Part Five

He Said

“Surely, this time, I’m interrupting something,” Dan announced as he entered the clubhouse. “Is this your secret rendezvous site with Brian?”

Liv shook her head, smiling. “It’s just a nice, quiet place.”

“Some of us would go sit by the lake, or out in the woods.”

“Yes, well some people – or should I say most people – are less prone to sunburn than I am. I’d rather not look like a lobster,” she retorted.

He nodded. “So, how is it going now? You’re not ready to run back to Kentucky, are you?”

She shook her head. “It’s getting better. I don’t mind the job I’m doing. Things are moving along with Brian. It’s just …”

“Trixie’s run off with Jim,” he guessed, “and when she’s not with him, she’s doing stuff with Honey.”

She shrugged. “It sounds petty, when you put it that way. She’s only just got back together with Jim, and she moved here especially to spend more time with Honey.”

“So, call Di,” he suggested. “She feels left out sometimes, too.”

“You don’t think she’d mind?”

He shook his head. “I know she wouldn’t.”

“You know her well, don’t you?”

He looked away. “Once, I thought she might be the one. But she’s a good friend and I haven’t found anyone who holds a candle to her since – and I don’t just mean because she’s beautiful.”

Liv nodded, but did not immediately respond.

“You’re feeling sorry for me,” he accused, a short time later.

She looked up, startled, and laughed. “No. I’m feeling sorry for myself. But I can feel sorry for you, too, if you like.”

He relaxed. “I wouldn’t put you to the trouble,” he replied. “I’m just fine.”

She Said

Trixie made her way, as quickly as she could, to Jim’s place. Arriving on his doorstep, however, she began to wonder just how to begin the conversation. Even before their break-up, he had been uncommunicative about the blackmailer and his threats.

“The document that Dumassi was holding over you,” she blurted, at last, “do you have a copy here?”

“Why?” he asked, looking both wary and weary.

“Something’s come up and I want to check up on it,” she answered, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

“I have a copy,” he admitted.

She let a hint of a smile show on her lips. “So, can I see it?”

Jim hesitated for a moment, then nodded. She considered following him, but decided to wait in the living room for him to return. He handed it over without a word. Trixie spent a few minutes examining the letter and reading it carefully.

“It really does look genuine,” she murmured, while still staring at the document.

He sighed. “It is genuine.”

She looked up. “I was going to add a ‘but’ to the end of that statement.”

“There isn’t one. It’s the real thing.”

She nodded, beginning to read it through again. “But just because it looks real, doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“That’s what Brian said, too.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Brian and I are thinking the same thing? That’s a turn-up for the books.”

He smiled, but only for a moment. “But, in a sense, it is true. It doesn’t say that I did those things, only that I was accused of those things.”

“Falsely accused,” she corrected.

Jim shrugged. “Brian also wanted to know why I hadn’t shown it to my lawyer,” he added.

“That’s a good thought, too. Why hadn’t you?”

“I thought it was an exercise in futility,” he answered. “And I didn’t really want to deal with it, either. I thought it was best left undisturbed.”

“Well, I think it’s time to stir things up,” she told him. “Lucius Englefield has given me a cryptic clue – as per usual – and I think I’m getting an idea how to handle this. And the first step is to find out about this guy.” She tapped her finger against the signature.

He looked sceptical. “You really think this will help?”

She grinned and gave him a kiss. “We’re going to get through this. And, if I have anything to say about it, this guy is going down.”

He Said

After Jim hid the document away once more, pushing its contents out of his mind as he concealed its physical form, he returned to the living room in the hope of conversation of a more pleasant nature. In his absence, Trixie had settled herself on the floor with Madoc and was busy rolling a large, soft ball for him to swat at. Her efforts made the little boy squeal in delight.

Jim stood in the doorway and smiled at them, feeling a warmth that had been missing all too long. One particularly wild hit from Madoc sent the ball flying over the sofa, where it just fit into the space between it and the wall. Trixie crawled around the end and stuck her arm into the gap.

“Ew! What’s this?” she asked, pulling her arm out and holding it up. Something red and sticky covered a patch of her forearm.

Jim pulled the sofa out from the wall, uncovering a squashed plum.

“I’m really sorry,” he told her. “I’d looked for this when I realised he’d taken it, but I didn’t look hard enough, obviously.”

“It’s fine,” she answered, “but I think I’d better go and clean up.”

Thinking for a moment of the lack of cleaning he’d done in the downstairs powder room, Jim made a decision. “Use the main bathroom. Do you remember where it is?”

She nodded. “I think so. I’ll be right back.”

Jim got on with cleaning up the mess, but soon wondered whether Trixie really did know the way. Heading upstairs, he found her with her hand on a door handle, staring through the open door into an empty room. “I guess I took a wrong turn,” she muttered, noticing him for the first time. “What is this room?”

“It’s spare,” he answered, feeling embarrassed. “I didn’t need it, so it hasn’t ever been finished.”

He could see the thought processes working in the pause before she spoke again. “This is where the master bedroom was supposed to be, isn’t it? Don’t you sleep in the master bedroom?”

A wave of sadness washed over him and he dropped his gaze. “How could I? It was supposed to be ours. I thought it would be more cosy in a smaller room, seeing I would be by myself.”

“Jim!” she cried. “This is your house. It’s your land. You can sleep wherever you want.”

“I know. And I didn’t want to sleep there, so I left it unfinished, with a view to completing it later.”

“If you were trying to make me feel small, you’ve succeeded beyond all expectation,” she muttered, face flaming.

He felt distressed by the accusation. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel anything. I didn’t mean for you to see this; I’m sorry you did.”

With a nod, she closed the door and opened the next one instead. “I’m sorry I’m so nasty. I don’t seem to have been a very nice person for the last few years. I’ve gotten out of the habit of being pleasant to you.”

He was still standing by the door of the empty master bedroom, head bowed and shoulders slumped. “Are we ever going to be able to fix this?” he wondered aloud. “Can we ever make us right again?”

“Well, I’m going to try,” she told him fiercely. “This is mostly my fault and I’m going to do all I can to fix it.”

“It’s not mostly your fault,” he disagreed. “If I’d had the backbone to refuse Brian, we would never have had the disagreement in the first place.”

She paused, considering. “I think, maybe, we would have, at some point. I wasn’t secure enough in myself to be able to trust you. I didn’t listen when you tried to explain, I only saw what I feared the most and that made my fears a reality. I was so afraid of losing you that I drove you away from me. It’s kind of stupid, really, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t do enough to reassure you,” he answered, avoiding her question. “I thought you should have known how I felt.”

“Well, it’s too late to go back now,” she pointed out, drawing herself up. “Are we going to fix this?”

“Yes,” he asserted. “I’ll do whatever I can to make things right.”

“Me too,” she answered, with a smile. “I know it’s going to be okay.”

She Said

Trixie typed the name Reeve Whitford into her search engine and set it running. As the results flashed onto the screen, her eyebrows rose.

“Now, that’s something I didn’t expect,” she muttered, clicking on a link to a local newspaper called The Sentinel.

The headline screamed, ‘Whitford Jailed’, with the article beginning, ‘Disgraced former mayor Reeve Whitford has been sentenced to fifteen years in jail for his part in the scandal that removed him from office.’ It went on to detail a string of offences, ranging in seriousness from extortion down to unfair parking fines, and hinted at links to organised crime. It also mentioned several instances where Whitford had worked to discredit witnesses against him, before finally being caught.

Trixie’s eye flitted from the screen to the document which lay beside her. “Now, that would make sense,” she muttered. “I’ll bet Whitford made this up to discredit Jim. But why would he need to?”

Turning back to her computer, she checked several other articles from the same paper, plus a couple of shorter pieces from Albany newspapers, all of which painted a similar picture. The comments on one of the local paper articles were also illuminating. One writer suggested that the police should have investigated a suspicious car accident. A reply to that comment asserted the boy who was blamed wasn’t even there.

With a sick feeling in her stomach, she started a new search, this one on the name Leora Blake. The only hit that even looked like it might be for the same person led to a site dedicated to revealing miscarriages of justice. The page was badly formatted, the spelling and grammar hit-and-miss, but the story it told caused shivers down Trixie’s spine.

According to the author of the article, sixteen-year-old Leora Blake, step-daughter of the mayor, died on a lonely stretch of road without any indication of why the car had crashed. The weather was dry, the road straight and there was only one tree in the stretch, which the car had hit. The land on either side was fully fenced and no livestock was loose in the area.

Further, Leora was found in the front passenger’s seat, with her seatbelt on. No driver for the vehicle was ever found, but her step-father accused a boy she had known slightly at school.

The article did not state it clearly, retreating behind generalised statements, but Trixie wondered whether they meant to say that Whitford himself was responsible.

She snatched up the phone and dialled Jim’s number.

“Tell me all about Leora Blake,” she demanded, the instant he answered.

“What did you say?”

“Leora Blake,” she repeated.

She heard him sigh. “There’s not much to say. I knew her to say hello to. Then she died.”

“And a guy who’s now been thrown in jail accused you of being involved with her death.”

“Jail? When did this happen?”

Trixie glanced at the screen. “Six years ago. He should be still there, if this is anything to go by. According to the local newspaper, he also tried discrediting witnesses to do with the extortion and other things he got jailed for. Which brings me to my next question: when you went there to look into this, what did you actually do?”

“Do?” He sounded bewildered.

“Yes, do.” She huffed out a breath. “Did you talk to people? Did you go and ask in his office about the letter? Did you look up the newspaper archives?”

For a long moment, he didn’t answer. “I went and looked at the scene of the accident. And I checked the newspapers from the time that it happened.”

“You didn’t go to the mayor’s office?”

“Now why would I want to do that, Trixie?”

“To find out whether there was a copy on file. I’m betting that there isn’t!”

“And what difference would that make?” he demanded.

“It would mean that there never was a problem, because the letter is a fake,” she retorted.

“Fake? It’s not fake, Trixie. I explained this already. Someone from the mayor’s office delivered it in person.”

She closed her eyes and growled. “Let’s take this one step at a time. One: this guy who wrote the letter is a criminal. He discredited witnesses to get away with his crimes. Two: you didn’t do the things he accused you of, so it stands to reason that he was trying to discredit you, or at least scare you into thinking you couldn’t do anything about him. Which brings me to three: what did you know about him, or more likely, what did he think that his step-daughter had told you?”

A soft thud sounded down the line. “Step-daughter! The guy who wrote that letter was her step-father? I can’t believe I never saw that.”

“You didn’t know?”

“No, I never made the connection.” He made a soft sound of disgust. “The only thing Leora and I really had in common was a dislike for our step-fathers. But she never told me what he did, or any more than his first name. But, now that I come to think of it, she did tell me once that she had something against him, something that she could take to the authorities and get him in a lot of trouble.”

Trixie gasped. “You don’t think he killed her for that, do you?”

Jim paused for a long moment. “If he did, he took an awful risk.”

“Well, maybe it was an accident,” she answered. “He might have crashed the car, seen that she was dead and run off.”

Again, he paused. “That’s not what I always thought had happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“I always thought one of her friends was driving; that they weren’t licensed, or they were drunk – or worse – and that’s why they ran.” Before she could answer, he went on. “But does it really matter who was driving? Even if we think we know, we can’t really do anything about it.”

Trixie frowned, torn between two lines of investigation. “No, you’re right. And anyway, that’s not what we’re supposed to be talking about. I think you should check up on this, Jim. Find out whether there’s a file copy of the letter. If there isn’t, then … you’re free of this, aren’t you?”

She heard him exhale. “I think I’m free of it anyway. If it ever comes up – and I hope it never does – I can always point out what’s happened to him since.”

“Okay,” Trixie answered, caught off-guard by his abrupt change of stance on the matter.

“And I’m sorry I didn’t talk this through with you when it first came up. If I had, you probably would’ve found this out back then. I could have told Dumassi to take a hike.”

“Even though he had those other photos?” Trixie could not help but ask.

“Yeah,” he answered, in a low voice. “Because those I could explain. This seemed insurmountable.”

“But you didn’t explain them.”

Again, he sighed. “I should have and I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” she answered softly. “If I’d just told you, we might not have fought.”

“No more regrets,” he told her. “The past is the past and we can’t change it.”

Something inside Trixie released in that moment and she let go of another piece of hurt. A smile spread across her lips as she murmured her agreement.

He Said

The next time Jim and Trixie saw each other was on Friday at Ten Acres, after Trixie finished work. Most of the time, meeting there was easier than any other way. On this particular occasion, it didn’t matter so much because Honey had taken both of the kids to give them some time together. They sat on the verandah, talking and watching the local wildlife go by as the sun sank lower in the evening sky.

“Jim, what happened to the summerhouse?” Trixie’s voice was soft and – to Jim’s inexpressible relief – non-judgemental.

He watched her face for a moment, taking in the slight sadness in her expression. “A tree fell on it in a storm. The main beam that held the roof broke from the force of the blow and the branches pretty much flattened the whole thing. There was nothing other than the tree raised above waist-high when I inspected next morning.”

“And the rings?”

“Come with me,” he asked, taking her hand.

He led her away from the house and along a well-worn path, the end of which emerged into a small, but well set out garden. A garden bench seat was placed so as to take advantage of the river views of this high spot. Directly in front of the seat, square paving stones in warm hues were interspersed with low-growing plants. Jim indicated that they should sit.

“This is the place where the summerhouse stood,” he explained. “That middle paver is under the place where we hid the rings – as near as I can make out. When I came up and found the summerhouse in ruins, I searched for the rings and found them. I didn’t want to permanently take them from the place we chose for them together, so after I had cleared the debris, I made this garden and I put them under that stone.”

“And you come here often.” It was not a question.

He shrugged. “I don’t see any point in denying the fact. It’s quite obvious, just from the state of the path.”

“Can we get the rings, or do we need to buy new ones?” Her brows were knit in confusion.

Jim left her on the seat and crossed to the hiding place. “We get the old ones. I won’t pretend that our previous history never happened. I think that the first thing we should do is admit to our families and friends what we did in Tennessee all those years ago. I’ve had enough secrets to last a lifetime and I don’t want any more.”

“Hey!” she cried a moment later, as he began struggling to lift the stone. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting the rings,” he answered, trying to gently hold a plant out of the way and pull up the stone at the same time. “You can help, if you like.”

In a moment she was beside him, one hand taking hold of the plant while the other got a grip on the edge of the stone. Almost as soon as she put a hand to it, it gave up its grip on the earth and flew upwards in their hands. Jim reached underneath and grasped a small bundle swathed in black plastic. He wiggled it vigorously until it, too, came free, then he eased the paver back into its proper place. Rising to his feet, he stamped on it a few times to set it back down, then returned to the seat.

His fingers trembled slightly as he unwrapped the black plastic, then an inner layer of white plastic. Those gave way to an ordinary zip-lock bag, with the original wooden box visible within. At this point, he let out a sigh of relief, knowing that his precautions had been sufficient to keep the water out. Undoing further layers of tape and opening the bag, he tipped its contents into Trixie’s lap. Jim watched closely as she ran her fingers over the wood, before flicking the lid back. There, nestled inside, were the rings they had bought in Tennessee so long ago.

Trixie held out her left hand, palm downwards, but Jim shook his head.

“If I put this ring back on your finger, it’s going to be in front of all our family and friends.”

“We’re already married,” she argued, reaching for it with her right hand.

He took both of them out of her reach. “But we can renew our vows.”

Their eyes met and an understanding passed between them.

“Okay. That sounds like the right thing to do.”

He smiled back at her, a burden lifted that he had not noticed until it was gone.

She Said

The next morning, Trixie was awoken by a ringing telephone. With a glance at the clock she wondered who, exactly, would want to talk to her at a quarter past five in the morning on a Saturday. Snatching it up, she found that the caller was Jim.

“I didn’t wake you, did I?” he asked.

Trixie rolled her eyes. “At this time of day, of course not!”

“Sorry,” he answered. “It’s just that I’ve remembered something and I thought you’d like to hear it.”

“Okay.” She frowned. “What is this about?”

“Leora. She had a hiding place; somewhere to keep important things that she didn’t want others to find.”

“At her house?” Trixie asked.

“No. She didn’t trust her step-father. It was somewhere she could go, where he wouldn’t find things. She described it to me, so I could … well, I could retrieve what she’d left there if anything ever happened to her. Only, I thought she was being melodramatic and anyway, I had no chance between when she died and when I left town. And what would I even have done with it, if I did?”

“But there couldn’t possibly be something still there after all this time, could there?” she wondered.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “But I thought, maybe, I should go back and look. And I was wondering whether you’d like to come with me.”

Trixie’s brow creased as she considered. “I was wondering if today would be the day we talked to our parents.”

“If we go early enough, we can do both,” he replied. “That’s why I’m calling now.”

She made a snap decision. “Okay. Let’s do that. I’ll be around in fifteen minutes. Who are you getting to mind the kids?”

“To what?”

She rolled her eyes again. “You’re not thinking of taking them with us, are you? It’ll be, what? More than two hours each way in the car? Not counting however long we’ll be searching?”

“About that,” he agreed. “You’re right. I’d better find someone. Do you suppose Honey is awake right now?”

She snorted. “No. But Mart might be. Text him.”

“I will. See you soon.”

She raced around getting ready and arrived at Ten Acres in almost exactly the time promised. Jim handed her the baby as he answered the door and she soothed the little girl while Jim finished packing what the kids needed.

“Mart agreed to mind them,” he told her, as he poked through the bag checking the supplies. “Do you think I should pack Madoc a lunch? We probably won’t be back in time to pick them up before then.”

“I think Honey’s capable of making him something,” she answered. “Stop worrying and let’s go!”

After one final frown, Jim zipped the bag and swung it onto his shoulder. He locked the house and they got into his car. Mart greeted them at the door to his and Honey’s house only a short time later.

“Honey’s still asleep,” he explained, while Joshie jumped up and down in delight at the unexpected visitors. “We’re letting her have a rest, aren’t we buddy?”

Joshie nodded vigorously. “We have to be very quiet.”

Jim cringed as Verena began to fuss.

“It’ll be fine,” Mart told him, giving him a push. “I’ll take her for a walk. The boys will like that, too, won’t you boys?”

“Hooray!” Joshie yelled, while Mart rolled his eyes heavenward.

“Go,” Mart urged. “Before I make any more trouble for myself.”

Jim hesitated for a moment, then agreed. “Thanks, M art. I owe you.”

Mart shook his head and waved goodbye.

A couple of hours later, Jim and Trixie rolled past the school Jim had once attended. She noticed that he kept his eyes on the road, even as he pointed it out to her.

“And the hiding place was near here?” she asked, looking all around.

“Not exactly. That’s why I never went there. I had to go straight home every day, or there’d be trouble.” He continued driving. “We lived in pretty much the opposite direction. But I knew the place she meant. And the building was still there that last time I was here.”

“I sure hope it still is,” she answered, “or this will be a big anticlimax.”

A wry smile appeared on Jim’s lips. “It’s probably going to be an anticlimax anyway. But we’re here.”

Trixie turned and looked at the looming hulk of the derelict building. Once, it had been a factory of some sort. Graffiti marred its corrugated walls and the panes of its few windows were broken. A stout chain secured the front door.

“How do we get in?” she wondered as Jim retrieved some things from the trunk.

“We don’t.” He locked the car and led her across the road to the building. “It’s on the outside. Around here.”

A narrow space ran between this building and the slightly better maintained one next door. The first few feet were cluttered with old car parts and mangled cardboard boxes, but beyond these the way became clear. Jim pushed his way past the debris, with Trixie following close behind, and then stopped short.

“I think this is it.” He bent to examine a panel set into the wall, perhaps the cover of some sort of chute, which was secured with a combination lock. “The place wasn’t empty back then, but they didn’t use this any more – I think it was for some kind of delivery.”

“You know the combination?” she asked, incredulously. “And after all this time, you remember it?”

He smiled. “I think so. We’re about to find out.”

He fiddled with the dials, but soon found that one of them was stuck. Taking the can of penetrating oil he had brought with him, he gave the lock a couple of squirts and waited for the oil to do its work. Trixie shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

Jim put his thumb to the last dial and rolled it into position. The lock clicked and he wriggled it open. The cover groaned as it swung outwards. Darkness concealed what lay within. Jim bent further to look inside, at the same time reaching into his pocket for the small flashlight he had brought.

“Wait. Is this it?” Trixie asked, pointing to the inside of the cover.

Taking his hand from his pocket, Jim brushed away the dust from a plastic packet that was taped to the panel. The yellowed tape crackled and part of it came away from the metal.

“Yes. I think it might be.” He pulled it off and gave it a shake, dislodging more dirt. “But I think I’ll take a look inside as well.”

He shone the light through the gap, but found nothing of interest. At the bottom of the chute, a splintered sheet of plywood blocked off view of the building’s interior. After a moment’s hesitation, he refastened the padlock. They clambered back over the odds and ends nearer the road and crossed back to Jim’s car.

“I think I have a plastic bag somewhere,” he told her, opening the trunk and pulling one out. “Let’s get rid of the outside wrapping first.”

While Jim disposed of the outer covering and cleaned his hands, Trixie pounced on the documents within and spread them out on the ground. The packet contained six pages, all of them photocopies. Some pages were hand-written, others typed. Some looked official. She read them through and her heart sank.

“What’s wrong?” Jim asked, as he finally finished what he was doing.

She looked up to him. “Whitford’s already been prosecuted for all this.”

Jim nodded. “I expected as much – if we actually found it.”

“But why did she hide it?” she cried. “Why didn’t she do something about this? Why leave it and let him keep hurting people? She didn’t care for him, so she wouldn’t protect him. Why didn’t she let someone know?”

“Maybe she did, but they didn’t believe her.” He looked away. “I don’t think we can answer those questions. And I don’t think we should try.”

Trixie opened her mouth to argue, but then snapped it shut. “No, I guess not. Justice has been done. And this doesn’t change anything.”

“I think it does change something,” he answered, softly. “I’m relieved that we found what she hid. And I’m especially relieved that there’s nothing there that hasn’t already been discovered. It means I don’t need to feel bad about forgetting about this.”

“You had your own problems. And you were right before when you said you couldn’t have done anything about it.”

He shrugged, scooped up the papers and dropped them in the trunk. “Well, that’s another ghost of my past laid to rest. Let’s go home.”

He Said

His heart beating faster than usual, Jim led Trixie into her parents’ home. She had called earlier and told them to expect a visit, so they were waiting when the pair arrived. Helen ushered them both in, with a look of expectation on her face. Once they were all seated, he looked to his wife to begin.

Trixie’s face showed her apprehension of what was about to come. “We – I mean, Jim and I – have a confession to make.” She stopped, looking to Jim for the next words.

“Part of it was my fault,” Jim admitted. “If I’d been thinking straight, none of it would have happened. The trouble started with the Englefield curse.”

“The trouble started with the part of the curse that we neglected to tell anyone,” Trixie corrected. “Mr. Englefield told us that I would die if I didn’t either prove his version of the story, or marry someone who was true to me – and I was already pretty sure his version of the story was wrong, which left the other option.”

Jim took a deep breath, facing down the fear which had caused the trouble in the first place. “And when Trixie had a dizzy spell at the top of an escarpment and narrowly missed falling down it, I panicked.”

“So, we drove across the border into Tennessee and eloped.”

There was a long silence, broken at last by Trixie’s mother, who said, “Thank you for finally telling us.”

Jim and Trixie both stared at her in mingled astonishment and horror.

“It’s not as if we didn’t know,” Helen Belden continued. “Peter and I knew the instant you got back that something had happened that you weren’t telling us – and we suspected that something might happen before you even left home; from the day that the statuette arrived, I suppose. Not that we were expecting you to get married – that wasn’t part of the curse before. But I knew for sure what you’d actually done the day the letter arrived addressed to Trixie Frayne. You’ll remember that I gave you a chance to own up; you didn’t take it.”

“But, Moms,” Trixie cried, “you knew that Mr. Englefield was a crazy old man. How did you know that we’d really done that and that it wasn’t just him projecting stuff onto us?”

To Jim’s surprise, he saw a blush light Helen’s cheeks.

“You do understand that the curse has been around for decades, in one form or another, don’t you?” she asked. “You wouldn’t be the first ones to be taken in by it, or to make a rash decision because of it.”

“You’re not saying …” Trixie trailed off, as her mother nodded. “But, why didn’t you tell me? You could have saved us all this trouble.”

“We did tell you there was no curse. You didn’t believe it,” her father answered. “And can’t you sympathise at all? Surely, you felt a little embarrassed admitting what had happened, and how he had fooled you. Why should it be any different for us? For all we know, that last revision may have been inspired by what we did.”

“And, we couldn’t predict exactly what the curse, its consequences and cure could be,” Helen added. “It has changed so often that we thought, maybe, it might have had a different effect. The previous time we knew of that he tried it, the end result was the couple broke up. We didn’t want that for you, either, but it was just as likely that that’s what he was aiming for. He really was a very unpleasant man.”

“I knew they were hiding something big from me,” Trixie muttered. “I knew there was a big mystery.”

“What’s done is done,” Jim told her, his eyes downcast. “We only agreed this morning that we can’t change the past, so how about if we move on from it?”

She threw him a mutinous look. “I’m not finished with this piece of past, just yet. I want a proper answer on how it was that I didn’t know about this before we went and ruined everything.”

“I’m beginning to think the thing that ruined everything was not my reaction to the curse, but our decision not to tell anyone what we’d done,” he argued, regardless of their audience. “If we’d admitted the mistake, we would have been forced to deal with it, instead of trying to pretend it never happened.”

“You always did say that,” she grumbled. “You still think that you’re right.”

“I think he is right,” her mother put in, before Jim could draw breath to defend himself. “It would have been a shock and I’m sure that everyone – all of your family and friends – would have been upset, but at least it would have been out in the open. Trixie, I’m sorry we kept that secret from you. After it happened, we promised each other we’d never tell the real reason for the timing of our marriage. I’m pretty sure that most of our friends thought there was a baby on the way and that I miscarried it sometime after the wedding. There wasn’t, in case you were wondering,” she clarified, hastily.

“And what, may I ask,” her father put in, changing the subject, “are you intending to do now?”

Jim glanced at Trixie, who nodded.

“We’re intending to renew our vows in public.” He squeezed his wife’s hand. “This time, we’re going to do things right.”

She Said

“Can you believe it?” Di demanded, as she plonked down between Honey and Liv in her own living room. “They kept that secret all this time!”

“They kind of kept it,” Honey corrected. “I didn’t know until Trixie admitted it to me, right before she went to make up with him, but Mart figured it out years ago. And he didn’t tell me!”

“Why ever not?” Di wondered, to which she received a shrug in reply. She turned to Liv. “Did you know?”

“I had no idea,” Liv answered. “It wasn’t until I met him last year that I even knew Jim’s name. I knew there’d been someone, but I didn’t know anything else.”

The initial instinct to exclaim over the development satisfied, the three began to settle down.

“And now they’re going to have the wedding that they should have had in the first place,” Honey noted. “What are you going to do, Liv? Trixie will be leaving you all over again.”

Liv nodded. “She will. But she’s promised to let me stay in the apartment at least until the end of the lease. After that, we’ll have to see what happens.”

“You could move in with a different Bob-White,” Di suggested, grinning.

Liv pretended to frown. “You mean, with Dan? I’m not sure he’d agree. I’d cramp his style.”

“He wasn’t the one I had in mind,” Di answered.

“Oh, then you,” Honey added. “It’d be crowded in here, for sure, but I’m sure you could make it work.”

Di rolled her eyes.

“Don’t rush us,” Liv urged. “We’re taking things at our own pace and we don’t need the pressure.”

“I was only teasing,” Di replied.

Liv laughed. “We know. Just don’t do it in front of Brian. You’ll give him ideas.”

“Ideas can be good,” Di told her.

“Yes,” Liv answered, “but I’d rather we had them by ourselves.”

He Said

On a beautiful summer’s day, all they held dear gathered in the grounds of Manor House to witness a renewal of vows between Jim and Trixie. Jim’s mother had ordered huge flower arrangements, his mother-in-law had tied ribbons to everything and his sister had set up bubble-blowing machines, to her son’s great delight, but Jim barely noticed. All he could think about was the meaning of this occasion. The outer trappings were merely a distraction.

The music changed and Jim’s throat went dry as he watched Trixie approach. He could not believe how beautiful she looked, or that this was really happening. The years of separation, those dark times that still haunted him sometimes, faded into the background as the long-awaited ceremony commenced. It passed, dream-like. Jim’s commitment had never faltered, despite the difficult circumstances of the last few years, but he sincerely meant the renewal that he was making. The celebrant told him he could kiss his bride and he did so, to a background of cheers.

Looking up, he could see the joy on his friends’ and family’s faces, which he was sure reflected his own. Trixie, also, was observing the reaction with a smile.

“You’d think this was a real wedding,” she whispered to him, “the way they’re reacting.”

He smiled. “We didn’t give them a chance to be in on the real one – and in a way, I think this one is a little more real. For one thing, I really mean it; nothing frightened me into it, this time.”

“And nothing will frighten me out of it this time, either,” she promised. “I’ve learned my lesson.”

Epilogue

A few Summers later

Jim leaned back in his comfortable chair on the porch, his own son snuggled safely in his arms. The two older kids played with a ball on the lawn, yelling to one another as they did so. Jim sighed in satisfaction and settled back to watch. Some time later, the door swung open and Trixie emerged, rubbing her eyes sleepily.

“Did you have a nice nap?” he asked, as she landed in the chair next to him with a thump.

“Mmm,” she answered.

Her eyes strayed across the game on the lawn to the baby her husband held, to Jim’s own face.

“I had such a strange dream, though. Do you remember all those years ago, when you tried to keep secret from me what you’d done at a party?”

He nodded. “You found out in no time,” he recalled.

“I dreamt I was back in that summer, trying to figure out what you’d been up to, only everyone else was as they are now – you know, all of the Bob-Whites in relationships and most of us married and having children – and Liv was there, and Indira, even though I didn’t know either of them back then.”

“Did you still solve the mystery?” he teased.

She did not smile in response. “Not before I woke up. I was chasing after you, trying to find out what you’d done, when Di started shrieking at Mart and throwing white tablets at him. And things started getting more jumbled after that. Indira turned into Lucius Englefield, who shook his finger at me, like I was a naughty child. Then Dumassi drove up in his red car and yelled out, ‘You promised!’ And then I woke up.”

Jim considered for a few moments, before he spoke. “Well, you have made quite a few promises during that time.”

She glanced back at the bigger children. “I have: to you, to Indira, even to Lucius Englefield, I guess.”

“And you’ve fulfilled all those promises.” He smiled at her. “We’ve had a few hiccups along the way, but now we’re heading in the right direction.”

“It sure was a bumpy ride for a while there,” she commented.

The baby let out a small cry and she reached for him. “You’re awake, too, little man? Let’s go and change you.”

Jim smiled as he watched her take their son inside. In that moment, everything was right in their world.

The End