet Coke past its prime.

  “She passed away.”

  “Passed away?” I knew what that meant, of course, I just couldn’t believe it.

  Nana looked at me anxiously. “She died, honey.”

  Even more unbelievably, I felt my eyes fill.

  “Who found her?” I became all business, rubbing my eyes as if I were merely tired.

  Nana sighed. “Don’t worry about that.”

  “Probably Jimmy or Micah.”

  “Let’s not worry about that right now, okay?”

  “Was she sitting in her chair?”

  “Gwyn, I don’t know!”

  “I bet she was. I thought she had expired in her chair last time I was there, and I had to check her pulse!”

  Nana looked at me with her mastered horrified expression.

  I chewed on my cuticles, itching to go over to Ms. Myrtle’s and have a look around. Nana would never allow it . . . unless . . .

  “What about my music?”

  “We can find you a new teacher, honey.”

  “No, I mean the music I used at Ms. Myrtle’s was Vienna’s. And . . .” I let the statement sit there like a slow-roiling kettle of water.

  “Your mother’s music?” Nana asked, her voice higher. She wanted the music and she wanted it bad.

  I made a move for my coat.

  “No,” Nana said, her worry lines deep with thinking. “We can’t just take it.”

  “Nana, if we don’t, it will get thrown out.” Brilliant. She had me on my feet and buttoned up before I knew what hit me.

  “Heavens, how will it look for you to go in and just take piano music?” She twisted her fingers into my coat.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m good at this stuff.”

  She gave me a look. “Guinevere, sometimes you really do scare me.” And then she practically pushed me out the door.

  • • •

  Out of habit I knocked on the door before I turned the handle. The living room was as cold as the outdoors.

  I sniffed, wrinkled my nose at the old smell, and looked around, wondering if death stank. Ms. Myrtle’s chair sat alone in the corner, and I felt a wave of wistfulness for the tales of my parents, and even of Gaysie, sorry I hadn’t asked for more stories and information, sorry I would never get the chance. And even though she was a frightful woman, I suddenly missed that she wouldn’t be watching us grow up or sticking her head out the
door to tell me to “hush up!”

  How did it happen, exactly? How does one just expire? I imagined checking for rigor mortis, taking Ms. Myrtle’s pulse, and shaking my head sadly. There was nothing we could do. After bravely calling Officer Jake with a time of death, I would recount the details for my interview with the local paper.

  I walked to the piano bench and opened it up. It was empty. I frowned.

  Glancing down the hallway, I took a step. A bedroom door was ajar.

  I gently pushed it open. It was a child’s room, in colors of blue and green.

  On the floor was an empty prescription bottle, cat food spilled beside it. There was a twin bed, a small bedside table, and a lamp. On the bedside table was a familiar-looking book—my Huckleberry Finn edition. I grabbed it, pulled it to my chest. I must have left it here and she kept it. Why?

  There was a small creak of the floorboards. I paused to listen, my eyes searching frantically for a place to hide. I heard nothing, but suddenly . . . cold, icy fingers touched my neck as a zombielike voice said, “Guinevere.” I felt hot breath on my ear. I swirled, and, using my best uppercut, connected with skin and teeth.

  “Ow!” my assailant shouted, holding his face.

  “Jimmy!” I yelled.

  “You didn’t have to hit me!”

  “Ow,” I said, shaking out my hand.

  He licked his lips, and I saw a red and swelling upper lip, a tiny dribble of blood running down his chin.

  “Oh, Jimmy, I’m sorry. . . .”

  He roughly pushed my hand away. “It didn’t hurt!”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to get my piano music. Did you know Ms. Myrtle died last night?”

  He sat down on the bed, crossly feeling his facial bones. “Of course I know.”

  “How?” I asked, disappointed.

  “Because Gaysie came over and took care of it.”

  I gasped. “Took care of it! She buried her in the backyard?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Ms. Myrtle warned me—she said she knew things about Gaysie that could get her in trouble. . . .”