Provenance

by Carla Laureano

  Her mother had been trying to bring her back home to her family, trying to give her a better life. No matter what had interrupted that goal, she could hold on to the knowledge that she hadn’t been dismissed as damaged or a deadweight or unworthy of love.

  No matter what Gabe might think of her.

  Kendall sighed and put aside her notepad. There was no way she was going to focus on the California house, and to be honest, there was very little she could do. For reasons she didn’t fully understand, she hadn’t been able to get herself to contact the owners of the home and tell them she would take the job. Something told her she’d never be able to move on with her life without some closure in Jasper Lake.

  There was no point in putting it off. She had to know.

  She brought up the genealogy site and opened an account, then entered her credit card number for the monthly trial that would give her access to all the original records they had on file. She then found herself staring at a clean white screen with a search box.

  She sat there, her fingers hovering over the keys. Then she typed Kendall Green followed by her birthday. At the last minute, she entered her place of birth as Colorado, though she had no idea which town she was born in.

  An animated symbol indicated it was searching, and Kendall held her breath. Only to receive the message No results found.

  Hmm. That was disappointing, but not completely unexpected. She typed in her mother’s name, Caroline Green.

  Nothing.

  She thought for a second and then typed Constance Green and Jasper Lake in the keyword box.

  Nothing there either.

  Clearly she needed a birth date. She turned to open the file box containing her grandmother’s medical records . . . and realized she’d been in such a hurry to escape, she’d left them in the back of Gabe’s truck. She winced, weighing the need to get the information against the awkwardness of texting him after she’d blown him off.

  The desire for information won out. She texted, I forgot my boxes in your truck. I don’t suppose you’re someplace you can reach them?

  A minute later, he replied, Sure. What do you need? Do you want me to bring them over?

  No, that was the last thing she needed. She was on a roll and he was only a distraction, especially if he wanted to talk about what had happened. No, I just need my grandmother’s birth date. It should be on the medical records.

  Several minutes passed, and Kendall couldn’t help wondering where he was. At home? Eating lunch? Obviously she’d sent him out in the cold and snow to check the boxes.

  And then he came back with 04-01-1951. Need anything else while I’m looking?

  Don’t think so. Thanks.

  She put the phone aside and carefully typed the birth date into the search box. This time when the little animation was done spinning, it brought up three records. One had been filed in St. Louis, Missouri, the second in Charleston, South Carolina. But the third? Longmont, Colorado.

  Kendall’s heart pounded as she clicked on the arrow that led to the record. She’d expected it to lead her to a birth certificate, but instead it led her to the deed of an old house in Denver, owned by Jonathan and Constance Green.

  She wanted to slap her hand to her forehead. She was looking up Connie’s married name. But now that she remembered her grandfather’s name, maybe she could find a marriage certificate.

  It took several permutations of her search before she came up with a plausible record: a marriage license between Jonathan William Green and Constance Amelia Jankowsky.

  Kendall gave a sharp laugh. She was part Polish? That was something she’d never expected.

  She typed in Connie’s maiden name, almost giddy with anticipation of what she’d find.

  No records found.

  She sighed and slumped back against the pillows on her bed. That was anticlimactic. Here she’d been sure she was about to uncover something important about her past, something that might even help her with the house, and she’d hit a dead end.

  She stared at the ceiling for a long moment, tracing the smooth slope of plaster into the cove molding, letting the sense of failure wash over her. And then she sat bolt upright.

  She was an idiot. The original owner—or at least an early owner—hadn’t been a Jankowsky. He had been a Green. Related to her grandfather, not her grandmother.

  Kendall rolled her eyes at her own sluggish thinking and typed in her grandfather’s name and birth date. This brought up a short list of records—marriage certificate, the deed to the Denver house, even a military enlistment record. Apparently Jonathan Green had been a Navy man. Well, that would explain why he had repressed his true identity for so long. Gay men in the military were barely tolerated today; back then, they would have been prohibited from serving at all.

  And then she came across something that she should have expected but hadn’t: a death certificate dated November 5, 1993.

  An unexpected wash of disappointment flooded her. It wasn’t as if she had given her grandfather much thought until now; she’d been much too focused on her relationship to Connie and Carrie. But now she realized that in the back of her mind, she’d hoped he might still be alive out there somewhere, one of the last links to her family. And as much of a long shot as it might have been, one of the last links to the provenance of the house.

  She shut the lid of the laptop in frustration. It was slightly more than she’d known before—she was a Jankowsky on her grandmother’s side—but it didn’t give any more insight into the house and how it had made its way back around into the hands of a family member. If indeed J. Green and Jonathan Green were even related. It was a common enough name; she could be reading into things far too deeply.

  No, if they were going to find out anything helpful about the Green family line and how these houses fit into the history of Jasper Lake, they’d have to do it through the house itself. She just hoped that when they cut into the ceiling of the master bedroom closet tomorrow, she was left with more than drywall dust to show for it.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  KENDALL WAS WAITING for Gabe on the front walk of the B and B when he pulled up to the curb the next morning—shivering, but more than ready to see what secrets the house might be hiding. At least it had gone from the teens to just below freezing this morning—already the snow was starting to melt around the edges, though she couldn’t quite conceive of how, given the cold, silvery sunshine. She hiked her bag onto her shoulder and picked her way carefully down the slippery walkway to the door of the truck, climbing in before he could get out and open the door for her. They weren’t dating, so there was no reason to act like they were.

  “Morning,” she said brightly when she settled into her seat and fastened her seat belt. “Are you ready for this?”

  Gabe blinked at her a couple of times, then seemed to pull himself together. “I just hope that we’re not making a big mess for no reason.”

  “Think of it as treasure hunting. You don’t always come across something valuable, but the possibility is the exciting part.” She might be overdoing the perkiness a bit this morning, but it was the only way she was going to get through this day with him. Complete denial. The sooner she pretended that he didn’t mean anything to her, the sooner she would start to actually believe it.

  They pulled away from the curb, and Gabe made his way slowly down the now-plowed road. “Kendall, I think we probably should talk.”

  “No need,” she said briskly. “Delia already told me.”

  “Yeah, I wish she hadn’t done that. It was something I should have told you myself.”

  Kendall waved a hand. If only she could wave off the sudden pang to her heart as easily. “It’s okay. She did me a favor. I didn’t realize that you were so strict about who you dated. Had I known, I would never have kissed you.”

  Gabe came to a stop at the intersection that led to the highway and put a hand on her arm. “Kendall, this is my fault, not yours. I’m really sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

&n
bsp; “It’s okay.” Kendall shrugged. “We’ve just been hanging out. It’s been an emotional trip, given everything I’ve discovered. It’s only natural that I would get a little carried away. But I am going home soon, so anything that we might have thought was . . . forming . . . between us would have to end anyway.”

  Her pronouncement seemed to shut Gabe up. He nodded and pulled out onto the highway, making the rest of the short drive around the lake in silence. Kendall watched the scenery out her window like she’d done the first time she made the trip with him, but the landscape was so different under a heavy load of snow that it looked almost like a different place. The shapes were now soft and indistinct, hard edges blanketed by white that sparkled in the sunshine like a layer of diamond dust. She’d forgotten how much she loved the light on freshly fallen snow. Even as a child, it had filled her with such a sense of possibility, like it would melt off to reveal a totally different world than the one that had come before. As if everything would be reborn.

  But now that she was an adult, she knew that for what it was—a child’s fanciful imagining. It had taken years for the realities of life to adequately sink in.

  When he finally pulled up behind Kendall’s SUV, the house looked exactly as they’d left it, complete with their footsteps marring the otherwise-perfect sheet of white. She hopped out of the truck directly into a snowbank. The snow melted on contact with her warm jeans and soaked through to the skin, crept into the top of her boots. Great. She’d be wet all morning now. And there was no chance of heat inside to dry her out.

  Gabe was just climbing out of the truck when an old, battered Ford pulled up behind him, a ladder strapped to the top, tools sitting in orange five-gallon buckets from a home improvement store in the bed. An older man with a gray ponytail and a battered army-green jacket climbed out of the truck gingerly, like he wasn’t quite sure yet if his legs were going to hold. But he trudged through the snow to shake Gabe’s hand and then turned to Kendall across the bed of Gabe’s truck. “You must be Kendall Green. I’m Mike Millan. I hear we’re going to be doing some surgery on the master bedroom ceiling.”

  The word surgery calmed whatever fears she might have had, so she nodded. “Hoping to find some clue to the house’s architect or builder up there.”

  “Let’s get started then.” Mike went back to his truck and pulled out one of the buckets, then gestured to Gabe. “You could grab that ladder for this old man if you wanted to make yourself useful.”

  Kendall grinned at Gabe, who just chuckled, and led the way up the walkway to the door. She unlocked it and kicked some of the snow off her boots before she walked in, but Mike continued straight inside. She would have to track down some towels or something before the snow melted into the hardwood floors and marred the pristine finish.

  “Let’s go see what we have. If Gabe ever gets here with the ladder.” Mike winked at her, and Kendall realized he’d given him the task just to be contrary.

  “Follow me.” Kendall led the way up the stairs and down the short hall to the master bedroom, then gestured to the closet. “From my understanding of typical Craftsman floor plans, I think this area used to be a staircase.”

  Mike walked inside and started rapping on the walls with his knuckles. “Could be. This doesn’t sound like lath and plaster, but with a house this old, it could be anything. It’s hard to tell until you open up the wall.”

  “We’re not going to do that, though,” Kendall said in alarm.

  “No, I don’t think it’s necessary.”

  Gabe finally appeared in a rattle of metal, out of breath and lugging the ladder under one arm. “Okay, where do you want this?”

  “Set it up in here,” Mike said, moving out of the way. “I’ll start with a jab saw and see what’s underneath the drywall before we fire up the generator.”

  Right. A generator. Because it was hard to use power tools when there wasn’t actually any power to the house. Kendall was glad he’d thought about that little detail or the whole trip would have been a waste of time.

  When Gabe had finished setting up the ladder, Mike found what looked like a pointy, serrated bread knife in his bucket and climbed up the first couple of ladder rungs. She held her breath when he plunged the saw into the ceiling and began sawing. “Not lath and plaster,” he said. “Probably not the original ceiling.” The saw stopped abruptly. “That’s a joist.”

  “So what does that mean?” Kendall asked, her heart beating fast.

  He didn’t answer, just kept cutting until there was a three-foot square scribed out in the ceiling. And then he shoved his hand in the gap and pulled. The section came away in two pieces, taking with it bright-pink insulation and a shower of dust. Mike pulled out a flashlight and pointed it up into the space left over.

  “We’ve got an attic,” he said. “Don’t even need the saw, I think. Give me that screwdriver, will you, sweetheart?”

  Kendall allowed herself a covert eye roll at the endearment but found the battery-operated screwdriver and handed it up to him. He removed several long screws from something. “Hammer?”

  Kendall held her breath again as he hammered a piece of two-by-four out of the ceiling and yanked it out. Then he climbed up another step, stuck his head inside, and looked around. When he climbed back down, he said to Kendall, “You were right. It’s an attic space. You want to take a look?”

  A giddy sense of excitement built in her chest as she squeezed by Mike and carefully climbed the ladder into the void. Cold air—even colder than the rest of the house—hit her as soon as her head breached the space. She held out a hand and Gabe passed the flashlight to her. She flicked it on and shone the beam around her.

  It was an attic all right, dark, drafty . . .

  And completely empty.

  Disappointment slammed into her, sucking both the air and the hope out of her chest. “Well. That was a waste of time and mess.” She climbed back down.

  “What were you hoping to find exactly?”

  “I don’t know,” Kendall said. “Paperwork? Old furniture? A big portrait of the owner with a flashing sign that says, ‘I built this house’?” Her voice cracked on the last word, spoiling the flippant effect. Gabe shot her a sympathetic look. “So far I’ve hit only dead ends when it comes to the architect of the house.”

  “You’re looking for blueprints and the like?”

  Kendall nodded. “I need something that shows who the architect was. It’s the only way for me to determine the exact age and historical significance of the place.”

  Mike moved past her again and picked up the piece of wood he’d taken out of the ceiling. “Did you look in the newel post?”

  Kendall blinked. “The newel post? Like for the railing?”

  “Yeah, sometimes architects of these old houses would leave the blueprints in the newel post. Or behind the fireplace mantel.” He scratched his beard. “You know, one time I found something under a floorboard when I was replacing the original floors. But I doubt you would want to do that.”

  Kendall exchanged a look with Gabe that made her think they were thinking the same thing. They’d just cut open a ceiling when they should have started with a newel post or fireplace. And then her heart sank. If there were plans in this house, they could be anywhere. She wandered back out in the bedroom and sank down onto the edge of the bed, deflated. They could tear this house apart and come up with absolutely nothing.

  The sound of the power screwdriver whined from the closet as Mike replaced the support beam in the center of the space he’d cut out. Gabe came to sit beside her. “Admitting defeat already?”

  “What’s the point? I’m not going to destroy my grandmother’s house looking for something that probably doesn’t exist.”

  “That’s what you heard? Because I heard something about checking a newel post and a fireplace mantel. Well, technically two, because this house has two fireplaces.”

  Gabe’s tone brought a spark of hope back into her gloom. “Mike, do you think we could get the ca
p off the newel post without damaging too much?”

  “We can try,” he shot back.

  Gabe grinned. “See? We can try. Not exactly a resounding yes, but at this point, I’d say we take it.”

  Now that there was a plan B, she could barely sit still while Mike sent Gabe down to get the other bucket, which had drywall tape and joint compound and all the tools he needed to repair the ceiling. By the time he was done, all it needed was to dry and then get another coat of paint, and no one would ever know they’d cut a hole in the closet.

  Mike climbed off the ladder and wiped his dusty hands on his jeans. “So. We cracking up a newel post or what?”

  “Easy there, Mike. Kendall just turned white as a sheet. We want to do it as carefully as possible.”

  “Well, yeah. But the varnish is old, so I just want you to be realistic.”

  In the end, though, it wasn’t that complicated. Mike ran the tip of a box cutter around the seam between the post and the cap. Then he removed a rubber mallet and gently tapped the cap off. He peeked in.

  “What’s in there?” Kendall asked, almost afraid to look.

  Mike stepped aside. “Look for yourself.”

  Her heart fell as she approached the post. Somehow, it had never occurred to her that it wasn’t a solid piece of wood, but rather four pieces seamed together with a void in the middle. She took the flashlight with dread and shone it into the space inside, expecting it to illuminate bare wood.

  Instead, it revealed a sheaf of rolled paper.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  KENDALL’S HEART THUMPED against her rib cage as she reached into the newel post and withdrew the roll. There could be no doubt about what the papers were—the dark-blue color gave them away—but the pages were wrinkled from exposure to moisture, and the rubber band that held them together crumbled the instant she touched it. She held her breath while she slowly unrolled the stack.

  It was the exterior elevation of the house, marked above the image in elaborate, old-fashioned script, with the words No. 3 Lakeshore Drive.