The Hellfire Club

She had been 'unwriting' the Unwritten Words through a lengthy, painstaking series of revisions. 'This was on her desk?'

'In her apartment, right next to her typewriter, along with a big folder full of earlier versions. The one she took to Shorelands was lost along with everything else she put into her suitcase.'

'You never showed it to me,' Jeffrey said.

'You weren't here all that often, and I wasn't done looking at it. I always had trouble understanding the things Katherine wrote, and this was harder than anything else, especially with all those scribbles. After a couple of years, I began to find my way. I saw - I think I saw - that she was writing about her death. About living with her death, the way she did for so long. If you had asked me, I would have said that she never thought about it because she didn't seem to. Katherine wasn't a brooding sort of person at all, but of course she thought about it all the time. That's why she wrote the way she did, and why she lived the way she did. What I think is, my sister Katherine was a saint. A real-life saint.'

Startled, Nora looked up from the book. 'A saint?'

Helen Day smiled and glanced down at the photograph. 'Katherine was the most sensitive, most intelligent, most dedicated person I've ever known, and deep down inside herself the purest. What most people call religion didn't affect her at all, even though we were raised Catholic. You'll find more spiritual people outside churches than in them. Katherine couldn't be bothered with the unimportant things most people spend their whole lives worrying about. She knew how to have a good time, she sometimes shocked ordinary- thinking people, but she had focus. When I take on new girls here, I look to see if they have at least a little bit of what Katherine had, and if they do, welcome aboard. You do, you have some of it.'

'Well, a lot of ordinary-thinking people might think I'm a little bit crazy,' Nora said, thinking of her gleeful demons.

'Don't you believe it. You've been hurt. I can see that. No wonder, considering what happened to you. Here you are, chasing around Massachusetts instead of going back home, if you still have a home to go back to.' She looked over at her son. 'Alden Chancel might not think you're the right wife for his son, but you're hardly crazy. In fact, what I think, you're one of those people who take in more than most of us.'

'You're giving me too much credit,' Nora said.

'You're a person who wants to know what's true. When I look back, it seems to me that most of what I learned when I was little was all wrong. Lies were stuffed down our throats day and night. Lies about men and women, about the proper way to live, about our own feelings, and I don't believe too much has changed. It's still important to find out what's really true, and if you didn't think that was important, you wouldn't be here right now.'

Yes, Nora thought, I do think that it's important to find out what is really true.

Helen Day checked her watch. 'I have to make sure everything's all right before I put in an appearance at the Asia Society. I hope you'll think about everything I said.'

'Thank you for talking to me.'

All three stood up. 'You'll be at the Northampton Hotel?'

'Yes,' Jeffrey said.

Helen Day had not taken her eyes off Nora. 'If you're still up around ten, would you give me a call? I want to talk about something with you, but I have to think it over first.'

'Something to do with your sister?'

The old woman slowly shook her head. 'While I'm thinking about my question, you should think about your husband. You're stronger than Davey, and he needs your help.'

'What's this 'question' of yours?' Jeffrey asked.

She turned to him and took his hand. 'Jeffrey, you'll come here tomorrow, won't you? We'll have time for a real conversation. If you turn up around eight, you can help with the driving, too. We have to pick up a lot of fresh vegetables.'

'You want me to drive one of the vans while Maya and Sophie sit in the back and make fun of me.'

'You enjoy it. Come over tomorrow.'

'Should I bring Nora?'

Helen Day had been moving them slowly toward the front door, and at this question she met Nora's eyes with a look as significant as a touch. 'That's up to her.' She let them out into the warm night.75

'You liked her, didn't you?'

'Who wouldn't like her?' Nora asked. 'She's extraordinary.'

Jeffrey was driving them down Main Street, where restaurant windows glowed and gatherings of three and four drifted in and out of pools of light cast by the streetlamps.

'I know, but she drives a lot of people up the wall. She makes up her mind about you as soon as she meets you, and if she takes to you, you're invited in. If not, you get the big freeze. I was almost certain she'd warm to you right away, but…' He glanced at her. 'I guess you see why I couldn't say much about her beforehand.'

'I suppose I do,' she said.

'What would you like to do?'

'Go to bed,' she said. 'After that, maybe I'll spend the rest of my life chopping celery for your mother. I'd have to change my name, but that's all right, everybody else already has. After a couple of years maybe I'd get to be as perceptive as your mother thinks I am.'

Jeffrey gave her one of his sidelong looks. 'I thought you seemed unhappy back there. Disappointed, I guess.'

'Well, you're already perceptive enough for both of us. Yes. I guess I was expecting too much. I thought that even if everything was falling apart around me, at least I could help prove that your aunt was the real writer of Night Journey. Instead, all I managed to find out was that Hugo Driver was a nasty little creep who stole things. But if he didn't steal Night Journey, then everything we thought we knew was all wrong. What did your aunts see in those pages, anyhow? What excited them so much?'

'Phrases. Descriptions of landscapes, fields and fog and mountains. Most of them were sort of like Driver, but not close enough to justify calling a lawyer. There was something about death and childhood - how a child could see death as a Journey.'

'That makes a lot of sense for Katherine Mannheim, but it hardly proves anything about the book.'

'Two other phrases got them excited, mainly. One was about a black wolf.'

'That doesn't mean anything.'

'The other was 'the Cup Bearer.' They did get excited about that.' The front of the hotel floated past them. A guitarist played bossa nova music on the terrace.

'I don't get it. That's what Davey used to call your mother.'

'You saw that picture of the two of them as little girls, where my mother is holding a cup. After that, Katherine started calling her the Cup Bearer.' He rolled the MG down into the lot. His smiled flashed. 'I forgot, you never read Night Journey.'

'I still don't get it.'

'Book Eight of Night Journey is called 'The Cup Bearer.' That's what really got Grace and Effie going, that and the wolf.' He pulled into an empty spot and switched off the engine.

'But Davey was calling your mother the Cup Bearer before he could even read. How did he ever hear about it?'

'He must have seen the photograph in her room,' Jeffrey said. 'He went there looking for her sometimes, when Alden and Daisy left him alone. If he'd asked her about it, she would have told him about the nickname. That would have been another reason why the book meant so much to him later on. It reminded him of my mother.'

Now she knew why Davey had been irritated with her when she had asked him about the origin of the nickname. Jeffrey was waiting patiently for her to finish asking questions so that they could leave the car. 'Is the Cup Bearer in the book anything like your mother?'

'Well let's see.' He propped his chin in his hand. 'She makes this foul-smelling brew. She had no children of her own, but she raised someone else's child. On the whole, she's pretty fearsome. I'd have to say she's a lot like my mother.'