"Good Lord," she exclaimed; she recognized almost instantly what the box held.
"You and Richard," he said, not quite able to keep the anger from his voice.
"This is extraordinary. From 1917 to what, a month before he died? This is a treasure trove." She looked at him then and was surprised to see in his face the anger in his voice. "Why are you angry?"
"How can you ask me that?"
"It's not just about this house. There's more to it."
He got up so forcefully that he knocked over his chair. The clatter seemed to shake him back to some rational place, for he stopped and picked up the chair, placed it neatly at the table, and apologized. "I feel like I'm down the rabbit hole. Or lost with Gulliver in some strange place or time where people see and feel things differently than I do. We all see the same things, but I have a different reaction or response and yes, it makes me angry."
"Because your response is different, or because of how the others respond?"
"You're one of them. What you just said about Grandpa's journals: A treasure trove you called them. And your excitement. You reacted exactly the way Richard and Margaret did."
"Who's Richard? And Margaret?"
"He's my law partner, my business partner. Margaret's his wife and the head of the CC historical society. Richard was crazy about Grandpa—I knew that—but I didn't know until after the old man died that Richard used to come over here and sit and talk to him. About everything, he said, but knowing Grandpa, it would have been about the past. They love that stuff, Richard and Margaret: Anything to do with the past gets their juices flowing."
"And you don't have much use for the past?" And when he shrugged, she snapped at him, "You are so full of crap, Jonas Thatcher!"
He felt the same way he'd felt when Richard yelled at him. "What are you talking about? And where do you get off saying such a thing to me?"
"You drive a thirty-year-old car, your suit and shoes are handcrafted, you still wear your college class ring, and I'm guessing your watch is at least fifty years old, unless it's a replica, which I doubt. And you shrug your shoulders at the past? Who are you kidding?"
Jay tried several times to respond but couldn't make any words leave his mouth. Then he laughed. Really and truly laughed. "He would've liked you."
"I think I would have liked him, too. Grandma certainly did."
"He more than liked her, as you'll see when you read those," he said, pointing to the box of journals.
"You've read them, then?" She opened one and turned its pages without reading them.
"I started today after I left you. I'd given them to Richard to read, which he did, from first to last. So did Margaret, both of them staying up until the wee hours. They live not far from here—that's how I saw you running—I was leaving their house." He paused, and she watched as he gathered his thoughts. "I lived with him most of my life, since my parents died, and I never truly knew him. I learned a lot today." He pointed again toward the box of journals. "I wish I knew more, enough so that I could at least begin to understand…"
Sissy returned the journal to the box and walked toward the solarium, beckoning Jay to follow. She took Jonas's letter to Ruthie from her briefcase and gave it to him. He began to read and had to sit down after just a few sentences. He had stopped breathing at some point, and he exhaled noisily when he finished reading.
"The past is how we understand the present and plan for the future, Jonas. If you'd known the history of this house and the land it sits on…"
"I wouldn't have made such a damn fool of myself. Here I am talking to him about my great idea for a development project, and he knows the whole time that it'll never happen. He must have really enjoyed watching me dig the hole that'll likely bury me."
"You think he enjoyed watching you embark on a course that ultimately would cause you pain? Is that the kind of man he was?"
"He could have stopped me."
"Would you have listened?"
He looked again at the twenty-year-old letter. "I wish I'd always listened. I wish I'd known when I brought you here this morning that this truly was your house, that it had always been your house."
"You know that I can't allow you to destroy it." It wasn't a question.
"I know, Ruthie, and it's all right. Really it—" He stopped talking because she was looking at him so very strangely. "What?"
"You called me Ruthie."
He looked momentarily confused, then realized that he was talking to her as if she were her grandmother. "I…I'm sorry…your name is…"
"Ruth Barnett Nelson. Sissy to my family and friends, RB or Barney to my colleagues."
"Barney? Like you're some ugly purple thing?" They both laughed. "I'll never call you Barney, and I can't call you Sissy."
"Does that mean you won't consider me a friend?"
"You've been calling me Jonas, which nobody ever has, but which I like hearing."
"What do your friends—Richard and Margaret—what do they call you?"
"They call me Jay, but I like you calling me Jonas. It makes me think there's a chance I could be something like him one day."
"And, while it will take some getting used to, I think I like having you call me Ruthie. It makes me think maybe I could be half the woman my grandma was." Her eyes misted, and she turned away for a second. "So, what shall we do with this house and the land?"
"You ask that as if I had some say in the matter."
"You do have some say in the matter. For instance, how flexible are your design plans? Since you haven't laid any foundations, could you re-route roads, build in different locations?"
His eyes narrowed. "What are you thinking?"
"There are three immoveable objects here."
"Three? There's one. This house."
She was shaking her head, and he felt his stomach drop. "The small building out there—"
"That's where the live-in housekeeper lived until she retired."
"That was the one-room school for the Colored children of Carrie's Crossing. There was no public school for them so my grandfather built one. He also was the only teacher."
Jonas covered his face with his hands. "OK, go ahead, drop the other shoe. What else don't I know?"
"Somewhere—and I'm not sure exactly where, though it's close—there's a Colored burial ground. My great-grandmother is buried there, and it's just possible that it was a burial ground for slaves too."
"What are you proposing?" he asked, his face still buried in his hands.
"That we leave this house and the school intact. I'll give them to the historical society if you'll incorporate them into your development. Make them the centerpiece. You could claim all kinds of historical significance."
"Don't you think it would make potential buyers a bit uncomfortable, the association with slavery and all?" He looked at her then, and wished he hadn't.
"Not as uncomfortable as it was for the people who were slaves."
He nodded, properly chastised, and she watched him think, which meant she watched him get up, pace a few steps, sit back down, and run his hands through his hair, standing it on end, then smoothing it back down. "What about the cemetery, the burial ground?"
"Not sure. We have to find it first. If it's far enough away from where you'll be building, we just leave it alone. Have it declared an historical site and preserved, and leave it alone."
"And if, and this is a big if, it's under a building site?"
"Then the bones must be excavated by archeologists, anthropologists, studied, cataloged and removed." And the way she spoke, the words left no room for argument.
"I can guarantee that not a single shovel will go near the burial ground."
"But you don't know where it is," Sissy said.
"Don't care," he said. Then, suddenly his expression changed.
"What?"
"We're talking about my building on land that I don't own."
She paced a few steps, then turned to face him. "You own lots of property?"
He nodded. "I do."
"Any apartment buildings in Belle City?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Any of 'em high enough off the ground that I wouldn't hear all that wretched traffic?"
Jonas thought he knew where she was going, but he wouldn't let himself fully give in to the hope. "Old or new construction?" he asked, though he expected he knew the answer.
"Definitely old," she said with a wry grin, as they both remembered her recitation of his classic belongings. It would take one to know one.
"I've got a penthouse in foreclosure in a pre-war on Belle City Drive. Sixteenth floor. Heart of the city, near everything, including the subway."
"That's not a subway," she snapped, and he laughed. "What's it cost?"
"The mortgage is one-point-six."
"And this land you just mentioned, that you don't own: What's it worth?"
"At least twice that," Jonas said, hurrying to add, "but I've got rental properties worth—"
She waved away whatever he was about say and stuck out her hand. They shook on it. She had just given him his development dream in exchange for a penthouse apartment that was one of the most beautiful in the city—and a permanent monument to the former Black slaves of Carrie's Crossing. "Margaret'll be happier than a duck in the rain. Richard too," he said.
"But you're somewhat less than happy, I take it."
He gave her a bemused look. "There's so much stuff going on inside me that I don't know what I am. Perhaps not happy, but not unhappy, either, and certainly no longer angry, no longer feeling abused and put upon—"
Her laughter stopped him. "Abused? Put upon? You'd have been right at home in the Drama Department instead of wasting your time in the law school."
"I was a star of the Moot Court, I'll have you know." He struck a dramatic pose before going to get the bottle of wine and their glasses from the dining room table. He poured and held his glass out for a toast. She stood, extended her glass, and waited. He looked at her, then shifted his gaze past her to the view outside, to the truth and the history now invisible but forever whispered by the rustling of the tree leaves and the babbling of the creek. "To Ruthie and Jonas," he said, thinking that she probably was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.
###
About the Author
Penny Mickelbury is the author of ten mystery novels in three successful series: The Carole Ann Gibson Mysteries, the Mimi Patterson/Gianna Maglione Mysteries, and the Philip Rodriguez Mysteries. Mickelbury is also an accomplished playwright and was a pioneering newspaper, radio and television reporter based primarily in Washington, D.C., an experience which provided the basis for her richly drawn characters and their myriad experiences. She is a fifth generation Georgian.
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