“Does Marilyn know we’re coming?” Nolan asked.
“I left a message on the museum line.” Tucker held the door open.
Marilyn stood up from behind a small desk. “It’s kind of you both to come back.”
“Glad to help,” Nolan said.
“I’ve made some progress since last week,” Marilyn said, “but with the usual schedule, it’s hard to undertake the project with full steam. I’ve shifted the children’s educational activities to another room in order to leave that space undisturbed.”
“Children’s activities?” Tucker perked up.
Marilyn nodded. “School groups, mostly. Class field trips. We try to make history as interesting as we can by making local connections, but children these days expect more technology than we can afford.”
“Perhaps a donation to technology would help,” Tucker said. “I was serious when I asked for a list of what you need.”
“He’s very serious,” Nolan said. “I’m supposed to vouch for him.”
“Subtle,” Tucker muttered.
“Yes,” Marilyn said, “and thank you. I promise I will make a list. How long do you plan to be in town?”
“That’s open-ended at the moment,” Tucker said. “I have one or two more things I want to do before I leave.”
“Long enough for the winter party? I hear Veronica and Luke have something fantastic planned.”
“I’m not sure.”
“I will make the list a priority.” Marilyn started walking toward the community room. “Now about all those documents.”
She updated Nolan and Tucker on the organization of the documents and photos and gave them a quick set of instructions on how to create labels, prepare boxes where the documents would be properly stored, and, if they had time or interest, begin reading documents for significant information on the history of the family who donated the boxes that might help further identify the contents. Then she left them to work while she greeted visitors to the museum and prepared for a school visit the following day.
Tucker tossed his jacket and backpack on a nearby chair. Nolan slung his coat over the back of another.
“The good news,” Tucker said, “is laying things out to dry seems to have helped.”
“A little curly around the edges in a few cases,” Nolan said, “but major casualties seem to be minimal.”
Marilyn had separated a box of documents and photos that sustained the most damage from the water. They were dry now but stained or blurred, and she would have to determine whether they retained enough value to keep. Everything else was ready to be organized more specifically and stored appropriately in sturdy, lined, acid-free museum boxes Marilyn had supplied.
“Why didn’t I see these before?” Tucker—wearing the gloves Marilyn had also supplied—picked up a set of photos.
Nolan moved closer to see. “Old ski resorts.”
“Look at those skis! I can’t imagine skiing with what they must have weighed.”
“Those photos must be at least fifty years old.” Nolan examined the one Tucker held now. “We were there last week. That’s the blue hill. I recognize the view of the mountains behind it.”
“You’re right.” Tucker moved the photo to reveal another. “I bet these are all area ski locations that have been in business a long time. Or some of them could be gone—lost ski runs. Marilyn could make an exhibit of them.”
“That’s a good suggestion.”
“Or postcards. She could sell them, and the Victorium Emporium could sell them. Leif too. People in his shop would pay good money for a nice collection.”
“I like the way you think. A good fund-raiser for the museum.”
Tucker moved through the photos. “I don’t know who the man is who keeps showing up in the photos, but the places tell a story through the decades.”
“Indeed.” Nolan was drawn in.
Tucker paused on one photo. “Is this what I think it is?”
Nolan leaned in. “Hidden Run?”
“From 1934.” Tucker gave a low whistle. “I’ve seen a few other old photos in its heyday.”
“Look at all the trees. Even then it was a difficult course. I’m sure it doesn’t look anything like that now, Tucker. It must be very overgrown.”
“Not this again. I thought you were the fun Duffy.”
Nolan swallowed his reply.
“Let’s just have a nice afternoon, Nolan.” Tucker carefully set down the photos. “Not everyone should go down Hidden Run, but I know what I’m doing, and Kris is equally qualified. I’ve taken her skiing enough times to be sure of that, and I made certain we both have the right skis.”
“It’s still dangerous, Tucker.”
“Drop it. Arguing about Hidden Run is not on the list of things Marilyn gave us to do.” Tucker picked up a box. “Where’s that instruction sheet about making box labels?”
Nolan found the sheet, handed it to Tucker, and pulled a chair up to a table full of documents. He read documents all day every day at work. Perhaps that would help his brain find information to highlight about the family history preserved in front of him here that might be helpful to Jillian’s genealogy work later.
“Maybe these papers will reveal who the skier is in the photos,” Nolan said.
“A name to go with the face would be cool,” Tucker said. “Obviously he loved skiing. He started as a young man and skied a long time.”
“He could be a grandfather or great-grandfather or even great-great-grandfather of someone here in Canyon Mines.”
“If that’s the case, why would people just give boxes of unsorted papers to the Heritage Society?”
“Maybe they didn’t know what was in them,” Nolan said. “They could have been sitting in somebody’s basement for years. An elderly relative dies, and the family needs to clear out the house to sell it. Nobody really wants to go through everything. The boxes could just as easily have ended up in an estate sale or a dumpster.”
“I guess. I got a few things like that from my grandfather.”
“Did you go through them?” Nolan asked.
“Not yet. I just transferred them from his basement to mine because we put the house on the market. No one in the family needs it. It’s just too big, and the money will help take care of my grandmother.”
“Maybe you’d find some interesting things about your genealogy,” Nolan said. “Great-grandparents and that sort of thing.”
“Bits of me, I guess,” Tucker said. “Grandpa Matt was adopted. That rather scrambles the family line when it comes to genetics.”
Adoption. Jillian would need this information as soon as possible. This could explain the disconcerting feelings between Matthew and his father.
“I suppose so,” Nolan said. “Did he have any information about his birth family?”
“Not that I knew of. And my father left when I was two. I grew up with a last name I know nothing about. I’ve never even met a single Kintzler in my life, and the Ryder name is an adopted name, so I don’t have much of a family tree, do I?”
“The Ryders are still your family. They were your mother’s family, and your grandfather’s family, no matter how he came to them.”
“He loved Great-grandma Alyce. I know that. Judd, not so much.”
“Is that what he said?”
“Some things don’t have to be said for you to know they’re true. He never would even use his middle initial because it stood for Judd’s name. He never kept a single picture of Judd around the house. Even my mother gave me a photo of the father who abandoned us. She thought I had a right to it.”
“She sounds wise.”
“She is. But Grandpa Matt never liked the man who raised him, and I only found out why after he died.”
“About the adoption?”
“Among other things.”
“Jillian could try to help with the family tree.”
Tucker finished his label and raised his eyes at Nolan. “Maybe we should just leave things be with Jilli
an as well.”
“She’s very good at her work, Tucker. Yours wouldn’t be the first family with an adoption she helped.”
“I believe you.”
“Why not give her a chance to find some answers about your grandfather? You cared about him a great deal.”
“I did.” Tucker got up and selected another stack of photos to examine. “All my life. But he spoiled it right at the end.”
Nolan lurched a few inches. “What do you mean?”
“Never mind.” Tucker spread photos of strangers on the table.
“Tucker?”
“You’ve been in town a long time.” Tucker flipped a photo, looking for a notation. “Maybe you recognize some of these older people.”
“Tucker, you can talk to me.”
Tucker’s hands stilled. He stared down at the old photo. “Why did he have to do that?”
Nolan waited.
“He was in his right mind. He knew what he was doing. He shouldn’t have put that burden on me. Not like that.”
“How?”
“On his deathbed! We both knew it was our last conversation. I was barely holding it together. I just wanted to tell him I loved him. And he told me to find a letter and that I had to do the right thing when he hadn’t, no matter how much he wished he had.”
“That sounds rough.”
“It was gruesome. The worst thing is he did it on purpose—made it too late for me to ask questions or have his help or understand what any of it means. A letter that made no sense and a sealed packet that I can’t bring myself to open.” Tucker glanced toward his backpack. “It’s like every good thing we shared was undone, and I’m supposed to fix it all on my own. And now that’s what I have to remember. It’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I’m tempted to shove his mystery envelope into one of his boxes in the basement for someone else to deal with. Or maybe I’ll take them all straight to the dumpster.” Tucker waved a hand over the table. “What’s the point of any of this, anyway? Somebody just didn’t have the courage to choose the dumpster.”
“I’d like to think there’s more to it.”
“I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s better just to put things in boxes and tape down the lids. What we do now is what matters. Just live.”
“In the moment.”
“That’s right.”
“Life can change in a moment.”
“Exactly.”
Nolan’s life had changed in a moment. In a way, he’d been handed a sealed envelope and had chosen not to open it all these years. It was easier to stuff the loose ends banging around his family into a metaphoric envelope. He never should have let Paddy give him something he knew Paddy had promised to Patrick. He played the little brother card. He was so good at being indulged in those days.
He had to try again with Patrick.
“I’ve changed my mind about today.” Tucker straightened his stack of photos. “I meant to do more. Please give my apologies to Marilyn.”
“I will,” Nolan said. “I’ll stay for a while and see what I can do on my own.”
“Do me a favor and try to forget everything I said.” Tucker fiddled with his backpack and jacket.
“Do me a favor and believe that you can trust me,” Nolan said.
Then Tucker was gone. Nolan pulled out his phone to call Jillian.
“This changes a lot,” she said.
“Can you crack adoption records?”
“I’ll certainly try. I have a friend who has more experience with adoption histories than I do. It’s easier if a family member cooperates. If the records are sealed, which is likely for records of that era, not just anyone can request they be opened.”
“Try, Jilly. I have a feeling this is where it all turns.”
“It takes time, Dad. It’s a bureaucratic process.”
“Well, see if your friend knows any shortcuts.”
Nolan ended the call and scanned the tables. He and Tucker had managed to bring more disorder than anything else in the few minutes they’d worked. He made some progress on the piles over the next hour or so, choosing to start with the simpler tasks and clear them from the tables and into labeled boxes so that what remained would be more evident. Before he left, he reviewed with Marilyn what he’d done so she could easily undo anything she wasn’t happy with. When he stepped outside to the relative privacy of the sidewalk, he scrolled his contact list for Patrick’s number and selected it.
“It’s about time,” was Patrick’s greeting.
“Hi, Patrick.” Nolan resisted the urge to point out that he’d left Patrick a voice message two days earlier. “Are you still in Denver?”
“I am.”
“How are you?”
“Well enough.”
“Have you seen Ma and Dad?”
“Quite a bit.”
“Good.”
“It’s a good thing you called, or you were going to have them on your tail soon.”
Nolan doubted that. His parents had stayed carefully neutral between their sons for decades, grateful for every small attention Patrick paid them while Nolan saw them often.
“I can come into town tomorrow,” Nolan said. “I’d love to buy you lunch.”
“I’d love to let you.”
They set up a time and place and clicked off. Nolan knew no more than before the call about what was on Patrick’s mind, but he had taken the needed step on his end. He knew what he would say if given the chance.
The museum door opened.
“Nolan!” Marilyn called.
He was standing right there beside the door. “What is it?”
She showed him a fist gripping a stack of hundred dollar bills. “I found it on a chair in the community room. It’s three thousand dollars with a sticky note that says: ‘Not lost. A gift for the children.’”
Tucker.
“What should I do?” Marilyn asked.
“Receive the gift.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Maple Turn, Missouri, 1948
Don’t forget the file your father asked you to get from his office.” Matthew’s mother looked up at him over her knitting needles. “He specifically said he’ll want it when he gets home from his meeting at the church.”
“I’ll go now,” Matthew said.
“The keys are there on the table by the door. When you get back, I want to measure your arms. My guess is I need to make these sleeves two inches longer than the last sweater I made you. I can’t keep up with the rate you grow.”
Matthew nodded. Grandpa Ted would give him any sweater he wanted from his store, but his mother was an expert knitter. His friends couldn’t tell the difference between the ones she made and the ones he got from a store or the Sears catalog, and at least her sleeves would cover his lanky wrists.
He scooped up the keys from the table and loped across the property, around the stand of maple trees, and in the front door of Ryder Manufacturing. These were his mother’s keys, which she never used. “For an emergency,” Judd said when he gave them to her. She hadn’t wanted them, insisted that she had no need for them, no intention of going in the building. And she hadn’t so far in the more than two years the business had been operating. But on occasions like this one, Matthew used them for brief errands.
Judd was not one to leave a cluttered desk at work or at home. Loose papers were sorted into appropriate folders, and folders were put away in locked drawers or cabinets or given over to the care of his secretary to do the same. Folders he intended to take home with him went to the corner of his desk, which otherwise was clear and polished cherrywood except for his telephone, green banker’s lamp, and a brass rack that held three fountain pens. On this day, Judd had made the rare oversight of leaving his office without the single manila file he intended to take home before having his supper and driving to the church for an evening meeting of the deacon board. The length of Matthew’s errand to fetch it and return home to his sleeve measurements and homework should not exceed t
en minutes. In the building, through the showroom, down the hall to the offices, into his father’s office. The key ring gave Matthew access to Judd’s tidy domain. He turned on as few lights as necessary to navigate the path. With the file in one hand—he wasn’t even interested enough to read the typed label—he pivoted to leave.
His hand was on the doorknob, checking to be sure it would lock behind him, when the phone rang. Twice. And stopped.
It was neither the phone on his father’s desk nor the one on his secretary’s small desk outside the office. There were other offices in the hallway—the accountant, the sales team, the production manager—but Matthew was certain the ringing had come from within Judd’s office and was heavily muffled. He turned around and scanned the possibilities. Judd’s office held little interest for him normally. Now he moved into the room again, standing beside the desk as he examined the trio of bookshelves on the wall behind the desk, peering into the openings between books and gaps behind vases and photos and a clock and assorted items of decor people typically didn’t notice. Matthew wouldn’t have been able to name most of them in a memory game. He wasn’t in any of the photos, but his mother’s face smiled from several of them.
But there was no second telephone.
It rang again. Twice.
It was in the desk. Matthew threw himself into Judd’s black leather chair and tugged at a lower drawer.
Locked.
A lifelong friendship with Jackson had taught Matthew a few skills. He’d never had any luck with that outside back door, once he’d identified it, though he’d tried a couple of times in the middle of the night before deciding it wasn’t worth the bother. It wasn’t an ordinary lock and would take more practice than he had opportunity for without prying eyes. But he’d learned from Jackson on simpler challenges, and they practiced for fun to see how fast they could get in. A locked desk drawer would be little obstacle.
Matthew reached into his pocket and extracted the tool he needed. Half his face turned up in pleasure at how speedily he heard the click he sought. The drawer opened, and there it was.
A phone.
His heart pounded.
Why would an upstanding businessman, or a deacon, keep a phone locked in his desk? Matthew waited for it to ring again, trying to reason through what he would do if it did. Answer? Impersonate his father? Just pick it up and listen for a voice?
In the Cradle Lies Page 15