Lost in Thought (29 page)

With that, she disappeared through a swinging door into what I assumed was the kitchen. I squeezed Carter’s hand and he smiled back encouragingly. I was grateful for Mrs. Young’s warm reception. It didn’t sound as though her and my father’s relationship could have been very good—he did leave her home and never once come back.

We waited in nervous silence for her to return. Well, I waited in nervous silence. Carter simply memorized the small room and held my hand in support.

Mrs. Young returned after not very long, carrying a small tray with three steaming mugs and a plate of a few cookies. She set the tray on the low table in front of us and sat herself in the ragged chair to my left, placing her own mug on an end table between the chair and loveseat. The lamp that rested on it was the only light in the room.

The curtains were half drawn over the picture window that dominated one wall and looked out on the small front yard. Carter and I both picked up our tea and took polite sips. It was weak, but warm and relaxing, extra sweet with sugar.

“Thank you,” I said. “For the tea, and for being willing to see me.”

“I suppose you’ve come to hear about Allen,” Mrs. Young said as she peered at me over her own mug. She didn’t seem like a woman who was afraid to get straight to the point.

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“Yes, if you don’t mind…” I told her about Northbrook, the mystery of my Legacy, and how we hoped she might help us understand where it had come from.

“I don’t know exactly how your schooling came to be, but…well, it would probably be easiest if I just started at the beginning…”

I listened to her story in rapt silence.

“Allen is my greatest regret, in a long list of them,” she said, paus-ing to take a brief sip of her tea. “He was a good child, special, but I…I suppose I was not a very good mother to him. For certain I wasn’t. It’s why he left here practically a boy and I never heard from him again ‘til he’d passed. I am sorry about that, young lady. He was so young and you had to be, too. I’m sorry you didn’t get to grow up with your own parents, either.”

Mrs. Young had a soft Boston accent, almost charming in her old-lady voice. When she said “either,” it sounded more like a gentle
ee-tha.

“You’re the spitting image of Allen’s real mother, you know. You could’ve been a ghost on my doorstep, except it’s not the middle of the night and you’re not holding a squalling baby. Her name was Virginia. Virginia Marwood. I hadn’t seen her in years before she showed up that night, and that was the last time I saw her at all. She thought she was making a good decision, bringing her baby to me. I wish it had been true.

“We’d known each other since we were practically babies. My mother was the housekeeper for Virginia’s family. Our lives were very different then—I was poor and she was not—but when you’re children, the differences don’t seem to matter. Virginia was happy enough to play with me, another girl only a few years older than she was. By the time we were teenagers, we were on very different paths, or so I thought. Virginia went away to a proper school—maybe the same one as yours—and I…I did finish high school, for all the good it did me,

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but I was not interested in learning. I was interested in…freedom, I guess.

“‘Course, as soon as I had it, first thing I did was give it up. Got myself pregnant, and then, because I was a romantic, got myself married. I thought that was the right thing to do, and I stuck by that decision. At eighteen I had one baby, by twenty I had two, and it would turn out that by twenty-one I’d have three. Long time later, I’d realize that was two too many. I could barely manage one, and three tipped me right over the edge. But you came to hear about your daddy, not the sad story of my mistakes…”

She paused to sip more tea and nibble at a cookie. I discovered I’d practically been holding my breath the entire time, and gulped needed air while I glanced at Carter. He too sipped his tea, and though he looked relaxed, I could tell he was as fascinated by the story as I was.

Mrs. Young cleared her throat softly and went on.

“Like I said, it was late at night when Virginia showed up at my door. I hadn’t seen her since she left for her fancy school. I’m not even sure how she found me—I was long gone from my mother’s— but she did. She was pretty as ever, just like you, Lainey, but she looked tired and, most of all, scared. Her son, your father, squirmed and cried in her arms, as if he knew what she was going to do. She was only eighteen, maybe nineteen, I can’t remember for sure.”

She shook her head sadly and smoothed the surface of the worn velvet chair cushion with her equally worn hand. “For all her good fortune, we ended up in the same predicament. Children with children of their own. I think she must’ve gotten pregnant before she graduated from high school, or not long after. Said she wouldn’t marry the baby’s father, as I had, and couldn’t even if she wanted to. I never asked why, but I assume he was married already. He was older, she said, and important. And dangerous. She said she couldn’t bring herself to end the pregnancy—that wasn’t so easy back then, either—and she refused to

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tell the father about the child. In fact, she hadn’t told anyone. When she’d gotten too big to hide her condition, she’d run away.

“Allen was only a few weeks old when she showed up here. She begged me to take him, raise him as my own. I asked why she’d picked me, another destitute young mother. She said she couldn’t bear to leave him with someone she didn’t know, but she didn’t want his father to find him either. She thought Allen would be safe with me. She was wrong, though not because of whatever threat his father posed.

But I couldn’t have seen that then.”

Mrs. Young stopped abruptly and rose, looking around as if she’d just remembered something. She bent stiffly and pulled an aged photo album from a stack under the coffee table. After flipping a few pages, she handed it to me. “Your daddy,” she said and pointed to a picture of my father as a young boy. I’d have recognized him even though I’d never seen pictures of him as anything but an adult. He looked serious and sad, but still my father.

“Willie,” she went on, pointing to another photo, “my husband, wanted to refuse. We had enough trouble with our own two babies and ourselves to take on one more mouth to feed. Until Virginia gave us her suitcase. It was full of money, a
lot
of money in that day. She said it was everything she had from her family and from selling all her nice things. If we’d take the baby, and promise to raise him, we could have it. We accepted.”

I turned pages in the album as she spoke, seeing pictures of a much younger everything—this house, Mrs. Young, my dad with two little girls—and it was almost as if her story came alive before my eyes.

“For a while,” she continued, “we were happy. We were able to buy this house and live well. Better than we should have. But the money didn’t last as long as our promise, and though we never went back on it, I think your father’s the one who paid the price. Willie hadn’t wanted him to begin with, and once the money was gone…he treated

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Allen almost as badly as he treated me. Our daughters were spared his hand—Allen and I were plenty enough to knock around—though not my foolishness. I never defended your father, and I barely raised my daughters. It’s a wonder they love me, but they do, and I’m grateful.

“For all that, Allen grew up to be a good boy. He was a big boy too, taller even than you, young man”—she looked over at Carter— “and just as handsome in his way. He didn’t look much like you, or Virginia, I suppose you know, except for your same dark hair. I imagine he looked like his father’s family.

“When he got old enough, he was almost never home. He went to school, and when he wasn’t at school he worked at any job he could find. That was another problem, because he refused to give my husband any of the money. Sometimes he’d sneak some to me, for his sisters, and I hid it away without a word. The little bit of time Allen was home, Willie would be on him about the money, or any other problem he could blame on him. Allen was big enough to fight back by that time, but for some reason, he never did. Not until the end.

“The day Allen turned eighteen—before he even graduated from high school—he came home to say he was leaving. He gathered up the few things he wanted to take while I cried and begged him not to go.

He refused, not that I should have been surprised. I think he meant to be gone before my husband got home, but he didn’t make it.

“Willie went after him right away—for taking off on his family, for upsetting me, for being a bastard child, anything you could name. I sobbed and sobbed, and for the first and last time, begged Willie to leave Allen alone. He didn’t, and then he turned on me. That was the final straw. For all my failures, I think your father loved me too, and I think he knew that when he was gone, I’d be the only one left for Willie to hit. I wasn’t sure how long I’d survive that, but it didn’t matter.

“Allen turned on Willie and told him not to touch me, not to touch me ever again. Willie came back after him, and Allen grabbed his

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swinging fists and shoved him away. That was all it took. Willie stumbled, fell, and never got back up. We didn’t know what to do, your father and I, it seemed so unreal. Eventually the doctors came and pronounced Willie dead of a heart attack and gave us their condolenc-es.”

She was crying now, not sobs, but slow, sad tears that overflowed her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She wiped them away absently. I imagined these weren’t the first tears she’d cried in memory of my father and her youth. “In the same day, I lost my husband and my son. I cried many more tears that day, most of them from shame. More than loss, I felt relief, and some regret. Even if I didn’t know how I’d go on, I knew I was better off without my husband. And Allen…I knew I deserved for him to leave, and he did, but not before giving me almost all the money I think he’d saved. I was amazed at how much it was, and cried even harder. He’d given me more than my husband had brought home in months of working. And that was the last time I saw him, Lainey. The rest of his life, you’ll have to tell me about.”

I couldn’t respond for a moment. I’d never imagined my father’s childhood was so…terrible. And I knew, without a doubt, what had happened to his adoptive father. I wondered if my father did, if he knew that
he
had caused the heart attack, but that was a question I’d never have answered. Regardless, Chastine Young’s sad story confirmed everything I’d suspected before we came. I
was
the last Marwood, whether I wanted to be or not. I didn’t realize that I was crying too, until Carter reached out and gently brushed away the tears on my cheeks. I hastily grabbed a napkin from the tray and blotted them away.

“I’m sorry, child,” Mrs. Young said. “It is a sad story, and I’m ashamed it’s all true. Allen’s life got better once he left me, though, I know it did. You’re proof of that. Perhaps you can lift my spirits by telling me about the man he became. Do you even remember him?”

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I didn’t, not really, but my aunt made sure I never forgot my parents. I told Mrs. Young what I knew, all the way up until their accident. I told her a little about my life too, though I glossed over exactly
why
I ended up at Northbrook, which brought us full circle.

I hadn’t wanted to interrupt her story, so I finally asked the few questions I’d been saving. “Did you ever learn who his real father was?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t, no. I’ve always wondered if he did, but he never told me. One day when he was maybe fourteen, I looked out the window and saw he was home from school. Except he wasn’t on foot. He was getting out of an expensive car. A man who looked like a driver sat in the front, but I couldn’t see into the back. Your daddy slammed the door and marched up to the house, shoving something in his pocket, and angrier than I’d just about ever seen him. I asked what was going on, but he told me it was nothing. He said if I ever saw that car again not to talk to them. I…I think whoever it was must have been his real father. He’d found him somehow. But either Allen didn’t believe him, or he wanted nothing to do with him. Not sure it matters which. We never saw him again, and I don’t know who he was.”

Carter had been silent almost our entire visit, but he asked a question that sounded innocent enough, yet I understood the meaning behind it completely. “What was Allen like as a boy? Did he get along with the other children?”

Mrs. Young thought about her answer before speaking. “He was a sweet child, never complained much despite all the things he deserved to complain about. Never had problems at school either. He was a quiet, likeable boy. When he got older, he was bigger than all the other kids, which is what kept him out of fights, I think. And then…about the time he became a teenager, around the time I think he met his fa-L O S T I N T H O U G H T | 227

ther, in fact, he became even quieter than before. I figured it was normal, for a boy who’d had his life, and for a teenager.

“But for all he seemed quiet and sad, everything else went well for him. His school grades were nearly perfect, and he always had at least one job or more, when jobs of any kind were not so easy to come by for a boy his age. It seemed like everything he touched turned to gold, everything except his home life. Even then, he almost always came home at the
right
time, avoiding Willie as if he knew where he’d be.