Nora made a hissing noise at mention of Becky’s name, and Jess remembered the altercation between the two women described in Daniel Miller’s book.
“That girl was a menace,” Nora said. “Far too attached. I sensed it as soon as I arrived. Always lurking about, behaving as if Isabel’s baby were her own.”
“She was very upset during our interview,” Miller replied. “She didn’t want to believe that the remains had been found. I don’t think she ever gave up expecting Thea to turn up alive.”
“Well, she was simple. No doubt she had all manner of stupid ideas in that head of hers.”
Jess was taken aback by the severity in Nora’s voice and the unkind sentiment expressed. Evidently, she’d been very wounded when Becky Baker set upon her in the street. Fair enough, Jess supposed, she was only human, she’d suffered a massive trauma; but the rationalization sat uneasily. Jess couldn’t help feeling it was a cruel comment on which to end the interview.
But alas, that was where it ended. Daniel Miller had stopped the tape recording at that point, so there was no way of knowing what he had said to Nora in reply.
Now, in the lamplit library, Jess said, “Well,” into the silence. The recording had left her disappointed. She had hoped—more than hoped; she had believed—that the tape would contain the answers to her questions. Why send the tape to Polly at all, particularly with such secrecy and explicit instructions? The conversation offered nothing new, covering old ground on a topic Miller had written and published about. Neither did it paint Nora in a particularly glowing light, in a way that could comfort her loved ones.
Jess glanced at her mother to see whether she was feeling the same way, but Polly had her head bent over a sheet of paper.
“What’s that?” Jess asked.
“A letter.”
Jess was confused. “Another one? From Nancy?”
“From Daniel Miller. It was inside the cassette container, folded beneath the track list. I found it just now. I don’t have my reading glasses. Here.” She handed it to Jess. “You read it out loud.”
Jess took the letter from her. The paper was ultrafine—old-fashioned airmail paper, by the looks of it, from the time before email, when people had to consider the weight of their stationery when they wanted to communicate with someone far away. Jess angled it toward the spill of lamplight and started reading.
Dear Polly,
I am sitting on a plane, about two hours out of JFK, having agonized the whole way home from Sydney about what to do. By the time you receive this letter,ifyou receive this letter, it is likely you will have forgotten me. But as I write, your face is vivid in my memory.
I met you only a few days ago, by the fountain at Darling House, where I had just interviewed your mother about the recent discovery of human remains at the house called Halcyon, once occupied by her brother and sister-in-law, and the closing of a missing person’s police investigation that had stood open since the disappearance of her baby niece, Thea Turner, twenty years before.
I’d been glad to see Nora. We got on well in 1959 and I liked her very much, so the visit had a social element as well as being professionally important. When we finished our interview, she walked me to the front door, and as we reached the driveway, she remembered that she’d been going to showme a photograph of her garden when it was new. She went back inside to fetch it, and I took the opportunity to walk down across the lawn.
I came upon you at the fountain. I hadn’t expected to run into anyone, so it was a surprise to find myself suddenly in your company. I experienced the strangest feeling of vertigo; I had last met you as a tiny baby in your mother’s arms. I asked you about your life, whether you were happy, and you told me that you were. I met your daughter, Jessica, and learned that the two of you lived with Nora at Darling House.
I couldn’t shake the odd sensation, though, and my mind was still ticking over when Nora returned and called me back. With every step I took, the cogs tightened, until finally it came to me as clear as day, the cause of my discomfort. Nora was shocked when I asked her outright, and for a split second I could see that she was tempted to deny my charge. But it has been my experience that guilt shadows a person like a most reliable friend, urging them to reveal the truth when opportunity at last presents itself.
She broke down, begging me to understand, to forgive her. Her distress was heartrending. I suggested that we go inside again, where we could talk. She made me promise not to breathe a word, and I agreed. Neither will I, though I will wonder forever what else I missed or got wrong, in which other ways I was misled. Nonetheless, I did something that day of which I am not proud.
I cannot say what made me do it, other than a deep-seated professional need to keep the record. The tape from our previous interview had already been turned over and rewound, ready for the next time I needed it. Without telling Nora, I recorded our second, private conversation. Afterward, I considered destroying the tape. I had already decided that Iwouldn’t publish what she told me. I’d promised her—and more than that, I couldn’t think that it would help anyone, whereas I knew it had a great potential to cause harm.
I could see only one person whose life would be changed by what she’d said. Nora asked me to forgive her, but her actions were not for me to forgive. And so I decided to put this tape aside for you, Polly. I don’t know whether you will ever read this letter. It depends, I suppose, on you—on your determination to know the truth. If you never seek it, I will assume that you preferred not to know, and I did the right thing in keeping Nora’s secret. If you do find your way to me, then the truth is waiting. It belongs to you. I have simply been its keeper.
Daniel Miller
The truth! Jess’s mind was racing. Here, at last, she glimpsed, were the answers she’d been hoping for. She felt incredibly eager, and yet—Miller’s reference to guilt made her anxious. For the first time, Jess began to worry that Nora had done something seriously wrong. She folded the fine piece of paper in half and waited for Polly to react. The letter, the tape, the decision, were hers. It was a lot to take in, particularly for someone who hadn’t spent the past week immersed in the world of Halcyon and the Turners.
Still... “What do you think?” she prompted. “Should I flip the tape?”
Her mother met her eyes, and when she gave a solemn nod of agreement, for a split second Jess felt a sense of déjà vu, an old memory of togetherness, of feeling bonded and safe, no matter what terrifying specter might be waiting around the corner.
33
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” This was Daniel Miller. Only half an hour had passed since they’d finished the last interview, but his voice was changed. It was strained now: serious and careful. Jess recognized the note of caution; she had adopted it herself during interviews where she knew she had to tread carefully lest the subject withdraw their agreement to talk. His words were muffled—he must have left the tape recorder in his bag—and the effect was to make them both seem farther away. “Why don’t you start with the night she was born,” Miller suggested.
Jess held her breath as the library speakers crackled and hissed with the static of distance. She did not meet her mother’s eyes. Finally came Nora’s faded voice: “I gave birth to her in the middle of a violent storm. It was Christmas Eve, the day of the disaster down at the water hole. I went into labor after the policemen left. It was the shock, I think. It took me a while to understand what was happening. I was out of my right mind.
“It wasn’t meant to be like that—Isabel was supposed to be with me. I was relying on her. I remember very little of the birth; I just remember the storm, the hellish storm. I thought the walnut tree outside my window was going to snap in half; wind howling through the gaps in the window, rain like spite against the glass. In my mind, it was as if I had become the storm, or else it had become me.
