“I didn’t know about that.”
“It’s still in existence. She purchased another, smaller cabin nearby. If the Vanderveers had known of the scandalous use she had made of the lodge, they would have come back to haunt her. But she made the right choice. I think it kept her occupied, kept her from dwelling on her problems. And away from Thelma Ducane, who was a terrible influence on her. Those unwed mothers were better women than Thelma, who had the morals of a jackal.”
“How did you get involved?”
“She heard that I had left the paper and was looking for a job. She was Wrigley’s godchild, and he was fond of her.” She smiled. “Dear Lillian. She gave the old man a great deal of misery over letting me go, and told him that she was going to hire me just to spite him. So she invited me to come up there to help her run her home for unwed mothers. And fiercely refused to let me consider coming back to the newspaper. We got along famously.”
“Wasn’t that frowned on back then, a single woman working around unwed mothers?”
She laughed. “Irene, what do you think they thought of women who worked for newspapers?”
“Oh. The cabin-the smaller one? That’s the place where Katy was born?”
“Yes.”
“No wonder you were so close to her.”
“Yes, I was a part of her life from the very beginning.”
“And later, Lillian gave the cabin to Katy, and Katy willed it to Jack?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve always wondered about that will. Do you know why she wrote it?”
Helen hesitated, then said, “I can answer that, but-I can answer it more fully if you will first call Lillian and tell her that you want her to give me permission to tell you all about the day Katy made the will.”
I looked at her as if she were nuts.
“Courage failing you? She is younger than I am, but I still think you’d beat her in a fair fight.”
I pulled out my cell phone and pressed redial.
Lillian answered, and when I told her what I wanted, she said, “Put her on the phone.”
I handed it to Helen.
After a moment, Helen said, “Yes, of course I forgive you. And you forgive me, I hope?”
There was another long pause, during which Helen rolled her eyes. “Yes, it was a terrible thing to say to you.”
Another pause. “Yes, I will… this will be for the best. You understand that?…I’m glad… Thank you… Yes, I’ll see you then. Good-bye.”
She looked at the phone, handed it to me, and said, “You’ll have to hang up. I can’t stand those things. And the buttons are so small. Who designs such things?”
I disconnected the call and put the phone away. I turned to her and said, “Wow.”
“Wow?”
“You two had a hellacious fight, one I was afraid would end in blows, and that’s all it took to patch things up?”
“We’ve had lots of practice over the past sixty or so years. Eventually you figure out that you’ll never have enough time to enjoy the company of your closest friends, so it’s best to learn how to mend damage quickly.” She paused, then said, “Lydia called me yesterday.”
I felt my spine stiffen.
“Do you know,” Helen said, “I think she’s in the wrong.”
“Not entirely,” I admitted. “Really, my attitude started it.”
“Perhaps, but the thing is, she knows that for the most part, it’s she who is in the wrong now.”
“She knows?”
“Yes. Which is why you’ll have to be the one to make another effort, Irene-so that she can admit it.”
I frowned.
“Is the worst thing she said to you worth more to you than the best thing she’s ever done for you?”
“Not even close.”
“Then let go of it. Call her. Invite her somewhere. Not to talk things out, just to see each other, and when the time comes you can tell each other how stupid all of this fighting is. All right?”
“If she snubs me again, I am siccing you on her.”
“I doubt it will be necessary.”
“Tell me about the will.”
She sighed. “All right. I want you to understand two things. The first is that I didn’t know the answer to this until very recently. I threatened to sell the cabin, and I suppose that was enough to make Lillian cave in and tell me what had happened. The other is that this is absolutely confidential. If you feel you might have to tell someone at some point in time, it will have to be after Lillian has given you permission, or because she’s dead. If you can’t promise that, I can’t tell you.”
“All right.”
“Here’s what Lillian told me. A few days before Katy’s birthday, Mitch came across Katy and Lillian when they were together, doing some shopping downtown. Their hands were full, holding the handles of their shopping bags-you know the type of bag-big fancy paper bags with twine handles. The chauffeur had already gone ahead with an armload of boxes, and was going to bring the car around. Mitch offered to help carry the bags until the car arrived, and Katy snubbed him. He asked her why she was always so rude to him. She said something like, ‘Uncle Jack has told me all about you.’”
“I remember O’Connor mentioning that she called him that.”
“She had always called Jack that, from the time she was little. Jack was much more of a father to her than Harold was-Harold spent less than a half-dozen nights a month at home. But whatever she called Jack, she probably shouldn’t have mentioned him to Mitch. Jack’s name was always enough to make him lose his temper.”
“Because of the stories he wrote about Mitch?”
“I think so. Although God knows Mitch’s mind works differently than a reasonable person’s-he can’t forgive any injury, he’s quick to perceive a slight, and he sees the smallest criticism as a major insult. Which is why what happened next was-was the worst thing that could have happened.
“According to Lillian, Mitch took her by the chin and said, ‘Uncle Jack, is it? He’s not your uncle, any more than Harold’s your father. Didn’t your mother ever tell you how close we were, all those years ago?’ Katy spit in his face.”
“Not that I blame Katy,” I said, “but given what happened later, why didn’t Lillian tell the police about this?”
“Irene, you must remember that for twenty years, we thought Katy had drowned in a boating accident. Lillian told me she thought of going to the police about it in 1978, when you found out what had really happened to Katy and Todd, but when she saw that even Ian and Eric wouldn’t be convicted, she realized that it would be her word against Mitch’s and Mitch would claim it never happened.”
“No one else saw it?”
“Someone might have seen it, but to be able to recall a relatively minor incident twenty years later? She doubted anyone heard him. At the time it happened, she was hardly in a state to take down names from witnesses-she was hoping no one had seen it. She apologized to Mitch and fortunately her driver pulled up just then, which is probably all that kept Mitch from striking Katy.”
“What happened after that?”
“Lillian dragged Katy into the car and, once they were home, scolded her. She tells me that Katy retaliated by asking certain uncomfortable questions about Lillian’s past, and why there had never been any other children in the family, and so on. Lillian refused to answer them, and told her she should be less worried about Lillian’s youthful foolishness and much more worried about her own-that insulting a man like Mitch Yeager could be extremely dangerous. When she asked if Mitch was her father, Lillian said that if she didn’t want someone to spit in her face, she’d better stop asking such things.”
“And the will?”
“Ah, yes. The will. Katy said Jack should have been her father, and that she loved him more than anyone she was related to by blood. Lillian said, ‘This is your family, and it will be Max’s family, and you ought to be grateful that you weren’t raised by a drunkard without two nickels to rub together.’”