Remember Me (32 page)

Or did she find another use for it?

At ten o'clock she went upstairs, changed into a nightgown and robe, and phoned Adam at the apartment in New York.

“I was just about to call you to say good night,” he said. “How are my girls?”

“We're fine.” Menley hesitated but knew she had to ask the question that was on her mind. “Amy stayed for dinner, and she made an interesting observation. She thinks Elaine is in love with you, and I have to say I agree with her.”

“That's ridiculous.”

“Is it? Adam, please understand that after Bobby died, I wasn't much of a wife to you for a year. Last summer I asked you for a separation, and we'd probably be divorced right now if I hadn't learned I was pregnant with Hannah. You got pretty close to Elaine in that time we were apart, didn't you?”

“It depends on what you call close. We've always been there for each other since we were kids.”

“Adam, forget the buddy routine. Haven't you pulled that on her before? You said she was a rock when your father died. And over the years when you didn't have another serious girlfriend, you'd call her up. Wasn't that the pattern?”

“Menley, you can't think that I was involved with Elaine last year.”

“Are you involved with her now?”

“My God, Menley, no!”

“I had to ask. Good night, Adam.”

Adam heard the click in his ear. When he got to the apartment he had realized what had been bugging him. One day last winter when Menley was out, he had watched the tape of Bobby. It was where he had left
it, in his desk drawer. He
had
brought it home last summer. Why did Elaine make a copy of it and not tell him about it?

O
n Wednesday morning, Nat brought his second cup of coffee into the family room and studied the two pictures of Remember House. He had painstakingly removed the mangled one from the frame, and now it was propped up on the mantel next to the copy Elaine had given him.

The destruction of the print he had taken from Scott Covey's garbage was even more apparent now that the picture was out of the frame. It looked as though the crisscross tears might have been made by a sharp knife or even a wedge of broken glass. There was a gaping hole where the boat had been.

The other print showed a faint smudge where the boat had been, as though Elaine had attempted to retouch the negative, but hadn't completed the job.

“Bye, Dad.”

Nat's two sons, Kevin and Danny, sixteen and eighteen years old, stood in the doorway, grinning at him. “If you're trying to decide which one to buy, Dad, I'd vote for the one on the right,” Kevin said.

“Someone sure didn't like the other one,” Danny commented.

“I agree,” Nat said. “The question is
why
didn't he like it? See you tonight, guys.”

Debbie came in a few minutes later. “Still haven't figured it out?” she asked.

“Nothing makes sense. First of all, I can't believe that Elaine Atkins honestly thought that Scott Covey was in the market for that property. Then when he was clearing out, why didn't he just leave it in the house? Why go to all the trouble of smashing it and cutting out the boat? And why did Elaine blank out the boat in the copy? There has to be a reason.”

Debbie picked up the torn photograph and turned it over. “Maybe you should talk to whoever took the picture. Look, his name is stamped on the back. Walter Orr. His phone number and address are here too.”

“I know his name,” Nat said. “Elaine gave it to me.”

Debbie turned the pictures over again and smoothed the curling edges. “Look. The date and time this was taken is here on the bottom.” She looked at the other picture. “It's not on the copy Elaine gave you.”

Nat looked at the date. “July 15th at 3:30
P.M
.!” he exclaimed.

“Is there anything significant about that date?”

“You bet there is,” Nat said. “July 15th was the day Vivian Carpenter was drowned. Covey phoned the coastguard at 4:30 that afternoon.” In two strides he was over to the phone.

A look of disappointment came over Nat's face as he listened to a recorded message. Then he gave his name and the phone number of the police station and finished by saying, “Mr. Orr, it is imperative I speak to you immediately.”

When he hung up, he said, “Orr is on a job and will be back at four o'clock. So this will have to hold until then. But Deb, I just realized, when Marge offered us
this copy, she said Elaine had the negative. And she's obviously already altered that. So if there is something to this, we may never find out what it is. Damn!”

T
here was a restless feeling in the air when Menley awakened at seven o'clock on Wednesday morning. The breeze was damp, and the room still shadowed. The light that penetrated around the shades was subdued, and no rays of sun danced on the windowsills.

She had slept well. Even though Hannah's room was close by and she had left both doors open, she had kept the baby monitor on the night table next to her. At two she had heard the baby stirring and checked her, but Hannah didn't wake up.

And no dreams, no flashbacks, thank God, Menley thought as she reached for a robe. She walked to the windows that overlooked the water and pulled up the shades. The ocean was gray, the waves still mild as they lapped at the shore. Thin sunlight peered around the heavy clouds that drifted over the water.

Ocean and sky and sand and space, she thought. This wonderful house, this special view. She was enjoying getting used to all this space. After her father died, her mother had given her brother the smaller bedroom to himself and moved Menley's twin bed into her room. When Jack went to college it was Menley's
turn to get a room of her own, and thereafter when Jack was home, he slept on the pullout couch in the living room.

I remember how when I was little, I used to draw pictures of pretty houses with pretty rooms, Menley thought as she looked out over the ocean. But I never visualized a home like this, a location like this. Maybe that's why the house Adam and I had in Rye never got to me the way this one does.

Remember House would be a home of the heart, she thought. I can see coming up here for Thanksgiving and Christmas and the kind of summers Adam experienced growing up, and for long weekends in other seasons. That's a perfect balance to all the plusses of living in Manhattan, with Adam's office minutes away.

What had been Mehitabel's plans for her life? she wondered. Many wives of sea captains sailed with their husbands all over the world and brought their young children with them. Mehitabel had sailed with Andrew after they were married. Before everything went wrong, had she been looking forward to other trips?

It would make sense if Tobias Knight did build some sort of storage area on the grounds or in the house and that was why he had been seen around here. I'm going to write the story that way, she decided.

Why do I feel so strongly about her this morning? she wondered. And then she understood the reason. On the third Wednesday in August all those years ago, Mehitabel was condemned as an adulteress, flogged and returned here to find her husband had taken her baby away. Today was the third Wednesday in August.

A moment later Menley did not need the baby monitor to inform her that Hannah was awake and hungry. “I'm coming, Crabby,” she called as she hurried into the nursery.

Amy arrived at nine o'clock. It was obvious that she was upset. It didn't take long to find out what was wrong. “Elaine was at our house when I got home last night,” she said. “Mr. Nichols had asked her about the tape of Bobby, and I guess she must have figured out that I borrowed it. She asked me for it.

“I wouldn't give it to her. I said it belonged to you and I had promised to give it back to you. She said it was a backup copy she'd made because Mr. Nichols was so distraught last year she was afraid he'd lose it, and she knew you hadn't seen it.” Tears glistened in Amy's eyes. “My dad sided with Elaine. He's mad at me too.”

“Amy, I'm sorry you've had a problem about this. But I don't believe that Elaine made a copy of that tape with me in mind. And I'm glad you didn't give it to her. Where is it now?”

Amy reached in her bag. “Here it is.”

Menley held the cassette in her hand for a moment, then laid it on the refectory table. “I'll watch it later. I think it would be a good idea if you put Hannah in the carriage and went for a walk. When that storm breaks, it's supposed to last until sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

*   *   *

Adam phoned an hour later. “How's it going, love?”

“Fine,” she told him, “but the weather's changing. There's a storm predicted.”

“Did Amy bring the tape of Bobby?”

“Yes.”

“Have you watched it yet?”

“No. Adam, trust me. I'm going to watch it this afternoon while Amy is with Hannah, but I know I can handle it.”

When she hung up, she looked at the computer screen. The last sentence she had written before the
phone had begun to ring was, “It would seem that Mehitabel implored her husband to trust her.”

At eleven o'clock she reached the contractor Nick Bean, who had renovated the house. An affable man, Bean was both open and informative about Remember House. “Priceless workmanship,” he said. “Not a nail anywhere in the original construction. All mortise-and-tenon joints.”

She asked him what he knew about hidden rooms in the homes of early settlers.

“I've come across them in some of these old places,” he explained. “People glamorize them. Originally they were called ‘Indian rooms,' the idea being that they were where the family hid from the Indians when they were attacked.”

Menley could hear the amusement in his voice as he continued: “Only one problem. The Indians on the Cape weren't hostile. Those rooms were where bootleg cargo was kept or where people who were going on a trip would hide their valuables. Their version of a safety deposit box, I guess you could call it.”

“Do you think it's possible Remember House has a hidden storage area?” Menley asked.

“It's possible,” Bean confirmed. “Seems to me my last workman on the job mentioned something about that. There's a fair amount of space between the rooms and the center of the house, where the chimneys were built. But that doesn't mean we'd ever find one if it exists. It may have been boarded over to the point where it would take a genius to locate it. One place to start looking is the minister's cabinet in the parlor. Sometimes a removable panel behind it led into a storage area.”

A removable panel. As soon as Menley hung up, she hurried to check the minister's cabinet in the main parlor. It was to the left of the fireplace. She opened it, and a musty smell assailed her nost ils. I should
leave the door open and let it air out, she thought. But the back of the built-in cabinet had no seams to indicate an entrance to a storage area.

Maybe when we own the house we can explore this further, she thought. You just can't go around smashing walls. She went back to the desk but realized she was becoming more and more distracted. She wanted to see the tape of Bobby.

She waited until after lunch, when Amy brought Hannah up for her afternoon nap. Then she picked up the cassette and brought it into the library. A lump was already forming in her throat when she put the tape in the VCR and pressed the start button.

They had visited one of Adam's partners in East Hampton that weekend. Lou Miller had a video camera and had brought it out on Sunday afternoon after brunch. Adam had Bobby in the pool. She had been sitting at the umbrella table talking with Lou's wife, Sherry.

Lou took shots of Adam teaching Bobby how to swim. Bobby looked so much like Adam, Menley thought. They were having such a good time together. Then Adam lifted Bobby onto the deck. She remembered Lou turning off the camera and saying, “Okay, enough of the aquacade. Let's get some shots of Bobby with Menley. Adam, put him on the deck. Menley, you call him.”

She heard her own voice next. “Bobby, come on over here. I want you.”

I want you, Bobby.

Menley dabbed at her eyes as she watched her two-year-old, arms outstretched, running toward her, heard him calling her, “Mommy, Mommy.”

She gasped. It was the same joyous voice she had heard when she thought Bobby was calling her last week. He had sounded so vibrant, so alive. It was the way he had just started to say “Mommy” that struck
her now. She and Adam had joked about it. Adam had said, “Sounds more like Mom-me, with the emphasis on
me
.”

That was exactly the way he had called to her the night that she'd searched the house for him. Had that been simply a vivid waking dream rather than a flashback? Dr. Kaufman had told her that happy memories would begin to replace the traumatic one. But the train whistle had certainly been a flashback.

The tape was rolling. Bobby flinging himself into her arms; turning him to the camera. “Tell us your name.”

She began to sob as he said proudly. “Wobert Adam Nikko.”

Tears choked her, and when the tape was finished, she sat for a few minutes, her face buried in her hands. And then a reassuring thought assuaged the pain: in another two years Hannah would be answering the same question. How would she pronounce Menley Hannah Nichols?

She heard Amy coming down the stairs and called to her. Amy came in, her expression concerned. “Are you okay, Mrs. Nichols?”

Menley realized that her eyes were still welling with tears. “I really am,” she said, “but I'd like you to watch this with me.”

Amy stood beside her as she rewound the videotape and played it again. When it was finished, Menley asked, “Amy, when Bobby was calling me, did you notice anything special about the way he sounded?”

Amy smiled. “You mean 'Mom-me'? It sounded as though he was saying, ‘Hey, Mom, you come to me!' “