Buried Sins. Marta Perry
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Nothing.”
They were family, she argued with herself. She could tell them. Except that she couldn’t tell them just a piece of her troubles—she’d have to expose the whole sorry story.
“When you asked if I’d been in the apartment earlier—was it because something happened?” Rachel’s voice was troubled.
Andrea’s gaze whipped round to her. “You thought someone had been in there?”
“It was nothing.” She should have remembered that you could never get away with half truths with Andrea. She’d always taken her role as oldest sister seriously. Far more seriously than Mom had taken motherhood, in fact.
“You had better tell us, Caroline.” Grams sat very straight in the chair at the head of the table.
She began to feel like a sulky child, being told to behave by her elders. “It wasn’t anything serious. I found the door ajar when I came home from the store, and I was sure I’d locked it when I left.”
“You probably forgot.” Andrea’s response had echoes of childhood—of Andrea bringing the lunch she’d forgotten to school or picking up the jacket she’d left at a friend’s house. When are you going to be more responsible, Caro?
“I didn’t forget.” She could hear the edge in her voice. “I’ve been living on my own in the city for years, and it’s second nature to lock up.”
“Even so—”
It looked as if Cal nudged his wife under the table to shut her up. “To tell the truth, I seldom locked up when I lived there. The latch is probably sticking. I’ll stop by in the morning and take care of it.”
“You don’t need—” she began.
Cal shook his head decisively. “I’ll come by.”
His tone didn’t leave room for argument, so she just nodded. Apparently Andrea had found herself a man who was as strong-willed as she was.
The entrance of Emma from the kitchen put an end to anything else Andrea might have had to say. Emma placed a platter in front of Caroline. One look, one sniff of the delectable aroma, and she knew what it was.
“Emma, your peaches-and-cream cake. That was always my favorite.”
“I remember, ja.” Emma’s round face beamed with pleasure. “You’d come into the kitchen and tease me to make it when you were no more than three.”
For an instant she was back in that warm kitchen, leaning against Emma’s full skirt, feeling the comfort of Emma’s hand on her shoulder, the soft cadence of her speech, the sense that the kitchen was a refuge from tension she didn’t understand elsewhere in the house.
“I did, didn’t I?” It took an effort to speak around the lump in her throat.
“You’ll have a big piece.” Emma cut an enormous slab and put it on a flowered dessert plate. “And there is a bowl of whipping cream that I brought from the farm this morning to top it.”
Funny. Cal and Emma, the two outsiders, were the ones who made her feel most at home.
But not even their intervention could change the way the others were looking at her. Wondering. Waiting to say it. Poor Caro, always needing to be bailed out. Poor Caro, in trouble again.
“I’m sure we’ll find something up here that you can use for your booth for the craft show.” Rachel led the way into the attic the next day. She’d been quick to offer her help when she learned that Caroline planned to sell some of her jewelry at the show. “As far as I can tell, no one has thrown anything away in the history of Unger House. They just put it in the attic.”
“I see what you mean.” She’d forgotten, if she’d ever known, how huge the connecting attics were, and how stuffed with furniture, boxes, trunks and some objects that defied classification. She picked up an odd-looking metal object with a handle. “What on earth is this?”
Rachel grinned. “A cherry pitter. See what I mean?”
“I see that I wouldn’t want to be the one to sort all this out.”
“We’ll keep that in mind.” Rachel worked her way purposefully through a maze of trunks. “I’d vote for Andrea, myself. She’s the organized one.”
“I doubt she’d appreciate that.” She followed Rachel, wondering a little at how easy she was finding it to talk to her sister. The years when their lives had gone in separate directions seemed to have telescoped together.
“Here’s the screen I was talking about.” Rachel pulled a triple folding screen out from behind a dusty dress form. “This would do for a backdrop, and then you could use one of the folding tables to display your jewelry.”
“It’s pretty dark. I’d like to find something a little brighter to draw people’s attention.” She hefted the screen. At least it was easily movable. She’d left most of her craft-show things to be shipped with the apartment’s contents, and who knew when the moving company would finally get them here?
“I know just the thing. There are loads of handmade quilts stored in trunks. Throw one of them over the screen, and you’ve got instant color.”
“That would work.” It was nice to have Rachel so willing to support her.
Rachel lifted the lid of the nearest trunk. “By the way, did you ever get in touch with your friend in Santa Fe? The one who was worried about you?”
And that was the flip side of support. You owed someone else an explanation of your actions.
“Yes, we had a long talk. I should have called her sooner.”
She hadn’t, because she hadn’t been especially eager to listen to Francine, who had been appalled that Caro had, as she put it, run away.
Well, what else would you call it? That’s what you do. You run away when things turn sour. She’d run from home. She’d packed up and left every time a relationship went bad or a job failed. That was always the default action. Leave.
Rachel, burrowing into the trunk, didn’t respond, leaving her free to mull over that conversation with Francine. She’d told Francine what she hadn’t told her family—about the man who’d accosted her in the plaza, his demands, his conviction that Tony was still alive.
Surprisingly, Francine hadn’t rejected that instantly.
“Honestly, Caro, I can’t say I knew Tony all that well.” She’d sounded troubled. “We worked on a couple of charity events together, and I knew basically what everyone else did—that he was smart, charming, well connected. As for any problems…well, did you think he might have been gambling?”
“That would be an explanation, wouldn’t it?” She’d felt her way, trying that on for size. “I never saw any proof, one way or the other.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Francine about the disappearance of her own money, but something held her back. Loyalty, maybe, after the wedding promises she’d made. Or just because it revealed how stupid she’d been.
“One thing I’m sure of,” Francine said. “If Tony did fake his death in some bizarre need to get out of a difficult situation, he’d find some way to let you know he’s still alive. You can be sure of that.”
She hadn’t found that as comforting as Francine had obviously intended. How could she?
“Caroline.” Rachel’s voice suggested that she’d said Caro’s name several times. “Where are you? You look a thousand miles away.” Her expression changed. “I’m sorry. Were you thinking about your husband?”
“Yes, I guess I was.” But her thoughts hadn’t been what Rachel probably imagined. She went to help her lift a sheet-wrapped bundle from a trunk. “I’m all right. Really.” Her mind flicked back to that conversation