Eve's Daughters (27 page)

Grace hesitated, suddenly unsure if she really wanted to learn the truth about the past. But when she remembered the locked door between Emma and God, she knew she had to find the key.

“This is crazy, Suzanne.”

“I know. That’s what makes it so much fun.”

“What’s the plan?” Grace asked, yawning, “or are we just winging it?” Five-thirty in the morning seemed a dubious hour to be launching into uncharted territory. She stowed her suitcase in the trunk of Suzanne’s car and sank into the passenger’s seat beside her.

“Here, I bought you some coffee,” Suzanne said as she started the engine. “According to this great book I’ve been reading, we can find all sorts of records—divorce papers, marriage licenses, death certificates—at the county courthouse. It’ll be easier to find Grandma’s sisters if we know their married
names. My plan is to arrive at the courthouse as soon as it opens and try to find what we need before noon. That will give us time to drive to Bremenville and poke around there for the rest of the day.”

Grace sipped her coffee slowly as they drove to the expressway and headed north, allowing the over-boiled brew to nudge her into consciousness. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but streaks of red smudged the sky on her right. It seemed an ill omen, like bloody handwriting on the wall.

“Remind me again why we’re doing this?”

Suzanne smiled playfully. “Want a little heat on your feet, Mom? Are they feeling a bit cold? . . . Take a look in that folder on the backseat. I wrote up a list of objectives so we’d stay focused.”

“You are just like your father,” Grace said as she reached into the backseat. “I’m surprised it isn’t labeled
Battle Plans.
”

The top sheet in the folder had the word
OBJECTIVES
typed in capital letters. Grace read the list to herself.

Mentally, Grace added two more objectives of her own: (1) Find the reason for Mother’s estrangement from God, and (2) Demonstrate to Suzanne what a mistake it would be to divorce Jeff. But what if their findings caused an ancient, crumbling skeleton to topple out of the closet? Grace closed the folder and shuddered. The fact that she was searching for answers implied that she suspected Emma’s version of the past was incomplete or misleading. Did she really want to risk uncovering an unpleasant truth? She flipped on the radio to drown out these nagging thoughts.

They reached the county courthouse just as it opened at nine o’clock. The huge nineteenth-century brick building sat on the town square in a grassy, tree-shaded park. The clock in the tower, like the sleepy town itself, had come to a halt more than a decade ago. The fact that it had stalled at five minutes to midnight seemed another ill omen to Grace, although she couldn’t have said why.

“Corinthian columns,” Suzanne informed her, pointing to the pillars that framed the entrance.

“See? Aren’t you glad you took that art history course in college?” Grace had intended it as a joke, but when Suzanne frowned and hurried up the steps without answering, she realized her mistake—Suzanne had met Jeff while taking that art history class.

By eleven-thirty, with the help of a clerk, they had unearthed a marriage certificate for Emma and Karl, and for Emma’s two sisters, learning that the youngest one, Vera, had married Robert Schultz in 1927. They found death certificates for Eva, who had died in the 1918 influenza epidemic; for Karl Bauer, who had died of cancer in 1969; and for Emma’s older sister, Sophie, who had died of heart failure in 1970.

“But there doesn’t seem to be a death certificate for Grandma’s youngest sister, Vera,” Suzanne said when she’d finished searching the most recent files.

“Good!” Grace smiled. “Maybe there’s a glimmer of hope that Vera is still alive and can be reunited with Mother. Maybe all this digging will yield sweet fruit, after all. How about a coffee break to celebrate?”

“In a minute.” Suzanne’s dark head was bent over a file containing divorce records.

Grace pulled a moist towelette from her purse and carefully wiped the dust and ink from her fingers. She had forgotten her earlier misgivings and was beginning to feel euphoric when Suzanne suddenly looked up from the file, her eyes wide with surprise.

“Oh boy. You’d better sit down, Mom.”

“Why? What did you find?” Grace was afraid to ask, certain from the expression on Sue’s face that she’d see a leering skull or a pile of old bones.

“I found Grandma’s divorce certificate, granted in 1926. Are you ready for this? It was Karl, not Grandma, who petitioned the court for a divorce.”

“That’s not so surprising. She deserted him.”

“But the stated grounds for divorce, attested to by two witnesses, was marital unfaithfulness. According to Karl Bauer, Grandma committed adultery.”

“That’s ridiculous!” But Grace had a horrible, sick feeling in the pit of her
stomach, nonetheless. “What a horrible thing to do, slandering my mother’s reputation like that!”

“Mom, according to this, she never contested the charges.”

Grace’s stomach turned over again. Against her will, she pictured the woman who had been caught in the act of adultery and brought before Jesus. A crowd of leering, self-righteous men gathered around to accuse her, pointing fingers. “I wonder who the two witnesses to this alleged adultery were?”

“No offense, Mom, but your father sounds like a real jerk.”

“If he was spreading lies like this around Bremenville, it’s no wonder my mother left town and never returned.”

Suzanne stared at the document as if it contained encoded secrets. “I don’t understand why it took two years, though. Grandma left him in October of 1924, you were born in May of 1925, but the divorce wasn’t finalized until November, 1926.”

“Do you suppose he tried to coax my mother to move back in with him all that time?” Grace mused. “Could he have seen me as a baby and changed his mind about not wanting children? Maybe that’s why my mother said he loved me.”

Suzanne closed the file. She gathered all the photocopied documents they’d requested and stuffed them into her folder. “Well, we can congratulate ourselves,” she said. “We’ve managed to answer one question on our list—who your aunt Vera married—and we’ve raised about two dozen new ones.”

EIGHTEEN

“I can’t believe our luck!” Suzanne replaced the receiver on the motel phone. “Not only is Great-aunt Vera alive and well and living here in Bremenville, but she has just invited us to come and see her in half an hour. She sounded as spry as Grandma on the phone. I’ll bet she can answer our questions.”

“Wonderful,” Grace said flatly. She was lying across one of the motel beds with her arm draped over her eyes, wondering again why she had agreed to come. She had pursued the truth, hoping to restore order to Emma’s and Suzanne’s lives, but her own life was being thrown into chaos instead. Still reeling from the discovery that her mother had been accused of adultery, Grace wasn’t sure she was ready to face any more surprises.

“What’s the matter?” Suzanne said. “Do I sense some waning enthusiasm for our ‘Magical Mystery Tour’?”

“I’ve decided that we’re never really going to learn the truth. We’re just going to hear several different versions of it, depending on who’s doing the telling.”

“Then let’s think of ourselves as the jury. We’ll weigh the evidence and see which version is the most credible.”

“You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Suzanne replied, “and if we hurry, we can stop off at your grandfather’s church on the way to Aunt Vera’s house. The desk clerk told me how to get there.”

They had no trouble finding the church Friedrich Schroder had once pastored, but the small white-frame sanctuary that Grace had expected to see was gone, replaced—according to the cornerstone—in 1953 by a large brick building with white pillars. The barn and the gray farmhouse that had served as the parsonage were both gone too, making room for an addition that housed Sunday school classrooms. Her grandfather had been right when he’d predicted the town’s growth—the church no longer stood a mile outside of town
but nestled in a subdivision of twenty-year-old ranch-style houses.

When Suzanne explained who they were, the church secretary immediately called the pastor from his study. “So you’re one of Fred Schroder’s grandchildren! I’m honored to meet you. Reverend Schroder is legendary in this community, remembered as a truly godly man. He didn’t exactly found the church, but I understand that he was responsible for helping to make it what it is today . . . but you surely must know all this. You must be proud of him.”

“I never met either of my grandparents,” Grace explained. “My mother moved away from Bremenville before I was born.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask for a reason why. She didn’t know the answer herself.

“I never had the privilege of meeting him, either,” the pastor said. “He died in the early 1940s, I believe, but you might find a couple of old-timers around here who still remember him. He married, buried, baptized, and shepherded this flock for over forty years. I can give you a few names. . . .”

“Please don’t trouble yourself. We’ve taken enough of your time. In fact, we’re on our way to see my mother’s sister Vera—”

“Yes, of course, Vera Schultz. One of our oldest members—and one of my favorite members too.”

They thanked him for his time and went outside to search the cemetery behind the church. Alongside Louise and Friedrich Schroder’s double tombstone was a much older one—their daughter Eva’s, who had died in October of 1918. The graves had been lovingly tended. Pots of tulips and hyacinths bloomed in a rainbow of color.

Grace stared at the date on her grandparents’ grave marker and felt a surge of anger toward her mother. “I was eighteen when they died,” she said aloud. “I grew up never knowing a single blood relative besides Mother, and all that time my grandparents lived just a few hours away!”

Suzanne looked up from where she knelt. She had brought a large pad of drawing paper with her to make rubbings of both grave markers. “You need to ask her why, Mom. She owes you an explanation.”

But as Grace glanced at the thriving church behind her and recalled the pastor’s words of praise for her grandfather, the bigger question in her mind was why Emma had rejected her godly father’s faith.

The Schultzes’ farm was a short drive down the winding river road from the church. The barn and stone farmhouse looked old but well kept, and Grace imagined that it looked much the same as it did seventy-six years ago
when her grandfather went out in the flood to pray for the present-day Schultzes’ great-grandfather. Aunt Vera was waiting for them on her front porch. Grace was barely out of the car when Vera pulled her into her arms as if they’d known each other all their lives.

“Emma’s daughter! Oh, what a thrill it is to finally meet you at last.” She gave them such a warm, tearful welcome that even Suzanne, who was usually brisk and businesslike, succumbed to her warmth and returned her embrace.

When she finished hugging Suzanne, Aunt Vera couldn’t resist embracing Grace once again. “My, you look just like him . . .” she murmured.

“Like my father?”

“Why . . . yes . . .”

“The only photograph I’ve ever seen of Karl Bauer is Mother’s wedding picture,” Grace explained. “I’ve never been able to see a resemblance, myself . . . with his hair and eyes so dark and my hair so fair. Do you have any more pictures of him I could look at?”

Aunt Vera’s cheeks flushed rosy pink. “Goodness! I don’t know . . . Come inside and we can look.” As Grace followed her into the house, she felt the irrational urge to cling tightly to Aunt Vera’s hand, as if unwilling to lose sight of the first blood relative she’d ever met aside from her mother.

The farmhouse kitchen was as bright and sunny as Vera herself. It looked as though it had been decorated in the 1940s—with white metal cupboards, speckled gray counter tops, yellow walls, red polka dot curtains—and hadn’t been remodeled since. Aunt Vera poured coffee into mismatched mugs, and they sat in red vinyl chairs around a porcelain-topped table to drink it.

“My sister Emma was sunshine and laughter and song,” Aunt Vera said. “Everyone loved Emma. But, oh, that girl could get into mischief! It was like she just couldn’t help herself.”

Grace smiled. “You’ll be happy to know she hasn’t changed.”

Aunt Vera laughed. “Good. I’m glad. Oh, what grand fun she was!”

Grace studied Aunt Vera as she talked and saw the resemblance to Emma in her gestures and in the shape of her nose and jaw. Vera was seventy-four, and so round and jolly and white-haired she might have been a stand-in for Santa Claus’s wife. She had lived in this farmhouse since she’d married Robert Schultz, and now she shared it with her son Bob Jr. and her daughter-in-law Marilyn. Grace’s cousin-in-law was in her late forties, with short cotton-candy hair that was dyed a startling shade of tangerine—a mute testimony against do-it-yourself hair care products. Her makeup looked as though it had been applied with a tablespoon. Marilyn puttered sullenly around the kitchen as
Aunt Vera talked, eyeing Grace and Suzanne as if they’d come to contest someone’s will.

“Emma used to call our escapades ‘adventures’,” Aunt Vera was saying. “‘Hey, Vera, do you feel like going on an adventure today?’ she would ask. I remember one time we went on a joyride in Karl’s car. Emma had never driven a car before in her life, but she just climbed behind the wheel and took off. Every time she changed gears the transmission sounded like a meat grinder. Poor Karl had his hands full with that girl!”