The Ladies of Garrison Gardens (21 page)

Chapter Forty-four

MRS. RAIN

2004

T
HOUGHTS ABOUT HEART ATTACKS
and memories of the summer of 1933 were coming back to haunt her all the time. She couldn't shake them. Cherry knew something was bothering her and tried to help.

“Why don't you tell me some more of your stories, Mrs. Rain,” she suggested. “You know that always makes you happy. And I like hearing them.”

But the story that was haunting her was the one she wanted to tell Laurel McCready. She was starting to think she should write it all down now, while her mind was still intact. She could send it to Laurel as a letter. The idea appealed to her. A missive that would tell all her secrets. A dangerous missive. Or would it be? That was the question she kept coming back to: How risky would it be after all this time? And would it really help Ms. McCready to know the secrets? She'd been going back and forth over that in her mind for days. It was one thing to daydream about pouring out her soul; it was quite another to actually find out where Laurel lived and write her a letter laying out the terrible truth. She wasn't sure she could do it. She hated not being sure. Sometimes she thought she'd never been sure of one damn thing in her life—she looked around the hated sunporch—except how much she wanted to get out of this room.

“Cherry, when am I going to start using my own bedroom again?” she demanded.

The girl looked uncomfortable. “Mrs. Rain, you know what the doctor said.”

Cherry meant the genius specialist, not the infant physician, and what the genius had said was, “I'm afraid we can't be running up and down stairs just yet. Not until we get this pesky little hitch in our git-along under control.” It seemed he was famous for his bedside manner with the elderly.

“The doctor is a jackass.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Cherry, “but he's the doctor. And until he says you can move—”

“All right, all right,” she snapped.

It was unfair to take out all her frustrations on poor Cherry when she was really angry at herself for being so indecisive. From what she'd been able to piece together, Laurel McCready was young and inexperienced, with no family to support her. The girl must be trying to cope with the overwhelming legacy Peggy Garrison had left her. Picture her reaction if she got a letter telling her the truth about that legacy. Would it help her? Did she need help? Mrs. Rain sighed; she had to have something more to go on than the nagging voice in her head that said things were going badly for Laurel McCready.

“Cherry, run over to the post office and see if the
Charles Valley Gazette
has come this week,” she said. But instead of leaving the room, Cherry was staring at her as if she'd lost her mind. “What is it?” she demanded impatiently. “Why are you looking like that?”

“Don't you remember?” Cherry said gently. “The last issue said they were going out of business. We won't be getting the
Gazette
anymore.”

It had slipped her mind, that was all. There was no need for young Cherry to look at her like she was in the early stages of gaga-dom. She simply hadn't wanted to remember that the
Gazette
was gone. She'd hoped to keep track of Laurel Selene through the little newspaper. At some point they'd write an article about the new Garrison heir. And by reading between the lines, she'd know if Laurel Selene was all right. And then she'd know what to do.

“Of course I remember,” she said firmly to Cherry. But her voice just sounded tired and querulous. “Go away, Cherry dear. I want to rest,” she said.

“That's a good idea,” said the youngster, obviously relieved. “Shall I pull down the blinds for you?”

She nodded, but it didn't matter. Because she was going to close her eyes. And as soon as she did that, she'd be in her daydream again. She'd be sitting in front of Myrtis's big log house in Charles Valley, and she'd be telling Laurel Selene the story—all of it—about the young girl who had hidden away her past in a water-stained suitcase with a swirling
B
on the side.

Chapter Forty-five

LAUREL

2004

L
AUREL TOSSED
the old leather suitcase on the passenger seat of her car and took off for Li'l Bit's, where she knew she'd find Maggie and Li'l Bit together on the porch. It was Saturday afternoon, and she'd made a decision. It was time to let the Myrtis Garrison experts have a crack at the mystery. It was strange how her attitude about the great Miss Myrtis had shifted. At first she hadn't wanted to talk about the woman. Now she had a spooky feeling that there was a story attached to the suitcase and its contents that she needed to hear.

Part of the feeling came from the fact that she was still crammed into her tiny cabin with eleven dogs because she couldn't make herself move into the log palace she had inherited. The power-of-attorney form still sat in her drawer under her underpants because Sheralynn's cousin hadn't yet produced the resort's financial records. Meanwhile, for the last three days Stuart Junior had been leaving increasingly hostile messages on the answering machine she'd installed so she could dodge his phone calls.

She drove up Li'l Bit's driveway faster than usual, hoping she wasn't spraying gravel on Li'l Bit's carefully tended front yard. She was eager to get on with her proposed show-and-tell. She pulled up next to the brick path leading to the front porch, but before she could take the suitcase out, Maggie and Li'l Bit waved and Li'l Bit called out, “Laurel, there's someone I want you to meet.”

Then she noticed the vehicle parked directly ahead of her. It had a squashed-in back, a snub-nosed front, and it looked like a car Daffy Duck would drive in the old-time cartoons. It was one of the virtuous new hybrids, which operated on a combination of gas and electricity. She turned to the porch and saw who had to be the owner of the cartoon car, a young woman her age, sitting in Peggy's chair. An attack of kindergarten-level jealousy hit. Li'l Bit's place was her turf, and the sacred afternoon hours on this porch were her special domain. Who was this intruder? She shoved the suitcase down on the floor of her car, got out, and slunk across the front lawn, trying not to pout too visibly.

Li'l Bit handed her a beer. “This is Gloria,” she said, as the young woman pulled herself out of the wicker chair.

Gloria was almost as tall as Li'l Bit, but a lot skinnier. She wore neat dark shorts, a dark shirt, and a pair of clunky sandals that Laurel assumed were as comfortable as they were ugly. There was something vaguely familiar about her face.

“I'm Gloria Lawrence.” The young woman amended Li'l Bit's introduction, sticking out her hand. Then she exploded in her mother's unmistakable cackle. “I'm afraid you already know my daddy.”

Laurel realized she was shaking the hand of My Child.

“Gloria has decided to leave her job in New York—” Li'l Bit began.

“I got fired,” Gloria interrupted. “I suggested doing a story on the downside of Botox, and the former model now hosting my show objected on the grounds that it was ‘so totally a bummer.' Plus she couldn't say all the big words in the script.”

“So now Gloria is here in Charles Valley,” Li'l Bit went on, obviously uncomfortable about something.

Maggie was examining her nails, which meant she was uncomfortable too. “Gloria has come to interview us,” she murmured.

“She's going to do a story about Peggy,” Li'l Bit fluted nervously.

“For the
Charles Valley Gazette
,” Maggie added. “I'm sure you know Hank isn't going to be continuing with the newspaper.”

Everyone in town knew it.

But what the hell did that have to do with the smiling Gloria? And why were Li'l Bit and Maggie shooting her such worried looks?

“Gloria bought the
Gazette
, Laurel, dear,” said Maggie, ending the mystery.

My Child had bought the newspaper? Laurel's
Charles Valley Gazette
? Gloria was sitting again. She sipped something from a can. She'd not only co-opted Peggy's chair and Laurel's newspaper, she was drinking one of Laurel's beers!

“We wanted you to hear the news from us,” Li'l Bit put in.

“Gloria just told us,” Maggie added.

“There wasn't time to call you—” Li'l Bit said.

“Not that there was any need,” Maggie cut in quickly.

They were making a mess of this and they both knew it, but they were too concerned about her to be graceful, which was so sweet it almost took away the sting. Laurel had to bail them out. “Congratulations,” she said to Gloria. “The
Gazette
's been around for eighty years, and people will be real grateful to you for keeping it from going under.”

“Actually, it's my mother they should be thanking. She put up the money. I'm going to be the editor, but she owns it.”

So it was a family effort. Daddy would probably vet all the stories about Garrison Gardens and the resort.

As if reading her mind, Gloria said, “My mother has her own money. My father had nothing to do with this.” Laurel smiled as if she believed that horseshit. Gloria turned to Li'l Bit. “I'll come back and do the interview later,” she said.

“Please, don't let me stop you,” Laurel said, telling herself she should offer to go but knowing there was no way she was leaving. After the briefest of pauses, Gloria whipped out a tape recorder and began asking Li'l Bit and Maggie questions.

The interview seemed to go on forever, but maybe that was because Laurel was working on her not-pouting-and-being-a-good-sport technique, and it was going down hard. Finally, Gloria turned off the recorder.

“It's such a pleasure to talk about Peggy,” Maggie said. “What a lovely idea—writing an article about her in the newspaper, Gloria.”

“You ask excellent questions,” Li'l Bit added.

“The dogs will be starving. I've got to run,” said Laurel. “Nice meeting you, Gloria.”

“I should go too,” said Gloria.

Which was how Laurel found herself walking down to their cars together.

“So just how emotionally invested were you in the
Gazette
?” Gloria asked.

“Emotionally invested in working for Hank?”

Gloria did one of her mother's cackling laughs. “I meant, how much do you miss the newspaper?”

“I like writing, but I've been thinking lately that it wasn't really what I wanted to do or I'd have done it—” She broke off. Why was she spilling this to the woman who had just drunk two of her beers? “My job at the
Gazette
kept me from being a waitress,” she said briskly. “Working there was a bitch.”

“According to what I heard, Miss Peggy offered to buy it for you.”

So Gloria really did do her homework. Laurel shrugged. “Running things isn't a big strength of mine.”

“Isn't that going to be a little rough? Given your new . . . situation?”

“Not according to your daddy. I don't have to bother my purty little head about any of it.”

“My father gives new meaning to the word
retro
. So you're cool with me being editor of the
Gazette
?”

The woman didn't let up. “Of course.”

“Good. Then can I interview you too?”

“Why?”

“You're the new Garrison. A story on you will be a nice companion piece for the profile on Miss Peggy.”

“I'm—” Laurel stopped. “Look, I still haven't wrapped my brain around all of this.”

“I understand. It'd be freaking me out, too, if I were in your place.” Laurel decided Gloria must be one of those people who regularly put themselves in other people's places. “If you decide to do it,” Gloria continued, “there's an article I found in the archives that you wrote. I'd like to use some of it. It's very good.”

“Thanks. Can we talk about it later?”

“I'll call you in a couple of days. I want to get my first edition out next week. From what I can see, delivery of the paper's been erratic lately, and I don't want to lose the six or seven readers I still have.”

Obviously, Stuart Junior's daughter wasn't going to have any trouble running things.

“Nice car,” Laurel said, as they approached the Daffy Duck-mobile.

Gloria looked at it vaguely. “Is it? I'm not into cars. The dealer said it was earth-friendly.”