A LADY NAMED ROSE
Chapter Sixty-Two
A letter from Josephine awaited Rose upon her
arrival home from the lake to an empty apartment; it was just what she needed
to lift her spirits. There were brief words of gratitude for the handcrafted
rag doll Rose bought from the shop for Josie's thirteenth birthday, interwoven
with complaints about how her parents ignored her and her sister bossed her
around, along with comical tales about the girls at her finishing school and
about Richard at his prep school. He'd gotten himself expelled for making
moonshine in a dormitory bathtub. No one knew where he'd picked up this
particular skill.
Rose had only received Christmas cards with
brief notes from Victoria herself, but thanks to Josie she knew that the Scotts
had taken to sleeping apart and were no more than cordial to each other. The
maids whispered about the head doctor Victoria started visiting in the
aftermath of Cecilia's death, but she had stopped drinking and for that her
family was grateful. Her mother, however, had not, and after several months of
making a nuisance of herself, Victoria finally shipped her back to relatives in
New York.
Josephine enclosed a theater playbill and
several gossip columns from the trades, which Rose devoured like candy. The
girl had lately taken quite an interest in Broadway and begged her mother to
bring her to the city to see all the shows. Her interest seemed genuine, but
Rose knew it was partly a ploy to see Sir, who'd moved back to Harlem with his
aunt a year earlier.
"I miss him so much," Josie
lamented, as she did in every letter. Rose had at first wondered if Marie took
the action she did to separate the children, considering what happened between
India and Bill, but realized otherwise when Marie herself wrote, saying that
she'd finally given in and married Phillip. It seemed that India's departure
freed her to live the life of her choosing.
As for Bill and India, they'd sent a
beautiful photograph taken at their wedding in San Francisco the previous
summer. After even the Negro ministers had been reluctant to perform the
ceremony, they married in a Unitarian church. India's mother attended. Victoria
secretly sent money, but Bill had not spoken to his father since leaving home.
Rose missed them all dreadfully.
For what was not the first time in recent days,
she contemplated a trip to Chicago to see Vera. Her former dorm mate had
completed her doctoral thesis, was teaching at a university, and spoke
breathlessly of a young lawyer whose advocacy on behalf of the city's poor and
disenfranchised was gaining him respect in even her father's inner circle.
There had been no time to stop on her journey west because of Randolph, but now
Rose had all the time in the world. She'd been to visit Vera twice, most
recently for the holidays this season. Vera came to Chippewa Falls once and
despised it on sight...but at least she came.
As the months progressed Rose had become
increasingly restless. She was certain in the beginning that she would find
some sort of answers in a solitary life here, but all she'd discovered was that
she wasn't a solitary person. Or maybe she just wasn't asking the right
questions. As much as Mrs. Cabot loved Eleanor Dawson, her memories of Jack
were sketchy at best.
"He was a smart youngun, very grownup
like," she reminisced one evening, "but he was always wandering off
by himself to work on his drawings. Me being an artist, I can kinda understand
that, but he would just disappear for hours. Liketa give his pa a heart
attack sometimes. John didn't understand his creative nature."
She'd produced a few photographs of herself
and Ellie, their husbands, and of Joe Dawson when they were much younger. The
Dawson men were both tall and lanky with dark hair and sullen expressions on
their faces, though Joe was by far the better looking of the two. In sharp
contrast, Ellie was petite, curvaceous and fair-haired, with a warm smile and a
mischievous gleam in her eyes. She looked out of place standing in the yard of
the isolated farmhouse. Rose didn't have to ask whom Jack favored more.
Mrs. Cabot had no pictures of Jack. Rose
wondered at that, but held her tongue.
She'd finally driven out to the farm once the
spring thaw began. It was just as Mrs. Cabot described it: an expansive field
choked with dandelions and other weeds, and a few charred bricks to mark the
foundation of what had once been a modest farmhouse. The Cabots didn't talk
about the fire; apparently, it had been one of the more gruesome events in
local history. Rose meant to look up old newspapers from that year in the
library to see what the articles would say about the family, but had never
gotten around to it. Perhaps irrationally, she thought the Cabots would find
out, and she didn't want them to.
On that visit to the Dawson farm, Rose had
closed her eyes and tried to envision Jack milking cows or picking tomatoes
during the fall harvest. She gave up after only a few minutes. Just as well.
The empty barn gave her an idea.
The morning after the fishing competition,
she rose early, packed two hard boiled eggs, a ham and cheese sandwich, a
handful of Mrs. Cabot's oatmeal cookies and a Thermos of coffee into a wicker
basket and set out along the county route that led to Lake Wissota. There was a
fine dusting of snow on the road and she had to use caution in handling the
car, which had begun to show its age in wear.
The turnoff to the Dawson farm was easy to
miss; on her first trips Rose passed it every time and had to double back, but
by now she'd memorized the pine trees that marked the entrance to the narrow
lane. The mailbox had long since been destroyed and the drive was dangerously
rutted. Rose slowed to a crawl and eventually emerged from the strand of trees
into the midst of a field that had once grown cash crops. Now the grass stood
waist-high in areas, concealing a variety of unsavory critters. Rose parked as
close as she could to the barn.
The dilapidated structure stood on a small
incline overlooking the water. Its door hung off the hinges and it was cold and
shadowy inside, with crows nesting in the rafters and God only knew what hiding
behind the bales of hay stacked in the corners. A spooky place, but Rose had
converted it into a makeshift studio, convinced that it was here that Eleanor
Dawson labored over that painting of the lake. She set up an easel, paints and
a stool she'd purchased at a secondhand store, and lit a lantern for warmth and
to scare away any creatures who dared disturb her.
She worked with a fury, pausing only to gulp
down the eggs and coffee, and lost track of the time until the sun reached its
zenith and she realized she had to relieve herself.
This was the trickiest aspect to her studio
in the wilderness. Rose was accustomed to indoor plumbing. Fortunately, there
still remained on the property near the barn an outhouse. The stench and the
flies were unbearable in the beginning, and Rose once had to frighten off a
green snake with a rake she found in the barn, but when one had to go...
Rose had latched the door when she imagined
she heard the rumbling of an automobile motor, and it sounded terribly close.
She decided it had to come from the road. No one ever visited the Dawson farm
anymore but her.
She rinsed her hands quickly in the freezing
water at the pump outside—miracle of miracles, the well had not run dry—and
turned back to the barn.
And stopped cold.
Parked beside the Daimler Benz was another
car, one she’d never seen before. And for the first time, Rose heard a male
voice inside the barn, calling, "Hello? Is anyone here?"
Without comprehending why, Rose began to
shiver.
She approached cautiously, stealthily. The intruder
grew quiet all of a sudden. Rose wondered if he could see her, and in a panic
she dropped into a crouch. Feeling more ridiculous by the second, she crept up
to the side of the barn and peered in through a gap between two slats. She
could see a figure standing near the easel, but couldn't discern his identity.
He knew she was here. She'd have to show
herself.
But she wouldn't approach unprotected.
Slipping silently into the barn, she grabbed the rake, which she stored just
inside the doorway. Her unexpected guest studied her painting, his back turned
to her, but there was something overwhelmingly familiar about him. As she drew
closer, Rose could tell by the light of the lantern he was the blond mystery
man from the lake the day before.
He heard her footfalls and spun around.
"Jack?" she whispered.
Something struck Rose in the back of her
head. She fell forward, collapsing in the stranger's arms, and there was
darkness.