Dreadful Sorry (16 page)

"Did you ever find out what happened to him? Did he ever come back?"

"Not to stay. And Wallace Holloway never came back at all. That big house just sat empty, falling into disrepair over the years. When he died, his eldest son, Arnold, inherited it but never lived here. About twenty years ago the grandchild of one of the girls inherited it and moved in with his family, but they didn't last long in that house. It's just too old and drafty. Too big for anything but a wealthy family with lots of kids—or else an innkeeper who can keep it full of tourists. I tell you, your dad has the right idea!"

"So you never saw Abner again?" asked Molly. "That's so sad!"

Grace Wilkins looked surprised. "Never saw him again? Did I say that? No, no, Molly. Don't go writing a tragic ending to my little story. Abner came back to Hibben after the war—the Second World War, that is. Stopped by to see me. We had a cup of coffee right here." She offered to refill Molly's cup, but Molly shook her head. "Brought his silly little wife, too. I tried to give back his mother's ring, but—to give him a little credit—he wouldn't take it. I hear he got divorced a few years later—no kids—and now he lives over in Benson. He was never a lad to make a commitment to anybody." She laughed wryly. "Lad! He's an old geezer now, same as me."

"What a story!" Molly thought it was a shame that the two old people couldn't have fallen in love again and made up for all the lost years. A hint of these thoughts must have shown in her face, for Grace Wilkins pursed her lips.

"Don't go getting all sentimental!" Miss Wilkins peered at Molly over the top of her glasses. "I saw him about a month back—funeral for a woman from his nursing home. I knew her because she had been the Benson librarian some years back. Anyway, Abner and I met up at the church. He's practically a cripple, the old seadog. A little bit senile now, I think, but in some ways still the same old Abner. Winked at me during the eulogy."

Miss Wilkins shook her head. "Don't know that I'd have wanted to spend my life with a man always setting out to sea, anyway. We had enough of that with my pa—and
he
came home at night. No, I have to say I've been content right here. I worked in the general store for years, then took over the library. And now here I am, working every day right in the little cottage that used to be my home. I was born right upstairs—in the children's book room. Fitting, don't you think? Of course it wasn't full of books then."

"This was your family's home?" asked Molly weakly. She remembered the woman she had seen in the garden—Mrs. Wilkins, Clementine had called her.

"Yes, indeed. We always lived here. After my parents died, I stayed on. I sold the house to the county about fifteen years ago when they wanted to relocate the library from the schoolhouse, and I moved into one of the modern condominiums right behind the church. They're much more comfortable than this old place ever was." Her smile was rueful. "Tourists love old places like this, but you'll see for yourself someday, my girl. Old. bones need good central heating and nice hot showers. They don't care much about charm."

Miss Wilkins chattered on about this and that, somehow getting back to the sinking of the
Titanic
on her birthday in April 1912, but Molly scarcely listened.

She sat at the table, her limbs feeling as limp as wet seaweed. In her attempts at research, she hadn't opened a single library book this morning, and yet she had learned far more than she'd ever hoped to know. The Holloways
had
been a real family. Uncle Wallace and Aunt Ethel had truly existed, and so had their many children, all with names starting with A. Abner, the boy who pestered Clementine and found her secret cave and played pirates, was a real person. He had jilted Grace Wilkins and gone to sea, had married and divorced, and was still alive today. And then there was Grace Wilkins herself, flesh and blood, sitting at the same table with Molly. The facts added up to something impossible. School had never taught her how to solve equations like this.

Molly set her coffee cup on the table. She hesitated; she could still leave here and try to forget everything she had heard this morning. But instead she plunged bravely on. "Miss Wilkins, you've been a big help. But there's just one more thing I want to ask before I go."

Miss Wilkins broke off in midsentence—something about how, as a girl, she had begged her father to take her out in the boat, even though girls didn't go on boats. She blinked at Molly. "What is that?"

"You said they had a lot of kids—and that all the daughters married into rich Boston families, right? Well, I just wondered ... well, whether all those girls were their own?"

"How funny you should ask." Miss Wilkins blinked. "Because you're quite right, though my family always tried to forget about her." She leaned across the table and lowered her voice to a whisper, although no one else but Molly was in the room. "There was a niece living with them once. She was older than almost all of the Holloway children. And she was the girl my brother, Hob, was sweet on. He knew her from school but didn't get much chance to be with her because she had to look after her little cousins. Abner told me once that she'd been more a mother to him than his own ever was. I think he was sweet on her himself, child that he was. He felt betrayed when she disappeared. Still feels betrayed, if you ask me."

Molly was trying hard to follow this story. "Disappeared?"

"The night Hob drowned. He went out in bad weather and was wrecked on the rocks in the cove. My pa could never understand such poor judgment. It wasn't like Hob, he used to say. He felt it was somehow because of that girl that our Hob died, though I'm not sure why. But years later when I told them about Abner, they said no good would come of a relationship with anyone from the headland house." Miss Wilkins shrugged. "Superstitious, I know. But my pa never fully recovered his good spirits after Hob died, and my ma wasn't able to give him any more children."

Molly swallowed. She had to ask. "The girl—" she whispered. "That niece. What was her name?"

"It was Clementine. Clementine Horn."

Without warning the humming began in Molly's head—that horrible Clementine tune. She stood abruptly. "Thanks for everything. I have to go."

"But you haven't found any books yet!"

"Oh, you've been so helpful, I don't think I need any books after all." Molly moved abruptly toward the door, gulping out a good-bye to Grace Wilkins.

"You're sure I can't help you find some books to take now? They found the
Titanic,
you know, only a few years back. Sent a submarine robot or something down to search. Now, I never! Amazing things go on these days, don't you think?"

That was exactly what Molly thought. But she didn't want to read about the
Titanic.
The humming was getting louder in her head, and her voice sounded hollow, as if it were coming from down a deep well. "I—I'll have to come back for books another day. I really have to get home now. Thank you..."

Then she started walking back down Cotton Lane. The humming receded, but her eyes, when she blinked, felt fuzzy. The sounds of the sea gulls wheeling overhead were muted.
I'm in a daze,
she thought. It was the sort of thing you always read people were in, without having any real idea what being in a daze meant. Now she knew.

Numbly she turned the corner onto Main Street and headed back up the hill. She passed the low stone walls built by the early settlers. There was the old building that had once been Clementine's beloved school. Now it was the antique shop. The next building was the church. Molly could see the modem condominiums where Miss Wilkins lived just beyond. As Molly trudged past, she glanced at the graveyard, and then she stopped. Here was her chance to cut through the fog and do some real research.

The headstones—most old, but a few new—seemed to beckon her inside the low stone wall. Hob Wilkins would be buried here. An inexplicable feeling of guilt penetrated Molly's daze at the, thought of Grace Wilkins's half-brother—the feeling was just as mysterious as the hollowness that assailed her sometimes when she was with Jared Bernstein. Without planning her route, Molly left Main Street and walked slowly along the side of the wooden church. Could there be some answers here?

She stepped over the low stone wall and stood amid the graves. The grass was scrubby but green and neatly trimmed around the headstones. A few of the graves had small bunches of wildflowers at their bases, arranged in plastic containers. One gravestone, larger than the others, was a memorial to the boys from Hibben who had died overseas in World War II. An American flag fluttered nearby. Molly walked around the memorial stone and saw that the other side was dedicated to the boys from Hibben who had died in World War I. Hob Wilkins might have been one of those young men from Hibben, she realized, if he hadn't died so young. Long life was something she'd taken for granted until her near drowning, but now she knew there was no guarantee at all. Not for anyone. You lived until you died, and that was it.

Or was it? Paulette would say no, that the soul had many more chances to live long lives. In other bodies. Maybe she should have asked Miss Wilkins for books on reincarnation.

Molly stepped around a few headstones, searching for Hob's grave. She found other Wilkins stones first, marking graves of babies who had died in 1906, 1907, and 1910. They had each lived only a few days. These might have been the babies Grace Wilkins's ma had lost before Grace was born on the day the
Titanic
sank in 1912.

And then there it was, a headstone larger than the ones marking the babies' graves, with a ship carved into the curve above the words:

 

H
OBSON
J
OHN
W
ILKINS

OUR
BELOVED
S
on and
B
rother
D
eparted this life
J
uly 1,1912
A
ged 17 years

H
E
S
AILS THE
E
TERNAL
S
EAS

 

Molly knelt at Hob's stone and traced the letters of the inscription with her finger. Her stomach tightened against the sudden hollow anguish. "I'm sorry, so
sorry,
" she whispered.

Here in the graveyard anything seemed possible. Molly sat cross-legged on the grass in front of the stone and closed her eyes. The sun beat warm on her head, and she could hear the buzz of bees in the flowering bushes at the side of the low stone wall surrounding the graveyard. But then the buzz changed slowly to a hum, and it was the same old tune, humming through her head.

Her daze had lifted; now she could hear the scream of sea gulls as they flew overhead toward the wharf at the end of Main Street. She could hear the thud of hooves on the street in front of the church. She could hear the laughter of children in the schoolyard next door. She recognized the high-pitched voice that called out excitedly: "
There she is, Janie! Over here! Hello, Clemmy!
"

On the last day of school, the graduating class tested the younger children in the traditional schoolwide spelling bee that marked the end of term. At noon the families started gathering in the schoolyard for the commencement ceremony. City high schools might put on fancy ceremonies in big auditoriums, but Hibben's village school kept the celebration to a simple afternoon of speeches and songs, with a picnic and dance afterward. The schoolchildren gathered in self-conscious groups, waiting for their families to arrive. The fathers of most of the children were absent, out with the fishing fleet as they were every day. But the fathers of the graduating seniors, on a rare day off, attended the ceremony dressed in their Sunday best.

Clementine wore a new white lawn dress, with her dark braids coiled tightly at the nape of her neck and interwoven with pink ribbon. She stood with the other five seniors just inside the school door, pink cheeks glowing even more vividly than usual as she peeked out into the yard to watch everyone assemble. Aunt Ethel and Uncle Wallace would not attend a village function, of course, but Janie had permission to bring the children—a rare outing, indeed. Little Abner especially loved the village. He'd told her the other day that he was going to be a fisherman when he grew up. Silly little boy—here he had a father wanting to send him to the best school in Boston, and all he wanted to do was fritter away his life in a boat. She knew Uncle Wallace would never allow it. In that, at least, she agreed with her uncle. If only he had the same plan for her as he had for his sons.

She heard Abner's excited voice now as he caught sight of her through the open doorway: "
There
she is, Janie! Over here!" He waved frantically and caught Alice's hand so she could run with him. "Hello, Clemmy!"

Clementine stepped outside. Janie smiled at her. "You look a right picture, Clementine. You really do."

"Thank you," she said, knowing it was true. "You all should go find places to sit. If you hurry, you may still get chairs together."

Anne and Amity, holding hands, stepped back in their lacy dresses and surveyed the yard. "Oh, Clementine, look how dirty these village children are!" said Anne. And Amity nodded.

"Our dresses are much prettier," observed Amity.

Clementine shushed them. "They don't have fancy clothes like yours, but some of them are very smart. Smarter than you two!"

The girls flushed. Janie led everyone away to the wooden seats set in rows before the stage. Miss Kent and Miss Reddy, the two teachers, stood on the makeshift platform. Abby Chandler, the fifteen-year-old orphan girl who had come to Hibben a year ago and lived with Miss Reddy, sat at an upright piano. At a signal from Miss Reddy, she began playing the march that meant the seniors should walk onto the stage.

As head student, Clementine led the way. Jilly Peters followed, turning behind her to dimple at the boys. Then came Gilbert Hanks, Sam Sawyer, Earl Wallings, and Hob Wilkins, all looking unaccustomedly formal and grown up in their Sunday suits. The families of the graduates sat in the wooden seats, while the other villagers sat on the grass, on blankets, and on wooden folding chairs. Miss Kent had made a cake in honor of her six graduates and decorated it with a rolled diploma and tassled cap cleverly crafted of marzipan. The cake sat in the center of the plank table at the back of the yard. The village women had baked other cakes and pies and all manner of fluffy muffins (many of them blueberry, since the berries grew rampant on the headland in summer) and sweets of spun sugar. Frosty pitchers of lemonade waited to quench nearly a hundred thirsts.