A. Renee Art

As Janet, Connor, and Merc finished telling what they discovered, Lydia scribbled a few notes and questions in her notepad. “Anything in Vivian’s journals,” she asked.

Janet had yet to go over them, so she began pouring over them as the teens quietly went over the other evidence, sharing what they found, Lydia writing anything that seemed interesting to her.

The earliest journal was from the early ‘70s, back when Vivian and Charles were still in the honeymoon phase. Charles was running for mayor and things seemed looking up for them. But later her mother-in-law, Magdalene Roberts wondered when the couple was going to have children. Vivian was recovering from a miscarriage, though, and didn’t feel ready to try again.

But eventually, she and Charles had Trisha, though there were complications and a C-section was required. Though Charles seemed happy, Vivian wrote that she felt miserable. Her misery only increased when she discovered that her husband had an affair with one of the maids. She found a letter her mother-in-law had written to Charles saying so. She wrote that after confronting Charles, she got rid of “that maid Charles was fooling around with”.

The second journal was written in the 80’s, a challenging time for the town. It had been a few years since the mining disaster and as a result, not much business was coming through compared to earlier. For the first time, more young people were moving out and staying away. Somehow, the town survived. She noted that Father Matthew adopted a little ten-year-old boy named Scott in 1985. She later writes about Charles’s pivoting into new business endeavors for the town and that he was making some headway. Trisha was a teenager and Vivian was making sure that she would be as successful as her and was already preparing a list of colleges for them to visit.

The third journal was from the 90’s when Vivian wrote about Scott and Trisha’s relationship. Vivian wrote that she thought of Scott as a kind boy with good manners and that despite being an orphan, she was glad that he was determined to make something of his life. She later, on insistence from her husband Charles, hired Scott to assist Andrew Reed to maintain the garden and yard. It seemed that Vivian was hoping Scott would take over, saying he was better at the job than Andrew, given Reed’s drinking.

“That explains the old beer bottles we saw,” Merc commented.

Vivian added that Charles often took Scott on hunting trips. She didn’t care for her husband’s hunting hobby, though.

In early ’94, like Trisha said, Vivian changed her mind about Scott. She wrote that Bernard, the butler, told her that Scott had been asking around about “that maid Charles slept with”, wondering how he knew about her and blamed Andrew for allegedly telling Scott. She asked for Bernard to keep an eye on the boy. Later, she had an alarming conversation with Father Matthew about Scott after church. He told her that she needed to tell her daughter to stop dating Scott. Vivian didn’t write Matthew’s reasons exactly, but it immediately prompted her to tell Trisha to stop dating Scott that same day.

Derrick had been trying to avoid driving Vivian around on a trip, saying he’s sick. She doesn’t understand why. She notices that he often avoids looking at her, but he’s still a good worker and Charles insists on keeping him. She wonders why Derrick seemed to be fine when her husband requested rides from him.

That spring, she additionally wrote about town activities for the Easter Fundraising Event at the church and asked Oliver Gibson to be the main photographer to help with pictures to promote tourism. There was also a new deal with a new insurance company for the hospital. She seemed empty on the inside despite all the improving news for the town that was, in a way, still recovering from the mining disaster from twenty years ago.

She lamented that her relationships with her daughter and husband were deteriorating. She wasn’t speaking to Charles much and Trisha was distancing herself from her. Vivian found herself almost regretting stopping Trisha from seeing Scott, at least as friends.

Almost. In July of ‘94, Vivian decided definitively that she no longer wanted Trisha to be near Scott. The next month, she said she was feeling sick. Like last year, she did not attend Charles at his mother’s grave on the anniversary of her death. Vivian admits to not really being the same ever since she found out about her husband’s affair almost twenty years ago. She feels she only stayed with him because of Trisha, but now she was all but distant from her as well. It also didn’t help that the hospital was underfunded. She began suspecting that Dr. Johnson might have been responsible for that and thought of beginning an investigation.

In January ’95, perhaps as a New Year’s resolution, she decided to turn over a new leaf. She wrote that she should probably forgive Charles and work something out with Trisha. She met with a bank representative to set up a new art gallery for the town. That June, she was looking forward to the opening of the exhibition later that year and asking Charles for donations from the mansion gallery. She was practically excited for the future for the first time in a long time, feeling a new sense of purpose.

That new purpose ended the night of July 19^th that year.

“No wonder the whole town showed up to her funeral,” Merc remarked.

“She really went through a lot,” Caylix said. “Her husband’s affair, health complications, a town on the brink of dying, but slowly coming back, the hospital funding problems. I think I’m more determined to find the killer now.”

“Sounds like Scott had motive to me,” her brother Connor chimed in. “If he was barred from seeing Trisha and was later fired from his mansion job…Not to mention that he did run from town.”

“It’s the best lead we have, I suppose,” agreed Janet. “He even went so far as taunting her about Charles’s affair. Break time? We’ll eat and then figure out what to do next.”