The View from Prince Street (24 page)

Daisy retied her apron strings, securing them with a tight bow. “He's a tank. You should hear him when he's crawling or when he's working his way through the lower pantry, pulling pots and pans from the cabinets. I tried to keep him out of the cabinets at first, then just decided to move the dangerous stuff up high and leave the fun stuff within his reach. He won't be this age forever, and I enjoy watching him wreck the kitchen.”

I tugged down his blue T-shirt, which had inched up over his round belly. The ice splintered more, and this time, I didn't even try to shore it up. This was a moment of pure joy, and it had been so long since I'd felt anything like
this
that I couldn't shut it out.

“You're a natural with him,” Daisy said. “Do you have children?”

And there was the opening.
Just tell her!

“Only a few people know this. But . . .” Emotion clenched my throat and threatened to cut off the words. “I had a baby when I was sixteen. His name is Michael.” Tears stung the corner of my eyes. God, I'd said it out loud. “I gave him up for adoption.”

Daisy stilled, staring at me and searching for answers to questions she'd so carefully walled away. “Oh, Rae.”

I smiled, keeping my focus on the baby's face, unable to speak with a steady voice.

“Have you seen him since?” she asked.

Walter pulled his thumb from his mouth and grabbed my lower lip as if he were waiting for my answer. Grinning, I gently pulled his tiny hand away. “For the first time last week.”

She straightened her shoulders and shifted. “How did it go?”

I looked up at Daisy. “I think it went well. But we were both so nervous.”

“Did you reach out to him or did he contact you about the meeting?”

I wasn't even sure if she was talking to me or her own birth mother. I studied Walter's sweet face, drawing the warmth my heart needed to speak. “He e-mailed me a couple of weeks ago. It took me a little time to get the courage to respond, but I did.”

She cleared her throat. “Why were you afraid?”

Daisy's expression was almost childlike. It reminded me of Amelia when she spoke about her birth mother. “I didn't want him to hate me.”

“Why would he hate you?”

I kissed Walter on the cheek and handed him back to Daisy. “Because I gave him away.”

She held her son tightly. Most in this situation would have said,
What you did was the best for you both. Giving him away was an act of love. You should be proud.

Though all true, those words described only one side of the coin. The other, the one few discussed, was the loss, the unnatural separation, and the sadness that always lingered in the shadows.

With Walter gone from my arms, so went the warmth in my chest. A chill snaked up my back, circling over my shoulders, and crept toward my heart. “That's a hard thing to forgive, even under the best of circumstances.”

A wrinkle furrowed her brow. She no longer saw her birth mother now, but me. “It sounds like you did it out of love,” she said.

“I'd like to believe so. I was sixteen and scared. I just didn't think I was brave enough to raise us both without my mother's support. And my mother was very clear she wouldn't help.” The anger that had stirred in the last couple of years glowed. “Michael is with a great family.”

Daisy chewed her bottom lip. “How is your son doing?”

I reached for my purse and the box of cookies. “Very, very well.” Susan's pale, drawn features and the wispy strands of hair peeking from her headscarf troubled me.

“Does he look like you?”

A sigh shuddered over my lips and I said with no small measure of pride, “He does.”

“I'm glad for you, Rae.” She kissed Walter. “No guarantees in life, Rae, but here's hoping you and your son can become good friends.”

Never a mother. I'd signed that right away. But a friend . . . “That would be nice.” I raised the box of cookies. “Thank you for these. Please tell Rachel I said hello.”

“Sure, any time.” She shifted Walter to her other hip. “Come back soon, Rae. I like talking to you.”

I raised the box of cookies. “I enjoyed meeting you, Daisy.”

Twenty minutes later, when I arrived home and saw the Shire Architectural Salvage truck in front of the house, I didn't tense up or resent the intrusion. I was actually grateful for it.

As I parked, Margaret swung open the driver's-side door and hopped out. “Rae! My wo-man! I have news from the past!”

Always excited. Always ready to grab life by the hand and run with it as fast as she could.

“Margaret. You must be psychic. I just bought cookies.”

She stretched and rolled her head from side to side. “USB cookies, I hope!”

I held up the pink box. “Is there any other kind?”

Nodding, she grinned. “I'll trade you a data dump for coffee and cookies.”

“Sounds like a fair swap.” The sky now was a deep blue and so blissfully cloudless. No rain in sight for now. “Let's eat on the back porch. I could use a little sunshine.”

“Done!”

And so I made coffee, and within ten minutes, the two of us were sitting on black wrought-iron chairs on the brick patio.

“At one time,” Margaret said, “this spot would have offered us a panoramic view of the river.”

For as long as I can remember, houses crowded the land between my current property line and the banks of the Potomac. “The family began selling off the property a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“That would have been right after the Civil War,” Lisa said. “The family's finances were decimated. Your great-great-grandfather was one of Mosby's Gray Ghosts. Basically, the special forces of the Confederacy. They did a lot of damage and made the Union very unhappy. Union soldiers burned all the McDonald's crops. That generation of McDonalds lost three sons in the war. One for the Union and two for the Confederacy.”

“I didn't realize.”

“One son survived. He ended up being your great-great-grandfather,” Margaret said.

“We seem to barely survive each generation. No more sons in this generation to carry on the name.”

“Then you keep the name. You pass it on to your children.”

I reached for a cookie but did not bite into it. I'd never considered that I could have more children. It was almost as if fate gave me my chance, and I blew it. Now, especially after holding Walter, at least a door to the possibilities had cracked open. “Maybe.”

Margaret tucked her feet up under her as she bit into a cookie. She pointed to the square patch of dirt. “So, what'll be on that spot anyway?”

“I asked for a garage with an office. But now, maybe an apartment.”

“Sounds a little indecisive, Rae. First you buy cookies and now you can't decide on a construction project. What's next? No high heels and pearls?”

A smirk tugged at the corners of my mouth. “I'm never indecisive. But for whatever reason, I can't make up my mind on this.”

“That hearth was there for almost three hundred years. It must be hard to imagine something else in its place.”

“I was told by my mother never to remove the stones. The stones were supposed to bring us good luck.”

“Then why'd you tear it down?” Margaret asked.

“I wasn't feeling like the McDonald family had seen much luck.”

“Why?”

“I decided to remove these stones because the hearth felt like a monument to the past, and for me to move forward, the hearth would need to go.”

Margaret reached for a cookie. “I can see that.”

“I just didn't realize that once it was gone, choosing what is to come next would be harder than I ever imagined.”

Margaret inspected her cookie as if it held all the answers. “Too many people assume the past, present, and future are separate. When will we learn?”

“So what do you have for me, Margaret? Something about your witch bottles? Or maybe Fiona McDonald?”

Margaret glanced up. “As you have already guessed, the McDonald women have had a very rough time of it over the last few hundred years.”

Needing a distraction, I bit into the cookie. The taste caught me by surprise. It was the perfect blend of butter and sugar, with a hint of lemon.

“Pretty good, right?” Margaret asked grinning with a wink.

One bite created a longing for more . . . “Very good.”

“Dare you to eat just one.”

As much as I wanted to prove her wrong and set the cookie aside, I couldn't. Not only would it be a waste to toss away what was clearly made with such love and care, but I also didn't want to deny myself the pleasure.

It was only a moment before I could say, “Rachel is a genius.”

“I know. She's the cookie master.” She gobbled the last of her
cookie and reached for another. “You can taste all her emotions she puts into her food.”

“After her husband, Mike, died,” Margaret said, “she went through a phase where everything was too salty. Then there were the months she dated that French baker. Too sweet. She's still trying to find the perfect balance.”

“I remembered reading the obituary notice for her husband in the paper,” I said. “The young ones always remind me of Jennifer. I'm sure that was a very difficult time for her.”

Margaret shook her head. “It was a tough time, but Rachel is stronger than she gives herself credit for, and we were all lucky when Daisy came to the rescue. It always seems to work out for us.”

“Really?” I reached for a second cookie.

“They say my great-great-grandfather had the luck of the devil. He won the Union Street Bakery in a card game and found the love of his life when he was in his late forties. He and his wife Sally had seven children, and all survived to adulthood.”

“All? That's something.”

“We also have a wanderlust in us. Most of the McCraes are now scattered, but from what I've been able to piece together, that thread of luck hasn't abandoned us.”

“Very fortunate.”

She dug her beat-up spiral notebook from her backpack. “But the McDonald women have struggled with some bad breaks.”

“I've done well enough in my career.”

She shook her head. “I'm not talking financially, Rae. I'm talking in matters of the heart. In that regard, you folks don't do so well. All the generations of McDonald women have suffered terrible losses.”

“True.”

Margaret finished off her cookie and reached for another. “You dating anyone?”

I laughed, surprised by her forwardness. “No.”

“Not ever?”

“Not in a long time,” I said. “It's odd that the McDonalds were so unlucky in love. I'm not a matchmaker, but for several generations we have had a knack for introducing people who went on to find love. That seems a bit odd.”

She slapped her hand to her thigh. “I knew you were a matchmaker!”

“I'm not a matchmaker.”

“You keep telling yourself that. But I've got your number.”

“I have no number.”

“I've gotten to know your family pretty well. Excellent journalists and scribes. From what I've gleaned, love isn't your friend.”

“Perhaps we're smart women who simply make bad choices.”

“Generation after generation. Come
on
,” She finished off her cookie and dusted the crumbs from her hands. “What are the odds that ten generations of women would struggle with happiness so much?”

“Ah, I think we're back to the witch bottles. Are you saying we're cursed?”

“The Shires called their ailment a curse.”

“They suffer from mental illness. Genetics are not curses.”

“That's what Addie used to say before her witch bottle broke.”

Relaxing back in my chair, I stared at the spot where they'd found the witch bottle. “So it all goes back to those bottles.”

“Appears so,” Margaret said, “Addie told me that Lisa brought an old picture by the salvage yard. Dated 1968. In the picture were Grace, Amelia, Fiona, and your mother.”

“Really?”

“And you know what Grace said?”

Again she paused, ever the performer. “What?”

“Grace said your mom, who was about eighteen, saw a young guy passing by the yard and asked him to come inside and help move a heavy piece. That guy was Robert Murphy. He saw Amelia and was smitten right away. They were married six months later.”

“Mom, the matchmaker.”

“Also super weird that Fiona was in the picture. Amelia is with her birth mother and half sister and never knew she was in the middle of her own family reunion,” she said. “Amelia found a witch bottle that day in the yard. It's the one we found in Lisa's basement over the summer. It's all so full circle it gives me goose bumps.”

“Lots of coincidences.”

Licking the tip of a finger, she flipped through her notebook pages. “I got the DNA test results back.”

“That was very fast.”

“I have friends who helped me get the work done quickly.”

My mood had been somber when she arrived, but Margaret McCrae had a way of lightening the load. “Tell me what you found.”

She tapped her finger on her dark, almost illegible handwriting. “All three families share similar genetic markers.”

“All three? I wasn't expecting that.”

“The Shires and McDonalds seem to originate from the same genetic line.”

“Meaning Faith and her twin sons?”

“Yes. Addie is descended from Marcus and you from Patrick. I truly believe now that Faith's son became Patrick McDonald, and Faith and the McDonalds never told anyone. It would explain why Faith never left that farm.”

I'd not given Faith much thought since Margaret had brought her to my attention, but now I wanted to know more. We shared the same ache, the same loss.

“And you have nothing else on Faith?” I asked.