by Shay Savage
“I guess that would be okay.”
We get set up on the couch in the living room, and Nate starts the call. It only takes a couple of minutes to gather everyone together. Nora is all smiles.
“Do I get to take credit for this?” she asks. “I mean, did I help?”
“You got me thinking,” I admit.
“I bet he’s been groveling,” Antony says with a laugh.
“Hey now,” Nate says, “my groveling is none of your business.”
“He groveled!” Threes lets out a big belly laugh.
“Hopefully, he stopped being an ass,” Nora says as she looks at her brother with narrowed eyes.
“Yes,” Nate says with a grin. He grabs my hand and holds it up for all of them to see. “You should all know that despite how idiotically I’ve behaved in the recent past, Cherry has agreed to become part of the family. We’re going to be married.”
Nora’s eyes widen as she stares at us. I nod at her, and she seems to relax a little.
“Well, that’s good news at least,” she says. “I hoped you would work it all out.” She holds her arms out toward the phone. “Virtual hug!”
“Congrats, you two!” Antony beams at us.
“It’s a good thing she is as sweet and naïve as she seems,” Threes says with a sly smile. Nate demands that he explain himself. “If she weren’t, she’d have smacked you silly for what you put her through.”
“I still might.” I narrow my eyes at Threes, and Antony laughs.
After a few more minutes of congratulatory words and Nora’s insistence that I hold the ring up so she can get a better look, the family gets down to business.
“Janna Ramsay paid Cherry a visit,” Nate tells them.
“Shit.” Antony glances at Threes. “You were right—she did leave town last week.”
“I told you we shoulda followed her.”
“We need to figure out how much Janna and Jay already know,” Antony says.
“But they do know Cherry is their sister,” Threes says.
“Yes,” I say. “She said she’s known for the past year, but my aunt didn’t want either of them to make contact.”
“So why the visit?” Antony asks.
“She said she just wanted to meet me, but I didn’t believe her. She seemed to know all about why I left Cascade Falls, though. At least, she knew it had to do with Nate.”
“She might have done it just to get close to you,” Nora says. “It was clear the two of you are were together when you were here.”
“They never reached out to you before?” Nate asks me.
“I’d never seen her before that day, and I’ve never met her brother,” I say. “At least, not as far as I know. I definitely hadn’t talked to her before.”
“They kept their distance for a reason.”
“Maybe they saw your interest in her,” Nora says. “Maybe they were hoping to convert her after she was already a part of this family.”
“That’s not how it works,” Antony says. “If you marry into a family, that’s where your loyalties lie, period.”
“They might have thought she would spy for them.”
“This all sounds ridiculous,” Nate says. “She wouldn’t have any loyalty to the Ramsay family, not with her birth parents dead. None of this makes any sense at all.”
“We are missing a piece of this puzzle,” Threes says with a solemn nod.
“How did your brother even find out about me?” I ask.
“That’s what I want to know,” Nate says. “I have no idea how he got your name or anything, but he did have a file on you. I think he figured out that you were a Ramsay, but I’m not sure what he did with the information. He might have tried to use it against them, and in the process, the Ramsays killed him in order to keep the secret from getting out.”
“That makes a bit of sense, at least,” Threes says. “That means the Ramsays definitely knew about Cherry before we did and maybe even before Micha found out.”
“Do you think he came to Accident at some point?” I ask. “He could have talked to Aunt Ginny without me ever even knowing about it.”
“That’s something we can check into,” Threes says. “It should be easy enough to figure out if Micha traveled to Maryland last year.”
“Do that,” Nate says. “The timing might be significant, too.”
“Hey, boss?” Antony tilts his head to the side as he looks at Nate.
“Yeah?”
“There’s something else I wanted to say about that birth certificate we found on file at the clerk’s office.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve been thinking about it, and if someone wanted us to see that birth certificate as a forgery, find the dead person and stop at that, it makes a little more sense.”
“What do you mean?” Nate asks.
“As in, all of this is just to throw us off the track—to hide who she really is.”
“But why make it such an obvious forgery?”
“If I wanted to make a forgery,” Antony says, “but wanted anyone in the know to think it wasn’t our family who did it, this is what I’d do.”
“But you weren’t around then,” Nora says.
“Uncle Mario was, and he taught me everything.”
Nate pulls me a little closer to his side.
“So, why would someone in our family want a forgery to look bad?” he asks. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Keep someone off our trail? Make it look like it was the Ramsays when it wasn’t? I don’t know, boss. I only got guesses here.”
“That’s all we have left. We’ve exhausted all the possibilities here in town.” Nate looks at me and huffs out a breath. “There is a reason Roland had Sofia go to Accident, and the only way we’re going to figure this out is to do a little digging.”
“We also have an address to investigate.” Threes pulls out a small piece of paper with some writing on it from a file folder next to him. “You’re right there. You could go check it out today.”
“I still think it’s a PO Box,” Antony replies.
“You’ll need a key for that,” Threes says.
“Could be a key in Cherry’s house for all we know,” Antony says.
“Cherry, do you know if there’s a key to a PO box around here?” Nate asks.
“Maybe. There are a bunch of keys on a ring at the store.”
“There could be more paperwork, too,” Threes says.
“I’ve been through an awful lot of Aunt Ginny’s papers, but now that I know what to look for, I might find something else.”
“Let us check things out here,” Nate says. “We’ll call you all tomorrow with what we find.”
Nate ends the call.
“We will get to the bottom of it,” he says as he tightens his grip on my hand. “It’s still early enough, and we can start right now.”
“All right.”
“Where shall we begin?” Nate asks.
“I have no idea.”
“Did your aunt have any close friends with more information or maybe frequent visitors?”
“Not really. She had a lot of friendly acquaintances but no one she was very close to. No one ever came to visit us from outside of town except that once.”
“You mean Roland Ramsay,” he says, and I nod. “How old were you?”
“About ten, I think. I remember it vividly because it was Christmas time, and we never had visitors from out of town before.”
“Do you think you might have any pictures from then?”
“Of Roland or of me?”
“Either. Both.”
“Certainly not of him. There are a few pictures, I’m sure, though Aunt Ginny wasn’t really into keeping photos around. She never had albums full of them or anything, and she hated the very idea of a smart phone. I had to beg and plead to get one when I was in high school.”
“I suppose that makes sense. She was trying to keep you a secret, and cell phones track you. Letters, maybe? Lots of
people, especially older ones, hold on to their letters.”
“Aunt Ginny definitely had a lot of those!” I laugh. “I didn’t see any I’d consider unusual, but there were so many. I didn’t look through them very much, but most of them were from long before I was born. She had a boyfriend who was killed in a boating accident when they were teenagers, and there were a lot of notes they must have passed back and forth in school. I found them kind of hard to read.”
“Hmm.” Nate’s eyes narrow as he scratches his chin.
“What is it?”
“I was just wondering if the letters belonged to Sofia Ramsay or the real Virginia Bay.”
“I hadn’t considered that.” The thought saddens me. “Considering they were from way back before I was born, I guess they’d have to be Virginia’s, wouldn’t they?”
“Or Sofia brought them with her.”
“No, they were addressed to Ginny, not Sofia.”
I’m beginning to wonder if I will ever know the truth, and my frustration must show on my face. Nate pulls me into a tight embrace and kisses me gently. I hold on to him for a long moment before stepping away.
“Let’s start looking in her office,” I say. “That’s where I found the adoption papers. It’s on the second floor.”
I show Nate where I found the papers, and we both carefully sift through all the other documents we can find but to no avail. We go through my aunt’s bedroom drawers and a few boxes in the basement. It stirs up a lot of memories for me, but we find nothing of interest.
“To the shop, then?” Nate asks.
“Maybe that is a better place to look,” I say, “but there are a lot of places information could be hidden there.”
We head outside, but I grab Nate’s hand and pull him to a stop.
“I’m going to make a little side trip before I go inside. Take the keys and let yourself in. I’ll be right back.”
I start toward the back of the house.
“Where are you going?”
“I want to go visit Aunt Ginny’s grave,” I tell him. “The cemetery is just a short walk from here.” I look away, suddenly embarrassed. “I know…I know she wasn’t who I thought she was, but I want to go see her.”
“Of course. I’ll come with you unless you want to be alone.”
I think about it for a moment. It feels strange being in this place with Nate, as if the life I have now is so far removed from where I was just a few months ago that having the two intermingle is unfathomable. On the other hand, I have been alone so much, I like having another person near me.
“I’d like the company, actually.”
I lead Nate straight to Aunt Ginny’s grave, immediately wishing I’d stopped somewhere for fresh flowers first. A few plastic ones sit nearby, covered in snow. I’d placed them there shortly after coming back. I crouch down and wipe the accumulating powder from the top of the rose-colored marble headstone, and Nate takes a few steps away from me, granting me a bit of privacy.
I feel like I should say something, but no words come to mind. All I really want is to be able to ask her the multitude of questions in my head. Sadly, and with more than a little frustration, she’s no longer here to provide answers.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” I whisper to myself. “You cared for me and loved me my whole life. Maybe that’s more important than answering any questions.”
I wipe a tear from the corner of my eye.
“Hey, Cherry?”
“Yes?” I blink back tears and rise. Nate is standing just a few feet away, looking down at a small gravestone.
“Come look at this.”
I walk up beside him and look down to find the name “Cherice Montgomery” on the marker at my feet.
“Wow.”
“I guess we know why that name was chosen for your identifying information,” Nate says.
“Do you think someone just randomly looked down here and picked it out?”
“Not necessarily. They needed to pick someone local, and my guess is she was chosen because she lived and died here. Picking out the name of a dead person at random has its drawbacks. A carefully chosen one will stand up to a lot more scrutiny. Makes everything a lot easier.”
“You know an awful lot about this.”
“It is my business.”
I stare down at the grave for a moment, noting the birth and death dates.
“I don’t even know what my real date of birth is.”
“It’s at least close to that day,” Nate says. He wraps his arm around my shoulders. “We have a lot of unanswered questions still. If you want, I can help you figure it all out.”
“I’ve thought about it a bit since I came back,” I say. “I think the idea of dealing with it by myself was a bit too overwhelming.”
“With how everything turned out, we never got to follow up on what we found out about you—about your heritage.”
“No, we didn’t.”
“We have a good start,” Nate says. “Everything got a little sidetracked, but we have a few things to go on. I’ll help you get the answers, Cherry. I promise.”
I nod and take in a deep breath of cold air as I stare down at the headstone bearing the name I found on my forged birth certificate. I can’t believe I’ve never noticed it before. I don’t even know anyone with the last name of Montgomery in town.
“It’s fucking creepy.” I wrap my arms around myself. “I mean, I know that’s not my real name on the stone, but still.”
Nate takes my hand and squeezes it.
“Let’s get to the shop,” he says. “We are more likely to find information there than if we just stand here in the cold.”
We walk back to the house, and Nate starts toward the car.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“I thought we were going to the antique shop.”
“It’s just a couple of blocks from here.” I point down the driveway and laugh. “You don’t really have to drive to get to anywhere in town.”
“But it’s snowing,”
“What’s more likely to get stuck in the snow, the car or your feet?”
“Fine. You have a point there.” Nate looks down at his expensive leather shoes and sighs.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t have any boots in your size. Maybe we should go get you some, first. We’d have to head to Grantsville to find an actual shopping center.” Just mentioning the town makes me realize I need to make an appointment with the doctor there. Of course, I still haven’t told Nate anything about the baby, but now doesn’t feel like the right time. “There isn’t a lot of variety here in town for such things.”
“No, it’s all right. The bag I left in the car has another pair of shoes I can switch into later.”
Nate takes my hand, and I lead him down the driveway and walk the short distance to the shop. We dig through a filing cabinet in the office as well as a few other likely places but still find nothing.
“There has to be something,” Nate says.
“Are you sure? I mean, maybe she got rid of any evidence.”
“No way. Even when you need to hide something important, you have to have proof of the truth somewhere. You never know when you’re going to need it. Maybe we should check out the post office before it closes. I think that paper from Micha’s file might lead to something there.”
I open the drawer of an antique desk in the back of the office and dig around in the back. I pull out a ring of keys.
“I know what most of these are for but not all of them. One might go to a PO box.”
Nate looks through the ring and identifies a couple of keys as possibilities, and we walk two blocks to the post office. Inside the door, post office boxes stretch from floor to ceiling. Nate locates box number seventy-two and tries the keys on the ring. To my surprise, the third key he tries fits in the lock.
He glances over at me as he turns the key and opens the little metal door. He pulls out a pile of junk mail along with a small, sealed envelope.
&nbs
p; “There’s no address or anything on it,” I say. “Should we open it?”
“That’s why we’re here,” Nate says. He glances around, but there isn’t anyone else in the lobby. He slips his finger under the flap and tears open the envelope. He pulls out a single piece of paper and reads it aloud. “Empire secretary left.” He shakes his head in frustration. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? What empire, and where did the secretary go?”
“I don’t think that’s it,” I say with a snicker. “Empire is a furniture style, and a secretary is a type of desk with drawers at the bottom, a hinged desktop, and a glass case on top. It’s got lots of small compartments over the writing area, which folds up to close the whole thing off.”
“So, are there any of these at the shop?”
“Sure,” I say. “More than one. It’s a common piece.”
We head back to the antique shop, and I point out a few Empire secretary desks.
“Any of them stand out to you?” Nate asks.
“Actually, yes.” I walk over to one of the pieces near the back. A square of paper marks the desk as sold.
“Why this one?” Nate asks. “She wouldn’t sell something that was important.”
“Because this one has been sitting here with that sign on it for years,” I say. “I remember asking her once if the buyer was ever going to pick it up, and she said something about them moving out of town, but she agreed to hold it for them indefinitely.”
“That certainly seems a little odd.”
I run my hand up the left side of the desk, but nothing seems unusual. Nate helps me pull it away from the wall, and we both look all around it but find nothing.
“What are we missing?” Nate asks.
“Well, it wasn’t unusual to have hidden compartments in old desks like these. There has to be one somewhere.”
We check for a false bottom on the drawers but find none. I look around the inside of the cabinet section and again run my hand up the left side. On the very top corner, the position of the cornice appears slightly off.
“Nate, can you reach that top part?”
He reaches up above my head, pulls at the underside of the wood, and a small hidden drawer falls out in his hand.