Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 02 - Rekindling Motives by Elaine Orr Page B

brother-in-law. Peter Fisher was almost a head shorter than Richard and his expression was usually somber.
    There were several photos of a smiling Audrey Tillotson, and one of the captions said, “The day Peter proposed.” Standing next to her, Peter Fisher almost cracked a smile. Two pages further there was a picture of Richard and a woman identified simply as Mary Doris. They had posed with the ocean in the background and were holding hands as they smiled at the camera. I jotted her name in my notebook. If she were still alive, she might know more about Richard’s disappearance. Perhaps Aunt Madge would know who she was. I studied Mary Doris more, taking in the flapper girl’s clothes and small hat and the long string of pearls that hung to just above her belly button. She and Richard looked as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
    Mary Doris was in several other photos, sometimes with Audrey and other young women of their age, which looked to be early 20s. This was clearly the Ocean Alley jet set of the times. I smiled at my mental choice of words. These women would never have heard of a jet airplane.
    I couldn’t take my eyes off their dresses. Did they always get so dressed up? The Tillotson family must have had a lot of money back then. My own has very few pictures of grandparents or aunts and uncles of the time.
    When Aunt Madge came into the room a few minutes later I asked her about Mary Doris. “Mary Doris Milner,” she said. “She lives at the nursing home on the edge of town. She must be, oh, in her mid-nineties.”
    “She’s alive then? How do you think she’d react to a visit?”
    Aunt Madge shook her head. “You need to leave her alone, Jolie. Uncle Gordon said Richard’s disappearance struck her so hard that she went to stay with family in the Midwest for quite some time afterwards. She said she didn’t want to see the ocean without Richard.”
    “She must have been embarrassed because she thought he left her,” I said.
    Aunt Madge settled next to me on the couch and opened a copy of Popular Science magazine. “She got over him just fine, eventually. She got a teaching certificate and worked until she was well into her sixtie.”
    “Did she ever marry?”
    “No, but she was so close to her brother’s family that her nephew and later his daughter would visit every summer for several weeks.” Aunt Madge closed the magazine. “Her brother’s granddaughter eventually moved here to stay with Mary Doris. What was her name?” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, then opened them and looked at me. “She came her junior year of high school. She fought a lot with her mother, I think, but not Mary Doris.”
    After looking through another album that was after Richard’s disappearance, I was done for the night. The albums had served their purpose. I had a lead in the form of Mary Doris Milner, and she was close at hand.
    WHEN I WENT DOWN TO BREAKFAST the next morning Aunt Madge handed me a piece of paper with Reverend Jamison’s name and phone numbers. “He won’t give up, you know.” She eyed me as she poured cream into a creamer. “He’s at least as stubborn as you are.”
    “I prefer to think that I’m disciplined enough to follow through with things.” I stuck the note into the pocket of my cotton slacks and helped myself to some orange juice.
    Later that morning I called Reverend Jamison, who asked me to come to the vicarage to talk about the food pantry. “Feel free to bring Scoobie, if you want to.”
    I went alone, and listened patiently as he downplayed the time commitment, talking about how to get volunteers and which food banks donated to the church food pantry. He introduced me to the church secretary as we left his office to visit the pantry, which was adjacent to the church in its community room area.
    “You’re Madge’s niece.” She said this as if she thought I didn’t know.
    I took in her tight perm, slightly pursed lips, and the cardigan over her