Hidden Places (12 page)

Mr. Wakefield closed his eyes for a moment before he continued. I wondered if he was praying. ‘‘I’m afraid it’s even worse than that, Eliza. Now, I know that Sam intended for the farm to go to you and the children, but your husband passed away before his father did, so Frank’s will has priority. I’m sorry to tell you this, but Frank willed everything to his elder son, Matthew Wyatt. The estate would pass to his second son, Samuel, and his family only in the event that Matthew died without an heir. Frank’s will makes no mention of you or your children. Evidently it was drawn up quite some time ago.’’

‘‘What are you saying?’’

‘‘Matthew Wyatt is the legal owner of Wyatt Orchards, not you. Until Matthew renounces all claims to his inheritance, we can’t transfer the title to anyone else.’’

‘‘Matthew! But he’s dead, isn’t he?’’

‘‘Well, I don’t know. It’s my understanding that Matthew enlisted in the Army around 1916 or ’17 and fought over in France, but Frank never mentioned anything about him dying. In fact, the memorial plaque at church lists the names of all the local boys who gave their lives, and Matthew Wyatt’s name isn’t on there. I hoped you knew where he’d settled after the war so I could contact him.’’

I shook my head. ‘‘Neither my husband nor his father would ever talk about him. Not one word. I always figured it was because they were too grief-stricken. I figured Matthew was dead and—’’ I stopped, remembering how I’d made the same assumption about my mother.

‘‘Perhaps he is dead, Eliza. But according to the law, I’ll need to see a death certificate before I can transfer the deed over to you.’’

‘‘So now what do I do?’’

‘‘Well, I suggest you go home and try to locate some family records. See if the army sent a death notice for example, or if there’s been any other correspondence with Matthew over the years, perhaps with a return address. In the meantime, I’ll write to Washington. Their records will tell us if Matthew was killed in action or if he was discharged.’’

‘‘How long will that take? The bank wants the money in ninety days.’’

‘‘I’m sorry, but this may take some time. And I can’t move forward with Alvin Greer’s offer to purchase since the orchard isn’t in your name.’’

I was relieved to finally hear at least one bit of good news. I didn’t want to sell the orchard to Alvin Greer, even if he would let us live there.

‘‘But from what I can tell after looking through Frank’s papers,’’ Mr. Wakefield said sadly, ‘‘everything belongs to Matthew— the house, the land, the tractor, and all the other equipment...even the truck.’’

I’d never hated Frank Wyatt as much as I did at that moment. He had not only robbed my children of their father, but now he was robbing them of their inheritance, giving everything that rightfully belonged to them to an ungrateful son who’d left home years ago.

‘‘What about all those years that my husband worked for his father,’’ I cried, ‘‘slaving away in all kinds of weather to help him run that place? What about all the backbreaking work Sam did while Matthew was who-knows-where? Doesn’t that count for anything? My husband
died
working for his father, and you’re telling me his children get
nothing
?’’

‘‘I’m sorry, Eliza...Iunderstand how you feel....’’

‘‘No, you don’t! That orchard is my home, my children’s home!’’ I battled my tears, determined not to cry, but a stray drop rolled down my cheek in spite of my efforts. Mr. Wakefield’s eyes seemed a little watery, too.

‘‘Once we find Matthew Wyatt,’’ he said, ‘‘I’ll do my best to convince him that you and your children deserve fair compensation for all the work Samuel did. But realistically, Mrs. Wyatt, you know you would never be able to run Wyatt Orchards by yourself. Perhaps Frank knew that, too.’’

The only thing Frank knew was that I was an outsider, and he hated me for it. This was his way of punishing Sam for not marrying well and adding even more land to his little kingdom. I understood that. But what I couldn’t understand was how any man could disinherit his own grandchildren—his own flesh and blood.

When I reached home I sat out in the driveway in the truck— Matthew’s truck—letting my emotions simmer down before going inside. I felt like spitting on Frank Wyatt’s grave. It was so unfair! I was more determined than ever to hang on to this land and this home that were rightfully mine. I had to find out what had happened to Matthew Wyatt. But the way I felt right now, if it turned out Matthew was alive, I was angry enough to murder him myself.

I started off by searching Frank’s office. He’d kept careful records of every business transaction, every invoice, every receipt for the past twenty years, it seemed. But there was not so much as a scrap of paper with Matthew’s name on it—let alone a letter or a mailing address.

When I finished that search to no avail, I got a stepladder and climbed up to the attic. As I looked around at the piles of discarded furniture, dusty boxes, and old steamer trunks, I couldn’t help thinking about the comment Aunt Batty had made at Frank’s funeral:
‘‘There’s a huge load of grief up in the attic of this house.’’
She didn’t know the half of it.

I dug through a mountain of stuff, searching for old photo albums, letters, or any other memorabilia I could find that might mention Matthew. It was much too cold to stay up there for very long, so I carried any box that looked promising downstairs to the parlor.

‘‘Well, will you look at this,’’ Aunt Batty said, pulling an old beaded purse from one of the boxes. ‘‘This belonged to my sister, Lydia. Oh, I can see her now—this purse on one arm and a beau on the other. My, how that girl loved to dance.’’

‘‘Aunt Batty, will you please look through these pictures with me?’’ I asked when I unearthed a family photo album. ‘‘Maybe you can tell me who all these people are.’’ Some of the pictures had captions below them, written in white ink on the black pages, but most did not. I realized that I not only had never met Matthew Wyatt, I’d never even seen a picture of him.

‘‘Wait, let me get my spectacles first.’’ She retrieved them, then sat beside me on the sofa with Becky perched on her lap. The three of us paged through the album together. ‘‘A lot of these are Frank Wyatt’s relations,’’ Aunt Batty said as we studied the first few pages.

‘‘I never knew he had relatives here in Deer Springs until the other day,’’ I said. ‘‘Mrs. Greer surprised me when she said she was Frank’s cousin.’’

‘‘Oh, there are still a few of them around. You know Julia Foster, the sheriff’s wife? She’s another Wyatt cousin.’’

‘‘Is there a picture of Lydia in here?’’ I asked, leafing ahead through the book. My mother-in-law was another mystery I’d never understood. Both Sam and his father would clam right up if I tried to ask questions about her. But then, I didn’t want to answer any questions about my own past either, so I’d learned to let sleeping dogs lie.

‘‘Let me see....Here, this is my sister, Lydia.’’

‘‘Oh, she’s beautiful!’’ The woman Aunt Batty pointed to was not at all the sturdy, hard-working farmer’s wife I had expected to see. Lydia was so lovely she took my breath away. I stared at my mother-in-law’s face for the first time, unable to take my eyes off her. Hers was a delicate kind of beauty that was both innocent and alluring at the same time.

‘‘You would never know we were sisters, would you?’’ Aunt Batty said, chuckling to herself.

I glanced at Aunt Batty and saw little resemblance except for the sisters’ arched eyebrows and delicate bones. I studied Lydia’s dark eyes and graceful brows, her irresistible smile, searching for a resemblance between my husband and his mother. But I couldn’t find any. Sam had been powerfully built, with his father’s chiseled jaw, fair hair, and blue eyes. Yet something about his mother seemed familiar to me, as though I’d seen her before, even though I knew that I hadn’t.

I saw Lydia in several of the pictures on the next few pages, usually surrounded by her three sons at various ages. It was hard for me to look at pictures of Sam when he was young and strong and healthy. I couldn’t get over how much my Jimmy resembled him. In nearly all the pictures, Sam stood as close as a shadow to his older brother, Matthew—the way Luke always hangs onto Jimmy’s shirttail.

I stared and stared at each picture of Matthew Wyatt. He had his mother’s dark hair and eyes, and looked as different from Sam as two brothers could look. But then, the youngest brother, Willie, looked altogether different, too. I knew for sure that Willie was dead. I’d seen his grave in the family plot beside Lydia’s and Frank’s—beside my Sam’s. According to the dates on Willie’s tombstone, he had died when he was nine—Jimmy’s age. Aunt Batty pointed to his picture.

‘‘This must be one of the last pictures they ever took of little Willie,’’ she said sadly.

‘‘How did he die?’’ I asked. ‘‘I’ve forgotten what Sam told me.’’

‘‘Poor child. He fell through the ice on the pond one winter and drowned.’’

I felt my skin tingle at the eerie coincidence, as if I’d just plunged into that icy water myself. It was the same way the youngest brother in Gabe Harper’s story had died.

‘‘Were you there when it happened?’’ I asked.

She stirred uncomfortably on the hard sofa. ‘‘Well, the pond is just beyond my house, you know. I hear an awful lot that goes on.’’

‘‘Did you hear what happened the day Willie drowned?’’

Aunt Batty carefully slid Becky off her lap and gave her the beaded purse to play with on the floor by our feet. Then she pulled a flowered handkerchief from the sleeve of her yellow sweater and began kneading it.

‘‘The three boys had been sledding on the hill behind my house—just like your three young ones do. I heard them whooping and yelling, then it got real quiet. I thought maybe they’d gone home. But when I looked out my window I saw Matthew and Willie standing out by the pond. The boys liked to skate on it once it froze solid. I was afraid they’d try it that day and I knew it was still too early in December for the ice to be safe.’’

I felt another chill shiver through me as she repeated mirrored details from Gabe’s story.

‘‘I tried yelling out the door to them,’’ Aunt Batty continued, ‘‘but they didn’t hear me. I went to get my coat and boots—and I was always sorry afterward that I took so long bundling up. By the time I got outside, Matthew was hysterical, screaming that Willie had fallen through the ice and crying, ‘Save him! Save him!’ I had all I could do to keep that boy from jumping in after him. We got help as fast as we could, but it was too late.’’ I heard the tears in Aunt Batty’s trembling voice. ‘‘That poor child...and poor, poor Lydia.’’

I was sorr y I’d dredged up such painful memories, but I needed to know something else. ‘‘Was Willie Frank Wyatt’s favorite son?’’ I asked.

‘‘It was shameful the way he favored that boy and heaped abuse on the other two. They were as jealous as sin of him, and I couldn’t blame them. Poor Matthew felt so responsible for what happened to little Willie that he kept saying it was all his fault. I told him to hush up! Don’t ever say that in front of your father!’’

‘‘Was it true? Was the accident Matthew’s fault?’’

‘‘The truth is that Frank Wyatt killed Willie by playing favorites.’’

Only one other person knows and I don’t think she’ll ever tell,
Gabe had written. My heart began to gallop like a race horse. What if, beneath all that shaggy hair and overgrown beard—what if Gabe Harper was really Matthew Wyatt?

I remembered the way he had stood in my kitchen that first night, reminding me for all the world of my Sam. He had even bowed his head and prayed before eating like Sam always did. And he’d known just what work needed to be done out in the barn. He’d had a guilty look on his face, too, when I’d asked him how he’d known my last name was Wyatt. I shivered again.

I slowly paged through the photo album, staring at Matthew Wyatt’s face in every picture, searching for a resemblance to the bushy-haired man in my spare bedroom. Hadn’t Aunt Batty said Gabe looked familiar the first time she saw him? And he called her Aunt Batty much too easily to be a stranger.

Maybe that was why Gabe had refused to see the doctor— maybe he had a scar or a birthmark or something that the family doctor would recognize, maybe even that scar on his chest. And maybe that’s why Gabe seemed so put out with me when I told him I’d rummaged through his things. He didn’t want me to discover the truth.

But why all this secrecy, especially now that his father and brother were both dead? Why didn’t he just step forward and say who he was if it was true? I couldn’t very well ask him without admitting that I’d read his private journals. Besides, I had no idea how he would react if he found out that the house and the orchard now belonged to him. Would he take it all away from us? Kick us out in the snow? For all I knew, Gabe—or Matthew, or whatever his name was—had a wife and a family of his own somewhere who were just dying to move right in.

‘‘Aunt Batty, whatever happened to Matthew?’’ I finally asked.

‘‘Matthew?’’ She glanced around the room with a worried look on her face as if he’d been here a moment ago and she’d misplaced him. Then she caught herself. ‘‘No, that young one is named Jimmy,’’ she said aloud. ‘‘Matthew joined the army and went to France to fight in the war.’’

The war. Gabe carried a U.S. Army canteen in his bag.

Part of me wanted Gabe to be Matthew so he could pay off the mortgage and help me run things, but part of me was afraid that the kids and I would lose our home—and I could never allow that to happen.

‘‘The war ended more than ten years ago, Aunt Batty. What happened to Matthew after that? Do you have any idea? Did he ever come home?’’

Aunt Batty squinted in concentration. ‘‘Matthew was still over in France when his mother died. I wrote to tell him that she’d passed away. Lydia had given me his address and asked me to write to him before...before she left us....’’ It seemed as though there was more Aunt Batty wanted to say. I waited.

‘‘Matthew wrote back to me just the one time,’’ she continued. ‘‘He thanked me for telling him the news and asked me to please take care of Sam. That’s all—just that one short letter. I don’t think anyone has heard from him since.’’