Winter Garden (22 page)

At 5:47 Meredith went for her run. The dogs raced along with her, eagerly vying for attention.

By seven o’clock, she was out in the orchard and walking the rows with her foreman, checking on the new fruit’s early progress, noting frost damage, and assessing the workers’ careful hand-wrapping of the apples, and by ten she was at her desk, reading crop projections.

But all she could really think about was the fairy tale.

I’m just going to ask it: Is she Vera?

The idea of that was like a budding apple; it flowered, grew, and gained mass. It seemed impossible that something you’d heard all your life and deemed irrelevant could actually be of value; it was like finding out that the painting above your fireplace was an early Van Gogh.

But it was true; she’d heard the words for years and simply accepted them at face value, never questioning, never looking deeper. Maybe all kids did that with family stories. The more you heard something, the less you questioned the veracity of it.

She put aside the crop reports and turned to her computer. For the next hour she ran random searches. Leningrad, Stalin, Vera, Olga (if she had been looking for Russian mail-order brides, the names would have been pay dirt), Fontanka Bridge, Great Terror. Bronze Horseman statue. Nothing of real value came up, just more and more evidence that the backdrop of the fairy tale was largely real.

She found a long list of Vasily Adamovich’s published works. He’d written about almost every facet of Russian and Soviet life, from the earliest days of the Bolshevik revolution, through the murder of the Romanovs and the rise of Stalin and the terrors of his regime, to Hitler’s attack during World War II, to the tragedy at Chernobyl. Whatever had happened to Russians in the twentieth century, he’d studied it.

“That’s a lot of help,” Meredith murmured, tapping her pen. When she added RETIREMENT to the search, she came up with an unexpected link to a newspaper article.

Dr. Vasily Adamovich, a former professor of Russian studies at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, suffered a stroke yesterday at his home in Juneau. Dr. Adamovich is well known in academic circles for his prolific publishing schedule, but friends say he is a master gardener and can tell a mean ghost story. He retired from teaching in 1989 and volunteered frequently at his neighborhood library. He is recovering at a local hospital.

Meredith picked up the phone and dialed information. The operator had no listing for a Vasily Adamovich in Juneau. Disappointed, Meredith asked for the library’s number instead.

“There are several listings, ma’am.”

“Give me all of them,” Meredith answered, making note of each branch’s phone number.

On the fourth call, she got lucky. “Hello,” she said. “I’m trying to find a Dr. Vasily Adamovich.”

“Oh, Vasya,” the woman answered. “No one has called for him in a while, I’m sad to say.”

“This is the library where he volunteered?”

“Two days a week for years. The high school kids loved him.”

“I’m trying to reach him. . . .”

“Last I heard he was in a nursing home.”

“Do you know which one?”

“No. I’m sorry. I don’t, but . . . are you a friend of Vasya’s?”

“My mother is. She hasn’t spoken to him in a long time, though.”

“You do know about the stroke?”

“Yes.”

“I heard he was in pretty bad shape. He has difficulty speaking.”

“Okay, well. Thank you for your help.” Meredith hung up the phone.

Almost simultaneously, Daisy walked into her office.

“There’s a problem down in the warehouse. Nothing urgent, but Hector wants you to stop by sometime today if you can. If you’re too busy, I’m sure I can solve it for you.”

“Yeah,” Meredith said, staring down at her notes. “Why don’t you do that?”

“And then I’ll go to Tahiti.”

“Um. Okay.”

“On the company credit card.”

“Uh-huh. Thanks, Daisy.”

Daisy crossed the room in a burst of energy and sat down in the chair opposite Meredith’s desk. “That’s it,” she said, crossing her arms. “Start talking.”

Meredith looked up. Honestly, she was surprised. What had Daisy been saying? “What?”

“I just told you I was going to Tahiti on the company dime.”

Meredith laughed. “So you’re saying I wasn’t listening.”

“What’s going on?”

Meredith considered that Daisy had been around the Whitsons for as long as anyone could remember. “When did you meet my mom?”

Daisy’s overplucked eyebrows lift ed in surprise. “Well, let’s see. I guess I was about ten. Maybe a little younger. It was all the buzz. I remember that. ’Cause your daddy was datin’ Sally Herman when he went off to war and when he came home, he was married.”

“So he barely knew her.”

“I don’t know about that. He was in love with her, though. My mom said she’d never seen a man so in love. She took care of Anya.”

“Who did?”

“My mom. For most of that first year.”

Meredith frowned. “What do you mean?”

“She was sick. You knew that, right? I think she was in bed for a year or so and then one day she just got better. My mom thought they’d be friends, but you know Anya.”

It was stunning news, really. Stunning. She didn’t remember her mother ever having so much as a cough. “Sick how? What was wrong with her?” What caused a woman to spend a year in bed? And what made her suddenly get better?

“I don’t know. Mom never said much about it, really.”

“Thanks, Daisy.” She watched Daisy leave the office and close the door behind her.

For the next few hours, Meredith managed to get a little bit of work done, but mostly she was thinking about her mother.

At five o’clock, she gave up the pretense and left the office, saying, “Daisy, will you run the warehouse check for me? If there’s a real problem, I’ll be on my cell. Otherwise I’m gone for the day.”

“You bet, Meredith.”

Ten minutes later, when she walked into her mother’s house, the smell of baking bread greeted her. She found her mother in the kitchen, draped in her big, baggy white apron, her hands sticky white with flour. As she had always done, she was making enough bread for an army. The freezer in the garage was full of it.

“Hey, Mom.”

“You are here early.”

“Business was slow, so I thought I’d come here and do some more packing for you. When I get it all organized, you and I should probably go through the giveaway piles.”

“If you wish.”

“Do you care what I keep and what I get rid of?”

“No.”

Meredith didn’t even know what to say to that. How could nothing be of importance to her mom? “Where’s Nina?”

“She said something about errands and left an hour ago. She took her camera, so . . .”

“Who knows when she’ll be back.”

“Right.” Mom turned back to her dough.

Meredith stood there a minute longer, then took off her jacket and hung it on the hook by the door. She started to go down the hall toward Dad’s office, but as she approached the open door, she paused. The last time she’d packed up Mom’s things, she hadn’t looked for anything, hadn’t gone through pockets or felt back in the drawers.

Glancing back at the kitchen, seeing Mom still kneading dough, she eased toward the stairs and went up to the master bedroom.

In the long, wide closet, her mother’s black and gray clothing lined the right wall. Almost everything was either soft merino wool or brushed cotton. Turtlenecks and cardigans and long skirts and flowy pants. There was nothing trendy or showy or expensive here.

Clothes to hide in.

The thought came out of nowhere, surprising her. It was the sort of thing she would have noticed before, if she’d ever really looked.

This telling of the fairy tale was changing their perceptions of everything, of each other most of all. With that thought came another: what was it about the play—and about the fairy tale—that had upset Mom so much all those years ago? Before, Meredith had always assumed that her mother’s Christmas play anger had been directed at Meredith, that in choosing to do the fairy tale as a Christmas play, Meredith had done something wrong.

But what if it hadn’t been about Meredith and Nina at all; what if it had been a reaction to seeing the words acted out?

She went deeper into the closet and stood in front of her mother’s chest of drawers. There was something in here that would reveal her mother. There had to be. What woman didn’t have some memento hidden far from prying eyes?

She closed the door until there was only the slimmest view of the room, and then she returned to the chest, opening the top drawer. Underwear lay neatly folded in three piles: white, gray, black. Socks were organized in similarly colored balls. Several bras filled out the corner. She let her fingers trail beneath it all, feeling the smooth wood of the drawer’s bottom. Guilt made her grimace but she continued through the second and third drawers, with their neatly folded sweaters and T-shirts. Kneeling, she opened the bottom drawer. Inside, she found pajamas, nightgowns, and an out-of-date bathing suit.

Nothing hidden. Nothing more personal than undergarments.

Disappointed and vaguely embarrassed, she closed the drawer. With a sigh, she got back to her feet and stood there looking at the clothes. It was all perfectly organized. Everything with a place and in it; the only thing that didn’t fit was a sapphire-blue wool coat hanging at the very back of the closet.

Meredith remembered the coat. She’d seen her mother wear it once—to a performance of The Nutcracker when she and Nina were little girls. Dad had insisted, had twirled Mom around and kissed her and said, “Come on, Anya, just this once . . .”

She reached back for it, pulled it out. The coat was a bright blue cashmere in a classic forties style, with broad shoulders, a fitted waist, and wide, cuffed sleeves. Intricately carved Lucite buttons ran from throat to waist. Meredith put it on; the silk lining was deliciously soft. Surprisingly, it fit pretty well; wearing it made her imagine her mother as young instead of old, as a smiling girl who would love the feel of cashmere.

But she hadn’t loved it, had rarely worn it. Neither, though, had she thrown it away, and for a woman who kept so few mementos, it was an odd thing to have saved. Unless she hadn’t wanted to hurt Dad’s feelings. It must have been expensive.

She put her hands in the pockets and twirled to look at herself in the full-length mirror behind the door.

That was when she felt it, something hidden, sewn into the lining behind the pocket.

She felt for the fraying edge of the secret compartment and worked it for a few seconds, finally extracting a tattered, creased black and white photograph of two children.

Meredith stared down at it. The image was slightly blurry and the paper was so creased and veined it was hard to see clearly, but it was two children, about three or four years of age, holding hands. At first she thought it was her and Nina, but then she noticed the old-fashioned, heavy coats and boots the kids were wearing. She turned the picture over and found a word written on the back. In Russian.

“Meredith!”

She flushed guiltily before she realized it was Nina, thundering up the stairs like an elephant.

Meredith opened the closet door. “I’m in here, Nina.”

Dressed in khaki pants and a matching T-shirt, with hiking boots, Nina looked ready to go on a safari. “There you are. I’ve been look—”

Meredith grabbed her arm and pulled her into the closet. “Is Mom still in the kitchen?”

“Baking enough bread for a third world country? Yes. Why?”

“Look what I found,” Meredith said, holding out the picture.

“You went snooping? Good girl. I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”

“Just look.”

Nina took the photograph and stared down at it for a long time and then turned it over. After a quick glimpse at the word, she turned it over again. “Vera and Olga?”

Meredith’s heart actually skipped a beat. “You think?”

“I can’t tell if they’re boys or girls. But this one kinda looks like Mom, don’t you think?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. What should we do with it?”

Nina thought about that. “Leave it here for now. We’ll bring it with us. Sooner or later, we’ll ask Mom.”

“She’ll know I went through her stuff.”

“No. She’ll know I did. I’m a journalist, remember? Snooping is my job description.”

“And I found out from Daisy that Mom was sick when she married Dad. They thought she’d die.”

“Mom? Sick? She never even gets a cold.”

“I know. Weird, huh?”

“Now I’m certain about my plan,” Nina said. “What plan?”

“I’ll tell you at dinner. Mom needs to hear this, too. Come on, let’s go.”

Nina waited with obvious impatience while Meredith returned the photograph to its hiding place and hung the coat back up. Together, they went downstairs.

Their mother was seated at the kitchen table. On the counter, there were dozens of loaves of bread and several bags from the local Chinese restaurant.

Nina carried the Chinese food to the table, positioning the white cartons around the vodka bottle and shot glasses.

“Can I have wine instead?” Meredith said.

“Sure,” Nina said absently, pouring two shots instead of three.

“You seem . . . buoyant,” Mom said.

“Like a Pekingese when the mailman comes,” Meredith added when her sister sat down across from her.

“I have a surprise,” Nina said, lifting her shot glass. “Cheers.”

“What is it?” Meredith asked.

“First we talk,” Nina said, reaching for the beef with broccoli, serving up a portion on her plate. “Let’s see. My favorite thing to do is travel. I love passion in all of its guises. And my boyfriend wants me to settle down.”

Meredith was shocked by that last bit. It was so intimate. To her surprise, she decided to match it. “I love to shop for beautiful things. I used to dream of opening a string of Belye Nochi gift stores, and . . . my husband left me.”

Mom looked up sharply but said nothing.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Meredith said at last. “I think maybe love can just . . . dissolve.”

“No, it does not,” her mother said.