by Ellen Crosby
There is one other thing you should know that you may not be prepared for: I am biracial. My biological mother is African-American. It wasn’t until I learned about Leland that I realized I was half-white. Or “only” half-black, depending on how you look at it. It was a huge shock to me and, in retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t know growing up because it was very simple to check the “African-American” box whenever the question of race came up on medical forms or college application papers. Otherwise I might have felt forced to choose since you’re only supposed to check one box.
If, after learning all this, you’re still willing to meet me, I’d be happy to drive out to Middleburg or Atoka so we could talk and get to know each other. For obvious reasons it might be best if it were somewhere private. I’ll leave it up to you to suggest the time and place; if I do not hear back from you, I’ll understand that after learning more about me, you might prefer to leave things as they are.
Hopefully,
David
I sat there for a moment, trying to catch my breath. A half brother who was biracial.
I hit Reply.
Dear David,
I would very much like to meet you. We would have privacy to talk at the old Goose Creek Bridge on Mosby’s Highway, just outside the town of Middleburg. I’m at the vineyard every day since we’re in the middle of harvest, but I can get away for an hour, so why don’t you pick the date and time? Perhaps we could meet before Lolita arrives?
—Lucie
Then I hit Send, shut off the computer, and went and found the cognac bottle on the dining room sideboard. I poured myself a glass and brought it back to the library.
I’d sent my saliva sample to the Genome Project because I wanted to learn more about my family and our heritage. Now I knew things I’d never bargained on, family secrets I was certain no one expected would ever be uncovered. I went over to the bookshelves and picked up the Montgomery Bible.
For my own piece of mind I needed to see if I could figure out who CM was. And hope I didn’t get burned. Again.
Though I wasn’t very optimistic about that happening.
Thirteen
The enormous gilt-edged Bible with its weathered brown leather cover, gilded tool work, faded gold cross, and the barely decipherable embossed names of Thomas and Mary Montgomery probably weighed at least six or seven pounds. Two worn grosgrain ribbons, white and black, marked pages in the Old and New Testaments, placed there by whomever had last been reading it. I found them in Psalms, on the page containing the twenty-third psalm, and in the Gospel of John at the story of the wedding at Cana, Jesus’ first miracle. A third burgundy ribbon was placed at the beginning of the section called Family Record. I turned to the last page and ran my finger over my mother’s elegant handwriting with which she had recorded her marriage to Leland and the birth dates of Eli, Mia, and me. Leland had written in the date of her death. I had filled in my father’s death date. Eli’s first marriage wasn’t listed, nor was Hope’s birth. Eventually there would be my marriage to Quinn and Eli’s to Sasha.
We had some catching up to do.
I found the page listing the births and deaths in the mid-1800s and skimmed them. The only names beginning with the letter C belonged to women, but Yasmin had been very clear that she’d found a man’s cufflink. I started over, checking entries from the late 1700s until the beginning of the twentieth century. Nothing. No man whose first name began with C. In a way, that was probably good news and perhaps CM wasn’t related to me.
Maybe it was the victim in the grave who was a relative, after all. Susanna Montgomery, the youngest child of Hugh, who had ridden with Mosby’s Rangers, had only a birthdate listed next to her name: October 5, 1843. The skeleton had been in her late teens or early twenties when she died, according to Win Turnbull. If it were Susanna, it would fit with Yasmin’s assessment of the grave dating from the 1850s or 1860s. There was also the fact that there was no marriage date or date of death—not even a question mark as if acknowledging that no one knew when she died. Had her death been covered up from her own family? By her own family?
Years ago Leland had hired an archivist from the Thomas Balch Library, the history and genealogy library in Leesburg, to assist him with cataloguing our family documents and putting them in chronological order. The archival boxes that had survived the fire a few years ago were stored in a barrister’s bookcase next to my father’s antique partners desk.
I slid open one of the glass-and-wood-fretted pocket doors, and checked the labels on the boxes. I found nothing in the boxes from the 1850s, but when I got to the 1860s I got lucky, especially because several years were missing, having been destroyed in the fire. Tucked among the newspaper clippings about Mosby’s Rangers and the success of their raids thwarting the Yankees between 1863 and 1865 was a letter from Abigail Montgomery, Hugh’s wife and Susanna’s mother, dated August 8, 1862. Somehow it had been misplaced. It took me a while to decipher the crabbed, cramped handwriting, but eventually I figured out that it was a letter to someone named Cousin Simon telling him about the engagement of “our beloved Susanna” to Captain Charles Montgomery. The wedding between Susanna and Cousin Charles, as she also called him, would be a simple affair and would take place when he was home on leave from the war, probably in the autumn.
Reading between the lines, it seemed as if Abigail was not entirely pleased with her future son-in-law’s financial situation, as the owner of the Goose Creek Ordinary, a tavern located halfway between Middleburg and Upperville, in addition to the Rectortown General Store. She also seemed to imply that Susanna, whose marital prospects had not been good, had been lucky to have Cousin Charles take such an affectionate interest in her, asking her to be his wife.
I set the letter on the desk and sat back in Leland’s creaky chair, trying to make sense of what I’d just read and everything I knew after what Yasmin had told Quinn and me this evening. Or what I thought I knew. According to the family Bible, Susanna had never married and supposedly no one knew when she died. Had “Cousin Charles” murdered his bride-to-be when he came home from some bloody battlefield and then tried to cover it up? Had the rest of the family gone along with it for some reason and deliberately left her death date blank? Not because they didn’t know when she died, but because they didn’t want it known that Charles, who was fighting bravely for our cause, had killed her?
The Rectortown General Store, which sat on the corner of Atoka and Rectortown Roads, was now known simply as the General Store. Thelma Johnson had owned the place ever since God was a boy. As far as I knew, Thelma had inherited it from her mother and father who inherited it from her grandparents, and so on. But Abigail had written that Charles Montgomery owned it, along with the Goose Creek Ordinary.
Tomorrow as soon as Quinn and I finished our meeting with Yasmin, I intended to pay a visit to Thelma. We needed to stock up on water, batteries, and candles anyway before Lolita arrived. But I also had some questions about Charles Montgomery that I hoped she’d be able to answer.
I put the boxes and their files back where I’d found them—including Abigail’s letter—turned out the lights, and went upstairs to bed. Quinn was already asleep, his breathing quiet and regular. I undressed and slid under the covers. The night had turned chilly and I moved closer, pressing myself against him and feeling the heat of his body warm me up. He rolled over so he faced me, now wide-awake.
“Hey, you,” he said in a drowsy voice, “come closer. You’re freezing. Why’d you stay downstairs so long? Did you spend all that time trying to find out who that woman might be? Or CM?”
“I did,” I said. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”
“Mmm,” he said. “Tell me everything.”
Everything. “Of course I will.”
When was I going to tell him about the Genome Project and the discovery of a half brother who had sought me out? That Leland once had an affair with a now-prominent African-American woman who apparently wouldn’t want her life disrupted by meeting the adult s
on she’d given up? When was I going to tell Eli? And Mia? The longer I kept this secret, the harder it was going to be.
Mia would be devastated. Eli would be hurt, but I knew he’d also be angry. At Leland, for sure, and maybe at me for opening Pandora’s box. For pulling both of them into a maelstrom of my own making. Eli avoided confrontation like the plague and Mia was a fragile soul.
As for Quinn, I wanted to meet David before I said anything to him. His own father had walked out on his mother before he was born and he never, ever wanted to talk about it. David’s situation would hit too close to home, except this time it was my father—who had hired Quinn while I was still living in France—who had walked out on his son.
“You okay?” he asked now, still sleepy.
I snuggled deeper into his arms and pushed my own confused feelings about what my father had done to the far recesses of my mind. “Now I am.”
“Lucie,” he said, no longer sounding drowsy. “I want to take care of you, you know that.”
“I know. Though you know I can take care of myself.”
“You’re tough,” he said. “That’s why I love you.”
“You’re pretty tough yourself. And I love you, too.”
He rolled over onto his back and pulled me on top of him. “Prove it,” he said.
So I did.
* * *
I FELL ASLEEP SHORTLY after our second round of lovemaking, exhausted from the events of the day and lack of sleep the night before, my mind totally distracted by the things Quinn’s hands and tongue had done to me. Once again he was up before I was and the smell of freshly brewed coffee woke me. I got up and within ten minutes had showered, dressed, and scraped my hair back into a ponytail.
Quinn poured my coffee and handed it to me with a kiss as soon as I walked into the kitchen. “Feel better today?” he asked.
I leaned against him and nodded. “I think so.”
“I’ll get the newspaper,” he said. “Be right back.”
He left the room and I pulled out my phone, quickly scrolling through my mail. David Phelps had replied last night. In fact, according to the time stamp, he’d written back practically the moment he’d received my email.
How about tomorrow afternoon, Thursday? 2 p.m.?
Thursday. That was today. Quinn would be back any second. I hit Reply.
See you today at 2.
The swooshing sound of my email being sent coincided with the kitchen door swinging open. I set my phone on the counter.
“Anything new this morning?” Quinn asked. “I haven’t checked my mail yet.”
“Just the usual stuff. I suppose the Trib did a big story on Jean-Claude’s murder?”
“You could say that.”
He unfolded the paper and laid it on the kitchen table, open to the front page. I took one look and my heart sank. A banner headline dominated the page and it wasn’t about Hurricane Lolita.
DEATH AMONG THE VINES: INTERNATIONAL CELEBRITY WINEMAKER FOUND MURDERED AT HOME OF FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE TOBIAS LEVINE.
Two articles took up the top half of page one. The other half was devoted to Lolita and the tax bill churning through Congress.
The most prominent story about Jean-Claude’s murder was an account of what had happened; the other—with an especially dashing picture of Jean-Claude at the Cannes Film Festival last year—was an extensive biography of his career and his famous family. There was also a grainy picture of Miguel with a photo credit that belonged to someone with a Hispanic surname I didn’t recognize. I wondered how the paper had gotten hold of it and who had given it to them. The article about what Toby had done professionally since leaving diplomatic life and buying La Vigne Cellars—TOP EX-DIPLOMAT REAPS BITTER HARVEST—was on the front page of the Lifestyle section. My name was left out of any of the articles—Kit had kept her word—but she did put in the details I gave her about where Jean-Claude was found, mentioning me only as “a neighbor” who had discovered the body.
Quinn and I leaned over the table, shoulders touching, and read in silence. When we finished, he refolded the newspaper and placed it on the counter next to yesterday’s paper, his mouth set in a grim line. Had it only been a day ago that we were reading about Jean-Claude and Dominique feuding at the Goose Creek Inn in “Around Town”?
“It doesn’t look good for Miguel,” Quinn said.
“I know.”
“What if he really did it?”
“He wouldn’t screw up his chance for citizenship, nor would he leave Isabella all alone with a new baby. I don’t think he’s guilty.”
“Then who killed Jean-Claude, if it wasn’t Miguel?”
“A lot of people around here didn’t like Jean-Claude,” I said.
“Including me,” Quinn said in an even voice. “Come on. If we’re supposed to meet Yasmin at nine o’clock, we’d better get going.”
As we left the kitchen I glanced at the two newspapers side-by-side where Quinn had left them on the counter. Someone had drawn devil’s horns coming out of Jean-Claude’s head and given him a sinister-looking goatee in yesterday’s photograph. Who would do something … never mind. It was probably Quinn.
He’d admitted yet again that he didn’t like Jean-Claude. But he’d never, ever consider murder to get rid of someone he didn’t like.
I was sure of it.
* * *
ON THE DRIVE OVER to the cemetery I told Quinn that I suspected the woman buried in the shed was Susanna Montgomery, Hugh Montgomery’s youngest child and only daughter.
“Except for her date of birth—which was 1843—there’s nothing else listed in the Bible next to her name,” I said. “No marriage date, no date of death. I also found out she was engaged to someone named Charles Montgomery.”
“As in CM, owner of a missing cufflink?”
“Possibly. Maybe very possibly.”
But Quinn was focusing on something else. “Was she going to marry … a relative? Like a cousin, maybe?”
“I don’t think he was a first cousin, but yes, Abigail’s letter referred to him as ‘Cousin Charles.’ He was also Captain Charles Montgomery. He served in one of the Virginia infantry brigades.”
“You do that a lot in the South, don’t you? Marry your own family.” Quinn looked as if I’d told him we also ate our young after boiling them in oil here in the sultry South.
“It’s not just a Southern practice,” I said, feeling defensive. “In many cultures marriage among cousins is quite common. Especially second cousins marrying each other. Look at the history of European royal marriages. They married among themselves all the time, since there was a limited pool of available candidates.”
“It just seems weird to me.”
“You’re from California. You guys invented weird.”
He grinned and parked the green ATV next to the cemetery wall. “So if you’re right, Susanna married her cousin Charles and then he killed her. Doesn’t sound like happily-ever-after.”
“You’re not funny. What if they didn’t get married? What if they argued about the marriage and he got upset and killed her because she didn’t really want to marry him?”
“Or maybe he didn’t want to marry her, so he got rid of her. We could speculate forever, you know,” he said. “Let’s go see this grave site.”
Yasmin Imrie was waiting for us, somehow managing to look chic and stylish in faded jeans and a worn denim jacket over a Hungry Heart Springsteen T-shirt. The items that had been in her storage container yesterday were now fanned out around her—a whisk broom, a trowel, a couple of paintbrushes with big mop-like bristles. Even a pair of chopsticks. The shovel and screen were off to one side next to a mound of dirt heaped on a blue tarp and the entire area around the grave had been marked off by a grid system of red nylon twine that had been tied to a spike protruding from the cemetery wall. Yasmin was sitting cross-legged on another blue tarp making notes in a well-used notebook, engrossed in her work.
I introduced her to Quinn and caught the flicker of a
ppreciative interest in her eyes as she got up and they shook hands. An unwelcome prick of jealousy stabbed me as he smiled back at her. I tried to push it away.
Quinn and I hadn’t set a wedding date yet, though we’d talked about it a couple of times. For now we were content to get used to living together and neither of us felt in a rush to change the status quo. Quinn had been married before; his divorce after discovering his wife’s affair with his former boss had been bitter. As for me, I didn’t want a marriage as rocky and tempestuous as my parents’ had been. In spite of everything I still wanted the fairy tale with the happily-ever-after ending. I wanted to believe it was possible. What I’d just learned about my father—his betrayal of all of us, but especially my mother—and now my overly possessive or, maybe even insecure, reaction to Yasmin’s friendly smile when she met Quinn made me wonder if I’d ever be ready.
But now she was turning that smile on me, standing up, brushing dirt off her jeans, and asking if we wanted to see the excavation site. I said yes.
The skeleton lay at the bottom of a two-foot-deep rectangle. I was surprised at how quickly she’d worked. The skull had been placed in its correct location in relation to the rest of the body, meaning we couldn’t see the consequences of the blows she had described last night. I knew it had been a deliberate decision and I was grateful for Yasmin’s consideration and compassion.
“I removed what was left of her clothes, as you can see. Each item is sitting on a paper bag over there.” She waved her hand in the direction of the shovel and mound of dirt. “We’ll take a look at everything after we’re through here and then I’ll bag it to protect it. The quilt is there as well. It must have been quite beautiful. You can still see some of the original colors of the fabrics in places where it was folded over the body and not exposed to the elements.”
Quinn and I glanced at the area she pointed to, but she was already moving on.
“There are a several items of interest that I found when I uncovered the grave cut,” she said. “I did what’s called a single context excavation.”
