Your tale is full of twists and turns I had not anticipated, Lori. As always, truth is stranger by far than fiction. I would not have expected Aubrey to provide for his sisters.
“He may have done it in order to humiliate his father,” I pointed out. “What could be more satisfying than to prove to the old man that a punk can be as charitable as a parson?”
A more charitable view would be that Aubrey was making amends as best he could. His father wouldn’t have accepted a penny from him, nor would he have allowed Ruth and Louise to do so if he could have prevented it. He certainly failed to enlighten them about the source of their income. He probably considered his son’s gift to be tainted.
“In a way, he was right,” I said. “Don’t forget that Aubrey married an heiress for her money. He was a gold digger, plain and simple.”
There is nothing plain and simple about the human heart, my dear. Aubrey’s initial instincts may have been mercenary, but if they’d remained so, his wife’s death would not have affected him so deeply. You said that the laughter had left his eyes in the baptismal photograph. It seems to me that he was a broken man after his wife died. He may have turned to drink in order to dull the pain of losing her. It’s entirely possible that he loved her as well as her money, Lori. Such things do happen.
“I’ll grant you that Aubrey may have had some redeeming qualities,” I conceded, “but you can’t say the same thing about Edmund. Ed brutalized his parents, his wife, and his child, and thought he could make it all better by saying he was sorry.”
Perhaps he was sorry. Nevertheless, I’m glad that Bree was spared the task of burying him, and that his grave is far removed from those of her grandparents. Edmund did nothing to earn his daughter’s grief, and his presence will not spoil any visits she might make to the final resting place of those she loved.
“Let’s hear it for overcrowded morgues,” I muttered grimly.
I wonder if Bree will sleep at all tonight? She must be overwhelmed by the prospects that lie before her.
“I may be the only person in the universe who knows exactly how she feels,” I said. “I was lost and alone once, and angry at the world. Then a fictional character from my childhood came to life and helped me to see that I wasn’t lost or alone and that I didn’t need to be angry. If Bree’s great-grandaunts do for her what Aunt Dimity did for me, she’ll be just fine.”
You still have a bit of a temper.
“I guess you’re not finished with me yet,” I said, smiling. “And I hope you never will be.”
Good night, my dearest child.
“Good night.” I closed the journal, turned out the light, and snuggled under the covers, but a moment later I hopped out of bed and ran over to peer through my balcony door.
It was snowing.
Nineteen
New Zealand, it seemed, wasn’t quite ready to let me go. Cameron announced at breakfast the following morning that we would have to postpone our departure for one more day because Mother Nature had sabotaged our escape route. The aftershock that had shaken my bed had also triggered a landslide that had blocked the road to the airport. The landslide wouldn’t have been a big deal—the locals were adept at earthquake cleanups—if the blizzard hadn’t complicated matters by dumping a foot of snow on top of it.
We were, for all intents and purposes, marooned.
Fortunately, Queenstown was a pretty fantastic place in which to spend a snow day. While Cameron went off to visit a friend, and Bree returned to the gallery to help her former boss cope with the prospect of losing her, I played tourist. I sailed across Lake Wakatipu in the TSS Earnslaw, a beautifully restored vintage steamship, rode an enclosed gondola to the top of Bob’s Peak, and watched a profoundly adorable kiwi forage for grubs at the Kiwi Birdlife Park. I was so taken by the bird’s perky personality that I bought a pair of stuffed-animal kiwis in the gift shop to bring back to Will and Rob.
After downing a burger that was nearly as big as my head at a place called Fergburger, I decided to work off the extra calories by hitting the shops. I returned to the hotel late in the afternoon, loaded down with gifts for my nearest and dearest as well as a few key items of clothing for Bree.
It had occurred to me that, despite all evidence to the contrary, it was springtime Down Under, which meant that the Northern Hemisphere was heading into winter. A hooded sweatshirt wouldn’t protect Bree from the biting winds that occasionally blew through Finch, but a down jacket and a handful of merino wool sweaters would. Having spent the previous six years of my life buying clothes for two little boys, it was a pleasure to pick out items for a young woman.