Eliza folded the sheet back into its envelope. She would have to tell her mother something, but she was not going to Wisconsin.
“We can become an infirmary,” Sister Constance said. “I am not sure where the beds will come from, but we have the space. The relief committee might be able to help with cots. In the meantime, if anyone sees even the least sign of illness in any of the orphans in our care, we must immediately arrange quarantine. Sadly, I believe we must be prepared to receive more children if we discover they have lost their parents. I’ve asked Sister Frances to oversee this so that we have a few beds ready and if we need to place a child at Church Home there will be no delay. Is this understood?”
Heads nodded around the table.
“We will care for all who come to us or call upon us, especially the children. The Howard Association will help with organizing nurses who can go out into the neighborhoods, but they will rely on us to know which houses to send them to. We must keep impeccable records. Addresses. Family names. Descriptions of how many people are in the households and what conditions we observe.”
Eliza scanned the faces at the table, moistening her lips and swallowing the words no one would voice. And if one of us becomes sick?
Sister Constance shuffled several pages of notes. “Eliza, do you have any report on the children at Canfield Asylum?”
Eliza straightened in her chair. “Yes. I have been out there several times since the start of the fever, most recently being just two days ago. I am happy to say there has been no sign of illness. They seem to be far enough out of town and self-sufficient with their gardens and chickens to have little reason for contact with people from town.”
“This is good news. Thanks be to God. We shall continue to pray for our children here, those at Canfield, and the many who will find themselves orphaned before this scourge is over.”
“Father Harris continues daily services in the cathedral,” Sister Hughetta said. “We have been praying for families by names as much as we are able.”
“We shall all try to commune daily as much as it is possible without neglecting the sick,” Sister Constance said. “It is vital to keep up our spiritual service.”
They closed the meeting by reciting together the Lord’s Prayer, and Sister Constance began assigning tasks, including reviewing the list of households Sister Hughetta had prepared who should receive visits.
“Shall I go?” Eliza asked. “I want to help.”
“We covet your prayers,” Sister Constance said.
“Of course I pray,” Eliza said. “What can I do with my hands? To ease the workload you have just outlined?”
Sister Constance glanced at the telegram envelope. “Your mother has other ideas, doesn’t she? Will you not go to her in Wisconsin?”
Eliza could hear the pleading in her mother’s voice, see the consternation in her face.
“No, I will not. I must stay and serve.”
Sister Constance nodded.
“The pantry then. Start with the crates I brought with me. Keep a close inventory. The families who come to our doors need the same careful attention as those who need us to come to them, and I need someone I can be confident in overseeing the items that come in and go out. And this way you can honestly assure your mother that you are caring for the poor and not nursing the sick. Perhaps that will allow her to rest in your decision to remain in Memphis.”
CHAPTER TEN
Nine o’clock meeting,” Nolan said when Jillian put her father’s green mug under a spigot at the coffee bar the next morning.
“Then I’ll put this in a travel mug.” She switched out the cup. “Are you sure I can’t fancy it up for you? Steamed frothy milk?”
“I’m a plain soul and I like my coffee to match, don’t you know.”
Jillian pressed a button for a large serving. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
Nolan double-checked his briefcase while he bit into a bran muffin. “Did you get anything at all from Meri yesterday? By the time we ate, she seemed more interested in our family than hers.”
“A few names and dates.” Jillian handed Nolan his coffee. “Enough that public records might get me a bit more. I’ll pop info into a family tree, see what else I can scrounge up to add, and make time to wander over to the Inn later today. Usually when people see a tree, they get excited and chattier.”
“I shall expect a full report tonight over dinner, then.”
“I will make it my top priority.” Never mind the pile of paying, contracted work on her desk.
Nolan checked the lid on his coffee, crumbled the last of the bran muffin into his mouth, and left through the back door.
Jillian opened the cabinet and stared at the mug collection for a few seconds, still missing the favorite she’d been forced to discard. None of the remaining options ever had been even a distant contender, but she had to drink from something. She chose one Nia had given her one year for her birthday with the image of a yellow butterfly nestled in the open bloom of an orange daylily. It was on the slender side, but at least it had a good sturdy handle to grip. She pressed several more buttons for her morning libation than she did for her father’s and carried it to her office, where she’d already spent a good two hours at her desk.
Her computer chimed with an incoming Skype call, and she checked her calendar. No, she hadn’t overlooked a client meeting. At least she wore a decent top that morning and her hair was fastened under control.
She answered the call. “Good morning, Raúl.”
“Good morning. I just wanted to check in on your progress locating the mystery heir, now that you’ve identified her.”
“Not quite there.” Jillian eyed her coffee, willing it not to get cold while she tried to carry on a professional conversation. “Though I’m tracking three different addresses around St. Louis. I’m certain I’ve got it narrowed down to that area.”
“And you really don’t think she has any idea?”
“She’s very young and seems to be on her own. I’m not sure she knew her father, much less that he had a great-uncle.”
“You can still pass along the information you dug up and let one of our detectives take it from here.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to finish it,” Jillian said. There was something about finding a name from among millions in the bowels of the internet and connecting it to a living, breathing being. Genealogists did a lot of digging into the past. Bringing the past to create a surprising future for someone—she didn’t get to do that very often.
“That’s all right by me,” Raúl said, “but I’m getting some pressure about it. Considering how long the body has been in the morgue, and all that.”
“It’s not as if she’d be able to identify the body if she never knew him. They already know who he is.”
“They will insist on the protocol. It will at least be her prerogative to make the arrangements.”
For a perfect stranger? Hello, you’re about to inherit a fortune, as soon as you make the burial arrangements. She might leave that piece of news to the detectives to deliver.
“I will make it my top priority,” Jillian said.
They clicked off the call.
She couldn’t really have two top priorities, could she?
Jillian drank coffee and mentally rearranged her day. Putting what she had from Meri into a tree would have to be enough for today. She could do that and shoot over to the Inn at some point in the afternoon for a short—emphasis on short—break and see if she could get anything more from Meri. Otherwise the reality was she owed Raúl her time. He was paying her, after all. And she still had to put the finishing touches on the expansive six-generation family tree for Mrs. Answald’s family reunion just around the corner.
Jillian rubbed her eyes, gulped more coffee, and dug in.
At two in the afternoon, she carried a folder with only the most elementary family tree for Meri Davies. All she’d had time to do was put information Meri already knew in the tree. Becau
se of four unexpected phone calls, including two from Mrs. Answald, and a trail that led nowhere for an entire branch of her family tree, exploring public records on Meri’s tree—so far—proved beyond Jillian’s time capacity. But she’d promised her dad she’d make contact.
She walked around the Inn to the back and entered through the kitchen.
“Knock, knock,” she called.
Nia’s head leaned around the corner of the laundry room. “Oh good. I was hoping you’d come by.”
“You were?”
Nia glanced around. “Did you run the number?”
“The number?”
“You know. Don’t play dumb with me.” Nia came into the kitchen with a stack of dish towels and opened a drawer to put them away.
“Oh the number. No, I haven’t.”
“I figured it would be an easy thing for you to do.”
“I guess it would be, but honestly, I’ve been swamped. Just ask my dad.”
“I believe you. Yet you’re here now.”
“I was hoping to talk to Meri. Casual-like. I started a family tree.”
“Oh good. Let’s see.”
“Don’t you think Meri is the one who should see it first?”
“You’ve already seen it.” Nia reached for the folder.
“That’s different.” Jillian pulled the folder out of reach. “Stop being so nosy. Is she here?”
“We’re in a bit of a lull until the three o’clock check-ins start. Even then it’s Monday. Hardly the busiest day for a small-town B&B.”
“So you won’t mind if I take some of her time?”
“Not if it will help the greater cause. I’ll help you find her.”
They walked together through the first-floor rooms—the office, the wide parlor, the library with its floor-to-ceiling shelves and upholstered Victorian chairs, and down the hall to the private quarters where Nia and Leo lived and Meri had a private room and bath separated from them by a small turn in the hall.
“She didn’t say anything about going out,” Nia said. She led Jillian up the broad staircase that always made guests ooh and aah, and they ducked their heads into the various guest rooms, all empty now and made up in readiness for the next occupants.
But no Meri.
“You don’t suppose …,” Nia said.
“Suppose what?” Jillian said.
“You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“That she would leave. I’m going to check for her car.” Nia charged back down the stairs, through the Inn, and out the back door toward the parking area.
Jillian followed her and caught her elbow. “She’s there. Let me talk to her.”
Nia exhaled. “She doesn’t look like she packed her bags or anything.”
“Why would you think she would?”
Nia twisted her braid. “Sometimes the kids I thought were benefiting the most from school counseling would turn out to be the ones who did something no one ever saw coming. You end up with a very sensitive radar after letting a few fall off.”
“This is not that, Nia.”
“I have bedding to fold.” Nia pivoted and went back into the house.
Jillian, with just the manila folder that held only one sheet of paper, approached Meri, who was foraging around on the passenger side of her car.
“Meri?” Jillian said.
Meri’s frame straightened. She had her phone in her hand.
Jillian looked from the phone to Meri’s eyes.
Meri shrugged. “I haven’t had it on since I got here. Four days. Figured it was time to see just how bad things are.”
“Maybe not as bad as you think.”
“Probably worse.”
“Let’s sit on the patio.”
Meri nodded, powering up the phone as she turned her steps toward the patio where she had bolted from the swing the last time they were out here together. Jillian chose an adjacent chair alongside the idle fire pit, and the phone came to life as they sat.
Jillian couldn’t keep count of the number of dings indicating missed text messages and voice mails now loading in. One after another the notifications lit the screen, and Meri’s thumb swiped through them as if sifting for hope.
Finally Meri set the phone down on the chair beside her. “I’ll have to read them all later.”
Somehow Jillian doubted she would.
“Besides,” Meri said, “I should go back to work. I don’t want to get on Nia’s bad side again.”
“Nia doesn’t really have much of a bad side,” Jillian said.
“She said there would be rules, and I want to respect that.”
“Of course. But she knows I’m here and said it would be all right to talk for a few minutes about your family tree.”
“Oh, that. Lunch was nice yesterday. Your dad is a good cook.”
“Even if he is a goofball?”
“I like that about him.”
“He can be serious when it matters. He’s a great lawyer, and an incredible mediator.”
“Are there other lawyers in your family?”
“Nope. He’s the only one.”
“Did you think about being a lawyer?”
“Not really. By the time I was old enough for college, my interest in genealogy was pretty fixed. My dad was the one who steered me that way after my mom died, so I could understand my roots.”
“He didn’t even strongly suggest what you should study?”
“No. Genealogy is not actually a college major, but I studied things that would help me learn to research and how to run my own business.”
“That must have been nice—not that your mom died, but that your dad cared about what you might be interested in.”
Jillian ran her tongue behind her upper lip. Her father would know what to say. Something empathetic. “I gather in your family there’s a lot of pressure to be a doctor,” Jillian said.
Meri didn’t answer. She picked up her phone and looked again at the stream of messages.
“I brought the beginning of your family tree.” Jillian offered the folder. “I haven’t had time since yesterday to research and try to add to it, but I thought you might like to see the format. Maybe it will trigger some names we can add.”
Meri shook her head. “What’s the point? I may not know all the names, but I know we’re doctors for a hundred years. That’s who we are. I can give the spiel about how we take seriously the responsibility that comes with opportunity and never turn our backs on the hard work that will help us help others. That’s the Davies way.”
“Buried in that speech are some good values.”
“You don’t get it. With a father like yours, you could never understand one like mine.”
Meri was probably right, but Jillian had to come up with something to say. She moved closer to Meri, removed the sheet from the folder, and said, “We can still do the project. Maybe we’ll find some answers, or at least the right questions.”
“There’s no point. I’m not going to be safe here much longer anyway.”
What in the world did that mean?
Meri’s phone rang in her hand, and she startled. Jillian could see that the caller ID said MOM. Meri immediately tapped the option to decline the call and shut the phone off.
“Meri,” Jillian said, “I know things are complicated with your family, but are you afraid of them?”
“You’re right. It is complicated.” Meri stuffed her phone in a back pocket, but she didn’t answer Jillian’s question.
“We want to help—Nia, my dad, me.”
“No offense, Jillian, but a pretty family tree is not going to fix this.”
“It might shed some light on why things are the way they are.”
“Doctors for a hundred years. Doctors marrying nurses or other doctors. Like a private club and swearing an oath to a creed. What else is there to say?”
“You’re describing what,” Jillian said. “Aren’t you interested in why?”
“In my experience, why is not a
relevant question in the Davies household.” Meri stood up. “I really should get back to work. I need this job right now.”
Because you don’t know how long you’ll be here. Because you don’t feel safe. From your own family.
“Sure,” Jillian said. “Just take the folder in case you change your mind. We can always work on it later.”
Meri took the folder, but she was about as likely to look at the single sheet inside as she was to read four days of messages from her family. Jillian trudged home, trying to formulate what sort of report she would give her father about this debacle of a conversation.
And in the meantime, she still had to find a young woman who seemed to have dropped off the grid in the middle of St. Louis.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tuesday’s mug looked too lonely. Jillian couldn’t even remember how it had come into the household, but it was too beige, too stark.
All these mugs. Why did they even keep them? She and her dad had their favorites—well, she needed a new favorite—and they rarely reached for anything else. Jillian was lining up the ones that failed her trials along the back of the counter on one side of the sink after they were washed. Why not give them to someone who would use them?
Of the three St. Louis addresses she’d been tracing in the last couple of days, phone calls and searches of public records had narrowed it down to one that was the last known record for the young woman she sought. But she’d only been there six months, her neighbors hadn’t known her well, and her landlord had encouraged her to look for somewhere else to live because if she was late with her rent one more time, he would be less friendly in his demands.
No forwarding address.
One neighbor said she thought the young woman was a student, though just barely. She’d had to drop down to only one class because she couldn’t cover her tuition.
She had a job, but no one Jillian spoke to could tell her where. Food service? Hotel housekeeping? Both? Something like that.
After spending a good chunk of Monday and half of Tuesday morning trying to crack this nut, Jillian was reconsidering her determination not to involve Raúl’s detectives. He could at least hire someone to go to St. Louis. But she was so close. Maybe she would go. The expense would be a small bite out of her fee.
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