The Invited(106)
“My goodness,” Mary Ann said. “You certainly have learned a lot! You should come volunteer here. We could always use someone with good research skills!”
“I’d love to. Maybe once the house is finished and I have more free time—right now, I’m looking for any other family. And I’d like to know what happened to Jason and Gloria—who they went to live with, where they are now.”
Mary Ann was amazingly adept at using both the computer and microfiche reader. In fact, she was a much faster typist than Helen—her fingers flew across the keyboard.
Together, they looked through genealogy websites, public records, census data, and old newspapers. Helen’s eyes got bleary and she felt a little queasy from flipping through page after page of birth and death records in state newspapers on the microfiche reader. She read articles about the mill fire that killed Jane, about Ann’s murder.
The first thing they discovered was that after Jane’s death, Silas Whitcomb remarried and had four more children, giving Ann and Mark half siblings, each of whom then married and had children.
Through Mary Ann’s skillful navigation of public records, they learned that Mark Whitcomb moved to Keene, New Hampshire, and married a woman named Sara Sharpe in 1965. They had three daughters: Rebecca, Stacy, and Marie. Mary Ann pulled up copies of birth certificates for all three.
“Riley can help me with this tomorrow,” Helen said after they’d been working for nearly two hours. “I don’t want you to have to be here all day.”
“Oh, I don’t mind at all,” Mary Ann said. “I’m actually enjoying the detective work. I had no idea that Hattie Breckenridge had left such a legacy. It’s fascinating that there are living relatives out there somewhere, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely,” Helen said.
“You know,” Mary Ann confessed, “I always thought it was unfair—the way people treated Hattie, the way the whole town talks about her still. I don’t think it’s right, to vilify a person like that.”
Helen smiled at her. “That’s part of what’s pulling me to do this research. I want to know her side of the story.”
Helen took a break and ran across to the general store to get them sandwiches, cups of coffee, and a box of raspberry Danish.
“I brought us provisions,” she announced when she got back.
“I’ve got some information on Samuel Gray here,” Mary Ann said, eyes on the computer screen. “He was one of eight siblings, and his mother, Eliza Gray, lived until 2002. She was in Duxbury, so the kids could have gone to her.”
Helen reached into her bag for her notebook to start writing down the list of names they came up with, but her notebook wasn’t there.
“Damn,” she muttered.
“Everything all right?”
“Sorry, I thought I had my notes with me, but I guess not.”
She must have left the notebook back at home. By the computer there, maybe. Careless. If Nate found it…but he wouldn’t find it, would he?
Mary Ann found her a blank legal pad. Helen started to write down the names and dates of birth of every family member they’d found whom Jason and Gloria might have gone to live with.
“I don’t want to make things more difficult,” Mary Ann said, “but I think it’s important to remember that they might have been taken in by a distant cousin, the sister-in-law of an aunt or uncle—anyone.”
In the end, after she and Mary Ann had been at it for over four hours (and had polished off their sandwiches along with all the raspberry Danish), she had a long list of aunts and uncles, great-aunts and great-uncles, cousins, in-laws. She had four pieces of paper taped together on which she’d sketched a rough outline of Hattie’s family tree—the branches twisted and tangled, heavy with names.
* * *
. . .
Helen flicked on her turn signal when the smiling cartoon pig on the Uncle Fred’s Smokehouse sign came into view. Under the pig sign hung another that said: BACON, SAUSAGES, HAM. There was a low single-story building with a green metal roof and an awning that said simply: MEATS. Behind it, a small shed with a metal chimney that sweet hickory smoke poured out of.
Helen walked through the door of the shop, where there was a large refrigerated case full of smoked meat: sausages, hams, thick slabs of fatty bacon. Helen’s stomach felt a little queasy—it was all too much, the sweet smoky smell, the fatty cuts of pork, rinds red from smoke. The rest of the shop was full of knickknacks tourists might buy—stuffed toy moose with ILOVERMONT T-shirts, maple syrup, local hot sauces, jellies and jams, quilted pot holders, beeswax candles—all of it seemingly covered with a thin layer of greasy dust. An old metal fan sat in a corner, chugging, doing its best to stir the thick air.
“Can I help you?” asked a young woman behind the counter. Helen guessed she was still in high school or maybe college. She didn’t look old enough to drink legally, but she was wearing a Long Trail Ale T-shirt and so much eye shadow and mascara that Helen was amazed the girl could keep her eyes open.
“I’m not sure,” Helen said. “I’m looking for family of Candace Bishkoff.”
“Candace?” the girl asked, looking up at the ceiling, thinking. “I don’t think I know any Candace, and I know pretty much all the Bishkoffs. My boyfriend, Tony, he’s a Bishkoff.” She smiled at Helen, proud to be showing her allegiance to this clan of the smoked meat Bishkoffs; maybe one day she and Tony would get married, and their children would grow up and learn the secrets of brining and sausage making.