Blood Relations

by Rett MacPherson

  Collette and I exchanged wondrous glances.

  “It was enough for me,” she said. “So I began researching what had happened to Jessica Huntleigh. One of the papers had an article about the sinking of The Phantom, and showed a photograph of the Huntleigh heiress. It was my mother.”

  “So when did you realize that Eli Thibeau was really your father? That he had become William Wade?” I asked.

  “I didn’t. It was my grandson Jacob who figured that out. I had no clue why my mother had chosen to walk away from her life of comfort,” she said. “She had quite a few letters from my father, William Wade. And he spoke of certain things in them, like ‘the diamonds’ and ‘the wreck.’ A place called New Kassel. But he never once hinted in those letters that he’d been on board the ship, too. Only once did he mention that he had been the captain of a boat that had already sunk.”

  “So how did Jacob figure it out?” I asked. “Did you tell him you thought your mother and Jessica Huntleigh were the same person?”

  “Not at first,” she said. “He started asking questions about our family history for a school project he had to do. He was about eighteen at the time. So I did the usual thing. I was elusive and tried to fend off his questions by saying things like ‘What do you want to know that stuff for?’ Then I realized I was doing exactly what my mother had done to me. I was keeping his history from him. So I finally told him what I suspected. I’d never told anybody else, though.”

  “What was his reaction?” Collette asked. We both had been hanging on every word she said. Her story was so sad, so tragic, we couldn’t help it.

  “He became obsessed. He asked for all the research I had, which wasn’t much. He wanted all the documents pertaining to my parents, and then he went about trying to prove that Maria Wade was Jessica Huntleigh.”

  She looked out the window a moment, as if everything was playing before her eyes in the here and now.

  “Jacob began researching The Phantom,” she said. “He found a photograph of the captain, Eli Thibeau, and noticed a marked resemblance to the few photographs I had of my father, William Wade. He was convinced they were one and the same.”

  I knew what came next. “By this point, the census records were available for 1910 and 1920,” I said.

  “Jacob realized that William Wade didn’t exist before the 1920 census,” she said. “It all fell into place.”

  “But what about the diamonds?” I asked. “I know that in one letter your father wrote to your mother, he mentioned that they didn’t have to worry about the future. I’m assuming now that he meant the diamonds, but when I first read the letter, I wasn’t sure. Why did your father have to hide them? Why didn’t he and Jessica take them with them when the steamboat sank?”

  “What Jacob gleaned from the personal letters was that my father and mother couldn’t carry the diamonds with them because they were very bulky. And they were afraid that if they were stopped and the diamonds were found on them, it would all blow up in their faces. So they buried them. But when Dad went back to get them, there was an investigator looking for the diamonds, as well. So Dad was going to go back for them after everything had cooled down. Only he died without ever having a chance to get back home and tell my mother where they were,” Tamara said.

  “That’s terrible,” Collette said.

  If I had had access to all of the documents and letters, I might have been able to figure that out days ago. But I had only gotten a peek at just that one letter. It all made sense now, though.

  “So how did Jacob find out exactly where they were?” I asked.

  “I guess the same way you did,” she replied.

  I know the shock must have registered all the way to my toes. “How do you know that I found the diamonds?”

  “Channel 6 news had a tape of you and the Granite County sheriff uncovering the diamonds. You were there, too,” she said, pointing at Collette.

  “Oh, great,” Collette said. “He beat me to it.”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t have the same info you do,” I said. “Don’t panic.”

  “What about Matilda O’Brien?” I asked. “She knew that your mother switched boats in Memphis to be with Eli, or William, or however you want to refer to him. She had to have known, because there was nothing wrong with the Louisiana Purchase. Why did she cover for your mother?”

  “I called and asked her that about ten years ago, shortly before she died.”

  “You did?” Collette asked. I’ll admit, I was equally surprised at the gutsy move.

  “Well, at first she wouldn’t speak to me because she didn’t believe who I was. See, she, too, thought my mother had drowned when the steamboat sank. She saw no reason in soiling my mother’s good name. The scandal would have been disastrous. So Matilda O’Brien never told anybody. She’s the one that made up the story that the Louisiana Purchase had broken down. She had to come up with some reason why the two of them had switched boats.”

  Collette rubbed her forehead and took a deep breath. “May I have a glass of water?” she asked.

  “Of course,” said Mrs. Lahrs.

  “So how did your father die?” I asked her as she stood up.

  “He was still a steamboat captain at that point, although he was going by the name William Wade. I think somebody recognized him. One of the deckhands said that there was a struggle and that my father fell into the paddle wheel.”

  What could I say to that? I mumbled a completely inadequate “Sorry,” then looked around the room like an idiot. “While you’re getting her a drink, I’d like to use your bathroom. Is that all right?”

  “Sure, it’s down the hall to the right.”

  I handed Collette the photo album that I’d been clutching and headed down the long hallway to the bathroom. On the way back, I stopped to look at the photographs hanging on the wall. Tamara Lahrs didn’t have an abundance of pictures, but the few she had spoke a thousand words. Four eight-by-tens hung in a row in matching oak frames. The subject of each photograph was a family group, a mom, a dad, and various children. I guessed them to be the families of her four children. One child had six kids, two had three, and the first one had only one child. I studied them, trying to find a boy who resembled Jacob Lahrs. It looked as if he was in one of the middle groupings, and that he had two sisters. The eyes were the same.

  Tamara Lahrs came to the end of the hallway and smiled. “My children,” she said.

  “Which one is Jacob?” I asked.

  “That one,” she said, pointing to the boy I had picked out. “He spent two years in the marines. His father had been in the service, so I think he felt pressured to join.”

  I smiled at her and then studied the other groupings. As I looked at the first photograph, a chill danced down my spine. It was the photograph of the family with the one child. A little girl.

  “Who is that?” I managed to ask.

  “That’s my daughter by my first husband,” she said.

  “Your first husband,” I snapped. My mind reeled. What was his name? I knew it. It was on the tip of my tongue. The bomber pilot who had died in the war. I had forgotten all about him. “Thatcher. Robert Thatcher.”

  She looked taken aback at first. “How did you know that?” she asked.

  “As I said before, we did a lot of research,” I said. It’s disturbing to some people just how easily and how much I can find out about their families without their help.

  “Yes, that’s my daughter Julia.”

  Mother: Julia Anne Thatcher.

  My knees wobbled and I felt sick to my stomach. “And this?” I asked, pointing to the little girl in the picture. I knew who it was. I knew the face. I’d seen it just a week ago in a bunch of photographs.

  “Oh, that’s my granddaughter Stephanie,” she said.

  Stephanie Anne Webster Connelly.

  Mother: Julia Anne Thatcher.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said, heading back to the living room. “Collett
e, we need to go.”

  “But…”

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Lahrs, for talking with us,” I said.

  “You’re quite welcome,” she replied. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I think I’ve got a touch of the flu,” I said.

  “Mrs. Lahrs,” Collette said. “With the help of Torie’s research, I’d like to go ahead and do the story that your grandson started. When I get to the point where I need photographs, would you be so kind as to let me copy yours?”

  Tamara Lahrs shook her head, unsure of what to say. The whole time my stomach was burning and bubbling, to the point I thought I was going to hurl right there on the lady’s pretty cream-colored carpet. “I don’t know,” she said finally.

  “I’ll dedicate the story to the memory of Jacob,” she said.

  “Collette—” I said. My face was red-hot.

  “Just a minute,” she snapped at me.

  “As long as I get to read it first,” Mrs. Lahrs said. “I get to approve it.”

  Collette weighed this and finally decided it was worth the trade. “All right,” she said. “I’ll let you read the story and approve it, and if I don’t print what you read, you can sue me. In exchange for copy of photographs and documents.”

  “Okay, I suppose that would be all right.”

  “Thank you,” Collette said.

  As we stepped outside, I took a deep breath and felt the cold air hit my hot face. Collette grabbed me and kissed me on the cheek. “Whoo hoo! I got the story of a lifetime. I get to blow the lid off of the Huntleigh heiress! Soon to be known throughout America as ‘the Huntleigh scandal.’ I couldn’t be happier. I don’t even care that there are smelly, disgusting cows over there swishing their tails and crapping all over the place. The world is beautiful!” she said. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

  “Get me home,” I said.

  “Sure thing. Torie, you look like you saw a dead person.”

  “No, did that once this month already.”

  “Torie, what’s up?”

  “My sister. Stephanie Connelly.”

  “Yeah, what about her?”

  “She is Jacob Lahrs’s cousin,” I said.

  “Yeah, so?” she said, getting in the car.

  I sat in the front seat and stared straight ahead at the dashboard.

  “Oh,” she said. “You think she was involved somehow?”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Twenty-nine

  I sat on my front porch, all six feet by six feet of it, staring out at the river and the dirty old snow. That’s the downside of snow. Eventually, it turns brown. The sky was gray and heavy, as if it were about to fall. The weatherman had predicted more snow, which was fine with me. It would cover up the brown stuff, and then I could pretend that it would be white and beautiful forever and forget all about the layer of deflowered snow beneath it.

  I could not, however, pretend it was a coincidence that Stephanie Connelly and Jacob Lahrs had come to New Kassel the same week. Every time I buried myself in some activity, thinking Stephanie was gone from my mind, a question would scream at me from some dark corner of my mind. Had Stephanie deliberately befriended me so that I would be more likely to help Jacob if he asked me to?

  Well, she had another thing coming. Of course I suspected her of something. What, I don’t know. But I knew there was something going on. I believed that. But how could she have known how my mind would work?

  I hadn’t slept all night. At some point, while Rudy snored and the furnace clicked on and off, the sun had come up and the chickens had begun to cluck. I don’t think I had closed my eyes longer than a few seconds. Stephanie had called twice yesterday, and once last night. She had called again this morning, and all four times, I’d refused to speak to her.

  It’s not that I didn’t want to speak to her. Oh, I wanted to speak to her all right, but I wasn’t ready yet. Just in case there was some chance that this was pure coincidence, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t say the wrong thing. And in order for that to happen, I needed to put some time between my discovery and a conversation with Stephanie.

  But I never got that chance. Stephanie Connelly, my newly found sister, pulled her car in my driveway. She got out in a hurry and rushed up the sidewalk. “Torie, you have got to let me explain.”

  “Explain what?” I asked, cool as a cucumber. Okay, some might say I was flippant and distant. I preferred to think of it as cool.

  The expression on her face was priceless, sort of a combination of confusion and relief. It didn’t last long, though. “Well, if you don’t already know, then now’s the perfect time to tell you,” she said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I am Jacob Lahrs’s cousin,” she said.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “But you just—I’m confused,” she said.

  “So, tell me, Stephanie.” I stood up. “Was it your idea or Jacob’s idea to contact me?”

  “It’s not like that,” she said.

  “Then tell me what it is like,” I replied, losing my patience.

  “Jacob knew you were my sister, from the first time he ever stepped foot in this town,” she said. “He and I were about the same age, and so we were always pretty close. At Christmas one year, he took me aside and told me everything he had discovered about our family. When he was finished, I told him that it was so ironic that my half sister lived in the very town where my great-grandfather’s steamboat had sunk.”

  “To say the least,” I said, crossing my arms.

  “I saw it in a different light. I took it to mean that I was destined to meet you, that our paths would definitely cross,” she said.

  “You didn’t have to have a great-grandfather wreck a steamboat and bury diamonds in a cemetery in my town to make our paths cross, Stephanie,” I said. I turned to go inside. “All you had to do was show up.”

  “Just hear me out!”

  Exasperated, I turned to face her. A part of me, the stubborn part that came from my father, made me just want to say, Forget it. Go away; leave me alone. No matter how sincere she was, no matter how much sense she made, no matter how much that little voice in the back of my head said to listen and believe, that streak of stubbornness ran through my blood and made me want to turn around and go in the house without another word. My dad got his stubbornness from his grandmother. He used to say that his grandma Keith was so mean and stubborn that she would raise hell and then stick a prop under it.

  I don’t know if I’m that bad. But right then, I was feeling none too charitable.

  “A few years later, Jacob asked me if I was ever going to contact you. I told him I wanted to but that I hadn’t gotten up enough nerve,” she said. “I asked him why he wanted to know that, and he said because he thought you would be a great help to him. He had heard about how you assisted the sheriff sometimes, and, in general, knew of your reputation. He thought you could help him locate the diamonds.”

  I rolled my eyes. She knew about everything. Even the diamonds.

  “But Jacob was pretty sure he knew where they were, without enlisting your help,” she said. “Then the river got so low…”

  “And then you decided to contact me,” I said. “Why didn’t you just tell me you were Jacob’s cousin?”

  “Because I thought you would think I was just doing it to help Jacob. You might have thought he wanted a favor or something, and I didn’t want that. I wanted you to know that I wanted to meet you on my own, not because Jacob might need your help,” she said. “So when he told me he was coming to New Kassel to dive through the wreckage, I knew I had to make my move.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was afraid you’d find out on your own that you had a sister. Jacob kept telling me that you would be able to make the connection if given the right information. And I just didn’t want you to find out about me that way,” she said.

  I stood there looking at her, trying to judge if she was telling the truth or
not. We must have been ten feet apart from each other during the entire conversation, me on the porch and she on the sidewalk. It started to snow then, and I couldn’t help but laugh. I love snow. So does Stephanie. I wondered if this was some sort of otherworldly sign for me to trust and believe her. Okay, it might be corny, but that’s what I felt.

  “I swear to you, Torie. Jacob was not the reason I contacted you.”

  “Well,” I said. “When I tell the sheriff, he’s probably going to want to know if you had an alibi for the night Jacob was murdered. He’s rather thorough.”

  She smiled, her hazel eyes nearly disappearing. “I was at home with my husband and daughter, playing Monopoly, of all things.”

  “Oh, and we know how long Monopoly can take. You must have been there all night,” I said.

  “At least three hours, but I always lose my patience and quit early.”

  “So do I,” I said.

  She laughed at yet another similarity between us. I turned to go in the house, then remembered something. “How did you know I’d made the connection between you and Jacob?”

  “Well, I had made up my mind to tell you about Jacob and me a few days ago. But then Granny called and told me that you and your friend had been to her house. I knew if you’d looked at any of her pictures, you would make the connection. Then when you wouldn’t take my calls, I just knew you had found out,” she said. “And that you’d jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

  I raised my eyebrow at her.

  “Not that you jump to conclusions all the time or anything.”

  “Hmph” was all I said. As I reached for the door, she spoke once more.

  “Do you believe me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I believe you.”

  “Then everything’s okay?” she asked.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said. “I’ll call you.”

  As I walked in the house, I couldn’t help but think about how strange it was to have somebody else initiating a confrontation. I was usually the one who did that.

  I had jumped to conclusions about her. I had immediately thought that there was more to her making contact with me than met the eye. Maybe because she also jumps to conclusions, she just assumed I would, too. Lord, Stephanie was even beginning to identify and pounce on my faults. Yup, she was just about a regular member of the family. There was only one initiation she had yet to go through.