In Sheep's Clothing

by Rett MacPherson

She led us to the back of the office and to a door that connected with the church. It also connected to another door that opened into the basement. Lisa flipped on the light. “You have to forgive us, but we don’t have a whole lot of room.”

  I’ve seen worse basements. This one was dry, with concrete walls and that green plastic turf on the floor for carpeting. The whole room was nothing but filing cabinets. There was a funny smell to the room, even though it seemed to be perfectly dry. Maybe it was just the smell that all basements have, regardless. Except my mother-in-law’s. Hers smelled like Febreze.

  Lisa opened up the top drawer on the first filing cabinet. “Here you go.” Inside were big leather books. One was marked: Marriages 1854–1875 A–M. I found the N–Z book right below it. Below that was births and baptisms. The last one was deaths. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

  “All right,” I said. Lisa walked back up the basement steps to her office and I let out a deep breath. “I don’t even know her name to look up a death record.”

  “Can’t you just look under Bloomquist?”

  “Well, yeah. But … that doesn’t mean it will be the same person who wrote the novel. Unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless it actually gives her father’s name,” I said. “All I can do is look.”

  I pulled out the death registry and scanned the pages. Now, I’m not sure what the official date in Minnesota is, but in most states nobody had to report a birth or a death prior to 1910. In West Virginia, it’s 1917. Therefore, any reports of births or deaths prior to about 1910 in this country were strictly voluntary. There were a lot more reported to the local parishes than one realizes. But fire on the frontier was a serious problem, due to the fact that most of the churches were built out of wood, and so a lot of the records were lost. Plus, trying to find the church that your ancestor attended can be a real problem. And sometimes churches just fell by the wayside or were incorporated into another church, so you never know where your ancestor’s records will end up.

  The point to all this is that as I stood there holding that death registry in my hands, I knew that even if the girl I was looking for had died in this county, between 1854 and 1875, I would only find the record in this book if her parents had voluntarily reported her death. I opened the book and held my breath as I scanned the names. They were not listed alphabetically, but rather by year. Most likely, the names had just been written in this book as the deaths were reported. So I had to read every name.

  There it was. Bloomquist, Brigitta, age thirty-nine. Died on the third of June 1859.

  “That can’t be her. She’s too old. That has to be her mother,” I said.

  “What did she die of?”

  “It says … it says … she died in a fire. Person reporting her death was her son, Sven. And then it gives her place of birth and who her parents were,” I said, amazed. “You go, Sven.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I mean, for as young as he was, Sven knew enough about his mother to put down her place of birth and her parents’ names. I have an ancestor who didn’t even know his own father’s name.”

  “How could he not know his own father’s name?”

  “Evidently his father died when he was really young and his mother never told him his name. So when he got married and they asked him for his parents’ names, he said, ‘Father, unknown.’”

  “Either that or his mother didn’t know who his father was either.”

  “Yeah, I considered that.”

  “So, the girl. Is she in here or is it just her mother?” Aunt Sissy asked.

  “I’m looking,” I said. “Oh, my God.”

  “What?”

  “She’s here,” I said. Goose bumps broke out along the backs of my arms and down my legs. “Bloomquist, Anna. Age seventeen years, nine months, and ten days. Cause of death is fire. Oh, God.”

  “What?”

  “It says she lingered for five days. She died on the eighth of June 1859. Parents were Brigitta and Karl. Person reporting the death was her brother, Sven.”

  “I don’t know if I’m happy that we found her or not,” Aunt Sissy said.

  “Yeah,” I said. I stood there for a minute taking it all in. It was true. Aunt Sissy’s rumor was actually true. But as with all rumors, it wasn’t exactly the same. The girl had not died in the fire, the mother had. The girl, Anna Bloomquist, had lingered for five days and died after the fire. I could only assume that if she had indeed fled to the cellar, as the rumor went, she had died of a fatal dose of smoke inhalation.

  The next name on the page caught my eye. The name Bloomquist, once again.

  Bloomquist, Emelie, age two months. Cause of death, fire. Parents were Anna Bloomquist and father unknown. Informant: Sven Bloomquist, uncle. “Oh, no,” I said. I covered my mouth and fought back tears.

  “What?” Aunt Sissy asked.

  “She had a baby.”

  “What?” The look of horror spread across my aunt’s face.

  “Right here,” I said. “The baby died with her. She had a baby.”

  “No,” Aunt Sissy whispered.

  “I can only assume, since its last name was Bloomquist and she was at her father’s house, that she was unwed. That means … that means Anna and her lover never married.”

  “No,” Aunt Sissy said. “Oh, why did I have you look? I wish I didn’t know.”

  We both just stood there, completely numb. And then it hit me. She never finished the novel because it wasn’t fiction. It was a diary. She never finished it because her death was the ending. “Aunt Sissy,” I said. “I need to finish reading what’s written.”

  “Okay.”

  “Because I don’t think it’s fiction at all. I think it was a diary.”

  Aunt Sissy nodded her head. “I’ve always thought so. Ever since I found the crooked tree.”

  I looked at her for a moment and wondered why on earth then she had presented that manuscript to me as a work of fiction. That was what she had called it. She had called it a novel. I couldn’t be angry with her. Maybe she thought that if she told me it was a diary I wouldn’t investigate it. That I would feel weird reading it. Well, she didn’t know me very well, if that’s what she thought. I am the nosiest person in the world and would have read it without a second thought. I might have read it with a little more caution, though.

  I copied all the information down. “Damn,” I said, and shut the book.

  “Why are you writing this stuff down? We’ve found it,” Aunt Sissy said. “We found what we were looking for. And now I even know how the story ended.”

  “I know,” I said. “Just habit, I guess.”

  We both walked up the steps having lost all of the bounce and vigor that we had had when we came in. Which was silly. We had come here looking for the girl’s death record, and then, when we found it, we wished we hadn’t.

  “Did you find what you needed?” Lisa asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Aunt Sissy said.

  With that we both walked out into the gorgeous sunshine and perfectly blissful spring air, feeling … feeling … well, feeling like we knew something we shouldn’t.

  “I’m hungry,” Aunt Sissy said. “Are you?”

  “Starved.”

  “Good, we’re going over to the Pancake Palace.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “It’s on the way to Cedar Springs. I’m gonna eat until I puke,” she said.

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  Eight

  The Pancake Palace had a giant ten-foot stack of pancakes on its roof to alert passersby on Highway 35 that it was there. I sat in a booth with my much smaller stack of pancakes looming in front of me. “I think my eyes were bigger than my belly,” I said.

  “Give it your best shot,” Aunt Sissy said.

  “Oh, I will,” I said.

  Pancakes in the middle of the day are sort of like Hostess Cupcakes. You know you’re not supposed to eat them,
but they’re so good and somebody has to eat them or they’ll just go to waste. Right? I poured my syrup over the pancakes and watched it slide down the sides, bringing a healthy dose of butter with it.

  Then I heard familiar voices in the booth behind me. I gave Aunt Sissy a peculiar expression. I raised up on one knee, turned around, and found my husband and my stepfather looking over the menu in the next booth. “And just what in blazes are you doing here?” I asked with a smile on my face.

  “Hey, honey,” Rudy said.

  I leaned over and tried to kiss him but couldn’t quite reach his lips.

  “We’ll be over,” he said. Since they hadn’t ordered yet, they just got up and walked over to our booth. Rudy sat down next to me and gave me a kiss, while Colin just sort of looked at Aunt Sissy. He stood, his hands in his pockets, and looked around the room.

  “Oh, all right,” Aunt Sissy said and scooted over. Colin, reluctantly, sat down next to her.

  “The lake get too lonely for you?” I asked.

  “No, we got hungry,” he said. “You think we just sit out on that boat all day without eating?”

  “Not for a minute,” I said. “I just thought you tore the heads off of the fish and sucked their guts out right then and there.”

  They each gave me a horrified expression.

  “And no offense, but you stink.”

  “That’s the down side to a fisherman.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “So, what are you guys up to?” Colin asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said with a downhearted tone.

  Aunt Sissy stuffed a big forkful of blueberry pancakes into her mouth.

  “No, seriously. What gives?” Colin asked. “You act like you lost your best friend. And that can’t be possible, because I’m right here.”

  He actually had the nerve to smile. I think slapping one’s stepfather should be perfectly acceptable behavior.

  “Well, we found the girl,” I said.

  “The girl?” Colin asked.

  “Oh, the one that wrote the book?” Rudy asked.

  “Yeah. She died in a fire at, like, seventeen years of age. With a two-month-old baby to boot.”

  “Oh, how sad,” Rudy said. “What was her name?”

  “Anna Bloomquist.”

  “Bloomquist?” Colin asked.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “That guy who rented us the fishing boat…” Colin said, snapping his fingers at Rudy. “His name was Bloomquist. Wasn’t it? Billy or Bobby. Or, oh, what was it?”

  “Brian,” Rudy said.

  “That’s it. Brian,” Colin said. “He owns a boat rental over on the other side of the lake. Wonder if he’s related.”

  “Could be,” I said. “Like a descendant of Sven. Or maybe another Bloomquist family moved into the area.”

  “What’s the name of the boat rental?” I asked.

  “Well, the sign said OLIN MARINA, BRIAN BLOOMQUIST, OWNER.”

  “Huh.”

  “What?” Rudy asked.

  “I was just wondering why Roberta didn’t mention that. How long has she lived here, Aunt Sissy?”

  “Her whole life,” she said with a mouthful of pancake.

  “When I mentioned the Bloomquist name, she never said a word. She pointed out that the Hujinaks were still around, but never mentioned Brian,” I said. “I just find that odd.”

  Nobody said anything for a minute. I waited for Aunt Sissy to swallow.

  “Aunt Sissy, do you know Brian Bloomquist?”

  She shrugged. “I see him from time to time, but don’t really know him.”

  “What have you heard about him?”

  “Not a lot of good. Sort of a rough fellow. Kids run around half naked and without shoes,” she said.

  “Huh.”

  “Huh what?” Colin asked. “Why do you keep saying huh?”

  “It’s just weird.”

  “Doesn’t matter now, anyway,” Aunt Sissy said. “We found out what we needed to find out.”

  “Well, but don’t you think that somebody in the Bloomquist family would like to have the diary?” I asked.

  “Wouldn’t give Brian anything like that. He wouldn’t take care of it.”

  “Is he the only one in the family? Does he have a sister? A brother?”

  She shrugged again.

  “Aunt Sissy, are you planning on keeping that manuscript? I mean, the diary?”

  “It’s a diary?” Rudy asked. “Oh, man.”

  “You should probably give it to the historical society if you’re not going to give it to the family,” I said.

  “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with it,” she said. “None of your business, anyway. I asked you to find out who wrote it and you did.”

  “Okay,” I said. “All right. Calm down.”

  “I’m perfectly calm,” she said and took another bite. “You better hurry up or I’m going to be finished eating. You haven’t even started.”

  Colin gave me a puzzled look and picked up his menu. I took a bite of my pancakes. The waitress came and took the guys’ orders. I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “I thought you wanted me to find out who wrote it so you could give the manuscript to the rightful owner,” I said.

  “I never said that,” Aunt Sissy said.

  “But—”

  “I never said that.”

  “You can’t keep it.”

  “I most assuredly can keep it. In fact, I most probably will keep it.”

  “But—”

  “You just hush up, Victory O’Shea. Do you hear me? I can keep it if I want,” she said. I noticed the lines around her eyes and mouth had deepened just in the past few days. I couldn’t help but wonder why I hadn’t noticed that before. Her hands shook a little as she took a drink of her milk.

  “Aunt Sissy, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Don’t much matter, anyway.”

  “What doesn’t matter?” I asked.

  Colin stood up. “I’m going to the rest room,” he said. He gave Rudy a nod. I knew what the nod meant. It meant, Let’s get out of here because this is going to get nasty.

  Rudy followed suit with a look on his face that said he was glad to do it.

  “What doesn’t matter?” I asked again.

  “It doesn’t matter if I keep it. It’s just going to be going to one of my kids shortly, anyway.”

  “Will you stop with the old remarks?” I said. “Jeez, you’re not even seventy yet.”

  “It’s my ticker,” she said and pointed to her chest.

  “What’s your t—?” I stopped. “Aunt Sissy, what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that my ticker’s going out on me. The doctor said I had a couple of years,” she said.

  “A couple of years? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m dying, Torie. The only hope is a transplant and I’m not going to do that.”

  I was speechless. I couldn’t do anything but sit there and stare at her. My stomach lurched and cramped and I felt like I was going to throw up all my pancakes right there and then. “Why?”

  “Because I’m too old for a transplant. Good Lord, if they give me a new heart, I’ve got what? Ten years after that? No. I’m going to let somebody a little younger than me take the heart. That’s it. It’s over. I’ve got a couple of years and that’s that.”

  I shook my head. “I just … I don’t believe this.”

  “Believe it,” she said. “Now finish your lunch.”

  “Finish my lunch!” I cried with tears burning the back of my eyes. “Are you insane? Finish my lunch?”

  “I’ve come to terms with this, and if I can, you certainly can. So get over it.”

  Uncle Joe’s words echoed through my head. “You haven’t told anybody, have you?”

  “You’re the first.”

  “But—”

  “They’re all gonna act like you’re acting right now. I don’t want that. I figure I’ll just drop dead and then they’ll
know,” she said.

  I swiped at a tear. What was wrong with my father’s family? Why couldn’t any of them face emotional confrontations like normal people? No, every one of them ran in the opposite direction just as fast as they could if it looked like things were going to get the least bit emotional. No wonder my mother had divorced my father.

  “Oh, jeez,” I said.

  “You know what?” she said. “Fine. You can have the manuscript.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want it.”

  “Well, it’s gotta go to somebody in a few years. Why don’t you just take it now and save me the trouble later,” she said.

  “Because I don’t want it.”

  “You’re going to turn down your inheritance?” she asked. “What kind of niece turns down an inheritance?”

  “If I take it, I’m just going to give it to the Bloomquists.”

  “You can do what you want with it. It’s yours,” she said.

  “Aunt Sissy—”

  “No, I’m serious.”

  Felicity “Sissy” Annabelle Keith Morgan was always serious, and especially when she said she was serious. You didn’t dare cross her then.

  “Don’t be angry,” I said.

  “I’m not angry. I’m just … tired,” she said and put another bite of pancakes in her mouth. “Now finish that food.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I swallowed and fought back tears until I couldn’t take it anymore. When I saw Colin and Rudy coming back to the table, I jumped up and ran to the ladies’ room. I passed Rudy and gave him one of those silent married signals. The one that said “Don’t bother me now, I’ll tell you about it later.” He let me go and I ran into the bathroom and cried in the sink.

  Nine

  “You mean she just told you right there behind her stack of blueberry pancakes that she was dying of heart disease?” Rudy asked.

  He had stripped down to his boxers and stood at the foot of the bed staring at me. It was weird seeing my husband in nothing more than his boxers in somebody else’s house. His cheeks were sunburned or windburned, I wasn’t sure which, from being out on the boat two days in a row. It gave him a rather youthful appearance.

  “Yes,” I said. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “And she hasn’t told anybody else?”