I pulled my phone out of my purse and flipped it open to the picture I’d taken earlier of the window. “Look,” I said, showing Yvonne. “I took this picture right before I came here.”
She looked at it closely before I held it up to the drawing next to it. “It’s almost identical, isn’t it?”
We sat in silence for several minutes, comparing the two pictures, our heads turning back and forth like spectators at a tennis match.
“The differences are pretty subtle, aren’t they? At first glance you don’t notice the changes, but after you become familiar with one or the other, you start to notice the differences. It’s like one of those games in puzzle books my grandmother used to give me to play with while she watched her soaps. What looks like the same picture appears on opposite pages and you circle the differences.” I looked at Yvonne. “If any other family besides my own was behind this, I’d say it was coincidence. But the Prioleaus are known for their love of puzzles.”
“Which makes you believe that this was done on purpose.”
“Absolutely.”
“And I think you’re right. I’m only surprised that Jack hasn’t noticed it, too. It’s really out of character for him to miss something like this. He must be distracted.” She gave me a pointed look.
“Can I make a copy of all these?”
Yvonne smiled. “I already did. Jack asked for copies, too, so I made extra just in case you wanted your own set.”
“Thanks,Yvonne. I owe you dinner,” I said, recalling how Jack always took Yvonne to the nicest eateries in town as repayment for going above and beyond her duties as a research librarian. It didn’t escape my notice that I was probably receiving the same level of treatment due to my association with Jack. It was disconcerting, but I was going to take advantage of it while I could.
I looked at the picture on my phone again, then back at the drawing. Tapping my fingers on the wooden tabletop, I thought back to what my grandmother had taught me about applying logic to puzzles and problems. She’d shown me how to unravel a puzzle like a thread, creating an alternate beginning and end, examining the new strands in unexpected ways, like starting at the end instead of the beginning.
My fingers stopped in midair, then came to rest on the table in front of me. I slid the receipt over to look at it again. “Do you know, or do you have any kind of records that would show, what happened to the shop after John Nolan died or moved away? Like deeds or that kind of thing?”
Her eyes sparkled. “You’re beginning to sound like Jack. Plucking random ideas from out of nowhere and convincing others to help him hunt unicorns.”
She was smiling but I wasn’t sure that was a compliment. “Is that a good thing?”
She almost looked offended. “Of course. Our Jack is very successful at what he does. He’ll question the color of the sky if he thinks there’s a possibility that everybody might be wrong about an accepted knowledge. Well, except for that Alamo fiasco, but there are still some experts who say he was right,” she said, referring to his canceled book contract because of its public debunking on national television. “So, what unicorns are you hunting?”
I had to think for a moment to figure out what she meant. “Oh, right. Well, see, the changes were made to the window after the original order was placed.” I turned the description page toward her. “There isn’t an angel head on the original order, and this odd line design that goes around the entire window was added, too. And no people, see?” I pointed to the people standing beneath the oak tree near the house in the picture on my cell phone. I squinted, trying to see the details more clearly.
“You need glasses, dear. Squinting will give you wrinkles.”
“I have glasses. I just always forget to bring them with me.”
She blinked slowly behind her own wide-framed glasses. “Despite evidence to the contrary, Jack is much more attracted to what’s in here”—she pointed to her forehead—“than anything else. In other words, he wouldn’t find glasses a turnoff at all.”
It was my turn to blink slowly at her. “I’m not trying to impress Jack Trenholm, if that’s what you’re getting at, Yvonne. He’s just not my type.”
She was silent for a moment. “I didn’t know such a woman existed.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” She cleared her throat. “Now show me what else you found.” She looked down at the map and I could have sworn I saw her roll her eyes.
Trying not to squint, I held the drawing closer to my face, then looked at the picture on my phone. “The window was installed in 1871, meaning the changes could have been made anytime after that.”
“Or maybe the changes were made during the design process and simply not recorded.”
I nodded, happy to have her play devil’s advocate. It reminded me of my childhood, working on mind teasers with my grandmother where I’d question and she’d answer with another question until I’d figured it out for myself. I had a flash of my mother, in what my grandmother called the puzzle room in her house, laughing and hugging me because I’d figured out a difficult one. It saddened me to think of it, too easily reminded of how very few memories of my mother I had.
Yvonne was watching me closely as I answered. “True, which is why I want to make sure that we’ve looked through all the existing records from the window maker, just in case there was some written record of any changes.”
“But what if the requested changes were made verbally?”
I smiled, enjoying the way our minds worked together. “Then there won’t be any records to find. But that can’t be helped. Which brings me to my request about searching for deeds on the window maker’s business.”
“Assuming that a son didn’t inherit, and an ongoing concern was valuable enough that an astute businessman would consider purchasing the business, and attaching his own name to the storefront.”
“Bingo.”
She folded her hands primly in front of her. “It’s a long shot, of course, but I like your creative thinking.”
“I guess that’s better than calling it a crapshoot, but I’ll take it. So, do you have access to that sort of information?”
“I do. I’ve got some other projects that I’m working on at the moment, but I see no reason why I can’t squeeze it in between. Give me a couple of days and I’ll give you a call whether or not I find something. I’ll admit I’m intrigued, although I must say it’s a bit more far-fetched than most of my requests.”
“Welcome to my world,” I muttered. Smiling, I said, “That’s great. Thank you.” I glanced over to the stack of large books on the corner. “Any luck with the family tree?”
Yvonne stood and took a book off of the top of the stack. “You, Miss Middleton, have been blessed with an old Charleston name. There is certainly no shortage of family histories and genealogies; the hardest part was narrowing down your branch of the Prioleau family tree.”
She slid a piece of paper out of the middle of the book and flipped it open to the marked page. “This book is a personal history of the Manigault-Prioleau branch, done in the early 1940s by a distant relation, most likely trying to prove his own bloodline, but a great source, anyway.”
I leaned close to the page she indicated, mindful of summoning wrinkles and trying not to involve my forehead or brows while I squinted. I followed her pink-tinted and neatly clipped nail as she indicated names on the hand-drawn tree.
“I’m not sure how far you want to go back, but this one goes back to the early 1700s, when the earliest members of your family were farmers on Johns Island.”
“Johns Island? I just always assumed they’d lived in the Legare Street house.”
“No.” She pulled the second book from the stack and opened it to another marked page. “According to this history, written by another relative in 1898, they didn’t purchase the house on Legare until 1783.”
I glanced over at the book. “So they weren’t the original owners?”
She shook her head. “No. Apparently, your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather came into his fortune around the time of the Revolutionary War and made enough to purchase the house. They still owned the property on Johns Island, and had apparently acquired enough wealth and land to become one of the largest sea-island cotton plantations on Johns Island. It’s around that time that they decided they were important enough to name their farm and called it Belle Meade.”
“I recall the name of the plantation. My grandmother took me there. It’s part of a golf community now. But for the rest, I had no idea. I really know very little about my family history.”
Yvonne pursed her lips. “Don’t say that too loud.You might be asked to leave the city and relinquish your last name.” She winked.
Laughing, I asked, “Could I get photocopies of that part of the book? I might as well educate myself while I have the chance.”
Yvonne slid a new manila folder from the side of the desk. “I already did, thinking you might want to read more. It’s in here with the rest of the photocopies.”
I looked at her in surprise. “You’re amazing, Yvonne. Really.”
She grinned broadly, her perfect dentures gleaming. “I’ve heard that more than once. I guess that’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
I laughed again. “I’ll let you get dessert and something to go when I take you out, all right?”
“I’d hoped you were going to say that.” She moved away the second book so that I was staring at the family tree again.
I glanced briefly at the generations preceding the Civil War, and focused on my great-great-grandfather’s generation. I looked at birth, marriage, and death dates, seeing nothing new or surprising. Leonard Prioleau had married Cecilia Allston in 1855, and their only daughter, Rose, was born in 1866. Rose Allston Prioleau married Charles Manigault in 1890 and died in 1946. She gave birth to my grandmother, Sarah Allston Manigault, in 1900. The only interesting item of information was that Sarah apparently married a distant relation whose last name was Prioleau, bringing the family name back to the Legare Street house until Sarah’s daughter, my mother Ginnette, married James Middleton.
“I was hoping I’d find a mention of Rose having a sister, but there’s nothing on the family tree.” I looked back at Rose’s name. “Having just one child, a daughter, seems to be a family trait.” I recalled the sound of a baby’s crying, and what Rebecca had told me about my mother’s miscarriage, and wondered if my life would have been different if I’d had a younger brother or sister. If that would have been enough to get my mother to stay.
“That it does. And since your mother wasn’t born until 1945, it would seem that she was a bit of an afterthought. I suppose you’re lucky that the house is still in your family, considering there were no males to inherit for at least three generations.”
“I suppose,” I said, feeling an odd sense of panic at the thought of the house not being mine. Then again, it hadn’t been mine for a very long time, and I’d grown used to saying that it didn’t matter anymore. “Can I . . . ?” I began.
Yvonne tapped the manila folder. “The copy’s already in here. I also made copies of any pictures I found of anybody on your family tree while I was researching, in case you wanted to put faces with any of the names.”
“That will be more than helpful, thank you.” I looked at my watch. “I’ve got a showing in half an hour, so I have to leave now.” I stood and began stacking the books, then picked up the folder with my copies. “Thank you, Yvonne. I’ll call you later to set up our dinner.”
“I’ll look forward to it.” She stood, too, then smoothed down her skirt. “And tell Jack that I said hello.”
“I’m, well, I’m not sure when I’ll be speaking with him again.”
She regarded me silently, her eyes nonjudging. “I think he’s fooled you into believing he’s—what was it he said you called him?—‘a conceited, shallow-hearted womanizer’?”
My cheeks flamed. “He told you I said that?”
“And more. But that’s just a mask he wears to protect himself, and I think you know that. He was hurt deeply when Emily left. Even now that he knows the truth, it still hurts. He’s a man who doesn’t give his heart easily, but when he does, he gives it completely. And he’s definitely not emotionally unavailable or a ‘toad-faced idiot.’”
I touched my face, feeling the heat. “I didn’t really say that, did I?”
“Something to that effect, I believe. But not to worry, dear. That’s not why he’s upset with you.” She moved around the table to where I stood. “He’s upset because you’re right about his attraction to Rebecca.”
I raised an eyebrow. “He said that?”
She raised a corner of her mouth in a half smile. “Of course not. He’s a male, so he probably hasn’t even figured that out himself. But that’s not the only reason, either.”
I waited for her to continue, getting nervous at the sparkle in her eyes. “What’s the other reason?”
“He’s upset because I think he might be more than a little bit in love with you, and he feels guilty because of Emily.”
“Because of Emily? But she’s dead.”
“Yes. But think about it from Jack’s perspective. She left him when he was planning to spend the rest of his life with her. For a man such as Jack to make that kind of commitment, he would have really been in love. But there was no good-bye for him, no closure. Even though he knows she’s gone, somewhere in his mind he feels that they’re still engaged to be married, and that having feelings for you is almost like cheating.”
I knew my cheeks couldn’t get any redder, so I didn’t bother to look away. Instead, I asked, “How do you know all of this?”
“I’m eighty-nine years old, dear, but I’m not dead.”
“Well, then. I’ll have to remember that. And I don’t think you’re right, Yvonne. I’d know.”
She looked at me dubiously as I slid my chair back under the table. I paused, a niggling thought dancing beyond my field of vision, like a stray thread from a tapestry. I faced Yvonne.
“You’ve been so helpful that I almost hate to ask you for one more thing, but I just had another thought.”
“It’ll cost you another meal, and it won’t be cheap.” She smiled sweetly.
“Deal.” I leaned forward. “The house that you sent Jack and me to, Mimosa Hall in Ulmer, the original family name was Crandall. Jack told me that they’d lost everything in the Depression and sold it to the current owner’s family. Could you find out what you can about the original family? Family tree, letters, that sort of thing? Mrs. McGowan, the current owner, has a bunch of letters and documents in her attic and Jack is planning another trip down there to go through them, but I’d really like to know more now. There was something about that portrait. . . .” I shuddered, remembering the cold breath on my neck—and the voice in my ear. “Anyway,” I continued, “Mrs. McGowan told Jack that some sort of tragedy occurred in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and I’m curious to learn what that was.”