Rita Dabney’s eyes widened a bit. “I told that other lady that we don’t have the money to pay for a mental hospital. I made that very clear!”
“I’m not here for money, and no one is going to ask you to pay for anything. I just have some questions.”
“She’s not really our problem, you know. I feel sorry for her. I always have, but she’s not really ours. If you ask me, we’ve been more than kind to her. Especially after what she did. She killed our first grandchild, you know.”
My hackles rose at the callousness of this woman’s words, but I reined in my indignation and continued with my calm questioning. “Yes, so I’ve heard,” I said. “I just want to know what happened that day her brother died. And then what happened after it.”
“Well, none of us were there. We were here, and Ines and the children were over the river in Philadelphia.”
“Ines?”
“Ursula and Leo’s mother. Cal’s first wife. She and he had that little apartment off South Street in as derelict an area as I’ve ever seen. I told Cal when he was about to be shipped off to the war that Ines and the children should come here to live with us, but Cal and his father weren’t on speaking terms then and he didn’t want any part of that. Maury and I weren’t even invited to the wedding. Cal married this Croatian widow with a five-year-old daughter and we weren’t even consulted or invited.”
The woman stopped and grimaced angrily, like the offense still stung.
“And then Ines and Cal had a child?” I asked so that Rita Dabney would go on, even if it was to continue talking about herself when it was Ursula I was asking about. I was beginning to see more and more the dark depths of Ursula’s world.
“Cal didn’t even tell us she was pregnant until the baby was born, and even then I had to beg to see him. Ines convinced Cal I should at least be able to see the baby. But then he was shipped off to France two weeks after Leo was born. Next thing I know there’s a killing flu all over the face of the earth. I didn’t know Ines had it. And I didn’t know she had given it to Ursula. If I had known I would have come for them no matter what Cal had told her before he left. I didn’t know!”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” I said empathetically.
“Then I come to find out from the police that Ines is dead and Ursula was found wandering around the river, blood all over her, sick with the flu, and carrying on about an angel coming for Baby Leo in a little brown boat. She tossed him into the river. A helpless baby. She drowned him.”
Rita Dabney’s eyes had misted over.
“I’m so very sorry.”
“The worst of it is, she says she doesn’t hardly remember that day.”
“I think maybe she does,” I said.
“Well, I’ve asked her time and again what on earth made her think an angel had come in a little brown boat for that baby, and she could never tell me.”
“Maybe the baby had died. Their mother was dead. Maybe the trauma of losing both her mother and her brother in the same day was too much. Maybe Ursula’s mind created the image of the angel taking Leo to soften the blow of seeing them both dead.”
“But she threw him in the river!”
“If the child was dead already, then she didn’t drown him.”
“Then why is she the way she is? Why did she try to kill herself? He was alive when she threw him in. If he wasn’t, she wouldn’t be carrying the guilt that she is. She is the way she is because deep down she knows she killed that baby. Probably because she was jealous of him.”
“She was sick with fever.”
“But my grandson is dead just the same.”
I paused for just a moment to collect my thoughts. “You and your husband took her in then?”
Rita Dabney’s nod was accompanied by a half-concealed snort. “What else could we do? Ines had no other family that we knew of. The city was plumb full of orphans. They didn’t want another one. And I did feel sorry for her. I did. Ursula was the saddest child I’d ever laid eyes on. When Cal came home some months after the war, he didn’t even want to see her. It was several years before he’d even look at her. And he had his own problems from the war. He softened up after a while, but there were times before he met his second wife and she gave him a new baby when he’d get ahold of liquor, and when he did, he always lit into Ursula and blamed her for everything bad in his life. It wasn’t her fault Ines died or that Cal had to see what he did in the war, but he heaped the blame for it all, and Leo’s death, too, on her. I don’t blame her for having left.”
“Left? Didn’t she run away at fourteen?”
Rita opened her mouth and then closed it. A second later when shespoke again, I knew we were finished. “She left. You apparently read the note I wrote to her. I told her she always had a home here. But she wanted to go. And now I think it’s time you went.”
I thanked Rita Dabney for her help and she merely tipped her head to acknowledge she’d heard me.
It was raining harder as I stepped outside. I ran to Conrad’s automobile, so grateful that he had wanted to wait for me.
“Did you get what you needed?” he asked as he pulled away from the curb.
