The Unforgettable Guinevere St. Clair Page 18

  “Why did you take it?” Nana demanded.

  “I thought it might provide insight into the investigation. I was wrong.”

  “Investigation?” Officer Jake asked.

  “Wilbur Truesdale?” I reminded him.

  Officer Jake blinked and tapped his foot on the ground. “I appreciate your interest, but you need to stop this meddling.”

  I opened my mouth, offended. Meddling!

  To add further insult, I was then driven down to Gaysie Cutter’s like a common criminal. I would have rather spent a hundred more Christmases in a smelly care center with a loud television blaring, bad Chinese food, and old people pinching my cheeks than have to face Gaysie!

  “There you are!” Gaysie said like she had been waiting all morning for me.

  I stood trembling, my eyes downcast, planning what my tombstone would say, wishing I had said my final good-bye to Willowdale.

  “Gaysie,” Nana said. “I’m just so mortified. . . .”

  Gaysie held up her hand. “It is I who is mortified! Interrupting your Christmas morning this way. Oh, Nancy, I apologize for not asking your permission. Leaving a knife out for a mere child to take, how clearly irresponsible and neglectful.” She smacked both of her cheeks. “I promise you this—it will never happen again!”

  “Well . . .” Nana began to look uncertain.

  “I got carried away. The knife was her father’s. How could she resist it? He gave it to me many years ago as a sign of friendship. You will forgive me, won’t you?”

  “Of course, but . . .”

  “Guinevere, make sure to check inside the piano bench. I left something else for you.”

  I perked up.

  “Now, please go enjoy the day—it’s Christmas!”

  • • •

  Back at Nana’s I looked inside the piano bench, underneath all the music, and found an envelope containing all the notes that had been in the suitcase, notes to and from Gaysie, Jed, and Vienna. Silly, inconsequential notes I knew I would treasure my whole life. On the envelope Gaysie had written:

  To Guinevere St. Clair. This is what I know of friendship: Hold on to the people you love. Know what they feel like, smell like, and act like, so that when they’re not there to hold on to, you remember. G.C.

  I tucked it under my mattress and tried to forget Gaysie Cutter had done something nice for me.

  The doorbell rang a second time that morning.

  “My favorite little girls!” my auntie Macy said, opening her arms. Coming in behind her was her husband, Uncle Bill, and their three boys, Peter, Tommy, and Patrick. Bitty and I quickly found them delightful as their dirt, farts, and ABC belching made Bitty and me the saintly grandchildren. Aunt Joanna was the next to arrive with her husband and new baby, followed by Vienna’s other sisters, Margaret and Alana. Nana’s face began to transform into pure joy.

  At dinner, Vienna sat next to my father, looking bewildered by the commotion and company. Bitty sat next to me, while Aunt Joanna sat across the table and discreetly nursed her baby under a blanket.

  “I would like to propose a toast,” my father said, raising a glass of homemade apple cider.

  “Joanna,” Vienna interrupted. “What are you doing to that baby?”

  “Love, this is my baby.”

  Vienna wrinkled her forehead and opened her mouth, but my father continued.

  “We’ve had some big changes in our family,” he said. “And I want to say thank you to Nancy, who has opened her home to us, who is helping me raise my girls, and does it all with grace and love. Here’s to our wonderful Nana.” Nana, her eyes happy and shiny, waved away the compliment.

  “Who are your girls?” Vienna asked curiously.

  “Guinevere and Elizabeth,” I reminded her.

  “And Gus,” she said.

  “That was the cat.”

  “Where is Gus?”

  Uncle Bill abruptly picked up the cider with a “Hear! Hear!” as rolls were passed and buttered, and heaps of stuffing, turkey, and squash consumed.

  Joanna leaned over and asked Bitty and me, “Have you made new friends?”

  Bitty nodded shyly.

  “Micah and Jimmy,” I said, my mouth full.

  “Micah is Gaysie’s boy?” Macy asked. I choked on a piece of turkey, my heart thumping at the mere mention of her name. Nana pounded on my back.

  “Where’s Daddy?” Vienna asked, looking around the table. She sat back and folded her arms like a two-year-old.

  “Eat up!” Nana said. “Would you like a roll? I know you love my rolls.”

  “I want my dad!”

  My father opened his mouth.

  “He’s not here,” Macy said.

  “When is he coming home?” Vienna demanded.

  I looked painfully at my father, willing him to lie, just this once. He’s at the store was so much easier than He’s dead on Christmas Day.

  “He’s coming,” Joanna said, winking at Vienna. “You know Daddy’s always late!” Contented, Vienna dove into her mashed potatoes.

  “How is, uh, the place where you live, Vienna?” Joanna asked, trying to disengage her baby from nursing and onto her shoulder to burp.

  Vienna stared. “I just totally saw your you-know-what!”

  The boys lost it. They fell off their chairs, their minimal table manners completely dissolving. I covered my mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Bill rapped Peter’s head and grabbed Tommy’s collar, his face red, trying to stifle his laughter.

  “The care center,” my father said, “is wonderful! We’re adjusting, aren’t we?”

  “Whose baby is that?” Vienna demanded.

  “It’s my baby.” Joanna turned to my father. “Will it ever be possible for her to live here? With her family?”

  “You had a baby?” Vienna’s mouth dropped open in shock. “I’m so telling!”

  My father patted Vienna’s hand and smiled.

  “No, it’s really not possible,” I answered for him.

  My father and I locked eyes. I had told the truth. He knew it was the truth. But it hurt him for me to speak it.

  Nana sat very still and didn’t take another bite. I stopped laughing and glared at Joanna; if she knew her mother at all, it was the meanest question she could have asked.

  “Disgusting,” Vienna suddenly yelled, spitting out Nana’s mustard pickles. “I hate these.”

  There was an awkward silence until Nana, surprisingly, laughed. “You’ve always hated my mustard pickles.”

  • • •

  Late that evening I pushed Vienna’s wheelchair back to the care center. It was cold and felt like snow was coming, sharp and expectant in my nose hair. Vienna’s head bobbed in fatigue.

  “Did you have fun?” I asked my father.

  “Certainly a lively dinner conversation, Guinevere.” He patted my hand.

  “Guinevere?” Vienna said, lifting her head. “I love Guinevere.”

  Guinevere. Of course she was speaking of King Arthur’s Guinevere. Even so, I felt my spirits lift at the thought of her naming me after someone she loved.

  My father reached down to hold Vienna’s hand while he walked.

  I wheeled Vienna past the handicap space in the parking lot and leaned down.

  “Want to walk the rest of the way?”

  She looked up. “Who’s handicapped?”

  “You are, Vienna. You had a brain injury, remember?”

  Her eyes drooped, and I pushed her up the sidewalk in the chair instead. While my father chatted with a night nurse, I leaned down. “Vienna,” I whispered, “did you really always want a girl named Guinevere?”

  She blinked several times, like she was thinking. I helped her onto her bed, tucking the covers under her chin, and found Love-a-Lot.

  “Vienna,” I whispered to ask her again. But her eyes closed. She was gone.

  • • •

  While Uncle Bill got the boys to sleep, and Nana was delivering pie to the neighbors, I lay at the end of my bed, eavesdr
opping once more with my superior hearing skills.

  I heard my father settle comfortably into his favorite chair, closest to my room.

  “Tell me how you’re doing, Jed,” Macy said.

  “Quite well, thank you.”

  “We’re family, Jed,” Macy said. “Tell me the truth.”

  “I’m serious. I’m grateful. Goodness knows, the girls can use a mother figure in their life. In New York, Gwyn was practically raising Bitty. Now she has something else to fixate on.” He laughed dryly and lowered his voice, but I heard the word “disappearance.”

  I slipped off the bed and sat by the door.

  “Gwyn is obsessed with the whole thing.”

  “Of course she is, Jed,” Macy said. “She’s the perfect combination of her parents—an inquisitive little spunk who always needs to be solving a puzzle.”

  My father laughed. “Vienna did all right today, don’t you think?”

  “Depends on your definition of ‘all right.’ ”

  I heard the chair creak as he stood. “You know, I’m reading this fascinating book. It’s groundbreaking, amazing stuff! The notion that the brain can’t be fixed is a thing of the past.”

  “Jed.” Macy’s voice was gentle. “This isn’t a science experiment. This is your life.”

  “Want a leftover turkey sandwich, a little cranberry sauce spread on the bread? That’s really my favorite part of a holiday.” I heard the fridge open. My mouth watered.

  “There would be no shame,” Macy said quietly. “Vienna . . .” I could almost see her swallow guilt as if folding something quickly and tightly in her mind. “I love my sister. I still grieve for her. But there was just too much damage. I’m so glad you’ve moved here, closer to Mom, and I’m sure it’s wonderful for the girls, but, Jed, she’s never going to be the Vienna she was before.”

  “We’ve had this conversation before, Macy. We have agreed to disagree. Now, sandwich or no? You’re really passing up a good thing here.”

  “That conversation was years ago.”

  “We went through the scenarios. I made the choice. I’m not trapped.”

  “Jed, all this stubbornness, this constant waiting, is so hard—think of the girls.”

  “Don’t you think I think of my girls!” My father’s voice rose sharply. “Every waking moment—every thought and decision is with them in my mind. I want my girls to know their mother.” His voice suddenly broke.

  “Jed, there is nothing holding you back from moving on except for your sense of obligation to a woman who doesn’t even know . . .”

  “Vienna would know,” my father interrupted. “I could never leave her, because she would know, Macy. That’s why.”

  He loved her, of course he did. Even as it hurt him and cost him every minute of his entire life. And he loved me and Bitty. I knew in my heart that this love was the sole reason, the overriding, against-all-odds rationale for everything he did.

  He was also right. Vienna would know. Jed St. Clair was a boy she would never forget.

  I heard the front door open. Nana. I leaped silently onto my bed like a deft cheetah.

  “You fixed yourself a sandwich!” she cried. “I could have done that for you, Jed.”

  “I’m particularly talented at making a leftover sandwich.”

  “Would you like some pie with that? A glass of milk? My goodness,” Nana fussed. “Macy? What can I get for you?”

  I crawled under my covers, silent and invisible, tucked safely next to a snoring Bitty, but it was hours before I was finally asleep.

  • • •

  I awoke before dawn, reaching under the mattress for the envelope of notes. I read them all by the light of my headlamp. There was one note I read over and over again.

  It was from Vienna to Gaysie. She wrote that she was so sorry. The sledding trip, she said, had been her idea and she was so, so sorry.

  I looked out the window. The wind had picked up, blowing cold, dry air through the trees, pulling leaves from branches. The sledding dare had been Vienna’s idea. And she remembered. This was why, even now, she kept saying she was sorry. She hadn’t been misremembering or confused. The revelation made me unsure of what to feel or do next except to open another note.

  It was a flattened paper fortune teller made from red origami paper. I reconstructed it the best I could. The names Guinevere, Elizabeth, and Gus were written as fortunes. What had Vienna been doing when she wrote our names? Guinevere and Elizabeth were queens and maybe they were like Gus—pets—or . . . had she actually written down what she wanted to name her future children?

  I put the notes back in the envelope and tucked them under my mattress as any good supersleuth would do, and lay down and cried myself back to sleep.

  CHAPTER 27

  I SAT AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE, harboring a great disappointment: Christmas had come and gone, and Santa had let me down; the fingerprint analysis had not come.

  “Do you think we should consider having Vienna live here with us?” Nana had inevitably asked my father before leaving with Bitty to deliver a butter-pecan tart to the care center. Joanna’s question at dinner had lodged its way into the overused guilt center in her brain.

  My father, having already had the experience of living with my mother both before and after The Vienna Episode, wearily opened a brain journal. “Pass the sugar, please.”

  “Nana doesn’t keep sugar on the table,” I said. “But Vienna would sure change that!” I grinned at him.

  He looked sideways at me, slowly chewing his sugarless cereal. “Hmmf.”

  “Daddy? Why did you give Gaysie a pocketknife?”

  He put down his paper.

  “Because I thought Gaysie might like it. She did, too, used it all the time.”

  “When did you give it to her?” I held my breath. And how exactly had Gaysie used it all the time?

  “I gave it to her when she was in the hospital, after the accident. A very long time ago.”

  “Oh.”

  “You look disappointed. Were you expecting a different answer?”

  Actually, I was relieved. His answer seemed to lessen the likelihood of my father and Gaysie in cahoots over Wilbur’s so-called disappearance. At least, when it came to the murder weapon.

  But I had another question.

  “She gave me an envelope full of notes from Vienna and Gaysie and you. I found a paper fortune teller with three names on it: Guinevere, Elizabeth, and Gus.”

  My father laughed. “Gus was her cat.”

  “I know.” My nose wrinkled. “Did I used to be a pet, too?”

  “Oh no. She always used to talk about the names of her children, but she was particularly stuck on her two favorite queens—Guinevere and Elizabeth.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. I really was named after a queen, not a pet gerbil!

  Since he was talking, I pressed my luck.

  “Daddy? One more thing. Won’t you please tell me about the sledding accident, and I promise I’ll never ask again!”

  He exhaled loudly. “What would you like to know?”

  “Well, I think I know it was Vienna’s idea to go sledding down that hill.”

  He took his glasses off and put them on the table. Finally, he nodded.

  I clutched at my heart, feeling for my mother in a way I hadn’t in a long time. She must have felt so guilty.

  “But that doesn’t make it Vienna’s fault,” my father said. “We all wanted to do it; she was just our leader. No one could have known what would happen. It was a very unforeseen and unintended consequence.”

  “And there were four of you on a sled?”

  “Yes.”

  “Once you said Gaysie saved you,” I said slowly.

  “Gaysie must have seen something—she pushed Vienna and me off the sled right before hitting the ice. I don’t know why or how, but she did. Heroic, I’d say, but no one saw it that way in the end, because someone died.”

  “Why didn’t she save Myron, too?”

  �
��Oh, Guinevere.” He put his hands to his face. “If you could have only seen her face when she found out he was gone. . . . It’s not something any child should feel responsible for. She couldn’t reach him. It was a terrible, terrible time.”

  “So she didn’t kill him on purpose?”

  “Of course not! We were all responsible and yet we were kids. It was an accident. Accidents happen. I have tried since that point, to make something good come of it. I have tried very hard to be a good friend to Gaysie. She, in turn, has been one back. Someday,” he said, “she will tell you the whole story.”

  “What whole story?”

  “You’ve surely heard the rumors of her death. When she was pulled from the water along with Myron, she wasn’t breathing. But here she is, living and breathing, with an experience that changed her life.”

  “Like dying and seeing ghosts?”

  “Like I said. Someday she’ll have to tell you the whole story.”

  “Daddy!”

  He put his glasses back on and went back to reading the paper. “It’s her story, not mine.”

  “Can I go to Micah’s and ask right now?”

  “No. His grandmother is visiting.”

  “I want to meet her.”

  My father grinned like Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire cat. “I’m sure you will. She’s a real treat.”

  “What’s so great about her?”

  “ ‘Great’ would not be my first choice of words. Gaysie is remarkable in many ways, but most of all because she’s refused to become her mother.”

  “Well, then, her mother must be real bad!”

  “I didn’t say Gaysie never made mistakes.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  My father put his paper down again. “Who brings your mother flowers every week?” he challenged.

  “Gaysie.”

  “Who takes care of your friend Jimmy? Who feeds, teaches, and keeps him safe?”

  “Gaysie.”

  “Do you think there was anyone else looking out for Ms. Myrtle?”

  I went silent.

  “She has a gift, of finding the marginalized, the lost and broken . . . She’s always stood up for the underdog. That’s what you and Gaysie have in common.”

  Horror-struck, I made a face.