Family Bonds: Home Truths, #3

By Ruth Hay

Elizabeth Goodwin Mowat sacrificed many years to bring up her family. 
Her secret desire to escape and live a different life has been thwarted by the needs of her mother, Sadie Goodwin, and the cascade of problems resulting from the COVID-19 epidemic.
 Can she now plan to extricate herself from all her responsibilities and begin again?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ruth Hay
• Release date: Jan 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393886532

Book preview

One

Opal

Opal Rodriguez found she could not escape the drama of the life of Amanda Goodwin.

It was like a hidden secret that kept sucking her back into its clutches.

Despite her desire to put the whole Goodwin journal reading behind her, and concentrate on the present, and the precious new life she carried, circumstances seemed to combine to draw her back in.

First, was the necessity to catch up with Amanda’s tale, after the newspapers broke the story of human bones found on the grounds around the old Goodwin Farm property.

Much as she would have preferred to forget what she knew about Amanda’s plan to poison her husband, Calvin, she found her heart rate elevated with stress, and she was unable to sleep at night while the thought of a murder investigation haunted her dreams.

She simply had to know the truth.

In the middle of the night, when Andre was snoring by her side in bed, and Lila was fast asleep in her room, Opal rose quietly and pulled out from under her bed the box of Amanda ‘s journals.

It did not take her long to find the one she wanted. She opened it with shaking hands.

Some of the journals were blank and some had been written in only sporadically, usually after a very troublesome episode that Amanda could not bear to write about until she had thought it through carefully.

Opal took the second journal, the next to the one that described the poisoning plan, and tiptoed downstairs to the table by the window where she had read the others. She turned on the lamp and began to read.

Immediately, she felt as if she was in a room in that fine old house that held so many dire secrets, sitting by Amanda’s side as she recorded another traumatic event in her young life.

---

Papa was most disapproving of my plan but he could not deny the evil Calvin Goodwin had brought into our lives. He wished to be free of the man almost as much as did I.

Almost, but not quite as much.

My hatred of my husband grew by the hour and I was intent on continuing the slow process of gradual poisoning. I estimated that no one would guess if I worked very carefully, adding noxious substances to his food in very small quantities.

Strangely, my plan became easier when Calvin reacted to the poison by seeming to develop a taste for alcohol. He was always a drinker but so were most of the men who my father entertained at home.

I never saw how much the men consumed as I, and any ladies present, were required to exit the dining room after dessert was served, leaving the men to their cigars and liquor.

---

On one such night, as was reported to me later by the servants, my husband became inebriated to a greater degree than was usual. The argument began after Calvin decided to call me some disgraceful names that should never be heard in polite company.

I believe he was commenting on my lack of womanly qualities related to the marital bed. Of course, I knew he was quite correct in his criticisms as I had long before withdrawn from any intimacies, but I did not expect my father’s reaction to this public humiliation.

Caustic remarks were exchanged between them, followed by a loud summons for me to appear and try to deny my husband’s accusations.

By this time, the whole house knew what was going on and I rushed to my father’s side to attempt to calm the situation before it got completely out of hand in front of witnesses. I knew any of our business acquaintances would soon spread the family quarrel far and wide on the first market day, thereby damaging our business credibility.

To my shock, Calvin grabbed my arm as soon as I entered the dining room and slapped my face hard enough to dislodge an earring that promptly tumbled to the floor.

Papa could not permit such an insult to my person. He immediately dragged Calvin outside and challenged him to fisticuffs to protect my honour.

There was nothing I could do other than to plead for common sense to prevail.

My father took one look at the blood on the handkerchief I now held to my cheek and he launched into a full attack on the man he, too, blamed for much of our misery.

Neither I, nor any of the men who witnessed this, could possibly intervene.

The two combatants hit each other repeatedly until Calvin, the older of the two by some years, suddenly collapsed onto the ground.

The servants took Calvin off to his bed while I looked after my father’s injuries, which were mainly bruises and cuts about the face and hands.

Later that same night, a doctor was called to attend to Calvin as he was still in a state of unconsciousness and could not be wakened.

The doctor declared my husband’s heart to be beating most irregularly. He diagnosed a weakness in that area that had likely existed for years. The pummeling he had endured during the fight, had caused a failure of the major organ.

I had difficulty concealing my delight at this announcement. I feigned sorrow and hid my face in my handkerchief. I was now sure that I would be released in due time from my married bondage, even faster than my own plan would have allowed.

---

To his credit, Papa suffered from guilt at his part in this situation, but he had witnesses who could attest to the original insult and who declared my father had done the honourable thing in defending his daughter.

I played the part of the grieving wife as well as I could manage.

Theresa quelled the comments of the kitchen staff and warned them not to gossip about events in Lomond on pain of losing their jobs.

---

Calvin Goodwin died without gaining consciousness.

He was buried in a very quiet ceremony on the property, attended by only a few mourners, mainly business associates. There was some questioning of the decision not to bury Calvin in the church graveyard but no one interfered with Papa’s right to use his own land as he wished.

My wee Jamie was perhaps too young to understand the loss of the distant father figure who was far less involved in his life than was his own grandfather.

---

Postscript.

---

No word of Calvin Goodwin’s death was sent to Scotland, and no enquiries ever came from there about him in subsequent years.

After some time, the simple headstone that my father had chosen, was removed from the grave and the area disappeared under a stable building where the horses trampled the ground flat in no time at all.

No one noticed.

No one mourned Calvin Goodwin.

He was soon forgotten.

Life went on in Lomond. My father was now free to choose business partners who helped him to acquire more land and reliable farm workers to make it even more productive.

Fraser Coley was admired, and respected, throughout the area.

He had a daughter and a grandson who loved him and he lived in the finest house for many miles.

Life was good, as far as any outside observer could see.

That is, until my Jamie began to ask questions about his origins.

Amanda’s fine handwriting finished here.

Opal took a long deep, breath and breathed out. She did not turn a page to see if there was more. It was enough that she now knew for sure that her ancestor was not a murderess.

No doubt, the modern forensic experts would soon discover that the bones unearthed by Warrington’s excavator belonged to a man who had died of natural causes. There might even be a note of his death and burial in the county records but no suspicion of wrongdoing would ever be attached to the event.

The entire story of Fraser Colquhoun and Marie Grant’s elopement from Scotland to Canada would now remain unknown and unremarked. That secret died with Calvin Goodwin who was sent by Marie’s father to track down the couple. Despite his best attempts at blackmail and coercion, Goodwin had failed.

Opal Rodriguez placed a hand over her stomach and vowed to protect the child inside her from any more unwarranted fear and stress.

She placed the journal back inside its box and thought that she was possibly the only person who knew or cared about Amanda Goodwin’s story, other than her mother, Elizabeth, with whom she had shared some of it, and who would need to be told about the recent revelations. It all happened a long, long time ago.

Lomond, or what was left of it, was no more than a pile of rubble in a building site slated for development.

Opal went back to bed and snuggled around her husband’s warm back.

She chose to think of more positive things, in the present time.

A new baby.

A hoped-for end to the coronavirus pandemic.

A good life ahead, with sufficient money to ward off most foreseeable financial problems.

---

What Opal did not know, as she fell into a deep sleep, was that her daughter Lila was determined to find out everything she could about Amanda Goodwin, the Lomond mansion, and anyone who had ever lived there.

Lila Rodriguez was fascinated by the past history of her family and she was not likely to let it go.

Two

Elizabeth

Opal’s news about the latest segment of Amanda’s journal was welcome to her mother.

It was too soon after Sadie Goodwin’s death for Elizabeth to contemplate a scandal in the newspapers that would cause speculation and questions that she could not answer.

The old house was gone and with it all the secrets that the family had kept, most of them unknown to Elizabeth and to her late mother.

If Opal and Andre had not been digging around in Lomond’s attic, those dratted journals would never have come to light.

Elizabeth wanted to move on from the past.

In fact, she wanted to move away.

Far away.

Sadie’s estate had been divided among her grandchildren, with a portion retained by Elizabeth that was an amount of money sufficient to make dreams come true.

Elizabeth had the dreams. She had dreams unmet for many years.

She dreamed of escaping from all her family responsibilities.

She saw herself free of Noah, free of the house she had laboured over for a lifetime,

free to travel, and live in sunshine year-round with Eileen, her best friend since schooldays.

And yet………………. here she still was in the lilac bedroom where she had slept alone for over ten years since Noah’s IBS symptoms had become impossible to ignore.

Here she was in the home she wished to leave behind her, with Barbara’s two children sleeping nearby, and Noah in the master bedroom with the ensuite.

Instead of her life becoming less complicated after Sadie Goodwin passed away and her estate was dispersed among her family, Elizabeth was tied even closer to this home by the never-ending effects of the coronavirus, and its restrictions on safe international travel.

Eileen, also, was trapped in Florida, where the state had been declared a virus ‘hot spot’.

Elizabeth tracked the numbers of Florida deaths on television reports. Eileen confirmed by phone that Orange County was in trouble and she was afraid to leave her condominium complex.

"This is so upsetting, Elizabeth. When will we ever see each other face-to-face again?

I am beginning to despair about this situation. The number of infected residents in Florida has shot up again since last month."

Elizabeth had no comfort to offer her friend.

They were both stuck in place, helpless, for the foreseeable future.

This was depressing in the extreme.

She turned her mind to more positive trends for lack of an alternative.

Travis and Chelsea were improving rapidly with the daily routines established by their grandparents. Elizabeth gave credit to Noah who had taken over much of the homework and exercise duties that kept the children on track and too busy to miss their parents.

Noah’s idea to take the children for regular walks around the neighbourhood gave Elizabeth time to catch up on housework and to visit the grocery and pharmacy stores so she could take supplies to Barbara and Ed. In recent weeks, Ed was recovering from his bout of the virus and it looked like the Benson family would soon be reunited.

In Elizabeth’s mind, her daughter had grown immensely during the very difficult weeks when Ed was seriously ill. Neither of them wanted Ed to be in hospital and possibly intubated. Barbara’s devotion to her husband’s care and feeding and the endless round of sanitizing everything, had paid off in Ed’s return to health and, also, in Barbara’s greatly improved attitude to life that came from a long time on her own to contemplate what she really wanted for her family.

The schools were still closed, and no one knew when or how, regular education would begin again. Barbara insisted it was now time for the Bensons to get back together and plan the way forward.

There was more good news from Opal and Andre Rodriguez. Opal had shared her pregnancy excitement with her mother and Elizabeth was delighted for the whole family, especially Lila who always seemed a very mature, if solitary, child for her age. A new baby would give Lila a chance to revisit her own childhood, and be a good big sister to the new little one.

And then, there was Aaron.

Elizabeth did not doubt that she and her adopted son were closer now than ever before. They had talked properly during Sadie’s last months when Aaron shared his feelings about Noah and the betrayal he felt because he was not told the truth about his origins. He also confessed his sorrow at his lack of appreciation for the role Elizabeth played in his upbringing. That confession broke apart the boundaries between them, and much healing had occurred since then. Aaron confronted his father at last and now he was determined to seek out his birth mother’s family.

Again, the current pandemic situation, made Aaron’s desire to visit his birthplace in Germany next to impossible. He had acquired a DNA testing kit and was now awaiting the results.

All these positive trends gave Elizabeth hope that her family would move on safely and comfortably without her, one of these days. Modern communications meant she would not be out of touch no matter where she lived.

There were two things that still worried her.

She had no control over the pandemic. That would eventually come to an end sometime in the future, with a universal inoculation program, or a new approach to testing and tracking.

What she must deal with in the present, were two confrontations.

One was a final, honest discussion with Noah.

The other was the last promise she gave to her mother to seek out what had happened to Amelia Goodwin, her father, Martin’s, long lost sister.

This task might be a wild goose chase as the chances were that Amelia Goodwin was long dead.

Nevertheless, it was an obligation that Elizabeth Goodwin Mowat felt must be pursued.

Three

Amelia

For many years, Amelia Goodwin travelled around North America under the assumed name of Amy Loring.

She never stayed in any place for very long at a time. After a few months, when people were curious and began to ask questions, she moved on, leaving no forwarding address.

For a several decades, she worked for a large government company that needed a person with no objections to a traveling life. She went from town to town visiting the company’s many small business depots, checking on supplies and looking for discrepancies in the office bookkeeping practices.

No one suspected she was from head office in Ottawa. They believed she was a temporary worker sent out to fill in for injured workers or staff members on pregnancy leave.

By the time she completed the yearly round of visits, most of the personnel had moved on and no one questioned the reappearance of the tall woman with the quiet manner and the soft voice who did not accept invitations to social events.

‘Amy Loring’ lived in rooms in a line of motels owned by the same government company.

They called ahead for her and booked her into their best suites.

She owned no more than could be packed into two suitcases in the trunk of her car.

She saw Canada from East to West and far to the North, and relished the changing landscapes and the changing weather with a deep enjoyment that she rarely, if ever, shared.

Occasionally, she attracted the attention of a company official who was curious about her unusual qualities. To those men, she had a quiet, confident