At one-thirty they were in Mike’s car, heading north on I-95, and going faster than the speed limit.
“Are you going to sulk all the way back?” he asked.
“I’m not sulking, I’m worried.”
“That’s my job. You’re the victim, remember? You people innocently get yourselves in trouble and we rescue you.”
“If you’re still alive, that is.”
“You sound like Tess.”
“Smart woman!”
“How about some music?” he asked. “Will that cheer you up?”
“Am I supposed to think about what they’ll play at your funeral?”
Mike reached across the console and squeezed her hand. “You need to distract yourself. Tell me about what you did in high school. Did you get good grades? What did you study in college? William and Mary, wasn’t it?”
“I’m sure you know every course I took and all my grades. Why don’t you tell me what made your grandmother leave Edilean and why she hated the McDowells so much?” She said it as a joke and never for a moment thought he’d tell her. It was the Big Secret among the Oldies in Edilean.
“She claimed she was raped by Alexander McDowell.”
Sara looked at him in astonishment. “Aunt Lissie’s husband? Rape?!”
“That’s the story Grans told. And, yes, it was that Alex McDowell.”
“He wasn’t prosecuted or I’d have heard about it. But then, the Oldies love to keep secrets.”
“Oldies?” Mike asked. “From the way you talk of retirement and me, I think I’m one of them.”
“All four times we made love this morning I thought, Mike sure is an old man.”
He grinned. “Yeah?”
“I heard a lot of complaints about Uncle Alex’s grumpiness, but I never heard of any violence against women.”
“I don’t think it existed. After Tess moved there and got to know some townspeople, she started asking questions.”
Sara waited for more, but Mike was silent. It wasn’t easy hearing that all this time Tess had known the full story. “Tell it to me from the beginning,” Sara said.
Mike hesitated for a moment. “My grandmother told us that one afternoon in 1941, she was riding on her bicycle down the old road by Merlin’s Farm. Someone threw something at her wheels and she fell, hit her head on a rock, and was knocked out. When she woke up, Alex McDowell was raping her. She lost consciousness again, and when she came to, she made her way to the farm, and Brewster Lang called the police.”
“And she identified Uncle Alex as her rapist?”
“Yes, but Edi Harcourt swore that Alex was at her house that day, so the charges were dropped.”
“That must have been hard on your grandmother. To have reported a rape but nothing was done about it must have been awful. Do you think Miss Edi lied?”
“Probably, but then my grandmother never had a firm grip on honesty.”
“Are you saying she wasn’t attacked?”
“I don’t know. But I do think it was wishful thinking on her part that Alex McDowell was the culprit.”
“She liked him?”
“When Tess and I were kids, we were told that Alex adored her, sent her flowers, wrote her poems. It made sense that when she turned him down he got angry enough to commit a crime of violence against her. But when Tess came here, she was told it was the other way around. Grans pursued Alex. Wherever the poor guy went, there she was. She used to tell people she was meeting him when he was actually trying to get away from her. She told us that even though back then he was really poor, she saw potential in him.”