On Turpentine Lane(24)

At breakfast, like an unwelcome houseguest, the photo album seemed to be taking up the whole kitchen. Draped over the back of a chair, its swaddling flannel was equally unappetizing. Why hadn’t I sent the whole creepy package home with my parents? I made coffee, toasted a waffle, and took both into the parlor so I didn’t have to dine with the evidence. I opened every shade and curtain for maximum sunlight; when I took my bath, I locked the door.

I pulled into my parking space at school almost an hour early. As ever, inadequately dressed for the cold weather, the students were rushing off to their eight o’clock classes. I found Nick already at his desk. A whole free hour, I thought, for forensic ventilation over coffee. But there was no reaction when I announced, “You won’t believe it, but yesterday, when my parents were visiting, we found photos of dead babies!”

I tried again, slightly louder. “Nick? Did you hear what I said?”

He was typing, his screen at an oblique angle, affording him more privacy than usual. “Dead babies,” he repeated. “That can’t be good.”

“?‘Not good’? How about incredibly sad if not creepy? How about didn’t sleep a wink?”

Finally, he looked up, and said rather numbly, “Me neither . . . Don’t ask.”

I said, “I’m very inclined to ask,” then spent the next few minutes silently considering what bad news he might be shielding me from. “Do you know something I don’t know about my job? Something bad?”

“It’s not about you,” he said. “It’s personal.”

Well, who doesn’t know that’s code for Mind your own business? I said nothing for a few minutes until: “You didn’t go to the doctor yesterday and find out you have a terminal illness, did you?”

His phone was ringing, first his cell, and when that stopped, the office landline. He answered neither. Nor did he answer me.

It wasn’t long before my extension was ringing. “Development, Faith Frankel,” I chirped.

“Is Nick there?” a woman asked.

“Who may I say is calling?”

“Is he there?” she persisted.

I said, “This isn’t his direct line, but I can give you that number.”

“I have that number. Believe me, I’ve tried it,” said the caller.

“Is this Brooke?”

“Good guess, Faith,” she snapped.

Where was this undeserved hostility coming from? I said, “Nick’s in a meeting and probably has his phone turned off.”

“I bet,” she said. Click.

“You may have noticed that was Brooke,” I told him.

Now my cell phone was ringing, the “Bridge over Troubled Water” ringtone I’d assigned to my mother. Before I’d even offered a greeting, she was launching into a narrative. “We’re at city hall. Outside city hall. I would’ve called you from the city clerk’s office, but they have signs saying no cell phone usage.”

“And?”

“Do you have a minute?” she asked, usually the preamble to a gossipy tidbit gleaned at the supermarket.

“Just the highlights. I’m in the middle of a couple of things.”

“So we get there at nine on the dot. Dad started with ‘Our daughter recently passed papers on 10 Turpentine Lane.’ The clerk was expressionless. She takes out a roll of stamps and starts putting them on envelopes—must’ve been property tax bills. So Dad tries ‘We’re pretty sure that the name we want to look up is Lavoie.’ Finally, the clerk says, ‘I knew a Lavoie on Turpentine . . . Sort of knew her. I went to high school with her daughter.’?”

I said, “I bought the house from that daughter.”

“What are the odds!” my mother exclaimed.

“Ma, welcome to Everton. Who didn’t go to high school together? Is there more to it? More info?”

“Of course! I asked her how well she knew the family. She said not much. So I asked if Theresa was an only child.”

Even over the phone, I could tell she was mentally congratulating herself for that bull’s-eye of a question.

“And . . . ?”

“She didn’t answer. But then—and I know you miss living in a gigantic impersonal city, but this is where living in a small town pays off—another customer was at the other end of the counter, and she calls over, ‘The Lavoies on Turpentine?’ So we say yes. And, of course, Dad and I are all ears. The woman practically spits out, ‘That house should’ve been condemned for all the tragedies that happened there.’ Can you imagine? Of course, one of us asked, ‘Tragedies . . . such as?’

“The woman said, ‘Her husbands died there.’ I asked how. She shrugged and said, ‘All I remember is that people kept their distance.’ So that was when Dad and I started going through the records.”

“And?”

“Well, we went straight for the birth date given on the Polaroids, December 15, 1956.”

“And?”

“And nothing. No twin baby girls born that day. The clerk said the births could’ve happened in a hospital elsewhere, out of town. Or maybe they were some photos that someone else left at the house—a relative or a visitor.”

“Doubt it. Did you check the death records?”