It didn’t mean anything. Baxter Drury obviously has it out for my mother and wants to make me feel strange at all costs.
Baxter Drury has made it his business to know the ins and outs of my journalistic family, if only because he sees us as the only boundary between him and what he wants.
Baxter Drury once saw a photograph of my grandmother.
The list was horrendous and nonsensical, and gave her no sense of the gravity of the situation. But when Elena pulled up a photograph of Rosa Tompkins from the archives, she again encountered a woman who looked tremendously like both her and her mother.
Natalie entered the office to check in, and Elena explained what had happened, plus the strange comments about her mother and grandmother.
“Didn’t you say your grandmother was writing about the mansions at Cranberry Cove even before they were built?” Natalie said, snapping the tips of her fingers against Elena’s desk.
An alarm rang in Elena’s ears. “But that was before he was born. How would he know about that?”
Natalie shrugged. “Did he inherit his house on Cranberry Cove?”
Elena pulled up Millbrook housing records to find that, yes, Judge Baxter Drury had inherited the house from his own father, the previous Millbrook judge, Garrett Drury. According to a few articles written by Rosa Tompkins herself, Garrett Drury hadbeen instrumental in the fight against the town of Millbrook to secure the right to build on Cranberry Cove.
In an opinion column, Rosa wrote: "It is entirely likely that Judge Drury and his scammy millionaire friends are up to their ears in fraud and hardly hiding it."
From there, it seemed that Rosa had mentioned Garrett Drury more than forty-seven different times over the course of 1957, 1958, 1959, and 1960.
“She was against him in every way,” Natalie said, breathless as they read and read, taking stock of this once-great journalist who’d left so much material for them to make sense of.
“It’s bizarre that the father would tell the son about his female enemy, isn’t it?” Elena asked, scratching her head.
“I don’t know how these judges operate,” Natalie said.
“I mean, she died, for crying out loud,” Elena continued. “You would think he’d have more respect than that.”
Natalie was quiet. Outside, it had grown dark again, and snow spat out of the sky. When they emerged from the office, they found most of the other journalists all packed up and ready to flee. It was a cold night—seven degrees—and Elena craved her pajama pants, a cozy sweater, and a movie. But would her mind let her off the hook?
As she and Natalie walked home, they shivered and discussed the next steps.
“I can’t help but think we’re getting closer and closer,” Natalie whispered, her lips bluing as they neared the downtown Christmas tree. She stopped for a second and gazed at the stars, then whispered, “Is this what it’s like to be a real reporter? I feel like I’m constantly inundated with all the horrors of the world. But I feel like it’s up to me to find them, expose them, and show them they can’t walk all over people. Someone is watching.”
Elena’s heart filled. She threw her arm over Natalie’s shoulder and felt a smile flutter over her lips. Inwardly, sheprayed that her mother’s medication was working, that soon, they’d be able to share all this info with Carmen and hear what she thought.
Come on, Mom. We need you. We need your genius mind.
Chapter Thirteen
The following evening, Elena agreed to go to Maxine’s for dinner. Before she left, she assured that Carmen was safe, tucked away with a movie and more or less half asleep. The medication exhausted her. This left Elena to speed off to the country, where Maxine, her husband Frank, and their three children lived next to a frozen stream. When Elena cut the engine, she peered through the night to see not one but four snowmen, all in a line, waving to the road with their stick arms. Back in the old days, she and Maxine had built snowmen together, rolling and rolling snowballs until they’d gotten frostbite. That had been before puberty, before boys.
Elena had brought a bottle of wine and a bar of chocolate, because the idea of making anything exhausted her. But when Maxine opened the front door and drew her into the warmth of the house, Elena inhaled the smell of fresh dough and sauce, freshly baked bread, and a chocolate cheesecake, which put her worries to rest. Maxine took the bottle of wine and said, “This is one of my favorites!” Even if it wasn’t, Elena was grateful for the lie. She took off her coat and sat in the living room with Maxine’s three children—Rachel, Laura, and Julia—and asked them questions about school, sports, and dance classes.
Maxine had ordered them pizza, so that the girls could watch television and be out of the way while Maxine and Elena caught up. The girls were ecstatic, mainly because they didn’t like eating at the table and saw couch-dining as the ultimate luxury. Elena was grateful for the pizza idea. Although she adored children, she didn’t always know what to say to them. Besides, she was here to see Maxine.
