The Violets of March (30 page)

Greg dropped me off at the municipal building, just off Main Street. At the reception desk an older woman, maybe in her seventies, maybe older, looked up from her dark-rimmed glasses. “Yes?” she said, almost mechanically.

“Yes, hi,” I said. “I’m trying to find any records you might have on someone who used to live on this island.”

She looked up at me curiously, as if I could be slightly crazy, and didn’t I know that information about islanders wasn’t remitted to crazy people? “What are you looking for, exactly?” she asked suspiciously.

I wasn’t exactly sure myself. “Well,” I said, “the thing is, I’m here to find out if someone who used to live on the island is still alive.” As I heard the words aloud, goose bumps erupted on my arms.

“Fill out this form,” she said, sighing, “and we’ll send you whatever documents we can find in six to eight weeks.”

I could almost feel my heart sink and then flop to the floor. “Six to eight weeks? I can’t wait that long. There must be another way.”

The woman shrugged. She was a brick wall. “It’s our policy,” she said.

I sighed, and decided that waiting was better than never knowing, so I filled out the form, writing the names “Elliot Hartley” and “Esther Littleton” on it, and left my New York address for any paperwork to be sent.

“Thank you,” I said, turning toward the door. The woman just nodded.

I walked several paces, and heard a gasp behind me.

“Wait!” the woman nearly screamed. “Miss,” she said again, louder, “wait!”

I turned around and could see her waving her arms at me from behind the desk.

“I think I
can
help you,” she said.

My eyes widened as I set my bag down on the counter.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking apologetic now, “I just read your form here, and well, you see, I
knew
an Elliot Hartley.”

I leaned in closer. “You did?”

“Yes,” she said nostalgically. “Oh, he was something. All the girls on the island thought so too. We all hoped Elliot Hartley would notice us.”

“And did he?” I said. “Did you date him?”

She shook her head. “I wish I had, but there was only one woman in Elliot’s heart. Everyone knew that. But they had problems, so . . .”

“What kind of problems?”

“I’m not sure exactly, but they fought a lot. They were always breaking up and getting back together. But one time, it was for good. Elliot was heartbroken. He started drinking. He started going around with a lot of women—I even danced with him once. Oh, that was a night. But then he went off to war.”

“Did he ever come back?”

The woman was silent, as though deep in thought. I prayed she would say yes, that he came back, as the story indicated, that he reunited with Esther—eventually, at least—and that the final half of the story was indeed true. “Yes, he did, but he wasn’t the same, mostly because the woman he loved was married to someone else.”

“And this woman,” I said, “the one he loved, her name was Esther, right?”

The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “I just can’t remember. It could have been Esther, but it’s been so long. My memory isn’t what it used to be.”

I nodded. “Do you remember anything about her, this woman that Elliot loved? Anything at all?”

The woman leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling as if she was trying very hard to recall a moment, a thought, a conversation from so long ago. “She was beautiful,” she said. “I do remember that. She was the envy of every woman on the island.”

“Do you know what became of her?”

The woman shook her head. “I don’t, I’m afraid. I moved with my parents to the Midwest shortly after high school. I’ve only been back here for the last fifteen years. So much has changed since then. Did you know that they put a McDonald’s on the island?”

I nervously tugged at the tassels on my bag, eager to change the subject back to Esther and Elliot. “Terrible,” I said, remembering seeing the golden arches as Bee drove me home that first night. It had been a surprise.

I cleared my throat. “I’m just wondering if you have any ideas about who I can talk to. Would anyone who is still living know more about these people?”

“Well, you could check the newspaper records down at the public library,” she said. “There has to be something on file about Elliot.”

“Thanks,” I said, a little disappointed. Sifting through county records didn’t exactly sound like the quickest way to get from point A to point B.

“Oh,” I said, remembering the records of Greg’s house. “Do you happen to know someone by the name of Elsa Hartley?”

“Yes,” she said. “She was Elliot’s sister.”

That makes sense
, I thought
. He went to his sister’s house, her garden, to get the tulip for Esther.
I would try to find her new address, I decided, and visit her.

“Wait, you said she
was
Elliot’s sister?”

The woman nodded. “She passed away several years ago, as did her husband, William. My grandson used to mow their lawn.”

“OK,” I sighed.
Another brick wall.
“Thanks again.”

“Sure,” she said nostalgically. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anything of Elliot Hartley,” she continued, shaking her head and smiling the way one does when recalling a fine wine. “But I’ll do some digging, and if I find anything, should I call you at a certain number?”

She wrote my cell phone number down on a slip of paper. “By the way,” she said, “how did you say you knew Elliot?”

“It’s a long story,” I said, before heading to the door.

Bainbridge Island has one library—one big and beautiful library built by the Carnegie Foundation in the early twentieth century. When I opened the door, three young children barreled out, nearly knocking my bag off my arm.

“Finny, what did I tell you about waiting for Mommy?” a rather frazzled woman, about my age, called out to her headstrong four-year-old son.

I smiled, but I was really thinking,
Please, somebody shoot me if I ever name a child Finny
. Then I headed inside, where I flagged down a librarian. “Hi,” I said, “I’m looking for the place where you keep newspapers on microfiche.”

“You’re in luck,” she said. “We just recataloged the Seattle newspapers and the local
Bainbridge Island Digest
this month. They’re all online now. What year are you looking for?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” I said. “But I thought I’d start with 1943.”

She looked impressed. “Wow, what interests you about the island in the forties?

“Oh,” I said, “just piecing together a bit of a mystery I seem to have stumbled upon.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re a writer, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes,” I said, “but . . .” I was about to tell her that this had nothing to do with my writing, that it was a personal project, but she cut me off.

“Wait, what’s your name? I know your face. I’m sure I’ve seen you on a book jacket.”

“Um, Emily Wilson.”

“Ahhhhhh!” she screamed, “
The
Emily Wilson, the author of
Calling Ali Larson
?”

I nodded. I hated when this kind of thing happened, even if it was pretty rare.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe it. You. Here. On Bainbridge Island!
This
is an occasion. I’m going to get the head librarian down here to meet you, and maybe we can rustle up an impromptu
reading
.”

I tugged at my sweater self-consciously, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Look who’s here,” she said to a man sitting at a table to our right. “A big New York City author!” She was practically squealing with delight, and I hated to spoil her fun, but a reading wasn’t what I had in mind. And frankly, I didn’t feel like Emily Wilson, the author of
Calling Ali Larson
—not anymore. My time on Bainbridge Island had changed all that. Writing that book was no longer the apex of my career. There were bigger things ahead; I felt it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really appreciate that, but this isn’t a good time for me. I really need to get a jump on this research. Perhaps another time?”

She smiled. “Of course, I totally understand. Let me show you where the computers are.”

She walked me down an old staircase to the bottom floor. The walls were covered in wood paneling, and the air changed a bit from smells-like-books to smells-like-books-mixed-with-mildew. She pointed to a computer station and showed me how to navigate through the database where I could do my searching.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Let me know if you need any help.”

I looked over my shoulder twice, and my hands almost trembled with eagerness as I typed in Elliot’s name. I wanted to cheer when six matches came back. The first, from the
Bainbridge Island Sun
, was a story about his winning touchdown at a Bainbridge Island High football game. There was even a photo accompanying the story, of Elliot in his football gear, surrounded by his teammates and one cheerleader who gazed adoringly at him. He was handsome, just as Esther had described—this was apparent even through the grainy newspaper photo.

I clicked on the next story, which was just a brief notice about his graduation from the University of Washington, and the next: his name embedded in a long list of GIs returning home from war.

There was one more story to click on.
Let this be it
, I said to myself.
Let this be the clue that I need.

It was a clue, all right: a marriage announcement, dated June 2, 1949. “Elliot Hartley wed Lillian Appleton in a small ceremony in Seattle with friends and family. The bride, the daughter of Susan and Theodore Appleton, is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. The groom is the son of Adam and Suzanne Hartley, and is a graduate of the University of Washington and an employee of the investment firm Hadley, Banks, and Morgan. The couple makes their home in Seattle.”

What? None of this makes sense. How could he marry someone else? This isn’t supposed to be how it ended. It’s all wrong. How could he have married anyone other than Esther? And what happened to Esther?
Her fate was starting to look cloudy. I looked back to the wedding date, 1949, and cringed.
What happened in those six years after Esther wrote her story? Did he wait for her? And if so, where did she go?

Hoping to find something—anything—on record for Esther, I did a search for “Esther Littleton,” but nothing came back.
Did she have a different name than the one in the story? And if so, why was Elliot’s name real and Esther’s fictional?
I ran my fingers through my hair, the way I do when I’m nervous or stuck on a sentence, which in my recent writing life was every few minutes.

Then it hit me. I remembered the photo of Elliot at the football game. There was that cheerleader, that adoring cheerleader.
Could she be Esther? Is there a caption next to the photo?

I searched for Elliot’s name again, and clicked on the football article. The caption read, “From left to right: Members of the football team Bobby McFarland, Billy Hinson, Elliot Hartley, and cheerleader Esther Johnson.”

My hair stood on end. Esther.
It has to be her.
And as I stared into that grainy photo, I knew in my heart I was looking at the author of the story in the red velvet diary.

But who was she?

I did a new search for “Esther Johnson,” and at least two dozen articles came back: BAINBRIDGE WOMAN GOES MISSING. POLICE SEARCH HOUSE, CAR, FIND NOTHING. HUSBAND QUESTIONED IN MISSING WOMAN CASE. MEMORIAL SERVICE PLANNED FOR MISSING WOMAN.

I read them all. Every word. Esther had vanished, mysteriously, on the night of March 30, 1943. Her car was found wrecked in a park on the island, with a suitcase inside. There were no eyewitnesses, no clues, and her body had never been found.

But as disturbing as these details were, one fact, perhaps the most chilling of all, hit me the hardest. Esther’s husband, I read in one of the articles, was Robert Hanson, which happened to be the name of . . .
my grandfather
.

I ran outside, both to get some fresh air and to keep myself from having some sort of outburst in the library. I also needed to talk to someone. I dialed Annabelle.

The phone rang several times.
Please pick up; please pick up.
It went to voice mail.

I called again.
Annabelle, answer. Please answer.
We both abided by the two-call rule: If we called back, it was important. She answered, just like I knew she would.

“Hi,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“I’m so sorry, but I had to talk,” I said, out of breath. “Are you in the middle of something?”

She hushed her voice a bit before saying, “I’m with Evan.”

“Oh, sorry, Annie. It’s just that, I think I just stumbled upon my family’s deep, dark secret.”

“Whoa, slow down, honey. What are you talking about?”

“My grandfather,” I said, “he was married to someone else before he married my grandma Jane, and I . . .” Oh God . . . could Jane be . . .
Janice
?

I had to stop and catch my breath, remembering Esther’s next-door neighbor and allowing my mind to wander a bit. “And I think it might have been my mother’s real mother. And, oh God, oh God, Annie, I think she may have been killed.”

“Emily, are you sure? What makes you think something like that?”

It all was making sense to me now. Grandma Jane wasn’t my real grandmother; Esther was. And that thing that Bee had told my mother so long ago—could she have told her that Grandma Jane wasn’t her real mother? And had she gone so far as to implicate my grandfather in her murder? Was that the reason they left the island so many years ago?

“Well,” I said, still gasping a little, “you know the book I found in the guest bedroom, the one I told you about?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I think I just found out who wrote it.”

“Who?”

“My grandmother, the one I never knew.”

“Em, this is nuts.”

“I know.”