I Still Dream About You: A Novel (27 page)

“Oh, my God! Brenda, look.”

Brenda looked up. “What?”

“Just turn around; look. Is that what I think it is?”

Brenda looked.

Brenda said nothing, but she stood up and went over and peered more closely. “It’s the same outfit, all right.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes. Right down to the buckle on the sash.” Brenda turned to Maggie with wide eyes. “Honey, we’ve got Mr. Edward Crocker himself over in storage.”

“But it can’t be him. Mrs. Dalton said he had been lost at sea; they never found him.”

“Well, I can’t help that; the gold plaque right here says ‘Edward Crocker,’ and I don’t know about you, but I’ve got to get out of here. Bones is one thing, but looking at that man when he was alive is another!”

Maggie followed Brenda out of the room, still wondering how a man said to be lost at sea could wind up in a trunk. What next?

Later that afternoon, after Brenda left, Maggie went back into the library and looked at the portrait again. The man in the portrait, who appeared to be at least in his forties, had clear blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and sandy-colored hair and was standing by a tree, with a golf club, in a stiff formal pose. Although he was gazing off into the distance, as she looked closer at the face, she saw something about his expression that intrigued her, a slight softness around the eyes. All she knew about Edward Crocker was what Mrs. Dalton had told her and the things she had read about him in school: that he had been a rich and powerful iron, coal, and steel man and had done a lot for the city. Of course, she couldn’t be a hundred percent sure the skeleton in the trunk
was
Edward Crocker, but still, there was something in his eyes that made her want to know more about him. “Who was he?” she wondered.

F
ROM THE DAY OF HIS BIRTH, NURSE LETTIE ROSS NEVER LEFT
young Edward Crocker’s side. Although she was still very young and pretty, she had no time for suitors. She was on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and slept in his room at night. Angus Crocker was terrified of kidnappers. There were ruffians down in the valley that would do anything for money.

As a consequence of his father’s mistrust of strangers, Edward played no games with other boys and mostly stayed indoors. Edward took after his mother’s side and was delicate and prone to colds and fevers, but even so, Angus refused to let Nurse Lettie call in a doctor. He no longer trusted doctors. He had come through many childhood illnesses; so would Edward.

But Lettie, being a trained nurse, did believe in doctors. Her own brother back home in Scotland was studying to become a physician. What Angus didn’t know was that Lettie Ross, passing the child off as her daughter, had dressed little Edward as a girl, and they had visited many a doctor in Birmingham over the years. She would take no chances while typhoid and yellow fever ran so rampant. She had made a secret vow to God that nothing would ever harm this child in her care, and if the child needed medicine, Angus Crocker be damned, the child would have medicine. But other than
those occasional visits to doctors and carefully supervised outings to visit the Crocker-Sperry mines and steel mills, Lettie and Edward seldom left the grounds of Crestview. It wasn’t too uncommon. In the rarefied world of the wealthy, in the days of private tutors and private nannies, everything was brought up the mountain to Edward. Private barbers cut his hair; clothes were brought to the home and picked out for him by Nurse Ross. His schooling was conducted at home. He had everything a boy could want, except friends his own age and a loving father. The only real interest Angus seemed to have in Edward was to teach him the business so he would be prepared to take over one day. With no friends and a father who was absent most of the time, Edward’s entire world revolved around Lettie Ross. And for Lettie, who was still young enough to miss her brothers and sisters, Edward was her only companion. They played together, made up games, and had fun together. But then one day, when Edward came of a certain age, they suddenly grew even closer. Edward and Lettie Ross had a sexual secret, a secret that must never be told.

M
AGGIE SPENT THE NEXT WEEK STUDYING THE MARKET AND
thinking about what the asking price for Crestview should be. It was tricky. You couldn’t ask too little or it would be an insult to the house and the neighborhood, and asking too much might cause the house to linger on the market too long. Of course, to her, the house was priceless; nevertheless, she had to put a price on it, and so it officially went on the market at just under $3 million, at $2,800,000—much lower than it would have listed at in a good market, but it was still a fair price. And to Maggie, considering what the brand-new fake Tudor homes out in the new gated communities were going for, it was a bargain; more than a bargain. Crestview was the real thing, not some cheap imitation. To her, the house was a work of art.

But Maggie was afraid that as much as she loved Crestview, it would be a hard sell. These days, everybody wanted the exact same thing: a large family room and kitchen combined, with granite countertops and cherrywood cabinets; every house had to have a home office, walk-in closets, snap-off mullions on the windows for easy cleaning, a jetted tub, a sound system, an outdoor eating area with a built-in grill, a three- or four-car garage, and be near a good school and a shopping mall.

Crestview would have been perfect for Maggie. She didn’t need to be close to a school, and she preferred a separate kitchen. As bad as she was at cooking, the last thing in the world she wanted was someone hanging around and talking to her while she tried to prepare a meal. And she didn’t want to entertain at a breakfast bar; she wanted a real dining table that she could set beautifully with lovely folded napkins. She didn’t want an outdoor grill. Eating outside on paper plates was not her idea of gracious living. But she was obviously in the minority.

Maggie knew that it was also extremely important to market the house correctly. Crestview was not a house where you could just stick up a For Sale sign in the yard. She thought she’d begin by quietly and discreetly making the right people aware that it was available. Maggie decided to forgo the usual realtors’ open house. It would be a waste of time and money, considering that only a handful of agents dealt with high-end listings. But mostly, she didn’t want to have to face Babs Bingington.

Late Tuesday afternoon, after Brenda and Ethel had gone home, Maggie sat down and typed out the brochure to be sent to her “over the mountain” client list. She would try that first.

F
IRST
T
IME ON THE
M
ARKET

She reread the brochure and hoped she was doing the right thing, but she couldn’t be sure. Without Hazel to give her advice, she was concerned. She
had
to sell Crestview. She had sent all the money she had left in her bank account to the Humane Society and the Visiting Nurses Association, and she couldn’t very well ask them to give it back. It hadn’t occurred to her that she would still be here.
She had been forced to take out a short-term loan from the bank to tide her over, and if the house didn’t sell, she would be in big trouble. She just hoped she could do it. God, she missed Hazel. Hazel had made her and all the girls in the office feel so smart, so capable that they couldn’t make a mistake, and strangely enough, they hadn’t. But after she died, it seemed nothing ever went right. Maggie sat wondering what it was about Hazel that had kept her and the entire office going. It had been almost impossible to be in a bad mood around Hazel. But how did she do it? One day, Maggie had asked, “Hazel, don’t you ever get depressed about anything?”

Hazel looked at her, surprised. “No. What do I have to be depressed about?”

“Well, I don’t know … a lot of people might feel sorry for themselves if …”

“If they were a midget?” Hazel laughed, then said, “Oh, I guess I might have, but do you know what my parents did? When I was eight years old, they drove me all the way out to Long Beach, California, to see the Miss Long Beach Beauty Contest.”

“Why?”

“Well, that’s what I wondered, but after it was all over, the M.C. announced that now it was time for the Miss ‘Pee Wee’ Long Beach Division, and out came ten of the prettiest little midgets you ever saw. And the crowd just went wild. There was a pair of twins dressed up in evening gowns and one in a little red Chinese pajama outfit and a little blonde that looked just like a miniature Jean Harlow, and you should have heard the sailors stomp and cheer and whistle for her. The midgets got more applause than the big girls had. Anyhow, it was the first time I had ever seen other people just like me, and I found out that people liked midgets. So I just made up my mind to be happy about it. My parents had read about the contest in a magazine and planned the whole thing. Wasn’t I lucky? Not a high school diploma between them, but they were two of the smartest people I ever knew.”

Maggie said, “Now I’m curious. Who won the contest?”

“Oh, honey, little Jean Harlow, hands down. And now that I think about it, I guess seeing all those cute outfits that day is what
made me love costumes. See how life works? Everything happens for a reason. Just think: if I hadn’t wanted an Easter bunny outfit, you and I might never have met.” Hazel’s eyes suddenly lit up. “You know what, Mags? This Easter, I’m going to wear that outfit and surprise the girls with it. Better yet, I think the office needs to sponsor a big Easter egg hunt every year over at Caldwell Park. And the Easter bunny can hand out a prize to whoever finds the golden egg. What do you think, Mags? Won’t it be fun?”

Maggie hadn’t bothered to answer. She knew no matter what she thought, once Hazel got an idea, there was no stopping her. And this idea meant that all the agents at Red Mountain Realty would have to spend all day Easter at the park, helping with the Easter egg hunt, and she would have to listen to the girls complain about it off and on for the next two weeks. It was a lot of work hiding all those eggs, but Hazel was right. The Easter egg hunt did turn out to be a lot of fun, and the Easter bunny handing out the prizes was always the highlight. But now, with Hazel gone, Easter was just another day.

Hazel always used to say, “There’s not enough darkness in the entire universe to snuff out the light of just one little candle.” It was the first time that Maggie had ever known her to be wrong. Without Hazel, the world had suddenly gotten very dark. Maggie sighed and got up from her desk and went home to another TV dinner and another long night, waiting for her first open house on Sunday.