Chapter 7

In Which I Encounter a Seventh Daughter of a Seventh Daughter

It was a few weeks later when fall swept into town, turning the air crisp and cool. The whole city of Chicago seemed suddenly to overflow with orange pumpkins and tart apples. I was munching on a bright red one I’d picked up during my afternoon marketing when I came across an advertisement in the newspaper that made me jump out of my chair.

“Did you read this, Aunt Kitty?” I hollered, though she was only an arm’s length away, seated at the small table by the window. She was grinding coffee beans in a wooden box—another of the many tasks performed for Mrs. Wigginbottom and the rent. “The newspaper says there’s a fortune-teller in town! Says she’s the Seventh Daughter of a Seventh Daughter. Madam L. L. Lucille’s her name.”

My aunt turned the long metal handle of the coffee grinder and stared at me. The coffee’s aroma was strong and comforting, and I had to fight the urge to sneak downstairs into Mrs. Wigginbottom’s kitchen and pour myself another cup.

“She’ll tell who loves you, who hates you,” I read breathlessly from the newspaper page, “and your future husband.”

I stood there waiting for Aunt Kitty to grab her bag and head for the door. If anybody was due for a husband to magically appear out of thin air, it was my soon-to-be-matronly aunt. But there she sat, grinding her bitter coffee and giving me a blank look like I was speaking Egyptian. I urged her on a few more times.

“I know, Nell,” she said calmly. “I’m already aware of Madam Lucille and her Powerful, All-Seeing Eye.”

“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get a move on. We’ve got fortunes to claim.”

But Aunt Kitty sat there perched like a pigeon on a park bench. Maybe she already knew about the cost of one of Madam Lucille’s readings—at ten dollars per session and two of us needing our futures revealed, well, that wasn’t difficult arithmetic.

“Is the cost too dear?” I asked, slipping into the chair across from her. “Perhaps Mr. Pinkerton could give you a raise.”

She shook her head and peeked at the ground coffee.

“Afraid of romance?” I followed.

She let out a choking cough.

“Something you’re hiding in your past?”

She set the grinder down on the table and sent a deep sigh into the air.

“Get ahold of yourself, Nell,” she began, tapping the freshly ground beans into a big black tin. “You don’t really believe in fortune-telling, now do you?”

Jumping Jehoshaphat, of course I did! And she’d be wise to try to read up on the power of the stars as well. Not all learning about life could be found in books. One look into the night sky, and a true believer could glimpse the turning wheel of Destiny.

“Why do you ask?” I hedged. “Don’t you believe in mystics, Aunt Kitty?”

She scoffed and stepped over to the fireplace, setting the black coffee tin on the mantel. We would take it downstairs to Mrs. Wigginbottom at supper.

“I don’t believe one whit in such shams, nor should you, Nell Warne.”

“Why not? Madam Lucille could lead you to love again—to a life of happiness and riches. Why would you not trust her to reveal Life’s Wondrous Plan?”

“Because, foolish girl,” she huffed, turning around from the fireplace with a devilish grin, “I am Madam Lucille herself.”

I had just risen to my feet, but this news sent me staggering back into my chair like I was punched. Aunt Kitty was Madam Lucille, the Great Mystic?

“You’re a Seventh Daughter of a Seventh Daughter…?”

“Goodness, no, Nell! It’s part of our latest case. I will be playing the role of a fortune-teller in order to solve another mystery.”

I couldn’t believe she was letting on about one of her cases. I asked her whether it was another instance of jewelry theft—there had been lots of stories in the newspaper about that. But she shook her head and gave me a solemn look, like she was sizing up what sort of information I could handle. With all her comings and goings the past few weeks, she’d never yet shared a word about her detective work.

“I only tell you this much because I could use your help sewing costumes,” she said. “We will have marvelous disguises.”

I felt peevish that she didn’t trust me enough to share more. She must have thought I’d go jabbering all over town about her private business.

“Fine, don’t tell me what you’re up to,” I said with a huffy breath. Then I mumbled for my ears alone, “Sounds like a bunch of grown-up persons running around playing make-believe.”

However, my ears were not the only ones to have heard.

“Playing make-believe?” said Aunt Kitty with an icy edge. “You think that’s what we’re doing? Perhaps I should let you know the seriousness of our work. How does catching a ruthless man trying to murder his wife sound to you, Nell? Murder by poison—slow and agonizing.”

Murder? I wondered how dressing up as a mystic would solve a mystery like this one. So she explained a bit, how a sea captain had come into Mr. Pinkerton’s office in a fit of worry. His sister had fallen in love with a bad man. He suspected the bad man was trying to kill off his wife in order to be with the sea captain’s sister.

“Because the sister is so superstitious, Mr. Pinkerton believes we can get her to reveal the secrets to this murder scheme,” Aunt Kitty said. “And, he hopes, we can save her from making a terrible mistake.”

Aunt Kitty pulled a few handbills from her bag and handed one to me. She said Mr. Pinkerton’s operatives would be passing them out on the street where the sea captain’s sister lives. Between these and the newspaper advertisement, the detectives were hoping to snare the sister in their trap.

I ran my fingers across the handbill. It was the same advertisement for Madam Lucille, the All-Seeing Mystic, that I’d seen in the newspaper. My eyes lingered longingly over the promise to reveal our fortunes. Did mine lie in detective work, like Aunt Kitty? In nursing soldiers back to health, like Florence Nightingale? I’d read all about her heroic exploits in the newspaper.

I imagined that my Destiny might be in roving the land as a keen-eyed journalist—recording history’s most exhilarating moments as they unfurled before my very eyes. All while wearing smart dresses and fashionable bonnets, of course. Now, there was the life.

I let out a heavy sigh. Those secrets would be left in the hands of Fate now.

“And Nell,” my aunt began, her eyes watching me fold the handbill and slip it into the pocket of my checkered dress, “you know better. I have but one husband, Matthew, and he was killed when your father—”

“My father didn’t kill your Matthew in anger, Aunt Kitty,” I interrupted, rising to my feet once again. “It was an accident.”

“Where is your proof, Nell?” Her voice was sharp as we faced off across the table. “How can you stand before me and assert such a thing? The Cornelius Warne I knew was a liar, a drinker, and a poker-playing cheat. He probably shot my Matthew over money or liquor.”

And then she paused, taking a deep breath to collect herself. She started up again, more softly.

“Your head is full of stories that your family made up, Nell, stories to help a little girl fall asleep at night. There is no truth to them.”

“That family is your family, too, Aunt Kitty.”

“No, it is not. And stop calling me Kitty. You’re holding on to something that doesn’t exist anymore, to someone I was a long time ago. I am Kate Warne now, with a life and a job that has nothing to do with Chemung County. I’m not Kitty.”

A house divided, that’s what we were: both of us a Warne, but each of us seeing things differently. The questions about my daddy cut like a raging river between us, threatening to tear us apart.

I’d read in the newspaper about Mr. Lincoln saying the same thing in a speech to folks in Ohio: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” He was quoting a Bible verse that I knew by heart. Only Mr. Lincoln was talking about slavery splitting the whole country in two—“I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.”

I stared hard into Aunt Kitty’s pinched, pickled-onion face and wondered about the two of us. Would we endure?