“You’re right. So why don’t I start with them, the Wilmington people, and you can do the others,” he said. “We can start tonight even.”
Tonight. Suddenly, we were thirteen years old again, gangly and sure of ourselves and full of an almost feverish urgency to begin, begin, begin.
“But how will I get you the addresses?” I asked. “It would also be good if you had the shadow ledger entries that correspond with the dates of the people you’re contacting. I could type it all up, I guess.”
“You could, I guess,” said Dev.
There was a silence during which I was pretty sure the two of us were thinking the same thing. Yes, I could type up everything and send it, which would take a while, especially since there wasn’t Internet service at Edith’s house, or Dev could come to Blue Sky House. He was spending the summer in Wilmington, splitting his time, the way he usually did, between Cornelia and Teo’s and his mother’s houses, taking the train into Philadelphia to work every day. Wilmington was a scant two-hour drive from Antioch Beach. He could be here tomorrow morning or even tonight. I knew just how it would be: the two of us sitting at the kitchen table with the ledgers spread open in front of us, Dev’s face alternating between pensive and animated in the glow of his laptop, his eyes as full of streaming, darting life as a coral reef. We’d type and leaf through the ledgers and now and then break the quiet to voice ideas that would seem random to anyone else, anyone other than two people who’d been following the stone-skipping trails—bounce, bounce, bounce—of each other’s thoughts since they were kids.
It would’ve been so easy to ask him to come, but, at the very last second, something held me back. I don’t know what. I felt not ready, although for what I couldn’t exactly say. Not ready to not be alone in Edith’s house? Not ready to not be alone, period? Not ready to be alone with Dev? But that last possibility made no sense, so I discarded it. Still, the fact remained that I didn’t feel ready to invite Dev to Edith’s house, not yet, not quite.
Just as I was about to say I’d type everything up, go to the library or a coffee shop or something and send it to him, Dev said, “What if you take pictures of the relevant pages with your phone and text them to me? That’ll save you some work and save us some time.”
I let out my breath, even though I hadn’t realized I’d been holding it.
“Good idea,” I said.
In the end, over the course of a week, we only got three phone calls between the two of us, but they were enough. We confirmed what I’d known in my bones to be true: the shadow guests were real and had stayed in Edith’s house.
One man had been nine, and he remembered getting up early and coming downstairs before his parents woke up. There was a girl sitting in a chair reading a book. She was about his age, maybe a little younger, with dark, curly hair. He remembered that she was embarrassed about her dress because it wasn’t pretty and was too big for her. She told him that the dress was “borrowed” and that all her own pretty clothes were back at home. He remembered her mother showing up and telling her to shush, and he wondered why her mother seemed mad when all the girl had done was talk about her dress. According to the shadow ledger, the girl’s name was Elaine and her mother’s name was Dottie.
Another man, nearly ninety years old but sharp as a tack, had stayed with his family at Blue Sky House three times. He described Edith as quiet and gracious, the kind of person who could produce a bucket and spade out of thin air for the children to take to the beach and who packed a hell of a picnic lunch. On the third visit, he and his wife, Anne, woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of someone “sobbing her heart out,” so Anne had gone down to check on Edith. But when she got to the first floor, Edith was standing in the living room, dry-eyed and composed as ever. She told his wife that a guest staying in the downstairs bedroom had had a nightmare but that everything was all right now. By the time his family came down to breakfast the next morning, the guest was gone. According to the shadow ledger, the guest’s name was Kitty.
Another woman had been around fifteen when her family spent a weekend at Blue Sky House. A chronic insomniac, she’d been unable to sleep and was lying awake when she heard doors opening and shutting on the floor below. Worried and curious, she’d crept down the stairs to see what was happening and saw a woman with two black eyes—terrible looking, swollen almost shut—standing in the kitchen. She remembered being surprised because she hadn’t thought there were any other guests staying there. The next day, she expected to see the woman at breakfast, but even though the girl could hear someone moving around in a back room on the first floor, the woman never appeared. When the girl told her mother about the woman and her black eyes, her mother decided that Blue Sky House must attract a lower class of guest than she’d thought, and they never went back. That shadow guest’s name was Mary.
During that week, Dev and I talked every night, about what we’d taken to calling the Blue Sky House mystery (“Pure Nancy Drew,” I told Dev, gleefully) and about other things, too. I even told him about my breakup with Zach, although I knew he’d probably heard much of the story already. I hadn’t realized how deeply I’d missed this when Zach and I were together: putting my phone on speaker and letting Dev’s voice be my company.
The night he told me the story of the woman with two black eyes, I went to bed, tossed and turned, switched the light on and off, tried to read twice with no success, until I was struck so hard by an idea that, even though it was well after midnight, I called Dev.
Before he could even eke out a sleepy hello, I said, “What if Sarah weren’t the first? All this coming and going in the middle of the night or early morning. That girl wearing borrowed clothes as if she’d left in a rush and hadn’t had time to pack. The two black eyes. The shadow ledger is obviously keeping a secret. It’s kept it all these years. What if the secret is that John Blanchard and Edith were running some kind of escape route, an underground railroad for battered women?”
Out of breath, I waited.
“You might be right,” said Dev. “Clare, I bet you’re right.”
My eyes burned, my mouth trembled. When I touched my cheek, I discovered I was crying.
“I think I am,” I said.
“Are you crying?” asked Dev.
“It’s just that—well, I’m lying here in her house, you know? And I’m thinking who does something like that? Because it would have to have been risky, right? Back then, in the fifties, especially. And I met her, this brave person who did this thing, and I talked to her and now I’m in her house, this house that she gave me that all those women and children passed through, and I miss her so much. I wish she were here, so I could talk to her and—and do something nice for her, give her something, and I will never be able to.”
“Maybe you are,” said Dev, slowly. “It could be that this is what Edith wanted, for you to find out her story. Maybe this is the thing you’re giving her.”
Startled, I wiped my eyes and considered what he’d said.
“Do you think it matters, though? Edith is dead. Can it possibly matter when she’s not here to know about it?”
And Dev said, “Yes.”
Chapter Seventeen
Edith
June 1954
Six months in, John found her out.
When she thought about it afterward, after Alice and her children were gone, after John came back and stood on her porch for the second time in two days, as close to truly angry as she’d ever seen him, and said, “I hope to God you know what you’re doing, Edith,” she realized he had been bound to find out sooner or later. Because if John Blanchard were good at anything, and he was good at many things, it was paying attention. Also, and perhaps more significantly, he loved her. How far that love went, whether it crossed over from simple friendship into the territory of being in love, she wasn’t sure, and he never let on, but she knew this: John Blanchard was her best friend and he loved her. He loved her and looked out for her and, moreover, seemed instinctively to underst
and when she was sad or worried or hungry for conversation or for the matchless, soul-nourishing camaraderie of laughing with another person. So when she began keeping a secret from him, it made sense that he would know this, too.
The June night that Alice and her two children, a one-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy, were to arrive at Blue Sky House, Edith was more nervous than usual. She’d gotten word the night before that because of some kind of safety concern that forced them to leave the place they were coming from, wherever that was, they would be arriving earlier than was usual for downstairs guests, as Edith had come to think of them, at around ten o’clock, instead of after midnight or just before dawn. Fortunately, there were no upstairs guests booked for that night, but ten seemed so early. Some houses along her street, as sedate as the street was, would no doubt still have lights on; people might even be out, walking dogs or coming home after a late dinner in a restaurant. To distract herself from worrying, Edith kept busy, tidying up the already pin-neat downstairs bedroom, getting the chicken out of the oven and carving it. By now she knew that the women who came either had no appetite or were ravenous, and, if they didn’t fall asleep immediately, the children would almost always eat. By 9:45, though, Edith was so jittery that all she could do was sit in a kitchen chair and watch the clock.
At 9:55, a knock at her door—the front door, not the back—scared her so much that she jumped out of her chair. Alice must have gotten her instructions wrong. Heart drumming, hands shaking, Edith opened the door, ready to hustle the three of them in as quickly as she could. But it was John. He wore street clothes rather than his uniform, and in his hand was a book about birds he’d borrowed the week before. His smile vanished as soon as he saw her, and she knew he’d noticed, as of course he would, her flustered state.
“Hey,” he said, taking a step toward her, concern in his eyes. “Are you all right?”
Edith brushed her hand over her hair and forced out a laugh. “Oh, my! I guess I was lost in thought when you knocked, and it startled me nearly out of my skin. How ridiculous I am!”
She stepped out onto the porch, trying to keep outwardly calm, while inwardly, she sifted frantically through her options, the best of which seemed to be getting rid of John as quickly as possible.
“Are you sure that’s all?” he asked.
“Well, the truth is I feel a bit feverish. I think I’m getting a cold, and I would hate to give it to you. There’s nothing so crummy as a summer cold, is there?”
“I’m sorry you’re not well. Want me to run out for anything? Orange juice? Tea? Cold medicine?”
“You’re so kind, but no. I’m all stocked up on, well, just about everything! Now, you should go before I infect you.”
But John stood his ground, and just then, Edith heard a faint knocking on the back door. John heard it, too. He craned his neck, trying to look past her, through the house.
“Was that knocking?” he said.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said, glancing over her shoulder.
The knocking came again, this time louder.
John’s eyes met hers. “There’s someone at your door, Edith. Are you expecting someone?”
“Well, I—” She paused, her mind racing. “You know, some guests were supposed to arrive this evening, but they never did. I bet that’s them.”
“At your back door? I didn’t see a car drive up.”
“Oh, it happens that way sometimes. You know how people can be,” she said, airily. “I should really go and let them in. I’ll see you soon, John.”
She turned to go, but John’s hand stopped the door from shutting behind her.
“I don’t feel good about this,” he said. “I think you should let me go see who it is.”
He stepped into the house, just as the back door opened and a tentative voice called, “Hello? Is anyone here?” and then, sharply, “Johnny! Come back here!” Footsteps, and then a small boy with dark hair and a toy truck in his hand appeared, running toward them through the house. When he saw them, he skidded to a stop at the edge of the kitchen and stared, open-mouthed.
“Hello,” said John. He smiled and crouched so that he was eye level with the boy. “I see you’ve got a truck there.”
Mutely, the boy nodded uncertainly, but then a second later, he held the truck out for John’s inspection. “It’s a dump truck,” he said. “You can put stones in it. Or dirt.”
“Johnny, darling.” A woman with a baby cradled in one arm stepped out of the shadowed living room and into the light. John stood up when he saw her, and at the sight of him, she froze, her eyes darkening and darting from John’s face to Edith’s. She touched a hand, a long, beautiful hand, to her lip, which was swollen and crusted over with blood, and then moved it to her bruised cheek. When Johnny ran to her and threw his arms around her legs, she winced with pain.
“It’s all right,” said Edith, softly. “This is my friend John. I told him that sometimes guests make a mistake and come to the back door.”
The woman drew herself upright and gave John and Edith a smile with her swollen lips that would break anyone’s heart. “Please forgive my mistake. Johnny ran around back before I could stop him, and I saw the door and just knocked. So thoughtless of me.”
“Don’t give it a second thought,” Edith said. “It’s fine, just fine.”
“I just stopped in to drop off this book I borrowed,” said John, giving the woman his kindest smile and handing the book to Edith. “I’ll make myself scarce, now.”
“I think I’ll walk him out,” said Edith to Alice. “Please make yourself at home.”
Out on the porch, as soon as the front door was shut behind them, John turned and said, “Edith.”
“I told you it was just my guests,” she said, meeting his serious blue gaze. “And it is. There’s nothing to worry about.”
John lifted his hand toward her, as if to touch her arm, then shook his head and let the hand drop to his side. “I’ll be back tomorrow night,” he said. “We need to talk.”
The following night, he stood on her porch again, and said this: “Three days ago, at the station, we got a wire, one that went out to all the police stations in this area, to be on the lookout for the wife of a high-ranking military man in Portsmouth, Virginia, who had left in the middle of the night with her two children.”
Despite the June mugginess, a chill went through Edith. “Oh?” she said, as casually as she could. “Why this area in particular?”
“Apparently, she has family in Kent County. It seemed possible that she would take the children there, but she didn’t and is therefore still at large.”
Edith swallowed her sigh of relief. Blue Sky House was safe, at least for the moment, but there was still John to contend with. “‘At large’? Sounds more like a missing persons case to me.”
John shook his head and said, grimly, “She’s considered a kidnapper. That woman is a fugitive, Edith.”
Keeping a cool head was obviously her best hope of deflecting John’s attention from the goings-on in Blue Sky House. Edith knew this; she really did, but still her temper flared. “A kidnapper? They’re her own children, aren’t they? And tell me this, John, has it occurred to anyone that if a woman takes a risk like that, she must have her reasons?”
John sighed. “Edith, the woman and her children who came to your back door two nights ago match the description of Alice Finlay and her two children exactly, down to the curls on that little boy’s head.”
Edith averted her eyes, staring off through the porch screen to the yard beyond. Her azaleas were having an especially good year. It was dark outside now, but in the daytime, you could barely see the leaves for the pink riot of flowers. “Did this description of yours mention her fat lip, the bruises covering the entire left side of her face?” she asked, quietly, her eyes on the azaleas. “Did it include her broken ribs and collarbone?”
“No,” said John.
“Of course not,” said Edith, bitterly. “So I don’t see how it cou
ld possibly have been the same woman.”
“Are they still here?”
“You came to arrest them, is that it?” she said, clenching her hands into fists. “That broken woman and her baby and her little boy.”
John took her arm, gently, a kind, light touch, but she twitched it away.
“I don’t think anyone really wants to arrest Alice Finlay,” said John.
“There are all kinds of prisons,” she snapped. “So answer me: Is that why you came, to take that woman and her children back to theirs?”
“I came to see if they were still here,” said John, wearily.
She turned blazing eyes on him. “Well, they aren’t. They aren’t the people you’re—hunting down. And they aren’t here. They decided they weren’t quite up for a vacation right now, so they left just before dawn.”
John looked spent, faded, his face drawn into tight lines. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, and Edith recalled another time she’d seen him do this: the morning they’d found the bodies of the poor, drowned Driver twins. Without wanting to, she remembered how tenderly John had lifted Robbie Driver and placed him in the bottom of the boat, but, impatiently, she shook off the memory. That time, John had been on the side of right. He had always, since she’d met him, been on that side, but not tonight, not now that he had become one of the people who wanted to send Alice and her children back to what was surely the opposite of home.
“They weren’t the people you were looking for,” she said.
“Listen to me.” John leaned toward her, gestured with his hands. “These people coming and going in the dark. Strange cars on your street at all hours. If I’ve noticed, other people will. Just the other day, Walter down at the drugstore remarked to me that your guests must be especially accident-prone with all the gauze and bandages and Bacitracin you’ve been buying. And my God, what about the other guests, the ones who come in the front door in the daylight? It might take time, but they will notice. And then you’ll be a target, and I—” John’s voice faltered. “And I can’t have that,” he said.