The Mill River Recluse Page 32

  Father O’Brien glanced to his right, toward the window on the front side of the town hall building. The streetlight outside highlighted a fine stream of snowflakes.

  “Mary loved the snow,” he said. “I think we all have to love it, to make it through winters up here, don’t you think?” The townspeople smiled. “But Mary wanted all of you to be warm in the wintertime. Another fund has been set up to provide assistance to people with heating bills. It’ll supplement the programs already run by the state. No one in Mill River will ever be cold again.

  “A certain amount has been provided to help the town with necessary expenses. Like maintaining our new town park or purchasing a new police Jeep, for instance. You never know when something will break down--or be smashed into a utility pole.” Fitz snorted beside him, and several people in the crowd laughed in response. “We also hope to start a mortgage assistance program to help people in Mill River with down payments on houses, but Jim is still ironing out the kinks with that one. I expect that in the next few months, each of your families will receive a mailing describing everything that is being made available to you from Mary’s estate. Jim’s law office has graciously offered to answer any questions you may have once all of the programs are in place.”

  Father O’Brien looked down at his watch. He had been standing at the podium for twenty minutes, but it had seemed like hours. A great sense of joy seized him. He had done it, he had kept his promise, and everything was wonderful. He felt waves of disbelief and delight emanating from the townspeople in front of him. Many still had expressions of amazement on their faces.

  Mary would have been delighted to see them. He closed his eyes and felt quite certain that, from somewhere, she could.

  “Excuse me, Father O’Brien?”

  He opened his eyes, scanning the crowd to find the thin voice that had called out to him. Two small, elderly women stood slowly, arm-in-arm, and looked around at the townspeople. They were dressed differently but had identical faces and hairstyles.

  “Yes?” Father O’Brien said. The women looked strangely familiar, but he couldn’t place them. The one who had first spoken continued.

  “We were just wondering…well, everything that Mary has done for Mill River is absolutely delightful, and it’s wonderful how she was able to get to know her daughter, Miss Delaine, but we want to know if she left anything behind for the rest of her family.”

  Father O’Brien stared, confused as to who these women were and why they would be here now, asking such a question.

  “Well, she really has no other family. Her husband’s family didn’t have much to do with her after her husband’s grandfather passed.”

  “Your first statement is not exactly true, Father,” the other woman said. “We are her family. Mary McAllister was our sister-in-law.”

  He knew them then. The old women were Sara and Emma, Patrick McAllister’s younger twin sisters.

  “I recognize you,” he said, but one of the twins interrupted him.

  “You all must understand, we never wanted to avoid Mary. We felt sorry for her, all alone in that house after our brother died. But our mother insisted that no one on our side have any contact with her. We had no choice.”

  The other sister nodded in agreement. “Our parents threatened to disinherit us if we so much as mentioned her name.”

  “But we heard about Mary’s death, and the announcement to be made at the meeting tonight. And we thought that maybe she would have left something for her family. After all, it was our grandfather who took care of her in the first place.”

  Father O’Brien was incredulous. He could not fathom the audacity of these women, coming out of nowhere after sixty years to demand part of her estate. He began to seethe with such a suppressed rage as he had never before experienced, a rage that had grown from seeing Mary abandoned by the McAllister family. From watching her suffer, day after day, year after year. From stifling his own dreams to ensure her safety and feeling helpless to offer her any relief from her isolation except his own company. From doing everything he could to ensure that tonight, this one night, her final wish would become a beautiful reality. Father O’Brien’s hands began to tremble again.

  The sisters took no notice of his agitated state, however, and continued to speak in turn.

  “You might be wondering why we would come here, being from a wealthy family.”

  “Or, at least, a family that was wealthy. The Marbleworks didn’t stay in business for very long after Father took over. He never was good with money, and he ran the company into the ground. That, and with so much competition from abroad, well, he had to declare bankruptcy, you see.”

  “We’re not well-off anymore. In fact, we’re no different from anyone else here tonight. Just two ordinary, middle-class ladies.”

  “We were only hoping that Mary remembered us in her will. It would sure make things a little easier for us.”

  Father O’Brien felt the townspeople watching him, waiting for him to respond. He was fighting to keep control of his emotions, to remain calm, but his temper had risen with such ferocity that he knew he would not be able to control it this time.

  It was exploding now, and for once in his life, he didn’t care.

  “Make it easier for you?” Even he was surprised at the tone of his voice, a cold hiss devoid of compassion. “How dare you come here tonight, asking for anything from Mary, asking for something to make your lives more pleasant, when you did nothing for her when she needed her family the most?”

  Father O’Brien took a step forward, out from behind the podium. He could feel waves of blinding anger rushing from his body. “You, and everyone else in your family, save Conor McAllister, shut her out. You two chose the promise of future wealth over the well-being of your own sister-in-law. And after the money was gone, after your parents had passed on, did you ever once contact her? No, you didn’t. I know because for all those years, I was the one who made sure that she survived. I gave her a new family, all of these fine people you see around you.” Father O’Brien gestured toward the townspeople and felt fresh tears warm his face. After a moment, he lowered his voice and continued. “And tonight, Mary took care of her family, as she’d done for years. But you are no longer her family. You have no place here.”

  The people before him were silent, wide-eyed. He had never spoken with such anger before them, but he saw their looks of disgust at the two old women, saw the wry smiles of support for him flash across their faces.

  The McAllister twins scowled. “We’ll see about that,” one of them snapped while the other crossed her arms and glared back at him. “Wills can always be challenged, you know. And what with all of Mary’s mental problems? Who knows whether it will hold up in court.”

  “I do,” Jim Gasaway said, standing again. He nodded to Father O’Brien and continued. “Mary didn’t know whether any long-absent family members would come crawling out of the woodwork once she passed, but she insisted on leaving a thousand dollars to each surviving member of Patrick’s immediate family. No, it’s not much, not by today’s standards and the total value of her estate, but it’s better than nothing. You can contact my office this week, same as everyone else, if you want to put in a claim for the money.” Jim Gasaway shook his head. “Even after what you people did to her, she still couldn’t bear to shut you out completely. Shocked the hell out of me, frankly. But she wasn’t about to be taken advantage of by any of you, either. So Mary’s will explicitly states that any member of the McAllister family that brings any sort of legal challenge against her estate will forfeit his or her inheritance. Trust me, I’ve been doing wills for thirty years, and we made damn sure that hers is airtight. So you can try to challenge it if you want, but you’ll lose. Simple as that.”

  As the McAllister twins stood in silence, Fitz lumbered up from his chair and cleared his throat. “Well, we’ve got a delicious supper getting cold, and I think you ladies had best be going,” he said. “I assume you’re parked outside?” The police chief ushere
d Sara and Emma out the door of the town hall and closed it behind them.

  When Father O’Brien had composed himself, he looked again at the crowd. The people were still quiet and waiting. He felt that he had said everything he needed to say, except for one thing.

  “The last thing I should tell you,” he said, “is something that Mary said to me many times, something that we’ve all seen here again tonight. And that is that in our world, even small gestures of kindness are remembered. I ask you to honor Mary’s memory by continuing to be kind to each other, even if you’re not sure that someone deserves your kindness. Mary knew that kindness is what brings all of us together as friends and neighbors and family.”

  ~~~

  Chapter 22

  On the morning after the town meeting, Mill River looked as it always had. The colors of the sunrise had just given way to a cloudy sky when Father O’Brien appeared in the doorway of the parish house. He looked down Main Street at the quiet, snow-covered buildings and smiled. The excitement that had gripped the town the previous evening had faded away, but he expected it to reappear as word of Mary’s generosity spread to residents who had not attended the town meeting.

  It had been a wonderful, beautiful evening.

  Today would be wonderful, too.

  Father O’Brien stooped to lift a small cardboard box and carried it through the snow to his old pickup. The large shipping box containing his spoons was already on the floor on the passenger’s side. He placed the small cardboard box on the seat above it. Soon, he would part with both of them.

  It took only a few minutes to drive down to the bakery. Ruth and Fitz were expecting him. He had asked to see them both before work on its reconstruction had begun for the day.

  “Morning, Father,” Ruth said as she held open the the front door. Instead of a flour-covered apron, she wore a heavy coat and gloves, and he could see her breath freeze as she spoke. The blackened inside smelled strongly of smoke. “Sorry there’s no heat since they shut off the power. Fitz is upstairs with some of the construction guys, but he’ll be down in a minute. Can I get you a hot cup of coffee?”

  “How have you got hot coffee with no electricity?”

  Ruth laughed. “I’ve got plenty. I brought a few thermoses over from my sister’s. We’re staying with her until the repairs are done.”

  “Ah. In that case, coffee would be wonderful.” Ruth nodded and went behind the counter for a mug. Save for a few folding chairs and and old card table near the door, the bakery was completely empty. Even the insulation in the walls was gone. He sat down on one of the folding chairs and noticed several men wearing hard hats and carpenter’s belts clustered near the back wall…or rather, what used to be the back wall. It was now mostly a gaping hole interspersed with temporary support beams and sealed with clear plastic sheeting.

  Ruth brought three mugs of coffee as she and Fitz joined him a few minutes later.

  “Hard to believe they didn’t condemn this place, seeing as how you’re missing a wall,” he told them.

  “We thought the same thing,” Fitz said, “but the inspector took a look and said we could stablize the building and replace the burned-out parts. There’ll be more inspections and permits along the way, since it’s a public building, but that’s fine with us.”

  “Cheaper than knocking it down and starting over,” Ruth added.

  “And faster, too. We should be back in the apartment in a few months if the crew keeps to schedule. We’ll have to replace the furniture in here, and a lot of our clothes and furnishings upstairs that were ruined by the smoke. But Ruthie here’s been wanting to update our stuff for a while, so I guess we’ve got a good excuse now.”

  “It looks like you’ll be all right, then,” Father O’Brien said. “What about Kyle Hansen and his daughter? Have they got a place to stay?”

  “Yep. Ron Wykowski’s got a spare room, so they’re all set,” Fitz said.

  “Rowen even knows their sons from school, so Jean tells me they’ve been having a great time playing together.”

  “This whole thing goes back to what you said last night, Father. You know, people pitching in to help each other. That meeting was something else, I tell you,” Fitz said. “I don’t know how you managed to keep it all a secret for so long.”

  “I couldn’t sleep a wink,” Ruth said. “I just kept thinking about it. The whole night, it kept swimming around in my head, like something out of a movie. Something you never expect to happen in the real world.”

  Father O’Brien smiled at the couple. They were about to be surprised again.

  “You’re right,” he told them. “But it was actually all Mary’s idea, even keeping the whole thing a secret. I just helped her make all the arrangements. That’s actually the reason I asked to see you both this morning. You’ll remember at the meeting that I said a few bequests from Mary’s estate would be handled privately?” Ruth and Fitz nodded. “Well, each week since you first opened the bakery, I took some of your pie up to her. She wanted to know all about you, of course, especially after you started doing her shopping, Ruth. I told her what I knew about you and your family, that your dream was to open a bed and breakfast when Fitz retires. She thought it was a good idea, since we’re so close to Killington and the other ski resorts. The thing is, buying a house big enough to do that isn’t cheap, even if you’ve saved for it for years. What I’m trying to tell you two is that Mary wanted you to have her home, for your bed and breakfast, if you want it.” He sat back in his chair, enjoying the open-mouthed, wide-eyed expressions on the Fitzgeralds’ faces.

  “Us?” Fitz asked. “She wanted us to have it?” Father O’Brien nodded and chuckled.

  “But we never really met her,” Ruth said. “I almost did that day when she tried to come here, but for all those years, I never so much as set a foot in her house. How could she mean for us to have it? I’d guess that she’d want Daisy—her daughter--to have the house. Are you sure there isn’t some mistake?”

  “Oh, there’s no mistake,” Father O’Brien said. “I can count on one hand the number of people in Mill River who’ve seen inside her home. So that has nothing to do with it. Daisy already has a new home and is happy where she is. She’ll be well taken care of, don’t worry, and she really couldn’t manage such a big place. And another thing--Mary’s home was never meant to be used by only one person. As beautiful as it is, she kept most of the rooms shut. It’d be well-suited for a bed and breakfast. Plenty of space, a gorgeous view. The furnishings would come with it, of course, and even the rooms she lived in have been well-kept. You saw some of them, Fitz, the morning she died.”

  Fitz nodded and looked at his wife. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff in there, Ruthie. All antiques, fancy rugs, and pictures. And I didn’t really get a great look at everything because the drapes were pulled shut.”

  “I’m sure it’s as stunning inside as it is outside,” Ruth said.

  “Let me tell you something else,” Father O’Brien continued. “That big house was built as a wedding gift by Mary’s husband’s grandfather. I knew him well enough to understand how much he loved his grandson and Mary. He arranged the purchase of the property and the construction himself, and poured his heart into it. And yet, that house has never reflected all the love and happiness that went into its building. But just imagine, if you two were to open it up, make it feel warm and inviting, it would be extraordinary. It would finally be the home it was meant to be. And I think that’s what Mary wanted.”

  Ruth and Fitz looked at each other, each apparently waiting to hear what the other was thinking. Fitz spoke first.

  “I don’t think we know quite what to say, Father. This is sort of a humbling experience…it’s not every day you get a mansion handed to you.”

  Ruth nodded. “It’s completely overwhelming. But we’d be honored to have Mary’s home,” she said, her voice a little unsteady. “And I think we could bring out the beauty in it, and the love, as you say. Just imagine what it would be like for the peo
ple in town to be welcomed to the house they’ve wondered about all these years.”

  “You sure could work miracles with that house, Ruthie,” Fitz said, “but we’re so short-staffed at the station. As much as I’d like to, I can’t retire just yet, not until we hire an officer to take Leroy’s place, and another one to replace me. And then there’s this place to take care of.”

  “There’s no hurry. We could work on getting the house ready a little at a time. I’ll bet it needs a good cleaning and sprucing up, and we’ll probably have to get permits and such so it’s all right with public building requirements. Once the bakery is back to normal, we could get someone to help with it, and I could focus on the bed and breakfast.” Her eyes grew bright and she laid her hand on Fitz’s arm. “I’ll bet we could have it ready by the time you retire.”

  “Hmmph.” Fitz looked his wife, then at Father O’Brien, and slapped the table. “Let’s do it, then. This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  Father O’Brien took a business card from his coat pocket and pushed it across the table. “This is Jim Gasaway’s card. The address of his office in Rutland is on it. He’s got all the papers ready to transfer the property, so you’ll just need to call and make an appointment to go sign them. You won’t have to worry about any legal expenses for the transfer, either. They’re all taken care of.”

  He stayed a few more minutes to finish his coffee. Ruth and Fitz sat with him, holding hands in the chilly, burned-out bakery and grinning like two teenagers on a first date. In a way, they would be starting anew. When he finally went outside to his pickup truck, he smiled and waved to the Fitzgeralds. He had left two happy people even happier, and, with great effort, he had left his teaspoon on the old card table next to his empty coffee mug.

  Father O’Brien continued through town and turned onto the highway leading to Rutland. His destination was the county hospital. He would go there and offer his assistance to Leroy Underwood. He didn’t look forward to seeing Leroy--it still made him angry to remember how Leroy had treated Mary as a teenager--but he considered it his duty to visit the troubled young man. Perhaps he could be of help.