What the Dead Want(13)

“When the Civil War started,” Esther went on, “James went off to fight and left George here to be pastor of the church.”

“You can just do that?” she asked skeptically. “You can just be, like . . . I’m leaving, so you’re the pastor now, tell everyone Jesus hates bigots?” Gretchen asked.

“Hush,” Esther said. “Don’t be a wise ass. Where was I? Oh . . . in any case, George kept working in the family business, and presumably kept up the mission of the church. He and Fidelia got married and had two children, Celia and Adam, and from what we know they kept helping people escape slavery, bringing them through here. Some even settled in the town eventually.

“And then everything went to hell. We don’t know exactly what happened. The church was burned to the ground. We don’t even know how many were killed, though some think it could have been half the congregation. The entire thing was ruled an accident. But it’s obvious it was white supremacists. No one knows how they found out it was a safe house. No one did anything to put out the fire or to save the people who were trapped inside.” Esther looked down and shook her head, lit a cigarette. “An accident,” she said with disgust.

A shiver went through Gretchen. She thought about people finally broken free of their torturers in the South, then terrorized, hiding in the church, only to die here in the north, murdered by the same kind of racists they’d escaped. She thought of the people who did nothing—made it possible for the racists and Klan to grow stronger, to get away with killing the innocent.

“Fidelia and her daughter, Celia, also died in the fire,” Esther said.

“They were African American?” Gretchen asked, as she looked again at the portrait. It was sepia-toned, and difficult to make out Fidelia’s complexion. Esther shook her head. “No. They were the only white people who died that day.”

Gretchen stood and walked to the middle of the room, suddenly restless. And people think New York City is violent, she thought. They think that things are so quaint and wholesome in the country, or back in the past.

“The Axtons held on to the house through all of that?” Gretchen said.

“Well, the family business was still thriving, of course,” Esther said. “The Axtons made a lot of money shipping goods overseas. After that the church was never rebuilt and life just went on, business as usual.”

“But why would anyone want to keep living here? I can’t imagine living on the site of that kind of crime.”

“Come now, sweets,” Esther said, looking at her with weary incredulity. “There are few places in the world that aren’t soaked with blood when you take a close look. And people need a place to live.”

“So the house was passed on through George? Did he remarry?”

“No,” Esther said. “George stayed here and raised the little boy—Adam—the only descendant who lived through all the violence; he was an infant at the time and home with a nanny.”

“And is there somehow . . . is there a link between this and my mother disappearing?” Gretchen thought of some centuries-old cover-up her mother might have discovered.

“Maybe a lot,” Esther said, a strange expression beginning to cloud her face. “But you look exhausted, and I’ve talked your ear off since you got here. I’ll tell you more after you get settled in.”

Gretchen nodded, even though she couldn’t imagine getting settled in a place so dilapidated. She wanted to know more right away. And to be able to give it all the proper thought and scrutiny. She could see why her mother would have wanted to study their family history more—document it—but the idea that anything that happened over a century ago was tied to her mother’s disappearance seemed sketchy, and maybe this tale of fire and freedom fighters, which she’d never heard before, wasn’t even true. A prominent wealthy family running a safe house for the Underground Railroad? A particularly brutal killing of escaped slaves? She’d never encountered it in a New York State history class, even a story that said it was an accident, and it seemed like the kind of historical event that would be written about.

Esther stood to leave.

“Wait, Aunt Esther,” Gretchen said. “Why have you stayed here all this time?”

“There’s much to be said for having a roof over your head,” Esther said. “Listen, sweets, good things happened here too. Hundreds of people who’d been enslaved got to freedom through this house and the church, and they went on to have children, generations of people, some who still live around here. Those are a couple reasons I stay. The others we’ll talk about over a good stiff drink.”

Gretchen thought about her aunt out here alone in this enormous house surrounded by miles of forest, on the site of a massacre. Crazy or not, she was a brave old lady.

“You get settled in,” said Esther. “I’ll go make us some cocktails. The washroom is down the hall, and my room is right above yours. But we’ll save the tour for later.”

Gretchen tried to smile. She wished Esther had said something about dinner instead of drinks. Suddenly she was very hungry, and this made her miss the city, where you could just step out the door and get something delicious right away. Asian fusion or Indian would be wonderful right now. She was about to suggest they go out to eat and then stay in a hotel, get a fresh start on archiving in the morning. But when she looked up at Aunt Esther, the woman was smiling at her with such love and old-lady coolness, she felt embarrassed to bring it up. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had seemed this happy to see her, to be with her—except, of course, Simon. And there was that shadow of her mother’s face she could see in Esther’s, and the shadow of Fidelia in all of them. It melted her skepticism, made her want to learn more—even if all she’d find out was that Esther’s various ideas about accidents and church burnings were because she had dementia. She’d stay. At least for the night. Go through the letters Esther had given her, start looking at what her mother had been collecting. Tomorrow she’d give Esther the kind of help she really needed: find out about hiring a cleaning crew, maybe get an antique appraiser to have a look around. Maybe even see if there was a doctor who could give her a checkup. Her father’s mother had dementia and she had nurses living with her to help her. Country people always thought they had to do everything themselves—a lifetime of not being able to order takeout probably does that to you, Gretchen thought.