The Diary (15 page)

“What did I do that was so terrible?” Elizabeth's voice rose on a wobbly, high-pitched note. “Was it that I fell out of love? Or that I lost my virginity to a man no one seems to approve of?”

“For heaven's sake! Someone might hear you,” her friend hissed. Color bloomed in Ingrid's cheeks, and she cast a nervous glance over her shoulder.

Ingrid had always been a bit of a prude—the closest they'd come to the forbidden topic had been in vowing to wait until their wedding nights—but it had never gotten in the way of their friendship before. Now there was a wedge between them because Elizabeth had broken that girlhood vow while Ingrid would walk down the aisle with her virtue intact. But would Ingrid be so judgmental if she'd ever experienced true passion? She loved Jeb, but their bond was rooted more in shared values and deep affection. If she knew what it was to make love under the stars, to be so carried away that you were scarcely in your right mind, she would understand exactly what had driven her best friend to act as she had.

“What is there to hide? Everyone already knows what a sinner I am,” Elizabeth tossed back.

Ingrid cast her a reproachful look. “This will all die down if you let it.” Her outburst, though mild, had blown through her like a strong wind, leaving her somewhat in disarray. The curl had gone out of her mouse-colored hair on one side, giving it the appearance of a sagging hem, and her hat sat at a tipsy angle on her head: a trim little felt number, navy blue with a grosgrain ribbon from which a feather stuck out at an angle, that Elizabeth recognized as one of Arno Fashions'. Ever since they'd been little, Ingrid had been like that, always with a button missing from her pinafore or one pigtail undone even when engaged in quiet activities. Now she reached up to adjust her hat before opening her handbag and fishing out a handkerchief, which she used to dab at her throat. “If you go around causing scenes, you'll only make it worse for yourself,” she advised, tucking the handkerchief back into her handbag and closing it with a decisive snap.

“Since when is it wrong to stick up for yourself?” Elizabeth demanded.

Ingrid flashed her a sharp look. “That's just it. You don't seem the least bit sorry about any of this.”

Elizabeth was sorrier than her friend would ever know—sorry not for what she'd done but for the way it had played out—but she tipped up her chin, striking a pose at which she'd become so practiced these past weeks that it had left a more or less permanent crick in her neck, and replied defiantly, “Why should I be? It's not as if I owe anyone an explanation.”

“Not even your best friend?”

“Oh, Gigi …” Elizabeth relented with a sigh. She couldn't deny that her friend had a point. Ingrid shouldn't have had to read about in the paper. “You're right, I should have told you.”

“Yes, you should have.” Ingrid was cutting her no slack.

“I meant to. But after Bob and I broke up, then that awful scene with my mother …” She paused to shake her head. “I was such a wreck, I guess I wasn't thinking straight. It was all I could do to go straight to the police before I lost my nerve. Then all hell broke loose.…”

Ingrid was silent, her reproachful gaze letting Elizabeth know that a phone call was the least she'd deserved.

“So does this mean you're going to ask me to turn in my bridesmaid dress?” Elizabeth asked in a joking attempt to get Ingrid to climb down off her high horse.

Ingrid replied stiffly, “I think that would be best, don't you?”

Elizabeth gasped as if she'd been punched in the stomach. She stared at her old friend in disbelief. This friend whom she'd always relied on, just as she had on Bob, was suddenly as much a stranger to her as she apparently was to Ingrid. Suddenly she could see past her childhood friend, standing there in her flowered dress, her prim little hat and gloves, to the matron Ingrid was on her way to becoming: married and respectable, more concerned with appearances than with old alliances.

Elizabeth, feeling sick inside, managed to reply with as much pride as she could muster, “Don't worry. I won't embarrass you any further.” With that, she turned and began making her way down the steps.

Mr. Arno returned
to work on Monday. Elizabeth, still raw from the bruising she'd gotten from Ingrid, greeted him with forced cheer and for the rest of the morning kept her head down on the off-chance that he hadn't yet gotten wind of the gossip. She was filing some papers when he stuck his head out of his office to bellow, “Miss Harvey, would you step into my office, please?”

Her heart began to pound, and she broke out in a light sweat. Was this it? Was she going to get the ax? Part of her hoped she would just so she'd be put out of her misery. Her main regret was that if she were to be fired, she wouldn't be able to save up enough money for her own apartment, which she'd made up her mind to do following the fit her mother had thrown after church on Sunday. She would have to find another job, and who would hire her now?

Mr. Arno was on a call when she walked in. A big man, he seemed to fill up the office, reducing it to the size of a phone booth as he paced behind his desk, the receiver to his ear. Elizabeth, waiting just inside the door, felt her tension mount, the faint, rhythmic thumping of heavy machinery underfoot matching the beating of her heart.
Please, let's just get this over with
, she pleaded silently.

Finally her boss hung up and, as if he'd just noticed Elizabeth standing there, gave a little grunt of acknowledgment and waved her toward the chair opposite his desk. Elizabeth sank into it, smoothing her skirt over her knees. She'd brought along her steno pad, just in case, but didn't expect to need it. It came as a surprise when Mr. Arno, instead of firing her, asked her to take down a letter.

She would never know how she managed it. It was a miracle that she was able to recall any shorthand at all, she was so preoccupied. When Mr. Arno finished dictating, she didn't get up right away, as she normally would. She remained seated, eyeing her boss anxiously. What now? Was she off the hook? Or was he just biding his time before he sent her packing?

But Mr. Arno only asked impatiently, “Yes, Miss Harvey? What is it?”

“Oh, I was just … nothing.” Flustered, she rose clumsily to her feet, accidentally dropping her steno pad. Quickly she bent to retrieve it. She straightened to find her boss eyeing her curiously.

“What's gotten into you today?” he growled. “You're jumpy as a cat on the Fourth of July. Was it something I said?”

“N-no, of course not,” she stammered, her cheeks on fire.

“What, then?”

“I, uh, I was just wondering …” She lost her nerve and asked instead, “Did you and Mrs. Arno have a nice vacation?” Oh, God. Why didn't she just walk away? What was the matter with her?

“Fine, thank you,” he replied gruffly. “If you can call two weeks of being holed up in a cabin with the in-laws a vacation. Take my advice, young lady, and don't get married until you're good and ready. Because you're not tying the knot with just one person—it's their whole damn family.”

She was surprised that Mr. Arno would confide in her. It was the first time he'd shared anything of a personal nature. “I don't think I'll be getting married for quite some time,” she told him.

“Now, why is that? I imagine a pretty young thing like you would have lots of offers,” he remarked, his grumpy expression giving way to a more fatherly one. Mr. Arno had four grown children, three of them daughters. One for each of his remaining hairs, he liked to joke.

“I had a boyfriend, but we broke up.” She felt a pang at the mention of Bob.

“Well, now, that's too bad. Though it doesn't surprise me. I hear you were a busy young lady while I was away.”

Elizabeth felt the fire in her cheeks spread to engulf her entire body. So he did know. She waited for the ax to fall, but incredibly her boss appeared nonplussed. Maybe he didn't know the whole story.

“I can explain,” she said.

“No need. It's all right here.” He fished a newspaper clipping, which some helpful employee must have left for him in his absence, from the inbox on his desk: the article in which it was reported that AJ was no longer under suspicion for the fire that had destroyed the Findlays' barn due to the timely intervention of one Elizabeth Harvey, who'd been with him the night of the alleged crime.

“Oh. I see.” She eyed her boss warily.

“No, I don't think you do. Sit down, Miss Harvey,” he ordered, causing her to abruptly drop back into her chair. He planted his meaty hands on the desk and leaned forward so they were eye to eye. “To be perfectly clear, I don't give a hoot what anyone says. I think it was a damned fine thing you did. Not many people in your shoes would have come forward like that. Especially not under the, ahem, circumstances.” As if taking note of her embarrassment, he added more gently, “I may seem like an old codger to you, but I was young once, too, you know. And believe me, I wasn't the only one feeling his oats back then. Any folks giving you a hard time, you can bet they were the ones picking the straw out of their hair when they were your age.”

Elizabeth could hardly believe what she was hearing. “Does this mean you're not going to fire me?”

Mr. Arno harrumphed. “Fire you? Now, why would I do that?”

“I know the only reason you hired me was as a favor to my mother,” she blurted.

He gave a knowing chuckle. “Well, now, I can't deny it. But if I know her, my keeping you on won't be the best news she's ever heard. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing she's fit to be tied right about now and that my turning a blind eye to all this won't sit too well with her.”

Elizabeth risked a small smile. “You seem to know her pretty well.” Mildred was so angry she'd like nothing more than to see her daughter thoroughly punished and stripped of any last shred of dignity.

“Indeed I do. We go way back, your mother and I. And I can't think of a more fitting way to repay the favor she did me, in introducing me to Mrs. Arno all those years ago, than to keep her wayward daughter in my employ,” he said, tipping Elizabeth a wink. “That way we're even.”

After her chat
with Mr. Arno, Elizabeth was feeling a little better as she drove home, but as soon as she was within sight of her house, any hope of spending a peaceful evening holed up in her room vanished.

An ambulance was parked in the driveway, its lights flashing.

She felt a surge of panic, thinking something had happened to Mildred. Some injury or attack brought on by Elizabeth having wished in moments of anger that her mother could know what it was to suffer. But as she charged past the group of concerned-looking neighbors gathered on the lawn, she could see her mother on the phone just inside the open door, pacing back and forth with the receiver to her ear. She hung up as soon as she spied Elizabeth.

“Where have you been?” Mildred cried, rushing to meet her. “I've been trying to reach you!”

“What is it?” Elizabeth asked in alarm.

“It's your grandmother.”

Elizabeth was seized with panic. “What happened? Is she going to be all right?”

“She's dead.”

“What?” Elizabeth felt the foyer start to revolve as if she'd stepped onto a moving carousel.

“She was unconscious when I went up to check on her after her nap,” Mildred went on in the same tone of barely contained hysteria. “By the time the ambulance arrived, it was too late. I tried calling you at work, but they said you'd already left. You were so long in getting here, I thought—” She didn't have to say it: It was written in her taut mouth and the set of her jaw. She thought Elizabeth had been with AJ.

“I came straight home,” Elizabeth reported in a dull voice. As if it mattered now.

“Well, you're too late.” A strange note, almost of glee, crept into Mildred's voice. Hectic stripes stood out on her cheeks, and her eyes glittered. “I hope you're satisfied. This is all your fault, you know.”

Elizabeth was instantly shocked back into awareness. “Mother! That's a horrible thing to say.”

“It's true,” her mother persisted in a loud voice, heedless of the neighbors hovering outside the open door. “All the trouble you've caused. Her heart just couldn't take it.”

Elizabeth knew that Mildred, in her present state, wasn't fully conscious of what she was saying. She also knew, from snide remarks her mother had let fall, that Mildred was jealous of the close bond she'd formed with her grandmother. But the hurtful words found their mark. Tears sprang to her eyes as she tried to push past her mother. “Where is she? Where are they taking her? I want to see her.”

Mildred moved to block her path. “Haven't you done enough? Can't you just leave her in peace?”

Elizabeth was crying openly now, tears running down her cheeks unchecked. Logically she knew she couldn't have had anything to do with her grandmother's death, but she felt guilty nonetheless. Suppose all the tension in the household
had
taken its toll? Look at her mother—she'd aged ten years in the past few weeks. She appeared almost haggard despite the fact that she was dressed impeccably, as always, in a flowered shirtwaist and pearls, not a hair out of place.

“I want to see her,” Elizabeth insisted.

She'd just started up the stairs when a pair of white-jacketed ambulance attendants appeared on the landing above, bearing a stretcher. She retreated, watching in dull-eyed disbelief as they carried it down, her gaze fixed on the lifeless, blanket-covered form strapped to it. In a kind of daze, she followed the attendants outside, where they loaded the stretcher into the ambulance before taking off. Not until the ambulance was disappearing around the corner onto Maple Drive—the route to the funeral home—did she realize she'd neglected to say a final good-bye.