That was Rowan. She liked to do things her own way—-usually the hard way, and the wrong way. Funny how she seems to look back on her own difficult childhood as if it were idyllic, while Noreen, whose youth seemed unblemished as it unfolded, can clearly see the flaws in retrospect.
Given Rowan’s penchant for trouble, Noreen would have predicted that her kid sister would wind up in a gutter somewhere, destitute, alone, and miserable. Too bad Mom didn’t live to see her turn herself around. Then again, if she had lived, it probably never would have happened.
It wasn’t until they were both grown women that Rowan revealed the reason she’d changed so drastically. “I promised Mom I’d behave,” she told Noreen on the long ago day when they’d met in Mundy’s Landing to clean out their childhood home after Dad died. “She was always so worried about what I was up to.”
“Because you were always up to something.”
“Exactly. She was afraid of what might happen to me if she wasn’t there to watch out for me. I had to promise her that I’d be okay. It was the only way to give her peace of mind.”
“She knew I’d have watched out for you, and so would the boys.”
“You all had your own lives by then. You and Danny were away in college, and Mitch was doing his residency in Chicago. It was just me and Dad living here after Mom died.”
“So you didn’t think I’d be there for you?”
“I wasn’t your problem,” Rowan said. “I had to grow up and learn how to be responsible for myself.”
“Well, I’m glad you did. Some -people never do.”
Noreen refused to participate in guilt trips—-self--inflicted, or otherwise. She’d devoted a good part of her youth to damage control on behalf of her sister, and often being mistaken for her, to the point where she’d joke about wanting to wear a badge that said, “Don’t worry, I’m the good one.”
There were times, even in adulthood, when Noreen grew weary of her own prim, holier--than--thou fa?ade. But she was playing her role, the one her family always expected of her; the one she expected—-still expects—-of herself.
And all you have to do is keep it up awhile longer. No one has to know that your life has unraveled until it’s absolutely necessary—-and that includes Rowan.
From the Mundy’s Landing Tribune Archives
Special Feature
January 18, 1992
Historical Society to Sponsor Second Annual Convention
The Mundy’s Landing Historical Society may be unceremoniously housed in cramped quarters in the basement of the Elsworth Ransom Library on Fulton Avenue, but crime buffs worldwide have long believed its archives hold the key to one of the most notorious unsolved murder cases of the century.
During the steamy summer of 1916, as Mundy’s Landing celebrated its sestercentennial with parades and pageantry, a serial killer was lurking. One by one, over a period of days, local families awakened to find the brutally slain corpses of young girls tucked into vacant beds in the house. In perhaps the eeriest twist of all, no one in the family—indeed, no one in town—recognized any of the victims.
Though the case was subsequently sensationalized in national headlines accompanied by composite sketches of the girls—dubbed “Sleeping Beauties”—they were never identified. Their unclaimed remains were buried in Holy Angels Cemetery, and the killings stopped just as abruptly as they’d begun. Local authorities chased a number of leads to dead ends. By the following year, as the United States entered World War I, the case faded from the public eye, though never entirely.
Theories have continued to abound over the decades, courtesy of armchair sleuths who have suspected everyone from Mundy’s Landing’s most illustrious citizens to a mysterious vagrant reportedly sighted in the area.