Summer at Hideaway Key Read online

He sighed, half shrugging, half shaking his head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t here then. I just know Rhona likes to talk, and that she isn’t always right when she does. Every word she said in there could be true. Or it could all be lies. I’d just hate to see you base your opinion of your aunt on anything she says.”

  “It’s nice of you,” Lily said quietly. “Trying to protect me. Thanks.”

  For a moment she wasn’t sure he’d heard her. He was staring out the window, as if focused on something miles away. Finally, he nodded, then dropped the truck into reverse. “Gossip can be a vicious thing—especially when it’s true.”

  Lily eyed him as he backed out of the parking lot, his face unreadable in the soft blue glow of the dashboard lights. He’d meant the words kindly, but there had been an unmistakable edge to his voice that made her wonder if he might be speaking from personal experience. Had there been rumors about his mother, gossip that had been especially painful for a young boy to hear?

  It seemed likely, and would certainly explain his words of caution. But it was different for her. Dean had known his mother, and loved her presumably, while Lily-Mae would always remain a stranger. There were no illusions to shatter, no feelings to hurt. She wasn’t emotionally invested in her aunt’s past, only curious, which was why, despite Dean’s warnings, she was going to have lunch with Rhona Shoemaker tomorrow and see what else the woman did or didn’t know.

  Until then, she’d keep trying to reach her mother and throw herself back into the notebooks, not that they would shed much light on the grown-up Lily-Mae. They’d been written long before the hiding and drinking and men at all hours. Long before Paris, too. But for now, they were what she had.

  ELEVEN

  November 23, 1955

  Mt. Zion Missionary Poor Farm

  I wish I could say I don’t remember.

  I wish I could say it, but I can’t. If I live a hundred years, or even a thousand, I’ll always, always remember—and wonder if there was some way I could have stopped what happened. If I had run, or screamed . . . or killed him.

  I didn’t do any of those things, though. I didn’t do anything.

  Zell was stretched out in the chair behind his desk when I walked in, fuming on one of his cigarettes while another one smoldered in the ashtray behind him. It’s a habit he has, lighting a new cigarette before he’s finished the last one. Sometimes he has three going at one time. I didn’t care about his habits right then, though. I was more worried about the way he was looking up at me through all that smoke.

  He was smiling, not the pious smile he wears for his flock, but a sharp little half smile that made my throat thicken and my blood go cold. That’s when I remembered it was the second Wednesday of the month, and that on the second Wednesday of the month Sister Ruth went into Ransom to see the doctor. He was always friendlier on those days, always patting me on the knee and forgetting to take his hand away, or brushing up against me like it was an accident when we both knew it wasn’t. But today was different somehow. I could see it in his eyes, like he’d made up his mind about something, and that something had to do with me.

  I turned away, grabbed the first stack of papers I could find, and scurried to the filing cabinet, praying, praying, that I was wrong. I heard the creak of leather, the sound that meant he was getting up out of his chair, then the cold snick of the door being locked. A moment later he was behind me, reeking of sweat and stale smoke.

  “We’re friends, aren’t we, Lily-Mae?”

  I stared down at my shoes, trying to think how to answer. I wasn’t his friend, and I didn’t want to be, but I knew that was the wrong thing to say. I nodded instead, and kept fumbling with my papers. I thought if I just kept busy, if I kept my head down, maybe he’d forget whatever it was he’d made his mind up about.

  It didn’t work. I could still feel his eyes on me, the weight of them cutting between my shoulder blades, paring me like an apple, right down to my core. I closed my eyes when he touched me, a single finger traced slowly along my cheek.

  “Very good friends, yes. The best of friends.”

  His voice was silky and raspy all at once, a breathy crooning that made my legs start to tremble. And then, before I could think how to stop it, it was happening. There was no pretending, today, as his hands began to roam, no mistaking his meaning when he pressed his hips to mine, whispering things that made my skin crawl.

  I heard a voice in my head—a voice like Mama’s—screaming at me to get away, but there was nowhere to go, no route of escape. I opened my mouth, ready to scream, when I felt the flat of Zell’s hand against my cheek, the crack of it so unexpected that for a moment white lights danced behind my eyes. And then he was smiling again, stroking the cheek where he’d just left his handprint.

  “Hush now, and be a good girl. I won’t hurt you. We’re friends, remember. Good friends.”

  He pulled me to his chair and dragged me into his lap—like Daddy used to do to Mama when he’d come home with liquor on his breath and winnings in his pocket. His face was so close I could see the place on his chin where he’d nicked himself shaving, and the sweat in tiny beads along his upper lip.

  “Yes. Yes. Such a good girl. Such a beautiful child.”

  Bile scorched up into my throat as he began to fumble with the buttons of my blouse, his fingers sticky as they plunged inside, groping and pinching until tears sprang to my eyes. If he noticed, he didn’t care. Without a word, he shoved me off his lap and sprawled me back onto the desk, sending a pencil cup clattering over the edge and onto the bare wood floor. I squeezed my eyes shut as my sweater was pushed back, the rest of my buttons greedily undone.

  And then, for one desperate moment, I thought I heard a noise, something or someone at the window. But when I opened my eyes there was no one there—only Zell with his suspenders dangling around his hips and his trousers gaping open.

  No one was coming to save me.

  I was shaking so hard I thought I might come apart as he raked up my skirt and pried my knees apart. Time slowed then, like a moving picture running at half speed, and suddenly it was as if I had stepped out of my skin and was watching it all happen to some other girl. And then, because I didn’t want to watch it happen—not even to that other girl—I squeezed my eyes shut again, and willed myself far, far away, out of that room and out of my body, back to the old tire swing in front of our house, barely aware of my head thumping against Zell’s big black Bible as he battered his way into me.

  When he was finished I slid from the desk and pulled my clothes together, dimly aware of the stickiness between my thighs, and the urgent need to scour every last trace of him from my skin with a bar of Sister Ruth’s strong lye soap. He was fumbling with his suspenders, mopping his face with the limp handkerchief he always kept in his pocket, doing his best to avoid my eyes. I was glad. I knew if he looked at me he would see the hatred I felt for him at that moment—the hatred I will always feel.

  I had edged all the way to the door when he seemed to notice me again, and took me by the wrist. “Fornication is a sin, Lily-Mae. Doubly so for women, who were made to be man’s downfall. We must pray together, and beg forgiveness for yielding to the temptations of the flesh.”

  The Bible says that sinning in your heart is the same as sinning in deed. If that’s true I committed murder at that moment. I wanted to scream, to rage at him that I had nothing to pray about, no sins that needed forgiving—that the weakness, the vileness, was not mine, but his! But the words wouldn’t come. They were stuck in my throat, almost choking me as he dragged me to my knees and began to pray in his Sunday-morning voice. His fingers were still around my wrist, squeezing until my hand began to tingle and go numb. And there I stayed—for Mama’s sake, and for Caroline’s—pretending to pray to a God I want no part of.

  I don’t know how long I stayed in the shower afterward.

  I only know it wasn’t long enough, that there will
never be enough showers, or days, or tears to wash away the stain of Harwood Zell. His smell might be gone from my skin, his seed and my blood scrubbed from my thighs, but no amount of scrubbing will ever erase what he’s done.

  Afterward, when I was alone, I forced myself to look at my body in the bathroom mirror, at all the places Zell had had his hands. Like a bruised piece of fruit, I expected the damage to show, for the spoiled places to be mottled and black. They weren’t, and for that at least I was grateful.

  I skipped supper. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him in the mess hall, of listening to him say grace in that pious, quaking voice of his, as if he hadn’t just broken half the commandments. Instead, I went for a walk, out to the pond behind the cow barn. It isn’t much of a pond, really, just a triangular-shaped gouge in the earth, filled with muddy water and cow dung. But it reminds me of home. I didn’t care that it was freezing and almost dark, or that I’d forgotten to bring my coat. I was alone, which was all I wanted. I gathered a handful of stones as I stepped to the water’s edge. It was a game Caroline and I used to play, to see who could throw the farthest. I let her win most of the time, because she was younger, and because she pouted for days when she lost at anything. But I didn’t want to think about Caroline just then, or about Mama, or home. It all seemed too far away, too lost.

  I could feel the tears burning in my throat, but I didn’t want to cry. If I started I might never stop. I tossed the first stone, watching as the dark water swallowed it up, imagined it sinking to the cold, quiet bottom—wishing I could sink there, too. Instead, I hurled another stone at the pond, farther this time, and harder. Then another, and another, flailing blindly at the water’s inky surface as the rage came again, threatening to drown me with its invisible waves. I kept throwing until I had spent my stones and my strength, and then, emptied, sank to my knees in the muck, keening it all out at last.

  I was frozen through by the time I returned to the dorm, wanting nothing but the warmth of my cot and the escape of sleep. I heard the usual chatter as I approached the door, muffled voices leaching out around closed windows, almost happy sounds now that the day’s work was over. But the chatter died as I stepped through the door, a heavy hush that grew thicker with every step I took toward my cot.

  And then I saw it—the nest of small objects at the center of the blanket—a tangle of ribbons, a pair of butterfly barrettes, a copy of Anne of Green Gables. And Chessie. All things I had passed on to Caroline, some of them from Zell, and now she had given them back. I scooped them up, but I knew it was too late. The others had already seen, and like me, were wondering what it meant.

  But Caroline was nowhere to be found. Finally, just before lights-out, she appeared, her hands and lips blue with cold, her chin sticking out the way it does when she’s angry. I waited for her to launch into one of her tirades, to wail and gnash it all out of her system. But this felt different somehow, colder, and in a way I can’t explain, more final, as if something between us had been severed. For a moment I wondered if she knew about Zell and what he’d done. But that was impossible. No one knew, or would ever know—Caroline, least of all.

  She wouldn’t look at me, and didn’t utter a single word as she stripped out of her dress and dragged on her nightgown, just crawled into bed and turned her back to me. It hurt to see her turn away, especially now, when I needed her most. Then I remembered how young she is, and that she’s supposed to lean on me, not the other way around. She’ll calm down. She always does—usually in the middle of the night, when she wakes up and remembers where she is.

  Long after lights-out, I lay awake, listening to the wind rattling the windows, waiting for the familiar creak of Caroline’s cot springs. It never came.

  November 26, 1955

  Mt. Zion Missionary Poor Farm

  Zell has gone away.

  Not for good, but for three full weeks, which is at least some small mercy. He left the morning after, lit out all of a sudden for a revival in Knoxville no one knew anything about—including Sister Ruth, if the whispers are to be believed. And there’s been plenty of whispering going on of late, most of it about me, and why I’ve suddenly been sent back to the kitchen.

  I don’t care. Let them whisper. I was so relieved not to have to go back to Zell’s office I nearly cried when I was told. Sister Ruth has been keeping a close eye on me. She’s wondering if I’m the reason her husband has left so suddenly. I wonder that, too, if it was guilt that drove him away, if he was ashamed of what he’d done. Not that it can possibly matter now. Like Mama used to say, what’s lost is lost, and what’s done is done. Please, God, let it be done. Please let him be finished with me. But in my bones I know he isn’t.

  Making a deal with the devil. That’s what Mama called it the day I walked in and found her on the couch with a man she met on one of her shifts at the truck stop. She said with Daddy not coming back we were in trouble, and that sometimes a woman had to make a deal with the devil in order to protect her angels. I suppose that’s what I’ve done, too—with Zell—made a deal with the devil to protect Caroline. I wonder if it’s what Mama had in mind all along when she dragged that promise out of me, and then drove off.

  Maybe not in so many words, but it’s what she would have done, too. I know that now, but wish I didn’t. The thought of it—a deal with the devil—sickens me. Men don’t have to make those kinds of deals. They’re always on the other end, the receiving end—the devils holding all the cards and setting all the terms.

  I try not to think too much about Mama these days. It’ll be Christmas soon, our third at Mt. Zion, and we haven’t had a word from her, not at Thanksgiving, and probably not at Christmas, either. I know she isn’t coming back for us, that she’s sick—or worse. I don’t say any of this to Caroline, but then, we don’t talk much these days.

  She spends her time with the other girls, the ones who shoot me dirty looks and talk behind my back. Maybe she’s just growing up, outgrowing her need for me, but it feels like something else, like maybe she’s heard the talk about me and Zell and believes what she’s heard.

  I still haven’t breathed a word to her about what happened, and I never will. She’s too young to know about such things, and even if she weren’t, I’m not sure I could ever bring myself to say them out loud. It’s my way of protecting her, of keeping my promise, by pretending I’m fine, and that nothing has changed.

  Everything has changed, though.

  All I think of now is leaving this place, of waiting until everyone’s asleep and slipping away, of disappearing down that dirt road, of being gone when the sun comes up. I could, too, if I made up my mind to do it. There’s no fence, no gate to keep us in. We’re free to go whenever we choose. And every cell in my body screams to go, to put this place—and Harwood Zell—behind me. I’m strong, smart. I could get a job, two if I had to. I could find a place to stay, and a way to feed myself. But it isn’t just me. How would I take care of Caroline?

  All this time I’ve been trying to keep my promise to look after her, to keep her safe until Mama comes back. Only she isn’t coming back. I know that now, and that the real reason I cling to that promise is because it’s my way of holding on to the woman who asked it of me. It doesn’t change anything. Caroline is still mine to look after, and until I can work out how to do that on my own, I’m stuck here, at the mercy of Harwood Zell.

  TWELVE

  1995

  Hideaway Key, Florida

  Lily was still rattled as she drove to meet Rhona Shoemaker for lunch. The more she learned about Lily-Mae’s childhood—and her mother’s—the more stunned she was that it had remained hidden at all. One thing was becoming clear: her mother’s animosity toward Lily-Mae had begun long before Roland St. Claire entered either of their lives.

  She had managed to get through the fourth notebook after Dean dropped her back at the cottage the night before, adding several new questions to the growing list of thing
s she’d ask her mother if she ever managed to get her on the phone. She had tried again, just before leaving to meet Rhona, but as usual, the machine had picked up. Caroline was being either extremely petulant or extremely evasive. It wasn’t going to work, though; sooner or later she was going to have to pick up the phone. Right now, Lily wanted to hear what the local fortune-teller had to say.

  Rhona was waiting when she arrived, seated on the deck in the shade of an enormous patio umbrella, a glass of iced tea sweating in one gnarled hand. The flower in her hair today was yellow, her voluminous muumuu printed with green and yellow birds.

  Lily ducked into the seat across from her with an awkward smile, Dean’s words of warning suddenly playing in her head.

  “Thanks for agreeing to meet me, Rhona.”

  “After all the fuss last night, I’m surprised you asked.”

  “I never knew my aunt. She and my mother had this sibling rivalry thing going on, so there was never much talk about her in our house—at least not nice talk—so nothing you say about her is going to surprise me. I’m just on a fact-finding mission.”

  “Why?” Rhona asked, swirling her tea glass. “Why now? And why from me? People around here’ll tell you, if they haven’t already: I get as much wrong as I do right.”

  They had told her, but she wasn’t about to share that with Rhona. “Because there is no one else,” she said finally. “My mother won’t talk about her, and my father’s dead. I just want to know what you know.”

  Or think you know.

  Lily grabbed the menu as the waitress approached, and after a quick scan ordered a salad. She waited while Rhona dithered, then finally settled on a crab cake sandwich and fries. When the waitress moved away, Rhona folded her hands beneath her chin, leaning forward almost conspiratorially.

  “I was young when your aunt moved in across from us. And pretty naïve. Most of what I remember is stuff I overheard my mother and Gran saying. And the rumors. There were lots of rumors.”