Darned if You Do (10 page)

Godwin said, “He wants to interview some of the people who got mail from that old mailbag we found in Tom Riordan's house. I said okay—is it okay?”

“Yes,” said Betsy, after an instant's thought. She was not averse to free publicity.

“Who's it from?” asked the reporter.

“A woman in Atlanta, Georgia. She wanted my sister, Margot, who first opened Crewel World, to carry the pattern for it in the shop.”

“Is it an antique?” he asked.

“No, it's something she crocheted herself.”

“Are you going to carry it?”

“I'll have to contact her to see if she's still interested.”

“How did she find out about Crewel World from so far away?” He answered his own question. “Oh, on the Internet, I guess. Did you—or your sister, that's right—have a web site back then?”

“I don't think there were such things as web sites in 1996,” said Godwin. “I know Crewel World didn't have one, since I helped Betsy build one in 2001.”

“So how did she find you?”

“I have no idea.”

“I don't suppose it matters. This is an interesting story. Thanks for talking with me. I'm sure this will be a great story for the
Sun Sailor
.” The young man asked a few more questions, took a photograph of the handkerchief with his cell phone, and went away.

“B
UT
she didn't include the pattern,” Betsy said the next morning over breakfast with Connor.

“Very wise of her,” he said. “Margot might have reproduced it and sold copies to customers without offering Mrs. van Hollen a penny.”

“Margot would never have done such a thing!”

“And Mrs. van Hollen knew this . . . how?”

“Well, yes, of course you're right. I wonder how she came to send that handkerchief all the way from Atlanta? I searched on Google for her name and didn't find anything, so I scribbled a note to her and drove by the post office after work. I put the shop's phone number and e-mail address on the note. Figure two or three days to get there, so maybe we'll hear from her in a week or less. Unless she's no longer at this address. Or”—Betsy shuddered—“I suppose it's possible that she's no longer alive. Well, I hope that's not the case. Anyway, this is kind of exciting, I hope she's still very much with us, and that she wants to sell the pattern.”

“Very likely when she didn't hear from Margot, she tried somewhere else.”

“Oh rats, you're probably right. What a shame! But still, it's been going on twenty years. Maybe she'd be willing to let us offer it a second time around. I don't crochet so I don't look at the details of crochet patterns. But even so, I'd say I haven't seen that pattern anywhere.”

*   *   *

W
HEN
Betsy came down to open up the shop the next morning, she saw Alice Skoglund waiting for her outside the front door. Betsy hastened to unlock it, though it was ten minutes before opening time.

A loyal member of the Monday Bunch, Alice was a Lutheran minister's elderly widow. She had gained the habit of good deeds so long ago that even with failing eyes, she still crocheted and knit tiny hats for newborn and preemie babies, and afghans for impoverished people in Africa and the Middle East. Lately she'd taken up knitting prayer shawls for her church, which were presented as the outward form of blessings to members who were seriously ill or newly bereft.

She was a tall woman with broad shoulders and big hands, homely and kind. This morning she was looking as if she'd received a shock. In one gloved hand she held an envelope.

Uh-oh
, thought Betsy, using a key to unlock the dead bolt on the door.

“Good morning, Alice, come on in. The pot's just heating but there will be hot water for tea in another minute.”

Godwin came out from the back. “What, a customer already?” he said in good humor. “Hi, Alice, how's my favorite girl?” Then he saw the look on her face and paused. “Oh my, has something happened? Here, come over here, you look as if you need to sit down.” He showed her to the library table and pulled a chair out for her.

“Thank you, Goddy, I have had a great surprise come in the mail, and I don't know if I'm on my head or my heels.”

“Oh, Alice,” said Betsy, “did you get one of those letters from eighteen years ago?”

Alice nodded. She fumbled in her overcoat pocket for a tissue and used it to rub her shapeless nose, which was already pink.

“Was it bad news?” asked Godwin.

“I—I'm not sure what to think about it,” said Alice, putting the tissue back in her pocket.

Betsy came to sit beside her. “Do you want to tell us what it is?”

“It's a proposal of marriage!” cried Alice, tossing the envelope onto the table. “Come eighteen years too late, a proposal of marriage.” She sobbed once, then took fierce control of herself. “I just couldn't believe it. I thought—I thought we'd broken off. We had a terrible quarrel—over nothing! Nothing at all, and then I didn't hear from him again, and I thought—I thought it was over and I was so sad for a long time, and all this while . . .” She did break down then.

Godwin and Betsy looked at each other in dismay.

Godwin said then, “I don't understand. You didn't see the gentleman again? You didn't call him or write your own letter?”

“I was too proud, too proud! I wanted him to come to me, to take the first step—and he did! And I never knew, oh, I never knew!”

Godwin reached out for the envelope but changed his mind before his fingers touched it. “What happened to him? Did he move away?”

“He went to Mexico to do missionary work. He was gone for five years. When he came back, he had a wife—another American; he'd met her down there. He sold his house and they moved away, to Texas, I think, or Arizona . . .” Her voice trailed away, and her eyes looked distant.

Then she suddenly came back to herself. “But I mustn't burden you with this. This has nothing to do with you. I don't even know why I came here!” She started to get up.

Betsy put a hand on her shoulder. “You were right to come here,” she said firmly. “We're your good friends, and we're going to ply you with tea and cookies, and, if necessary, take you out to dinner.”

“Absolutely!” said Godwin. “I'm all yours—well, until seven this evening, when Rafael and I are going to a Northest Coin meeting.” He leaned in and said in a confidential murmur, “You know those coins we found in Tom Take's house? I'm going to ask Valentina if Rafael and I can take them to a coin club meeting next month to see what they're worth.”

“Goddy . . .” warned Betsy.

“Why can't I tell her? She's one of us! She won't go running to tell on us! Will you, dear, sweet, kind,
understanding
Alice?”

Despite herself, Alice smiled. “Oh,
you
—!” she said.

“See?” Godwin said to Betsy. “Now you just sit tight and I'll get you a nice cup of tea. And over it you can tell us all about this very intriguing romance of yours.”

Alice did draw comfort and courage from the tea. Paul Engstrom, Alice said, was a member of Mount Calvary Lutheran Church back when Alice's husband was pastor. He was an active member, even serving a term on the vestry, though his main interest was outreach. He was firm in his faith, but charming and funny—the Bible stories he told in Sunday school were related in a hilarious Bill Cosby style. He was always respectful and courteous to Alice and made no approach to her for the first year of her widowhood. Then he began a courtship so understated it took her several months before she finally understood what he was doing.

But when they got serious, they discovered their differences. He wanted to go to Mexico to do missionary work, and she thought there was plenty of work to do right here in Minnesota. He began taking classes to improve his Spanish and one evening, probably in an attempt to tease her, insisted on speaking only Spanish to her. She lost her temper and told him to go home and not come back until he gave up trying to persuade her to go live in some filthy hovel in Mexico. She never heard from him again.

“And now this!” she said, and pulled the letter from its envelope. “Read it, read it!”

The letter was handwritten and began with an apology:

My dearest Alice, You know I would not for the world distress you. If I didn't feel God's own voice calling me to work in Mexico on His behalf, I would not argue so strongly in favor of going. I was blinded by my desire to answer the call, and did not realize the strength of your resistance, or your fear of travel to a place so strange and, in your mind, dangerous. I apologize from the depths of my being for distressing you.

I propose the following: Allow me to go alone, with your blessing, for one year. On my return, I will hang up my foreign missionary shoes and devote my life to making you happy. If necessary, by marrying you—joke, joke, joke, my dearest one. I would marry you tomorrow if I could, but hope you will agree to this compromise.

Say yes, please say yes, please, please, please say yes.

Your madly devoted—Paul.

“Oh my God,” said Godwin, awed. “And you never got the letter, so he thought you said no, and he went away brokenhearted. Oh, this is the saddest thing I've ever heard!”

“He probably thought I was insulted by the way he proposed—‘if necessary, by marrying you'—and when he got no reply . . .” She sighed. “Oh, what a fool I was! When I didn't hear from him, I should have called or written myself. But I was too proud, too proud!” She broke down again.

Betsy put an arm around Alice's shoulders. “Not at all. It was his fault for trying to make you go with him to a place you thought of as dangerous, where you didn't speak the language or understand the customs. It was wrong of him to try to force you.”

“But he offered a perfect compromise! If I'd gotten this letter, I would have gladly agreed! Oh, that dreadful man!”

“Wait, I thought you just said Paul wasn't being dreadful,” said Godwin.

“I mean Tom Riordan! It's a good thing I'm a Christian, or I might go pay him a visit and tell him what a wicked thief he is, he who made my life sadder than it might have been!”

*   *   *

W
HEN
the next edition of the
Sun Sailor
came out, there was an immediate grab for copies. The paper was a weekly that paid for itself with advertising and normally there were numerous copies left over by the time the next edition appeared. But not this time. People sat in restaurants, in the new library, in the Barleywine microbrewery; they stood outside in the freezing rain, hunched under whatever meager shelter they could find—a young tree, a narrow overhang; they huddled in groups or sat alone at home, reading the story of the late-delivered mail.

THE MAIL MUST GO THROUGH
read the headline,
EVEN EIGHTEEN YEARS LATE
. The article told of an old mailbag found in a hoarder's house, half full of undelivered mail postmarked 1996.

Betsy searched for and found the paragraph about her own experience with a long-delayed package.

“Small business owner Bessy Devonshire received a beautiful lace-edged handkerchief from a woman in Atlanta, Georgia, and a request that she sell the handkerchief in her store,” read the article.

Betsy sighed. In her whole life, no matter where she lived, every single time she knew something about an event, the media report got at least some of the details wrong. This was no exception, beginning with getting her name wrong.

The article continued, “Devonshire has written to the handkerchief maker. ‘It's sad that I didn't get this right away,' Devonshire said. ‘I really would have liked to carry her handkerchiefs in my shop.'”

This after the reporter had talked with her for half an hour!

Well at least the subject was handkerchiefs, not overshoes. Or cotton candy.

Betsy went back to the start of the article to read it in its entirety. The article's author said there were fifty-six first-class pieces of mail in the bag. Twenty-seven of them were bills, long out of date. Sixteen of the remaining were undeliverable, either because the recipients had moved and the forwarding information was long expired, or the recipients were deceased.

That left thirteen. Betsy knew one was her own. Another was Alice's—but there was no mention in the article of Alice Skoglund, or even of a woman who received a proposal of marriage too late.

The article did mention Mr. and Mrs. Lundquist, who received a letter about Joey, their high school graduate son, offering him a scholarship to a fine university to study political science. Since the letter did not arrive on time, the boy had instead gone to a vocational school and now owned a very successful plumbing company. “I think I do cleaner work as a plumber than I would have as a politician,” he was quoted as saying.

Betsy happened to know the plumber in question, and the quote was a highly bowdlerized version of something he frequently said. Which was all right; the
Sun Sailor
was a family newspaper.

She also knew that Joey had flunked out of the University of Minnesota before going to vocational school—from which he did not graduate, but he was apprenticed to a licensed plumber who owed his father a significant favor. Joey was very bright, but also very dyslexic.

The next story was about Dee Dee Millwright, who had a favorite nephew, Aaron Monroe. He was described by Ms. Millwright as a solemn little fellow, bright in his studies—he was in third grade—who, when he stayed with her, played placidly with her little dog, slept long and deep, and cried when the visit was over. He loved her cooking, and she sent him cookies every few months.

Aaron died after falling out of the big tree in his front yard, where he'd climbed after a quarrel with his father. Dee Dee was devastated. Aaron's parents sold their home and moved away, and Dee Dee lost touch with them.

Then came a last letter from Aaron, like a voice from the grave. Dee Dee did not wish to share its contents except to say his last wish was to come live with her permanently so he could play some more with the dog.

“Dee Dee's eyes filled with tears as she told the story,” wrote the reporter.