What You Said to Me

by Olivia Newport

  “So the start-up guy’s name gets completely lost when he gets bought out,” Tisha said.

  “Later listings, from when the mine was actually yielding, would show the owner of record at the time.”

  “But how am I ever going to find what I’m looking for?”

  Leo pulled several tomes off his shelves and dumped them in Tisha’s arms. “You can learn a lot about nineteenth-century mining from these books.”

  “Leo,” Nia said, immediately relieving Tisha of the volumes, “she’s not trying to learn a lot about nineteenth-century mining. She wonders if she can find the mines her ancestor might have owned around 1893 right near here somewhere.”

  Leo tapped his chin, thinking. “Well, there’s always the picture books.”

  “Hey!” Tisha said. “I’m not in second grade.”

  “Not that kind of picture books.” Leo pulled another book down and opened it. “Historical photographs. They often have captions. The information isn’t consistent, of course. It depends on the book and what the author or editor decided was important, or what information was available, where they got the photos from. But you never know.”

  Tisha hunched over the book. “The Red Elephant Mine?”

  “True thing, as you see.”

  “What kind of name is that?”

  Leo shrugged. “There’s no rhyme or reason to the names. Mostly sentimental.”

  “Wouldn’t Brandt Mine Number One be more efficient?”

  “To you maybe.”

  Leo handed a couple of other books with photographs to Jillian and Nolan, and they all flipped pages.

  “New Era Mine,” Jillian said.

  “Central Mine at Silver Dale,” Nolan read. “At least that’s a location.”

  “The Busy Bee. The Danville. The Conley,” Tisha read. “Those were all something called Cragmor mines.”

  “In the Colorado Springs Coalfield,” Leo said.

  “Not around here, then.” She turned a page. “The Lost Pin.”

  “Near Delta. Western side of the mountains.”

  “Also not exactly around here.”

  “Missouri Rise,” Jillian murmured. “That could be anything. A ridge somewhere.”

  “That’s a nice picture, though, don’t you think?” Leo said. “I always thought so.”

  “I would agree,” Jillian said.

  “Money Musk Mine,” Tisha read. “No location. No owner. Fidelity Wink. But there’s not even a photo of that. Just a mention in a caption about some tunnel. This all feels a little hopeless.”

  “Maybe you won’t find it today. You can come back.”

  “I might have to.”

  “Anytime,” Nia said.

  Nolan gasped.

  “Dad, don’t toy with us,” Jillian said.

  “I’m not,” Nolan said. “I turned a couple of pages, and there’s a caption below an old mountain cabin that says it’s near the Decorah Runner and served as a boardinghouse for the workers.”

  “That has to be Clifford Brandt’s mine.” Tisha seized the book. “But there’s no picture of the mine, and it doesn’t even say where the cabin is.”

  “Granted, not the most helpful,” Nolan said, “but a probable connection.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I do.”

  Jillian winced. She wanted to give Tisha hope as much as anyone, but they didn’t know for sure the mine’s name meant anything.

  “My head is spinning.” Tisha stared at the photo and caption before snapping an image with her phone.

  The Inn’s door opened, and there was Drew, effulgence standing in the foyer. Or perhaps Jillian was the only one who saw his brightness. She went to greet him.

  “Are we still going for a hike?” With an arm around her, he addressed the group.

  Tisha shrugged. “Sure. Maybe it will help to just get in the mood somehow.”

  “Go on the trail Jillian and I took for her birthday hike,” Nia said. “There’s some good mining scenery. Just don’t let her talk you into any shortcuts. My legs still haven’t forgiven me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Jillian raised her eyes over the top of her laptop, open on the table in the kitchen nook, to the view of Nolan and Drew in their white aprons and chef hats.

  “La donna è mobile qual piuma al vento,” Nolan sang.

  “Muta d’accento, e di pensier,” Drew responded.

  Both of them grinned at her, their knives flying over the island strewn with vegetables.

  Jillian refused to do more than flinch one side of her mouth. Those two thought they were so hilarious. Verdi’s Rigoletto. When she asked Drew not to encourage her father’s antics, Drew looked at her as if he didn’t know what she was talking about and switched operas. In truth they were adorable together. Nolan had been singing his whole life out of love for music, only melding it with cooking after her mother died and he discovered that food could be an art form as well. Drew was a professionally trained musician whose father insisted he also be trained in a skill that could generate income if performing concerts didn’t pan out. Together they were an irresistible and admirable whirlwind of passion for everything they did. But if she said any of that aloud, her father would take the whole game up six more notches, and it really would be over the top.

  “You know the words,” Nolan said. “Sing with us.”

  “I will not,” she said. “You are singing about a fickle woman, and I will not support the stereotype.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sing,” Drew said.

  “I assure you, it’s better that way.” If you were going to date someone with a trained operatic voice who could sing in six languages, Jillian figured, it was better not to chase him off in the first few months by letting him hear you massacre the simplest of tunes. Better to first make sure he was solidly attached to other, more certain qualities you had to offer. When it came to music enjoyment, she was right there with the two of them. When it came to performance, she was happy to let Nolan stand in her stead.

  “All those piano lessons,” Nolan said, “and your mother and I never thought to add voice lessons during your formative years.”

  Jillian rolled her eyes at the dramatic swirl with which her father moved an empty mixing bowl to the sink. “I thought you two decided we would have a nice salad for dinner tonight.”

  “We are having salad,” Nolan said. “Quinoa salad.”

  “And fig caprese salad,” Drew said.

  “And peaches and shaved fennel salad,” Nolan said. “With red pepper, of course.”

  “Of course.” Drew nodded. “And tomato-watermelon salad with turmeric oil.”

  “And may I say I find your concept of a smashed cucumber salad intriguing, rather than sliced.”

  “It augments the cucumber’s ability to absorb the flavors of the lemon and celery salt.”

  “If I may interrupt,” Jillian said, “what you have in your hands right now, Drew, looks suspiciously like some sort of patty, not a salad.”

  “Veggie burgers from scratch. Almost a salad. Ready to throw on the grill.”

  “This is a lot of food!”

  Drew shrugged. “The veggie patties will keep up to three days. You will thank me after I’m gone.”

  “But for dessert?” Nolan wiggled that one eyebrow in the way Jillian would never be able to move hers.

  “Chocolate–salted caramel swirl meringues. You will master them in no time, my friend.”

  Jillian furrowed her brow at her laptop screen.

  “What’s the matter, Silly Jilly?” Nolan said.

  She blinked, enlarged the block of text she’d just found, and read it again.

  “Jillian?” Drew said.

  “I’ve been poking around archives of Denver newspapers some more,” she said, “looking for references to Clifford Brandt. Honestly, there hasn’t been much. I was just hoping for anything I could give Tisha. All I’ve found were a few references to the fact that he worked for Horace
Tabor and minor civic activities. Then I switched to looking for Georgina, which turned up more in the society pages.”

  “And?” Nolan said. “Don’t keep us waiting.”

  “They had three daughters.” Jillian raised her gaze to look her father square in the eyes. “Missouri, Decorah, and Fidelity.”

  “The mines.” Nolan dropped his stirring spoon. “Well, I’ll be.”

  Jillian nodded.

  “Missouri Rise. Decorah Runner. Fidelity Wink,” Nolan said. “They were all mentioned in the captions in Leo’s books.”

  “Just not in the same book. So we didn’t string them together.”

  “If he had three daughters and named his mines after them,” Drew said, “why aren’t their names known around here?”

  “That’s a good question,” Jillian said. “Maybe Decorah is the only one who lived in Canyon Mines.”

  “You’re going to keep digging, aren’t you?”

  Jillian flicked her eyes up at him. “Salad away, you two.” She was already clicking into new screens.

  The sounds of cooking—and singing—resumed. The quickest task Jillian could do was run the other daughters’ names through any public records for Clear Creek County. Colorado’s state archives, though admittedly incomplete in the early decades, went back to 1890. If the Brandts—at least some of them—came to Canyon Mines in 1893, she had a reasonable chance of catching the name of a married daughter in the old records.

  Missouri Brandt.

  “Bingo.”

  Drew wiped his hands on a dish towel and came around to the table. “What did you find?”

  “Missouri Brandt married Loren Wade right here in Canyon Mines late in November 1893.”

  “Who is Loren Wade?”

  “No clue. But now we have more to trace Missouri with.” Jillian typed in Fidelity Brandt. “No hit on the third daughter.”

  “So she didn’t marry here.”

  Jillian shook her head. “Nowhere in the state.” She navigated to another website and entered first one name and then the other. “They’re both buried in Tennessee. Different cemeteries in two different counties. Looks like Fidelity has a married name. Most likely she married in Tennessee.”

  “And Loren Wade?”

  Jillian clicked again. “Also in Tennessee. Looks like he’s adjacent to Missouri.”

  Drew leaned over her shoulder to peer at the dates. “They made it all the way through the Depression and then some.”

  “Let me check one more thing.” Jillian wanted to know more about Fidelity’s married name. She didn’t expect what filled her screen.

  “An artist.” Drew scanned the screen along with Jillian. “Of some regional renown in her time.”

  Jillian’s head pivoted toward the small reproduction hanging in the corner of the kitchen—the one Tisha claimed to have the original for in her attic.

  The clatter of Jillian’s phone ringing startled them both, and she snatched it up off the table. “Tisha’s guy.”

  She hustled out of the kitchen and into the quietness of her office.

  “Thank you for calling back.”

  “I promised I would.” Eli Depue’s solid bass voice sounded resolute in a way that unsettled Jillian. “After discussing the matter with my mother, I’m calling to say that we can’t help you.”

  “Can I answer more questions for you?”

  “No, that’s not necessary. Mother feels that even if the outrageous theory is true, she’s had a good life and has no wish to disturb it at this point.”

  “May I ask if she has an original birth certificate? Is there any chance at all she was adopted?”

  “It would make no difference to her. She always felt loved by the parents she grew up with and certainly learned to pass love on to her own children and grandchildren. A DNA test will not change that.”

  “I see.” Jillian maintained a professional tone. “And what about you? Are you curious to know if you are related to descendants of the other twin sister?”

  “I don’t think so,” Eli said. “I’m not going to hurt my mother over this. It wouldn’t change my life, either. My sisters and I had a lovely family. We still do.”

  “Have you also discussed this opportunity with your sisters?”

  “Again, in deference to my mother, I’ve chosen not to do that, and I would ask you to respect her wishes as well.”

  “I understand. If you change your mind, you know how to reach me.” She’d keep his contact information in her file.

  “No offense, Ms. Parisi-Duffy, but it’s my opinion that the genealogy rage is overrated. We each make our own way in the world. Certainly my mother has. Pretending to find affiliation with a group of strangers because of some event eighty years ago has no real point.”

  Jillian swallowed. “Thank you for your time.”

  She blew out her breath as she returned to the kitchen.

  Nolan ceased his rapid chopping of tomatoes. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not,” she said, slumping back into her chair. “The family Tisha found is not interested. So even if we find the other twin, it won’t matter. We can’t find out if this is Maclovia.”

  “Tisha’s going to take this hard.”

  “Yep.”

  “Someone from the original family might have DNA out on record with one of the companies,” Drew said. “So many people do. That’s how you found my fourth cousins.”

  “You found them,” Jillian said. “All I did was say the results were valid. But you’re right. We might still have something to work with that could lead us back to Eli Depue.”

  “Tisha’s waiting to hear,” Nolan said.

  “Yep.”

  “The sooner, the better.”

  “Yep.” Jillian sent a text, suggesting Tisha meet her at the park beside the school grounds for an update. It was still midafternoon. She could meet Tisha, flush the dread of her reaction out of her own system, and be back in plenty of time to enjoy a bevy of salads.

  A text message chimed back in response.

  “What does she say?” Nolan asked.

  “She’ll be at the park in twenty minutes.”

  “Do you want me to come along?”

  “Or me?” Drew said.

  Both offers were tempting. Nolan was much better at difficult moments than she was, and Tisha might need calming. And Drew was calming to Jillian.

  Jillian drew in a long breath and exhaled. “I’ve got it. Thank you both.”

  She reached the park ahead of Tisha. On a warm Sunday afternoon, families with children took advantage of the playground while older kids tossed Frisbees. A group of young adults was spreading out a picnic on the tables under the small pavilion while a couple of the men poked at the coals in the grill, a platter of burgers ready to go on. Jillian staked out space on a bench midway along the path from the parking lot to the playground where she could easily see the arrival of the bright green bicycle from any of several directions.

  Tisha pedaled in from the back side of the athletic fields. Jillian waved her over and offered a water bottle.

  “It’s mixed news,” Jillian said.

  Tisha’s guard flashed up, a block of distrust set in her jaw as she balanced the unopened water down on the bench between them. “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” Jillian said, “that you did a phenomenal job of tracking Maclovia and producing contact information for her son. But we can’t control how people respond on the other end.”

  Silent, Tisha stared at her feet.

  “Rejection happens sometimes,” Jillian said softly. “This is not the first time I’ve seen it in my line of work.”

  “Well, it’s stupid.” Tisha raised a glare. “People should want to know who they came from.”

  Jillian waited a few seconds before speaking. “It’s hard to say one should applies to all people.”

  “Now you’re taking her side.”

  Whose side? Were they still talking about Maclovia?

 
“I’m sorry, Tisha.” Jillian laid a tentative hand on Tisha’s shoulder. “For now, at least, Chloe Depue is not interested in disturbing her life to find out if she is the lost Maclovia, and out of respect for her wishes, her son doesn’t want any further contact, either. I think if we tracked down his sisters—which probably wouldn’t be hard to do—things could get unpleasant.”

  “They don’t even get a say?” The words burst out of Tisha, and she threw off Jillian’s touch. “He’s calling all the shots just because I found him first?”

  “For now.”

  “But the sisters don’t even know. Now there’s a big secret in their family. And I put it there.”

  “No. You didn’t put it there. It was always there. What happened to Maclovia was always there.”

  “But now Eli knows. If I had a brother, and I found out he knew something like this and didn’t tell me, I wouldn’t be very happy.”

  “I wouldn’t be, either.”

  “There must be something we can do.” Tisha slapped the bench.

  “We look for the twin who wasn’t stolen.” Jillian thrummed her thumbs against her thighs. “That’s what we do. Then perhaps we approach Maclovia’s family with another opportunity. We’ll have more information—maybe even photos of the other family. Something to draw in their interest. DNA to compare to. We can try again.”

  Tisha kicked up loose dirt with the toe of her flip-flop. “I don’t like it, but I guess there’s not much I can do. As usual, I have no control over anything.”

  Jillian’s heart heaved as she tried to rescue the conversation.

  “I have other news,” she said. “Better news.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That picture Leo had of the Missouri Rise mine was a Brandt mine. So was the mention of the Fidelity Wink.”

  Tisha gave Jillian her eyes now. “How do you know that?”

  “I found his other daughters.”

  “Missouri and Fidelity?”

  “Right.”

  “Weird names. All of them.”

  “Unusual by our standards, yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I am.” Jillian nodded emphatically. “Maybe Leo can help find one of those specific mines now that we’re sure Clifford Brandt owned them. They can’t be too far from here, and he must have owned them around 1890.”