Necessary Evil (3 page)

It was like being under siege. The police
did their best, but they were unable to handle the problem. These invaders
disrupted the lessons, disturbed the horses, wearied my aunt with phone calls
and visits, and drove my sweet uncle to such a nervous state that the normally hawk-eyed
sage never saw the gouge in the trail before his horse, a fine spirited
stallion, tripped in it. The stallion broke his leg. My uncle broke his neck.
The finest man I’d ever known was killed over an empty promise of treasure.

The incident broke my aunt’s heart, and
she withdrew into herself to grieve. My uncle was a popular man, and his
funeral was a big affair; but even with all of the news coverage, and the
increased police protection, the incursions on our land didn’t stop. The
morning of my uncle’s funeral, I found a fresh excavation in the north pasture.

Even death doesn’t stop the gold hungry.

I don’t know what we would have done
without the Beaumont letter. While cementing the charge of theft, it
conclusively proved that the treasure had never been buried on the farm. Its
discovery and public authentication by Professor Maddox was covered by the
press, and picked up by the treasure hunter blogosphere. It took long enough
for things to calm down, but now it’d been months since I’d found any evidence
of trespassers. For that, my family owed a debt of gratitude to Professor
Maddox.

I agreed with Aunt Susanna that the farm
should send something, but with the mortgage due on top of the usual bills, and
this year’s disappointingly small sign-up for summer classes, there wasn’t much
capital to spread on lavish gifts.

“What were you thinking of sending?” I
asked and braced myself. Aunt Susanna sometimes forgot that we had no money and
I hated whenever I had to remind her that we couldn’t afford something.

She was looking at the on-screen picture
of Professor Maddox, a kindly looking man in the obligatory tweed jacket. We’d
met him in person only once, but it was enough to impress upon us that he was
as kind as he looked.

The thought of that kindness and that
reputation made my stomach churn and I turned away from the picture, pretending
to look out the back window.

“Would it be foolish to send flowers?”
Aunt Susanna asked.

I looked at her, surprised.

She gestured to the screen. “It says to
send a donation in lieu of flowers, but I dunno, a donation seems – seems so
impersonal.”

“Sure, why not?” I said.

She nodded and turned back to her
computer. “I wish they lived closer. I’d send them some in one of my baskets.”

Basket weaving was the only hobby that my
aunt kept up in the past few years. I suspected that was largely due to
Darlene, who wove with her, but the nature of the activity - the simplicity of
the supplies, the tidy, methodical weave,
the
satisfaction of the final product – has a soothing effect on the practitioner.
Before Aunt Susanna’s fall, the hobby required her to spend hours outside
collecting supplies, or pouring over guides and handbooks, looking for trickier
weaves or new techniques. Aunt Susanna and Darlene would collect willows, and
then spend afternoons weaving them into the most fantastically shaped baskets,
some of which won prizes at local fairs. She had three to enter this year and I
was determined to see to it that she went to the fair, her protestations of
weakness notwithstanding.

“You can’t really mail a basket of flowers
from here to California,” she was saying wistfully. “Which is too bad, because
the one I’m making now would be perfect for her.” She checked her watch and
started to rise. “I’ve got to rush. Darlene will be here any minute.”

I handed her the walker, then turned to
the cabinets, rummaging for my breakfast. “You have an appointment today?” I
asked.

“No, Mass.”

Despite myself, I felt my spine stiffen.
Of course. It was Sunday, and if there was one thing that Aunt Susanna never
forgot to do, no matter how deep her depression, it was to go to Mass. I used
to be as faithful, but lately, I’ve been overbooked. I knew she wasn’t going to
be happy about my absence.

“Oh, right,” I said, keeping my back to
her.

“We’re going to the eight a.m. Mass
today,” she informed my back. “We like the music there better. They’ve got that
new keyboardist, the one who went to Berkeley. He’s very good – you should come
and hear him.”

“I can’t today, but thanks.”

Silence for a moment. I found some stale
corn flakes and made a mental note to go to the grocery store, wondering when
on earth I’d find time to do that, too. Suddenly, I felt overwhelmed and fought
the urge to bury my face in my hands and scream.

Aunt Susanna asked, “Are you going later?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got lessons all
morning, then Lindsay and I have to do the stall cleaning.”

We thoroughly clean out the stalls at
least once a month while the horses are out in the paddocks, and always try to
do it on a dry day, so the horses don’t immediately track mud in. It’s a long,
hard afternoon’s work, but necessary and overdue. I prayed that my aunt would
know to let this go.

She didn’t.

“Maddie,” she said, with that note of quiet
concern in her tone that was meant to comfort me, but instead set my teeth
further on edge. “You can’t do this anymore. You have to take time out, to
rest, to pray, to spend time with God. You can’t let work be your life. Come
on, Maddie. Cancel the classes and come with me instead.”

“
Cancel
the classes!” I barked,
turning on her. “Cancel the classes? Susanna, I already had to reschedule the
Bailey girl twice this week and Mrs. Taylor is already upset because it’s me
and not Lindsay teaching her kids. These people will
leave
us if we
don’t pay attention to them. The Baileys will take Greybeard with them, and if
there’s one thing we can’t afford to do, it’s lose a paying customer. We’re
barely
keeping afloat and you want me to take the day off? No. I can’t go. You go.
And say ‘hi’ to God for me while you’re at it.”

I turned again and yanked a bowl out of
the cupboard, annoyed at myself as much as at her. I heard Aunt Susanna shuffle
slowly out of the kitchen and down the hall, to where we’d set up a temporary
bedroom for her in what had been the TV room. Immediately, a wave of regret
washed over me. I shouldn’t have lost my temper, not at her. But sometimes her
simple faith drove me crazy. She believed in miracles – I believed in that old
maxim: the Lord helps them that help themselves. At that moment, neither of us
had much to show for our beliefs.

By the time she finished dressing, I’d
calmed down enough to apologize and she accepted, but I could tell she was not
happy.

That made two of us.

That night, Aunt Susanna found me sitting
dreamy-eyed in the office, with Joe Tremonti’s professional page pulled up on
my computer screen. She was in a good mood, having spent the better part of the
day with Darlene and a few church friends.

“What are you looking at?” she asked. The
desk was near the door and despite her handicap, she was able to see the screen
before I could switch it. “Joe Tremonti! Goodness, he hasn’t changed, has he?”

I disagreed. The years had touched him,
but gently, aging him to perfection - hardening the always admirable jaw line
and dusting his thick, dark hair with the right amount of gray. His smile was
just as I remembered it: mischievous and even dangerous - and in this
professional photo, even after all these years, it was enough to set my heart
pattering.

“Did you know that he was back in the
area?” I asked, as casually as I could manage, which was quite the trick.

Aunt Susanna glanced at the photo and the
long list of accomplishments, and shook her head. “I didn’t. I was surprised
when I read the article.” She leaned over, took my mouse, and began scrolling
down, slowly. “Has he been in touch with you?”

“No.”

My face was flaming, both at being caught
and from the knowledge that a crush from my teenage years could still be so
powerful. I got up abruptly, offered her the chair, then grabbed an armload of
files and hurried over to the cabinet to put them away. I said, casually, “When
I saw his name in the article today, I became curious and searched for him. He’s
guest lecturing at that university while writing a book.” I pulled open a
drawer and began to sort files.

Aunt Susanna scanned the write-up with
interest. “I read his book, you know,” she said softly.

“Which one?” I asked. He’d written several
bestsellers, two historical and one historical fiction. I’d read them all,
several times.

“The one that mentioned the dig,” she
said, clicking in a distracted way. “The one here on the farm. You remember.”

I remembered. Ten years ago, when I was
seventeen, Joseph Tremonti was an assistant at the local college who’d just
gotten a grant from the state to do a historical dig. A popular teacher for
obvious reasons, he had the volunteer manpower to do it but was at a loss for a
site. When Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth turned him down, a student oh his -
one of our riders- remembered that my uncle, while digging out a section of the
yard for a cement pad, discovered an old knife that dated back to 1820. Joe
went to see it on display at the library, then offered my uncle a deal: if he
allowed his team to conduct a dig, Joe would pay to install the cement pad
himself. Uncle Michael, excited by more by the idea of the dig than the cement
pad, was easily persuaded.

It was the most exciting thing that had
ever happened to me. I was a rough and tumble kid who hadn’t much interest in
either history or boys. The dig changed that. For six weeks, our yard was
covered with college kids and the teacher with the Hollywood good looks who
insisted that I join in on the fun. With his flashing smile, intelligent humor,
and graceful yet rugged mannerisms, I was a goner before I even knew I had a
heart. That summer was momentous: I grew up, and Uncle Michael discovered his
passion for the past - a passion that would lead to his untimely accident.

I looked at the wall over the filing
cabinet. In a dusty old frame was the group photo we’d taken at the Dig’s End
Party, the last night we’d all been together. Joe Tremonti was in the middle,
his confidence radiating even through the passage of time.

It amused Aunt Susanna then that the team
was mostly comprised of girls. I remember mixed feelings of jealousy,
admiration, and kinship with those older, seemingly sophisticated young women.
In the group photo, I’d somehow managed to stand next to Joe. A messy-haired,
sun-browned kid, I was beaming like a lottery winner - standing next to my
crush, who’d condescended to put his arm around my shoulder. I’d felt like a
woman then.

Now, looking at the photo, I saw me as I
was: a child who was about to experience her first heartbreak over a boy, a
girl who didn’t see the impossibility of a seventeen-year-old’s love for a
twenty-four-year-old.

That was ten years ago and I’d aged
considerably. A lot had happened since then.

But that night wasn’t the last time I’d seen
Joe. That had been at Uncle Michael’s funeral.

                                                          
***

We buried Uncle Michael on a miserably hot
and humid day. The church had no air conditioning, so we sweltered during the
Mass and the lengthily eulogies. Then the priest, with a stately elegance no
humidity could touch, incensed the coffin, and we formed a line to follow him
to the cars.

Aunt Susanna’s brother and his wife, both
from North Carolina, escorted her, staying close as she silently wept, leading
the long train of neighbors and friends outside, where it was only slightly
cooler. They were too absorbed in their own grief to notice when I slipped away
to the side, hiding in the shadow of the choir loft staircase. When the doors
closed and I was alone, I sat down and cried for the first time.

I hadn’t time to cry before. There were
too many arrangements to make, too many decisions that Aunt Susanna was too
prostrate to handle, and I was afraid that my tears would only add to her grief.

So I sat in the silent staircase, and
sobbed. When the door wrenched open unexpectedly, I barely contained a scream.

Joe Tremonti was framed in the doorway.
“Maddie?”

No one had expected the rising academic star
to show up at the funeral, least of all me. Aside from that summer, our family
had no connection with the man; but there he was, late, his impeccably tailored
suit adorably untucked, rushing only to find that the grieving party had
already left for the cemetery and me, a shivering, miserable wreck, crying on
the choir loft stairs.

Seeing him was like discovering a
freshwater lake in the middle of the desert: tall, handsome, and kind, pulling
me into his arms and letting me sob on his shoulder. I wasn’t too upset to
notice that he still wore the same cologne that he’d used when we were at the
dig together.

“Maddie,” he whispered in my hair. “I’m so
sorry, Maddie.”

I’d dreamed about Joe coming back into my
life. I’d scripted dozens of witty conversations, imagined me throwing my head
back, laughing,
looking
like Audrey Hepburn in
Sabrina
,
only with reddish curly hair. But that day, tears overflowing my swollen eyes,
my scripted lines left me. My wits as well.

“They killed him, Joe,” was the first
thing I said. “They killed him.”

We sat hidden together on the choir loft
stairs for a long time. He listened while I cried. I told him about the
treasure hunters, and the holes, and the accident, reliving the scene as I
spoke. I must have sounded like a mad woman – all I could see were trespassers,
flooding our land, leaving holes and destruction, gold-blind to the death they
caused, and I began to shiver uncontrollably, despite the heat.

“They killed him and they’re still there,
Joe,” I whispered, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. “They just. Keep.
Digging
.
I found another hole this morning. Another bloody
hole
!”

If I hadn’t just cried myself tearless, I
would have crumbled again. But I had nothing left to give, just a hollow
emptiness and a dreadful fear: that we’d never be free of this cursed treasure
story, nor of the ever-present intruders.

“Oh, Maddie,” Joe said again.

The others had returned by then. We heard
them entering the church basement, the faint sounds of laughter and chatter
signifying warmth, security, and kinship. I felt alone, as though I were a
million miles away, kept away by a force far more insurmountable than distance.
And even though Joe was there, his profile in sharp relief against the light of
the doorway, his shoulder brushing mine, his handkerchief crumbled in my hands
– even he was there only temporarily. I, and I alone, would have to face the
future.

To keep myself from sliding into despair,
I turned to anger.

“
They
won’t believe that there is
nothing
to find
,” I snapped in a whisper. “They will keep looking for it – why
would they stop now when even Mark Dulles’ failure wouldn’t stop them?”

“They’ll stop,” Joe said softly, “once
definitive proof is found.”

I laughed, bitterly. “Definitive proof!
How can you prove something
isn’t
there?”

He looked at me, with just the slightest
hint of a smile.

“That,” he said, “is the right question.”

                                                         
***

I don’t know how long I’d been staring at
the photo, but I was in a deep enough reverie to be startled when Aunt Susanna
said, “He’s writing another book!”

Shaking my head clear, I put the files on
top of the cabinet and went back to the desk to take a look. “He is? What
about?”

She pointed at the screen. She had
followed a link to the Braeburn College Journal, where the headline announced,
Popular
lecturer on loan to Mass
.

Still reading, Susanna said, “According to
this, he’s writing a book on the Carignan Diaries while he’s guest lecturing.
That had some connection to the Civil War, too, which I remember was a favorite
subject of his. He was forever talking to Michael about it.” She frowned,
seeming confused. “Now, I wonder why he’s doing that, and not something about
the Beaumont letter. He was so interested when you sent it to him, and now that
he’s in the area, he’d be able to see it whenever he wants...”

Before she could think too much about it,
I pointed out the second to last paragraph of the article. “It says right
there. Apparently, this was the project that Professor Maddox was working on
when he died and the family asked him to finish it.”

“For joint credit, I’ll bet,” she said,
and before I could question her remark, she read aloud, “Professor Tremonti is
looking forward to his return to New England, where he received his Masters and
first worked as a student-teacher. ‘I’m looking forward to connecting with old
friends,’ he stated. ‘And as much as I love sunny California, it’ll be great
experiencing a real New England winter again.’ Professor Tremonti confirmed
that he will be bringing his skis and snowshoes.” She sat back in her chair. “I
didn’t know he was an outdoorsman.”

“Oh, sure you did,” I said. “Don’t you
remember all those afternoons he stayed late to ride with Uncle Michael and me,
and that time we took him waterskiing on Winnipesauke? He took a group up Mount
Washington, the
hard
way. I remember because you wouldn’t let me go.” I
stroked the keyboard and went back to the original page, musing,
“
I still have his phone number. I should send him a text
sometime.”

I must have looked even dreamier than I
thought, because there was a sharp note in Aunt Susanna’s voice when she said,
“He’s still married, Maddie.”

Like a bucket of ice water, that jolted me
out of my half-formed daydream, and before I could stop myself, my eyes went to
his hands. Yes – there was that gold band. I hadn’t noticed before. Something
like an iron band snapped around my heart and I experienced a sharp,
embarrassing jolt of disappointment.

He was married. I hadn’t been the only
heartbroken girl when he announced it that night at the Dig’s End party, but I
was probably the hardest hit. I remember him standing in the glow of the
bonfire, his cheeks flushed, his hands trembling as he lifted his soda can high
and shouted, “Congratulate me, my friends. She said ‘yes’!”

Most of the other girls had brought
boyfriends or friends with them to the party, so they had support when they
cheered in celebration. But I had no one except Uncle Michael and Aunt Susanna,
and I was too embarrassed to confide in them. I remember holding it together
until the congratulations calmed down, then I made an excuse and hid in the
stables to cry until Aunt Susanna found me.

“Men like him are always breaking young
girls’ hearts,” she’d told me that night. “His kind aren’t worth it, Maddie.”

Back then, I’d wondered why she’d taken
such a dislike to Joe. When Aunt Susanna, now gathering her walker to leave the
room, said, “Although I doubt a little thing like
that
would really
discourage a man like him,” I learned that time had done little to change her
mind.

I wasn’t seventeen anymore and had no
business mooning over a married man. All the same, I felt the need to defend
Joe. Aunt Susanna didn’t know the debt of gratitude she owed him. How could
she, when I never told her how that Beaumont letter got into the trunk in the
attic?

“Geez!” I said lightly. “I was thinking
about getting a coffee together, not starting a passionate romance! I’s a
good
girl, I am,” I added, and she laughed as she began her slow march into the
kitchen.