A Dark and Lonely Place (49 page)

“All clear!” Laura sang out. “It’s so good to be home!”

They drove up to the house and around behind it, where she parked among the trees. She rang the brass bell at the front door. They waited, then waited some more, until a tiny, gray-haired woman appeared. She wore a black dress, silver-rimmed spectacles, and a faded facsimile of Laura’s smile.

“Lawd, child, where’ve you been hiding?” she said, her hand over her heart, as though her great-granddaughter’s arrival had answered her fondest prayers. “You shore are a sight for these tired old eyes. Pretty as ever, let me have a good look at you, girl. Turn around now.”

Laura stretched out her arms and pirouetted for her.

John loved seeing them together, Laura and the small, frail woman. They say look at the mother, he thought, and you will see what your girl will look like in twenty years. Does that also apply to great-grandmothers? he wondered. See what your girl will look like in seventy-five years? He could live with that, if he could just live long enough.

Gram was shorter, shrunken from the physical stature she had once achieved, but behind skin like ancient parchment, a fire still burned. He could see what a beauty she must have been, a young woman to be reckoned with, formidable in her prime and a force even now, in the twilight of her life. What had she seen, experienced, and lost in a century on the planet? World wars, the great Depression, and the chaos since, in a life span that stretched back to the Harding administration. So much history, he thought.

He didn’t know the half of it.

The tiny, birdlike centenarian must have read his mind. She turned and cut her eyes at him from behind the spectacles. “Who is this handsome young man, Laura?”

“The love of my life, Gram. ’Member, you said I’d meet him one day?”

Laura took John’s hand and drew him closer to the old woman whose stare penetrated his soul.

“John, this is my great-grandma, Arlie Tillman Pickett.

“Gram, this is John Ashley.”

“Who?” Arlie’s voice rose shrilly. “Who?” Her mouth gaped open.

“John Ashley, ma’am.” He spoke softly, but his voice carried like an echo to every corner of the little house.

She fell back, stunned. “John Ashley?” she whispered. “
That
John Ashley?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and wondered what she thought of him, dragging Laura into jeopardy and worse all over the state.

Arlie reacted as though slapped, her hands flew to her throat. Laura caught her, or she might have fallen.

“Gram, let’s sit down. I’ll help you.” Laura led her to a comfortable chair, as the old woman mouthed his name and craned her neck to stare at John.

“You might have seen something in the newspaper,” John said earnestly, “or on TV.” He stepped closer. “You know how it is. If you don’t read the newspapers, you are uninformed; if you do, you are misinformed,” he said, hoping to comfort her.

She nodded vigorously. “I know. I know. Saw all those terrible newspaper stories. Saved ’em all.” Her eyes skipped around the room like those of a disoriented stranger. “John Ashley,” she murmured again. “They said you were killed years ago.” She frowned, rocked back and forth, and scrutinized his profile with a puzzled expression as he looked to Laura for help.

None there. She’d run into the kitchen to take the boiling water off the burner. “I’ll fix the tea,” she called. “Will you two be all right, John?”

“Sure, darlin’,” he said, hoping Gram wasn’t having a stroke.

Her eyes had grown sly. “Where did you say your people are from?”

“Florida natives,” he said. “From up here, somewhere around the Caloosahatchee River, then southeast Florida, Palm Beach, and now Miami.”

She smiled and nodded, as though he’d given the correct answer. “You come from a big family?”

“Yes, ma’am. Nine of us, five boys, four girls.”

She nodded again, eyes wet. “My mama was so in love with you,” she murmured. “She gave me and my little brother up to go off with you.”

Laura caught that last line as she emerged from the kitchen carrying a steaming teapot, china cups, cream, and sugar on a tray. “Gram? I think you’ve mixed John up with someone else.”

“No, darlin’. My mama loved this man so. He built a fishing camp way out in the ’Glades. She used to go to meet him there.”

John made a startled sound and exchanged a look with Laura. “My family’s had a fishing camp deep in the ’Glades forever,” he said. “Laura and I were just there.”

“That’s where my mother’s heart broke.” Arlie sighed. “Her name was Laura too. Laura here was named for her, but never knew ’er. Neither did I. But it was a bad and ugly time in . . .” Her voice trailed off and she looked up like a child. “Laura, honey? Can you hand me that wrap over there? I’m so cold.”

Laura brought the black cardigan, helped her put it on despite the oppressive heat, then held her withered hand. “Gram, I do think you have John confused with someone else.”

“No!” Arlie said sharply. “I’d know him anywhere, so good-looking. When I last saw ’im I was just a little girl. But later their pictures were everywhere. I’ll show you. Come on.” Her words were a challenge. “You can help me.”

“Rest for a while, sip your tea,” Laura said gently. “We shouldn’t have burst in on you the way we did. Shoulda called hours and hours ahead. I think the surprise just confused you for a minute there.”

“The tea’s too hot, needs to cool, anyhow,” Arlie said peevishly. “I want to show you.” She struggled to her feet.

“Now I know who you take after,” John said, as Laura tried and failed to keep Arlie in her chair.

She and Laura proceeded slowly down the hall until Gram turned. “Come along, John. You’ll want to see this too.”

He followed, as Gram’s cane tapped on the original hardwood floor constructed of Dade County pine. She and Laura made their way into her sewing room but lost John. Laura found him in front of a framed, faded black-and-white sketch of a young girl on the riverbank, her skirt whipping in the wind as a storm threatened. The paper had begun to yellow around the edge.

“Is that you?” John said, unable to tear his eyes away. He loved how the artist had caught Laura’s posture, attitude, and spirit in just a few spare lines.

“No,” she said, “I’m told that was the original Laura, the mother Arlie didn’t really know. The legend is that it was sketched by Winslow Homer, the famous artist. He did visit this part of Florida several times, so it may be true. Gram insists that she’s seen her mother in several of
his major paintings, some with the boy she ran off with, abandoning her, her baby brother, and their father.”

“How did Gram come by it?”

Laura frowned. “I’m not sure. We’ve had it as long as I remember. I must have heard at some point but don’t recall. Come on, let’s ask her.”

Arlie stood impatiently over an old trunk she had unlocked. She lifted the lid. “In here, Laura, they’re at the bottom.”

Inside were keepsakes, photos, and family scrapbooks. At the very bottom she found two thick black scrapbooks and a white one. “Ah, there they are.” Arlie nodded. “I knew this was where I hid ’em. Haven’t looked at ’em in years. Was a time I’d take ’em out to read, but the pain was too hard to take, so I put ’em away. But I could never throw ’em out or destroy ’em. Because this,” she said proudly, “is Florida history, part of our family’s past.”

“I’ve never seen them before, Gram.” Laura frowned as she dusted one off with her sleeve. “Why didn’t I?”

“Most people wanted ’em gone,” Arlie said. “They want to rewrite history, forget these people ever lived. But why? They were pioneers, lived hard lives, loved with a passion, and died hard, and I, for one, who was a motherless child as a result, don’t ever want to forget them. They say those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” She sat down hard in a wicker chair, as though her knees had given out. Her voice dropped until they strained to hear. “I’d never want to see such sad times repeat,” she whispered. “Too much heartbreak, too much killing.

“So many were ashamed to be blood kin and changed their names. Not me. I was proud of ’em.”

Laura carried the scrapbooks into the living room, set them on the coffee table, made Gram comfortable, then opened the first big, black book. “The Ashley Family” was handwritten in black ink and beautiful script across the top of the first page.

“How is it that you have Ashley family scrapbooks?” Laura asked. “How’d you come by them?”

“You see,” Gram said, “I grew up without a mother but never lost my connection to her. Neither did my father. When I was young, whenever we heard stories about John Ashley and my mother . . .” She frowned at John for a moment, then went on, “My father wouldn’t speak
for days. But I’d hear him cry in the night. When he finally realized she was never coming back, he divorced my mother. He remarried, a nice-enough woman, I guess. But we kids never connected. That woman was colorless, as gray and as quiet as a mouse. Meant well, I guess. But she wasn’t Laura, and we all wanted Laura. My daddy did, and so did I. Even my baby brother, God rest his soul, who surely could not remember her except as a picture under a newspaper headline. But he always dreamed about our mama. Sure wasn’t fair to the mouse, who wiped our noses, nursed us through the flu, washed our clothes, and cooked our meals.” She shook her head.

“But how did you get the Ashley family scrapbooks?”

“I’m getting to that,” she said impatiently. “From Leugenia, John Ashley’s mother. That good woman kept up those books for years, in chronological order as the articles or pictures appeared. Good, bad, or disaster, she clipped and kept ’em all. God bless ’er, she valued history like I do. Over the years, after Laura and John were both gone, I went to see her, to ask questions about my mother. I was curious, and Leugenia was far closer to her than me or my father. He would never discuss her at all ’cept to say she loved us, which made no sense to me. If she loved us, where the hell was she? First time I knocked on Leugenia’s door, her snotty daughter-in-law ran me off. But the next time, Leugenia was alone. As sweet as peach pie to me, but bitter about all that had happened.

“Another of her children, John’s sister Daisy, died early too.” Arlie shook her head. “The girl drank poison. Leugenia took out the scrap-books and the family Bible with all the handwritten records, and we spent a long afternoon going through ’em together. She’d written lots of notes in the margins. I was fascinated. She saw they meant as much to me as they did to her. We both cried when I left, but I was so happy to finally know my mother better. She explained why Laura did a lot of the things she did and said she had not given us up lightly but had done it to prevent bloodshed.

“Leugenia outlived most all her family, lived into the nineteen forties, I think. But long before that, she couldn’t live alone anymore and was going to stay with her last surviving son, Bill, and that uppity daughter-in-law. They wouldn’t allow reminders of the past in their
home, wanted them burned—the scrapbooks, the Bible, even that lovely sketch that Winslow Homer, the famous artist, did of young Laura down by the river. Leugenia said her daughter, Daisy, brought it home after Laura left it behind at John’s fishing camp.

“Leugenia called, said she wanted to see me. When I went, she gave ’em all to me. Cried her eyes out, said she wanted to leave the past in good hands and I was the only one who still cared.

“Hard to believe”—Arlie’s eyes brimmed with tears—“how many Ashleys changed their names, moved away, ashamed to be related. That white scrapbook is one I kept since I was a girl. But Leugenia’s are far more complete and thorough. There was so much my little brother and me never heard about because our father shielded us from anything he thought might make us think less of our mother.

“I never saw Leugenia again. But there was one thing.” Her eyes flashed like a girl’s and she smiled. “A few years after I last saw her, that snotty daughter-in-law heard that Winslow Homer was a famous artist whose work was valuable, especially after he passed away. She got Leugenia to tell what she’d done with that sketch, and that woman, Lucy, had the nerve to come knocking at my door. Said Leugenia gave it to me by mistake, that it belonged to her family, and she had to have it back. Did you ever?”

“What did you do?” Laura asked.

“Ran her off, what else?” Arlie’s eyes twinkled at the memory.

Laura made more tea and fixed sandwiches. After they finished, she cleaned up, then took the Homer sketch of her grandmother off the wall and propped it up on the kitchen table where they were reading. The scrapbook pages were yellowed and crumbling. But the newspaper articles had held up surprisingly well over the years due to the better-quality paper, with a high rag content, used at the time.

Arlie went to take her nap but promised to answer questions and fill in the gaps when she awoke. John and Laura settled in to read about love, death, and how more than a hundred years earlier their family histories had entwined forever in one of the most colorful, violent, and little-known chapters in Florida’s history.

PART EIGHT

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

W
ooden planks rumbled beneath the tires as John drove onto the narrow Sebastian Bridge. “What the hell’s that?”

Red tail lights glowed up ahead. A Model T Ford had stopped at a barrier on the span.

“Why’d they stop?” Hanford asked.

“A lantern.” John slowed down. The big car’s headlights pierced the dark like lances.

“The bridge must be out,” Clarence said in disgust.

Ray cursed.

“Nobody mentioned it back in Fort Pierce.” John cut the engine and opened the driver’s side door.

“Storm musta damaged it,” Hanford said.

“Could be.” John glanced at the backseat passengers as he slid out of the car. “Ray, didn’t I ask you to stay outta that food hamper? That has to last us till we get to Daisy’s place.”

“Sorry, John, only took a biscuit. Your mama’s cooking is sure hard to resist.” He flicked crumbs from his mustache and shirt front as they all climbed out, stretched, and yawned.

Hanford squinted across the shadowy span. “Nothin’ seems wrong. Water don’t look high.”