Page 81 of Dying to Meet You

“Since he’s not around, you can work right here. Just poke me if you need the copy machine, but you’d need to check with him before removing anything from the premises.”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary. I just want to refresh my memory on a few details of the original plans. Maybe I’ll take a photo or two with my phone?” I’m babbling. Espionage doesn’t come naturally to me.

Or so I used to think.

“I’ll be right outside,” she says. “Let me know if I can bring you anything to drink.”

“Thanks so much!” I say with too much enthusiasm.

The moment she’s gone, I lift the top off the box and peer inside. Hank and I pored over this stuff together before I began the renovation. There’s a set of old blueprints from when they’d upgraded the plumbing in the 1920s. Other documents are as old as the mansion itself—bills of sale for original fixtures and furnishings. Letters between the architect and the painter.

I pull out an archival album and find many of the documents carefully stored in acid-free sleeves. This isn’t what I came for, but I briefly page through the album in case there are cameras watching me. Knowing Hank, it’s entirely possible.

For show, I unfurl the old blueprints and spread them out on the table. The remaining items in the box include a set of old photographs of the facade, as well as a few 1940s postcards featuring the mansion.

What I don’t find, however, is a small leather book full of babies’ birth details.

I poke around the blueprints for a few minutes, idly taking photographs, trying to decide where Hank might have put the journal. Time’swasting, so I hold my breath and quietly open several cabinet doors, looking for the old book.

And—bingo—I find the small metal strongbox behind door number three.

It was me who’d plucked this from its hiding place in the mansion on that winter day back in March. I’d been lurking in the library, watching the contractor pull up the rotting floorboards so I could assess damage. A glint of steel caught my eye. “Wait! Stop!” I said to the men wielding crowbars. “There’s something under there.”

I knelt on the joist and extracted the box. After carrying it to my desk, I had a Nancy Drew moment. Inside the box I’d found the Wincott family Bible and the leather journal.

Old books hidden under the floorboards would make anyone’s spine tingle. This is why people like old houses. It’s not just the handcrafted details. It’s the history.

Notmyhistory, though. And since Hank wasn’t around that day, I’d carefully taken some photographs of these treasures and sent them along.

Later, without my knowledge, Tim had helped himself to those photos. And now I might finally learn why.

I open the lockbox and pull out the journal. Fresh goose bumps rise on my arms as I open the cover. It’s an old-school, leather-bound volume with ruled pages. And someone’s crisp handwriting trails down each page. Given the location of the lockbox in the mansion’s office, and the history of the Home for Wayward Girls, I have to assume that the handwriting belonged to Marcus Wincott.

The first pages are from the 1950s, and I’ve already photographed them. Only the bare facts are recorded, but it’s still a poignant record of the babies’ births.

4 April 1951—Baby girl—7 pounds, 4 ounces—to Miss M. Wattford

7 June 1951—Baby girl—6 pounds, 9 ounces—to Miss L. J. McManus

11 June 1951—Baby boy dead-born—to Miss J. Connelly

Poor Miss J. Connelly.

With occasional nervous glances toward the door, I continue to flipthrough the book and the pages that I didn’t photograph the first time. The pace of births increases over time. There’s a baby or two born every month during the 1960s. Hospital births were the norm then, but I’m pretty sure that these babies were born in the mansion.

And now I’m going to figure out if Tim Kovak was one of them.

By the late seventies, births tapered off to five or six a year. I’d like to think that this is because the world was changing. Maybe unmarried women didn’t feel quite so much pressure to hide themselves away at the Magdalene Home.

I’m biased, though. I got pregnant in college. That first week after I missed my period, I already knew. But I didn’t take a test for three more weeks, because I was nervous about telling Harrison.

But then I gathered my courage, made a batch of cookies, and peed on a stick while they cooled. When the+showed up, I wasn’t even surprised.

Harrison came home at four thirty, tired from a shift at his low-paying coffee shop job. Before I could lose my nerve, I sat him down and handed him a cookie. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but...” I showed him the test.

The look on his face. I’ll never forget it. Not anger. Not even shock. Just wonder. “Wow, baby. That’s amazing. Don’t look so scared. It’s gonna be great.”

“Do you promise?” I begged.