Single-minded pilots like Dex and Lawrence have their drawbacks; it might have been interesting to get lost for a few minutes on these quaint streets. Or even to slow down when Janetta pointed out landmarks of interest like the Temperance Hotel from 1900. We did agree to meet at a coffee shop bakery on the main street where I would walk and wait for them if the visit with Laura became tedious.
Laura Owens' little house stood on one of the side streets leading up a hill. I was surprised to see a number of miner-style bungalows, but the others had been refinished more recently and, in some cases, enlarged. Laura's sagging glassed-in verandah and flaking white siding with a few remaining slivers of blue trim spoke of neglect but not abandonment. The front yard was spread with small stones. “Less grass to cut,” said Lawrence. “Someone did her a favour.”
Janetta shook her head in wonder. “It didn't hit me on my last trip that this is the original mining cottage where Mother went to live after her mother died. It must have been repainted and reshingled â quite a while ago from the looks of it â but the structure is over a hundred years old.”
Sliding out of the back seat, my curiosity gave way to apprehension. I almost hoped there would be no answer when I rapped lightly on the glass door of the cold, empty porch before letting myself through to the main entrance. Janetta and Lawrence stayed parked on the street, like parents seeing their daughter safely into a new school. I knocked gently again, three times, and was about to turn back when a little old lady in a loose black dress opened the door.
“Laura Owens?” I asked, feeling like Gretel at the gingerbread house.
When she nodded, I said in a rush: “I'm your cousin Arabella Dryvynsydes â second or third or fourth, who knows? Sara Hughes was my grandmother. She lived with your family as a child and spoke lovingly of you.”
From a head and body that quavered uncontrollably, she regarded me with more shrewdness than suspicion. Finally she spoke in a voice that came in little puffs between tremors, as if someone was giving her the Heimlich manoeuvre after every word. Like Katharine Hepburn. Even her grey hair was pinned up at the back and rolled at the front in the same style, but that's where the similarity to the actress ended. Laura's face was round, her grey eyes wide. “You may come in.”
I turned, waved Janetta and Lawrence on their way, and followed her into the house. Nose-clogging staleness attested to the years that were layered here. If I were to compare home odours of this trembling old lady and the trembling not-so-old man we had visited the day before, I'd say both could be traced to infrequent laundry and baths, but this place gave off a dry mustiness of mothballs and dust where Andy Lambert's trailer reeked of damp, smoky, mildewy, leaky dog smells.
Inside, the house was more spacious than it appeared. I'd taken calls to similar-sized bungalows that had not started out as miners' cottages. The living room opened onto a large kitchen at the back, and through an archway to a corridor on the left could be seen two small bedrooms and a bathroom. What distinguished it from my clients' residences in Burnaby was that it was crammed with religious mementoes. I was no stranger to Hindu and Sikh prayer rooms, but could not remember seeing Christian adornment on this scale. The Lord's Prayer carved out of lace hung on a feature wall; three-dimensional plaster plaques of hands praying, crosses, and the head of Jesus were mounted all over the remaining walls. Ceramic figurines of the Virgin Mary, Jesus holding a lamb, lambs by themselves, and Jesus by Himself stood on every table and shelf, underlaid by doilies. Yellowed doilies also covered the arms of an old brown velvet sofa and easy chair. Was the largest disintegrating piece of lace on the back of the sofa what Sara had in mind when she made jokes to me as a kid about not sitting on Auntie Mc-Cassar? Thinking of Sara in this very house caused me to catch the breath I was so cautiously inhaling. In my mind I morphed the little girl in the picture from a child through puberty to the young woman she was when she escaped, all without guidance or encouragement. Laura Owens now waited for me at the kitchen table, so I left this museum and sat down across from her.
“Where did Sara sleep?” I asked.
She pointed to a room off the kitchen, probably added on to the original house by Uncle Thomas â was that also where his mother ended her days? The door was open and I could see a faded yellow chenille bedspread. “In there. I slept there too. Still do.”
The old lady seemed remarkably unfazed by a stranger twice her size firing questions at her. In my head was Sara's voice: “Be gracious, use your manners. She's frail.” Laura Owens might be stooped and shrunken, but from what I could see, she was not delicate. Through her tremors she stared unblinkingly, almost like a war criminal who had been expecting me. Not surprised, not sorry.
“Thank you for letting me visit, Laura â or do you prefer Miss Owens?”
“Laura.”
I complimented her on her independence and asked about her health. She said she had no complaints for a woman of almost ninety. Some stiff joints and failing eyesight, but with the grace of God, Meals on Wheels, and home care for cleaning and cutting the back grass, she still had the strength to look after herself.
“Would you mind if I looked in the bedroom? To imagine Sara in it.” She nodded and tried to pull herself from the chair. “Don't bother to get up.”
“Used to be two cots for us,” she called in her helium voice, as I surveyed the double bed where she now slept. “When I had a bad dream, Sara would push them together, then back again in the morning before Mommy saw.”
I spotted Mommy in a sepia photo on the wall. A large woman with a no-nonsense face looking out of place in a wedding dress. Next to her stood a shy-looking man even more out of place as a bridegroom. Jane's big brother Thomas. “Why did your mother not want you and Sara to be close?”
“She thought Daddy had to give too much to his family. His mother lived with them, and then they were forced to take in Sara, another mouth to feed.”
From a second picture of Lizzie as an older woman, perhaps dressed for church in a colourful shawl, I guessed that if an extra mouth were to be added to their household she would want it transplanted in her own face.
Laura added, “Things were hard. Money was scarce.” She identified the two other pictures in her room as Edna and Myrtle and their families, both older sisters long gone.
“Do you see much of your nieces and nephews?” I asked, rejoining her at the kitchen table. “No. They live their own lives.”
“Did you know Sara sent money to your mother for a few years after your father died?”
“Yes, Mommy told me.”
“But she never answered her.”
“No.”
“Why?”
The war criminal expression intensified. This was not a one-way conversation like the one I'd had with Mona Mingus. Laura Owens seemed ready to explode.
“Mommy felt bad.”
“Why?”
“About Janet.” Laura's movements had become so spastic I was afraid she might fall off her chair.
“Janet?”
“Sara's twin sister.”
“What about her?”
“Mommy knew she wasn't dead and didn't tell Daddy or Sara.”
The breath rushed out of me. “Why not?”
“Mommy went to Victoria to visit her sick brother and met Aunt Thelma. Aunt Thelma told Mommy she was fed up with Uncle Gomer. He didn't bring in any living, only more relatives to feed and clothe. Mommy feared Aunt Thelma might get so fed up she'd send Janet to us, because she knew Daddy and Sara would welcome her.”
“So she told your father and Sara that Janet was dead.”
Laura nodded.
“And Thelma must have told Janet the same thing. Maybe the two aunts made a pact.”
Laura shrugged â I think. Her twitching was too random to be sure. “Mommy said she had the best intentions to tell Daddy but never got around to it. And then Daddy died and Mommy had a breakdown.”
“How about telling Sara?”
She ignored my question, determined not to have her version of the story sidetracked. “Mommy took to her bed when Daddy died and couldn't move. Until Jesus pulled her up and saved her life. Praise be to God.”
“So that's when she joined the church?”
“She was baptized and cleansed of all her sins. May her soul rest in peace.”
“How old were you?'
“Seventeen. I missed Daddy something bad until Mommy explained I had to forget him. The church was our new family and God was my father. Daddy wanted me to take a stenographer's course, but Mommy needed me at home. Learning too much can take us away from the church, if we're not careful.”
My heart was pounding with the power of three â mine, Sara's, and Janet's. “Did you understand what your mother's secret meant to those twin girls?”
“I felt sad when I heard it later because I remembered Sara telling me how much she missed her twin. Even though I liked being her new little sister.”
“If your mother found forgiveness, why didn't she want to repair what she had done years earlier? Why didn't she write to Sara then, later in life, and tell her Janet wasn't dead?”
Laura bent her head as if in prayer, and for a moment I feared she was on the verge of a seizure. But when she looked up again, her head was steady. Like the hands she splayed firmly on the table in front of her. She spoke quietly. “Shame. Mommy carried the bitterroot of shame for what she did. Constant prayer and service to the church gave her strength to live each day. And God's grace would one day bring her strength to act without fear of retribution from Sara and Janet and their families.”
“Do I look as if I'm about to strike anyone dead?”
The last words got caught in my dry, constricted throat. I asked for a glass to help myself to some water and she pointed to a cupboard. While the faucet ran, I thought of Sara washing dishes in this same spot, a pump likely installed by Uncle Thomas at the sink. Did she look upon this grassed-in yard, or was there a garden filled with vegetables she had to tend? I walked twice around the table before sitting down again to make sure my legs hadn't turned to mush.
“Then the letters came from Aunt Catherine in Wales,” Laura continued. “She wanted her niece Sara to have their mother's letters, and the only address she had was Daddy's, here in Ladysmith. Like everyone else, she thought Janet was dead. Mommy said this was her sign from God to tell Sara and Janet the whole story. She divided the letters into two packets and wrote a letter to Aunt Thelma in Victoria to see if she had an address for Janet. Uncle Gomer had died and Aunt Thelma sent an old one in Saskatchewan.”
“Did you or your mother read the letters?”
Laura shook her head. “Mommy and I weren't much for reading. Or writing. She had a time trying to compose the letters to Sara and Janet. Tried so hard she got fever doing it.”
“And?”
“She died. Jesus called her home before she could write the letters. I had to put addresses on the packets myself and mail them to Sara and Janet. Along with Mommy's death notice. And they were never returned, so I have to think they reached them.”
I needed more water. Now my legs and arms had begun to jerk. To all appearances, an energy transfer had taken place between this distant cousin and me. Were unscrubbable atoms of Sara's
DNA
still in the house making mischief with us? “They received them,” I said, “but why didn't you write the letters to Sara and Janet?” I caught myself sounding harsh, realizing her writing skills might have been even less polished than her mother's. But she didn't flinch.
“When Jesus took Mommy home so sudden, I knew it was a sign to send the letters from Wales just like that, without explanations. Otherwise, He would have spared her long enough to write her own notes. The Lord's messages are clear through intimacy with Him.” She paused and gave me a cunning smile. “But I did one naughty thing. I decided to send them all to Sara because she was good to me. At the last minute I realized my disobedience to Mommy and put one â the thickest â into the envelope for Janet along with the letter from Wales.”
I stared at Laura Owens sitting unapologetic and resolute across the table from me. She was not slow or backward or however we had tried to describe what we knew of her. She was brainwashed. Indoctrinated. Programmed. Conditioned by classic cult tools. Deprived of a kind father, already isolated from other children by a domineering mother, she was ripe for a fundamentalist religion that provided simple answers for everything. No shifts in perspective, no fresh new views drifting in with the spring breezes. Laura took on the same beliefs without having to undergo the conversion of her mother. Certainty was the most dangerous weapon of all. I'd seen a teenage girl stabbed by a mini-cult of her peers, and the one who used the knife was the most decent of them; in a fragile stage because her parents were separating, she had drifted into this group where everyone agreed. Forgotten words from Sara passed through my head: Doubt should be the cornerstone of faith.
“Then the better question would be: Why are you telling me now?”