The Curse of the Dunmore Women

“You got one too?” Clare asked her sister. They crossed the threshold of their childhood home.

“Have you opened yours?” Lydia produced a folder embossed in gold script: From the Desk of Marlene Dunmore.

“Of course I opened it. How else would I know to be here?” Clare said.

“There was the invitation, but I also have this envelope with our names on it.”

“Still the favorite daughter.” Clare crossed her arms over her chest like a five-year-old denied a second slice of cake. “It’s not fair that you get a letter to both of us. I’m the one who handled Mom’s estate, and did all the work for the funeral, and found the buyer for this house. Yet here you are, reading a letter meant for me.”

“I’m not the favorite daughter, and I haven’t opened it. I was waiting for you,” Lydia said. “Girls, please don’t touch anything. This place doesn’t belong to us anymore.” Twin girls dressed like miniature versions of their mother shuffled out of the dark hallway.

“Let’s get it over with,” Clare said. “Evie, Zelda, the place is ours until Monday morning. The estate is sold as is, but they won’t know if a few things go missing.”

“Do you want to do the honors?”

Clare snatched the envelope, broke the seal, and read aloud:

My dearest daughters, Lydia and Clare, my pride and joy—

“Sheesh, really laying it on,” Clare muttered. Lydia nudged her.

As your mother, it was my greatest wish to nurture and develop your individual potential. I was also blessed to enjoy a career as a professional novelist; something no other woman in our family has achieved. By now, you know that I wish to sell my estate to an eligible buyer, as neither of you earned it. But I have left one treasure somewhere in this house, kept secret from my solicitor, wealth managers, and even my long-time publisher to ensure it is kept within the family. It is of unnumberable value to me, and since I have never prized one daughter above the other, I present a challenge to see who the true beneficiary will be.

Enclosed is a single envelope with a clue to the treasure’s location. Whichever daughter uncovers the treasure keeps it. Happy Hunting!

Your beloved mother, Marlene

“A treasure hunt?” Zelda clapped her hands. “What do you think it is?”

Clare tipped her head to the side in contemplation but said nothing.

“We are not playing her game,” Lydia said.

“Why not, Lydia?” Clare said. “Are you scared to find out that I’m the favorite daughter?”

Lydia sighed. “I’ve had enough Mom in my head these last thirty-three years. You’re welcome to the treasure on top of your commission.”

“I’m not the realtor on the sale, I just assisted as an interested party.”

“The treasure is in the nursery!” Evie blurted. She waved a slip of paper. “See? It’s a clue! Seek in the place where we whiled the hours, counting bags of wool and singing to stars. They’re nursery rhymes. Probably ones she sang to you!”

Clare and Lydia exchanged an unreadable glance. They were funhouse reflections of each other. The resemblance was evident, but life and time took their tolls in different ways. The elder unkept, the younger expensively preserved. Both weary beyond measure and readying themselves for another fight.

“If it’s that simple, we’ll look there. Worst case scenario, we find nothing and walk down memory lane. Best case, we find the treasure and share it,” Lydia said after a moment’s hesitation.

“The letter doesn’t mention sharing,” Clare pointed out. “What if the treasure can’t be shared?”

“We’ll figure it out when we get there,” Lydia huffed, leading the way.

***

“So this is where you grew up," Zelda said, fingering the yellowed lace curtains. Evie opened every cabinet and drawer she laid eyes on. An oval frame held a portrait of two girls. Lydia, the elder, her serious, wide eyes taking everything in. Clare, the baby, all smiles and charm.

“Yes, me and Aunt Clare played here. Your Grandmother and Aunt Joyce grew up here too,” Lydia said.

“The house has been in the Dunmore family for four generations,” Clare said.

Lydia marched to the writing desk and wedged herself into the too-small seat.

“Mom hovered over this desk day after day while I worked math problems, read history, and poured over the classics.” She opened the desk drawer and grimaced at a tattered vocabulary workbook.

“She barely saw me.” Clare stroked the frayed mane of a rocking horse. “But that was back when you were the one with all the potential. She didn’t know me from any of these dolls.”

Zelda, stroking a doll’s pink satin ribbons, lifted her finger like she’d been burnt.

“That isn’t true,” Lydia said. “Her writing career took off after you were born. She spent hours in her study, pacing in front of the windows. It was a relief, because for once she something to focus on other than me.”

They searched in silence for a few minutes. Evie, growing bored, studied the dolls, wondering if she had to smash their porcelain faces to find the next clue.

“There’s nothing here, so we should be going.” Lydia declared. “Girls, see anything you like? Most of this is Aunt Clare’s, but if you ask nicely she’ll let you take something.” She contemplated a teacup, admiring the delicate brushwork when her fingers twitched.

The cup fell to the floor but did not break. Lydia knelt to return it to its wicker basket and found a tiny envelope folded into the gingham lining.

Clare flew to her side and yanked the clue from her hands. “This was obviously meant for me,” she said. “The tea set is mine.”

“I’m the one who found it. Besides, you made me play tea party with you when I should have been studying. I took some lashings with a ruler for you,” Lydia said.

Clare pocketed the paper and ran from the room. Evie and Zelda followed, close on her heels.

“Clare! Girls! Get back here!” Lydia called, feeling her age as she ran. She threw open every door on the floor: the solarium, the billiards room, the guest bedroom. Entering her mother’s study, she stopped dead.

Clare stood on the desk, holding the clue aloft. The twins scoured the room like racoons in a trash heap, shuffling through mountains of papers strewn on the floor.

“Hey!” Lydia shouted, snapping her fingers like her mother used to do whenever she and her sister quarreled. Remembering herself, she drew a steadying breath and continued. “Can’t you see this is exactly what she wants? We don’t even know what we’re looking for, and we’re right back at each other’s throats.”

“They’re not making a mess; we found the room like this. All the other buyers had their chance to snoop through this office, looking for them,” Clare said.

“Looking for what?”

“For someone so smart, you ask some stupid questions. Obviously the treasure is Mom’s missing manuscripts.”

“And you think the manuscripts are here?” Lydia said, incredulously. “What does the clue say?”

“Like I’d tell you, you’re already two players up on me.”

“Because having twins as a twenty-year-old college dropout was my master plan to steal Mom’s manuscripts from you,” Lydia retorted.

The twins stopped their search. Zelda crossed to the window to hide her tears, chin raised high.

“You know you girls are more important than the moon and all the stars,” Lydia said. “I didn’t mean—look, if other people searched this room and no one’s found it, then the manuscripts aren’t in here.”

“The clue says Go to the palace of my thoughts, my greatest inspiration,” Clare mumbled. She dropped the slip and it fluttered to the floor, swallowed in the shuffle.

Lydia raised her head. “That could be anywhere. She wrote in her study, but who knows what inspired her. Her books were so—,” she groped for the right word. “Tortured. Like they came from someone haunted by something.”

“But hopeful, too.”

“You read them?” Lydia looked at her sister. “She always told us not to.”

“Of course. Back in college, I took Lit 101. She wasn’t on the syllabus, but they taught us about close reading and I thought: if I really wanted to understand Mom, I should read her books. Maybe I would learn something about myself, too.”

“And did you?”

“No,” Clare laughed, brittle and cold. “I’m not smart like you.”

“Looks like a storm,” Zelda said from the window. Lydia approached and gently wrapped an arm around her youngest daughter.

“Mom used to stare at the roses,” Lydia murmured.

Black clouds covered the weak afternoon sun, but the window in the study presented a perfect view of the rose garden.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Clare said, peering over Lydia’s shoulder.

“We’re only going to get one shot before the storm gets here. If we’re doing this at all, we’re doing it together.” Lydia said.

“I’ll grab the shovel.”

***

A thick mist lingered on the grounds of the Dunmore estate. The four Dunmore women crossed the lawn and assembled around the garden fountain. Their clothes were already drenched.

“There are four main sections. Let’s each take one,” Clare directed. “If you find anything, shout and we’ll all come and help.”

Lydia selected the Old Garden Roses, methodically turning the dirt with her palms. Evie worked next to her mother in the Floribundas, careful to inspect each plant’s trellis for a fluttering clue. Shivering, Zelda took the Rosa Carolinas, lazily toeing clods in the soil. Clare dragged the shovel behind her like a plow through the Rugosa roses, gleefully trawling the flower bed closest to the house. It was the most visible from her mother’s study, and if she was staring at something, it would be here.

A roll of distant thunder sent Zelda skittering for shelter. Evie reached the end of her section before anyone else, but found nothing. She looked to her mother. Lydia made even less progress, stopping to squint through the mist in Clare’s direction. A moment later, she heard a shout.

A flash of lightning illuminated the silver blade of the shovel. Clare tossed dirt over her shoulder, digging furiously. Evie and Lydia ran to help her. Three women tore at the ground with tools and fingers until Evie cried out, clutching her palm to her chest.

Both women rushed to the girl. A jagged line of blood creased her palm. Lydia quickly covered it with her sopping sleeve, ignoring Clare’s protests. She led her daughter back to the house, and Clare called after her.

“There’s something here! We need to keep digging.”

Lightening flashed again, sparking against the spire on the attic turret.

“It’s too dangerous. We’ve found the spot, let’s get inside and wait out the storm. The rain might wash away some of the dirt,” Lydia said. Evie shook feverishly and Lydia applied pressure to her wound.

“It’s really big! I can’t manage it on my own.”

“Later. There are things more important than this.”

“So you’re just going to quit? Like you quit on your ambitions when your kids came along?” Clare said. “What’s the point of that big brain if you’re just going to watch two girls who are more than capable of fending for themselves.”

“I did not quit on my ambition, it’s the damn curse,” Lydia shouted. “Mom was the exception. I’m just another link in the chain of wasted potential.”

The wind howled and Clare tucked her chin into her collar. A slip of paper fluttered between her fingers: a flag of surrender.

“You found the clue already?” Lydia yelped. She dragged her sister toward the house.

“Let go— the treasure is buried— it’s right there and you’re just going to let it get soaked—” Clare protested. Lydia determinedly ignored her.

***

The fight went out of them as soon as they were inside. Water dripped off their clothes, pooling in the hallway and on the carpeted stairs. Portraits of disapproving ancestral matriarchs glared at them. Staring down the likenesses of Marlene and Aunt Joyce, Lydia marched the group into her mother’s bedroom.

She settled her daughters first: Evie on the bed with a clean washcloth over the clotting cut, Zelda on the settee draped in a blanket. Then, she led her sister to her mother’s vanity and turned on the lights.

Clare looked monstrous. Her hair coiled free from her sleek French twist in sections; charcoal mascara streaked her cheeks. In comparison, Lydia was composed. Drenched, but the rain had washed away her strained expression.

“What does the clue say?” Lydia carefully unfolded the damp slip of paper. The ink ran, obscuring all meaning. She crossed the room to the fireplace and stacked wood, placing the clue at the center for kindling.

“Who were all the ladies in the hallway?” Evie called weakly from the bed.

Clare bit her lip. She slid the vanity’s top drawer open and swiped a finger in some ancient cold cream.

“Hasn’t your mother ever told you the women in our family are cursed?” Clare said, stroking the curve of her jaw.

“Clare, let’s not—” Lydia warns, but Clare continued.

“The eldest daughter is always, for generations immemorial, the warm, loving mother. A virtuous woman of family, though often there’s not much going on upstairs.” Clare tapped her forehead and lathered more cream onto her face. “The second daughter is the professional: the artist, the merchant, whatever careers women were allowed in those days. But she always ends up alone.”

“Is that why you have no children, Aunt Clare?” Zelda says. Clare scraped the mascara from her cheekbones.

“Our mother, Grandmother Marlene, changed all that,” Lydia said. “She was mother to us and a brilliant novelist. She broke the curse and expected both of us to be just like her.”

“So we’re your curse?” Evie said.

Lydia shook her head furiously. “No, not at all. Growing up, I just wanted to make Mom proud. But when I went to college with so many other people as exceptional as I was, I felt lost. Things got out of control, and then I had you.” Lydia shrugged.

She looked to Clare for confirmation, but she was bent over a journal bound with twine. Her face was greased and glowing while she flipped pages back and forth.

“It’s Mom’s manuscripts. They were right here, under the makeup,” she said, voice pinched. Lydia sprang from the fireplace.

“How can you be sure? That doesn’t look like her handwriting.” She ran from the room and returned with an armful of first editions. The sisters matched each journal to its published copy. Both versions lined up word-for-word.

“She really was a genius,” Clare breathed.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Lydia said. The final two notebooks rested on her lap. She pointed to a small smudge in the lower right-hand corner of one page and flipped to find a nearly identical smudge on every other page in the book. On the penultimate page, the smudge formed a legible set of letters: JAD.

“Joyce Alice Dunmore,” Clare said. She frowned at the initials, and then at the final notebook. “So, what’s this one?”

“This one,” Lydia said, fanning the pages to reveal a mostly blank notebook, “is unfinished.”

Clare lay her mother’s letter alongside the notebooks. It was obvious, even to the untrained eye. The handwriting in the journals did not match the handwriting from the letter.

“So, we’re saying that Grandmother stole Great Aunt Joyce’s journals and wrote books about them? Or just published them with her name?” Zelda asked.

“Why would she do that? Could we ask Great Aunt Joyce?” Evie said.

“Nobody’s seen Joyce since…” Lydia trailed off.

“Since before I was born,” Clare finished, thinking of the larger box buried in the rose garden.

Without warning, Lydia picked up the smudged journal and threw it into the fire. Clare yelped in protest, clutching her discovery to her chest.

“What are you doing?” she shouted. “This is our legacy! We need to go public, get justice for Aunt Joyce, or at the very least have a professional look at these.”

“This is the only thing to do. Our legacy is based on a curse and a lie. What would happen to us if our mother’s bestsellers were plagiarized?”

Slowly, Clare nodded. Lydia lived on residuals, and the sale of this estate advanced Clare’s career. They had to let the dead stay buried. She dropped the remaining journals in the fire, one by one. The sisters embraced as the pages curled into ash.

Quietly, Evie crept from the bed and slipped the unfinished manuscript under her blanket. She might become a writer someday.