June (15 page)

As they pulled out of the driveway, Cassie noticed the pair of eyes peeking through the living room blinds of the Victorian on the corner. Tate’s people might be able to make vehicles magically appear somewhere between the local airfield and Two Oaks, but they did not know how to take the pulse of a small town; had they rented a beat-up Ford truck, no one would have looked twice, but a brand-new Range Rover with tinted windows was bound to get attention.

Nick was dependent on the SUV’s GPS. Cassie loathed the machine’s calm, assertive voice, especially because Cassie told Nick at least six times that she could navigate them to the Three Oaks Estates herself. Three Oaks—the name leapt out at her. Two Oaks, Three Oaks; was the development linked to the house she now owned? And the town green, where they were now turning, was named Montgomery Square. She smiled, wondering if it had been named after Jack, realizing she didn’t know as much about St. Jude as she’d thought. She hadn’t even been aware that a movie had been filmed here, or anything about the building of Two Oaks. She snuck a glimpse at Nick as they turned right up Main Street per the GPS’s instructions; he looked like a kid on Christmas.

She’d only ever seen the downtown strip as a depressing eyesore, with its boarded-up windows and the old theater marquee dangling with consonants—all that remained of its plastic lettering. But with Nick beside her, she could almost imagine the wonder that downtown St. Jude had once been. He slowed the car and pointed out details she’d never noticed: the gold numbers someone had gilded on the inside of a glass door, and the hitching post still attached to the former Dry Goods. The Majestic Theater marquee hung above a long, glass-enclosed promenade that had once held notices for upcoming shows and spectacles.

Nick whistled. “What a gorgeous old town.”

Cassie checked him again. “You’re serious?” She couldn’t quite buy that he was this into it.

But he turned to her with an absolutely genuine expression and said, “Of course.”

A laugh hiccuped through Cassie.

“What?” He scowled.

“You’re a conundrum.” They passed the mayor’s office, occupied by a lone lady manning the phone.

“You have no idea,” he replied. She could detect the trace of a smile.

The next mile was a scattering of industrial buildings, some wooded areas, a few empty fields, and then a single suburban development that included the house where Mrs. Weaver, their interviewee, lived. Nick slowed as they drove through the gates, really just two low stone walls with the name of the development in rusted metal along one side. The houses were different over here: humbler, modern, nothing like the historic fortifications that occupied the center of St. Jude. These were buildings that had obviously been constructed on an assembly line. Cassie pressed her face against the SUV’s cool glass and let her eyes skip over the little boxes. Maples towered above each street; they were, she guessed, at least fifty years old.

They found Mrs. Weaver’s small white house, neatly surrounded by hedges and a red line of geraniums. There was a white Buick the size of a sailboat parked in the driveway, standard issue for elderly Ohioans. Nick drummed the steering wheel. “I told them we were working on a project about the summer of ’fifty-five. So we won’t ask anything direct about June and Jack, okay?”

Did he really not trust her judgment? “Yeah,” she said, irritated. “Sure.”

He cleared his throat. She could feel his eyes on her. “I don’t want her name dragged through the mud,” he said quietly. “This is a small town.”

A petite, elderly woman with a halo of white hair answered the door. She tightened her cardigan as though the warm air they risked trailing in was colder than the frigid air-conditioning she was standing inside.

“Mrs. Weaver?” Nick asked.

The old woman smiled with a secret as she adjusted her pearls. “No, no, I’m Mrs. Albert Deitz.”

Nick reached for his phone and frantically started scrolling through it. Panic hunched his shoulders. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I thought our meeting with you wasn’t until twelve thirty.”

The woman’s smile hadn’t faltered. “Oh, it was. But, you see, then Janet and I realized you’d called both of us, and I live only one street over, and we thought perhaps it would help to talk to both of us together.” Her shoulders rose impishly toward her ears.

Nick’s phone found its resting place in his pocket again, and then they were being ushered inside, and Mrs. Weaver was emerging from the kitchen with a tray of Velveeta on Ritz and a pitcher of Hawaiian Punch the color of maraschino cherries, which Cassie couldn’t wait to watch Nick choke down. Raw almonds indeed.

Mrs. Weaver was taller than Mrs. Deitz, and slightly less adorable, but her hair had the same cotton-candy quality. Her house was an altar to white carpeting and linoleum and recliners and lazy Susans. A wooden cabinet held dozens of porcelain figurines in various adorable country poses; the top shelf bore a fifteen-piece Hummel crèche, which had been meticulously dusted. Cassie wondered if Nick knew that, as soon as this woman had gotten his call, she’d started cleaning.

“Well then,” Mrs. Weaver said once she’d distributed the food and drink and settled into a velvety, mushroom-colored armchair in the immaculate living room. “How we can help?”

“Oh, but first,” Mrs. Deitz said, hands clasping beside her face, “do tell us how long you’ve been married. We love a romantic tale.”

“We’re not married,” Cassie said quickly as Nick choked on the punch.

Mrs. Deitz’s face fell. “But he said—”

“I said we were partners,” Nick said, turning to Cassie with his hands up.

“Yes, partners,” repeated Mrs. Weaver. “That’s what my lesbian granddaughter and her…partner call themselves.”

Nick was nodding frantically. “Yes, yes, of course, I’m sorry, I meant working partners. We’re working on a project together.” His hand jogged back and forth between him and Cassie, doing his best to indicate strict professionalism.

“Of course,” Mrs. Deitz said, bobbing her small head, although Cassie didn’t think she really understood.

“Do you mind?” Cassie asked, pulling her camera from her bag. The ladies preened and posed at the sight of it, pleased to be deemed worthy of notice; she already knew, for this reason, that the first picture she took would be dreadful. But if she could gain their trust, earn their respect, she might be able to capture these women not as they wanted to be seen but as they were. She’d be able to break through their carefully built façades and expose a bit of what they loved and feared. She was already thinking of the front porch—it might be just the place. At the end of the interview she would suggest they go out there.

Nick pulled his phone from his pocket and opened his notes app. “We don’t want to take up too much of your time”—he said this pointedly, as if Cassie’s photography was doing just that—“but we’re very interested in the summer of 1955, specifically when they filmed
Erie Canal
here in St. Jude.”

“You’re June Danvers’s granddaughter?” Mrs. Weaver asked.

Nick and Cassie exchanged a quick look in which he tried to convey he hadn’t mentioned that. “Yes,” Cassie said, because there wasn’t any reason to lie.

“Your grandmother was the heartbeat of this town,” Mrs. Deitz offered.

“Thank you.”

“She means it,” Mrs. Weaver insisted, giving the impression that she didn’t particularly agree. “June was on every board, at every meeting, and volunteered at every fund-raiser.” She sniffed. “That is, until she moved to Columbus to help with you.”

Cassie had never much considered what the St. Judians had thought about that.

But Mrs. Deitz smiled to cover up the disapproval lingering in the air. “Since June’s family was from Lima”—for Nick’s benefit, she added, “that’s about thirty miles up the road—we didn’t know her when we were children. But she fit right in when they moved here.”

“I wouldn’t say right in,” Mrs. Weaver quipped.

Nick ignored that. “Why did her family move down to St. Jude?” The old women exchanged a look. Mrs. Deitz sent a testing smile out to Cassie, and Cassie realized she was supposed to give the old woman permission to tell her family’s business. Only thing was, Cassie had no idea why June’s family had moved from Lima to St. Jude, and obviously she was supposed to, so she dipped her eyes as though, despite her reluctance to air dirty laundry, she’d allow it.

“Her father was killed in Korea,” Mrs. Deitz said, but Cassie had the feeling that wasn’t the half of it.

“He gambled away the family’s fortune is what happened,” Mrs. Weaver said sharply, as though, simply by being his great-granddaughter, Cassie had carried a dangerous strain into her home. “He lost them everything. And then he went and got himself reenlisted in Korea without even telling his wife. And got himself killed over there. After that, June’s mother, Mrs. Watters, had to sell the house, their furniture, even their car. They couldn’t show their faces in Lima again. They would have been out on the street if Mr. Neely hadn’t taken them in. Or at least that’s what my aunt Biddy, who lived in Lima, told my mother.”

“And Mr. Neely wasn’t even their blood relation.” Mrs. Deitz leaned forward now, clutching her pearls, caught up in the thrill of the sixty-year-old gossip.

Mrs. Weaver nodded. “June’s father was the nephew of Mr. Neely’s first wife, Mae. But she’d been dead for years.”

“The influenza epidemic, I heard?” Mrs. Deitz asked.

Mrs. Weaver shrugged and rolled her eyes, as if speculation was beyond her.

“Regardless,” Mrs. Deitz said, “once your grandma grew up, it was like she’d never lived in Lima. She just fit right in here, joined the sewing circle, the bridge club, the dinner club. It was too bad, though, because her mama was real sick. But Mr. Neely died real soon after June married your grandfather, and he left the house to her, which meant June and her mama could stay put. Her mama didn’t have many more years ahead of her, and there was the baby on the way. Good thing they didn’t have to move anywhere else.”

Cassie heard her grandmother’s accent in these old women’s mouths; it flattened words and elongated vowels: “move ee-in,” “he died rull soon after.” It made Cassie homesick for the woman who’d raised her.

Nick cleared his throat. “Fascinating,” he said, in a stilted voice. And then, “So, if we could just get back to 1955…” The old women tittered as he tried to draw their focus to the matter at hand. “Do you remember if there was much interaction between the movie stars and everyone else?”

“Not if you were Diane DeSoto,” Mrs. Weaver said. “She was always on her high horse. I know it ended badly for her, and I’m not one to speak ill of the dead, but you could tell just by looking at her that she couldn’t stand St. Jude.”

“She didn’t mingle,” Mrs. Deitz explained.

“She stuck to Jack Montgomery like glue.”

“
Erie Canal
was the movie they met on, right?” Nick asked, playing dumb well.

Mrs. Weaver nodded, lips tightening. “It was clear they’d already started their…affair before they came to Ohio. She wouldn’t let him out of her sight. They lived next door to each other, at the far end of this development. Can you believe it? One can only guess what they were up to. Of course we were all completely blind to that kind of thing.”

“Well,” Mrs. Deitz contributed, “there was a rumor that he was sweet on some girl in town…”

“Who was she?” Nick asked, feigning casual interest.

“Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t true.” She shook her head vehemently. “Jack and Diane were practically engaged. Everyone wants to imagine a movie star would fall in love with you, but it doesn’t happen.”

“Well, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out he’d been carrying on with all kinds of girls. He was a flirt.” The lines around Mrs. Weaver’s mouth found their disapproving groove.

“You would know,” Mrs. Deitz teased.

“He only said he liked my dress.” Mrs. Weaver ducked her head in feigned humility, and Cassie could see the awkward gosling she’d once been. “Besides, I was married by then. I did not flirt back.” She pointed to Nick’s phone. “And you can write that down.”

Cassie avoided looking at Nick. “Do you remember anything about my grandmother during that summer? Did she help out with the movie? Did you ever see her with Diane, or…Jack?” Nick shifted uncomfortably beside her.