by Becky Wade
“Do you happen to know where I can find records for the city of Athens like the ones you keep here?”
“Athens is in Clarke County, and that county’s records are kept in the courthouse in Athens.” She consulted her computer, then jotted down a phone number.
Genevieve checked her watch. Too late to head to Athens today. It would take her an hour and a half to get there, and it was already three forty-five on a Friday. She’d have to wait and travel to Athens on Monday—no, Tuesday. She and Natasha had made plans for an early lunch on Monday with Wyatt’s mother.
The clerk slipped the number for the Athens courthouse across the counter to her.
She accepted it, glanced at Sam, and caught him watching her.
Her blood rushed in response.
Oh my.
This really wasn’t good.
They made their way out of the building in the direction of his truck.
She’d been in love just once, during her college years. With a funny, confident fraternity president and baseball player named Thad. They’d dated for two years, and she’d been dreaming of marrying him when she’d learned that he’d cheated on her. Their relationship had ended in a blast of shrapnel.
Since Thad, it was unusual for her to experience a pang of attraction as powerful as the one she’d just experienced for Sam.
Since Thad, she’d gone on what felt like hundreds of first dates and had pretty much exhausted the supply of single men her friends knew, were related to, or worked with. She’d liked many of the guys she’d met. She’d dated a couple of them for a handful of months.
But that elusive, mystical thing—love—had never revisited her again. Dauntless, she’d continued to dress up and stride into coffeehouses to shake hands with yet another new man a friend had assured her would be perfect for her.
But what if God had only given her one allotment of love . . . that she’d squandered on Thad? Or maybe, since God had already granted her a successful career, He didn’t intend to give her love, too.
God had a sense of humor, yes. But knowing her heart and her history on the subject of men, surely, surely He would not have allowed her to meet a highly eligible man after taking too many painkillers and house-crashing a cottage, right at the most inopportune low point of her life.
God wouldn’t dare do that to her.
Would He?
Luke
My brother.
My brother had been pestering me, back on the soccer field. Ethan’s talkative, and he’s always asking a million questions. Every time I turn around, questions. It drives me crazy.
When today’s sports camp ended and our youth pastor asked us to put away the sports equipment, Ethan was right behind me at the top of the stairs, asking questions. I couldn’t deal. So I took him by the shoulders and steered him to the back of the line behind the other kids. “You’re last,” I told him, glad to put some space between him and me.
Now I’m here, in this wrecked room. The windows that should be pointing out at the sidewalk are pointing straight up at a bright blue sky.
And my brother isn’t with me. Because he was bugging me, and so I put him at the end of the line.
Is Ethan dead?
I moan with terror and regret and clasp my head to keep my brain from exploding. He can’t be dead. He can’t have been crushed by this building.
He has to be fine.
Chapter Seven
Vault.
The term vault tempted a person to conclude that the items stored within were of great value. Genevieve wondered if that would prove true in her case as she carried the item she’d just found inside the vault—a file on her mother—toward the reading room of Clarke County’s courthouse.
The temperature outside today: chilly for the middle of September. The temperature inside the courthouse: pleasant. She liked today’s furry vest, long-sleeved top, and wide leather earrings. Even her burgundy skinny pants were comfy, though every woman knew that it defied physics to use skinny pants and comfy in the same sentence.
She’d lain in bed at the cottage last night battling loneliness and struggling to fall asleep. She’d concentrated on Sam instead of the dark voices that kept trying to command her attention. She’d thought about his shoulders, his rare smile, his voice, his scent, his truck, his solitude. She replayed everything he’d ever said to her. She imagined him looking at her with those grave eyes.
It had taken ages before she’d at last nodded off, but at least she’d passed that time dwelling on someone who stoked a comforting glow inside.
She’d woken early, eaten granola for breakfast, and downed one cup of coffee at the cottage, then stopped for a latte en route. The caffeine had helped her energy level, but she could still feel the underlying weight of her tiredness. She blinked dry, scratchy eyes and focused on the folder she placed before herself on the small table. Her chair faced a sunlit window and a view of a tree covered in leaves that hadn’t quite yet decided to turn color.
After providing ID to prove her relationship to her mother and thus her right to access the documents, she’d been entrusted with the file without incident.
Her mom, Caroline Harmon Herrington Woodward, was the daughter of parents who’d despaired of having children before suddenly conceiving in their late thirties. They’d lavished love on Caroline, their only child. Her traditional childhood had included the Southern pillars of Christianity, manners, and class.
Mom had paid her parents back for their devotion by living a life of excellent decisions. She’d been a Brownie in elementary school, a class officer in middle school, a member of the local junior charity board, cheerleading squad, and homecoming court in high school.
Both Genevieve’s maternal grandparents had lived to the age of ninety. Both were now gone.
Reverently, she opened her mother’s file. Instead of the birth certificate she’d expected to see, she took in the details of an application for a marriage license.
She stared at it blankly. Mom and Dad had been married in Augusta. Clearly, they must have applied for their license here—
Her vision snagged on the groom’s name.
Russell Michael Atwell.
The world around Genevieve turned to smoke. All she could see were the letters printed so clearly and neatly on the page.
She checked her mother’s name. Correct. She checked her mother’s birth date. Correct. Her mother’s parents’ names. Correct.
She checked the groom’s name. Russell Michael Atwell.
Who? Her heart drummed.
She’d never heard of this person.
This was only an application. Perhaps Mom had been engaged to a previous boyfriend and called things off.
Genevieve slid the application to the side, revealing what lay beneath. A marriage license. And below that, a marriage certificate.
For her mother and Russell Atwell. They’d been married on July 18, 1982. Mom had not called the wedding off. She’d gone through with it.
Mom had never breathed a word of this to her.
This couldn’t be!
. . . And yet it was. This document proved a wedding had occurred.
Mom would have been twenty-two in 1982. Fresh out of college.
Her mom? Married to a man named Russell?
Did Dad know about this? What if he didn’t? What if he thought he was Mom’s first and only husband?
Genevieve placed a hand over her heart and waited for her body’s clamor to calm.
Down in her soul, she’d known since the moment she’d received the anonymous letter that there was something to be found in her parents’ past. She’d driven to Athens today to chase that very suspicion. Even so, now that she’d uncovered a secret, she didn’t want it to be true. Accepting this meant accepting that her family wasn’t as she’d believed all her life.
At her third-grade Halloween parade, Mom had stood with the other parents, clapping and snapping photos. As Genevieve had walked by in the Mulan costume that she and Mom had worked on for
two weeks, her mother had called out, “Go, Mulan! Girl power!” The sleeve of Genevieve’s robe had slipped down to her shoulder as she’d raised her fist in acknowledgment. That costume had been her favorite of all time.
Later, in El Salvador, the curtain around Genevieve’s hospital bed had jerked back and Genevieve had laid eyes on the two people she’d been desperate to see for days. Her mom and dad. Mom had looked so familiar to her in that moment and simultaneously different, too. Smaller, older, thinner. But when Mom had released a sob and wrapped Genevieve in a hug, her arms had communicated fierce strength.
Caroline had spent hours moving things into Genevieve’s freshman dorm room at Belmont and arranging the decorations for maximum beauty and charm. When there was nothing left to do and it was time for her to go, Mom had stood in the middle of the room as if suddenly and totally lost. Her arms had dropped to her sides. “Oh, sweetie,” she’d whispered. Tears had tumbled over her eyelashes.
They had such a long history, she and her mom. Genevieve was as accustomed to her mother as she was to anyone on earth. She comprehended her mom’s foibles and virtues. She’d lived with her for the majority of her life and had talked with her at least every other day since moving out. There’d been a million chances for her mom to say, “Hey, by the way, Genevieve. I was married once before.”
How could her mother have been another man’s wife?
A lightning bolt carved into her. What if her mom and Russell had had a child?
That possibility was almost too disturbing to consider.
What had happened to Mom’s first marriage? Had she and Russell gotten a divorce? Had Russell died? Or was Mom a . . . polygamist? What if she was one of those people on the TV shows who had two families?
Genevieve pulled her phone from her purse and snapped pictures of all the records. Then she walked on quivering legs to the gray-haired woman at the information desk. “Do you happen to have any documents on my mother’s husband, Russell Michael Atwell?”
“I can check. Birth date?”
Genevieve consulted the file and supplied his birth date.
“One moment.” The clerk ran a search. “Yes.” She kindly directed Genevieve back into the vault.
They walked down the rows of long-undisturbed papers that chronicled the lives of thousands upon thousands of people, many of them gone from this earth.
She needed to call Natasha. She needed to tell Sam.
Sam? How strange that he’d sprung into her mind.
Yet, in this moment when her sense of security regarding her family was careening the way the walls had during the earthquake, he had. Because she knew Sam would be stationary.
He’d offered to travel with her today, but he didn’t finish at The Kitchen until after lunch, right when she hoped to return to Misty River and buckle down on her own day’s work. So she’d come alone.
The gray-haired woman slid Russell’s file from its resting place. Genevieve thanked her and returned to her table. Inside Russell’s file, she discovered the same marriage documents she’d found in her mother’s file. She flicked past them and came to—
A will.
Russell had died. Russell Atwell had died in . . . 1983, when he’d been twenty-three, approximately a year after his wedding to Genevieve’s mother.
Silence gathered in and around her. She could hear the ticking of a wall clock.
What? Why? What could have ended his life at such a young age? Nothing here specified his cause of death. A death certificate would, though. She checked behind the will and found nothing. This file didn’t contain a death certificate.
As best she could understand, Russell had died intestate. That is, without a will. The probate court had been petitioned. His spouse, Caroline Atwell, had requested that his estate go to Russell’s family. The judge had assented to that request.
Genevieve pressed the pad of her thumb against the file’s edge.
Had Mom never mentioned Russell because their marriage had been so brief? Or maybe because it had been too painful to talk about him? Mom must have been devastated by the loss of her young husband so early in their marriage.
Caroline and Judson had married in a small ceremony less than three years after Russell’s death. Genevieve had looked through their photo album many times. Dad had worn a suit and tie. Mom had worn a fancy pale blue dress. There’d been no cadre of bridesmaids or groomsmen.
When Genevieve had commented on the simplicity of their wedding, Mom had said that they’d wanted to keep it intimate, that the love they shared had been more than enough for both of them.
That her mom would focus on the emotion of the event—definitely within character. That she’d choose a small wedding—out of character. That she’d choose to marry in her groom’s hometown instead of her own hometown—out of character.
Now, looking at Mom and Dad’s wedding through this new lens, those out-of-character decisions made sense. Mom and Dad had kept their wedding low-key because Mom had probably already done the big, white, hometown wedding once before, with her first husband.
Genevieve snapped more photos and revisited the information desk.
“Find what you were looking for?” the woman asked.
“To some extent, yes. I expected to find birth and death certificates in the files, but I didn’t see any.”
“In our county, the health department keeps all the birth and death records.”
“Is the health department nearby?”
“It’s just five minutes down the road.”
Almost before the male health department clerk had finished handing her Russell’s death certificate, Genevieve had already started reading it.
At the top it listed information she already knew: Russell’s name, birth date, death date. Lower, it also listed his cause of death.
Blunt force trauma to the head.
Genevieve whispered prayers that had no beginnings or endings, only middles.
He’d died at an address in the town of Camden, Georgia. “I’ve never heard of Camden,” she told the clerk.
“It’s a small town located in the southeastern corner of Clarke County.”
She read the certificate over and over again, trying to process each detail, then took a photo of it. Returning the document to the clerk, she asked, “Is Russell listed as the father on any of the birth certificates in the system?” While he ran a search, she held herself immobile, bracing for his answer.
“No,” he replied. “He’s not.”
She released a quivering breath.
Back in her car, she sat in the driver’s seat, mind rioting. A lot of things could cause blunt force trauma to the head. Right? Car accidents. Falling off a horse. It’s just that the words blunt force trauma were so sinister that, when she’d read them, her mind had leapt straight to murder.
She typed Russell Michael Atwell’s death into Google on her phone.
Numerous search results came up. The first one read, Local Man Potential Fourth Victim of Shoal Creek Killer.
“Perish,” Genevieve breathed. She clicked the link.
Russell had been found dead at his home, apparently murdered by a serial killer. A grainy black-and-white image of Russell clad in a tux was embedded in the article. He wore his blond hair in a preppy, side-parted style. With his firm jawline, straight nose, and chiseled brow, he struck her as young, handsome, athletic.
Her mom’s first husband, this youthful person named Russell, had been murdered by a serial killer.
A tidal wave of shock submerged her.
Ready to check out?” the cashier at The Bookery asked Sam that afternoon.
“Yes, thanks.” He did his best to quash his embarrassment as he set Bearer of a Woman’s Soul by Genevieve Woodward on the counter near the cash register.
The book’s cover was unnecessarily girly. Lots of pink flowers.
He forced himself to meet the cashier’s eyes without flinching.
Real men could buy women’s Bible studies. He’d like to see he
r try to tell him otherwise.
She scanned the book. “Did you know there’s a DVD series that goes along with this study?” She had a friendly, plump face.
“No.”
She arched back as if a strong wind had hit her. “Oh my goodness! The DVD lessons Genevieve recorded for this study aren’t to be missed. They’re excellent. Not to be missed! You need to tell the woman you’re buying this for about them. I guarantee she’ll get goose bumps watching them.”
He sincerely doubted the person he was buying this for would get goose bumps. “Do you sell the, uh . . .”
“DVD series? We do. It’s one hundred and twenty dollars for the set.”
He blinked at her. What on earth? He could buy a top-of-the-line cordless drill for that price.
“Would you like for me to grab them for you?” she asked.
“No thanks. Just the book please.” After his discussion with Eli about Gen, he’d decided to buy one of her books, read it, and see for himself what all the fuss was about. He wasn’t willing to trade a new drill for a set of DVDs, however.
“That’ll be seventeen dollars and ninety-five cents,” she said.
He handed over a twenty.
“Just be sure to tell the woman you’re buying this for that she can purchase and watch each teaching session individually online.” Her forehead wrinkled. “What do they call that, when you can watch things automatically online?”
“Streaming?”
“Exactly! Streaming. Please tell her that she can stream each of the recordings online. She’s going to want to watch those sessions!”
“I’ll tell her.”
Sam worked in the orchard until night fell, then made a quick meat marinara over spaghetti squash. He ate it at his dining room table while reading the newspaper. After cleaning up, he settled at his desk in the front downstairs room he’d converted into a home office. In addition to the desk, the room held a chair, two bookcases, and one large piece of framed photography. An artist had given him the photograph after Sam had given him permission to take black-and-white photos of the farm.
