Red lily

eight

IN THE PROPAGATION house, Hayley watched Roz set a ceanothus cutting in a rockwood plug. “Are you sure you don’t mind watching Lily?”

“Why would I mind? Mitch and I will spend the evening spoiling her rotten while you aren’t around to run interference.”

“She loves being with you. Roz, I feel so weird about everything.”

“I don’t know why you’d feel weird about going out on a date with Harper. He’s a handsome, charming young man.”

“Your young man.”

“Yes.” Roz smiled as she dipped another cutting in rooting compound. “Aren’t I lucky? I also have two other handsome, charming young men, and wouldn’t be the least surprised if they had dates tonight.”

“It’s different with Harper. He’s your first, he’s your partner. I’m working for you.”

“We’ve been over this, Hayley.”

“I know.” Just as she knew that impatient tone. “I’m not able to wind myself through it as easy as you, I guess.”

“You might if you’d relax, go out, and have a good time.” Roz glanced up before sliding the cutting into the plug. “Wouldn’t hurt to try to catch a quick nap beforehand, either. See if you can deal with those circles under your eyes.”

“I didn’t sleep well.”

“Not surprising, considering.”

The music in the propagation house today was some sort of complicated piano, drenched in romance. Hayley had more skill identifying plants than classical composers, so she just let the music drift around her as she worked.

“I kept having weird dreams, at least I think I did. I can’t remember any of them clearly. Roz, are you afraid?”

“Concerned. Here, you do the next one.” She stepped back so Hayley could take over. “And angry, too. Nobody slaps at my boy—except me. And if I get the opportunity, I’ll tell her so, in no uncertain terms. That’s good,” she said with a nod as Hayley worked. “This kind of hardwood cutting needs a dry rooting medium or you get rot.”

“She may have gotten that sickle and the rope out of the carriage house. I mean all those years ago. Maybe she tried to use them and someone stopped her.”

“There are a lot of maybes, Hayley. Since Beatrice didn’t mention Amelia again in any of her journals, we may never know all of it.”

“And if we don’t we may never get her out. Roz, there are people, paranormal experts, who you can hire to clean houses.” She glanced up, knitted her brows. “I don’t know why you smile at that. It’s not such a strange idea.”

“I just had an image of a bunch of people running around the house armed with buckets and brooms, and that ray gun sort of thing Bill Murray used in Ghostbusters.”

“Proton streams—and I have no idea why I know that. But really, Roz, it’s a fringe science and all that, but there are serious and legitimate studies. Maybe we need outside help.”

“If it comes to that, we’ll see about it.”

“I looked up some sites on the Internet.”

“Hayley.”

“I know, I know, just a contingency.”

They both looked over as the door opened. Mitch came in, and something about the look on his face had Hayley holding her breath.

“I think I found her. How soon can you wrap things up here and come home?”

“An hour,” Roz decided. “But for God’s sake, Mitchell, don’t leave it at that. Who was she?”

“Her name was Amelia Connor. Amelia Ellen Connor, born in Memphis, May 12, 1868. No death certificate on record.”

“How did you—”

“I’ll get into all that at home.” He flashed her a wide grin. “Rally your troops, Rosalind. See you there.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered when he walked out. “Isn’t that just like a man? I’ll finish up here, Hayley. You go tell Harper and Stella to finish up whatever they’re doing. Let me think,” she said as she pressed fingers to her temple. “Stella can get in touch with Logan if she wants him there, and she’ll need to leave Ruby in charge, see that she closes today. Looks like we’re taking off a couple hours early.”

AMELIA ELLEN CONNOR. Hayley closed her eyes and thought the name as she stood just inside the foyer of Harper House. Nothing happened, no ghostly revelations or appearances, no sweep of sudden knowledge. She felt a little foolish because she’d been sure something would happen if she concentrated on the name while standing inside the house.

She tried saying it out loud, quietly, but got the same results. She’d wanted to be found, Hayley thought. She’d wanted to be acknowledged. All right then.

“Amelia Ellen Connor,” she said aloud. “I’m acknowledging you as the mother of Reginald Edward Harper.”

But there was nothing but silence in answer, and the scent of David’s lemon oil and Roz’s summer roses.

Deciding she’d keep the failed experiment to herself, she headed to the library.

Roz and Mitch were already there, with Mitch hammering away at his laptop.

“Says he wants to get some things down while they’re fresh in his mind,” Roz told her with some exasperation whipping around the edges of her voice. “Stella’s in the kitchen with David. Her boys are with their grandparents today. Logan’ll be along when he’s along. I imagine the same goes for Harper.”

“He said he’d come. He just had to finish . . .” She lifted her shoulder. “Whatever.”

“Have a seat.” Roz waved a hand. “Dr. Carnegie seems determined to keep us in suspense.”

“Iced tea and lemon cookies,” David announced and he wheeled in a cart just ahead of Stella. “You cracked him yet?” He nodded toward Mitch.

“No, but it’s not going to take much more to push me to do just that. Mitch!”

“Five minutes.”

“It’s such a simple name, isn’t it?” Hayley shrugged when Roz looked at her. “Sorry, I was just thinking. Amelia, that’s sort of flowy and feminine. But the rest. Ellen Connor. It’s solid and simple. You sort of expect the rest to be flowy, too, or a little exotic. Then again, Amelia means industrious—I looked it up.”

“Of course you did,” Roz said fondly.

“It doesn’t sound like that’s what it should mean. I think Ellen’s a derivative of Helen, and makes me think Helen of Troy, so it’s actually more sort of feminine and exotic when you come down to it. And none of that’s important.”

“Interesting, as always though, to see how your mind works. And here’s the rest of our happy few.”

“Ran into Harper out front.” Logan walked over to kiss Stella. “Sweaty, sorry. Came straight from the job.” He picked up a glass of iced tea David had poured and drank every drop.

“So what’s the deal?” Harper zeroed in on the cookies, took three, then plopped into a chair. “We’ve got her name, so what, drum roll?”

“It’s pretty impressive Mitch could find her name with the little we had to go on,” Hayley shot back.

“Not saying otherwise, just wondering what we do with it.”

“First, I’d like to know how he came by it. Mitchell,” Roz said with growing impatience. “Don’t make me hurt you in front of the children.”

“So.” Mitch pushed back from the keyboard, took off his glasses to polish them on his shirt. “Reginald Harper owned several properties, including houses. Here in Shelby County, and outside it. Some were rented, of course, investment properties, income. I did find a few, through the old ledgers, that were listed as tenanted through certain periods, but generated no income.”

“Cooking the books?” Harper suggested.

“Possibly. Or these residences might have been where he installed mistresses.”

“Plural?” Logan took another glass of tea. “Busy boy.”

“Beatrice’s journal speaks of women, not woman, so it follows. It also follows, as we find him a shrewd, goal-oriented type that as he wanted a son, whatever the cost, he maintained more than one candidate until he got what he was after. But the journals also indicate Amelia was local, so I concentrated on the local properties.”

“I doubt he’d list a mistress as a tenant,” Roz said.

“No. Meanwhile, I’ve been scouring the census lists. A lot of names, a lot of years to cover. Then a little lightbulb goes off, and I narrowed it to the years Reginald held those local properties, and before 1892. Still a lot to cull through, but I hit in the 1890 census.”

His gaze scanned the room, landed on the cart. “Are those cookies?”

“Jesus, David, get the man some cookies before I have to kill him. What did you hit in 1890?”

“Amelia Ellen Connor, resident of one of Reginald’s Memphis houses. One that generated no income from the later half of that year, through March of 1893. One, in fact, he’d listed as untenanted during that period.”

“Almost certainly has to be her,” Stella said. “It’s too neat and tidy not to be.”

“She knows her neat and tidy,” Logan commented. “In spades.”

“If it’s not our Amelia, it’s one hell of a coincidence.” Mitch tossed his glasses onto the table. “Reginald’s very careful bookkeeper noted on Reginald’s books a number of expenses incurred during the period the property was supposedly empty, and Amelia Connor listed it as her residence on the census. In February of 1893, considerably more expenses were noted dealing with refurbishing in preparation for new tenants, paying tenants. The house was sold, if you’re interested, in 1899.”

“So we know she lived in Memphis,” Hayley began, “at least until a few months after the baby was born.”

“More than that. Amelia Ellen Connor.” He slipped his glasses back on and read his notes. “Born 1868 to Thomas Edward Connor and Mary Kathleen Connor née Bingham. Though Amelia listed both her parents as deceased, that was only true of her father, who died in 1886. Her mother was alive, and very possibly well, until her death in 1897. She was employed by the Lucerne family as a housemaid at a home on the river, called—”

“The Willows,” Roz finished. “I know that house. It’s older than this one. It’s a bed-and-breakfast now, a very lovely one. It was bought and restored oh, twenty years ago at least.”

“Mary Connor worked there,” Mitch continued, “and though she listed no children for the census, a check of vital records shows she had a daughter—Amelia Ellen.”

“Estranged, I suppose,” Stella said.

“Enough that the daughter considered her mother dead, and the mother didn’t acknowledge the daughter. There’s another interesting bit. There’s no record of Amelia having a child, just as there’s no record of her death.”

“Money can grease wheels or muddy them up,” Hayley added.

“What’s next?” Logan wondered.

“I’m going to go back over old newspapers, again, keep looking for any mention of her death—unidentified female, that sort of thing. And we’ll keep trying to find information through the descendants of servants. I’ll see if the people who own The Willows now will let me have a look at any documents or papers from that time.”

“I’ll smooth the way,” Roz offered. “Old family names grease wheels, too.”

SHE WAS OUT on a date for the first time in . . . it was really too sad to think about how long. And she looked pretty good, if she did say so herself. The little red top showed off her arms and shoulders, which were nicely toned between hauling Lily, yoga, and digging in the dirt.

There was a great-looking guy sitting across from her in a noisy, energetic Beale Street restaurant. And she couldn’t keep her mind on the moment.

“We’ll talk about it,” Harper said, then picked up the glass of wine she’d ignored and handed it to her. “You’ll feel better getting it out than working so hard not to say anything.”

“I can’t stop thinking about it. Her. I mean she had his baby, Harper, and he just took it. It’s not so hard to see why she’d have this hard-on about men.”

“Devil’s advocate? She sold herself.”

“But, Harper—”

“Hold on. She came from a working-class family. Instead of opting to work, she opted to be kept. Her choice, and I got no problem with it. But she traded sex for a house and servants.”

“Which gives him the right to take her child?”

“Not saying that, by a long shot. I’m saying it’s unlikely she was a rosy-cheeked innocent. She lived in that house, as his mistress, for what, more than a year before she got pregnant.”

She wasn’t ready to have it all taken down to its lowest level. “Maybe she loved him.”

“Maybe she loved the life.” He jerked a shoulder.

“I didn’t know you were so cynical.”

He only smiled. “I didn’t know you were so romantic. More than likely, the truth of it hits somewhere in the middle of cynicism and romance, so we’ll split the difference.”

“Seems fair. I don’t always like being fair though.”

“Either way it falls, we know this is one screwed-up individual, Hayley. It’s pretty likely she was screwed up before this happened. That doesn’t mean she deserved it, but I’m betting on a hard edge. It takes one, doesn’t it, to list your own mother as dead when she’s living a few miles away?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t paint a nice picture. I guess part of me wants to see her as a victim, like the heroine, when it’s just not that cut and dried.”

Deliberately she sipped her wine. “Okay, that’s enough. That’s all she gets for tonight.”

“Fine with me.”

“I just have to do one thing.”

Harper reached in his pocket. “Here, use my phone.”

Laughing, she took it. “I know she’s fine with Roz and Mitch. I just want to check.”

SHE ATE CATFISH and hush puppies and drank two glasses of wine. It was amazing how liberating it was to sit as long as she liked, to talk about whatever came to mind.

“I forgot what this was like.” Simply because she could, Hayley lounged back in her chair. “Eating a whole meal without interruptions. I’m glad you finally asked me out.”

“Finally?”

“You’ve had plenty of time,” she pointed out. “Then I wouldn’t have had to make the first move.”

“I liked your first move.” He reached over, took her hand.

“It was one of my better ones. Harper.” Relaxed, she eased forward, her eyes on his. “Were you really thinking about me that way all this time?”

“I put a lot of effort into not thinking about you that way. It worked some of the time.”

“Why did you? Put a lot of effort into it, I mean.”

“It seemed . . . rude,” was the best he could think of, “to imagine seducing a houseguest, especially a pregnant one. I helped you out of the car once—the day of your baby shower.”

“Oh God, I remember.” It made her laugh even as she covered her face with her free hand. “I was so awful to you. I felt so hot and fat and miserable.”

“You looked amazing. Vital. That was my first impression of you. Light and energy, and well, sex, but I tried to tramp that one out. But that day, when I helped you out, the baby moved. I felt it move. It was . . .”

“Scary?”

“Powerful, and yeah, a little scary. I watched you give birth.”

She went still, and flushed to the tips of her ears. “Oh, oh God, I forgot about that.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh no.”

He grabbed her hands, pulled them toward him to kiss. “It was impossible to describe. After I got over the get-me-the-hell-out-of-here stage, it was just staggering. I saw her born. I’ve been in love with her ever since.”

“I know.” Embarrassment faded as her heart swam up into her eyes. “That I know. You never ask about her father.”

“It’s not my business.”

“If we take this any further, it should be. You should at least know. Could we maybe take a walk?”

“Sure.”

THEY TURNED AWAY from the lights and action of Beale Street and wandered toward the river. Tourists flocked there as well, to stroll through the park or stand and watch the water, but the relative quiet made it easier for her to go back in her mind, and take him with her.

“I didn’t love him. I want to say that right off because some people still like to think poor girl, some guy got her in trouble then didn’t stand by her. And they think your heart’s been broken by some asshole. It wasn’t like that.”

“Good. It’d be a shame if Lily’s father was an asshole.”

The laugh bubbled up, made her shake her head. “You’re going to make this easier. You’ve got a way of doing that. He was a nice guy, a grad student I met when I was working at the bookstore back home. We’d flirt with each other, and we hit it off, went out a couple of times. Then my father died.”

They crossed the little bridge over the replica of the river, wandered past the couples sitting at stone tables. “I was so lost, so sad.”

He slid his arm around her shoulder. “I think if anything happened to my mother, it would be like being blinded. I’ve got my brothers to hold on to, but I can’t imagine the world without her.”

“It’s like that, like you just can’t see. What to do next, what to say next. No matter how kind people are—and they were, Harper, a lot of kind people—you’re in the dark. People loved my father, you just had to. So there were neighbors and family and friends, the people I worked with, that he worked with. But still, he was so much the center of my life, I felt alone, just isolated in this void of grief.”

“I was a lot younger when my father died, and I guess in some ways it’s easier. But I know there’s a stage you have to go through, the one where you can’t believe anything’s ever going to be right again, or solid again.”

“Yes, exactly. And when you get through it, start to feel again, it hurts. This guy, he was there for me. He was very sweet, very comforting, and that’s how one thing led to another.”

She tilted her head to meet his eyes. “Still, we were never more than friends. But it wasn’t a fling, it was—”

“Healing.”

Her heart warmed. “Yes. He went back to school, and I got on. I didn’t realize I was pregnant at first. The signs didn’t filter through my head. And when I did . . .”

“You were scared.”

She shook her head. “I was pissed. I was so mad. Why the hell had this happened to me? Didn’t I have enough to deal with? It wasn’t like I’d slept around, it wasn’t like I hadn’t been responsible, so what the hell was this? A joke? God, Harper, I wasn’t all soft and shivery. I was enraged. I got around to panic at some point, but I bounced back pretty quick to mad.”

“It was a tough spot, Hayley. You were alone.”

“Don’t pretty it up. I didn’t want to be pregnant. I didn’t want a baby. I had to work, I had to grieve, and it was about damn time somebody up there gave me a freaking break.”

They moved toward the river, and she kept her voice down as she looked out toward the water. “Now I was going to have to get an abortion, and that meant I’d have to figure out how to get some time off work, and pay for it.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I got the literature, and I found a clinic, and then I started thinking maybe it’d be better if I had it then gave it up for adoption. Signed up with one of those agencies. You read so much about these infertile couples pining for a baby. I thought maybe that would be something positive I could do.”

He brushed a hand down her hair, spoke softly. “But you didn’t do that either.”

“I got literature on that kind of thing, started researching. And all the time I was going back and forth, cursing God and so on, I was wondering why this guy wasn’t coming back in the store, or calling me. Part of my thinking when I was a little calmer was that I had to tell him, he had to know. I didn’t get pregnant by myself, and he’d better take some responsibility, too. Somewhere in all that thinking, it got real. I was going to have a baby. If I had a baby, I wouldn’t be alone. That was selfish thinking, and the first time I realized I was leaning toward keeping it. For me.”

She breathed deep and faced him. “I decided to keep the baby because I was lonely. That, then, was the heaviest weight on the scale.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. “And the grad student?”

“I went to see him, to tell him. Tracked him down at college, all ready to say, oops, look what happened, and here’s what I’ve decided to do so step on up.”

A breeze fluttered her hair, and she let it go. Let the damp warm air breathe over her face. “He was glad to see me, a little embarrassed, I think, that he hadn’t kept in touch. The thing was, he’d fallen in love with somebody. Big sunbursts of love,” she said, throwing her arms out to illustrate. “He was so happy and excited, and when he talked about her he just sent off waves of love.”

“So you didn’t tell him.”

“I didn’t tell him. What was I supposed to do? Say, gee, that’s nice, glad you found someone who makes your world complete. How do you think she’ll feel about the fact that you knocked me up? Too bad you screwed up the rest of your life because you were being a friend to me when I needed one. On top of that, I didn’t want him. I didn’t want to marry him or anything, so what was the point?”

“He doesn’t know about Lily?”

“Another selfish decision, maybe with a little unselfish best-for-him worked in. I wrestled with it later, when the pregnancy got more real, when I started to show and feel the baby kick around inside me. But I stuck with what I’d done.”

She paused a moment. It was harder than she’d known it could be to finish it out, to go on when he was quiet, when the quality of his listening was so complete.

“I know he has a right to know. But that’s what I did, and what I’d do again. I heard he married that girl in April, and they moved up to Virginia where his people are from. I think, whatever the reasons were, I did the right thing for all of us. Maybe he’d love Lily, or maybe she’d just be a mistake to him. I don’t want to know. Because she was a mistake for me for those first few months, and I hate knowing that. I didn’t start to love her, really love her, until I was about five months gone, and then it was like . . . oh, it was like everything in me opened up, and she was filling it. That’s when I knew I had to leave home. Give us both a new start, clean slate.”

“It was brave, and it was right.”

It was so simple, his response, and nothing like what she’d prepared for. “It was crazy.”

“Brave,” he repeated. He stopped, by deliberate design, next to a patch of small yellow lilies. “And right.”

“Turned out right. I was going to name her Eliza. That was the name I had picked out for a girl. Then you brought those red lilies into the room, and they were so beautiful, so bright. When she was born, I thought, she’s so beautiful, so bright. She’s Lily. So . . .” She let out a long breath. “That’s the big circle, from the beginning around to the end.”

He leaned down, touched his lips to hers. “The thing about circles? You can keep widening them.”

“Is that a way of saying you weren’t so bored by my personal soap opera you might want to do this again?”

“One thing you’ve never done is bore me.” He linked his hand with hers so they could continue walking. “And yeah, I’d like to do this again.”

“Away from the house. Away from her.”

“We can do that. The thing is, Hayley, we live there. We work there. We can’t avoid her.”

TOO TRUE, HAYLEY thought when she walked into her bedroom. All the drawers on her dresser hung open. Her clothes from there, from the closet, were all heaped on the bed. She crossed over, lifted a shirt, a pair of jeans. No damage, she noted, so that was something.

There’d been nothing amiss in Lily’s room when she’d checked, and that was even more important. Curious, she walked to the bathroom. All of her toiletries had been shoved into a pile on the counter.

“Your way of reminding me this isn’t really my place?” she wondered aloud. “That I may be told to pack up and go any time? Maybe you’re right. If and when, I’ll handle it, so all you managed to do was give me an hour’s annoying work before I go to bed.”

She began to put away the creams and colognes, the lipsticks and mascaras. Discount brands mostly, with a couple of splurges tossed in. And maybe she did wish she could afford better, just for the fun of it.

The same went for the clothes, she admitted as she went into the bedroom to deal with them. What was wrong with wishing she could afford really good fabrics or designer labels?

It wasn’t like she was obsessed with it.

Still, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be hanging up fabulous dresses instead of knockoffs and discount rack. Silks and cashmere. It would feel so good against her skin.

Roz had all those incredible clothes, and walked around in old shirts half the time. More than. What was the point in having so much, then taking it for granted? Leaving it hanging when someone else could use it. Use it better, too. Someone younger who knew how to live. Who deserved it, who’d earned it instead of just having everything handed to her.

And all those jewels, just going to waste, sitting in a safe when they’d look so beautiful around her throat. Sparkling.

She should just take them, take a few pieces here and there. Who’d know the difference?

Everything she wanted was right here for the taking, so why not . . .

She dropped the shirt she’d been holding. Holding, she realized in front of her the way a woman holds some lovely gown. Swaying in front of the mirror. And thinking of theft.

Not me. Shaking, she stared at her own reflection.

“Not me,” she said aloud. “I don’t need what you need. I don’t want what you want. Maybe you can get inside me, but you can’t make me do something like that. You can’t.”

She dumped the rest of her clothes in a chair, then lay down on the bed fully dressed. And slept with the lights on.