She turned the book over. There was a small pink envelope taped to its back. Bennie hadn’t seen it the first time around. She turned the book sideways so she could read the envelope. The ballpoint ink was faint and clotted in spots. “To Bill,” it said, in a woman’s hand. Her mother’s hand. There could be no mistaking it. Bennie had seen her mother’s writing a thousand times, on powers of attorney, medical releases, and informed consent forms. What Bennie held in her hands now was a letter from her mother to her father. Maybe.
Bennie felt her throat thicken. She hadn’t heard them utter a word to each other, but she could read their most intimate thoughts. She freed the envelope from the scrap-book.
17
“Five minutes to lights out!” shouted the guard, and inmates began shuffling to their cells for the night.
Alice was already washing up in her cell. She dried her face and spotted Shetrell’s girl, Leonia, glancing at her as she lumbered by. Weird. Leonia’s cell was on the lower tier of the unit, underneath the ground floor. What was she doing on the upper deck so close to lights out? Goin’ up to Shetrell’s for a quickie? Disgusting. Alice didn’t get it. She liked her men with dicks. Anthony had been the exception, and Alice used to call him the only dick without a dick. She wasn’t sorry he was gone. She was only sorry she’d ended up in jail for it.
Alice stepped close to her cell door and watched Leonia amble down the hall. The big girl’s arms hung apart from her sides, the steroid shuffle. Alice flicked out the light and edged away from the door, watching. Leonia looked back over her shoulder in the direction of Alice’s cell.
Alice stood motionless in the darkness at her door.
Leonia turned back and walked past Shetrell’s cell without going in, then continued down the hall and took the stairs down to her tier, where Alice lost sight of her.
“What’re you doin’?” Alice’s cellie whined from her bunk. “I was readin’.”
“Shut up,” Alice said. Wondering.
18
Bennie slipped a finger in the small pink envelope. Inside was a slip of rose-colored paper and she tugged it out. It came only reluctantly, apparently unopened for years, and she unfolded it.
August 4
Dear Bill,
Please try to understand. I have to go. Someday I will explain it all. Until then, please know how much I love you.
Yours always,
me
Bennie stared at the letter, reading it again and again. What? I’m leaving you? She had been told that Winslow had left her mother, not the other way around.
She shook her head, astounded. The date on the letter was roughly a month after Bennie was born. Had her mother left her father with a newborn? Maybe newborn twins? It didn’t make sense. It seemed incredible.
But there it was, on paper. The letter wasn’t signed, but it had to be from her mother, it was her handwriting. Still, Bennie wished it had been signed with at least a “C,” just to be sure. The photos, the handwriting, the way it was faithfully kept and even hidden, all of it taken together indicated the note was from her mother, but it struck Bennie as a circumstantial case. Or maybe she was thinking like a lawyer, not a daughter.
She refolded the note. She felt shaken, her body hollow. She returned the note to the envelope, then held the letter in her palm, feeling the old-fashioned heaviness of the stationery. Smelling the vaguely perfumed scent to the paper. Tea Roses, her mother’s perfume, or did she imagine that? Still, she couldn’t bring herself to put the note back right away.
Then Bennie paused. Whose note was it anyway? Whose secret to keep? It was truth, after all, and to keep it secret was to treat it as if it were property, fencing out others like trespassers. But truth wasn’t property, to be owned and held exclusively by anyone. Truth was to be shared, commonly and collectively owned. Bennie had a right to know the truth, certainly of her own birth, and no one else had an equal right to keep it from her. No, the note belonged to her. She placed it in her jacket pocket, put the scrapbook back in the bin, replaced the lid, and shoved the box under the bed.
Bennie rose unsteadily. Her history had changed, or at least her view of it. She questioned everything she’d been told and much that she hadn’t. Would her mother leave a man with a newborn, or twins, with no means of support? You’d have to be crazy.
But her mother was crazy. Stone-cold crazy.
Bennie felt vaguely sick inside. She needed to know the truth about Connolly. She had a piece of the puzzle, but not the whole picture. “Let’s roll, Bear,” she said, and left Winslow’s cottage with the golden lumbering sleepily after her.
From the front step of the cottage, she could see the gabled roof of the main house against the darkened sky. Maybe Winslow was there, or at least they would know where he was. Bennie hustled to the Expedition and tricked Bear into jumping in without her.
She hurried through a pasture with grass barely long enough to tickle her ankles. A green, fresh scent filled the air and fireflies glowed on and off, oblivious to mounds of horse dung that Bennie avoided like land mines. She reached the main house, a stately mansion covered with the same white stucco as Winslow’s cottage, glowing alabaster in the dark. Huge white pillars supported its slate roof and front porch, which soared to four airy stories. Green-painted shutters framed rows upon rows of bubbly mullioned windows. Bennie paused at the imposing front door and rang the brass bell under a working gaslight.
The door opened almost immediately, and the sweet, aged face of a uniformed maid appeared. “Can I help you?” the woman asked.
“I’m an attorney, Bennie Rosato. I need to speak to the owner of the estate.”
“At this hour?” The maid’s gray eyebrows made a snow-dusted roof over her eyes. “Why, they’ve all gone to bed. Is something the matter?”
“Uh, no. I’m trying to find the caretaker, Bill Winslow. I went to his cottage but he wasn’t there. Do you know where he is?”
“Mr. Winslow is on vacation this week and the next two. He takes three weeks every year.”
Bennie wondered if it was a coincidence. “Do you know where he went on vacation?”
“No. Shall I tell him you called?”
“I was wondering, how long has Mr. Winslow worked here?”
“Let me see. Mr. Winslow and I came to the family about the same time, almost thirty-nine years ago.”
Bennie hid her reaction. All her life, he had been here. “So you must know him well.”
“Well, no.”
“In almost forty years?”
The maid’s eyelids fluttered. “I have my duties in the house, and Mr. Winslow works the grounds. He does like his privacy.”
“Does he have any family?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“Any children?”
“No. I must say, I know nothing about that, and I’m terribly uncomfortable discussing Mr. Winslow’s personal business any further. Please call again when Mr. Winslow returns.” The maid closed the heavy door with a solid brass click, leaving Bennie on the outside with her questions.
It was a feeling she was getting used to.
By the time Bennie got home, her bedroom was dark and Grady was sound asleep. It was just as well. She didn’t want to explain about her trip to Delaware or her lease of a crime scene. She had never done anything like that and didn’t know a criminal lawyer who had. Bennie sensed she was crossing a line, but decided to go with it. Coming so late to Connolly’s defense called for pulling out all the stops.
She undressed quickly in the darkness, piling her skirt on top of the exercise bike and stepping out of her pumps. She felt exhausted and there was still so much work to do. She padded to the bathroom, followed by Bear, and stopped halfway in the dark hallway. Her home office was on the right, still unpainted.