by AJ Scudiere
The wall where they’d found the packet of letters, the top one of which suggested that the writer would kill her child, had held other things, too. After he’d cooled off a bit, Evan had come back and finished the job by himself much later that night. But he’d found the need to make two piles—one for the dead wall pieces and a second for a few items hiding behind the plaster.
There had been a diary and a second stack of letters from another time frame. A baby outfit and a set of clothes for a grown man, stained with what must be blood.
Despite his find, Reenie had been angry that he hadn’t woken her and let her catalog things as they came out. She’d been mad that he’d just made a pile, rather than marking each exact stud where the items had been found. It had only added to her ire from what he’d said earlier. And he found he couldn’t take it back, so he’d let her stay mad.
Now she smiled. “According to Ivy, the wall was built around the late 1800s, but the letters were from 1803 to 1805. The clothes she looked up; they are from around the 1820s. I went out to the family plot, and guess what!?”
Reenie didn’t wait for either of them to answer.
Evan had known his sister wouldn’t guess, but Reenie didn’t and so her next words covered right over Kayla’s “I have no idea what to guess.”
“There’s a grave for an infant that died in birth, only a few weeks after that letter!”
“Wow.” Unable to think of anything else to say, Evan glanced at Kayla. He could have predicted the look on her face. She looked like she was horrified and trying to cover it up.
Kayla, too, said “Wow.” She said it just as Evan had, same inflection and everything. She’d learned a long time ago to mimic someone who fit in, someone that she trusted, so Evan wasn’t surprised that she used his own word to cover the fact that she was appalled that Reenie was excited about the death of a baby . . . possibly a murder.
Though this wouldn’t help Kayla take to Reenie, Reenie beamed at his sister, something that didn’t happen often.
“I know! We have some twisted history, us Hazeltons. And that’s going to bring people here to visit!” She turned and started away, calling back over her shoulder, “I’ll tell you all about it at dinner!”
Kayla shrugged at him, and he knew she didn’t think that selling the murder of an infant was the way to go, so he tried—as he always did—to smooth the way. “It happened, and it’s history. That kind of thing occurred more than people think, and it will help educate the people who come here.”
His sister nodded back at him as though accepting that excuse, but then she changed the subject, not swayed from the task they had been on for hours. “I calculate that we don’t have time to get this whole wall out by dinner, but if we tackle the smaller one first, we should get done a little early.”
Grinning at her, he started an old game. “When do you think we’ll finish?”
Kayla pushed her glove down to check the shiny surface of her analog watch. It was a men’s watch, gold, with roman numerals and a ticking second hand. It was only slightly different than the one he’d given her for her thirteenth birthday. When one died, she went in search of a nearly identical replacement. “5:42.”
He frowned then looked at the wall, assessing the work needed. “Over.”
She nodded and they got to it.
Kayla won. They had finished at 5:41. Evan had been on Reenie’s case for years to triple her estimated time for any task, in hopes that she wouldn’t continue to be perpetually late. Kayla, on the other hand, could figure a task to the minute. Which was why he only ever bet the over/under.
Dinner was at six, so they hauled the tarp out to the trash, dumping all the debris. They kept some pieces; they were after all part of Hazelton House history. But they didn’t match the antebellum version of the plantation that they had decided to portray, so Reenie and Ivy had declared the dead wall parts interesting but not part of the final product.
He made a second run while Kayla poked at all the fireplace stones. The mechanical engineer in her and the OCD-like quality that came with Aspergers demanded that she check the rooms and structures for soundness. When he came back in a second time, he found her with a heavy stone pulled from the hearth, and she was unrolling a huge oiled cloth.
“Ev, check this out.” She didn’t look up.
He didn’t look down. He’d had enough of women and their findings. “I’m taking a shower, then I’m going to come back in and get you for dinner.”
He’d seen that intent expression on her face before. If he didn’t come back, she would miss dinner, and maybe breakfast tomorrow, too. She might forget the value of the original hardwood floors and start making notes on them. Luckily, she only carried a grease pen.
If he hadn’t been so exhausted and hungry, he might have stayed. Whatever she was unrolling had her enthralled.
3
Kitchen, Overseer’s House
“So.”
Evan sat back as Reenie started up again. Actually, it was wrong to think of it as “starting up,” she hadn’t quit all through dinner. At least the information was interesting. Kayla was paying little to no attention, looking off into space.
“The infant grave that matches the letter we found, is for a boy. Alfred Elmore Hazelton. He’s the fourth son and fifth child of Martin and Charlene Hazelton. And he’s the only child not to survive to adulthood.”
Ivy finished the bite she was chewing and asked, “Are these your ancestors?”
“They sure are. We are a pretty screwed up bunch. Martin and Charlene are my great-something grandparents. My grandmother, Charlene Carlyle Hazelton married Edwin Carroll. She was the last of the Hazeltons; that’s where the surname changed.”
Evan didn’t follow all the names and genealogies that Reenie was rattling off. But even mentally absent, Kayla did. “You’re a Charlene, too.”
Ivy looked at Kayla, then at Reenie, then back at Kayla. “What?”
Kayla pointed at Reenie. “She’s Charlene Temple Carroll.”
“So where does ‘Reenie’ come from?” Ivy was not Southern with a capital S. Not the way Reenie was.
Reenie sighed. “My mother was the second daughter born to her mother. No sons. The first daughter of the eldest Hazelton son is always named Charlene. So my aunt is the Charlene in my mom’s generation. She actually goes by ‘Charlene.’ My grandmother went by Charlie, and she was a cold bitch, which you wouldn’t expect from that nickname. Anyway, Charlie had no sons, so when my mom had me before Aunt Charlene had any children, she named me Charlene,” Reenie shrugged, “Oldest daughter in the generation and all that. My mother was single at the time, so she waited a few years until she was married to come home and show me off to Charlie. Apparently, my grandmother went off her rocker and nearly disowned my mom for it, since the name belonged to my aunt’s first daughter. The way my momma tells it, Charlie was more upset over the name than the whole baby-out-of-wedlock thing. And never mind that Aunt Charlene only had boys and the chain would have died out completely if my mom hadn’t done it. So Mom immediately looked for something else to call me and apparently as a toddler I called myself ‘Reenie’ and it stuck.”
Evan had never heard that before. He’d never thought to ask how she’d gotten such an unusual name. It was simply hers, it fit her, and she was Southern. If he knew one thing about Southern women, it was that they often had odd names. “So your great . . . great great grandmother might have killed your great . . . great great uncle at birth?”
She shrugged. “More ‘greats’ than that, but it’s looking that way.”
“Your genetics concern me.”
She rolled her eyes, “You don’t even know your genetics past your grandparents. Don’t give me any guff.”
Guff. There was a word that was pure Reenie. But he didn’t have time to think about it, Reenie was already leaning forward to share more dirt. “It gets juicier!”
He wasn’t sure he was up for more juice. But Ivy leaned in, too, and both the wome
n glanced at Kayla, who showed only a passing interest even after joining the conversation for a beat.
Reenie dove back in with gusto. “So . . . those letters are addressed to ‘E’ and signed ‘L.’ It took me a while to figure out Martin’s wife went by ‘Lena.’ But I’m still looking for ‘E’—he’s been harder to find. He’s a friend of Martin’s and visits the family periodically. She mentioned another plantation, Mulberry Grove, but it burned in Sherman’s March, so there won’t be anything there.”
Ivy blinked. “You did all this today?”
Instead of tearing down walls or doing some much-needed planning, Evan thought. But he knew better than to say it. There was a modicum of peace in the house and he wasn’t going to mess with it.
Reenie smiled. “I love the Internet.”
Evan now regretted asking Kayla to install it.
He chewed the rotisserie chicken Ivy had bought at the local grocery store. None of them really cooked beyond the basics, and town was five miles away. Springfield had only a few thousand residents, which gave it two gas stations, one big and one small grocery, and a tiny handful of other businesses. Savannah was only about twenty-five minutes away, and that was a good part of why they thought this venture had a fighting chance. Still, at least one of them had to learn to cook. Anything other than the combo Taco Bell/Pizza Hut was a drive.
Reenie wasn’t even eating; she was too busy talking. Wanting to point this out, Evan shoved more chicken in his mouth to quell the urge and keep the peace. Then Reenie turned her eyes on him. This could be bad.
“That diary was Carlee’s diary. Carlee was fourteen in 1805 when the last letter was written.”
Ivy interrupted, “Is she another Charlene?”
“The only daughter of Lena and Martin.” A brief nod, then Reenie thought for a moment. “Well, given Lena’s history, maybe she wasn’t Martin’s daughter after all.”
Kayla smiled. “Maybe you aren’t a Hazelton at all then.”
Evan felt his teeth grind. Kay could be a trial. She honestly thought it was an interesting development that the family line could be skewed and impure. Just as Reenie had said. His sister had no idea that it could devastate someone to find out they weren’t who they believed they were.
Reenie froze.
He felt his shoulders sag. They shouldn’t have hired Ivy. They should have hired a man so that he wouldn’t be left swimming in this shark-filled estrogen pool.
Reenie’s head tipped as she thought about it. “Maybe. But I have legal inheritance of the house.” Then she sighed. “And if you check out the house portraits, either I’m genetically related to Lena and Martin or else the painter was both unskilled and psychic.”
Kayla laughed.
Evan almost choked on the broccoli he had swallowed in an attempt to look normal and stay out of things. This was epic. Maybe he should shut up more often.
Reenie missed the moment for what it was and kept rolling. “Carlee apparently had a crush on a young man who visited the plantation often. This was when she was fourteen. But the diary spans the later years of the letters. I haven’t read it yet, but I’m hoping it will reveal more, like who E is.”
Evan held back his groan. He was practicing shut-up-ism. It was going to be his new religion.
Kayla, now a bona fide part of the discussion, spoke up. “So what you need to figure out next is who put the stuff in the wall.”
Ivy joined, too, nodding at Kayla. “That was an odd lot of items to put in together. They must all have been buried at one time. Something someone didn’t want laying around to be found.”
Evan kept eating even though he was full, the conversation roiling around him.
“So,” Reenie paused for just a small moment. “It sounds like typical, Southern, hide-it-in-the-house-somewhere history. So the question is: who and why and when.”
“That’s three questions.” That from Kayla. “But who was the right age to be involved in wall building in 1870? And what happened in 1805 that someone in 1870 thought was better removed from the family history?”
There was no answer to that, yet.
But if Evan knew Reenie she’d find it or die trying. She picked up her plate, her food only half-eaten. “When y’all are finished, just leave stuff on the counter. I’ll be back to put it away.” Then she disappeared down the hall, probably to get started on that diary.
Ivy’s plate was empty, but she hadn’t been storytelling the whole time the way Reenie had. “I’m going to clean up the rest of the chicken then head back to the big house.”
She had her own room there with a window unit for air-conditioning and a space heater in the corner. She had an old four-poster bed that was original to the house. She’d cleaned and polished it the first day they were here, as well as fixing up the matching armoire. One trip into Savannah and Ivy had a sewing machine, fabric and some cutting boards. The next day she’d had curtains, bed drapes and a coordinating bedspread. If the wall paper hadn’t been so old and peeling, it would have looked like Ivy slept in the 1700s.
In contrast, the house here—where he and Reenie shared the back room and Kayla slept in the old “office”—was 70s’ crap. The kitchen counters had been updated with laminate, and the cabinets had been painted over several times, hinges and all. The stove was olive green and the counters robin’s egg blue. Evan cringed every time he came in here.
He was convinced of two things: (1) If he put a marble on one side of the counter, it would roll to the other end and fall off. He refused to try. (2) The previous generation of Hazelton-Carrolls had suffered not just from tragically short life spans but tragically bad taste.
Forcing himself not to dwell on his current dwelling, he turned to Kayla. “What did you find in the fireplace? Were you trying to find loose stones?”
She laughed. “I’ve found several. None of them had anything hidden behind them until now.”
“It looked big.”
She went into her room and came back with the rolled and flattened piece in her hands. But then there was no clean spot on the table to lay it out. Kayla’s desk would be cluttered with organized piles of papers, and if anyone touched anything, she knew and was bothered by it.
“Bring it back and we’ll spread it out on the bed. Reenie will want to see it.” Maybe he could continue some of the not-good-but-passable-will between the two women.
They followed the dark tan hallway to the end to his and Reenie’s room. In the middle was a queen-sized bed from a big box store. Had the house not been so hideous in its own right, the bed would have looked crudely out of place. But the layers of paint obscured the fine work in the moldings, the carpet was an old, nearly-shag model, and the cheap corners of the low-slung bed fit right in.
Reenie sat cross-legged near the head, propped on pillows, the letters stacked to one side of her, her log notebook on the other, and the diary in her lap where she read.
“Kayla found something under a stone in one of the fireplaces.”
His girlfriend perked. “Is it more letters? Lovers would tuck letters into secret places for the other to find. This was particularly true when they were courting and couldn’t be together.”
Holding up the thick paper, Kayla shook her head. “Blueprint.” She sat and unscrolled it across the bed, carefully revealing labels, notes, and descriptions of materials.
Evan frowned. It looked like a machine. “Do you know what it is?”
Reenie said nothing; this was not her area of expertise. But Kayla spoke, “It looks like a generator of some kind, but nothing I’ve ever seen.”
Still cross-legged with the diary in her lap, Reenie leaned forward to examine it. She grabbed at the corner and tugged it toward her, “Look, it says ‘E.W.’ and it’s dated Oct, 1821.”
Kayla spoke at the same time, pointing somewhere else on the diagram, “This gear is out in the carriage house.”
Kayla sat in the carriage house on the packed dirt that still carried th
e imagined smell of old wood and horses. She told herself that the horses had never been kept here, only the carriages themselves, but there was something about lifting the hand-hewn T-latch and coming through the wooden door to where there were still ruts in the ground from years of wooden spoke wheels, and just a few treads from car tires.
The light was poor, the lack of windows standard in this type of outbuilding. There was space for three carriages—according to Ivy, a large amount for an average family, but typical on a wealthy plantation then—each with their own double doors for entry. Two spaces had seen far more use than the third, and a smaller, person-sized entrance was embedded at the far left side. That entrance was not the size of a typical household door today, but Kayla’s healthy five-foot-eight frame could fit.
She’d brought in a standing light, running an extension cord from the Overseer’s House. Though there was power in the big house, she didn’t trust it. The Overseer’s was the only part that had been in continual use until just a few years ago when Reenie’s cousin had moved out to be closer to one of his baby mamas; it was the only part that had been pulled through time to anywhere near the modern century.
So Kayla flexed the neck of the lamp until a cone of light pointed the way she needed. There were ten contraptions lined up and stacked along the back wall of the third bay. She almost laughed at the thought of Civil-War families using their garages for crap storage just the way any modern person would. It seemed there were many more American traditions than just the Fourth of July and apple pie.
The rusted pieces stared back at her, hand cranks off to one side all at different angles. It would soothe her to align them all, but she didn’t want to touch them. The wooden boxes built around them had started to decay, showing rusted wire-mesh barrels inside, bent and twisted comb fingers that had once sat perfectly straight, picking cotton fibers through the holes and leaving the seeds behind. Why there were so many on this particular farm, Kayla couldn’t say. But they had all been put away at the same time, it seemed. All lined up neat, maybe a hundred or more years ago, and not touched again. Kayla respected that.
