Calvin’s face fell. One of the little boys scampered up and tugged at his hand, wanting his attention, but Calvin batted his grandson away.
After a long pause, he said, “You mean Heidi, I guess. You look more like Heidi. Both of you do.”
Lindsey and Candice couldn’t speak. This was the first time they’d ever heard their mother’s real name aloud. Heidi Kimpel. Candice didn’t know what to make of it.
Of course, Heidi had probably become Heidi Summers after she’d married Harvey, she thought. She’d done the math and realized that her mother had married Harvey when she was eighteen. The same age as Sarah now was. Too young for any young woman to marry anyone, least of all someone so much older.
“Aunt Heidi had kids, huh?” Trevor said, sounding doubtful.
“She did,” Candice said. “And we have a brother.”
Lindsey tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
Calvin was quiet for a long time before he said, “She didn’t ever tell you her real name?”
“No,” Candice said.
Calvin looked down. “She didn’t want Daddy to find her.”
“We know about what happened in Nashville,” Lindsey said.
Calvin grunted. “Everyone knows, don’t they?”
Candice didn’t want to say that they’d only just heard the story. She didn’t want to waste any time. “We just want to understand,” she said. “We want to know what she was like before she left.”
As though exhausted, Calvin dropped back into his chair and pressed his hand against his forehead. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“She is,” Lindsey said. “She died in May.”
They held that silence for a beat longer than the others. Candice couldn’t fathom what it meant for Calvin to grieve a sister he hadn’t known for years.
For the next two hours,Calvin sat with Lindsey and Candice and told them the story of their mother, or at least, “The Heidi I remember. My older sister.” He explained that she was basically a stand-in mother for all of them, because their own mother hardly ever left her bed. “Daddy was set on having her married off, and suddenly, she was gone. He also made her drop out of high school. I remember that being really hard for her. None of us knew why school was so important to her. But I did feel for her. I worried that she was sad sometimes. But everyone we knew was sad.
“The problems really started when Daddy told Carrie she had to drop out of school, too. Heidi did not want that. She insisted, and then Daddy hit Carrie, and everything went to heck. Within a day or two, Heidi and Carrie had skipped town. We had no idea what to do. For a little while, Daddy and Harvey searched neighboring towns, but what you have to understand is, we didn’t have money. They couldn’t take time off work to search farther. Not long after, Harvey got another wife—a sort of wife, although he couldn’t marry her since he was already married—and Daddy forgot all about Carrie and Heidi. That is, they forgot until that album started making the rounds. That made Daddy and Harvey wildly upset. Harvey started drinking more than he ever had. He started getting ideas. They asked me to go with them to Nashville to fetch them, but I had kids. I had things to do.”
“What did you think of what they were doing?” Candice asked quietly.
Calvin thought for a moment. “I thought Heidi and Carrie needed to come back and take care of their families. I thought it was stupid that they’d gone away. Then again, I thought it was great to hear my sisters on the radio. I told everyone about it. I felt famous, a little bit.”
When it was time for Lindsey and Candice to go, Calvin disappeared inside for a little while and emerged with a single photograph. It was black-and-white, taken in the sixties, and it featured a little boy and two little girls, both with braids. On the back, it read:Heidi, Calvin, and Carrie, 1968.
A shiver went down Candice’s spine.
Calvin told them to keep the photograph if they wanted to. But, because she sensed it was his only one, Candice insisted that he keep it. “I’ll take a picture of it with my phone,” she said, lining up her phone with the photograph. She took several, her eyes filling with tears.
She’d never seen her mother as a little girl. She’d looked perfect. She’d had no idea what was waiting for her in her future. All she’d known was this.
25
When Candice and Lindsey returned to the Harbor House, they found only Henry on the veranda, drinking wine. They’d been gone a little more than a week, but Candice was surprised at how achy and good it felt to be back “home” at the Harbor House, the place where their mother had escaped to so many years ago.
Henry popped up to grab two glasses and gush with happiness that they were back. “I got a little lonely, to be honest with you,” he said bashfully.
Now, Candice and Lindsey sat with their brother and explained what had happened in Tennessee. They showed him photographs of Sally and Stella McGee, and newspaper articles. They finished with the final photograph of Carrie, Heidi, and Calvin Kimpel in the backyard of that mountain shack. Henry was speechless. He couldn’t stop staring at the last photograph of their mother as a child. “I can’t believe I never wondered why she didn’t have baby photos of herself,” he said then.
This had occurred to Candice, too. Stella Vanberg’s entire life now felt like a magic trick. She’d only let them see what she wanted them to.
After nearly two hours of filling in the blanks, Candice realized something. “Where’s the construction crew?” She remembered that Gwen had hired men to fix up the place for the women’s transitional home.
