Edward Buckley had been on his mind, too. His and Mary’s story was another tragedy in itself and he believed that Edward had been a good man at heart, forced into what must have seemed like a surreal and hopeless situation. Whichever path he had chosen as he held Danny in his arms, he had ultimately lost the woman he loved.
Tayte was just wondering how Edward had known where to send Mena’s suitcase - concluding at the same time that he’d had his whole life to find Eliza Gray - when the phone on the side-table at his elbow rang. He sat up and answered it.
“Jefferson Tayte,” he announced, expecting it to be another client, but it wasn’t.
“Jefferson! It’s Marcus. I just got back from France. Emmy said you’ve been trying to contact me.”
Tayte couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather talk to right now, which only seemed to add to his melancholy when he thought that most men his age had a wife and family at the top of their list. But Marcus Brown was like family and Tayte was well aware that he was all he had.
“Marcus, hi. So what were you doing in France?”
“Oh, just a project I’m working on. Something for myself actually.”
“Who’s the family?”
“No one you’ll have heard of. It’s early days yet. I’ll tell you all about it sometime. Did you need something?”
“No, I just called to catch up. I thought I might visit with you both while I was in England this time.”
“I’m sorry I missed you,” Marcus said. He paused. “Is everything okay? You sound a bit low.”
“I’ll buck up in a day or so,” Tayte said. “I’ve just taken another assignment that should keep me busy. That last one got to me a little, that’s all. It didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped.”
“Do they ever, Jefferson?”
“I know. I just think I got a little too close to the subject this time.”
“Ah, the girl with the red suitcase.”
“Mena,” Tayte said, nodding to himself. “I guess I just didn’t want to find another headstone this time.”
“Family history isn’t full of happy endings, Jefferson. You know that. And isn’t that one of the allures of the job? It’s the skeletons in the closet that get people like us out of bed in the morning, isn’t it?”
Tayte had to agree. Tragedy, injustice and misfortune were commonplace in genealogical research and those elements of people’s lives were a part of what made going back through time so compelling.
“I guess,” Tayte said with a sigh.
“Oh dear,” Marcus said. “You are in the dumps. But what about your client? The past is the past, Jefferson. You can’t change it. It’s what you do right here in the present that matters and you’ve changed your client’s life for the better, haven’t you?”
Tayte knew Marcus was trying to cheer him up and he supposed he was right as always. Another eventful assignment had reached its conclusion and although it had begun too late for any kind of reunion between Eliza and Mena, he had re-connected her with the family that until a few weeks ago she never knew she had. Perhaps more importantly, now that she did know, she wouldn’t wake up each morning wondering who she was like he did.
“I know what you need,” Marcus said, interrupting Tayte’s thoughts. “You need a girlfriend, Jefferson, that’s what you need.”
“Please don’t start that again.”
“And someone in the here and now,” Marcus added. “Not in the past where they can’t hurt you.”
Tayte knew exactly what Marcus meant by that. He meant that he’d come to prefer spending his time with the people whose lives he researched - the dead over the living - perhaps because their paths had already been determined. They could not refuse his company or turn their backs on him as his own mother had. Back there he was in control.
Tayte laughed it off and changed the subject like he always did. “So when’s your retirement party? I’ll bet you’re looking forward to that.”
“In the summer, Jefferson. And yes, I’m looking forward to spending more time with Emmy and working on my own projects.”
Tayte laughed. “Don’t tell her that last part,” he said. “I’m sure she’s looking forward to having you all to herself.”
“Why don’t you come along,” Marcus said. “You’ll be forty soon. We can have a double celebration.”
Tayte didn’t like to make a big thing of his birthday. It always seemed such a farce to him because he had no idea when his real birthday was. It was just some date that had been picked for him because no one else knew either. He certainly didn’t want a party.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, thinking that it really would be good to see Marcus and Emmy again. Maybe he could take a vacation. He smiled to himself. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d done that.
“Good,” Marcus said. “Now get stuck into that new assignment you mentioned. The matrix of human life is full of broken links and it’s -”
“I know,” Tayte cut in. “And it’s up to you and me and all the other genealogists out there to find them and put them back together.”
“Precisely. And there’s no better tonic for what’s troubling you than a fresh assignment. What’s it about?”
“It’s just routine stuff,” Tayte said. “An origins assignment. First generation ancestor settled in New York in the 1800s. Probably of Irish descent.”
“Oh,” Marcus said. “Still, you never know what you’ll uncover until you start digging, do you?”
Tayte smiled to himself. “No, you really don’t,” he said knowingly, already thinking about Ellis Island and the immigration registers.
The world keeps turning,
he thought.
And we must turn with it.
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks to the members of the Goodreads UK Amazon Kindle Forum and the Kindle Users Forum (KUF) for all their support and encouragement since launching my debut book,
In the Blood,
in June 2011, and to those readers who have written to me and/or written reviews for my work. Our lives are often busy and to have taken time out from yours in this way will always be very much appreciated.
Special thanks to Kath Middleton, Madeleine Paine, Patricia Elliott and Karen Watkins for their help with proofreading this book, and to my wife Karen, without whom Jefferson Tayte would not have been able to make the leap from my head to yours in the first place.
About the Author
Steve Robinson was born in coastal Kent, UK, and now lives near London on the Essex/Hertfordshire border. His passion for writing began at the age of sixteen when he was first published in a computer adventure magazine and he has been writing by way of a creative hobby ever since. When a career in software and telecommunications ended in redundancy he began to write full time. His debut novel,
In the Blood
, was the result, with
To the Grave
following a year later.
I write for the crime, mystery and thriller genres with a family history angle, having become interested in genealogy as a means to tell the story of In the Blood and perhaps because I have no idea who my own maternal grandfather is, which is something that has always intrigued me. He was an American GI billeted in England during the second world war and to my knowledge a few years after the war ended he went back to America leaving a young family behind and no further contact was made. I traced him through his enlistment record to Arkansas and know very little else about him. Perhaps this is also why my lead character is an American genealogist.
If you can find the time, please leave a review on the website you downloaded this eBook from. If you enjoyed it, please tell someone. If you would like to contact me, you can visit my website at
www.steve-robinson.me
, or you can send an email to
[email protected]
. I’d love to hear from you.
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