Legacy of Secrets (72 page)

“Your mother called me,” Ned said.

Liam shrugged resignedly. “I might have guessed. But don’t think you can talk me out of this, Ned, because you can’t. But maybe you can tell me what she meant,” he said, looking puzzled. “Maybe you know. She said I was not a Porter Adams. That my real father was an O’Keeffe. Is that true?”

Ned hesitated. “Well, yes, but let me explain….”

Liam stared blankly at him. He was twenty-one years old and he had just learned that he was not the person he thought he was. He suddenly remembered the night when the man had stabbed him, what he had said about his mother, and now he realized with horror it was all true. He grabbed Jennie’s hand and began to run.

Ned followed them through the barrier and out into the street. There was a cab cruising outside and they leapt into it, slamming the door as it sped off. Ned ran out into the street to try to stop them, and an oncoming cab hit him, tossing him onto the sidewalk. A crowd gathered around, exclaiming when they saw it was the famous actor. He was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced “as well as can be expected” to the waiting press, and kept under the constant vigil of around-the-clock nurses.

Ned was lucky to be alive. He had broken limbs and a fractured skull. Lily, distraught, moved back to New York and came every day to see him, bringing him baskets of fruit and flowers and the latest books to read, but even as he got better, Ned seemed disinclined to open them. A terrible lethargy had overtaken him, and he lay in his hospital bed, staring at the wall.

When he was finally allowed out of the hospital, Lily took him back to Nantucket to recuperate. But he was no longer the old vibrant Ned. He leafed disinterestedly through the scripts awaiting him, and the truth soon became apparent. His powers of concentration and his memory
had been affected by the accident. He could no longer remember the lines. Ned Sheridan was finished as an actor. Lily remained with him, living next door at Sea Mist Cottage, blaming herself and waiting for Liam to come back to her. Though in her heart, she knew he never would.

“S
O THERE YOU HAVE IT,
my dears,” I said to Shannon and Eddie. “The story of the past. Or almost all of it. There is just one more episode and I am only sorry I was not there personally to witness it. Because you see, Lily did come home again to Ardnavarna. But she came home to die.

“I was away at school in Paris when it happened. My pa was in China on army business and Mammie was alf alone. She said it was a glorious day of pale sunshine and soft breezes and Ardnavarna was looking its best. Late roses were in bloom and the scent of them was on the air. Mammie was returning from a ride; her red hair was blowing in the breeze and her chestnut mare looked very much like Lily’s old horse, Jamestown. It might have been a scene from the past.”

L
ILY STEPPED FROM THE BATTERED OLD CAR
that had brought her from Galway. The two sisters stared at each other while the mare danced and skittered and the barking dogs leapt toward them. For a long minute they just looked at each other, then Lily said, “I’ve come home, Ciel,” in a trembling little voice.

“Am I welcome?” she asked, looking apprehensively at her sister.

“As the buds in May,” Ciel cried, leaping from the horse
and throwing her arms around her. They stepped back and held each other at arm’s length, searching for changes, seeing the passing of time, and on Lily, the marks of her illness. The two had always been more like twins than sisters; they always knew everything about each other and there was no need for Lily to tell Ciel that she was dying.

“Why, oh, why didn’t you come home earlier?” she cried tearfully.

Lily shook her head. “I’m home now, and that’s all that counts, isn’t it?” She smiled, her head tilted in her old coquettish way. “Am I forgiven?” she asked hopefully.

“Aren’t you always.” Ciel grinned, and in an instant they were back into their old relationship; the adoring younger sister and the beautiful, confident older one.

They walked into the house, arms around each other’s waist, and Lily told the sad story of Liam leaving her. “He’ll come back,” Ciel cried. “I’m sure of it. There’s still time.”

But Lily just shook her head and said, “I’m afraid time has run out for me.” There was so much sadness in her voice and Ciel knew it was not for herself. Whatever else she was, Lily had always had courage and she was not afraid now. Ciel knew she was mourning for her lost son, and she was glad her own daughter Maudie was away, because their happy relationship would have only emphasized Lily’s loneliness.

Lily wandered around the drawing room, touching remembered objects: a family photograph in a silver frame; a tapestry footstool worked by her mother; the binoculars William always used for bird-watching, and a beautiful rosewood humidor. She lifted its lid, smelling the aromatic odor of Monte Cristos, closing her eyes as the scent conjured up a vision of Pa, clearer than any photograph.

She could see herself as a small girl, sitting on his knee while he chose his cigar, as he went through the slow luxurious ritual with the special gold clippers and the long wooden matches that she always got to blow out. And then, best of all, he would put the cigar band on her finger like a
ring. She could see Mammie sitting with her needlework and Pa with his newspaper and she savored again the special atmosphere of peace and security she had known as a small child, privileged to creep downstairs and curl up beside those two wonderful beings, before being sent scuttling back to bed.

If only, oh, if only
… she thought longingly for the very last time in her life.

The news that wicked Lily Molyneux had come home flashed through the household and then the village with the speed of a brushfire; the servants gathered to stare curiously and soon everyone knew that Lily had come home to die. “It’s written on her face” they told each other solemnly, and all the old stories and rumors were brought out and rehashed again in the crowded village store, and over a jar or three in the saloon.

Lily was content just to be home, riding alone through the bracken-fronded trails and along the strand. She sat quietly by the fire in the evening, smiling as they talked over old memories, old times. And the dogs, just as they always had done in times past, lay at the foot of Lily’s bed, gazing adoringly at her as though they were her own best-beloved dalmatians from forty years ago. When she grew too weak to ride anymore, she walked slowly around the gardens, leaning on Pa’s old silver-headed malacca cane. She refused the large doses of morphine prescribed by the doctor, because with so little time left she was not going to waste it in a drugged haze.

“I want to savor every last minute of my time at Ardnavarna,” she said quietly to Ciel. “Because I know that
this
is paradise, and when I die I shall have to leave it all behind. Again.” She glanced pathetically around her and said, “Do you think Pa has finally forgiven me? Will he turn in his coffin if you bury me beside him?”

“Of course he has forgiven you,” Ciel lied, choking back her tears. “He told me so a hundred times. And you’re not going to die for a long time yet.” But Lily just smiled at her.

On those long evenings alone together by the fire, she told Ciel the truth about John and Finn and Daniel; about her two sons and her hatred for one and her overwhelming possessive love for the other. “Liam just never came home again,” she said sadly. “I did it again, you see, Ciel. I just didn’t think about anybody but myself. I tried to find him, to ask his forgiveness, but it was no good. He simply disappeared.”

“Did you never think about how different life would have been if you had never met Dermot Hathaway?” Ciel asked.

“Did I?” Lily laughed, a sad, bitter little laugh. “Only every day of my life, that’s all. But I’ve learned the hard way that there is no going back. You can’t change the past, Ciel, though heaven knows I tried.”

She took the diamond necklace from her pocket and gave it to Ciel. “Remember?” she asked, smiling. “When I was seventeen and had the world at my feet. Now I want your daughter to have it, when she is seventeen and all life lies before her, and everything is possible.”

She spoke about Ned, whom she had been forced to leave behind in Nantucket in the care of a local woman. “He is my only friend, apart from you, Ciel,” she said. “Now his poor mind wanders, but he is as handsome and gentle and charming as ever. Why, oh, why did I not love him enough to marry him? Life would have been so simple then. But his old theater friends are loyal; they still make time to visit him and in the summers there’s often a crowd of them at the white house to keep him company. I knew it was better to say good-bye to him while I was still myself, and not let him see what I have become.” She glanced ruefully down at her hands, just a thin bunch of bones covered in blue-veined parchment skin. “An old woman’s hands,” she sighed regretfully, “and yet I shall never grow old.”

The day finally came when Lily could not get up. Ciel had her bed moved to the window so that she could gaze at the lovely gardens and the alder trees planted by their
great-great-grandfather, and glimpse the silver sea and the broad opalescent sky and see the horses trotting by. Even though the late summer air was balmy, Lily felt cold and a fire burned constantly in the grate. The dogs remained devotedly by her side, their heads on their paws, and the orange cat sat on the window ledge, watching and waiting.

A week passed, and then another, and Lily could no longer eat. She took liquid through a straw, though she told Ciel there was no point. “It doesn’t matter anymore, darling Ciel,” she said. “I’m home now.” Her eyes were like dark glowing sapphires and her thin, wasted face seemed all bones, but Ciel saw that the yearning and sadness had finally left her.

Lily moved her hand and let it lie on the dog’s big head. With a sigh of contentment she closed her eyes and Ciel knew that she would never open them again.

The tenants came, as they had always done, to decorate the cart that would carry her coffin with mosses and ferns and all the scented Gloire de Dijon roses from the garden. They walked behind Ciel to the family chapel and then to the tomb where Lily was finally reunited with her beloved pa and mammie, and this time they removed their caps in respect at the passing of Lily Molyneux.

I
GLANCED AT MY TWO LISTENERS.
Their heads were lowered and they were gazing at me solemnly as they thought of Lily. “She died happier than she lived,” I reminded them gently. “At least she was home again, where she had always wanted to be.”

“Ned must have died a few years after that,” Eddie said. “I still have the old newspaper clippings about his funeral and the big memorial service later. Everybody who was anybody in the theater went to say good-bye to him and pay their respects.”

I looked at Eddie and said, “So now you know what
happened to your great-grandfather. He gave up everything he was for the woman he loved, bit by bit, then he almost gave his life, and finally she cost him his career. He was a fine man and a great actor, and he was a fool for her.

“Before Lily died she asked Ciel, ‘Was I really a wicked woman?’ And Ciel told her what I think is the truth. ‘You were never wicked,’ she said loyally. ‘You were silly and headstrong. You always regretted things afterward, but by then it was too late.’

“And that is what I feel is the truth about Lily. But as I said in the beginning, you must make up your own minds about her.”

“Poor Lily,” Shannon said compassionately. “I don’t believe she was wicked; it was just that bad things happened to her.”

“But she brought them on herself,” Eddie said, and I could tell he was thinking of Ned, whose life had been ruined because of her.

“That is not quite the end of my story,” I said, and they picked up their heads and took notice again. “Because the next visitor from the past to come in search of Ardnavarna was Shannon’s father, Bob Keeffe.

“It was around 1980, if I remember correctly, when he appeared on my doorstep and when he told me his name I knew right away he belonged to Finn. He had a ‘look of him’ as they say around here: dark and handsome. Oh, he was Finn’s grandson all right and nobody around here would have disputed it.”

Shannon propped her chin on her hands, gazing eagerly at me as I told her the story, exactly as her father had told it to me.

B
OB
K
EEFFE HAD TRACKED DOWN
his past, just the way his daughter was doing twenty years later. He had found Lily’s portrait and the letters at Sea Mist Cottage on Nantucket. Then he checked the orphanage records, and, with what I was able to tell him, we deduced the rest.