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Authors: Betty Jane Hegerat
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exactly as she
remembered her sister talking about Daisy. And the comments of Mrs. Joe Reilly, who it turned out was Marion Andersonâs other sister, rang true. She was curious about my interest. So was I, I was tempted to say. So was I. A friend had just told me she had no intention of ever buying this book if I was lucky enough to get it published. My interest repulsed her.
I told Marion Anderson that my quest was really on behalf of a character in a story I was writing. I remembered the murders from my own eleven-year-old perspective, but another story, a piece of fiction, seemed to be demanding that I try to find the family in this crime.
Donât blame it on me.
The Boy
July, 1995
In the first months of her pregnancy, Louise didnât have the energy to resist when Jake set out to find them the perfect house in Valmer. Right to the end of the school year, she was wracked with morning, afternoon, and best-part-of-the-evening nausea. When they moved at the end of June, she let Jake do the packing, most of her belongings still in their boxes anyway.
Although Jake insisted the move was for Danny, the boy was even less enthusiastic than Louise. He refused to help with any of the unpacking, wandering outside instead, sitting on the back step, staring at the wooden sidewalk that led to the garage. Or riding his bike up and down the street for an hour at a time, bouncing a basketball off the side of the house until the sound drove Louise mad. Or sometimes just disappearing, but leaving her with the feeling that he was hiding somewhere. Watching her.
The house, she has to admit, is charming. It was built as the parsonage for the Anglican church, but when there was no longer a priest the members of the dwindling congregation had gone to other towns to worship. For the past five years, the elderly widow of the last Anglican priest to serve the parish had lived rent-free in the house. When she was shipped off to a nursing home in Edmonton, Jake, as hometown boy, was given first bid on the house.
Nothing, Louise is sure, has been changed since the house was built, and if she were feeling better, she would be as excited as Jake over the possibilities for upgrading. Meanwhile, even though the place is old, dated, itâs in pristine condition. Louise imagines a long line of pious women polishing the banister with Pledge, waxing the black and white tile floor in the kitchen with Johnsonâs paste wax each week.
When the nausea finally abates, Louiseâs legs and feet start to swell to elephantine proportions by the end of each day and itâs clear there is going to be no radiance to her condition. None whatsoever.
On a sultry day in August, she enlists Danny to drag the boxes labeled âDENâ out of the garage and pile them on the screened front verandah. Here, she decides, she will sit in a wicker chair in the lovely cross-draft and sort through her papers. Sheâs sure that after these months of storage, there is much that she will be happy to discard.
Among the cartons, though, are several labeled in Jakeâs bold printing and one that says âDEN (Brenda).â She hesitates. Danny disappeared as soon as he finished hauling the boxes. When she looked out the window a few minutes ago, she thought she saw the bike, a swaying dot, at the end of the street. But she canât shake the feeling that sheâs not alone in spite of the silence.
Letter knife in hand, Louise slits the tape and carefully peels back the flaps on Brendaâs archives. At the top of the box thereâs a file folder of recipes clipped from magazines. Of course. Brenda the amazing cook was always trying something new, Jakeâs sister told Louise. So the second folder of quilting patterns is no surprise either. Then two photo albums, kittens cavorting on the cover of one, a pony-tailed teenager with a transistor radio pressed to her ear on the other. Pages and pages of friends, birthday parties, school field
remembered her sister talking about Daisy. And the comments of Mrs. Joe Reilly, who it turned out was Marion Andersonâs other sister, rang true. She was curious about my interest. So was I, I was tempted to say. So was I. A friend had just told me she had no intention of ever buying this book if I was lucky enough to get it published. My interest repulsed her.
I told Marion Anderson that my quest was really on behalf of a character in a story I was writing. I remembered the murders from my own eleven-year-old perspective, but another story, a piece of fiction, seemed to be demanding that I try to find the family in this crime.
Donât blame it on me.
The Boy
July, 1995
In the first months of her pregnancy, Louise didnât have the energy to resist when Jake set out to find them the perfect house in Valmer. Right to the end of the school year, she was wracked with morning, afternoon, and best-part-of-the-evening nausea. When they moved at the end of June, she let Jake do the packing, most of her belongings still in their boxes anyway.
Although Jake insisted the move was for Danny, the boy was even less enthusiastic than Louise. He refused to help with any of the unpacking, wandering outside instead, sitting on the back step, staring at the wooden sidewalk that led to the garage. Or riding his bike up and down the street for an hour at a time, bouncing a basketball off the side of the house until the sound drove Louise mad. Or sometimes just disappearing, but leaving her with the feeling that he was hiding somewhere. Watching her.
The house, she has to admit, is charming. It was built as the parsonage for the Anglican church, but when there was no longer a priest the members of the dwindling congregation had gone to other towns to worship. For the past five years, the elderly widow of the last Anglican priest to serve the parish had lived rent-free in the house. When she was shipped off to a nursing home in Edmonton, Jake, as hometown boy, was given first bid on the house.
Nothing, Louise is sure, has been changed since the house was built, and if she were feeling better, she would be as excited as Jake over the possibilities for upgrading. Meanwhile, even though the place is old, dated, itâs in pristine condition. Louise imagines a long line of pious women polishing the banister with Pledge, waxing the black and white tile floor in the kitchen with Johnsonâs paste wax each week.
When the nausea finally abates, Louiseâs legs and feet start to swell to elephantine proportions by the end of each day and itâs clear there is going to be no radiance to her condition. None whatsoever.
On a sultry day in August, she enlists Danny to drag the boxes labeled âDENâ out of the garage and pile them on the screened front verandah. Here, she decides, she will sit in a wicker chair in the lovely cross-draft and sort through her papers. Sheâs sure that after these months of storage, there is much that she will be happy to discard.
Among the cartons, though, are several labeled in Jakeâs bold printing and one that says âDEN (Brenda).â She hesitates. Danny disappeared as soon as he finished hauling the boxes. When she looked out the window a few minutes ago, she thought she saw the bike, a swaying dot, at the end of the street. But she canât shake the feeling that sheâs not alone in spite of the silence.
Letter knife in hand, Louise slits the tape and carefully peels back the flaps on Brendaâs archives. At the top of the box thereâs a file folder of recipes clipped from magazines. Of course. Brenda the amazing cook was always trying something new, Jakeâs sister told Louise. So the second folder of quilting patterns is no surprise either. Then two photo albums, kittens cavorting on the cover of one, a pony-tailed teenager with a transistor radio pressed to her ear on the other. Pages and pages of friends, birthday parties, school field
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