A Purrfect Romance (15 page)

Absentmindedly, he picked French fries from the bowl, slogging them around in the puddle of ketchup on his plate and eating them slowly, then licking his fingers—just the way his mother had taught him not to.

Bridey, too, felt the strange current. It seemed to run up her arms and down her spine, down and down, all the way to her toes, and she feared she was going to faint again. She wanted to reach across the table, right across the bowl of ketchup and the plate of sliced onion, to touch his hair, to run her fingers through it, to trace with her fingertips the black brows, the strong bones of his face, the curve of his lips . . .

But they continued to eat in silence.

And when they were finished, and she automatically offered to help clean up, his “No, thanks, I can handle it” was abrupt.

“Fine,” she said. And she was out of the apartment, with Silk and Satin scooting along quickly to keep up with her.

Mack was left staring at the door.

“Scout,” he said, “I was right, wasn’t I?”

The dog walked out of the room in exasperation.

And back in her own apartment, Bridey dropped disconsolately onto the sofa and held Silk close to her for comfort.

“Oh, he is so stubborn! He just hasn’t a clue how wrong he is. Has he, Silk?”

Silk refused to respond, and Bridey decided she must be agreeing with her.

“But you know, Mack was right about one thing. Henrietta’s dream was exactly the same as mine. It’s almost spooky. Of all the people who might have wound up here in this apartment, taking care of you and Satin, isn’t it strange that it turned out to be me? Like it’s magic or something. Because, just like her, I’m creating a cookbook out of a family’s history, using recipes and stories that have been collected over generations. Do you suppose it means something?”

Silk just snuggled into her lap, and Bridey was left alone with her musings, which quickly drifted from Henrietta and cookbooks to thoughts of a certain strong jaw and waves of dark hair, a tall, handsome shape in chinos and a light blue oxford shirt, and a cheery wave of a spatula. . . .

M
ack was at his desk, brooding. He’d been glowering for days now, snarling impatiently at everyone who came near, and this morning had brought no improvement in his foul mood. Helen and the rest of his staff continued to stay nervously out of his way, waiting for the storm to blow over.

Finally, after trying without any success to attend to the pile of work on his desk, he gave up in angry frustration and tossed his pen down on the papers in front of him. He punched a key on the intercom.

“Helen?” His voice came through the phone with the peremptory bark of an angry drill sergeant.

“Yes, Mr. Brewster?” Helen kept her tone as neutral as she could, but she braced herself, sitting up a little straighter than usual. She made a face at Janet Warensky, whose smile was sympathetic as she laid the morning sales reports on Helen’s desk.

“Helen, I want you to go back in the files and locate anything you have on a manuscript submitted by a Mrs. Henrietta Willey. That’s W-I-L-L-E-Y. It would be some time in the spring of 1999. There should be a letter to Mrs. Willey from my father, and I especially want to see that. It should be in the files for April or early May of that year. Get it all to me as soon as you have it.”

“That’ll be in the archives, Mr. Brewster,” she said cautiously, afraid of eliciting an eruption. “It’s going to take a while.”

“Then get on it right away, dammit!”

He punched the button again, cutting her off.

Then he sat there at his desk for a long time, glaring at the large portrait of his father, which glared back at him from the opposite wall.

He didn’t like the way he was feeling: angry and guilty and defensive. Like something explosive was bottled up inside him. And whatever it was, it was something important, something he couldn’t ignore. Mack was a man of action and command; it was impossible for him to sit quietly. But now he was completely stymied. He had to do something, but he hadn’t a clue what it was. He tugged at his tie, loosening it. He ran his hands through his hair, messing it up. He got up and paced the room several times. He sat down again, shuffled helplessly through the papers on his desk, and then gave up trying to concentrate on the work in front of him. This thing, whatever it was, was making him nuts.

Downtown, at the New York Surrogate’s Court, Afton Morley’s kinship hearing was about to start. The referee, Gilbert Forsgren, sat at a desk to one side of the room, facing a long conference table around which were gathered all the interested parties. Afton and Mulie were there, on one side of the table, with their lawyer, Bryan Chubb. Opposite them, on the other side of the table, Gerald Kinski sat with his hands folded, waiting for the referee to begin the proceedings. Next to Gerald were Alan Grossman, appointed as guardian ad litem “for persons unknown,” Charles Chessler, representing the office of the County Public Administrator and Harold Maudsley, for the co-op board. All the lawyers were dressed in dark gray, as though that were the uniform of the day, and on the floor next to each was a bulging briefcase. A microphone was set before each person, connected to a digital recorder.

Bridey was there, too. Gerry Kinski had invited her to observe and, with the referee’s permission, she’d been offered a seat apart from the others, facing the end of the table. Her nerves were on edge, with her whole life riding on the outcome of this hearing, and she had to force herself to maintain a composed and professional air of detachment. Though she hadn’t slept well and hadn’t been able to eat any breakfast, she was determined to show a quiet and respectful demeanor. Her knees felt shaky, and she was glad she didn’t have to participate in any way, for she wouldn’t have trusted herself to keep up her pose of objectivity. She was wearing her very nicest business-type suit, and the russet color of the soft, nubby fabric and the creamy silk of her blouse set off her coppery hair beautifully, giving an extra glow to her eyes. Behind her was an enormous window that reached high above her head toward the distant ceiling, and though it was layered with accumulated city grime and dust, it let in a shaft of filtered morning light that fell across her, softening the harsh fluorescence coming from the fixtures set into the ceiling. From her position at the end of the room, she was able to observe all the participants, and she made a quick inventory of everyone seated at the table.

First there was Mulie, who was plainly nervous. Though she kept her feet firmly on the floor and set tight together, she kept shifting her plump bottom back and forth on her seat, as though it was too small for her. Her hands were in constant motion, patting at the little curls that surrounded her face and pulling at her skirt, which kept riding up over her knees, and she avoided the eyes of everyone in the room while glancing repeatedly at the microphone in front of her, as though she expected it to bite her. She had dressed up for the occasion in a lavender polyester suit that bunched up at the back, and for the hundredth time since arriving in New York she promised herself that she really would go on a diet, as soon as she returned to Twin Falls. She fiddled nervously with a mass of papers she had drawn out of her copious straw bag, removing paper clips and putting them back on again, leafing through them repeatedly as though to assure herself that nothing was missing.

Afton was leaning back in his chair, his jacket open and falling back from a checked shirt that strained at its buttons and bulged over his belt buckle. Unlike Mulie, he seemed totally at ease, and never once, through the whole proceedings, did he remove his hat. He was apparently entirely assured of the outcome of this proceeding, and his smugly relaxed posture, backed up by the imposing pile of documents in Mulie’s hands, only added to Bridey’s worries.

The Morleys’ lawyer, Bryan Chubb, was the very picture of his name, being a short, portly man with multiple chins and round red cheeks upon which his glasses, also round, rode primly. He wore a dark gray suit, highly polished black shoes and a dark tie. He had the happily confident air of a man whose clients were about to become very wealthy.

The lawyers facing the Morley side, Gerry and the others, chatted amiably among themselves, catching up on their news and sharing anecdotes while they waited for the hearing to begin.

Mr. Forsgren, the referee, was a tidy man, with long, delicate hands and a graceful manner. He was dressed conservatively in a dark blue suit and a striped tie, and his voice, when he spoke, had a faintly Jamaican lilt. He opened the manila file folder in front of him, scanned its first page briefly, then said, “All right, then. Are we ready?” When everyone nodded, he punched the play button to start recording.

“This is case number thirteen-one-o-seven,” he dictated mechanically, as one who has done this same thing a thousand times, “in the matter of Afton Morley, claimant to the estate of Henrietta Willey.” He recorded the names of those present with their titles and affiliations, including Bridey, whose observer status was duly noted. And then, “Mr. Chubb, will you please proceed?”

Mr. Chubb took several packets of paper from his briefcase and handed them out to each of the attorneys. While each man unfolded what appeared to be an extraordinarily long length of paper, too long to spread out in its entirety, he passed another copy to Bridey.

“In case you’d like to follow along,” he said.

Bridey had never seen anything like this document. There wasn’t room enough on her lap to open it completely, but she was able to extend it sufficiently to see that it was a family tree, drawn horizontally across the page. A profusion of printed boxes, each almost two inches square, filled the paper, and black lines were drawn between the boxes to indicate spouses and offspring. Each box contained the name of a single individual and their relevant birth, marriage and death dates. Spread out, the whole sheet was about seven feet long, but Bridey had room across her lap for only three or four segments. The name
Lloyd
appeared frequently in the little boxes.

“This,” said Mr. Chubb, speaking for the record, “is the family tree of Afton Lloyd Morley and delineates his status as first cousin twice removed of the decedent, Henrietta Lloyd Caswell Willey.” His voice was flat, without emotion. He, too, had taken part in hearings like this a thousand times.

Afton smiled complacently and Mulie pursed her lips, as though daring anyone to challenge her husband’s claim. They were the picture of smug anticipation, and Bridey felt like smacking them.

Mr. Chubb handed another sheaf of documents to the referee and said, “Mrs. Morley has gathered this material in support of my client’s claim. With your permission, I’ll let her explain each document as we trace Mr. Morley’s kinship on the family tree.”

“That’ll be fine,” said the referee. “Go ahead, Mrs. Morley.”

With Chubb’s help, Mulie opened the paper to its full length, stretching it to the end of the table. The lawyer and Afton both moved back their chairs to give her the room she needed as she moved back and forth, using the family tree to illustrate her explanation. Her voice shook a bit at first, and she tugged awkwardly at the back of her jacket several times, pulling it down over her round bottom, but she gathered confidence as she went along, for this was a subject on which she was prepared. In a few minutes her voice and her trembling hands stopped shaking and she seemed to forget her nerves as she discussed each little box on the family tree in turn, tracing the history of the Lloyd clan.

“Now, this here’s Josiah Lloyd, Afton’s grandfather,” she began, resting her plump index finger on the box at the very top of the sheet. “That paper you’re holding,” she indicated the yellow document with a bright green seal that Mr. Forsgren was reading, “that’s an extract from the church records, and it shows Josiah was born on March 17, 1866.” She waited a moment while Mr. Forsgren read the document and marked it as Exhibit A.

“Now, in January 1884, when he was almost eighteen years old, Josiah married Lydia Mack.” Mulie’s finger moved to the box next to Josiah’s. “You have the record of his marriage there, next one in the pile. That was back in the territorial days, before Idaho was admitted to the Union, and the only records they had back then were kept by the church elders.”

Mr. Forsgren set aside Josiah’s birth certificate and carefully picked up the next item in the pile, a frayed, fragile bit of paper attesting to the marriage of Josiah Lloyd and Lydia Mack. He noted that Lydia’s wedding date was also the date of her sixteenth birthday.

“We found that in an old family Bible,” Mulie said. “I’d appreciate your being real careful with it, Your Honor, because it’s already falling to pieces and it’s kind of like a family heirloom.”

“Of course, Mrs. Morley. We’re accustomed to handling delicate old documents here. I’ll have my clerk place it in a plastic cover for safekeeping.”

Mulie sniffed, as though she wasn’t so sure he’d be up to the job.

“So, like you can see there,” she continued, “Lydia was sixteen when they married—you got papers for her, too, in there. Now, here’s the fourteen children they had.” Her finger touched each box in the next row down. “Of the fourteen, only two actually survived. The first was Jason Lloyd, the oldest child; he was born in December 1884, just short of Lydia’s seventeenth birthday. And this here,” her finger ran along the row to its last box, “this here’s the other, the youngest, Patience Lloyd, born in 1910. And Patience Lloyd was Afton’s mother.”

Bridey was doing the calculations in her head. She had tried to follow along on her copy of the tree, unfolding it enough to view a portion of it at a time, but found it too cumbersome to manage. Finally she just folded it back up and determined to examine it more closely later on. Despite Mulie’s matter-of-fact comments, Bridey had seen enough of the information printed in the little boxes to be struck by the extraordinary real-life dramas that were hidden there. Poor old Lydia Lloyd, for example, married at sixteen, had had fourteen children over the next twenty-six years, and had lost almost all of them; three of them in one year. What dreadful accidents, illnesses or epidemics had carried them off? And she had been forty-two years old when her last child was born. Why, even with today’s modern technology, a pregnancy at that age could mean serious problems. In Lydia’s time it would truly have been a life-and-death risk. Bridey was awed by the courage of those pioneer women, and for the moment her own anxieties seemed trivial.

Mulie went on. “Now Jason, here,” she said, her finger moving down the line, “he married an older woman. Martha Hansen, right here, born in 1874. She was twenty-eight when her first husband, Heber, died, and she already had four little ones. Jason was only eighteen himself, but he adopted them all, gave them his name, Lloyd, and it was the oldest one, Henry—that was Henrietta Willey’s grandfather—he was twelve years old when Martha and Jason got married, in 1902. You got all the papers for each one of them, there in the pile.”

Afton spoke up for the first time. “My lawyer here,” he said with an air of challenge in his voice, “Mr. Chubb, he tells me adopted kids count just as much as natural-born ones, isn’t that right?”

“It certainly is,” Mr. Forsgren assured him. “Adopted children and half siblings and children born outside of a legal marriage, too. They all count in establishing consanguinity. That is, the degree of kinship.”

“I know what consanguinity means.” Afton said the unfamiliar word slowly, taking care with each syllable. His face looked belligerent, as though he dared anyone to put him down. “Mr. Chubb here explained it to me.”

“Of course, Mr. Morley.” Mr. Forsgren’s tone was conciliatory.

“And first cousins, once removed, twice removed, even three times removed, that doesn’t matter either, isn’t that right? They’re all entitled?”

“Absolutely, Mr. Morley. In New York State, a first cousin no matter how distant, is entitled to assert a claim.”

Afton relaxed, apparently satisfied. His lawyer pursed his plump lips in irritation. Hadn’t his client believed what he’d told him?

“Lucky for me they kept having all those kids,” Afton observed coolly, “spitting ’em out like peanuts. And lucky for me old Mulie here’s kept up with all her genealogy work. She’s done a great job putting this all together.”