Skizzer by A. J. Kiesling

Author:A. J. Kiesling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC026000, FIC030000
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

16

Gideon, North Carolina

June 2001

Back at the townhouse, Aunt Jess led us to her living room and continued her story. “I told Dorothea I would help her get back to Charlotte and start a new life, away from my brother. Instead, she asked for my assistance in living a life hidden away from society, somewhere she could raise her child alone. She was tired, she said. Tired of everything and everyone. I found an apartment with a discreet landlady in a small town about forty miles away. Dorothea set up house there. In due time the baby came, and it was another little girl. She named her Lily, and this baby she adored—the love child, you know. By now I was keeping all the estate books, and so I saw to it that Dorothea and Lily were taken care of. That was my part of the bargain. Her part was to keep away and never come back.

“As you can imagine, the household was in turmoil all this time. Morgan couldn’t accept the fact that his wife had left him.”

I glanced at Rainey; he looked uneasy and wouldn’t meet my eyes. Without a word I hooked my arm through his for reassurance.

“Morgan cancelled all his business appointments and kept searching for Dorothea,” Aunt Jess continued, her voice a monotone now. “This next part is difficult for me to tell you, but if you’re going to hear the story you might as well hear all of it. It broke my heart to see my beloved brother so torn up over an undeserving woman—at least, that’s how I saw things then. I decided something needed to be done. Morgan needed closure. A person with money always has access to . . . exceptional resources. I used the Trowling money and my connections to procure suitable remains that would close the case on Dorothea Trowling, nee Sanderson. I hired a man to bury the remains half hidden from view, but visible enough so that a search party found them—found her, or so they thought. You have to remember this was long before forensic science could identify human remains through DNA testing. The coroner was satisfied, the search party was satisfied, and ultimately even my distraught brother came to terms with the fact that his beautiful bride had wandered into the woods and died.

“Their marriage lasted only four years, but in that short time I watched my brother transform from a robust, visionary man to a distraught, tormented soul—all because of a romantic nature he inherited from our father. Morgan was better off believing her to be dead. Or so I told myself.”

Aunt Jess’s voice broke off, and she looked down at her hands in her lap. “Another year passed, and by then my brother was a changed man. He took to the bottle like his father before him. I would smell whiskey on his breath at the breakfast table, for Pete’s sake. On the Fourth of July, one year since the trouble began, he gave all the household servants the day off.

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