Yes, with Jason C. Benedict, it’s almost always a question of what the F.
Poor Jason. He was never going to see her, let alone understand her, and that was, in her opinion, simply sad. They were family, siblings! In that moment she was grateful that her relationship with Chance and Logan was good. Sure, they’d teased her in the past. They still did, a little, come to that. But that teasing was always wrapped in brotherly love.
Alice mentally sighed and then shut down that side of her brain and, instead, refocused on her perusal of the Jessop-Kendall family lore she’d been studying. In her short time in Lusty, this was her third visit to the museum. She loved this place!
“This is just amazing, Aunt Anna. Such an incredible, rich history! And what a story of female empowerment!”
“It is, indeed. Many of us are very proud of our ‘great-greats.’” The older woman who reminded Alice of Mrs. Santa Claus came to stand beside her. Alice wasn’t particularly tall, but her frame stretched a little above the older woman’s.
Being shorter didn’t diminish Anna Jessop in Alice’s eyes, not at all. She thought Anna Jessop to be one of the most remarkable women she’d ever met.
“You should be proud of them! They’re awesome ancestors. Just imagine being Amanda Jessop-Kendall. There she was, at the train station, certain that she must go back to Virginia and leave the men she loved behind forever. And then, to be set upon by that blackguard, Jonathan Marley, who held a gun to her head! Imagine having the clearness of mind and confidence of ability to take him down, all by herself!”
“They’re your ancestors, too, Alice dear.”
Anna’s words settled softly upon her. Alice closed her mouth and met the tender gaze of the museum’s curator.
“Over the history of this family, there have been several marriages,” Anna said, “between all of the families, and that includes the Mendez and Sanchez families, who’d been originally hired as staff at the Big House by that horrible Tyrone Maddox, before it became the home of the Benedicts.
“That tradition of inter-marriage began when Sarah, Caleb, and Joshua’s daughter, Chelsea, married Dalton Jessop and Jeremy Kendall, two of Amanda, Adam, and Warren’s sons. So you see? They’re your ‘great-greats,’ too.” Anna nodded to a photograph that stood on the opposite wall, a black and white portrait that had been newly enhanced.
Alice took a couple of steps nearer so she could better see the print. Anna moved closer and slipped her arm around Alice.
For just a moment, Alice soaked in the motherly gesture. She’d never been away from her own mother for as long as she had at this point in her visit to Lusty. She wasn’t ashamed to admit, at least to herself, that she needed a motherly touch now and then.
“That man, there, with the lighter hair and the bit of a smirk? That’s your grandfather Christopher when he was a young man—your father was named for him. This was the last photograph taken with his entire birth family together. He and Emerson went their separate ways after the Second World War—Emerson to Montana, and Christopher to New York State. Soon after this picture was taken, Howard, Lincoln, and Edward enlisted and went to war. They were sent to England, and were a part of the landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day.” Anna pointed at each one as she said his name, and Alice felt as if she was meeting family for the first time.
“Edward, the youngest, sadly, didn’t survive. The other two stayed over there when peace was declared, although Howard later emigrated with his English wife to Australia.”
Anna turned to her. “You’re a child of Lusty, Alice Benedict. This, all of this, is your heritage as much as it is anyone’s.”
Alice had known that. She’d known it since her first visit here, when she and her parents had come to attend the engagement party for her brothers Chance and Logan to Bailey James—now, of course, Bailey Benedict. But she’d never felt it until right this moment.
“There’s a false trap you can fall into,” Alice said. “One where you compare yourself to those who came before you, those who blazed the trail. If you’re not careful, you can look at your own life and feel unworthy. But that’s false, as I said, because every generation has their own trail to blaze. Each of us is faced with a different set of challenges, a different set of hoops to jump through. There’s really no comparison to be made at all, is there? Between them and us.”
“Oh, absolutely not. You’re a very wise and insightful young woman,” Aunt Anna said. “And of course, you’re right. Every generation has to face hurdles that don’t seem to be the same for the ones who come next or the ones who came before. For example, when I married Craig and Jackson, my mother never truly accepted my choice. She was too self-involved. In my parents’ generation, accepting a person’s right to love who they loved wasn’t a priority or even, as they say these days, a thing.
“But that’s not such a challenge for our generation, who, for the most part, accept that our children have the right to decide their own futures and to determine what happiness is to them.”
“Your mother just never saw you,” Alice said. “If she’d seen you, she’d have wanted you to be happy.” Alice turned back and looked at the image of her grandfather, captured in the last century.
There was so much she didn’t know about her own family. “Why did he leave? Why didn’t he go to war, too?”
“In those days, men who wanted to enlist were denied, if they were involved in work that was deemed essential to the war effort. Your
