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January 1779
CHARLOTTE ELLIS LURCHED from one side of the muddy lane to the other, her hands flailing as she strove to keep her balance. Ahead of her, she could still see John Martin with that scandalous mother of his.
"It’s time he learned the truth," she said aloud, although there was no one close enough to hear her. What a shame. It was time everyone knew the truth. Everyone. What good was that information in her packet if she had no chance to benefit from it?
She increased her speed as much as she was able, mentally tallying the benefits she had already reaped from blackmailing various community members about their small peccadillos, but this was worth so much more—just to see the look on the face of Mary Frances Martin when her wrong was revealed to that bastard child of hers. That would be worth a great deal to Charlotte.
She called out to them. At least, she thought she had, but they kept walking, forcing her to try to scream. John Martin’s head jerked, as if he had heard something, and he looked back over his shoulder.
"Are you in distress, Mistress Ellis?" He came close enough for her to touch. "May I be of service?"
She lifted one bony finger and prodded him in the shoulder. "Service? Oh yes, nephew. Ha! You look surprised to hear me call you that."
John turned his head to look at his mother, who had stayed where she was, rooted to the muddy lane as if planted there.
"My brother Sayrle would have been proud of you if only he had stayed around to see his bastard grown."
"Let me help you to your sister’s house, Mistress. You needs must lie down for a bit."
"Aren’t you the polite one?" She let him take her arm. After all, he was kin, wasn’t he? Kin of a sort.
Mary Frances Martin, that adulterous woman, came up and took her other arm. Charlotte might have objected, but she felt a bit weak, so even the hand of a fallen woman was better than none.
"Rupell would not have believed me," Charlotte babbled, "but then Rupell is dead. He is dead, is he not? He ate the castor beans I gave him, so he cannot come back to worry me. To bother me. To ..." Even Charlotte could not say those hateful words of what she had endured from that man every night for almost a decade.
She was only vaguely aware of the look exchanged over her head between John and his disgusting mother as they steered her around a large mud puddle.
"Anthina," Charlotte prattled on. "Anthina Shipley should have known better than to cross me. Death’s cap mushrooms. Very effective. Very, very ..." Her words dwindled to nothing. She stopped suddenly almost at the front porch of her house, and pulled her arm from John’s grasp. "You did not know, did you? You have never known."
"Known what?"
"Where you truly came from, you stupid dolt. Look in a glass sometime."
"You are overwrought, Mistress." He stepped onto the porch and knocked on the door of the parsonage.
Sarah Russell came, and Charlotte could see that long-suffering look come over her face.
"Would you like me to knit you some stockings, sister? Just like the ones I knitted for Anthina?" She cackled, jerked her other arm free from Mary Frances Martin, and spun on her heels. "Must get some yarn. Must get my packet of secrets. Must let everyone know..."
Her words gave out as she pitched onto her knees and then landed with her face in the puddle of mud they had so recently skirted.
Sarah cried out and rushed forward, but her sister was gone before Sarah reached her.
Jane Elizabeth Hastings hurried up at that moment. "I saw her fall. Is there ...?"
But her question remained unanswered as she saw that there was indeed nothing more that could be done for Charlotte Ellis. Nothing except the last services women gave to the dead.
"John, carry her inside," Sarah instructed, "so I can clean her and prepare the body. Will you help me with that office, Jane Elizabeth?"
JOHN BENT TO pick up what was left of the frail old woman. He had seldom heard such rantings, none of which made any sense. Then again, everyone in town knew that Charlotte Ellis had lost her mind some years ago. He wanted to ask his mother about all that talk of Rupell—had that been Widow Ellis’ husband? And Anthina Shipleigh. Something about stockings. But the old woman’s words had been so garbled and made so little sense. Something, too, about mushrooms.
Even as he laid her body on the bed in the back room of the parsonage, his thoughts had already moved ahead to springtime. He would soon be able to take his son Jerrod searching for tasty mushrooms among the trees at the base of the cliffs across the Metoochie River. They grew well in the moist soil that accumulated before the openings into the dark caves.
Mistress Hastings brought his attention back to the crumpled remains of Charlotte Ellis. "She so preferred this bonnet." She removed the mud-drenched article in question.
"It has seen far better days," Mother said.
"I will clean it," Mistress Hastings declared.
THE FUNERAL WAS well-attended, but Mary Frances privately thought it was because of the promised feast afterwards. The women of the town seemed more celebratory than Mary Frances thought was strictly proper, but had she herself not rejoiced for a brief moment, just as she saw Charlotte Ellis fall? How could she despise in others an attitude she held deep within her own heart?
John had never said a word about the accusations Charlotte had thrown out in those last few minutes, other than to inform the members of the council at the public meeting the day before that Mistress Ellis had not said anything of import at the end. Mary Frances had been privately amused to see several of the council members looking mightily relieved, and she wondered if Charlotte Ellis had been the keeper of private knowledge about those men. It was none of her concern, though, and she put the thought out of her head.
The new bonnet Jane Elizabeth Hastings had used to cover Charlotte’s thinning hair looked incongruous somehow, as if it belonged on the living head of a much younger woman. Charlotte had been a faded old woman, and her old bonnet with its rather limp strings had matched her well.
For a moment, Mary Frances wondered what she herself would look like when she was dead and in her own coffin.
AFTER THE FUNERAL feast, Jane Elizabeth returned to her house and studied the wilted bonnet she had left hanging to dry over a chair back. It had so little life left in it, almost like the husk of the woman they had just buried. Even in the peacefulness of death, even with that clean dry bonnet, Charlotte Ellis had not looked pleasant.
Jane Elizabeth ran her hands along the shirred and frayed edging of the cap and over the initials stitched so carefully into the center of the back. Charlotte may have been a harridan, but she was—had been—an accomplished sempstress.
Charlotte’s granddaughters had already said they did not want the cap. Jane Elizabeth set one of her flatirons on the hearth to heat. Her thrifty nature would not let her throw out the cap, but her memories of Charlotte Ellis and all the havoc she had wrought for the past sixty-odd years—as long as Jane Elizabeth had known her—would not let her use it for herself or even pass it on to another woman. She should have buried the woman in it, even though it had been still damp.
Once it was pressed, she wrapped it in a small gray cloth from the rag bag and stuffed it into the bottom of the bag. Someday she might deal with it, but not now. Someday her great-granddaughters might find it. She hoped it would amuse them.
~ ~ ~
ANITA IGNORED ALL OUR comments about the admittedly pathetic-looking white bonnet with the limp shirred edge. "My hat’s much better," she declared again, and I found myself wanting to slap her. I didn’t like Clara Martin either, but there was no need to rub it in.
Fortunately, Rebecca Jo had her priorities straight, and she was old enough that Anita would almost have to defer to her. "First, I want to hear about these initials. What are they, Maddy?"
"C E E." Maddy looked at Carol and Sadie, a question in her eyes as well as in her voice.
"Charlotte Endicott Ellis," Carol said. "Possibly." She seemed to be figuring something in her head. "The timing could be right. These bonnets, as I already mentioned, were mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries." She nodded toward Sadie. "Do you know of any other CEEs in the history of the town?"
"Nope. I think we may have a winner here. Museum definitely."
"Shouldn’t it go to Charlie?" I asked.
Charlie wrinkled her nose, as if she’d just smelled something stinky. "It’s ugly. The museum is welcome to it."
So much for family connection. But then again, this tall blond-rooted woman, whoever she was, might have no connection to the Ellis family whatsoever. I sure hoped Reebok could track her down.
"Museum," Clara said. "What museum?"
We took a few minutes to explain about the museum Maddy would be curating. We touched on the book she planned to write, but nobody—least of all yours truly—wanted to bring up the subject of what that history was intended to reveal. Clara might have murdered her husband, but I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for her, and I wasn’t planning to be the one to tell her all her queen aspirations were based on a fantasy.
"Biscuit," Maddy said, "I’ve been trying to write reminders to myself, but I’m running out of room in the notebook I brought. Do you have a notebook or just some paper I could borrow?"
"Sure," I said. "In the office downstairs. There’re a couple of reams sitting on the shelf above the desk. You’re welcome to as much of it as you want."
"Thanks. I’ll pick it up before bedtime."
"Just be sure you knock first. Doc’s using the office as his bedroom." And Reebok had been using it to make some of his phone calls, but I didn’t think I needed to mention that.
"Will do."
I had a sudden jolt—an ah-ha moment, I guess. A whole ream of paper was hardly worth anything nowadays. I’d so casually tossed it out there—Maddy could take as much as she needed. I knew without a doubt that Silas or Mary Frances would have treasured the paper I treated in such a cavalier manner.
Anita stepped into the center of our informal circle, holding her hat aloft as Maddy turned to place the hatbox with the bonnet next to the museum dresser. "I love this hat."
I peered at it from several angles as she turned it around and around. "That’s a hat? It sure doesn’t look like one." What it looked like was two long dark blue ribbons with a jumble of heavy silvery gray yarn chains—crocheted, maybe?— dangling from them.
Anita spread the ribbons apart a bit, revealing a wire connecting the two. She placed the wire over her head and the ribbons, along with their assorted dangles, curled in front of her ears and down well below her collar bone.
"Designed to draw the eye to a certain portion of the anatomy," Pat said. "Wouldn’t you agree?"
"It certainly is flirtatious-looking," Rebecca Jo agreed.
Glaze tilted her head from side to side. "I bet that wire thing was intended to be hidden beneath piles of curls."
Anita’s face stiffened. I’m sure Glaze hadn’t meant to call attention to how thin Anita’s hair was—almost as thin as Ida’s—but now that she’d mentioned it, I wondered why I’d never noticed before.
Hat hair. That was why. Anita usually had her hair all fluffed up, but that knitted hat she’d worn to cross from Matthew’s house to ours had flattened every bit of teasing.
~ ~ ~
1824
CATHARINA SWORE THAT Hubbard John was going to be the death of her. He may have been the smallest of her children at birth just six years ago, but he had more than made up for that laggardly debut with a determination to taste everything, see everything, get into everything, and experience everything he was capable of.
Had he learned, though, that his actions had consequences? He had almost died last summer when he climbed a tree to look closer at a hornet’s nest. He had come close to drowning in the Metoochie River when he tried to fish with his bare hands. He had nearly lost an eye when he ran full tilt into the hedges around the Hastings house as he chased a pheasant who had exploded from under his feet as he ran through some tall grasses. And now, he was like to be killed by his mother for near ruining her hat, the first new one she had made—or tried to make—ever since Hubbard John had learned to walk.
The women of Garner Creek had missed Catharina’s millinery skills—skills Catharina had learned from her grandmother, Prunella Farner—in all that time, so much so that Catharina had sometimes dreaded opening her front door for fear yet another woman with yet another request for a special hat would stand there. Catharina hated to disappoint anyone, but really, what could she do while she had a son who got into everything? Disciplining him did not make a bit of difference. His curiosity was entirely too much a part of his very being.
Now, with his being old enough to attend the village school, she had hoped to take up her old pursuits. Seven orders for hats awaited her attention, but now this straw concoction with the fabric roses was practically in ruins. She knew she should have waited until the boy was out the door and on his way to the schoolhouse before bringing out the hat that she had labored over last night after he had gone to sleep. She had been too excited to wait, though. All she had done was turn aside for a moment to stir the porridge. When she turned back, Hubbard John was parading around the kitchen with the dog on his heels nipping at the unwinding strands of red fabric.
Fortunately, the straw base was still intact.
She would have to dye more fabric to make more roses. Sighing, she set the hat aside and flipped through the other six orders. Three women from Martinsville had driven a wagon all the way up the valley to Garner Creek just to order new hats, despite the millinery shop in Martinsville right on the main street beside the river. The order from Grace Surratt caught her eye. Grace had the loveliest hair, prematurely gray—silver, really—but still thick and rich. Catharina knew that this design, daring though it was, would set off Grace’s silvery curls in the loveliest way.
Blue ribbons cascading down the sides, Grace had said, with silver decorations of some sort.
Catharina sketched several ideas before she alighted on one that would, she thought, be perfect. All she needed to do was find a flexible wire with which to join the two sides. She could crochet the thick silvery gray yarn she had been given by Mistress Garner last year. With Grace’s curls piled up to hide the wire, the girl would entice any man at the spring cotillion. Including Arthur Hoskins who, according to Mother’s last letter, already seemed head over heels around Grace.
Now, all Catharina had to do was be sure to keep the hat and all its fixings hidden from Hubbard John. She wondered briefly if she might send him to live with his grandparents for several months.
~ ~ ~
BOB CLOSED THE OFFICE door in back of him. "What’s going on, Matthew?"
Matthew rubbed his palms up and down either side of his face, pushing his light brown beard all askew. "I probably should have said something while you were over there"—he tilted his head toward where his house sat on the corner uphill from Beechnut House—"but those walls are so thin, I thought somebody might hear me."
Bob nodded. After Hubbard’s death, he’d questioned the Foleys and Clara and Matthew individually, but he could remember having been aware of low-voiced conversation in the next room as he’d done so.
"It may be nothing."
Bob waited.
"Or I guess it might mean something." Matthew squared his shoulders. "I’ll leave it up to you to decide."
"Go ahead. These walls are pretty well insulated here."
"I gave my room to Clara and Hubbard. It’s downstairs. I don’t like stairs much anymore."
Bob nodded.
"There’s really only one other room with beds—the room Buddy uses when he comes to visit, but it’s got two twin beds in it, and Clara asked us to move one of those into the room with Hubbard so she wouldn’t disturb him while he was resting. Nick and I had a devil of a time hauling that thing down the stairs." Matthew frowned. "I probably should have given that other room to the two of them—to Clara and Hubbard, I mean—but I didn’t know if Hubbard would be able to climb all those steps."
When Matthew remained silent for a few seconds, Bob said, "Go on."
"So Anita slept on the second twin bed upstairs, and Nick and I slept in the living room. I’ve got those two big old couches, you know."
Bob nodded. He did remember them. Saggy in the middle, but certainly long enough for Matthew and probably almost long enough for Nick.
"I usually sleep pretty soundly, but that night my gut was bothering me. Maybe something I ate. Or"—he made a wry face—"maybe I was still hungry. Anyway, I woke up in the middle of the night. No idea what time it was. I was lying there when Clara opened her door and headed over into the bathroom. I couldn’t see her, but who else could it have been? Hubbard couldn’t walk that fast. I didn’t move or anything, and all of a sudden I heard Nick slip out from his blankets. He couldn’t have been going to the bathroom. We’ve only got the one on that bottom floor. It wasn’t two, three minutes before he was back. And then Clara came out of the bathroom and nobody said anything, and then a couple of hours later I guess that’s when Clara discovered Hubbard was dead and she raised a ruckus and ... and well, that’s when I called you."
"What did you do when Nick returned to his couch?"
"Nothing. I just stayed there where I was as quiet as I could be."
"Thanks for letting me know, Matthew. Like you said, it could be nothing. Just in case, how about if you don’t say anything to anybody else, okay?"
"You got it."
BOB STEPPED INTO the kitchen and motioned as discretely as he could to Reebok to join him in the office. Luckily Reebok always had a good excuse to leave the other men. He had that enormous mug he needed to keep filled with hot chocolate. Bob waited for a couple of minutes before he slipped out himself. He wanted to be sure nobody picked up on what was happening.
"What’s up, Chief?" Reebok asked as soon as Bob closed the office door behind him.
"We have a complication." Bob sat at the desk.
Reebok set down his mug and pulled out his notebook.
"I just had a talk with Matthew."
"Yeah?"
"This is going to require some finesse," Bob said. He outlined briefly what Matthew had told him.
"So," Reebok said after thinking it over, "we were pretty sure that Clara smothered Hubbard, but now it looks like it might have been Dr. Foley who did it?"
Bob nodded. "Could have been."
"But we have absolutely no proof one way or the other."
"Right." Bob could almost see the wheels turning.
"We have a witness," Reebok said. "Mr. Olsen sees Dr. Foley go into the room where the murder takes place."
"He didn’t see him. He heard him, but he was sure of what he was hearing."
"Right. So we have the opportunity, what with the room, the pillow right there, and Mrs. Martin out of the picture for the few minutes it would take." He leaned forward. "But we don’t have a motive."
"That’s the problem," Bob agreed. "I don’t know of a single thing that links Nick Foley to Hubbard Martin. Other than that they’ve both lived in Martinsville all their lives and they’re both on the town council. And Foley is probably Martin’s dentist. I’ll need you to find out as much as you can about any sort of other connections they might have."
"You think it could be something in their past?"
"It almost always is," Bob said. "Murders don’t just happen. They build over time. The actual killing might be spur-of-the-moment, but the reason for it?"
"Something that’s been festering," Reebok said. "For a long time."
"Usually."
Reebok nodded. "Looks like I’ll be on the phone for a while, Chief."
"I’ll unplug the one in the kitchen." He knew he didn’t have to explain why. Garner was sharp.
Garner also had connections all over the state. Bob wasn’t sure how he’d done it—maybe attending that regional police academy in Atlanta had started it—but Reebok Garner seemed to know everybody. Everywhere.
~ ~ ~
"NOW THAT ALL OF US have hats," Amanda said, "could we please get back to the Mary Frances Myra Sue letters?"
She may have phrased that as a question, but it sure sounded more like an order.
"It’s time for the April diary entry first." Ida sounded equally insistent.
Maddy and Glaze pulled two more chairs toward the circle while we all adjusted our seats to accommodate the newcomers. Of course, we couldn’t just start in reading without first explaining what we’d found—the diaries, the letters—and what we’d learned about the history of the town. We skirted around the whole issue of Mary Frances Garner’s marriage to Hubbard Brandt, though.
I knew it would come up eventually, but I was just as happy to defer it. Apparently everybody else was, too.
Amanda looked around. "Is everybody with me?"
The two new ones looked a bit unsure, as if they weren’t quite ready to get into whatever this was going to turn out to be, but the rest of us were chomping at the bit.
Nobody got bit.
Marmalade jumped into my lap and settled down.
Monday 18 April 1779
Some months ago Charlotte Ellis died under painful circumstances. Painful not for her, for she went quickly, but painful indeed for me. Just before she died she accosted my son and me and began raving about her brother Sayrle. He was perhaps the least objectionable of all the Endicott brothers, for he treasured reading. Charlotte had claimed as much to me before, but I had laughed in her face, which led me to believe that she had forgotten her ridiculous accusation.
She had not forgotten, though, or perhaps her mind, riddled as it seemed to be of late, latched onto the one thing that she felt could hurt my John. Fortunately, John did not pay heed to her, other than to offer to take her to her sister’s house as she was most obviously in distress. When we arrived there, Charlotte fell. I am sure she was dead before her body came to rest in the muddy path.
Two other things Charlotte said, and I am reluctant to repeat them here, but feel I must. She admitted to having killed—murdered—not only her husband Rupell, but Anthina Shipleigh as well. Poison I believe, in both cases, although it was difficult to understand her rantings.
"Poison." Maddy grinned maniacally. "Oh, boy! I feel another book coming up!"
"Quit gloating," Dee said. "Just because we’ve discovered a murder up here."
"Two murders," Maddy said, returning to a more sober expression. "Can you believe she killed her husband?"
"Yep," Pat said, and I wondered what the story was. We never really know what goes on in the private parts of a marriage. Of course, if I’d been married to Dave Pontiac, I probably would have killed him a long time ago.
You are married to Softfoot.
Thank goodness I had Bob for a husband.
"And that other woman, too," Maddy said. "Who was she?"
"Anthina Shipleigh," Carol said. "She was one of the women who left Brandtburg in 1741."
Something was niggling at the back of my head ...
Do you have fleas?
... but I couldn’t quite bring it to mind. I stilled Marmalade with a pat along her back. "Wasn’t there something ... doggone it, I can’t remember ... something about ..."
Everybody waited—not exactly breathlessly, but at least quietly—while I searched my memory.
"That’s it. Something about Sayrle. Remember early on in her diary, Mary Frances said he had warned her not to accept any gifts from Charlotte." The more I talked, the clearer the memory came back. "Especially not any food. I think that was what he said."
"You’re right," Maddy crowed. "He must have known what Charlotte was doing."
"Even if he just suspected that she was murdering people, it would have been enough for him to warn Mary Frances, considering how he felt about her."
"We’re still just making suppositions," Carol said. She turned to Ida. "What else does she say?"
Although I have always believed Jane Elizabeth Hastings to be level-headed in the extreme, I do wonder why she chose to adorn Charlotte’s body in a newly-made near duplicate of the shirred bonnet Charlotte has worn ever since she sewed it that first year on the trail.
"Shirred bonnet," Ida said. "Shirred bonnet. There’s your answer, Carol." She cocked her head over toward the museum dresser. "The C-E-E must have been Charlotte Endicott Ellis."
Carol lifted her hands slowly, palms upward, probably unwilling to commit her historian’s opinion just in case there had been another C-E-E in Martinsville history.
"Oh, come on, Carol," Pat said. "Isn’t it obvious?"
I must admit to some duplicity, for I asked Sarah Russell after the funeral—it was in January of this year—if I might help her in cleaning out her sister’s belongings. She was grateful, indeed, and thanked me for my Christian charity in taking on such a task. Charlotte’s daughters should have been the ones to shoulder the burden, but so far as I have seen, the two of them have never shown any daughterly concern for their mother or for her wellbeing. It was, therefore, only Sarah and I in Charlotte’s small house, sorting through her meager fund of badly soiled dresses and aprons. We were both surprised to find a heavy pouch of coins tucked under a few smallclothes.
"Small clothes?" Pat interrupted. "What are those?"
"Underwear," Carol said.
"I thought women didn’t wear undies back then," Dee said. "Just their chemise, and it doubled as a nightgown, didn’t it?"
Carol nodded. "But most of the women had pouch-like contraptions, sort of like underpants, that held the rags they used for their monthly bleeding. I think that may be what she’s talking about."
"Wouldn’t Charlotte have been old enough to not need those anymore? Did they even have menopause back then?"
Sadie shook her head at Dee. "There has always been menopause, but we never used to talk about it, and I’d imagine it was even more of a no-no subject in the seventeen hundreds."
"I doubt they had a word for it," my mom said.
How, we both wondered, could Charlotte have amassed such funds, when she had done nothing that we knew of to earn any. She never sewed for others, although she was skilled with a needle.
"What does sewing have to do with anything?" Pat asked.
"If you keep interrupting, we’ll never get through this," Ida grumped.
"It’s a good question," Carol said. "Sewing was one of the few ways women had to make money at that time."
"No Rosie the Riveters back then." Easton smiled at Sadie.
Anita looked confused, but we didn’t clue her in.
"In fact," Maddy said, "most women then never earned any money at all. They depended on their husbands for that."
"And Charlotte didn’t have one."
Maddy smirked at me. "She had one. But she killed him."
Her daughters will of course inherit the coins, along with the small house, although I could tell that Sarah Russell was as reluctant as I to turn over such a windfall to two young women so undeserving of it.
When I found the stiff oiled packet of Charlotte’s notes, I was hard-pressed to conceal it beneath my cloak without Sarah taking notice of what I did. Here in these private pages, I will admit that I had strung a particularly large and sturdy canvas pocket about my waist before ever I went to help with my 'Christian charity,' for I had hoped to find Charlotte’s writings. Glad I am that John believed her words were the mere rantings of a deranged mind. Glad I was, too, that the weather has been so inclement and I had need to wear my heaviest cloak, which helped immeasurably to hide the offending package, for it was thick indeed.
"So, that packet of Charlotte’s," Dee said, "is the one Constance took when Mary Frances died, right?"
Pat nodded. "But she gave it back to Charlotte’s granddaughter, remember?"
I just happened to be looking at Clara when Pat said that, and was taken aback by the poisonous look she threw across the circle. I couldn’t tell who she was aiming it at, though.
Ida set down her diary.
"That’s it? She doesn’t say whether or not she read it?"
"That’s it," Ida told Pat. "End of this entry."
"They sure are getting short," Pat grumped. "You’d think if she had six months to write about, she’d be a little chattier."
Sadie smoothed a hand down her green sweatshirt. "After a lot of years, it can seem almost too much to go on accounting for every single day."
"I’m not asking for every day," Pat said, "but a general summary would be nice."
"Don’t worry." Amanda waved the next letter—carefully, so as not to bend it. "She tells Myra Sue."
Pat looked considerably relieved. I had to admit I was curious myself.
Monday 18 October 1779
My dear Myra Sue,
I have been tempted almost beyond bearing, tempted to read the contents of Charlotte’s package, and you are the only one I can confess this to. Had Miss Julia still been alive, I might have been able to discuss this with her. Perhaps I should write to her as well? What think you?
But she is not alive, nor can she answer me. Of course, neither are you and neither can you. Still, you and she both live in my thoughts so clearly. Oh, my dear friend. I laid down my quill just now and tried to envision your face, and I cannot see it. I cannot recall the color of your eyes. I am not even sure about the color of your hair, although I brushed it countless times, including that last night before your death.
I do not want to grow old. Or rather, I am happy to grow old, for it means I still live to see my grandchildren growing. But I do not want to end my days as Charlotte Ellis did, raving and forgetful. Help me, my friend. Can you not look down on me and lend me some of your angelic wisdom? Can you not tell me what color your eyes were?
Despite the frailty of my mind, I remain always
Your loving friend.
Amanda set the letter down, her face troubled.
"I wouldn’t worry if I were you," I said. "Any woman who can state her thoughts that clearly is obviously not losing her mind."
"As to not remembering the color of Myra Sue’s eyes"—Sadie waved her hand negligently—"senior moment."
"Brain fart," Glaze said, and we exploded into giggles. It wouldn’t have been funny if Maddy or Pat had said the very same thing. But coming from my elegant sister?
"I forget things all the time," Pat said, "and have done since I was in my teens. That’s when I started making lists, notes, anything to help me remember the important stuff."
"Like grocery lists or doctor’s appointments?"
Pat looked resignedly at Glaze. "Like what time to start making dinner."
Ida looked at Pat like she thought the woman was nuts. Fortunately, she didn’t say anything. Just picked up the diary.