The View from Prince Street (7 page)

But now, as I stared at the page, I could see this statement was irrefutable. “Explains why you and Dad were so different.” My father was as closed as Amelia was open.

“We were never really close. I always felt that once he came along I became nearly invisible. He was the son my parents thought they would never have. Of course, to get everyone's attention, I had to become more and more outrageous. My parents were never amused.”

I turned the page of the book and studied a collection of telegrams wishing Fiona and Jeffrey congratulations on the birth of their daughter. Time had weathered the telegrams, making them appear all the more ancient. We all exchanged words easily today. Quick texts, or if time really allowed, an e-mail. Letters and note cards were relics. But when Amelia had been born, to send a note of congratulations took time, effort, and money.

Carefully, I ran my hands over the beautiful cards that still had a silky, delicate quality. On the next pages were photographs of smiling strangers surrounding the young couple and their baby.

Here were two people full of life and love. It was clear that Amelia had been a much loved and cherished child. “What happened to Fiona and Jeffrey?” I whispered.

“Jeffrey died.”

I studied the face of the man who shared the same jawline and glint in his eyes as Amelia. “How?”

“I don't know. It was during World War II and he had been shipped overseas.”

“Do you know why Fiona couldn't keep you?”

“No,” she sadly whispered. “She left Alexandria after the adoption and then returned several years later married to David Saunders. They had a daughter, Diane, who oddly also married into the McDonald family.”

“Diane McDonald. She was Jennifer and Rae's mother.”

“Yes.”

The faded page creaked as I turned it. The families were intertwined like the thick honeysuckle vines growing on the back fence of the Prince Street house. “And you asked your mother about all this?”

She studied the page so closely, recalling distant memories fading fast. I wondered if she remembered it. “She never admitted to any of it.”

“You must have talked to someone. Who told you about the adoption? How did you end up with this book?”

A frown furrowed her brow. “I don't remember. I've been trying all morning to remember the details of how the book came to me all those years ago but I can't dig up one memory. This damn disease is stealing my life.” Tears moistened her eyes. “I need to remember. I need to find out what happened to Jeffrey and why Fiona gave me away. And why didn't she ever want me back after she was married again?”

A lot of time had passed, but the pain on Amelia's face was raw. Her wound had never healed.

“How did you get this book here, Amelia? I didn't bring it from the house.”

Her eyebrows rose. “I called my attorney. I asked him to bring it to me. It's been with my papers for years.”

“Colin West?”

“Yes. I think it was Colin.”

I'd met Colin to get Charlie and discuss Amelia's finances. In his late thirties, he was polite, nice, and reserved. Not classically handsome, but very intense. He always wore a suit, and once I jokingly
asked if he'd come into this world fully attired. He wasn't amused. Jokes and Mr. West were strangers. I'd have written him off if Charlie hadn't liked him.

Amelia laid her small hand on mine, her grip tight. “Maybe you can talk to your friend Jennifer McDonald. I bet she would be able to find out more.”

I drew back. Her addled mind was missing critical bits of information and she didn't realize it. Still, the words sliced. “Jennifer is dead, remember, Amelia? She died in a car accident when we were in high school.”

She clutched her white blanket as though holding on to memories. “Jennifer is gone?”

“You remember the car accident, don't you?” There were so many times that I wished I could forget it. But not a day passed when I didn't hear the screech of locked wheels or my screams blending with Jennifer's as the car struck an old tree by the river.

“The accident.” Amelia's lost eyes stared back at me. “Jennifer was killed?”

Carefully, I closed the book, sensing the frail woman who had greeted me when I'd entered the room minutes ago had been overtaken again by the shadows. Her memory flicked off like a light. “It was a long, long time ago, Amelia. Don't worry about it.”

Still holding my hand she offered to console me. “But it was an accident.”

“Yes. A very bad accident.”

“Maybe you could ask Jennifer's sister, Rae, about Fiona. Rae was always such a smart girl. Always had the answers.”

“I haven't seen Rae in sixteen years, Amelia. She and I aren't friends like we used to be.”

When Jennifer died, Rae's world of order was turned upside down with grief. She acted out, rebelled against her own mother's stoic acceptance of Jennifer's death. She went looking for love and comfort anywhere she could find it. Rae soon found herself pregnant at sixteen.

I moistened my lips, the constant craving for alcohol elbowing to the front of my mind. I'd thought about drinking every day since the accident and most days could list all the reasons why I was grateful I no longer drank. But today, the gratitude list was woefully short. All the true and sure reasons for sobriety that usually remained at the ready weren't holding water. They had scattered like vapor, leaving me to think about the bittersweet taste of a cool white wine trickling down my throat. I imagined releasing my firm grip on sobriety.

Over a dozen years had passed since I'd had a drink. But in a blink, none of that mattered. What mattered now was that I was desperately thirsty for the release of one glass of wine. One small glass. Not a bender. One to soften the edge and soothe the swelling sadness that was consuming me.

But AA didn't work that way. One glass, the first glass, was the destroyer.

“Honey, I'm sorry you and Rae and Jennifer don't get along anymore. You were all close.”

The window to Amelia's clarity had closed. No sense reminding her of what now skittered out of her reach.

I gently tugged the scrapbook from Amelia's hands and carefully placed it in the drawer of the nightstand. I leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead and tucked her hands under the folds of the white blankets. “I'll be back tomorrow, Amelia. Sleep well.”

Her eyes drifted open for a moment, and she stared up at me with cutting clarity. “You were in the car when Jennifer died.”

A sigh shuddered over my clenched teeth. “It was a long time ago.”

She shook her head. “But not for you. For you, it's right now. I can see it. I can see her.”

“See who?”

“Jennifer. She's behind you now.”

A tingle shot up my spine, and despite logic, I turned and looked. Jennifer's presence always lingered close since the accident. There
were times I sensed her standing right behind me, goading me forward to fill my life with experiences enough for two.

Turning, I found only the glow of the overhead light.

I smoothed my hand over her forehead. “No one is here, Amelia.”

Sympathy warmed my aunt's confused, sad eyes. “I know you didn't mean to kill her. She knows that, too. We both know you didn't mean it.”

No one knew what had happened in that car before the accident. No one. Except Jennifer. And me.

“Get some sleep,” I said.

When she drifted off to sleep, Charlie and I left the room. The urge to drink yanked and tugged at me. At moments like this I stood at the cliff's edge, tempted to jump back into the delicious oblivion of alcohol.

To combat the terrible craving, I moved with precision, slowing life to microseconds and analyzing each of my actions, hoping the cravings would pass. All the while I feared that if I lowered my guard, time would jump forward and I would find myself sitting in a bar with my second or third glass of wine in my hand. There were moments when my sobriety felt as fragile as a robin's egg. I needed another meeting.

Smiling at the nurse, I walked toward the elevator, Charlie at my side. What came next was a blur to me. Charlie hopped into the front seat and we drove back to Alexandria fast enough to earn a hefty speeding ticket if caught. I slowed when I exited the Beltway and worked my way into Old Town and the Methodist church where AA held meetings. Out of the car, Charlie and I slowly walked around the block to kill a little bit of time before we went inside the church basement. I took a seat in the empty circle of chairs with Charlie settled on the floor next to me.

“The meeting doesn't start for a half hour,” a man's voice said behind me.

I gripped the strap of my purse a little tighter but made no move to stand. “If you don't mind, I'd like to sit here and wait.”

“Sure, sure. That's fine. I'll have the coffee and donuts out soon. Unless you need it earlier.”

“No, that's okay.” I peered into his familiar face with a slight smile, in what I hoped was a friendly gesture. He was a midsized man with thinning brown hair wearing a tan sweater, jeans, and white tennis shoes. His name was Grant and he ran our meeting.

“Do you need to talk?” he asked.

“No, I'm good.”

“He's cute,” the voice whispered softly.
I assumed, as I always did, that it was my own thoughts echoing Jennifer.

“You sure?” he asked again.

I hugged my purse a little closer. “If you see me running for the door before the meeting, tackle me. Make me stay.”

A grin warmed his face. “Consider yourself stopped.”

“Thanks.”

Here I felt a little bit safer, knowing Grant was on guard and soon I would be surrounded by kindred souls. Once the meeting started, the room would fill with people from all walks of life and then I would listen to their struggles with alcohol and drugs.

If I stayed right here in this chair, I wouldn't find forgiveness, but I might find a reason not to drink for another hour, maybe another day.

“You'll find a reason. You always do.”

Dearest Mother,

Faith and her babes have been here five days. I woke to the sound of one crying and the milk in my breasts that I thought dried, stirred. I rose from under my covers and saw the infants lying on a pallet. Faith was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she went to the barn to fetch milk for breakfast. Pulled by the babe's squawks, I moved to the pallet where the boys lay side by side. Though they were twins, they didn't look at all alike. One was as light in skin and hair as the other was dark. Good and evil. Light and darkness—one can't exist without the other. I picked up the smaller of the two, his hair as pale as mine, and took him in my arms. He rooted, fussed and searched. Unable to resist the powerful stirring in my womb, I unfastened the front of my nightshirt and bared my breast. As soon as I teased his lips with my nipple, he hungrily suckled. For a moment I stood frozen, my body overwhelmed. Though my heart did not beat as it once did, soft whispers of hope stirred.

—P

Rae McDonald

T
UESDAY
, A
UGUST
16, 3:00
P.M.

I
dreamed about the boy last night.

Because I was young and tall, my pregnancy didn't really show until I was six months along. Loose clothes and sweaters bought me another month until finally there was no denying it. By the time I finally confessed my condition to my mother, I was seven months pregnant.

Mom had poured a scotch, swallowed it in two gulps, and then poured another shot as tears streamed down my cheeks. “You are not even seventeen. You understand you're not keeping that baby. You're sixteen and not ready to be a mother.”

My trembling hands instinctively slid to my stomach as the baby kicked and stirred.

Mom stared at the amber liquid in the crystal glass, lost. “I cannot do it. I cannot go through this.”

The idea of motherhood terrified me. I didn't know what to do or how to handle the weight of so much responsibility. When my mother told me she would not help, I knew I could not do it alone.

I moved forty-five miles west to live with a friend of Mom's in
Winchester. The car ride was a solemn tense affair. Staring out my window, I watched the malls and housing developments give way to rolling hills and pastures. Mom gripped the steering wheel, staring at the road ahead.

Her friend was nice enough and tried to make me feel welcome. But when Mom drove away and I sat in my room tugging at the loose thread on the bed quilt, I felt alone. My sister was dead and my mother had abandoned me emotionally. Even the baby in my belly refused to move. Pain overloaded my days, and the heaviness in my heart grew with my belly.

When the boy was born, I had an hour to hold him. The first minutes brought a rush of love that was so, so sweet. I'd never experienced this kind of love from my mother. And when I looked into his face, I saw perfection. When the nurse returned with his adoptive mother, I had to tell her I couldn't keep him. I'd brought him into the world, but he couldn't stay. When I laid him in the other woman's arms, a switch clicked off somewhere deep inside me to keep me sane. The sadness retreated and so did love. So did most of me.

I picked up the stone heart given to me by Zeb Talbot. Heavy and cold in my palm, the stone carried far more weight than the original gesture intended. It was an odd-shaped rock to him, but it epitomized me. I might have been annoyed by the reporter's words, but she was right. I had a heart of stone.

The front doorbell rang, shifting my thoughts back to the present. I moved from my study, a tad irritated to see Margaret McCrae through the windows that trimmed the side of the door. She was early. I was a rigid scheduler, and as a psychologist, I recognized that my obsession with time stemmed from a need to control a world that didn't care what I wanted. I understood the futility of clock watching. But I couldn't stop.

Opening the door, I found Margaret standing on the front porch, her hair damp from what must have been a quick shower, given the trip
she and Addie had taken to Prince William County today. They must have hit traffic on the forty-five-minute return ride. There was always traffic, so for her to arrive early meant she'd wasted no time.

Margaret grinned at me, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She reminded me of a young trick-or-treater at Halloween on the doorstep of the house with the best candy.

“I know I'm early,” she said, “but the job went faster than we expected and I can't wait to get started.”

I stood back, watching as she wiped her damp boots on the front mat and entered the foyer. “I was sorting through the boxes of papers, trying to isolate the time period,” I said.

“You were sorting through boxes. How many papers do you have?”

“I've never stopped to count them, but we McDonalds were always detailed record keepers.”

She laid her hand over her heart. “So you have over two hundred years' worth of documentation?”

“Perhaps a bit more. Some records came over from Scotland with Patience McDonald,” I said. “I hope you don't mind but I went ahead and set up the boxes on the kitchen table. I'll show you the way.”

She clapped her hands together. “I swear this is amazing, Rae. I live for days like this.”

My heels clicked on the hardwood floor a couple of beats faster than her boots. “I've sorted them by dates. You should be able to zero in on the time period in question.”

Margaret entered the kitchen and paused to stare at the long farmhouse table covered in sturdy brown boxes. This part of the house had been an add-on, when my mother still could summon a bit of emotion. My father was dead but Jennifer and I were doing well and our family was the happiest, for lack of a better word, that I ever remembered us being. Mom decided the old kitchen needed to go, so she hired an architect to add this large addition onto the house. The old was swept away and a modern kitchen was built. Last year, I hired Zeb to
renovate the space. Though I kept her structural design, I replaced mauves and grays with an eggshell blue color, stainless steel appliances, and white marble countertops. The large kitchen table was the single holdout from the original kitchen, which was built in the late eighteenth century. I still found the kitchen one of the most comfortable and inviting spaces in the house.

“Kitchen looks new. What's prompted all the changes on the property?” Margaret asked as she dumped her satchel purse on the table by a crisp box.

“A house needs to be updated from time to time to maintain its market value.”

Her curls glistened with a slight dampness. “You thinking about selling?”

The idea had crossed my mind once or twice, but whenever it did I always opted to stay. This was the McDonald family home, the address I gave the boy's parents, and to leave risked him not being able to find me. “It's a big house and it's only me here.”

“Part of the house's foundation dated back to the mid-1700s when the McDonalds arrived. That means there's been a McDonald on the property for nearly three hundred years.”

“Yes. Though I'm the last of the line.”

She ran a callused hand over the top of a box. “Adopt me, Rae. I'll become a McDonald and continue the legacy with pride and glory.”

With a slight grin, I replied, “We McDonald women live a long time.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two,” I replied.

“I'm thirty-six.” She beamed. “If you never marry or have kids, can I have the house?”

“Check back with me in sixty years.”

“It's a date. Looking forward to it.” She glanced out the window toward the raw patch of land. “So why get rid of the hearth? I mean, I'm glad we excavated the site for you, but why?”

Deep inside me, fear whispered:
Because every McDonald before me insisted it stay.
Logic said, “I'd like to have a garage and that's the last available land.”

She visibly shuddered. “When I think about all the history that has been lost because people need parking.”

I'm tired of carrying the weight of the past.
“My practice is expanding, and I have more clients coming and going.”

“If it were me, I'd make them park at the end of the street and hoof it in before I'd get rid of the hearth.” She held up her hand, realizing her candor was not her best asset. “But if you'd not pulled apart the hearth, then I'd never have found the witch bottle. Thank you.”

“If you consider finding that old bottle lucky, I'm glad for you.”

Margaret moved to the first box. “The question is, why did a McDonald, whom I'm guessing was Patience, feel the need to create a witch bottle?”

“Superstition was common in the days when death was never far and families had little control over their physical environment.”

“So you don't believe in spells and curses?” She contemplated the box marked
Eighteenth Century
and then carefully removed the lid.

“Are you saying that you do?” I asked.

Margaret grinned as she reached in her pocket and pulled out a pair of white cloth gloves. “Hell, yes.”

“That's not logical, is it?”

“Spoken like a psychologist. ” She tugged on the pristine gloves and removed an old leather-bound ledger from the box. She moved her hand reverently over the worn, cracked surface. “When I hold pieces of the past like this, I believe there's a lot we could learn.”

“It's a journal,” I said. “An artifact.”

“To me, it's a voice from the past reaching out to me.” She eased open the pages, wincing when the spine creaked. “I believe that there's more to this planet, this life, than the physical world.”

“Ah, you believe in ghosts, spirits, and goblins and all creatures that go bump in the night.”

“Do I detect a bit of disbelief, Rae?”

“I'm more science minded.”

“But you're a psychologist. The mind and thoughts are not exactly a tangible science. More art than science,” she said.

“Behavior can always be traced back to a specific source. We may not be able to identify the source, but it's there.”

Margaret pulled out a straight-backed chair upholstered in a light cream fabric and sat, never looking up from the page. A frown furrowed her brow as her fingers moved over the page. “So my obsession with the past can be traced back to a specific event.”

“Or events.”

She raised her head, considering what I'd said. “I had a pretty normal upbringing, if you consider my indentured servitude in a bakery normal.”

“That bad?”

She tugged a pair of reading glasses from her shirt pocket and perched them on the bridge of her nose. “Not exactly. If you haven't noticed, I tend to exaggerate. But our family was all about keeping the bakery running and making a buck. As Dad always said, the bakery was our past, present, and future. And since the present meant work and the future was always a little daunting, I found myself drawn to the past.”

“I understand you're a scholar when it comes to Alexandria,” I said.

She reached in another pocket for a cell phone. “That and a few coins will buy you a cup of coffee.”

“Yes, I don't suppose history is the profession of the rich and famous.”

“Not generally.” She slowly turned a page. “Mind if I snap pictures of the documents as I go along? That way I can study them at length when I get home.”

“That won't damage the pages?”

“No. I would never, ever damage these documents. There's a list of people I could harm but never a historical document.”

“And you won't share the pictures?” I asked.

“Not without your approval.”

“Okay, you may photograph.” I had a paper to finish and several follow-up client letters to write, but I found myself fascinated by Margaret's utter absorption in the journal. “I tried to read the notes in that book before you arrived but found the script challenging.”

“I've read so much of this that I can decipher the penmanship pretty well. Another one of those quirky specialties that doesn't earn me a dime.”

“So what have you discovered?”

A frown furrowed her brow as she stared at the first pages. “It's a household account kept by Patience and Michael McDonald.”

“Michael?” I'd wanted a strong name for my son and had chosen
Michael
for the archangel who commanded the angels in heaven. When my mother tried to object, I insisted and she realized I was pure tinder, ready to ignite. All parties agreed to the boy's name.

“Yes. He was the one who started it all in the Virginia Colony. I know from other research that Patience and Michael McDonald came to this country in the mid-1700s,” Margaret said.

“They were the first from the old country to own land on these shores.” Michael wasn't an uncommon name, but it was an odd coincidence that the line began and ended with the name. “Interesting.”

“What, the name?” Margaret asked.

“The name Michael has always been a favorite of mine.”

“Oh, okay.” When I didn't expound, she did. “As you might know, Patience and Michael hailed from Scotland with the intention of being tobacco farmers. I know that somewhere along that time they purchased the indentured servant contract for Faith Shire.”

“Shire? As in the Shires of the architectural company?”

“One and the same. I know from previous research that Faith lived
on their farm for about a year before the McDonalds sold her indentured servant contract to Mr. Ben Talbot, the manager of Hugh West's tobacco warehouse. That was located where modern-day Union Street ends and Oronoco Street begins.”

“Where Robinson Bus Terminal is now?” I asked.

“Yes.” She sat back and tugged off her glasses. “I know that many women in town considered Faith a witch and were afraid of her.”

“They created the witch bottles as a protection against spells.”