“She walked. She walked right to Harper. Three steps!”
Nothing would do but that Lily demonstrate her new skill again. But she just buckled at the knees each time Hayley tried to nudge her into a step. And preferred crawling on the patio or trying to climb up Roz’s chair.
“I swear she walked. You can ask Harper.”
“I believe you.” Roz hauled Lily up to nuzzle. “Teasing your mama, aren’t you?” She pushed back, rose with Lily in her arms, then picked up a cracker, held it out to Hayley. “You might as well start early using one of the primary parenting tools. Bribery. Scoot down there, hold that cracker out.”
As Hayley obeyed, Roz crouched, steadied Lily on her feet. “Harper held out a flower.”
“That boy knows how to charm the girls. Go on, baby. Go get it.”
To enthusiastic applause, Lily performed. Then she plopped down on her butt and ate the cracker.
When the others went inside, Roz sat with Mitch in the twilight.
“Would you be insulted if I said you make a beautiful honorary grandmother.”
“The term
“She’s not seeing anyone? Hayley?”
“Her life’s centered on Lily right now. But she’s young and full of passion. There’ll be someone sooner or later. As for Harper, I can’t keep up with the females who come and go. Still, he doesn’t bring them home to meet me. There’s significance in that, too.”
“Well, speaking of sons, mine’s seeing a new young lady. A local girl. And it happens her parents are members of your club. He’ll be at the dinner dance tomorrow night. I’m looking forward to introducing you.”
“I’d love to meet him. Who’s the girl?”
“Her name’s Shelby—after the county, I’m guessing. Shelby Forrester.”
“It’s a small and crowded world. Yes, I know Jan and Quill, Shelby’s parents. I know her, too—and she’s a lovely girl. Her parents and I are currently on . . . tenuous terms. Quill is doing business of some sort with Bryce, and it makes things a bit sticky between us. But that won’t touch on anyone else.”
“No one does complex connections and tenuous terms like the South.”
“I suppose not, and I only mention it so that if you sense any awkwardness, you’ll know why. But I’m prepared to be excruciatingly polite, so you needn’t worry.”
“I’m not, whether you decide to be polite or otherwise. Why don’t we take a walk? That way I can hold your hand and find some shadowy and fragrant corner of the garden where I can kiss you.”
“Sounds like a fine idea.”
“You’re doing a fine thing for Jane Paulson.”
“Maybe, but my motivations are murky.”
He laughed and brought her hand to his lips. “If your motivations were always pure, I doubt I’d find you as fascinating as I do.”
“I do love astute flattery. Let’s walk around to the stables. I’ll show you Spot’s marker.”
“I’d like to see it. It might be a good place for me to broach another theory. One I’ve been chewing on for a while now.”
As they walked down the path, she gauged the progress of her flowers and kept out an eagle eye for weeds.
“I’d as soon you spit it out as chew on it.”
“I’m not entirely sure how you’re going to feel about this one. I’m looking at dates, at events, at key moments and people, attempting to draw lines from those dates, events, moments, and people to Amelia.”
“Mmm-hmm. I’ve always enjoyed having these stables here, leaving them be. As a kind of ruin.”
Head cocked, hands fisted on hips now, she studied the crumbling stones, the weather-scarred wood. “I suppose I could have them restored. Maybe I will if I get those grandchildren and they develop an interest in horses. None of my boys did, particularly. It’s girls, I think, who go through that equine adoration period.”
She studied the building in the half light, the sagging roof and faded trim—and the vines, the climbers, the ornamental grasses she’d planted around it to give it a wild look.
“It looks like something you’d see in a movie, or more likely, in a storybook.”
“That’s what I like about it. My daddy’s the one who let it go, or never did anything to preserve the building. I remember him talking about having it razed, but my grandmother asked him not to. She said it was part of the place, and she liked the look of it. The grave’s around the back,” she said. “I’m sorry, Mitch, I interrupted. Mind’s wandering. Tell me your theory.”
“I don’t know how you’re going to feel about it.”
“Poison sumac,” she said, nudging him away before he brushed up against a vine. “I’ll have to get out here and get rid of that. Here we are.” She crouched down, and with her ungloved hands plucked at weeds, brushed at dirt until she revealed the marker with the hand-chipped name in the stone.
“Sweet, isn’t it, that he’d have buried his old dog here, carved that stone for him. I think he must’ve been a sweet man. My grandmother wouldn’t have loved him as much as she did if he hadn’t been.”
“And she did,” Mitch agreed. “You can see the way she loved him in the pictures of them together.”
“He looks sort of cool in most of the photographs we have of him. But he wasn’t cool. I asked my grandmother once, and she said he hated having his picture taken. He was shy. Odd thinking of that, of my grandfather as a shy man who loved his dog.”
“She was more outgoing?” Mitch prompted.
“Oh, much. She liked to socialize, nearly as much as she liked to garden. She loved hosting fancy lunches and teas, especially. She dressed up for them—hat, gloves, floaty dresses.”
“I’ve seen pictures. She was elegant.”
“Yet she could hitch on old trousers and dig in the dirt for hours.”
“Like someone else we know.” He skimmed a hand over her hair. “Your grandfather was born several years after the youngest of his sisters.”
“Hmm. There were other pregnancies, I think. My grandmother had two miscarriages herself, and I recall, vaguely, her mentioning that her mother-in-law had suffered the same thing. Maybe a stillbirth as well.”
“And then a son, born at the same time we’ve theorized Amelia lived—and died. Amelia, who haunts the house, but who we can’t verify lived there—certainly not as a relation. Who sings to children, gives every appearance of being devoted to children—and distrusting, even despising men.”
She cocked her head. Twilight was moving very quickly to dark, and with dark came a chill. “Yes, and?”
“What if the child that was born in 1892 was her child. Her son, Roz. Amelia’s son, not Beatrice Harper’s.”
“That’s a very extreme theory, Mitchell.”
“Is it? Maybe. It’s only a theory, in any case, and partially based on somewhat wild speculation. But it wouldn’t be unprecedented.”
“I would have heard. Surely there would have been some mention of it, some whisper passed along.”
“How? Why? If the original players were careful to keep it quiet. The wealthy, the influential man craving a son—and paying for one. Hell, it still happens.”
“But . . .” She pushed to her feet. “How could they hide that kind of deception? You’re not talking about some legal adoption.”
“No, I’m not. Just run with me on this a minute. What if Reginald hired a young woman, likely one of some breeding, some intelligence, who’d found herself in trouble. He pays the bills, gives her a safe haven, takes the child off her hands if it’s a boy.”
“And if it’s a girl, he’s wasted his time and money?”
“A gamble. Another angle might be he impregnated her himself.”
“And his wife just accepted his bastard as her own, as the heir?”
“He held the purse strings, didn’t he?”
She stood very still, rubbing her arms. “That’s a very cold theory.”
“It is. Maybe he was in love with Amelia, planned to divorce his wife, marry her. She might have died in childbirth. Or it could’ve been a straight business deal—or something else. But if that child, if Reginald Harper Jr. was Amelia’s son, it explains some things.”
“Such as?”
