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“Will that help?”
“It might.”
My mind is too full to think.
“I’m just so, so tired by all of it,” I say. “It’s too much.”
He lets his fingers slip between mine. A gentle squeeze.
“Come,” he says. “I’ll drive you home.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
THURSDAY
All night, my dreams cross territories, with Lady Blanders running around a burning house looking for her children and Gordon Penny doing the cha-cha with my mother in my living room at home.
“Look how we dance, one, two, three,” my mother shouted. “We’re never going to stop, one, two, three.”
I wake up exhausted, still half in the dream. Dancing is the perfect metaphor for how my mother lived her life. Don’t stay in any one place long enough to feel pain or remember how life has slapped you. Just keep dancing.
I’m amazed to see I’ve slept late; it’s already almost eleven. I wonder if Amity and Wyatt are still here. I think about my family as I pull on some clothes. I’ve always taken for granted that I’m descended from good people. Grandma Raya was my everything, and I’ve heard only good stories about my grandfather. In Indiana, Granny Lou and Grampa Hal were quiet and kind and always sent cards on my birthday and Valentine’s Day with a dollar inside for “something sweet.” I was sad when Granny Lou passed away whenI was eight and Grampa Hal a year later. Now I have a grandmother who died in a fire caused by a grandfather who doesn’t sound like someone I’d like to know, let alone be related to. It pains me to think about him, which probably should make me understand why my mother buried her past.
Downstairs, Amity and Wyatt are at the kitchen table, all their notes laid out in front of them. Since the revelations about my mother, I haven’t given the fake mystery a thought.
“Tea?” Amity says. “I just made a fresh pot. We’re having a lazy morning.”
“Cath doesn’t like tea.” Wyatt pushes the French press toward me.
But I move the coffee away and take the teapot instead. I fill a mug halfway and pour in milk. I add two heaping teaspoons of sugar.
“I’m half English. Shouldn’t I try?”
It’s good to laugh.
“You’re a Derbyshire girl, the granddaughter of a blacksmith,” Amity says. “It sounds like a story from a book.”
“But definitely not a fairy tale,” I say. “My grandfather George Crowley sounds like a bad man. Maybe my mother was better off in Indiana.”
“Don’t you want to know where George Crowley is now?” Wyatt asks.
“He’d be so old,” I say. “You think he’s still alive?”
“I have no idea,” Wyatt says.
“I’m not sure I want to know,” I say. “I mean, I want to know, but I’m not sure I want to meet him.”
“You can decide that later,” Amity says.
“How would we find him?” I ask. “If Edwina and Germaine don’t know anything about him, I can’t imagine anyone else would.”
“There’s got to be someone in the village who remembers him. Who went to school with him or worked with him,” Amity says.“We know he was a blacksmith, so let’s start there. Let’s talk to the oldest blacksmith in town.”
She gets up and starts opening kitchen cabinets. “Bingo,” she says. She drops a phone book on the table, sits down, and starts flipping through pages. “Here we go, there are quite a few in the area. R. W. Martin, Master Farrier; Thomas Max Farriers; Davis Troy and Sons Farriers; Joseph B. Welch, Farrier; Oliver—”
“Stop,” Wyatt says. “Joseph Welch. We’ve heard that name.”
“We have?” I say.