The Serpents Trail

by Sue Henry

  I explained, as best I could, about Sarah’s death and finding out she had a daughter; about finding the picture, letters, and the card with Mildred’s name and address; and that I was trying to find out something that would tell me who had tried to kill Sarah and why—starting with Mildred Scott, who was my only real lead.

  “So she did live here?” I asked.

  “Until she died in June of 2001,” he said. “It was our home.”

  Just after the date on that last picture of Jamie that I had found in the basement room.

  “And you were . . .”

  “Her husband.”

  “Did she know a Jamie Stover?”

  “Oh, yes. We both knew Jamie. She grew up right next door—lived with her parents until she got married and moved away. They died a few years ago. Still, she used to drop in to see Milly now and then.”

  He sighed and waved a hand toward the living room.

  “Might as well sit down, I guess. They’re both dead now, so I guess it can’t matter to talk about it finally. What else do you want to know?”

  I perched on the edge of the sofa. After he had given Stretch a pat or two, he sat down in a recliner so worn it retained the impression of his body.

  “Did she know Sarah Nunamaker?”

  “Only met her that one time, years ago. Milly was a nurse at the hospital where her babies were born.”

  “Babies?” He had said “babies”—plural—hadn’t he?

  “The twins she put up for adoption. But Milly was only able to keep track of Jamie, because the Stovers next door adopted her. The boy got adopted by some other people.”

  I sat back and stared at him, taken aback to the point of speechlessness. It had never occurred to me that Sarah might have had more than one child. Why should it? All the information I had found was related to Jamie, with no mention of anyone else. Could Ed have been right and Alan was really Sarah’s son? Had she adopted him after she married?

  “You didn’t know about the boy?” he asked.

  “No. I didn’t. Sarah was my best friend, but she didn’t even tell me about Jamie. I don’t know why. Was the boy adopted immediately, or later? Did Mildred know who adopted him?”

  “He was adopted almost as soon as he was born, but Milly didn’t know who the adoptive parents were. She tried every way she could think of to find out, because she had promised Sarah. But he just disappeared and the court sealed all the papers.”

  So, I thought as he continued, it couldn’t have been Sarah who adopted Alan.

  “Not knowing upset both of them. Milly always blamed herself—but Sarah never did,” he finished.

  “Did you know Sarah?”

  “Nope. Just knew about the pictures that Milly sent with the letters. A letter from Sarah would come once a year—about the time of Jamie’s birthday always—usually with a present that we gave her like it was from Milly. I never pried. It was Milly’s secret when we got married. She told me about it, but she wasn’t going to let it go, so we just kept it like that.”

  “Did you know that Jamie had found out that she was adopted and that she had located Sarah?”

  “Yes, I knew that. She was pretty upset when she found out—after her folks died in that accident. She kept insisting that Milly must know something about it, because Alice Stover and Milly were pretty good friends, but Milly never told her that she knew Sarah, or anything about having a brother. I think she was still keeping loyal to Sarah. Jamie may still not know about her twin. I don’t know. She found out about Sarah through some agency that helps adopted people find their real mothers. She should have left it alone, I think. She’s got enough on her plate with raising that boy of hers by herself.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. So I asked him if he knew where Jamie lived. He didn’t—just somewhere in, or near, Salt Lake. Did he know the name of her ex-husband?

  Harris, maybe Harrison—or something similar.

  “We went to the wedding. I didn’t like him much.”

  My head full of new information, there wasn’t anything else I could think of to ask, so I thanked David Scott and got up to take myself back to the VIP Campground for the night. Before I left, he said he was sorry to hear that Sarah was dead, but I thought I recognized relief in his voice and could understand why. The burden of the secret relationship between his wife and Sarah must have been a thing he felt she could have done without—and knew he could.

  As I drove back through the wide streets, I wondered if Jamie had been able to find out anything about her twin brother—if she even knew she had one. Where was he? What had his life been like? If his family had lived in Salt Lake, being the same age as Jamie, they could have been in the same place any number of times without knowing. It was improbable, but not impossible, that they had gone to the same schools. If not, they might have attended the same football, or basketball games, or gone to church together. They might even have researched their family history at the library near Temple Square, if he was also LDS, and the majority of people in Salt Lake are. How ironic—each of them researching families that were really not their own. But he might have been told he was adopted, as she had not. Had he looked for her—or Sarah? Now there was an interesting thought.

  Speculation—all speculation, with a tangle of possibilities. I was glad my children knew who they were and that their lives would hold no such surprises. They might have lost their father, Joe Flanagan, but they knew who he was, know who their mother is and, most important of all, who they are. There is stability in continuity. I had trouble imagining how being adopted would feel.

  The next morning I left Stretch in the Winnebago, not wanting to leave him in a hot car and having no idea how long it would take me at the Family History Library to find Mr. Wilson. When I parked in a lot just around the corner from Temple Square I was glad I had, for the cement paving was already reflecting heat like an oven and there wasn’t a single tree anywhere under which to park.

  Finding a walkway that led to West Temple Street at one corner of the lot, I took it and was startled when I came out next to a rough log cabin between two multi-story modern buildings—a display to illustrate what early settlers had originally built and lived in. Around it were flowers similar to those pioneer women had cherished enough to carry seeds all the way across the plains from their eastern gardens—hollyhocks and sunflowers, among others.

  Next door to this educational display was the Family History Library, a large attractive building with a tall modern entrance that provided shade for low walls retaining attractive beds of pink, red, and white flowers. Several people were sitting on the walls, taking breaks from their research of the records contained in the library. A sign on the wall of the building identified the Genealogical Society of Utah, Established 1894. No wonder they were reputed to have the most extensive collection of family history in the world. They had certainly been at it long enough.

  For the first time I wondered if I could find the names of any of my ancestors in their voluminous collection of information. Not today you can’t, I told myself. Today I was on the track of Mr. Wilson and whatever, if anything, he could tell me about the family group sheets, or the names on them, that I had found in Sarah’s house.

  Inside the front door on the northeast corner of the building, I found myself in a large atrium that held a reception desk with several people behind it who were answering questions and giving directions. As I waited my turn, I picked up a floor plan from the counter and found that the library was much larger than it appeared. The main and second floors held records in books and on film for the United States and Canada. There were, also, two basement floors; one that held records for Europe, Scandinavia, Latin America, and International; and one below it that did the same for the British Isles. A brochure next to the floor plan told me that the library had been gathering records for over a hundred years and that every year it preserves and catalogs an astonishing hundred million new pages of historical documents. Somewhere in the library were over 12,00
0 books, 50,000 microfilms, and 25,000 microfiche, all carefully organized and cataloged.

  I was still absorbing this information when one of the women behind the desk sent a researcher downstairs to the Scandinavian collection and turned to me. “May I help you?”

  Given Mr. Wilson’s name, she directed me upstairs.

  “He should be at the reference desk,” she told me. “If not, someone there will know where to find him.”

  There was an elevator, but I climbed the stairs. Exercise at my age is never a bad idea. The reference desk, a large square counter with space for workers in the middle, was the first thing I came to in a huge room of bookshelves and lots of microfilm and microfiche readers, most with people searching records in front of them.

  I asked a woman at the counter for Mr. Wilson.

  “Michael,” she called, and at the other end of the square a short gray-haired man in a business suit turned to look back over his shoulder. His face was wider than it was long, which made his smile look even broader beneath the bushiest pair of eyebrows I have ever seen. He came bustling across to where I stood and looked up at me from behind his side of the counter.

  “Yes? May I help you?”

  They must train all their volunteers—and, I learned that most are volunteers—with the same phrase, but it works for me. Everyone I met in that library was friendly and helpful—some overly so. The IRS and a few other government agencies—Medicare for instance—could—no, should—make their employees go through training at the Family History Library before they are allowed to meet the public.

  I laid my copies of the family group sheets on the counter in front of Mr. Wilson and showed him the note with his name and the phone number, explaining that I had found it in the belongings of a now-deceased friend. “She may have called and talked to you sometime in the last month or so. I thought perhaps you might remember a Mrs. Sarah Nunamaker, or recognize some of the names on these pages. I’m the executor of her estate and am trying to figure out what she was looking for and if it is important for me to know.”

  The brows went up and down, and he gave me a helpless glance over the granny-glasses he had balanced on the bulb of his nose.

  “I am the only Wilson here, so it must have been me,” he said. “But we assist hundreds of people, in person and on the telephone, with questions. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t remember most of the names I helped yesterday, let alone a month ago.”

  Until I walked in the door, I realized that I had had the picture of a regular library in mind. Having found something so different, I had feared this kind of failure would be the answer to my questions. In the few minutes I had been in the library I had seen dozens of people in motion, books and papers in their hands, and many more working at film readers, copy machines, and filing cabinets. The place was like a hive of busy worker bees, with pleasant helpers around for guidance.

  “I’m really sorry,” Michael Wilson said again. “Was there anything else I could help you with?”

  I was already there and interested, so why not?

  “You could tell me a little about how this all works,” I said. “Is there anything in print for novices who might like to do a little family research here?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. Eager to make up for not being able to provide an answer to my initial question, he reached behind the counter and pulled out several brochures and sheets of information, including another floor plan. On top of these he laid a two-page form titled Where Do I Start? and a Family History Materials List. Before I could even consider a protest, I was carrying a pile of Mr. Wilson’s introductory gifts and he had come from behind the desk to give me a tour of the second floor of the library.

  He was explaining the variety of census records that were on file, and we had come to a large area full of filing cabinets with a row of carrels for film readers off to one side, when someone else caught my attention and I abruptly quit listening to his nonstop explanation of what was available to researchers. I stopped moving as well when a man stood up from one of the carrels, pushed back a chair that had a jacket draped over its back, and turned to walk toward us with a roll of microfilm in one hand.

  His appearance before he turned gave me a start because for a moment I had thought it was Ed Norris. This man’s hair was as dark as Ed’s had once been and he was as tall and thin but, as he came toward us and gave me a disinterested passing glance, I could see there was no other resemblance—or only what my imagination had provided. Still, it made me suddenly aware that, consciously or not, I was now on the lookout for Jamie’s brother—Sarah’s other twin.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I STOOD LOOKING AFTER THE MAN WHO HAD JUST passed me in the Family History Library.

  He had glanced at me with no reaction and walked on to stop in front of a bank of drawers where he opened one and replaced the microfilm he had been reading.

  “Someone you know?”

  Mr. Wilson, who had noticed I wasn’t tagging along, followed my gaze to the man with the microfilm.

  “I don’t think so. Do you?”

  “No.” He turned to continue the tour.

  But I couldn’t stop watching while the man at the drawer ran a finger down the top of a row of films, selected a new one, and took it out. Closing the drawer, he started back toward his carrel and, as he passed me for the second time, glanced my way again.

  Something in my expression must have registered, or he was uncomfortable being stared at, because there was a hesitation in his step and his glance turned into a look with a question in it. When I didn’t respond or look away, he gave me a self-conscious almost-smile and moved on.

  I went on with Mr. Wilson, who led me out of sight of the carrel between two bookshelves, but I wasn’t hearing a thing he said.

  How could I, the evening before, have found out about a person the existence of whom I had never suspected and, the very next morning, have seen someone I thought might be that person cross the room in front of me—twice?

  Get a grip, I told myself. If you hadn’t met Jamie, then learned that she had a brother, you wouldn’t have noticed this man at all.

  Politely I listened for another few minutes as Mr. Wilson did his best to give me an informative tour, but I didn’t understand or retain much. When we came back through the microfilm area on our way to the reference desk I glanced over again, looking for the man I had seen. Pausing in front of the carrel, I saw that there was film in the reading machine, but the paper upon which he had been taking notes was gone. The chair was empty, the jacket missing from its back, and the man who had been working there was nowhere to be seen.

  Mr. Wilson assured me that researchers are honor bound to return materials when they finish using them. Since the microfilm was still in the reader, he thought the man was probably still in the library and had merely stepped away for some reason.

  Honor bound or not, I thought otherwise. I thanked him for his time and assistance and went back down the stairs and out the front door with my armful of informative brochures. There, I sat down on the wall with people taking breaks from their studies and turned so I could watch the doors. I couldn’t help it, though I knew I was being silly, I wanted another look at the man if he hadn’t already come out and gone.

  It was a bright sunny day, but pleasant in the shade. Scores of people were coming and going from the library and a variety of buildings that occupied Temple Square across the tree-lined street. At least half the researchers who were chatting together along the wall were senior citizens, probably freed by retirement to be able to spend the majority of their time searching their family histories for lost ancestors. The two women closest to me were discussing the merits of working at the library rather than online. It was something I hadn’t thought of, but evidently there were numerous sources that could be studied with a computer. Maybe I should get out my laptop from the cupboard where it lived in the Winnebago and take a look. It was about time for my weekly e-mail check anyway and I might have something from Joe and Shar
on in Seattle. I filed away a reminder to do so and returned my attention to who was coming and going through the library doors.

  As I waited, I did not try to unscramble the potential piece of the puzzle I had just stumbled upon, but tried to figure out how I could find Jamie—if she had returned to Salt Lake, as I suspected. It was very possible that she had not—that I had left her behind in Grand Junction. From what she had said she must have been there for at least a week. How long would she leave her son with a friend? Was there any way I could locate that friend? Had she purposely left me with no names, no addresses, nothing of help in finding her? I could search unsuccessfully for weeks in a city this large.

  An hour later I gave up. Mr. Wilson had been mistaken. The man I had seen was long gone and had simply forgotten to return the microfilm before he left for some other, completely innocent reason. I was being seduced by my overactive imagination. Collecting my bag and brochures, I headed for the car that I knew would once again be too hot to drive.

  Strike three!

  The car was once again a furnace. As I had in Grand Junction, I started the engine, turned the air conditioner on full blast, and stood around waiting for it to cool to endurance level. This was September? Not the kind I was used to in Alaska.

  As I waited, my cell phone suddenly came to life in my bag and I had to dig hurriedly through the contents to find it. Finally at the bottom I recognized it by feel and fished it out before it stopped ringing.

  “Hello.”

  I could hear the line was open, but there was no response.

  “Hello. Who’s calling please?”

  Still nothing, though I had the definite feeling that someone was listening.

  “Do you have the wrong number? I’m going to hang up, if you don’t answer.”

  “Wait,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. “You’d better listen.”