Sisters (29 page)

"You may be right.
Baby's situation shocked Amy, don't you know, and I'm sure she found
it hard to be sympathetic. But she didn't turn her back on Baby, no
matter how she felt about her, about her life." She paused a
moment. "But maybe that doesn't seem like enough to her now.
Maybe her sadness is regret that she couldn't be friendly, more...
more sisterly toward Baby." Anna May looked down. "Helen
could do that, d'you know, take some woman whose habits she found
completely foreign, and look beyond the difference to where things
are the same."

After a moment she looked
up at Sophie again. "Would you like me to drive you down to the
sheriff's office? Lydia went down yesterday to tell him about Zack
and Baby. He sent some men out to... to take care of them. Anyway, I
know you'll want to tell him what you saw."

"There's something I
want to check first." Looking at Anna May, Sophie realized that
this was the first time she'd seen her when she wasn't smiling and
bright. Sophie had always thought she wanted Anna May to drop her
cheery mask, but now that she had done so, Sophie felt a curious
letdown. All the determination that had gone into Anna May's smiling
good cheer--it was sad to see it give way. "How tired you must
be, Anna May. This has been hard on you, hasn't it?"

"It's partly Paul. He
was gone all day yesterday looking for Rodman, and when he got home
last night and heard what had happened, he was certain Rodman had
been involved."

"He was right about
that."

"Paul was like a wild
man when I told him about you and the fire. I don't think he slept at
all last night. And he left before dawn, looking for Rodman again."

"And you didn't sleep
all night either, I'd venture. Why don't you go on home and rest."

Sophie walked the older
woman to the door. Sally followed Anna May outside into the sunshine
and sat down on the porch steps. Sophie closed the door and rang for
Mrs. Syms. "There was a bandbox in the linen closet upstairs
some months ago," she said when the housekeeper came. "Esther
told me that some of Helen's papers had been put into it, but when we
looked for them, we found the box wasn't there any more."

"That closet was so
crowded, it was gettin' hard to get sheets and pillow covers in and
out. I had one of the maids pack up some of the things in there to
clear it out a little. I had no idea the missus' correspondence was
in that old bandbox."

"Where did the things
get packed away?"

"The tank room, most
likely. Probably in one of the trunks up there."

"Thank you, Mrs.
Syms." Sophie made her way upstairs, favoring her left ankle.
Before she went to the sheriff to tell him about what Rodman had done
at the Wilson homestead, she wanted to see if there wasn't something
that might connect him to Helen's death. She had seen Rodman's
capacity for violence, knew he worked for those who might have felt
threatened by Helen's activities. And now she knew as well there had
been a man arguing with Helen before she died. It might be a long
shot to hope she would find evidence in Helen's correspondence that
it had been Rodman, but it was the one place she could thing to look.

There were many trunks in
the tank room, and Sophie opened several before she saw a bandbox.
She lifted off the lid, anxious to get at what was inside, but what
she saw was not correspondence. Instead there were ribbons, bright
red ones, pale blue ones, velvet, satin, a richness of color and
texture. She took the bandbox from the trunk, intending to carry it
downstairs when she went. It belonged down there with Esther and
Sally, not locked away up here.

The next trunk was full of
old books, the next had a leopardskin saddlecloth packed on top. It
was edged in scarlet, with a coat of arms and a gilded number fifteen
in the corner. Sophie lifted it out, realizing it was from the King's
Hussars, and thinking it must have been James' father's. She laid the
fur blanket aside and saw another bandbox, this one covered with
scenes from the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. When she
opened the lid, she saw what she had been looking for--paper, a
confusion of papers.

The first thing she picked
up was a bill for three hundred dollars from the Bellavance Emporium
for a set of china. There were other bills, then a marriage
certificate testifying that Helen Marie Talbot had married James
Archibald Stevenson on August 3, 1874. Beneath that was a packet of
letters, all in different-sized envelopes and addressed in a variety
of handwritings. She opened and scanned several, quickly concluding
they were all about her mother. A detective named Marcus Kerrison
wrote that he was certain that he had located Julia Talbot in
Leavenworth, Kansas. The next letter, dated the following year, was
on Pinkerton National Detective Agency letterhead. An operative in
the Denver office wrote that he was investigating reports Julia was
in that city. The next letter, dated that same year, was from a
detective agency Sophie had never heard of. It reported that Julia
was in Socorro, New Mexico.

Sophie leaned back against
a wall. She was exhausted, and though it was evening, the attic still
held the day's heat, and she wanted to take the letters downstairs
where it was cool. She spread them out in front of her. There must be
twenty of them, and that probably meant twenty different stories
about Julia. What had kept Helen going? Why hadn't she become
discouraged? If not from finding Julia, then with detectives who
continued to provide her with unreliable information.

Well, the least she could
do was spend a few minutes right now examining the fruit of what had
been months, years, or labor for her sister. She opened the rest of
the envelopes, one after another, until she came to a salutation
different from the rest. "My dearest Helen," one of the
letters began, prompting Sophie to turn it over and look for the
signature. There it was, far down, in a delicate feminine hand. She
squinted at the signature, then her eyes grew wide, her mind at first
refusing to accept what she read. "Julia Talbot," the
letter was signed. And just above the signature, in the same fine
hand, were the words, "Your loving mother."

"My dearest Helen,

"My dearest little
Helen," I almost write, because you were so small when I saw you
last. And now you have children much older than when I remember you.
How odd that seems to me, and how sad it makes me feel.

"Your letter came as
quite a shock, I must confess, and I wanted to ignore it, throw it
away unopened, not because of you, dear Helen, but because of myself.
So many years have been layered on top of pain and guilt, and I was
reluctant to have them torn away.

"But as I stood with
your letter in my hand, and I saw your name, your writing, and I
could not set the envelope aside. And once I had opened it and read
your dear and loving words, I could not help but answer. For you to
be so full of forgiveness, so anxious to see me, after I left you,
deserted you and your sister--oh, my dear Helen, how could I not
respond to such love, not tell you how much I love you and Sophie,
how I have prayed for you, thought of you daily, hourly, over the
last thirty-six years.

"But, my dear, I think
these words must be the last between us. You have your life, a good
life with your husband and daughters. I know Sophie is happy and
successful, and I think we would be wrong to open the past. I wish I
could put my arms around you as I write this, so you would know I
speak from love, know how much I love you and your sister. But even
as I think these words, I can imagine how hollow they will sound to
you, how little they will seem to suit my past actions and my present
wish that we not meet.

"Paul Bellavance lives
near you. He is a good, kind man. Speak to him, and perhaps he can
phrase better what I am saying so poorly. There are times, dear
Helen, when it is better to leave the past alone. I am certain that
is true, no matter how much I yearn to see you and your children. And
so I am leaving Denver. By the time you receive this letter, I will
have gone. But wherever I am, I shall still hold you in you in my
heart.

"You loving mother,

"Julia Talbot

*

Sophie stared at the
letter, for a moment unable to sort out her feelings. Julia. Her
mother. These were her words, her her thoughts, and Sophie was as
amazed by them as she would have been by whispers from a ghost. Helen
had found Julia! And then lost her again. How could Julia do that,
turn her back after so much work to find her? Well, it was probably
no more difficult than it had been to leave two small children,
babies really, in the first place.

Sophie checked the unkind
thought. The words in the letter sounded so sincere. And there was
the evidence of the letter itself. If Julia did not love her
children, why would she have bothered to write?

But if she did love them,
why wouldn't she see Helen? It was little enough to do for one who
was flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood. What was this woman
like, that she would flee instead?

Sophie had never been sure
if she remembered her mother. She had something that was like a
memory. In it, a woman with dark brown hair picked her up. It was
outside, because the sun was shining on the woman's hair, and a
breeze was blowing it. They must have been standing some way up the
side of a gentle incline, because Sophie had looked down to see
soldiers on horseback galloping by. That was all there was to it, and
she didn't know if it had really happened or if she had imagined it.
The one person in the world who might know had written the letter she
was holding, and she felt a tenuous connection with her past
producing a strange emotion in her, a comforting feeling which was
all the odder for her not having suspected she wanted it.

But where had Julia gone?
Sophie opened the remaining letters. One was from the Pinkerton
detective who had found her mother. Julia Talbot, he reported, was
running a successfully millinery establishment in Denver under the
name Julia Martin. And he gave the address. Another of the letters
was from the same detective, reporting no success in finding where
Julia had gone. "I hope you will forgive the delay in responding
to your query," the letter ended. But Helen had obviously not
been entirely forgiving, for here was a letter from the Bloom and
Dignan Agency on the same matter. Despite "lengthy inquiry,"
they reported no success in determining where Julia Martin had gone.

"Mrs. Dymond, are you
up there?" It was Mrs. Syms.

"Yes, I am."

"It's so dark. Why
haven't you turned on the light?"

Sophie had not realized how
dark it was growing. "I lost track of the time. I'll be right
down."

"There's an important
message for you."

"I'll be right there."

She put all the letters
back in the bandbox, except the one from her mother, which she tucked
in her pocket. She put the leopard blanket on top on the box, closed
the trunk, and started down the stairs. She saw the bandbox of
ribbons she had set aside and thought about fetching it, but decided
she would get it later.

"Was your search
successful?" Mrs. Syms asked.

Sophie paused at the bottom
of the stairs, taken aback by the housekeeper's question. She hadn't
really found what she was looking for, had she? There had been no
mention in the papers she had found of Jake Rodman, nothing to tie
him to Helen, except perhaps for the fact he was a detective. Was it
possible Helen had hired him to look for Julia? But that made no
sense. She wouldn't have hired someone who worked for the Stock
Growers' Association.

No, she hadn't found what
she had been looking for; indeed, the only name she recognized in
Helen's correspondence besides her mother's was Paul Bellavance's.
Interesting that her mother would send Helen to Paul for counsel and
comfort. He must have been exactly the same when he was a young man
as he was now, she decided, the sort of person who was natural to
that role: calm, wise, enough at ease with himself so he vould view
the situation of others objectively. After all these years, did her
mother still feel some regret she hadn't married Paul?

"Did you find what you
needed?" Mrs. Syms repeated.

"No, not really.
Perhaps I'll look again later. There was a message?"

"The sheriff phoned."

"Yes, I'll go there
first thing in the morning."

"He said he has to
talk to you tonight. I asked him to come out here, but he said he
needs to see you at the Inter Ocean Hotel. As soon as you can get
there. After everything you've been through... well, it's not right,
and I told him so. But he kept saying you have to go down there."
Her head bobbed as she spoke, her silver spectacles flashing
indignantly.

"It's all right, Mrs.
Syms. Please get one of the boys to drive me."

The young man who helped
her into the phaeton a quarter of an hour late was the same one who'd
driven her to the Clarion office. "Thank you very much for
taking me out so late," Sophie said.

He blushed and avoided her
eyes. "No trouble, ma'am. No trouble at all." He took a
left at the first corner, then turned right down Hill Street.

As they approached
downtown, Sophie thought how deserted the streets were. There wasn't
a person in sight, and the only sounds breaking the quiet came from
several blocks away, where loud music and raucous whooping could be
heard. Probably that's where everyone was, Sophie thought.

Listening to the horse's
hooves thud softly on the fine dust of the street, she leaned back
against the leather seat. She fought against closing her eyes,
because she knew if she did, she would sleep instantly. She rolled
her head slightly to the right, looked out of the phaeton, and noted
there were alongside the opera house.