Jane rode the elevator up to the ninth floor of the Reynolds Building in downtown Winston-Salem, the one that had inspired the more famous Empire State Building in New York City. This property was for sale, as were many of the old mills just north of downtown. Just how many new, spiffy lofts did the town really need? Outsourcing had taken its toll on this once prosperous manufacturing center. She realized for the first time that those factory owners had been lucky to employ her ancestors, used to hard work and frugal living, dedicated to honesty and a good life. The elevator door opened and Jane pulled down the jacket of her pin-striped suit, the one she wore for bad news, she thought wryly when she put it on this morning.
Just listen, she reminded herself, then opened the door to the offices of Heren and Holler, Attorneys at Law. The receptionist ushered her into a large conference room where Anna Szeges sat with John and three other men, attorneys and assistants Jane supposed. The door opened again and her cousin Frank rushed in, a bit out of breath. He sat next to her, but before he could say anything to explain his presence, Anna began introducing her. “You’ve already met John.”
Jane nodded to him. The two men next to John turned out to be Mr. Heren and Mr. Holler, whose names graced the firm, the first in his sixties, the other younger by a generation, both with affable smiles useful for putting people at ease. Jane resisted.
“This is Mr. Boehme,” Anna continued, nodding to a round, blond man around Jane’s age who seemed a bit too serene for this time of the morning, “and you already know Frank, of course.”
“Indeed I do.” Jane smiled at him.
“Gentlemen, this is Jane Frey, who has taken on Miss Essig’s house.”
Everyone murmured greetings.
“Coffee?” Mr. Heren asked.
“I’ll take a cup,” Frank said and turned to Jane. “Would you like one?” He poured one before she could answer.
“Donuts?” Mr. Heren pointed to a long, white and green box of Krispy Kremes, which Jane had intended to resist—eating at meetings was not exactly professional—but when he lifted the lid, the aroma filled the room. She took one—they were still warm—and pushed the box back along the long conference table out of reach. “Thank you.”
With everyone provisioned, Anna took control. “Yesterday, Jane—”
“Ms. Frey,” Jane interrupted. If these three men got called by their surnames, then she had to insist on equal treatment.
“Y-Yes, of course.”
Good, she’d interrupted Anna’s rehearsed speech.
“Ms. Frey asked about having the title to the house put in her name.” Nods all around. No surprises here. Anna was teeing up. “I was pleased we could meet so quickly to settle this matter.”
That sounded promising.
“Mr. Frey?” Anna emphasized the appellation with the arch of one trimmed eyebrow.
Frank’s smile was sheepish. “As you may already know,” he addressed himself mainly to Jane, “in 1727 our ancestor Jacob Frey emigrated from Upper Alsace to Pennsylvania, and then moved south to the banks of Muddy Creek where he settled.”
“Yes, Frank, but what does our family history have to do with this?”
Frank held up a finger, asking her forbearance. “His son, Hans Jacob, bought a large tract of land south of Salem Creek, on the other side of town, where he built a farmhouse.”
“Where our grandmother took care of us,” she finished for him. She pushed down an incongruous memory of the two of them around the age of three playing in an enormous mud puddle and their grandmother finding them smeared and wet. She picked up her coffee cup to keep herself from laughing.
Frank smiled, his eyes warm. “I remember it fondly. But before that, Hans’ son, named after his grandfather, so another Jacob—” he held up fingers to keep them straight “—gave part of his estate to an organization of mostly Moravians that he was a member of. They built three more houses and allowed a church to be built there.”
“Oh,” Jane said, “Miss Essig’s house and yours.” She looked at Anna. “So that big white antebellum must be the other one. I don’t know who owns it.”
“That’s the thing,” Frank said. “No one person owns any of them. The organization still holds those houses and the land the church is on in trust. Jacob Frey put in his will that the organization was to keep the title to those properties in perpetuity.”
So those estates in her old neighborhood had not sold off their land as she’d previously thought. It had belonged to her own kin.
Frank continued, “In a way, our family already owns the house you’re living in. And we’ve always honored our great, great, great grandfather’s wishes.”
“I never knew this before,” Jane said. “Thanks for the explanation.”
He nodded and took a sip of his coffee, then frowned at the cup. It had probably grown cold.
“So, may I know what this organization is?” Jane asked while an assistant freshened everyone’s coffee.
Mr. Boehme leaned forward. “That’s why I’m here, Ms. Frey,” he said, his voice resonant and rich. She wondered if he was a singer. “I am the current head of the OGMS.”
“OGMS?” she repeated.
Mr. Boehme smiled. “Omega Grant Management Systems.”
“So this company manages real estate? Writes software?”
“We do property management, among other things,” Boehme answered.
She mulled this over, then said, “I’d like to see all the relevant documents.”
Mr. Holler slid a large manila envelope down the polished table toward her. “I believe you’ll find copies of everything here. Study them at your leisure. Let us know if you have any concerns.”
“May I have access to the originals if necessary?”
“Yes,” Mr. Holler said, “but the papers establishing the trust are kept down at the archives. You’d have to consult with them to see it.”
The Moravian Archives were housed in a brick building kitty-corner to God’s Acre. Jane had always thought it looked like an old-fashioned school. She’d never been inside, but knew it held some of the oldest documents in the country, many of them still not translated from eighteenth-century German.
Mr. Boehme leaned forward. “I’m sure that wouldn’t be a problem, as long as you follow their procedures for handling antique papers. I could set it up for you if you’d like.”
“I’ll let you know if that will be necessary,” Jane said. She slipped the envelope into her briefcase and stood. Mr. Holler’s eyes rounded in surprise. “Thank you, gentlemen. Ms. Szeges. I’ll look these over with my attorneys and let you know if they are to our satisfaction.”
✬ ✬ ✬
As soon as she got home, Jane spread the documents out on the table in the breakfast nook, then called Lois Williams. She’d first started using Lois’s legal services when she worked in New York and had kept her on retainer through her various moves.
“Jane—” Lois’s voice worked like a shot of espresso “—have you finally come to your senses and decided to sue those bastards for age discrimination?”
Jane laughed. “It’s nice to hear your voice.”
“What’s up? I’ve got two minutes before I’ve got to run off to another meeting.”
Jane caught her up quickly. “I’m sick of being jerked around. First the job, now this house situation. I just want to be sure I’ll be safe living here as long as I want.”
“Sure,” Lois said, “just fax me everything.”
“You do realize I don’t have a secretary anymore,” Jane quipped.
“Think you can remember how to work a fax machine?”
Jane chuckled. “I can figure it out.”
“I’ll look them over in the next few days, then get back to you. You know you should have told me about this before you moved in.”
“I know. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”
“Getting senile already?”
They laughed.
“Come visit,” Lois said. “We’ll go out on the town, see a show.”
“Sounds great.”
“Later.” Lois hung up.
Maybe I should take a trip up there, Jane thought. The roar of the city might be just the thing to break her nostalgia or whatever it was that had taken hold of her.
Jane hooked up the fax to her laptop and did a test run. It worked on the first try. She skimmed the documents as she sent them out. The attorneys had included what amounted to a rental agreement explaining that she could live in the property indefinitely, but couldn’t make changes without the agreement of the board of OGMS and that the house could not become part of her estate. She had a friend who’d built a cabin in a national forest and the situation there had been similar. One of the signatories to this agreement was a John Szeges. She wondered how he and Anna were related. Maybe brother and sister. They certainly didn’t live together.
Her great, great, great grandfather’s will appeared to be about a fifth-generation copy. She wasn’t sure it would come out clearly on the other side. Maybe she’d have to go down to the archives after all. It might be fun to see. She could get a family history done. She’d lost the one her father had given her years ago. Maybe they’d discovered something new. She ran her finger over the old signature. At least they couldn’t take away those roots.
She gave herself a shake. What had come over her? She’d spent a good forty years happily away from here. Now she was pursuing her childhood musical dreams, owned the dog she’d wanted as a ten-year-old, was getting to know family again, tracking down her ancestral records, and had a date with her high school sweetheart, who had called yesterday. Next she’d get married, put up a white picket fence and pop out 2.5 children. Just like Uncle Pat wanted. Except it was too late for that.
A seal at the top of the next document caught her eye. A tree with something written beneath it, too fuzzy to make out. The initials OGMS stood out at the bottom. The border was scribed with what looked like Greek, but she couldn’t read it. A trip to the archives was definitely in order. But first she got ready for another visit she’d been putting off for too long.
✬ ✬ ✬
As Jane’s faxed documents printed out in her attorney’s New York office, a man pulled duplicate copies from a third machine in a separate location. The halogen desk lamp sharpened the angles of his face. He read each page as it was received, his eyes avid. His plan was working perfectly so far. When the machine beeped to indicate the transmission was complete, he stacked the pages carefully. Two vital documents had been blurred. Surely the attorney would tell Jane to resend them. Or he’d get into the archives himself. His contact there believed his cover story.
✬ ✬ ✬
Uncle Pat still lived out in the country. Suburban sprawl had not reached his land, tucked in a hollow between two old homesteads that had become prosperous horse farms. After a long stretch of white picket fence, Jane turned down his dirt drive. Only a few feet in, the trees thickened overhead, the underbrush scraping against her car. Across the creek, kudzu had choked the hill and taken over a stand of trees. That stuff could eat a house in one summer.
Jane parked under a spreading maple and checked to be sure her star pendant was tucked safely under her blouse. The beagles set up a loud baying as soon as she took a step toward the moss-roofed house, its paint peeling off all along one side. She glanced over at the caged animals, remembering how as a child she’d urged her uncle to let his dogs run free. “It’s not fair, keeping them locked up,” she’d said.
“They’re huntin’ dogs, not pets.” He’d spat a long stream of brown liquid and moved his chewing tobacco to the other cheek. “I take ’em out plenty.”
She’d always brought them treats, escaping the family visits and going out to the dogs, feeding them and letting them lick her hands. Until her uncle caught her at it. Now she walked toward the house, steeling herself against the hope in the dogs’ voices.
The screen door opened and a young woman appeared. She wore a flowered housedress, faded and loose, her wispy red hair caught up in a quick twist. She straightened her dress, tucked a stray strand behind her ear, then nodded when Jane stopped in front of her. “Granddaddy told me you was coming,” she said.
Jane introduced herself and extended her hand. The young woman frowned for a minute, then put her limp hand in Jane’s. “Misty.”
“Uncle Pat was my mother’s brother.”
Misty’s eyes shifted toward the door.
“So, we’re second cousins?” Jane asked.
“I reckon. My dad’s Elmer.”
Jane tried to remember him, but failed. She nodded like she did.
“Don’t just stand there jawin’,” a voice bellowed from inside the house. “Let her in.”
Misty rolled her eyes, the first sign of any spunk, and moved aside. “We’d best git inside afore he tries to get up.”
Jane nodded again like she understood, but was even more confused. Inside, a well-worn sofa took up one wall and a frayed arm chair stood at an angle. The pot-bellied stove still dominated the room. Newspapers and logs were stacked near it, none too neatly, along with a box of kindling.
“So where is she?” The voice emanated from the back.
Jane turned to Misty, her eyes asking the question.
“I been takin’ care of him since the operation.”
“Operation?”
“Cancer,” she whispered.
Misty led the way through the hall and stopped at the bedroom door. “Here he is.”
Jane peered around her, feeling again like the child she’d been the last time she’d been here. Uncle Pat sat propped against several pillows, their cases now grey rather than white, a pile of magazines next to him. The top one sported a man with a rifle and spiffy hunting clothes. She looked back at her uncle, still clean shaven, searching for bandages, any sign of where the surgery had been, but saw only flannel pajamas with a long brown stain on the front.
Her uncle reached out his hand. “Come here and let me look at you. Just like your mother, you are.” He gripped her wrist tight and she winced, trying not to pull back.
“Well, thank you, Uncle Pat. How you doing?”
Misty shifted at the door. “Can I git you anything?”
“Nothing for me,” Jane said.
“Bring her a chair, girl. And some tea.”
“Oh, don’t go to any trouble—”
“Ain’t no trouble,” he spat out. “Do like I say,” he shouted. The last word came out as a gasp and he started to cough. Misty rolled her eyes and handed him a dirty handkerchief. He hawked and spit. Jane took a step back. He wiped his mouth and handed the hankie to Misty, who took it and left.
“I didn’t know you’d been sick, Uncle Pat. You should have said something when I called.” Jane sat in the chair from the kitchen table Misty brought her, draping her coat over the torn upholstery. “What do the doctors say?”
“It’s them chem trails that’s got me.” He peered at her through watery eyes. “You know ‘bout them, don’t cha?”
“Can’t say as I do.” She caught herself falling into their vernacular. Her mother had struggled to stop speaking this way all her life.
“Figures,” he mumbled.
Misty appeared and handed Uncle Pat a fresh handkerchief and set a Mason jar full of sweet tea on the bedside table. She handed a second jar to Jane. “Call if you need anything,” she threw over her shoulder. The door to the bedroom next door closed and the muffled sound of the television came through the wall.
Jane picked up her tea and took a tiny sip, then a gulp. Misty had added some kind of fruit juice and lemon. Delicious. She looked up to find Uncle Pat studying her. “Chem trails?” she said, trying to get back to their conversation.
“You don’t need to pretend like you believe me. Got that big college degree, but ain’t got no common sense. Just like your mother.” His eyes took on a far-away look.
“I could help with the doctor bills.”
He looked back at her and frowned. “They done passed that socialist medicine now. Whole country’s goin’ to hell.”
“Just let me know.”
“I got my Medicare. I don’t need no charity.” He took a long swallow of his tea.
Jane suppressed a smile, not bothering to point out that his Medicare came from the government and some people would call that socialist. These holes in her relatives’ arguments used to drive her crazy when she was younger.
“So, you come home now?” he asked, his tone suddenly mild.
“My company downsized,” she began.
“Got fired, did ya?” He chuckled with glee.
Jane sat back in her chair, wondering why he was so pleased. Then she decided to just tell him. What difference would it make anyway? “They gave my job to a younger, prettier woman,” she began.
“Whore.”
She couldn’t disagree with him there. “And my old music teacher passed away.”
“She’s doomed to hell fire, just like the rest of them Papists.”
“She was a Moravian, Uncle Pat, not a Catholic.” Jane didn’t bother to explain that the Hussites had been one of the first groups to rebel against Catholic rule. Her mother had told him at least a hundred times. He didn’t know the history of the religion he preached so vehemently.
He scowled at her. “Just like your mamma. Her own family not good enough for her. Married into those Moravian heathens.”
Jane forced herself to stay still. Anyone who didn’t belong to Uncle Pat’s gospel church was a Papist or a heathen in his eyes, sometimes both, depending on his mood. Then she said, “She asked me to take care of her house.”
Her uncle frowned. “Who did?”
“My music teacher.” Jane waited for him to nod. “You remember the one near Daddy’s house where I grew up? The English Tudor?”
He blinked. “That was always a pretty place.” He picked up the tea again, then set it down without drinking. “Guess I won’t see your mamma again when I pass into glory. Some of the family’ll be there, though.”
“Are you in much pain?” she asked.
He ignored her question. “We was the closest in age, your mamma and me. We used to run around in them woods, climb trees. She was as good a climber as any boy.” His eyes glowed. “But she turned on us. Went and got all highfalutin’.” He shook his head.
“I’d love to hear more stories about those times,” Jane said, meaning it.
“You wanna hear ’bout the depression, do you? Eatin’ beans for weeks on end. Couldn’t get no work. You with your fancy job. Took you all over the world.”
“I thought you’d be pleased if family did well, Uncle Pat.”
“This world’s a vale of tears. Says so in the good book. Anyone who trucks with sinners is damned sooner or later. That’s what you did, girlie.”
Before she could think of a response, a mischievous look came over Uncle Pat’s face. “Now you done got fired and you’re all alone, right?”
“I still have plenty of family here.”
“You never got married, did ya?”
Here we go. Jane sighed.
“No, sir. I guess I was too busy at my job.”
“You’re one of them bull-dykes, most likely.”
Jane’s eyes went wide. This was new. “Excuse me?”
“Just like the rest of them bitches over to Salem College.” Jane opened her mouth to say something, but he marched on. “Got that Single Sisters’ House. Dykes, every last one of ’em. Whores.”
“How can they be both dykes and whores, Uncle Pat? Isn’t that a contradiction?”
“Don’t you sass me.” He pointed a finger at her.
Jane stood up. It was worse than she remembered. “Let me know if you need anything, Uncle Pat. A ride to the doctor, someone to take care of your dogs.”
“You always cared more about those damn dogs than your own kin,” he spat.
She turned to leave and found Misty standing in the hall watching. Jane pulled an old business card out of her pocket, wrote her cell phone number on it. “Call me if you need anything.”
“We’ll be all right, I reckon. Have been all these years you been away.”
Jane nodded. Fine, if that’s the way you want it.
“Nice to meet you,” she said aloud.
“You leaving already?” Uncle Pat’s voice was querulous, aggrieved. “You just got here.”
Jane turned halfway, exasperated.
“He’s just that way,” Misty whispered. “Getting worse, too. Doctors give him two months at the most.”
“God will damn those quacks,” he shouted. Apparently there was nothing wrong with his hearing.
“Take care, Uncle Pat. I’ll come see you again.” She knew she was lying.
“Watch out for those adulterers you’ve taken up with,” he said, eyes narrowed, his face full of venom.
Jane turned and walked toward the front door.
“Whore,” he shouted after her, “Heretic.”
Outside, Jane marched over to the row of dog pens and started opening the tiny cages. The beagles swarmed out, tails a blur, licking her hands. They ran to the bushes, lifting their legs or squatting as the case may be, then circled back and turned their noses to the ground, milling around. One lifted his head and bayed. The rest of the pack sniffed around him, then they took off into the woods as one.