Secrets of a Small Town
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Patricia Kay
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18,8K
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13
Chapter One
Sabrina March leaned back in her chair and sighed with satisfaction. “The chicken and dumplings were wonderful, as usual.” She smiled at Florence Hillman, her parents’ longtime housekeeper, who had begun to clear the table.
“Glad you enjoyed them.” Florence’s return smile was affectionate.
“I believe I enjoyed them far too much,” Sabrina’s father said, patting his stomach. “What do you say we go for a walk, Sabrina? Work off some of these calories.” Turning to Sabrina’s mother, he said, “You don’t mind, do you, dear?”
Isabel March’s gray eyes seemed, if anything, to grow frostier, but after a moment, she shook her head. “As long as you’re not gone too long.” Under her breath, she added, “I get little enough of your time.”
As always, Ben March ignored her critical comment, and his voice was gentle as he replied, “I’ll be back in an hour, no longer.”
Sabrina’s father, who was the CEO of his tour company, was due to leave on an extended trip—this time to Greece, Sabrina thought—early the following morning. His expertise lay in finding new areas to tour, then negotiating the best deals with hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions. March Tours wasn’t a large company, but it was very successful in the high-end tour business. That success was directly attributable to her father’s work ethic, which had translated into long absences from home.
These absences had been hard on Sabrina and her mother, so Sabrina sympathized with her mother’s wish to have more of her father’s attention. Even so, she couldn’t help being glad she’d have a little time alone with him today. She loved her mother, but she adored her father.
When he was home, there was an excitement and cheer that was in short supply at other times. There was no one she respected more. In Sabrina’s eyes, Ben seemed the ideal man: honest, hardworking, loyal, generous and loving. The past sixteen years couldn’t have been easy ones for him, but he had never complained. In fact, his behavior had been an inspiration to her.
With only a nod to indicate she’d heard him, Sabrina’s mother pushed back from the table. Her motorized wheelchair—the best money could buy—moved as silently as a cloud. If only her mother hadn’t had that accident sixteen years ago, things might have been so different. She might have been different.
Sometimes Sabrina thought she couldn’t stand her mother’s unhappiness and bitterness another day. And then, as soon as the thought formed, she felt guilty for the selfishness of it. After all, it couldn’t be easy for her mother who, before the skiing accident that had cost her the use of her legs, had been athletic and active. To compensate for these occasional uncharitable feelings, Sabrina tried to be doubly attentive and compassionate toward her mother.
“Ready?” her father said now, rising from the table.
Sabrina nodded, eager to be outside in the fresh October air.
Once they were in her father’s car and on their way, he said, “Have you done any more thinking about your job since we last talked, honey?”
Sabrina sighed. “Yes, but I haven’t come up with any answers.”
He reached over and squeezed her hand. “Do you want me to talk to your mother about it?”
For just one weak moment, Sabrina was tempted. Then she sighed again. “No, Dad. This is my problem. I appreciate that you’re willing to do it, but I have to handle this myself.”
Sabrina was the publisher of The Rockwell Record, the daily newspaper, which had been founded by her great-grandfather, Francis Kipling Rockwell. From the time she was old enough to understand what a newspaper was, she’d wanted to work there. But her vision had been romantic. She’d seen herself as a reporter or as the editor. She’d never wanted to run the business, to be the one who would hire and fire, the one who would have all the practical and financial worries. Yet since her Uncle Frank had retired, she was the only Rockwell left to head the paper. More and more, she’d had to leave the reporting and editing to others. For the past year, she’d been torn by a sense that her life had somehow gotten out of her control. And she felt powerless to change that.
“If I wasn’t gone so much, and you didn’t have the responsibility of your mother, too…” her father began.
“It’s not your fault. I don’t want you to feel guilty. You know Mom would be very unhappy if you didn’t bring in the kind of money you do. Besides, it wouldn’t matter. She expects certain things of me, and that wouldn’t change even if you were home all the time.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “I’m okay. Really I am. Now, let’s talk about something else.”
Ten minutes later, car parked, Sabrina and her father began to climb the hill leading to the flower gardens of the park, which was their favorite place to walk. The path was strewn with brightly hued leaves from the maple trees that lined the walkway. Sabrina took a deep, appreciative breath. She loved autumn. It was her favorite season.
“Did you hear about what happened to Shorty Carwell last—” She stopped in mid-question. “Dad?”
Her father had abruptly stopped walking and was gripping his chest.
“Dad?” she said more urgently. “What’s wrong?”
He grimaced. “Just…just a bit of…indigestion. Shouldn’t have had that second helping of dumplings.”
“Are you sure?” Sabrina didn’t like his color. Normally her father’s complexion was ruddy, but right now he looked pale. “Maybe we should go home.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m fine. It’s just indigestion. Walking will be good for me.”
“But—”
“It’s okay. I feel fine now.” Smiling, he held out his arm.
Although Sabrina took it, she couldn’t banish the kernel of anxiety that had knotted in her stomach. Maybe it was just her questioning nature—so valuable to a reporter—but his smile seemed strained to her. Yet he seemed determined to act as if nothing had happened, so she forced a lightness into her voice that she didn’t feel.
“What time is your flight tomorrow?”
“Noon.”
“So you’ll be leaving early.”
Her father always flew out of Cleveland rather than Akron, which was closer to Rockwell, because there were more flights to choose from. When Ben didn’t immediately answer, she looked at him sharply. Alarm caused her heart to lurch. His face was now a ghostly white, and beads of perspiration stood out on his upper lip, although the late afternoon air was chilly. “Dad! You’re not all right!”
“I—” He staggered back. Clutched his chest. His eyes met hers for one panicked moment. Then, with a strangled cry, he collapsed on to the walkway.
Sabrina lunged for him, but she couldn’t hold on—he was too heavy. With a calmness she later marveled at, she whipped out her cell phone and punched in 911, as she sank to her knees and put two shaking fingers of her other hand against her father’s carotid artery. She swallowed. There was no pulse. Dear God.
The moment she’d finished giving the emergency dispatcher the information that would bring an ambulance and EMT personnel to the park, she began CPR. Thank God she’d taken the lifesaving course only months earlier, as part of a series she’d done on emergency facilities in the area; otherwise, she wouldn’t have had any idea how to go about trying to revive him.
“Dad, please be okay. Please be okay.”
Over and over she pleaded with him even as exhaustion began to make it harder and harder to keep going. Again and again she went through the cycle she’d been taught. Fifteen compressions followed by two slow breaths into his mouth. Recheck his pulse. Fifteen more compressions, two slow breaths. Check the pulse.
By now she was sobbing with fright and frustration. No matter what she did, he still wasn’t breathing! Where was that ambulance?
Please hurry, she prayed. Please hurry.
Finally she heard the wail of the siren, faint at first, then louder and louder as it pulled into the parking lot below.
Within moments, three EMTs converged on her. Strong hands moved her aside, and the technicians took over.
The next ten minutes were a blur. Sabrina watched numbly as the EMT personnel worked on her father. When one of them—a stocky dark-haired man who seemed to be in charge—called for the defibrillators, Sabrina bit her lip to keep from crying out.
Please, God. Please don’t let him die. I need him.
She watched in agony, wincing each time they shocked her father’s heart.
And then, in a slow-motion moment Sabrina knew she would remember the rest of her life, the dark-haired EMT raised his head.
“It’s no use,” he said, looking at the other two.
“No!” Sabrina cried.
The female EMT turned to her. “I’m so sorry.” Her dark eyes were filled with sympathy. “There’s nothing else we can do. He’s gone.”
Sabrina stared at them. Her father couldn’t be dead. He was only fifty-eight years old. He was way too young to die. “Daddy…” Tears ran down her face. “Daddy.”
The female EMT stood, putting an arm around Sabrina’s shoulder. She led Sabrina to a nearby bench. “Is there anyone I can call for you?” she asked kindly.
Sabrina numbly shook her head. Her father had no family. His parents were dead, and he had been an only child. And her mother…dear God, her mother…
“Are you sure?”
Sabrina wasn’t sure about anything. “M-my mother’s in a wheelchair. I—I have to go there and…and tell her.” Oh, dear heaven. What was going to happen to them? How would her mother handle this?
“Is there any other family? Someone who can be with you so you don’t have to do this alone?”
There was only her mother’s brother Frank, but he was in poor health and retired with his wife in Florida, and her Aunt Irene, her mother’s sister, who lived with her family in Savannah. Sabrina bit her trembling lip. Casey. Casey would come.
“I—I’ll call a friend,” she finally managed. Casey Hudson had been her best friend since high school, the closest friend she’d ever had.
The moment she heard Casey’s voice, Sabrina broke down. Gently the EMT—whose name tag identified her as J. Kovalsky—took the cell phone out of her hand. In soft tones, she explained the situation. By the time Sabrina had regained control of herself, the phone call had been disconnected.
“Your friend said she’d be here in ten minutes.”
Sabrina sat numbly as the two male EMTs loaded her father’s inert body onto a rolling stretcher that they placed in the ambulance. “Wh-where will you take him?”
“To the morgue at County General.”
Because of her newspaper work, Sabrina knew that a death certificate would have to be signed, and that her father’s body would be kept at the morgue until whatever funeral home she and her mother chose would claim it.
Her lips trembled. Body. Morgue. Funeral home. They were such harsh words. Harsh and alien and final. Suddenly the numbness that had kept her grief in check evaporated.
Burying her face in her hands, she allowed the tears to come.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”
Sabrina listened to the words of the minister with the same stoic acceptance she’d worn for the past three days. Everything that had happened since her father’s fatal heart attack was a big, mixed-up blur in her mind.
Giving her mother the bad news. Making decisions about the viewing and the funeral. Notifying relatives and friends. Listening to all the expressions of sympathy on the phone and in person. Greeting everyone who came to the funeral home to pay their respects—hundreds and hundreds of people—a testament both to her family’s prominence in Rockwell—her mother had been a Rockwell before her marriage to Sabrina’s father—and to the fact that Ben March had been well liked by everyone.
And today, the funeral itself.
It seemed ironic to Sabrina that today should be such a beautiful one—crisp and cool, with a clear blue sky and golden sunshine gilding everything it touched. People weren’t supposed to be buried on a day like this. Burials should take place on dark, gloomy, rainy days.
The minister dribbled a handful of dirt over the bronze coffin. “Benjamin Arthur March, we commit your earthly remains to…”
Sabrina tuned out the rest of the words. They were meaningless. Nothing anyone said would change a thing. Her father was dead.
She wished she were anywhere else but here. She didn’t want to remember her father like this. Didn’t want to see his coffin lowered into the ground. Didn’t want to believe she would never see him again.
Her eyes burned with unshed tears. She hadn’t allowed herself the luxury of crying since those few minutes in the park.
What good would crying do?
Her father was gone. Never again would she see his smile. Never again would he bring his optimism and good humor home. Never again would she feel the comfort and support of his strength.
Oh, Daddy, what will I do without you?
Next to her, her mother stirred. Sabrina glanced sideways. Isabel’s profile was calm and dignified, her chin raised, her posture straight.
“Rockwells don’t air their emotions in public,” she’d said more times than Sabrina could count.
Resentment bubbled inside. Her mother hadn’t broken down once. Not once. Not even when Sabrina had given her the news, a fact that had shocked Sabrina and made her wonder if her mother had ever loved her father. Then she felt guilty. She knew she shouldn’t judge her mother simply because Isabel didn’t show her grief the way Sabrina showed hers.
It wasn’t just that her mother was a Rockwell and felt she had a certain position to live up to. Isabel had never been able to show her love easily. Some people were like that. They held their emotions inside, unable to share them. It didn’t mean they didn’t feel them.
Only once had Sabrina ever seen her mother lose control. It was a memory long buried, but today it surfaced and Sabrina remembered how, as a twelve-year-old, she had heard her parents arguing.
She’d been upstairs in her room studying and the raised voices had drawn her to the top of the stairs. Ben and Isabel had been in the library—which was on the first floor near the stairway—and the door had been partially open. Neither had noticed, so caught up in the storm of emotion that their usual caution when Sabrina was nearby had been forgotten.
“It’ll be a cold day in hell before I give you a divorce,” her mother had been saying.
Sabrina had gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. Divorce! No! Not her parents. They couldn’t get a divorce.
“Isabel, be reasonable,” her father said. “Whatever love we once felt for each other is gone, and you know it.”
“Rockwells do not divorce.”
“Just to save face, you’d rather be miserable the rest of your life, is that it?”
“Who says I’ll be miserable?” her mother had shot back. Then she’d stalked out, heading for the stairs, and Sabrina had scrambled to get back to her room before her mother discovered her listening.
That night Sabrina’s father hadn’t been home for dinner, and the next day her mother had left for a skiing trip. The skiing trip where she’d had the disastrous accident that had so affected the rest of her life.
From that day on, Sabrina’s father had been a devoted husband. No one would ever have known the March marriage had been on the brink of dissolving, not from Ben’s actions and certainly not from Isabel’s. In fact, over the years, Sabrina had often wondered if she’d imagined that whole scene in the library.
Today, though, she knew she hadn’t. No, her father’s patience with, compassion for and devotion to her mother had been his penance. For Sabrina knew he’d blamed himself for the accident, even though he hadn’t been there and hadn’t caused the accident physically.
Nevertheless, she was sure he felt responsible, because if her mother hadn’t been so upset, she wouldn’t have been foolhardy enough to ignore the warnings and ski in conditions that were less than favorable.
Sabrina sighed. It wasn’t right to judge her mother. Until you walked in another’s shoes, you couldn’t know how you would behave in similar circumstances.
Dad wouldn’t want me to be bitter toward her, she thought. If he were here right now, he’d tell me he was depending on me to be understanding and kind, that Mom will need me now more than ever.
As that realization sank in, Sabrina could feel the weight of the future pressing down upon her. Now she could never leave the newspaper. Never try something different. Never have a life of her own.
After the last of the food had been eaten and all the guests had finally gone home, Leland Fox, her parents’ longtime friend and the family’s lawyer, asked if they were up to going over Ben’s will.
“If you’re too tired today, we can do it another day,” he said gently, smiling down at Isabel.
“No, let’s get it over with.”
Sabrina would have preferred to wait, but the decision was her mother’s, so she settled herself in a chair and waited for Leland to dig the will out of his briefcase.
“I’ll just go give Florence a hand in the kitchen,” Sabrina’s Aunt Irene said. She smiled at Sabrina, then left the room.
There were no surprises in the will. The family home had belonged to Isabel’s parents. After their death, she had bought out Frank’s and Irene’s shares, so the house was already in her name. Her and Ben’s bank accounts and investments were held jointly with survivorship benefits. As for Ben’s company, Sabrina and Isabel already held twenty-four percent of the stock apiece. Of the remaining fifty-two percent, eighteen percent belonged to Bob Culberson, Ben’s general manager, and thirty-four percent was in Ben’s name with the provision that upon his death, any stock held by him would be divided equally between Isabel and Sabrina.
In addition, there were two cash bequests: one to Florence and one to Jennifer Loring, Sabrina’s cousin and the daughter of Irene.
For a few moments, Leland discussed the logistics of transferring money and stock, then he kissed Isabel goodbye and Sabrina walked him to the front door.
As he was putting on his coat, he dropped his voice and said, “Sabrina, could you stop by my office in the morning? I need to see you about a private matter.”
“Of course.” She wanted to question him, but she could see he didn’t want her mother to know about this, so she only said, “What time?”
“Ten?”
“All right.” Standing in the open doorway, she watched as he got into his car and drove off. What could he want that couldn’t be said in front of her mother? A bequest, perhaps, that her father wanted kept secret? That seemed unlikely, but it was all she could think of.
For the rest of the day, as she helped Florence clean up after their guests, as she tended to her mother and helped get her ready for bed, and as she finally had some time to herself and was able to take a soothing bath before climbing into bed in her old room—she was staying at her mother’s for a few days—she thought about Leland Fox’s request and wondered what it involved.
The next morning, as soon as breakfast was over and her mother and aunt were ensconced in the sunroom with a pot of tea and their knitting, Sabrina said she had some errands to run and would be back for lunch. She kissed her mother’s cool cheek with only a twinge of guilt.
She arrived at Leland’s office, conveniently located next to the courthouse in the town square, ten minutes early.
“He’ll be with you shortly,” said Betty Treehorne, his longtime secretary.
Sabrina settled herself on to one of the burgundy leather sofas. Less than five minutes later she was ushered into his office.
“Have a seat, my dear,” Leland said. He stood—a tall man with dark hair turning gray and friendly blue eyes—until she was seated in one of the chairs flanking his desk. Only then did he sit, too. “How are you holding up?”
Sabrina shrugged. “Okay.”
“And your mother?”
“She’s doing all right. Aunt Irene is going to stay for a couple of weeks.”
“That’s good. The next months are going to be hard for you both.”
His kind face was almost Sabrina’s undoing. But she fought the tears that hovered and managed to subvert them.
“Well…” He seemed at a loss. “You’re probably wondering why I asked you to come to the office.”
Sabrina waited.
He opened a file that lay on his desk and removed an envelope. “Your father left this letter in my safe-keeping. He asked me to give it to you should anything happen to him.”
Sabrina’s hands shook as she reached for the letter. Her heart felt as if it might burst. Her father had written her a farewell. It was so like him to know how much she would need to know he had been thinking about her and wanting to ease her grief.
She didn’t open the letter in Leland’s office. Instead, she headed for the park, thinking that would be a fitting place to read her father’s final message to her. Even after arriving and settling on their favorite bench next to the rose garden, she didn’t open the envelope.
She looked at the seal, looked at her father’s hand-writing—the bold letters and black ink. She traced the letters with her finger, then held the envelope close to her heart for a long moment.
Then, with a tremulous smile, she put her index finger under the sealed flap and slit it open.
