Brooke glanced at her guest in the rearview mirror. “It’s none of my business, but when I contacted you, the first thing you told me was that you’re broke. I guess I’m wondering why your grandmother didn’t leave you any money.”
“The broke part was just in case you were a scammer. Anyway, I didn’t say she didn’t leave me any money,” Lizzie said, her smile tight. “Grandma didn’t want me to end up like my dad—you know, just a stoner. Most of Grandpa’s fortune she left to the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, and Greenpeace, which she told me she intended to do, so no surprise there.”
Marie turned around in her seat to face Lizzie. “Didn’t you resent that?”
“Not really. It was something she talked about a lot. She paid for me to go to a good college, said she was investing in me having a career so that I could make my own way without having to depend on some man to support me. She left me enough to buy a house—which, if you know anything about California real estate prices, was a pretty good chunk of change. I started out working at newspapers, but that’s no longer sustainable. So I freelance, and I do okay.”
“Why wasn’t newspaper reporting ‘sustainable’?” Marie asked.
“It was for a few years, right up until they fired me,” Lizzie said. “I might’ve survived the downsizing, but they wouldn’t accept Dweezil as my emotional support animal.”
“You mean you took your cat to work with you?” Brooke asked. She was beginning to wonder if maybe Lizzie had inherited some of her father’s instability.
“Of course,” Lizzie said. “But one day she ate my editor’s desk plant and coughed it up on the linoleum floor of the break room. The publisher stepped on it, slid to the floor, and broke a hip. So they banished Dweez from the newsroom, which was entirely their loss, I assure you. Without her, my anxiety level soared. So when cuts were made, I was one of the first to go.”
Brooke wasn’t sure she wanted to hear how Lizzie’s anxieties manifested themselves, so she decided to change the subject. “Your grandma sounds like somebody I would have loved to have known,” Brooke said. “I guess it makes sense that she and Josephine were such good friends.”
Now it was Lizzie’s turn to ask the questions. “What was Millie like, Marie?”
“Mama was pure sweetness. Quietly religious, in her own way. She played the piano beautifully, and she was devoted to her home and her family. I know she and Josephine were in nursery school together, and later they met Ruth in boarding school, and they all went to the same college together, but I think she dropped out after her sophomore year. Her family had financial issues, the war had started, and she got married not long after that.”
“I wish Granny had lived long enough for me to have really known her,” Brooke said. “I just have these tiny fragments of memories—like, I remember her perfume. It smelled sort of like lilies. And I remember her hands. She had long, slender fingers, and I’d sit on her lap and she’d let me play with her rings.”
“By the time you came along, she’d already started to show signs of early dementia,” Marie said sadly. “She’d get frustrated and was so easily agitated. Holding you seemed to calm her down.”
“It’s funny to think about Granny and Ruth and Josephine being best friends,” Brooke mused. “From what I can tell, listening to you two, they all had such different personalities.”
“I have a couple of old pictures of the three of them together that I found in one of my grandmother’s photo albums,” Lizzie said.
Marie’s face lit up. “You do? Oh, I’d love to see those.”
“Me too,” Brooke said.
“They’re in my suitcase,” Lizzie said. “I made copies for you.”
“That’s so thoughtful,” Marie said. “I don’t have many family photos at all. Mama was never much of a saver,” she said wistfully. “I think she didn’t see the point of it.”
“Grandma was the opposite,” Lizzie said. “She saved everything. Newspapers, old letters, play programs, diaries. And scrapbooks! I have an entire trunkful of her scrapbooks. I’ve always thought someday I’d get a book out of that stuff. Maybe even more than one.”
“What kind of a book?” Brooke asked, intrigued.
“Well, there’s that unsolved murder on the island, of course,” Lizzie said.
Brooke stared at her passenger in the rearview mirror. “You don’t mean Talisa.”
“Of course I do,” Lizzie said. “Hasn’t Josephine mentioned Russell Strickland to you?”
“Noooo,” Brooke said. She looked over at her mother. “Does that name mean anything to you?”
“Never heard it before,” Marie said.
Lizzie sucked loudly on her mojito. “It was a huge mystery at the time. Let’s see … 1941? Think that’s right. I say it’s a murder, but actually, nobody really knows what happened to the guy. One minute he was there, at a big fancy party at Shellhaven, and the next morning, he was gone. Poof! Never seen or heard from again.”
“For real?” Brooke asked.
“Absolutely. It was in all the newspapers back in the day. There was even a piece in The Saturday Evening Post. I found all the clippings in Grandma’s scrapbooks.”
“Who was this Russell Strickland?” Brooke asked. “Why was he on Talisa? How did he know Josephine?”
Lizzie took the last sip of her mojito. “He was from a wealthy family in Boston. According to the newspapers, he came down to Talisa because Josephine’s family was throwing an engagement party for him and his fiancée.”
“Who was his fiancée?” Marie asked.
Lizzie stared at her intently. “Her name was Mildred Everhart.”
26
October 1941
Ruth gingerly touched one of the angry bruises on Millie’s exposed upper thigh. “Did he…?”
Millie reached again for the whiskey bottle and gulped. “Not this time. He was about to, but Gardiner followed us out into the garden. He saw what was happening and made Russell stop.” She blinked back more tears. “Gardiner said he’d kill Russell if he didn’t get off the island. And then he took me back to the house.”
“You said he didn’t do it this time,” Josephine broke in. “Does that mean he’d…” She lowered her voice. “Has he forced himself on you before?”
Even in the moonlight, they could see Millie blush deeply. She looked away. “He only does it when he’s drunk.”
“When isn’t he drunk?” Ruth demanded, her fists balled up as though she were about to launch a counterattack on her friend’s fiancé. “You can’t marry him, Millie. We won’t let you, will we, girls?”
She looked to Josephine and Varina for an answer.
“No!” Josephine said.
Varina shook her head mutely, her eyes wide. She snuck another sip from the bottle of Jim Beam and this time immediately began coughing and wheezing.
“It burns!” she sputtered.
“Here, Varina,” Millie said, handing the younger girl the cup of champagne. “This tastes much nicer.”
Varina hesitated, then took the cup.
“Just a sip at first,” Ruth suggested.
Varina took a cautious drink. “It tickles,” she reported, giggling.
“Exactly,” Ruth said. “That’s the whole point of champagne. It’s tickly and bubbly, and it makes you feel giddy.”
“Even when you shouldn’t,” Millie added.
Varina smiled and took another sip, and then a few more. “Oooh,” she said, looking up at the sky. “I’m dizzy!” She flopped backward onto the blanket. “Why you gotta marry that man?” she asked, poking Millie in the arm. “He hurt you bad, didn’t he?”
Millie sighed. “You wouldn’t understand, Varina. You have a father and three brothers to help take care of you. My father is dead, and Mother and I don’t have any money. We have to depend on my grandmother to support us, and she’s so mean about it.”
Varina looked at Josephine and Ruth. “Your friends have money. Maybe they can share so you don’t have to get married.”
“She’s right,” Ruth said. “I bet if I told my father how awful Russell is, he’d help you.”