Cade used to read it to cheer her up when she was sad.”
She’d been sad a lot. Even boisterous Deirdre had longed to be able to comfort her. But when the melancholy had stolen over Emmaline McDaniel’s face, the last thing she wanted was Deirdre racketing around.
Can’t you ever sit still? her mother would mourn. You’re just like your father.
Not that the Captain had approved of her wild side, either.
“I’m just dying to get my hands on that play,” Emma pleaded. “Can I come with you and look for it?”
Deirdre’s jaw clenched. Score another point for Cade. He’d not only made certain Emma would check on her in the house, he’d guaranteed the kid would shadow her every step of the way to the cedar chest.
“Emma, I’d…”
Rather not let you see how much it hurts me to sort through Mom’s things, see how badly everything in the chest suits me. What a disappointment I was to a mother I never really knew…
There had been an ocean of secrets between Deirdre and her mother. Deirdre had almost lost Emma’s trust, as well. She’d deserved to. Jesus, God, how she’d deserved to. But she’d fought to mend the wounds between them, swore she would never hide things from Emma again, never keep secrets that would fester, destroy.
She’d be the worst kind of hypocrite to change the rules now.
She forced herself to smile. “If you really want to come upstairs with me, it’s fine.”
Emma gave a skip of delight. “You’re the best mom in the whole world!”
Deirdre flinched inwardly. She knew better.
Emma grabbed Deirdre’s hand the way she had every Christmas morning before they headed downstairs to see what Santa Claus had left, never disappointed even those times when the man in the red hat had to scrape the very bottom of his sack for presents.
Half dragging Deirdre, Emma rushed up the stairs to the soft pink room that had been Emmaline’s own. Not that Deirdre had entered it willingly after shattering the china ladies. The afternoon sunlight showed the dust on the top of the chest, smeared with finger marks, as if Cade hadn’t been able to resist touching it. He should take the blasted thing, Deirdre thought. For him there would be warm memories as well as pinching ones.
“Oh, Mom!” Emma enthused. “Do you know how many times I wanted to open this thing? But the Captain would never let me.”
One thing Deirdre and her father had shared was a desperate need to forget. Deirdre knelt beside the chest, sucking in a steadying breath.
“How about we open it on three?” Emma said, curling her own fingers around the edge of the wooden lid. “One, two, three.”
The hinges creaked, the sweet smell of cedar filling Deirdre’s nose as she set the length of brass into place, to hold the trunk lid open. But the scent was the only thing familiar. Deirdre frowned, puzzled. Instead of precisely folded linens and silver lined up like soldiers on parade, the trunk’s contents were a jumble as if someone had dug frantically through the contents. Atop it all lay a worn copy of Romeo and Juliet, bits of its blue cardboard cover flaking off, a smear of blue dye staining the bridal veil beneath as if it had gotten wet somehow during the years.
Emma cried out, snatching the script up, clutching it to her chest as zealously as Juliet had clutched the dagger. But it was Deirdre who felt the piercing of old pain, old grief.
“I just…I can’t believe I’m actually holding a play she loved as much as…as I love it.”
Deirdre’s throat felt so tight it hurt to squeeze words through it, but she wouldn’t have spoiled Emma’s pleasure for anything in the world. The child was far too intuitive as it was, always picking up on the hurts and secret sorrows of everyone around her. “Then keep it.”
“Uncle Cade says Grandma’s stuff is all yours. You don’t have to give this to me.”
“I want you to have it.” Maybe Emmaline McDaniel was looking down from heaven, delighted, too. Her beloved play script was going to someone who wouldn’t regard it with cynical distaste.
Reverently Emma cradled it in her hands. “Listen! I’ll read the part I used for the audition!” She started to open the script, but it fell open in the middle, a yellowed envelope seeming to mark a place. “What’s this?” Emma said, slipping the envelope free. Deirdre recognized her mother’s elegantly swirled handwriting.
“It must be a letter your grandmother wrote to somebody.”
“But it’s stamped ‘return to sender.’ I wonder why she kept it. It must have been important. This is the place she kept all her most precious stuff. Maybe it’s something wonderful! Mysterious! Like something in an old Nancy Drew book.”
“Or maybe she was reading the play and had to stop to cook dinner or answer the phone so she just stuffed a stray letter in to mark her place. Go ahead and open it. I can see the suspense is killing you. Just don’t be disappointed when it turns out to be no big deal.”
Emma folded herself down to the floor, crosslegged, and pillowed the script on her lap, carefully loosening the flap of the letter. She withdrew folded sheets of stationery embossed with a graceful bunch of lilies of the valley.
She cleared her throat, beginning in her most theatrical way.
“Dear Jimmy,
After so many years, I hardly know how to begin. Three nights ago there was a horrible accident. My daughter, Deirdre, fell off the wing of a plane in the local hangar, damaging her kidneys. She nearly died, and the doctor says it’s so serious she may need an organ donor.”
“That’s why you’ve got those scars on your back, right?” Emma glanced up at Deirdre through her lashes.
“Not one of my finer moments. I was climbing around on the plane, trying to get your uncle’s attention and—well, it was a really bad idea.” Bad? How about catastrophic? The guilt had all but destroyed Cade. She’d come out of the anesthetic to find that the bright, laughing older brother she’d adored had vanished forever.
She’d tried to prove to him she wasn’t worth all the misery in his eyes. She was so wild, so reckless, it was no one’s fault but her own when life steamrolled her.
But what the heck was Mom writing to this Jimmy guy about the accident for? One of the few things Deirdre could remember from the fog of pain that had engulfed her as she drifted in and out of consciousness was the Captain’s gruff voice, telling the doctor to cut him open right then and there, give his daughter his kidney, hell, his goddamned heart if the girl needed it.
She’d felt so loved for that short space of time. Her mother’s tear-streaked face desperate, her father so fierce, as if he could hold back death. And Cade…he’d looked as if the sky had fallen on his head. But there had never been any question her big brother loved her. She’d never doubted it for a moment, even years later when she’d gambled everything on his love, taken advantage of his generous heart.
The memory still brought tears to Deirdre’s eyes. Why hadn’t her family been able to hold on to that far-too-brief closeness? How could it have slipped away?
Emma
