by Barbara Ross
I found Rose’s photo on the web site of a San Francisco hospital. She was a physician, a neurosurgeon. She stared out of her official photograph, a woman in her late forties, strong and confident, with deep brown eyes, thick, wavy, brown hair. Rose Morrow was mixed race, certainly part African-American.
That took me aback momentarily, but then I thought, why wouldn’t she be? She was born in 1968, not 1908, and Arthur Morrow was free to marry anyone he wanted, and apparently, he’d wanted Louise. I wondered how this had gone over with his parents. Hugh had told Mom his mother cared only about what other people thought. It was hard to imagine Arthur’s marriage had been the toast of the Gold Coast set. But it appeared Louise and Rose had lived with the Morrows after Arthur died, so how bad could the relationship have been?
I had a cousin Rose, a third cousin, once removed, if I calculated right. Rose must have inherited or found the Black Widow. She must have been the one who searched the genealogy site and built the family tree to Lemuel and Sarah, our common forebearers. But why? If she’d inherited the Black Widow, why hadn’t she kept it, or sold it?
I paced until at last Mom emerged from her room, showered and fully dressed. “Did Hugh ever mention a sister-in-law or a niece?”
She didn’t answer right away, but went down the back stairs to the kitchen where she poured a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table. I followed like an eager terrier, nipping at her heels. Why was she avoiding the question?
“I’m sure Hugh didn’t mention a niece,” Mom finally said. “He didn’t like to talk about Arthur. The subject was painful for him. Do you mean Arthur had a daughter?”
“He did and I’ve found her on the Internet. A real, honest to goodness, living relation.”
Mom stared at the tabletop. She’d said her relationship with Hugh was based on honesty. My heart broke for her. This had to be a serious blow. Maybe more important, what else hadn’t Hugh told her? Finally she said, “What will you do now?”
“I’ll figure out how to get in touch.”
“And ask a perfect stranger, ‘You didn’t, by the way, happen to send my mother a two-million-dollar necklace?’”
I laughed. “Maybe not right off. I’m headed to the post office to verify that the package came from San Francisco.”
* * *
I dressed in snug layers—T-shirt, flannel shirt, coat, scarf, gloves—and then realized, like a three-year-old, I had to pee before I went out. So I undid most of it and then had to put it all on again while Le Roi sat at my feet and laughed. Or, at least I imagined he laughed.
The day was clear like the previous one, and enough above freezing that the melt continued. On my way to the post office, I stopped off at Tom’s Business Center to have the photos of
Windsholme and Clementine Morrow enlarged and printed. Mom had seemed so taken with the one of Windsholme. Clementine, I wanted for my own purposes.
“Hi, Julia,” Barbara Jean called from behind the counter as soon as I entered the post office. There was no line, but three people stood around the high table in the center of the room, sorting mail they’d taken from their boxes. In true Busman’s manner, I knew all of them, and we greeted each other by name and remarked on the snow and the melt and speculated about when the next storm might be.
I handed Barbara Jean the wrapping paper from the package as soon as I reached the counter. She entered the numbers from the machine-generated stamp into her computer. “Got it.” She spoke softly, as if we were in a hospital elevator or a confessional. I smiled at her encouragingly, knowing what was coming. “Your package originated in Boston.”
“Boston!” Nothing in my research had led me to Boston. Frederic, the first Morrow iceman, had started there, but Lemuel had moved to New York City and Charles to San Francisco, and the two families had continued in those places.
“Back Bay, specifically,” Barbara Jean added.
Darn. I was going to have to start over. “Anything else?”
“It was sent last Tuesday, if that’s helpful.”
Every little bit. I thanked her and trudged out into the snow.
Tom at the business center had printed the photos. “She sure is a beauty,” he said, sliding them into an envelope. It wasn’t until he said “Shame she burned,” that I realized he meant Windsholme, and not Clementine Morrow or the necklace.
Mom and Page were in the kitchen baking ginger snaps, as Mom was taught by Helga, one of the housekeepers who had raised her and provided her sketchy domestic education. As I watched, Page combined the dry ingredients with the wet and stirred the mixture. When the dough rolled into a big ball, Mom covered the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. It would be several more hours before the house filled with the smell of their gingery deliciousness.
“Have you talked to your Mom or Dad this morning?” I asked Page.
“Yup.”
“Everything’s fine,” my mother elaborated for her. “Livvie is resting.”
“Where have you been?” Page asked. “My dad said you had something important to do.”
“Don’t worry. I’m doing it.” I poured coffee for Mom and me and we sat at the kitchen table.
I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to say in front of Page, but I figured if I didn’t mention the Black Widow, or its value, which was the type of thing that might easily slip out in conversation with her friends, the rest was okay. “The package didn’t come from San Francisco,” I told Mom. “It came from Boston. Do you have any idea of someone who might have sent it from there?”
Mom’s mouth drooped in disappointment. “No idea at all,” she answered. “You know more about the family than I do at this point. Hugh went to Harvard, as did Arthur, so that’s a Boston connection. But other than that, I couldn’t say.” She paused. “What will you do now?”
“I don’t know. I was so sure it was Rose who sent the package. I may try to call her or e-mail her anyway. I’m out of clues.” Then I remembered the printed photograph of Windsholme and pulled it from my tote bag. “I have something for you,” I said, hoping it would cheer Mom up.
“Oooh, let me see.” Page slid over next to me.
I had to admit the quality of the photo wasn’t great. It had been blown up from a photo of a photo taken with my phone. Windsholme loomed, but the figures on the porch and lawn were fuzzy, their faces a perturbing congregation of wavy, disconnected lines. Despite this, my mother studied them intensely.
“What’s that?” Page pointed to a cart that stood between the two little boys.
“I imagine it’s something they played with,” I answered.
“No, I mean what’s in it?”
“I don’t see.” But then I squinted and I did.
“I’ll get a magnifying glass.” Mom opened the kitchen junk drawer, pulled out a cheap magnifying glass, and returned to the table. “It’s a baby!” Mom gasped. “Another relative.”
The trail had opened up again.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” Page asked.
“No way to know, sweetie,” Mom said. “It’s far too small to see, and anyway, they dressed them pretty much the same in those days.”
“Oh,” Page said, losing interest.
“Do you want a brother or a sister?” Mom asked her.
“We’re not finding out,” Page answered, giving the party line.
“I know,” Mom prodded, “but it’s so close now. Tell us what you really want. I know you will love the baby no matter what, but what are you wishing for?”
Page hesitated, and then blurted, “A boy.”
“Really?” That surprised me. I thought a ten-year-old girl would want a little sister to dress up and play with. “Why?” Less competition?
“This family needs boys,” Page said matter-of-factly. “We don’t have enough.”
“What will you do now?” Mom asked me.
“Follow up. Find out who the baby was. Maybe his or her descendants stayed in Boston.”
“Start at the historical society,” M
om advised. “Floradale got you this far.”
* * *
The sidewalk up to the historical society door had melted to wet pavement, a far cry from the way it had been on my first visit. Mrs. Thayer answered on the first knock. Her project was still spread out across the conference table, so I again sat at the small desk in the corner.
“What would you like this time?” Mrs. Thayer asked.
“A History of the Morrow Ice Company, again, please, and the photo you showed me yesterday of Windsholme.” I hadn’t brought the blown-up photos with me. I was afraid admitting I’d photographed them would get me banned for life. This would take some finesse.
She gave me the book and the file with the photo and returned to her work. I looked casually through the photos, stopping at the one of Windsholme. “May I have a magnifying glass, please?”
Mrs. Thayer grunted, rising to cross the room to her desk. “Think you see something?”
Perfect. I pointed to the cart. “I think there’s a baby in there.”
“I don’t need a magnifying glass for that. That’s Lemuel and Sarah’s daughter, William and Charles’s sister.”
My hopes soared. “Do you know what happened to her?”
“She died at the age of six, in the same scarlet fever epidemic that killed her mother.” Floradale studied my reaction. “What’s the matter? I know it’s sad, but it happened many years ago.”
I decided to lay my cards on the table, at least partially. “I’m trying to track down some relatives for my mom. It’s really just her, you know. Her mother died when she was so young. She doesn’t know much about the family. I did find one person, Arthur Morrow’s daughter, but she’s on the West Coast.”
Mrs. Thayer sat in the chair next to me and put a hand as big as a basketball player’s over mine. “Your mother’s had more than her share of bad fortune. But what about Clementine’s daughter? I realize she was a half sibling, but she’s been at Windsholme. She might love to connect with your mother.”
Clementine had a daughter? Clementine, Lemuel’s second wife, who had been photographed wearing the Black Widow? “Do you know anything about the daughter?”
“She was a pip, that one. Went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War, married a Spanish freedom fighter.”
“Did she stay in Spain?”
“No, no. Brought him back to her mother’s house in Boston, in the Back Bay. Her name is Morales. Marguerite Morales.”
I calculated in my head. It was so confusing. Marguerite had to be three decades younger than her half brothers, but she must be quite old now, if she was even still alive. “Do you know if she had children?”
“I lost track of her. She never returned to Busman’s Harbor.” Floradale’s tone made it clear that if your life didn’t include Busman’s Harbor, it wasn’t worth knowing about.
I jumped up and grabbed my coat. “Thank you, thank you, Mrs. Thayer. I’ve got to run.”
Chapter 12
I thought it would be harder to find Marguerite Morales on the web than it was. Knowing not only that she had lived in Boston, but in Back Bay, made it easier. Marguerite Morales had been active in the Garden Club of Back Bay, the Alliance Française, and the Boston Athenaeum. Entries on the web were slimmer for her in recent years. She had to be well into her nineties, but I found no obituary. I couldn’t believe my luck. Was she still alive?
I tracked down her exact address on Marlborough Street in Back Bay. Almost all the homes around were condos, but there were no unit numbers at Marguerite’s town house. Perhaps she owned the whole building. I was skimming through the information about her address available on the web, reading about building permits sought and real estate taxes paid, when I noticed something that took my breath away. Marguerite co-owned the house with a Hugh M. Morales!
At first, I assumed he was a husband or a son, but I couldn’t find any evidence of that. Hugh Morales was as present on the web as Marguerite was. He was a realtor. He ran in 10K races. He was on the board of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. I typed in my credit card number to access the Boston Globe archives and found him in a group photo at the start of a road race. Could it be? Could it possibly be? He was lean like the runner he was, sharp featured and gray haired. Mom had plenty of photos of her cousin Hugh, but they stopped when he disappeared when he was twenty-one. I squinted at the image. The man in the picture was the right age. I couldn’t be sure, but my hopes rose.
Just as with Marguerite, the mentions of Hugh on the web were scarcer in the last few years than previously. There had been nothing in a couple of years. But again, I found no obituary. Would you have an obituary and a funeral for a man who was already dead? My hands shook as I powered off the computer. What should I do?
I called Cuthie Cuthbertson. “Hello, Julia dear. What can I do for you this fine day?”
“I think I found the person who might have sent Mom the . . . tiara. At the very least, I’ve found a relative in Boston we didn’t know we had.”
“Good for you, dear.”
“What do I do now? Should you call her?”
He didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “Remember I told you these kinds of cases, questions of ownership, are always giant messes? The last thing you need is to start things off with a call from an attorney, even one as tactful as me. And I don’t think you should call or e-mail either. I think you need to go down to Boston and meet face to face. What’s the worst that can happen? You meet a new relative. You can’t make the situation any trickier than it already is.”
I knew before I hung up what I would do. What I had always planned to do, probably. I called Chris.
“Hey, beautiful. What’s up?” He sounded relaxed, like a man wearing sandals, not snow boots.
“I found someone who might have sent the necklace to Mom. She’s a distant cousin who lives in Boston. I’m going to go down there for a couple of days to see if I can meet her.”
He was silent for a moment. “Take my truck. You shouldn’t drive your old beater to Boston, or even to Portland to catch the train. The truck is heavy and it’s loaded up with sand in the back. There’s more weather coming your way at the end of this week.”
He was right about my car, a 1982 Caprice with a wonky heater and questionable windshield wipers. It was definitely not to be driven off the peninsula. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Do me a favor, throw my coat in the truck. If you’re still in Boston when I fly in, you can pick me up at the airport. Maybe we’ll even spend the night in a nice hotel.”
“Wow. I’m sold. How much is Joe paying you that you have cash to throw around on hotel rooms?”
“It’s not wasted when I’m with my girl.”
I hung up with a ridiculous grin on my face. Chris was a handsome man. Almost too handsome, as I was reminded as I walked around Busman’s Harbor and women, so many women, stopped to inquire how he was and to reminisce about their time with him. He had a wonderful voice, strong and masculine, with a hint of a Maine accent that made me tingle whenever I heard it. And when he said things like that . . .
I returned to my apartment and packed a small bag. When I got back to Mom’s house, she and Page were reading in the living room. “I’m going to Boston.”
“You’ve found someone else.” Mom caught my gaze and held it, confirming the significance with a swift nod of her head.
“I think so, yes. Clementine’s daughter, Marguerite.” I wouldn’t tell her what I suspected about Hugh. If Hugh M. Morales wasn’t him, it would be too cruel to get her hopes up.
“She must be a hundred.”
“In her nineties, certainly. Perhaps at the time of life when people think about passing material things along to their rightful owners.”
“Maybe.” Mom sounded doubtful. “Where will you stay?”
“I’ve booked a room in a big hotel right in her neighborhood.”
“Sounds expensive.”
“I still have a lot of hotel points left from my job.” I did, though only enoug
h for a couple of nights. I hated to use them for this, but what was the investment, relative to a necklace worth two million dollars?
“I wish I could come.” Much as she longed to know her mother’s family, there was no way my mother was going to leave Maine when my sister needed her. Despite the long tentacles of her ancestors, my mother’s face was fixed firmly toward the future, not the past.
“Get your coat,” I said. “We’re going to First Busman’s this minute to rent a safety deposit box for the necklace. Otherwise, I’m not leaving.”
“Okay,” Mom sighed. “You win.”
* * *
After I picked up Chris’s truck, I took a detour and drove out toward the end of Westclaw Point. The note with the Black Widow had said, “For Windsholme,” and so much of the story of my mother’s family seemed to come back to that place. I felt pulled to it as if by a magnet. There was no one with a boat in the water who could take me out to Morrow Island, and I didn’t want to ride across the cold ocean anyway. Looking from land would have to do.
Westclaw Point Road was plowed all the way to the end, a new town policy, in effect the last few years as more of the old places had been winterized. But most of the driveways I passed were snow clogged, the windows in the houses blank, empty for the season.
I pulled gingerly to the side of the road when I reached my friend Quentin’s modern stone edifice. A wall of glass and marble, it erupted out of the rocky shore. The neighbors called it an eyesore. I teasingly called it Quentin’s Fortress of Solitude. He wasn’t there. He was off at one of his homes in the Caribbean or Manhattan or the Côte d’Azur. I imagined the scene when we handed over the money and happily paid him back. I wasn’t sure he’d take it. He was a lover of the architecture of Windsholme and a major proponent of repairing and restoring, rather than demolishing, the old house.
The snow in Quentin’s driveway would probably leave me in wet jeans for the drive south, but, called by Windsholme, I waded my way to his back deck. Windsholme stood in the distance across the water, sited at the highest point on Morrow Island. From this vantage point, the fire damage wasn’t visible, just the clear, straight lines of the house, the slant of its slate roof, the twin sentries of its chimneys. Windsholme was beautiful, and I understood why Quentin loved this view of it. But the house was empty and dark; no smoke curled from its chimneys. Was there any arithmetic that made it worthwhile to save it, a relic of a bygone past? Was that what the person who sent the Black Widow to my mother meant for her to do?