A grin warmed his face. “Consider yourself stopped.”
“Thanks.”
Here I felt a little bit safer, knowing Grant was on guard and soon I would be surrounded by kindred souls. Once the meeting started, the room would fill with people from all walks of life and then I would listen to their struggles with alcohol and drugs.
If I stayed right here in this chair, I wouldn’t find forgiveness, but I might find a reason not to drink for another hour, maybe another day.
“You’ll find a reason. You always do.”
November 10, 1751
Dearest Mother,
Faith and her babes have been here five days. I woke to the sound of one crying and the milk in my breasts that I thought dried, stirred. I rose from under my covers and saw the infants lying on a pallet. Faith was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she went to the barn to fetch milk for breakfast. Pulled by the babe’s squawks, I moved to the pallet where the boys lay side by side. Though they were twins, they didn’t look at all alike. One was as light in skin and hair as the other was dark. Good and evil. Light and darkness—one can’t exist without the other. I picked up the smaller of the two, his hair as pale as mine, and took him in my arms. He rooted, fussed and searched. Unable to resist the powerful stirring in my womb, I unfastened the front of my nightshirt and bared my breast. As soon as I teased his lips with my nipple, he hungrily suckled. For a moment I stood frozen, my body overwhelmed. Though my heart did not beat as it once did, soft whispers of hope stirred.
—P
Chapter Three
Rae McDonald
TUESDAY, AUGUST 16, 3:00 P.M.
I dreamed about the boy last night.
Because I was young and tall, my pregnancy didn’t really show until I was six months along. Loose clothes and sweaters bought me another month until finally there was no denying it. By the time I finally confessed my condition to my mother, I was seven months pregnant.
Mom had poured a scotch, swallowed it in two gulps, and then poured another shot as tears streamed down my cheeks. “You are not even seventeen. You understand you’re not keeping that baby. You’re sixteen and not ready to be a mother.”
My trembling hands instinctively slid to my stomach as the baby kicked and stirred.
Mom stared at the amber liquid in the crystal glass, lost. “I cannot do it. I cannot go through this.”
The idea of motherhood terrified me. I didn’t know what to do or how to handle the weight of so much responsibility. When my mother told me she would not help, I knew I could not do it alone.
I moved forty-five miles west to live with a friend of Mom’s in Winchester. The car ride was a solemn tense affair. Staring out my window, I watched the malls and housing developments give way to rolling hills and pastures. Mom gripped the steering wheel, staring at the road ahead.
Her friend was nice enough and tried to make me feel welcome. But when Mom drove away and I sat in my room tugging at the loose thread on the bed quilt, I felt alone. My sister was dead and my mother had abandoned me emotionally. Even the baby in my belly refused to move. Pain overloaded my days, and the heaviness in my heart grew with my belly.
When the boy was born, I had an hour to hold him. The first minutes brought a rush of love that was so, so sweet. I’d never experienced this kind of love from my mother. And when I looked into his face, I saw perfection. When the nurse returned with his adoptive mother, I had to tell her I couldn’t keep him. I’d brought him into the world, but he couldn’t stay. When I laid him in the other woman’s arms, a switch clicked off somewhere deep inside me to keep me sane. The sadness retreated and so did love. So did most of me.
I picked up the stone heart given to me by Zeb Talbot. Heavy and cold in my palm, the stone carried far more weight than the original gesture intended. It was an odd-shaped rock to him, but it epitomized me. I might have been annoyed by the reporter’s words, but she was right. I had a heart of stone.
The front doorbell rang, shifting my thoughts back to the present. I moved from my study, a tad irritated to see Margaret McCrae through the windows that trimmed the side of the door. She was early. I was a rigid scheduler, and as a psychologist, I recognized that my obsession with time stemmed from a need to control a world that didn’t care what I wanted. I understood the futility of clock watching. But I couldn’t stop.
Opening the door, I found Margaret standing on the front porch, her hair damp from what must have been a quick shower, given the trip she and Addie had taken to Prince William County today. They must have hit traffic on the forty-five-minute return ride. There was always traffic, so for her to arrive early meant she’d wasted no time.
Margaret grinned at me, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She reminded me of a young trick-or-treater at Halloween on the doorstep of the house with the best candy.
“I know I’m early,” she said, “but the job went faster than we expected and I can’t wait to get started.”
I stood back, watching as she wiped her damp boots on the front mat and entered the foyer. “I was sorting through the boxes of papers, trying to isolate the time period,” I said.
“You were sorting through boxes. How many papers do you have?”
“I’ve never stopped to count them, but we McDonalds were always detailed record keepers.”
She laid her hand over her heart. “So you have over two hundred years’ worth of documentation?”
“Perhaps a bit more. Some records came over from Scotland with Patience McDonald,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind but I went ahead and set up the boxes on the kitchen table. I’ll show you the way.”
She clapped her hands together. “I swear this is amazing, Rae. I live for days like this.”
My heels clicked on the hardwood floor a couple of beats faster than her boots. “I’ve sorted them by dates. You should be able to zero in on the time period in question.”
Margaret entered the kitchen and paused to stare at the long farmhouse table covered in sturdy brown boxes. This part of the house had been an add-on, when my mother still could summon a bit of emotion. My father was dead but Jennifer and I were doing well and our family was the happiest, for lack of a better word, that I ever remembered us being. Mom decided the old kitchen needed to go, so she hired an architect to add this large addition onto the house. The old was swept away and a modern kitchen was built. Last year, I hired Zeb to renovate the space. Though I kept her structural design, I replaced mauves and grays with an eggshell blue color, stainless steel appliances, and white marble countertops. The large kitchen table was the single holdout from the original kitchen, which was built in the late eighteenth century. I still found the kitchen one of the most comfortable and inviting spaces in the house.
“Kitchen looks new. What’s prompted all the changes on the property?” Margaret asked as she dumped her satchel purse on the table by a crisp box.
“A house needs to be updated from time to time to maintain its market value.”
Her curls glistened with a slight dampness. “You thinking about selling?”
The idea had crossed my mind once or twice, but whenever it did I always opted to stay. This was the McDonald family home, the address I gave the boy’s parents, and to leave risked him not being able to find me. “It’s a big house and it’s only me here.”
“Part of the house’s foundation dated back to the mid-1700s when the McDonalds arrived. That means there’s been a McDonald on the property for nearly three hundred years.”
“Yes. Though I’m the last of the line.”
She ran a callused hand over the top of a box. “Adopt me, Rae. I’ll become a McDonald and continue the legacy with pride and glory.”
With a slight grin, I replied, “We McDonald women live a long time.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-two,” I replied.
“I’m thirty-six.” She b
eamed. “If you never marry or have kids, can I have the house?”
“Check back with me in sixty years.”
“It’s a date. Looking forward to it.” She glanced out the window toward the raw patch of land. “So why get rid of the hearth? I mean, I’m glad we excavated the site for you, but why?”
Deep inside me, fear whispered: Because every McDonald before me insisted it stay. Logic said, “I’d like to have a garage and that’s the last available land.”
She visibly shuddered. “When I think about all the history that has been lost because people need parking.”
I’m tired of carrying the weight of the past. “My practice is expanding, and I have more clients coming and going.”
“If it were me, I’d make them park at the end of the street and hoof it in before I’d get rid of the hearth.” She held up her hand, realizing her candor was not her best asset. “But if you’d not pulled apart the hearth, then I’d never have found the witch bottle. Thank you.”
“If you consider finding that old bottle lucky, I’m glad for you.”
Margaret moved to the first box. “The question is, why did a McDonald, whom I’m guessing was Patience, feel the need to create a witch bottle?”
“Superstition was common in the days when death was never far and families had little control over their physical environment.”
“So you don’t believe in spells and curses?” She contemplated the box marked Eighteenth Century and then carefully removed the lid.
“Are you saying that you do?” I asked.
Margaret grinned as she reached in her pocket and pulled out a pair of white cloth gloves. “Hell, yes.”
“That’s not logical, is it?”
“Spoken like a psychologist. ” She tugged on the pristine gloves and removed an old leather-bound ledger from the box. She moved her hand reverently over the worn, cracked surface. “When I hold pieces of the past like this, I believe there’s a lot we could learn.”
“It’s a journal,” I said. “An artifact.”
“To me, it’s a voice from the past reaching out to me.” She eased open the pages, wincing when the spine creaked. “I believe that there’s more to this planet, this life, than the physical world.”
“Ah, you believe in ghosts, spirits, and goblins and all creatures that go bump in the night.”
“Do I detect a bit of disbelief, Rae?”
“I’m more science minded.”
“But you’re a psychologist. The mind and thoughts are not exactly a tangible science. More art than science,” she said.
“Behavior can always be traced back to a specific source. We may not be able to identify the source, but it’s there.”
Margaret pulled out a straight-backed chair upholstered in a light cream fabric and sat, never looking up from the page. A frown furrowed her brow as her fingers moved over the page. “So my obsession with the past can be traced back to a specific event.”
“Or events.”
She raised her head, considering what I’d said. “I had a pretty normal upbringing, if you consider my indentured servitude in a bakery normal.”
“That bad?”
She tugged a pair of reading glasses from her shirt pocket and perched them on the bridge of her nose. “Not exactly. If you haven’t noticed, I tend to exaggerate. But our family was all about keeping the bakery running and making a buck. As Dad always said, the bakery was our past, present, and future. And since the present meant work and the future was always a little daunting, I found myself drawn to the past.”
“I understand you’re a scholar when it comes to Alexandria,” I said.
She reached in another pocket for a cell phone. “That and a few coins will buy you a cup of coffee.”
“Yes, I don’t suppose history is the profession of the rich and famous.”
“Not generally.” She slowly turned a page. “Mind if I snap pictures of the documents as I go along? That way I can study them at length when I get home.”
“That won’t damage the pages?”
“No. I would never, ever damage these documents. There’s a list of people I could harm but never a historical document.”
“And you won’t share the pictures?” I asked.
“Not without your approval.”
“Okay, you may photograph.” I had a paper to finish and several follow-up client letters to write, but I found myself fascinated by Margaret’s utter absorption in the journal. “I tried to read the notes in that book before you arrived but found the script challenging.”
“I’ve read so much of this that I can decipher the penmanship pretty well. Another one of those quirky specialties that doesn’t earn me a dime.”
“So what have you discovered?”
A frown furrowed her brow as she stared at the first pages. “It’s a household account kept by Patience and Michael McDonald.”
“Michael?” I’d wanted a strong name for my son and had chosen Michael for the archangel who commanded the angels in heaven. When my mother tried to object, I insisted and she realized I was pure tinder, ready to ignite. All parties agreed to the boy’s name.
“Yes. He was the one who started it all in the Virginia Colony. I know from other research that Patience and Michael McDonald came to this country in the mid-1700s,” Margaret said.
“They were the first from the old country to own land on these shores.” Michael wasn’t an uncommon name, but it was an odd coincidence that the line began and ended with the name. “Interesting.”
“What, the name?” Margaret asked.
“The name Michael has always been a favorite of mine.”
“Oh, okay.” When I didn’t expound, she did. “As you might know, Patience and Michael hailed from Scotland with the intention of being tobacco farmers. I know that somewhere along that time they purchased the indentured servant contract for Faith Shire.”
“Shire? As in the Shires of the architectural company?”
“One and the same. I know from previous research that Faith lived on their farm for about a year before the McDonalds sold her indentured servant contract to Mr. Ben Talbot, the manager of Hugh West’s tobacco warehouse. That was located where modern-day Union Street ends and Oronoco Street begins.”
“Where Robinson Bus Terminal is now?” I asked.
“Yes.” She sat back and tugged off her glasses. “I know that many women in town considered Faith a witch and were afraid of her.”
“They created the witch bottles as a protection against spells.”
“Exactly.” She tapped her finger on the ledger. “This is a household account that Michael McDonald created when he began his farm.”
“Is there mention of Faith?”
“Yes. He purchased her contract from Captain Smyth for the promise of a hogshead of tobacco. A hogshead was a giant wooden barrel. Currency was a rarity then, so many farmers used tobacco as money.”
“Why would a man want an entire barrel of tobacco?”
“He’d have sold it back in England and made a sizable profit.” She carefully turned several more pages. “Here I see that Mr. Talbot paid for Faith the following spring. He traded two hogsheads of tobacco for her.”
“Her value doubled in a year.”
“Very few women in the city at that time,” Margaret said. “They were at a premium, and if she survived here a year that meant she had to be tough.”
“So what happened to this witch?”
“She later ‘married’ Talbot and bore him twin sons.”
“Why do you say ‘married’ that way?” I asked.
“I’m not so sure they legally wed.”
“Ah.”
“The women of Alexandria accused her of witchcraft after Mr. Talbot’s death, and then she and her sons vanished from the records. I’m hoping that Patience will make so
me kind of mention of her.”
“You’ve quite the task. There are dozens of letters along with the ledgers.”
Margaret raised a white-gloved hand to her heart. “Letters.”
“A couple of decades’ worth.”
“Rae, this is like historical porn.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, I’m very happy to study it.”
It was hard not to be impressed by her excitement. “Sexual fantasies are not my forte, but I’m glad you have found a distraction that’s of interest.”
Her laughter rang clear and loud. “Rae, I think you made a joke. There might be hope for you yet.”
“I didn’t realize I was hopeless.”
“Not hopeless,” Margaret said. “But you did get labeled as the lady with the heart of stone. At least no one called you the Ice Queen.”
“My clients like my detachment.”
“That can’t be much fun for you. What gets your motor racing?”
I fingered the pearl bracelet encircling my wrist. “I choose not to engage in high drama. Calm and order are needed to remain objective.”
Margaret shook her head as if she pitied me. “Unless I’m dealing with documents like this, order drives me insane.”
“To each his own.”
I left her hunched over the papers and returned to my computer. Without really thinking, I pulled up my e-mail, hoping for minor tasks to occupy my time. I was scrolling through my inbox when I saw his name: Michael Holloway. The boy.
Sitting up in my seat, I stared at the name, stunned. I wasn’t intimidated much, but I was now scared to read his message.
My index finger anxiously tapped the mouse button before I drew in a breath and clicked it twice. The e-mail opened.
Dear Dr. McDonald . . .
Dr. McDonald. That made sense, of course. Polite. But distant.
Dear Dr. McDonald,
I read about you in the paper. You might not know it but you and I are related. I guess you could say I’m your son. I’m not writing to ask for anything, but I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me about the McDonald family tree. My mom was trying to help, but she doesn’t know any names other than yours and your mom’s.
The View from Prince Street Page 6