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BY THE TIME she and I got downstairs, the meal was in full swing. I wondered if Amanda had already told the men about the letters to Myra Sue. I sure hoped so. I could just imagine how Dave Pontiac would have made some sort of lame joke about writing to a dead person, and I was happy to miss his weird sense of humor.
Sadie and I set about putting together our sandwiches. I poured her a mug of tea and filled my own cup. I always left my tea mug on the side counter after breakfast. No sense washing it if I was just going to use it again in a couple of hours. Same with lunch and supper. Final wash-up of the evening got it clean and shiny and ready for the next day. Anyway, I always liked to use the same mug. Bob had given me one for my last birthday that said 020—bright red numbers on a white background. Dewey decimal for library and information sciences. It sort of went with my 636.8 sweatshirt.
I joined the rest at the table. Bob asked, "So, besides a recipe box and a bunch of uniforms, what else have you found up there?"
Amanda said, "I found a stack of letters that Mary Frances wrote to her friend Myra Sue."
Rats. Now I’d have to listen to Dave. I waited for the quip I knew would be forthcoming, but Dave surprised me. He just kept eating.
"To Myra Sue?" Reebok cocked his head to one side. He looked like a chickadee investigating a new seed cache. "Wasn’t she the one who ...?"
"Yep," Ida said before he could finish his question. "That’s why Mary Frances never mailed them."
"Anything interesting in them?" Dave sounded like he doubted there would be. For a high-priced corporate type, he was surprisingly dense at times, and he obviously hadn’t remembered that Myra Sue was the one Ira Brandt killed on the church steps.
"No, Dave," his wife said. "We spend all our time up there reading things that are absolutely boring."
Pat’s sarcasm didn’t faze him. "Why do you bother then?"
Before I could say anything, I noticed the expression on Bob’s face—complete disbelief. I wasn’t the only one.
Pat rolled her eyes and threw up her hands. "I. Can’t. Take. Him. Anywhere."
I thought she was being singularly patient, but there was an edge to her words that I’d never heard in the past.
Henry set his sandwich down. "How did those letters end up in your attic?"
"Wish we knew the answer to that," Ida said. "Maybe the same way the Mary Frances diaries did."
"So you think Constance took the letters," Melissa said, "the same time she took the diaries, right after Mary Frances died?"
"Wait," Father John said. "How do you know that?"
"It was in another letter we read," Maddy explained. "One from the great-granddaughter who was with Mary Frances when she died. She said her Aunt Constance opened a bedside cabinet right after Mary Frances died and took out a couple of packets. She could easily have taken the letters then, too."
"That’s right," Amanda said. "When I found them, they were folded in half and tied up with string in a tidy bundle."
"I’d like to hear them," Bob said after a sideways glare at Dave. I think I was the only person who saw it. "If you don’t mind re-reading them, that is."
"I can always use a repeat," Melissa said. Amanda stood and headed upstairs. "It’s hard sometimes absorbing everything that’s going on up there," Melissa continued. "We’ve only read four of them so far."
"Yeah," Dee said. "That’s because we spend a lot of time just trying to figure out what the story is behind the stories."
I had to chuckle at that. "You’re right, Dee. But it’s funny how often we think we’ve reached a dead end, and then all of a sudden we find something up there that ties together with whatever we’ve been wondering about."
"Pass the spicy mustard, would you, Father," Carol said. "That’s one of the things I enjoy the most about being a historian. The way all our stories seem to be connected. Just look at me. Here I am, a professor from Vermont, who’s never been in the state of Georgia before, and now all of a sudden I’ve found a bunch of relatives."
The truth of what she’d said hit home. "That’s right, Carol! You and Ida are probably cousins of some sort."
"Not probably," Ida said. "Definitely." She held up her hand, palm forward. "Put 'er there, cuz," and they slapped a high five across the table as Carol’s sandwich leaked mustard onto her plate.
Amanda came in holding the letter stack high. I was glad to see she had on the white gloves.
"Better wait on those." Glaze cocked her head in Carol’s direction. "Some of us are dripping condiments all over the place."
"Whoops!" Carol looked delighted, for some reason, and it took me a moment to figure it out. If we were willing to razz her, it meant she’d been completely accepted as one of the group. The Attic Women.
"We can’t have our very own favorite historian defacing the artifacts." I tried to mimic that dry tone Ida always used, but my giggles spoiled the effect somewhat.
As Amanda re-read the first four letters, the men were interested—at least, most of them were—but there weren’t any new insights. Most of their interest centered around the approaching revolution.
After the cleanup operation—we had it down to a science now, so it took only a few minutes—Ida led the way out of the kitchen. I caught Sadie’s eye and cocked my head toward Bob, who stood beside the bay window. She took the hint.
I couldn’t hear what they said. In fact, I talked rather loudly about the weather so nobody else would hear them either, but they must have settled on a time to meet because Sadie walked over to join me.
"It doesn’t matter what the weather is, Biscuit. We’ll deal with it as it comes." That settled, she headed for the stairs, and I followed her.
Me, too.
Of course, Marmalade had to get in the last word. I wondered just what that word was.
"This afternoon," Sadie whispered to me at the bottom of the stairs. "Whenever we take a break."
Saturday 18 April 1772
Thirty-one years ago I was married to my Hubbard.
I have a second grandchild now to dandle and spoil. John is as entranced with this boy child as he has been from the start with Marella. They have named the boy Jerrod Silas, and he, like his sister, is hale. The Surratt family celebrates as well, for they endured a number of stillbirths before their newest girl, Betsey, was born on the same day as our little Jerrod. I dreamed last night that the two of them grew up together as great friends and married when they were of age. The airy fancies of a fond grandmother.
Ida stopped. "Does anybody know who Jerrod married?"
Sadie grinned. "I do. His wife’s name was Betsey. I read about it somewhere or other, and I remembered the name because it was unusual to find Betsey spelled B-e-t-s-e-y." She nodded at the journal. "Is that baby girl’s name spelled with e-y on the end?"
"It sure is."
"Bingo," Carol said. "Another puzzle piece falls into place."
"I’m glad she was writing backwards," Melissa said.
"Why?" None of us knew where she was headed with this.
None of us except Carol. "You’re right, Melissa. That dream of hers could have had her branded as a witch back then."
With a shiver, Ida continued reading.
Jerrod was christened during a Sunday service, and entertained the congregation with his many cooings, not even crying when the water was dribbled upon his forehead. Afterwards he was the center of much attention. Charlotte Ellis made a point of looking at me when she declared, 'The babe has the look of his grandfather, does he not?'
I could see many people furrow their brows at this, for of course the child looks nothing like Homer Martin, or anything like the Surratts either, but he does indeed look like my Hubbard. Before I could think of what to say, Miss Julia, standing beside me, stepped forward and placed her hand on Jerrod’s head. 'Yes. And see how much he looks like his father.' All present agreed that he did indeed have the same high forehead and the same shape of eye as my John. I thank God for Miss Julia and the deft way in which she diverted everyone’s attention.
I do not curse, but I cannot believe that anyone who knew the truth would think less of me for despising—and therefore cursing—Charlotte Ellis. Would that she would lose her mind completely.
I looked over at Charlie, but she was biting at the edge of her thumb. Winter dry skin, I thought, although I didn’t see how she could be so focused on that when these letters were filled with such compelling information about her ancestor.
Maybe they were compelling to me only because I was—how do the French say it?—a woman of a certain age. But then Maddy spoke up, and I realized she and Dee and Amanda were all young, and they were as caught up in the Mary Frances saga as I was.
"He sounds like a cute little guy."
"Sure he was," Dee said. "Remember that sketch Silas did of Hubbard and John?"
Amanda picked up the next letter, glanced at it, and then kept reading silently.
"No fair," Maddy said. "Tell us what it says."
Amanda had a suspicious glint of moisture in her eyes. "It looks like it’s all about death. I almost hate to read it."
Sunday 18 October 1772
My dear Myra Sue,
I dread to hear a step at my front door, for of late all the news that has come has been of death. Death for people who are elderly is to be expected, but seven children have died within the past two months. There were none from people you knew in Brandtburg. Indeed all of those are approaching old age themselves and will likely not have more children.
Enough of this. I must speak of happier tidings. Do you recall the young Sheffield man, the cabinetmaker who came to town some twenty years ago? The one who set up his shop beside the dry goods store.
"Sheffield?" Melissa’s gaze bounced back and forth between Rebecca Jo and me. "It looks like we’re getting everybody lined up with a genealogy."
"Oh, I’ve known all along that my husband’s roots went way back," Rebecca Jo said. "But I’ll bet you didn’t have any idea about this, did you, Biscuit?"
"Some of it, but I never heard anything about a cabinetmaker that far back in Bob’s line."
"Now those bookshelves he built for you make a lot more sense," Glaze said with a distinct twinkle in her voice.
"Near the dry goods store," Sadie said. "I wonder if she’s talking about the building where Frank Snelling has his frame shop."
"Best picture frames in the Southeast," Melissa told Carol.
He married one of the Hastings brood, and their son Curtis is now besotted with Lydia Russell, although I doubt the marriage will happen soon, for they are both too young to wed yet.
"Definitely Bob’s family line," I said. "Rebecca, didn’t you tell me he’s descended from Lydia and Curtis Sheffield?"
"That’s right, but I never heard anything about the first Sheffield. Not until Myra Sue’s last letter."
"Read that last sentence again, Ida," Carol requested. She listened as if savoring each word. "Besotted. Such a lovely old-fashioned word."
Mistress Sheffield bore twins just last week. It was a difficult birth, of course—twins always are, aren’t they? At first the boy and girl seemed to do well, but after two days they both declined and died within hours of each other, as if they neither one wanted to live alone.
Alas. I was trying to write of more pleasant tidings, and here I am centering on death once more. The Surratt family lost a baby boy, a girl was born dead to one of the Russell offspring, Jane Elizabeth Hastings lost a grandson just two days old, and—perhaps hardest of all—Brand Tarkington and his wife Parley had two of their children, a boy and a girl, carried off with a fever that struck so suddenly we knew not from whence it had come. I refuse to think it was God’s will, as many of the portentous busybodies in town are saying. The boy was but five, and the girl only three.
Amanda looked up from the letter. "Oh, Melissa. I’m so sorry."
Melissa shook her head. "I wish I knew whether my ancestor was older or younger than those two. Does she say anything about any other Tarkington children?"
Amanda scanned ahead. "No. Just another sentence or two."
I dread the thought of more dire news such as this. I thank God daily my grandchildren continue to thrive.