Yesternight (12 page)

“‘Damn' for the rain?” he asked, peeking back at me as he sprinted ahead with my bags. “Or ‘damn' because you're now completely embroiled in the bizarre world of Violet Sunday.”

“Both. This is quite a predicament you've put me into, Mr. O'Daire.”

“If you hated it so much”—he smiled over his shoulder at me, swinging the luggage by his sides—“if you weren't as curious as all hell about Janie, you'd be running in the other direction right now, not after me.”

“It's simply my job.”

“And what a job it is!”

A shot of wind whipped a blast of arctic air up my skirt, and I, indeed, ran after him, not away.

F
ROM BEHIND HIS
front desk, Mr. O'Daire fetched a white towel and a silver key to the same room that I had occupied during my last visit. Room 22.

“Is your mother here?” I asked from the other side of the desk, more soaked mop than person by that point.

“No, she's at home.” He handed me the towel. “Why do you ask?”

“I'd like to speak with her about Janie.”

“Oh?”

“I'd like to hear about her interactions with the girl—her observations of the ‘Violet Sunday' moments.”

He nodded and kept his voice even. “I'll be fetching her later this afternoon so she can help with the Saturday-night supper and drinks.”

“I'll speak to her then, if you don't mind.”

“No, I don't.”

I wrung out my hair with the towel and scanned the empty lobby—the vacant chairs, the coat stand lacking coats, aside from mine and Mr. O'Daire's. One of his sleeves protected one of mine—raven black against claret red. The jackets dripped in unison against a braided tan rug.

“Are we alone right now?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said in a tone that sounded like a question.

“May I talk to you about your thoughts on reincarnation?”

He laid the key upon the front desk's polished wood. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, if past lives are a legitimate phenomenon—and I'm still not saying they are—what, in your opinion, was Violet Sunday's reason for coming back? And do you believe
all
souls are reincarnated into newborn bodies?”

He lifted his eyes to mine. “Are you sure you want my humble opinion on the great question of life after death?”

“If I'm going to even consider venturing into the realm of parapsychology, then I want to believe there's still some genuine psychology involved. What, in your opinion, as humble as it may be, do you believe would drive a human soul to be born a second time?”

“Unfinished business,” he said without hesitation. “Or a tragic death, which would also create the sense of an unfinished life.”

The hairs on the backs of my arms bristled. Again I thought of all the urgent mathematical writings marking Janie's walls.

He rested his palms against the countertop. “Reincarnation is very much in alignment with the popular belief that spirits remain tethered to this world to accomplish something they didn't achieve during their lives. Only, in the case of past lives, the spirit starts from scratch in a brand-new body.”

I leaned my left elbow against the desk. “If this were true, might criminals and other nefarious people from the past also return?”

“Well . . .”

“For every Violet Sunday, mightn't there be a Jack the Ripper or Vlad the Impaler, returned to continue their murderous rampages?
And wouldn't we see them repeating their violent patterns in their new lives? Wouldn't we have already realized that reincarnation exists, if it actually exists?”

“I don't believe every vicious individual will become a criminal in his new life, nor will every good soul remain a good one.” He toyed with the little key and its plain metal ring, jangling the two against each other. “From what I've seen, past life personalities are as fragile as candlelight. Often, the residual traces of Violet burn out, and Janie lives as just Janie, a girl shaped by her mother and me and her current surroundings.”

“Well, then . . .” I straightened my posture. “Now you're venturing into the psychological territory of nature versus nurture.”

“Am I?”

“I think your ‘humble opinion' isn't as humble as you believe.”

He folded his hands on the countertop and leaned against it. “I read quite a bit, that's all. And sometimes . . .” His face pinked up; he turned his eyes away from mine. “Sometimes, I even fancy myself a writer.”

“Really?” I smiled. “What do you write?”

“Well . . .” He shifted his weight between his legs. “Nowadays, I gravitate toward dark, philosophical works. All these winters spent on the coast, all this business with Janie and the child that we lost, did that to me. I didn't used to be so introspective.”

“If you died this very moment and had a chance to come back,” I asked, a little startled at my own dark line of thinking, “do you think you would?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “Most definitely. I would try to get things right the second time around.”

“You don't think you've gotten things right this time?”

“Haven't you heard anything I've said about myself?” He smirked again, but the light in his eyes dimmed. “I sit here and write about grim and hefty topics. I'm a divorced man, banned from seeing his daughter, stuck in a hotel without guests nine months of the year. Does that sound like ‘getting things right'?”

“I'm sorry.” I drew back. “I didn't mean to upset you.”

He stroked a hand through his damp hair. “No, that's just me taking out my frustrations on the wrong person. I'm sorry. It's just a vexing way to live, stuck in this place, pressured to keep it running the way my father did, restricted from helping my own daughter.”

“You are helping your daughter by speaking to me. Not everyone finds the courage to seek the aid of a psychologist.” I picked up my leather briefcase from the floor beside me.

“And how about you?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Would you come back for another life, given the chance?”

I sighed and rolled back my shoulders. “Only if someone could guarantee I would return as a man.” I reached back down and hoisted up my suitcases as well.

“Here”—Mr. O'Daire hustled around the desk—“let me help you with those; they're monstrous.”

“There's no need. As I just said, I wish I had been born a man. No one would feel obligated to make a fuss over anything I do.”

“All right, then.” He lifted his hands and stepped away. “Carry on, Mr. Lind.”

“Now you're making fun.”

“Not at all. You're the saint who verified the existence of Friendly for me. You can do anything you please, as far as I'm concerned.”

“Well . . . thank you.” My face warmed. “Would you mind if I
borrowed a book from your little library? I think I might weather the storm in my room until your mother arrives.”

“What is it you're hoping my mother will say?”

“I want to obtain a complete picture of the family—and to see what all of Janie's relatives have to say about their experiences with her.”

He paled and asked, “A ‘complete picture of the family'?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“When working with a child, it's important to know the full background of her parents' relationship”—I averted my eyes from his—“warts and all.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “So . . . Rebecca, indeed, dragged out all of our dirty laundry.”

“She had some things to say about you.”

“Ask
me
about my infidelity, Miss Lind. Not my mother.”

I swallowed. “All right, then.
Were
you unfaithful to your wife when you were married?”

“I told you, I haven't gotten things right.” He picked at the front edge of his desk. “Rebecca and I fought before I left for Camp Lewis, even though I had no choice but to leave her and Janie to serve the country. She was terrified of Janie dying; I was terrified of all of us dying. I entered the army an unhappy, frightened young man, and I made a stupid mistake.”

“I'm sorry to hear you left home in that state of mind.”

He lowered his face and ran his tongue along the inside of his left cheek. “Our marriage was already in shambles. Everything was so much better before we lost that first little one.”

My throat tightened. For the briefest of moments, my mind
slipped back to the moment when I myself discovered a stabbing pain in my abdomen; blood in my underclothes.

I clenched my hands around the handles of my bags. “Well, thank you for your honesty. The loss of a child is the most painful experience a parent can ever face. It's not surprising that you and your wife struggled in the aftermath.”

“I should have been a better husband. Rebecca didn't deserve that.”

I didn't pass judgment on either of those statements.

He raised his head. “I have a feeling you don't have many warts in your own past. Do you?”

“My own past,” I said, altering the way I held my suitcases to keep them from slipping out of my damp fingers, “has nothing to do with my business here in Gordon Bay.”

“I suppose not.” He nodded. “I'm just not used to baring my soul to a person without knowing a thing about her.”

“This is simply how the world of psychology works, Mr. O'Daire.”

“I suppose it does.” He tucked the key between my right thumb and index finger. “I'm sorry for prying.”

When I could think of nothing more to say—when it became all too clear that both of our pasts elbowed their way between us in that hotel lobby—I turned and lugged my bags up the stairs.

I
n my notebook, I recorded Mr. O'Daire's accounts of Janie's wall writings, as well as his theories about reincarnation.

She wrote . . .
numbers
all over her walls . . .
That
part worried her mother to no end . . . On the one hand, I agreed—it, indeed, resembled a crazy person's room. On the other, I felt it looked to be the realm of a genius.

Reincarnation is very much in alignment with the popular belief that spirits remain tethered to this world to accomplish something they didn't achieve during their lives . . . the spirit starts from scratch in a brand-new body.

I don't believe every vicious individual will become a criminal in his new life, nor will every good soul remain a good one.

Past life personalities are as fragile as candlelight . . . the residual traces of Violet burn out . . . Janie lives as just Janie.

No new psychology-based diagnoses sprang forth from his statements. The past-life possibility, however, hovered in front of me, a filmy screen blocking the truth, distracting me with its outlandish yet undeniable presence. I increasingly wanted to believe in its existence. As ludicrous as the rational side of my brain still
knew reincarnation to be, I longed to hunt down the real Violet Sunday and discover a murder in a lake that had, for three decades, silenced a brilliant mind. The back of my neck prickled just from thinking about it. What a discovery that would make—proof of the immortality of personalities. Proof of the undying potency of the human memory.

Memory is the strongest component of the human psyche,
I wrote below my records of Mr. O'Daire's statements.
Not even death can weaken it. It propels us forward. It holds us back. It refuses to let us go.

Rain suddenly battered my window with a sound that jarred. I lifted my head and gave a shiver. My room, I realized, lacked a fire in the grate, and the temperature couldn't have been any warmer than fifty degrees.

I rose, fetched a cardigan sweater, and then wandered over to the window while threading my arms through the thick sleeves. Down below the rocky cliff, white-capped waves slammed against slick black boulders. The water smacked the rocks with a satisfying
thwack
and promptly retreated to the gray and swollen sea, only to lunge straight back at the shore.

A bout of loneliness gripped me as I stood there, contemplating, dreaming, theorizing in the cold. I debated heading out to catch the train back to Portland and spending the night at my sister Bea's apartment. Sometimes, Bea hopped on trains and surprised me for weekend visits in whichever town I happened to be stationed. Neither of us had married. I strongly suspected that she preferred women over men, romantically speaking, but neither of us ever spoke of such a thing, and I certainly wasn't going to broach the subject with my parents or Margery. Bea cur
rently lived with a blonde named Pearl who also worked at her library. She would have enjoyed hearing about my foray into the supernatural. I imagined her leaning close, her deep brown eyes narrowed and intent, as she formulated her own astute conclusions about the O'Daires.

T
HE STORM PASSED
over the hotel's gabled rooftop and moved on to cannonade the mountains to the east. I grabbed an umbrella from the brass holder in the lobby, and without alerting the currently unseen Mr. O'Daire to my departure, I walked back into town with the rubber heels of my galoshes squeaking against the wet road. I ate lunch. I rummaged around the bushes near the depot in a futile search for my burgundy cloche. I browsed a bookstore and bought a copy of Mary Roberts Rinehart's
The Breaking Point
, simply because I believed I would have spoiled the expectant-looking owner's day if I had left his sleepy little business without a purchase.

Upon my return to the Gordon Bay Hotel, I found Mr. O'Daire adding logs to the lobby's fireplace.

“Oh.” He sat back on his feet with the last log cradled in his arms. “I thought you were still in your room.”

“I ventured out for a bit of exercise and lunch.” I stuffed the umbrella back into the holder with three others. “Sitting around in hotel rooms disquiets me.”

“Too much traveling from town to town?”

“I beg your pardon?” I asked.

“Is that why you don't like hotel rooms? Your gypsy lifestyle?”

“Precisely.” I unbuttoned my coat and let that explanation do.

He grabbed a poker from a stand of black tools. “I'm planning to drive over and fetch my mother in a few minutes.” He prodded
the logs, pulling back when a flame snapped at his wrist. “Would you like to speak to her at her house or here at the hotel?”

“If you don't mind, I'd prefer to speak to her here, where there's plenty of room for a private conversation. I want her to be able to speak openly about her experiences with Janie without feeling self-conscious.”

“Fair enough.” He got to his feet. “I'll fetch her right now.”

“Thank you. I'll wait down here in front of the fire if you don't mind.”

“Would you care for another Orange Quench?”

“That won't be necessary. Just your mother will do.”

I
INTERVIEWED
J
ANIE'S
paternal grandmother in one of the guestrooms on the topmost floor—her idea for an ideal location for chatting, not mine. She didn't want to be a bother in my own room, and, as she said herself, “these pretty little quarters are just sitting up here, bathing in dust.” We drank tea and spoke of Janie and all of the various Violet Sunday anecdotes from the past five and a half years.

“The stories have never changed since she was just a wee thing,” said Mrs. O'Daire, warming her fingers around a china cup painted in daffodils. “They've simply grown in detail and emotional depth. That's what makes them so believable, in fact. They're consistent.”

“Oh, that's interesting,” I said, and I jotted down
Stories believable because consistent
in my notebook, which lay on a small table to my left.

Mrs. O'Daire sipped her tea, while I stirred my own cup and waited for her to say more.

“Janie never alters anything,” she continued after a spell, cra
dling the teacup in her lap. “She simply expands upon the memories, recalling items like the fragrance of the pencils with which she wrote or the particular lace on a dress that she wore. The older memories—the childhood events—seem the strongest, and everything grows a little hazier in the later years of Violet's life. She seems confused about what precisely happened to make her drown.”

“And, as far as you're aware,” I asked, “Janie never experienced any moments of falling underwater since her birth in 1918?”

“No, there've been no brushes with drowning. Whenever I helped bathe her in the early years, she always hated when we rinsed her hair after a shampooing—she'd fly into a tizzy about water going up her nose. But I do seem to remember her father fussing over the same exact thing as a child.”

“Do you have any reason to believe that Janie experienced any severe accidents or abuse?”

“Heavens, no! That child is as protected and loved as a prized peach.”

Once again,
I wrote in my notebook,
a relative insists that Janie's past is devoid of any trauma.

And later, after Mrs. O'Daire left the room, I added,
Nothing else can be done, I'm afraid, unless I speak more to Janie or someone comes forward with a concealed moment of tragedy in the child's life. Unless I receive a return letter from Friendly, Kansas
.

I
N MY OWN
room that evening, with a blanket tucked around my legs, I sat on the bed with my legs crossed in front of me and perused every single line of the notes I had compiled during the past three days. I reread the specifics of a possible test I had considered devising.

Perhaps make a list of towns that exist throughout Kansas—Hutchinson, Marysville, Oakley, Independence, Liberal, Goodland—and ask her to point to the ones that sound familiar.

Following my own advice, I, indeed, created such a list. Mining my own knowledge of Kansas, which I had formed during the years I spent in rapturous awe of the worlds of Dorothy and Princess Ozma, I wrote down the names of northeastern towns in the state. Interspersed between them, I included names fetched from my immediate family . . . and from my own imagination.

    
Kansas City

    
Topeka

    
Lawrence

    
Margery

    
Leavenworth

    
Rustic

    
Manhattan

    
Yesternight

    
Junction City

    
Marysville

    
Ottawa

    
Beatriceville

    
Abilene

    
Salina

I tittered over “Margery” and “Beatriceville,” knowing Bea would appreciate my incorporation of her name into my investigation.

Oh, Nell,
she would probably say with a flip of one of the neckties she always liked to wear with her blouses,
you always did like a
good puzzle. Maybe you should go find that handsome daddy of Janie's and discuss Sherlock Holmes with him while playing footsie in front of the fire. Just don't let him knock you up like that last one. Don't hit him in the head.

I closed my eyes and rubbed at my eyelids, forgetting how little sleep I had managed to snatch over the past forty-eight hours. My brain somersaulted, and all that pondering and speculating and decoding throbbed within my temples. Rain tapped against my window yet again—the sound of fingernails incessantly rapping against glass—and I swear, I smelled the dampness of the outside world through the pane. The scent of water made me think of drowning, which put me into that far-off lake somewhere in the northeastern corner of Kansas. Skirts billowing and undulating. Ice-cold water rushing inside Violet Sunday's ears. A blurred man, standing on the shore, peering into the water, while branches dragged her down, down, down into a dark and gaping mouth. Into eel-like grasses that lapped at her legs like long, wavering tongues. And then blackness.

Followed again by light.

I
REMOVED MY
shoes and resigned myself to a much-needed nap, but no more than two minutes after stretching across the downy white bedspread, someone knocked on my bedroom door. I crawled off the mattress—ill at ease over the idea of a person standing right outside the place where I was just about to sleep.

The keyhole spied with its narrow dark slit for an eye.

“Who is it?” I asked in a voice that came out quieter than I intended.

No one answered. I stepped back and stiffened over the ridiculous
notion that the man with the tumbleweed beard from my recurring dream waited on the other side, preparing to kick open the door and blast a bullet through my chest. The taste of iron coated my tongue. A mental image of my legs covered in blood flashed through my mind.

Beneath the bottom edge of the door, I spotted the shadows of two feet.

I swallowed. “Who is—?”

“It's just me, Miss Lind,” said Mr. O'Daire from the other side. “I'm sorry to disturb you. I brought you some dinner and a drink. Mom told me she thought you looked exhausted and malnourished, and . . . well . . . mothers are usually right about that sort of thing.”

I squeaked open the door and found my host standing out there in the hallway, dressed in a pressed white shirt and an evening coat, along with a necktie and trousers the same charcoal-gray shade as the coat. He held a silver tray, topped with another one of his famous ham sandwiches and a side of pretzels, but no pickle this time. Also on the tray sat a glass of clear liquid that smelled as piney sweet as gin.

The dimples I remembered from his heroism at the depot reemerged. “Yes, it's gin,” he said. “You're not buying it from me, so you wouldn't be doing anything illegal if you drank it. I figured you might need a little hooch after all that we're putting you through in our tempestuous seaside hamlet.”

“Hmm . . .” I eyed the glass brimming with liquid temptation. “Is your little blind tiger alive and kicking down in the basement right now?”

“What blind tiger?” The dimples deepened. “This is a fine old family establishment you're talking about, Miss Lind.” He lifted the tray. “Shall I bring it in or hand it to you?”

“I'll take it, thank you.” I procured the tray with care to avoid sloshing the gin and steered the food and drink toward the dressing table.

“Did your chat with Mom lead to any more answers?” asked Mr. O'Daire from the doorway.

“No, it didn't, I'm sorry to say. Although I greatly appreciate her speaking to me.”

“She didn't seem to mind.”

“I was just thinking about Janie's claims about drowning, as a matter of fact.” I adjusted the tray's position on the table, scooting it just so. “I wondered if she's ever provided any clarification about a certain aspect of her nightmares.”

“Which aspect?”

“That ‘man in the other house'—she claimed to have witnessed him standing above the surface of the water, watching her drown.” I licked a drop of gin from my right thumb and tasted the sweetness of juniper berries. “But has she ever said
how
she got into the water in the dream? Did he push her in—and if so, wouldn't she have bobbed straight back up to the surface?”

“Well . . .” Mr. O'Daire jangled coins about in his pockets. “I've always wondered if he had tried to kill her and was attempting to dispose of the body.”

“
How
did he try to kill her, though? Has she ever mentioned memories of any other violent moments?”