Just as the midday lull began, Margaret rushed into the shop. “I have news.”
I glanced up from the register and counted out the change for a customer. “Thanks for visiting us at Union Street Bakery.”
The woman smiled, accepted her bag of sweet buns, and barely glanced at a grinning Margaret as she left the store.
Margaret hesitated as she waited for the woman to leave and then hurried to the front door and locked it. She flipped the sign from OPEN to CLOSED.
“Hey,” I said. “We aren’t closed.”
“You’re gonna want to hear this.”
“I can listen and work. Open the door. Those customers keep us in business.”
“God, when did you turn into Dad? I mean, grow a paunch and lose some hair and you two will be twins.”
“Bite me. Now, open the door.”
She opened it. “Now, I’m not so sure I’ll tell you what I found.”
For reasons I didn’t understand, I simply laughed. “You had something to tell me a couple of weeks ago but it kinda got lost in Terrygate.”
She waggled her brows. “This is even better. I mean, the other stuff was interesting but this is better.”
Seeing Margaret’s dance of excitement made me laugh. Just to tease her, I made a show of turning toward the cappuccino machine and cleaning the milk dispenser. Whatever Margaret knew, not telling was killing her.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” she said. “You think I have to tell you or I will bust.”
I wiped the milk spout on the machine. “I know you will bust.”
“I will not bust. I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“One. Two . . .”
She groaned her frustration. “Okay, okay, big-time business gal. I’m caving. I cannot hold this in another minute.”
I didn’t turn immediately, but carefully folded the damp towel first. “So what’s up?”
“Okay, okay. The trail on Susie went cold.”
“You told me.”
I knew Margaret had been methodically digging through wills, documents, and papers, but I’d not paid much attention. She had also been digging through Sally’s letters. The search for Susie had been an entertaining distraction but the reality was that I needed to worry about my own life, not the girl’s tragic, short one.
“What I didn’t tell you is what became of her.”
Despite my best interest not to be pulled back into this mystery, I found myself turning.
She smiled. “The girl did get on the ship but there is no record of her getting off it.”
“Margaret, if she jumped, you said it yourself, she likely drowned. I mean, the ship was in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay in January, wasn’t it?”
“I know. I know. But something about the whole thing kept bugging me.” I started to protest but she waved her hand. “So, I went to the ship’s inventory log. Turns out McCrae crackers filled the Diamond’s storerooms.”
“Yeah, I remember Dad saying old Shaun made good profits feeding sailors.”
“Then I decided to see what I could find out about Sally Good McCrae. The wife of our illustrious ancestor.”
Our ancestor. I didn’t see the point in making an issue. “Why look into her past?”
“There was something about her letters that kept bugging me.”
“How so?”
“I kept getting the sense that everything she said was double-speak.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a line in her first letters to Shaun. It’s something like, ‘Please tell my Hennie that I so enjoyed the tin of her biscuits. I remember standing back home in Alexandria at my own mother’s side making and forming the dough that we sold at market.’”
“Her mother worked in the bakery, too?”
“She could have been a home baker.” Margaret ran her fingers through her hair. “But it is kind of a strange coincidence that both mothers baked and sold goods.”
Interest sparked in me and I leaned into the counter, my arms folded over my chest. “Keep going.”
“I searched birth records. I searched wills. Marriage records. Nothing. There is no record of Sally Good until the letters to Shaun begin. And then in 1864, she arrived in Alexandria accompanying Jenna’s body. Shortly thereafter she became Mrs. Shaun McCrae. She was twenty-four and he was forty-eight. She becomes an active member of the community. She was a big supporter of education and funded the local schools. If you ask me, I’d say Susie changed her name to Sally Good.”
It made sense. “If Susie was Sally, she’d have mailed her letters to Shaun and he’d have passed them on to Hennie, who lived in the Randolph house until Elisabeth died in 1864. And the journal?”
“My only guess is that Hennie found it. Anyone else would have destroyed it.”
“What else do you know?”
“I found a picture of Sally.” Her eyes danced with such excitement I couldn’t help but get involved.
“And you have it.”
“I do. It’s a wedding portrait taken of her and Shaun.” She opened the folder and held it out to me.
I studied Sally’s pale eyes, brown hair, and lovely smooth skin. “Holy shit. Is that Susie?”
“It’s hard to tell. We only have the one grainy picture of Susie a child. But it does look like her, doesn’t it?” She pointed to the groom. “Now take a look at Shaun.”
I studied piercing eyes, a nose that had been broken several times, and a stern jawline. “Mystery man.”
“Bingo.”
“Shaun is haunting me? But why?”
“No one would have figured out the Sally-Susie connection if you’d not come back to Alexandria.”
I stared, transfixed, at the couple. “So how did she get off the slave ship?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Do you think anyone knew her heritage?” I asked, staring at the picture, searching for anything that might confirm our thoughts.
“Doubtful. Her marriage to Shaun McCrae would never have been considered legal if her heritage was discovered. In fact, she could have gotten into serious legal trouble if anyone knew she’d passed herself off as white. And it may have started as her protecting herself, but when Sally and Shaun had children she would have been worried about them.”
“Mrs. Randolph died at the end of the war?”
“Yes. Just before Sally/Susie retuned to Alexandria.”
“That was handy.”
“From what I understand, Mrs. Randolph got sick right around the time Sally wrote home and said she was returning to Alexandria.”
“That’s coincidence.”
“Maybe Hennie decided she needed to protect her daughter.”
“Poison? She poisoned Mrs. Randolph?”
Margaret shrugged. “Who’s to say?”
“And her son wouldn’t have remembered Susie. He’d been just a baby when she left.”
“Others must have known.”
“They seemed to have kept her secret. By all accounts, no one guessed that Mrs. Randolph’s slave returned to town and became Mrs. Shaun McCrae.”
“So she lived her life with a secret.”
“A huge secret. I suspect she had to always be on guard.”
Had Terry spent most of her life guarding a secret she always feared would be discovered? “That is so sad.”
“Read this last letter.”
November 30, 1920
My dearest granddaughter,
I so enjoyed your visit to the bakery this morning. When you walked into the bakery today, I was drawn back to the precious days I had with my own mother. It has been fifty years since I’ve seen my mother, but not a day passes that I don’t walk through the bakery and remember her sweet face. As I watch our bakers knead the dough, I remember her baking lessons and I
realize all that she tried to teach me in those brief years we had together.
It is my greatest regret that my age may keep us from standing in my kitchen. I so want to teach you to bake as my mother taught me and I taught your mother. I want to talk to you of the past filled, I dare say, of thrilling tales of an auctioneer’s block, the putrid hole of a slave ship, a savior hiding me in a cracker barrel, and a frightening trip to Ohio. Fear kept me from telling such tales to your mother, but age has made me bold and I did so want to share them with you.
I sit now in my chair, fashioned by my dearest Shaun, and stare at the river I love so much. The spring thaws have arrived and the fishing boats, dormant this winter, have resumed their daily treks into the bay.
My bones ache more with each day and I no longer have the desire to mix my dough, which makes me believe my time is nearly past and I will never be able to tell you or anyone my stories. So I have assembled my letters and placed them in this box so that you or your children may one day read the history of your family.
All these years I’ve lived a lifetime pretending to be someone I’m not. The last months spent with my dying mother were done in secret. When people I knew from my true past stared too long, I’d worry and fear, not for myself but for Shaun and our children. Shaun always labeled the lies necessary if we were to remain together and as much as I understood his reasons, I never totally accepted the deception. I am a woman of two worlds, who was forced to deny one to live in the other.
The wind grows quite cold now and my toes have gone numb from the still chilly ground. Regrets will always linger in the shadows waiting to unleash melancholy, but it is important, dear Mabel, that you never let past regrets rob you of life’s blessings.
Your loving grandmother,
Sally Good McCrae
I glanced up from the letter. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Margaret nods. “Shaun helped Susie escape to Ohio.”
“And the two just started corresponding?”
“It would have been a way to get news to Hennie. Remember, if Shaun’s actions had been discovered Mrs. Randolph would have gone out of her way to see him arrested and ruined.”
“And when Jenna died, Sally or Susie returned with the body?”
“Despite a twenty-year age difference, she and Shaun must have developed a bond.”
“And Mabel was their granddaughter, which means her parents were related.” My head was spinning with the intertwining connections.
“Half-second cousins, which in those days was quite acceptable. The sticky part would have been that Susie was African-American and all her children and grandchildren would have been considered the same. In Virginia, the law stated if you had one drop of African-American blood you were considered such. And that would have made all their marriages illegal.”
I shoved long fingers through my hair. “Damn.”
Margaret nodded. “You do realize something else, don’t you?”
“What?”
“We are both descended from the same couple.”
I laughed. “I’m a real McCrae.”
“Imagine that.”
• • •
When I climbed the steps to the attic that night, I felt different. Not exactly happy and buoyant but not weighed down and lost as I’d felt so many nights before. There was a sense of acceptance. I understood that my life was not perfect, that Terry and I weren’t finished. She might believe that I was a part of her past but something in me said that we’d meet again. I didn’t know when and right now didn’t care, but I knew we had more in store for us.
I wanted to believe that Susie had escaped and had been able to not only remake herself in Ohio, but had returned home to live a full and happy life. As I stepped into my room, the sun hung on the horizon and cast orange and gold lights into the room. I turned on a lamp and pulled off my USB T-shirt and flour-caked jeans and shrugged on an oversized T-shirt. I craved a hot shower and change of clothes and maybe even heading down the street to the pub and getting a burger.
As I reached for the tap, the light I’d just turned on flickered once, twice, and on the third blip went out. I stood waiting, knowing someone had come.
“Shaun.”
Of course no voice answered. That would have been too simple. Instead there was a steady thickening and souring of the air. The lightness around me vanished and in its place the dark anger, which I’d felt a couple of times before. My heart beat a little faster as I clenched my hands at my side.
“The secret’s out, Shaun. We know Sally is Susie. And it’s okay. No one is going to hurt her. She’s safe.”
The books stacked on the floor toppled over and the light on the nightstand flickered. A glass on the sink in the bathroom rattled, fell to the floor, and shattered.
Leave.
The message was as clear as if it had been spoken.
Leave.
“Sorry, pal,” I said in a not-so-stern voice. “I’m here to stay.”
Leave.
“No.”
I stood tense and waiting as the energy swirled around me. Sensing I was in some battle of wills, I mentally dug in deeper. “Like it or not, Shaun, I’m stuck here for the duration. I’ve got a family to look after, just as you looked after yours.”
For a moment the sour air swirled but my heart did not race this time and my palms did not sweat. Shaun and I weren’t so different. We would both do what it took to take care of our own.
And then just as quickly as the presence came, it vanished.
The air cleared and the light on the nightstand flickered back on. Releasing a tense breath, I moved into the bathroom and gingerly picked up the broken glass. A shard caught the tip of my thumb and nicked the skin. A trickle of blood oozed out.
I cursed and grabbed toilet paper from the roll and wrapped it around my thumb. Life at the bakery would never be easy. This place would always require something. Dad had said it was never satisfied and he was right. But I was okay with that for now.
“I am here to stay.”
Epilogue
I’d never given a guy flowers. I’d received my share, but I’d never given. Buying the yellow sunflowers had seemed like a great idea at the time, but now as I stood outside of Gordon’s shop on this lovely early May Saturday morning and watched the passersby go in for the grand opening, I was feeling a little foolish. We’d not spoken much in the last couple of weeks and I wasn’t sure if he’d really welcome me.
“Buck up, Daisy,” I whispered. “Don’t be a baby.”
With those words rattling in my head, I crossed the street and walked into the shop and was amazed at the crush of people who’d gathered for his opening. I spotted several of my customers as well as a couple of folks from Suburban.
I caught sight of a group of women and knew I’d found Gordon. The ladies in town who came into the bakery had not been shy about gossiping about the new bike guy who was so hot.
As I wove through the crowd, I bumped into a tall guy wearing a Tour de France T-shirt. He had suntanned features and dark hair. “Hey,” he said. “Love the flowers. Tour de France, right?”
“The tour cuts through the sunflower fields of southern France. Very good.”
“Hey, I know bikes.” He shifted a water bottle from his right to his left hand and extended his hand to me. “I’m Sam. Gordo and I rode bikes together back in college.”
“Daisy McCrae. I manage the Union Street Bakery.” The words no longer tripped on my tongue but flowed easily.
“I’ve seen that place. Very cool.”
“We like to think so. So you in town for long?”
“Maybe.” Twin dimples appeared on his cheeks when he smiled. “I’m starting to like Alexandria a lot.”
The gaggle of women parted and Gordon caught my gaze. He smiled. “Hey, let me go wish Gordon good luck.”
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“Yeah, sure. Maybe I’ll come by sometime and buy a cookie.”
I laughed. “Right.” When I reached Gordon I’d forgotten about feeling awkward about the flowers or even coming. It was just good to see him. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself.” He glanced at the sunflowers. “For me?”
“For you. I thought about a cake or cookies but that seemed too predictable.”
He took the flowers. “Thanks.”
“You’re very welcome. And I wish you many years of good business.”
“Back at you.”
“Hey,” I said before I lost my nerve, “want to grab dinner and a lecture next Saturday?”
“Lecture?”
“Margaret is giving it. It’s about our family and kinda cool.”
“I’d like that.” For a moment we just lingered, only inches apart. The crowd around me faded and I had the urge to kiss him.
“Hey, Gordo!” Sam called. “I got someone you need to meet.”
“He’s interested in investing in the shop,” Gordon said. “I’ve got to go.”
“Saturday, then.”
“Yeah.”
Smiling, I tossed him a final wave and made my way out of the shop. The air outside was cool but the sun was warm enough to make this a perfect spring day.
As I reached the bakery, I could hear yelling. It was Rachel. And I’d never heard her so angry. I pushed through the front door and found her standing by the front register staring with a glare that bordered on wild.
“What the heck is wrong?” I asked. Illness, death, fire, you name the disaster and it flashed in my mind.
“There is a man. A horrible man who smokes and rides an old Harley.”
I didn’t see anyone. “Where is this man?”
“The kitchen. He left his nasty, beat-up backpack right by the register and is rearranging my kitchen. I told him to get out. He told me to call Henri.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. But he is not answering his phone.” Her flushed cheeks made her eyes look all the bluer. “I am out here to call the police.”
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