The Fate of Mercy Alban (13 page)

I thought I detected a faraway fire behind her cloudy, weepy eyes. Matthew began to lead her away when Jane appeared in the room carrying a tray of wineglasses.

“Jane, will you bring us some punch?” the woman called to her, waving her arm in a wide arc. “I’m in the mood for punch, Jane. And then we’re going to play croquet.”

Jane took one look at her and cried out as the tray she was carrying clattered to the ground, glasses shattering everywhere. A stunned silence fell over the room.

“My goodness, Jane, whatever has come over you?” the woman wanted to know. “You’re looking at me like you’ve seen a ghost.”

As the servers scurried into the room with mops, brooms, and dustpans to clean up the tray of glasses Jane had dropped, a man whom I had never seen before—midfifties, tall, wearing a black suit—slipped into the room and held out his hand to the woman.

“Now, now,” he cooed. “Didn’t I tell you to stay in the wing chair in the parlor until I could talk to our hostess?”

The woman huffed and pouted. “I didn’t want to stay in the wing chair. I wanted to find Adele.” Then, looking to me, her eyes brightened and she said: “Let’s go upstairs and change out of these ridiculous black clothes. This party is dreadfully dull, don’t you think? Maybe we could go for a swim!”

Jane had regained her composure and was helping guests with their coats and umbrellas, trying, it seemed, to usher the stragglers who remained at the reception out the door. I agreed with her. Everybody out. As she held the door, I saw that her face was gray and lifeless, a mask of confusion and questions.

A chill ran through me as I looked from the obviously old woman to her younger companion, who stood ramrod straight, chin jutted out, a slight smile on his face. Cockiness, that’s what he projected. I shot a glance toward the officers, who were slowly approaching.

“I’m Grace Alban,” I said to the man. “And you are …”

He held out his hand to me. I hesitated a moment before crossing my arms over my chest.

“I’m Harris Peters,” he said, smiling broadly. But there was no warmth in his smile or behind his steel-gray eyes. “I’m here to pay my respects. I had an appointment to meet your mother the day she died.”

“You’re the journalist.” I narrowed my eyes at him.

“That’s right,” he said, brushing a bit of lint from his lapel. “I’m writing a book about your family. I was so looking forward to meeting your mother.”

“I specifically didn’t invite any journalists to this reception, Mr. Peters,” I told him. “I didn’t want the press intruding on our grief today. So I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“I thought you might say something like that,” he said, still smiling that broad smile. “So I brought along a guest. I think she’ll change your mind about my being here.” He gestured toward the woman, who was now batting her eyelashes at him.

“Miss Alban,” he said to her. “Isn’t it lovely to be back home?”

“Miss Alban?” I furrowed my brow. “There is no Miss Alban other than myself.”

“Yourself?” The woman laughed, a gurgling, throaty sound. “Adele, have you gone mad? You’re no Alban, although you’re certainly around here enough to be part of the family.” She smiled up at Matthew and sniffed, “Herself. Who does she think she is, claiming to be an Alban?”

Harris crossed the room and put his arm around the woman’s shoulder, leading her slowly away from Matthew. A proprietary gesture. “Of course she’s a little confused,” he said to me in a stage whisper. “Being in an institution for fifty years will do that to a person.”

Time slowed to a crawl, groaned, and stopped. I looked around to the fire crackling in the fireplace, the candles burning low on the table. I noticed the hors d’oeuvres were nearly gone; several wine bottles were emptied. The heavy, deep red curtains in the parlor swayed ever so slightly, as if they were being blown by an unseen breeze. I could hear the rain still pounding away outside, and I smelled the particular spicy scent of my mother’s perfume. And then, overpowering that, the fresh aroma of lake water that had accompanied my father’s visit a few days earlier.

I locked eyes with Jane and there was something about her expression that told me, in that instant, who this woman was. I took a few steps toward her and held out my hands.

“You’re Fate Alban, isn’t that right?” I said to her. “I’m Grace, Adele and Johnny’s daughter.”

She shook her head. “Grace? I don’t understand.” She put one age-spotted hand, rings on every finger, up to my face and stroked my cheek. “Why are you acting like this? Whatever is the matter with you, my darling Adele? And where’s my mother? I can’t imagine where my mother has gone.”

I grasped for Matthew’s eyes with mine, silently pleading for help.

He understood immediately. “It’s been a long day and you must be very tired, Miss Alban,” Matthew said to her.

She smiled up at him, and as she did so, the years seemed to disappear from her face. Beneath all that garish makeup, I could see the beauty she had once been.

“During Daddy’s summer solstice parties, we girls always take naps in the afternoons,” she said, turning in a slow circle to address all of us. “That way, we’re fresh for the nighttime activities. We’ll have a bonfire! Down by the lakeshore. And we’ll dance and dance and dance to the ancient songs. Mama likes that, don’t you know. I’m quite light on my feet, that’s what they say. All the fellows want to dance with me.” She had turned full circle and held out her hands toward Matthew. “I’ll save you a dance if you’re lucky.”

As she was speaking, a shroud of chill wrapped itself around me. It was clear—this woman was time traveling, perhaps even back to the party, fifty years earlier, when David Coleville took his own life. To the night she herself disappeared. I wondered if she had ever left that night or whether she was stuck there, reliving whatever happened to her, year after year after year.

Jane must’ve realized the same thing because she sprung into action, hooking an arm around Fate’s waist and leading her away. “You’re right, it’s time for your nap now, Miss Fate,” she said. “You want to be fresh for dinner and the evening’s festivities. Your mother and the rest of the girls are already sleeping. I’ll make up the chaise in the library for you. That’s where you like to rest. Come on now.”

Fate sighed and rolled her eyes dramatically for the benefit of all of us. “All right, Jane. If you say so.” And she waved at us over her shoulder as she let Jane lead her out of the room. What a character she must’ve been in her youth, I thought.

When they had gone, I whirled around to face Harris Peters, the grief I had been keeping at bay for the past several days finally and completely catching fire.

“What is the meaning of this?” I demanded, my voice louder than I had intended, gesturing my arm toward the room where Jane had led my newly found aunt. “You burst in here on the day of my mother’s funeral using a poor, confused old woman as a prop? I don’t know what you think you’re doing or what you’re trying to accomplish with this stunt, but you’re not making any friends here. Today of all days!” I stomped toward the window determined to hold back the tears that were threatening to erupt. “What kind of person are you?”

He just stood there, cool and collected. “I should be asking you that question,” he said. “You’re the head of a family that kept this ‘poor woman,’ as you called her, a prisoner in an institution for fifty years.”

“That’s not true,” I spat back. “We had no idea where my aunt was. Nobody knew what had happened to her. She
disappeared
from this house fifty years ago. We all thought she was dead.”

But even as I said the words, they rang hollow in my ears. Hadn’t I been wondering, just the other day, about her disappearance and whether my grandparents had launched a search for her? The old family story just hadn’t seemed right to me, it never had. This, at least, explained where she had been all this time.

Harris walked over to the sideboard and poured himself a drink. “You Albans might have controlled the press and the police generations ago, but not anymore. I knew something didn’t add up about her disappearance. I knew she was out there somewhere, and I just couldn’t stop wondering about it. Why send her away and cover it up?” He took a sip and continued. “I’ve spent years trying to find out what really happened.”

He reached into his pocket, fished out a folded sheet of paper, and handed it to me.

“What’s this?” I asked, but as I looked at it, I answered my own question. My college French told me it was the address of a hospital in Switzerland.

“Go ahead, call them,” he went on. “You’ll be told that Miss Alban has been living there since 1956. When I started this investigation, I figured she was in hiding somewhere. A plush villa in Italy. An estate in Ireland. After years of turning up nothing, I finally got the idea to check the best mental institutions worldwide. I don’t know what made me think of that. Just a sixth sense, I guess.”

While he was talking, my mind was racing in different directions at once. On the one hand, I should’ve been thanking this man for finding my long-lost aunt and bringing her home. I had no idea why she was institutionalized, but even if she needed around-the-clock care, we could certainly afford to hire a live-in nurse for her so she could stay at Alban House or, barring that, place her in the best care facility in town. But his demeanor made it impossible to be grateful. He stood there so proudly, so defiantly, as though he had unearthed a dirty family secret that we had intentionally kept hidden. I had no doubt that was the slant his book was going to take and I wanted to squash it here and now.

“She was in a mental institution and my family didn’t feel the need to tell the world about it,” I said, trying to steady my voice. “So what? Back in those days, mental illness
was
covered up. There’s no bombshell here.”

“Are you kidding?” Harris laughed at me. “I’ve solved the mystery of the Alban daughter who vanished the night of David Coleville’s suicide! It’s like finding the Lindbergh baby. Only her disappearance wasn’t at the hands of a servant wanting ransom, it was the work of the family itself. Again, Grace, you have to ask yourself: Why?”

“You have no idea how or why she ended up in that institution, only that she was there,” I said slowly, choosing my words carefully. “She might have run away from this house on her own. Others have. She certainly had the means.”

“Do you really think I haven’t asked her about it?” Harris chuckled. “What do you think we chatted about during that long plane ride across the Atlantic? And boy, does she like to talk.”

“You went over there to get her,” I said.

“I did indeed. Apparently her father had an entire wing at the hospital built just for her. It really is quite beautiful. That’s how I found her, you see. One of my sources told me about how this hospital in Switzerland was a replica of a famous mansion in the United States, and it got me thinking. I pushed further, paid off a few people, and found her. And my source was right. It’s a dead ringer for this place.”

He took another sip of his drink and then continued. “She’s all the way across the ocean imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital, and it’s like she never left home. Maybe that’s why she remembers the past so well. Especially when it comes to your mother. She’s quite fixated on her.”

I could feel the hair on the back of my neck bristle. I didn’t know what he was implying, but I didn’t like his tone.

“Of course she remembers her.” I shrugged. “My mother was Fate’s best friend when they were growing up. Again, that’s some ‘bombshell’ you’ve got there, Harris.”

But even as I said it, I realized I was feeling my way blind. I was trying to downplay an event in my family history that I knew nothing about. But then a thought occurred to me and I ran with it.

“If she told you so much, why are you here?” I asked him. “Why aren’t you holed up someplace writing that book of yours or trying to convince a literary agent that it’s worth publishing? I’ll answer my own questions, Harris. It’s because she hasn’t told you anything you can use, or enough, at any rate. And you’re here to get me to fill in the blanks for you. Isn’t that right?”

He swirled the scotch in his glass. “I’m here because after learning what I did from your aunt, I wanted to talk to your mother—”

“You’re a bit late for that, I’m afraid,” I interrupted him, my voice disintegrating into a rasp.

“I realize that. Just before I was to meet your mother, your housekeeper called to tell me she had passed away. It was quite a shock.”

“I’ll bet it was,” I spat back at him. “Imagine, spending all those years solving the mystery of the vanished Alban girl, only to lose the last remaining eyewitness just minutes before she might have told you all you needed to know. And now here you are, with a crazy old lady on your hands, and nobody to make sense of what she’s saying.”

“As I said, that’s why I’m here.”

“Now you’re the one who’s not making sense,” I said. “Knowing my mother had passed away, why didn’t you just get in touch with me? I’ve been here for more than a week. Why pull this stunt now, showing up like this at her funeral?”