Bitter Harvest (35 page)

But she felt a sense of triumph: she had verified that Jenn Taylor, née Morgan, wife of John Taylor, was indeed a direct descendant of Violet Cox, daughter of Unity Warren. Which in some oblique way made Jenn Meg’s relative, too. Was everyone in Granford connected?

She hadn’t traced John’s lineage, but she was pretty sure she didn’t need to. Whoever he was descended from, they’d also carried a recessive gene for Batten Disease. It was only when two carriers came together, as John and Jenn had done, that the disease became fatal. Unity Warren’s second husband had also come from Granford, and most likely they had both been carriers.

When she reached the kitchen, she saw that Seth’s van was parked in front of his office. Bree was sitting at the kitchen table eating cereal, and Meg realized that she had been so absorbed that she hadn’t even heard her housemate come down the stairs. “Good morning,” Meg greeted her.

“Uh, it’s one thirty. What are you working on?” Bree asked.

“Local connections. I’ll fill you in, but I want to see if Seth expects to see John today—I’ve got some questions for him.”

Bree snorted. “If I was John, I’d steer clear.”

“Poor John. He didn’t do anything. At least, that’s what he says—he had no idea what his mother was up to. And Jenn says she didn’t know until last night. I wonder what she thought she could accomplish in the barn?”

“I got the feeling Jenn wasn’t thinking much at all, just lashing out. Maybe Donna pushed her to do it.”

“I know Donna wanted to help her son,” Meg said, “but she just ended up making things worse. Poor Jenn.”

“If they wanted the property so much, why didn’t they just ask if it was for sale?” Bree asked.

“I can’t answer that. Maybe the timing was never right. Maybe they did, and Mother’s lawyer blew them off without even telling her. I’d bet Mother would’ve snapped up an offer if she had known about it. Maybe the Taylors were waiting for some divine power to drop the opportunity in their laps.”

“Ha! And then they finally got tired of waiting and decided to do something about it, once you looked like you were settling in. Maybe they hoped you’d give up quickly.”

“I guess,” Meg agreed. “Anyway, I’m going to go say hi to Seth.”

She pulled on a coat and hurried toward the building at the other end of the snowy driveway, crisscrossed with frozen tire tracks from all the activity the night before. Seth’s office was upstairs, and Meg went up the wooden stairs and rapped on his door.

“Come in,” he called out.

Meg opened the door and was greeted with a blast of warm air from the space heater, which explained the closed door. “Hi,” she said, shutting the door behind her. Max rose from the floor to greet her.

“Hi yourself. How’re you doing this morning?”

“Not bad, all things considered. Relieved. Saddened. A whole muddle. But I’ve been trying to sort out a few things about the Taylors, and I wondered if you were going to see John today?”

“Yeah, he’s coming over later. I had to call him—I know he feels really bad about what happened. Why?”

“I’ve been looking at Jenn’s family history, and at Batten Disease, and I’ve found some interesting things. Well, interesting to me.”

“You want me to bring him over when he gets here? We didn’t have any jobs planned for today, and after last night that’s probably a good thing. I’m not sure I could hit a barn with a hammer at the moment.”

“Want some lunch? I don’t know what I’ve got, but I’ll fake it.”

Half an hour later they were finishing up canned soup and sandwiches when John’s truck pulled into the driveway. Seth went to the back door to wave him in. John came in, hesitating on the doorstep when he saw Meg waiting.

She smiled at him. “Come in, John. I’m not angry at you, or Jenn. Your mother I’m not so sure about. Want some coffee?”

“Uh, okay.” He came into the kitchen, leaving his coat on, as Meg made more coffee. “Look, Meg, I’m really sorry. Jenn and I had a long talk last night. She’s not a bad person, really. It’s just that she’s had a really hard time, and when Ma told her what she’d been doing, Jenn just went crazy. She didn’t mean to hurt anyone. Heck, I don’t know what she was thinking. But that doesn’t make what she did right.”

“I understand, John.” Meg set coffee mugs on the table, and then sat down facing the two men. “You said Jenn’s family comes from around here?”

“Yup. They go back a long way in Granford.”

“Did you and Jenn have any genetic testing done?”

John looked startled. “Not at first, when Megan died. We had the basic tests done before Sean was born, but he was already on the way by then.”

“I’d guess that you found out that you’re both carriers for Batten Disease. You don’t show any symptoms of the disease, but you passed it on to your children. You were unlucky enough to marry another carrier, but given how limited the population of Granford is, it was likely. It’s nobody’s fault, and there was no way of knowing ahead of time unless you did some expensive and complicated medical tests.”

“You’re saying this goes back a long way? Before us?”

“What’s your point, Meg?” Seth asked.

“I do have one. It comes back to the sampler. Wait, let me show you.” She stood up and went to retrieve the sampler, and the family tree charts she had been working on all morning. When Meg returned, she carefully unrolled the sampler, still in its white towel and turned it so it faced the two men. John looked baffled.

“John, I found this sampler in the house a couple of weeks ago. I was really curious about how it came to be here, so I’ve been looking for answers ever since.”

John shifted in his chair. “What’s this got to do with me?”

“This is what’s known as a family register sampler, and as you can see, it was made in 1798 by a girl named Violet Cox. I’ll keep it short: Violet’s mother Unity was a Warren, and sister to the man who lived in this house. Unity and three of her brothers all moved to Vermont. They all married there, and she had one child, Violet, by her first husband. Then her husband died. Unity remarried pretty quickly, and had four more children by her second husband, Jacob Lampson—who, as it turns out, also came from Granford originally. But then the Lampson children started dying.”

John made the connection quickly. “You’re saying you think it’s the same thing? This damn disease?”

Meg nodded. “I think it’s possible. Unity’s first husband was born in Vermont and had no ties here, and their daughter was fine. But all the younger ones died early.” Meg pointed to the lines on the sampler. “I’ve seen some of the town records from that era, and they say things like ‘sickly,’ ‘poorly,’ ‘feeble’ about the Lampson children. Some of them had fits. Does that sound familiar?”

John nodded, his expression grim. “Sounds like Batten, all right. Our kids have what they call the infantile kind, the one that hits earliest. They don’t have good muscle control, and they have seizures and jerk a lot. Eli doesn’t only because he’s on some pretty heavy-duty meds. They sometimes go blind, too.”

Meg reached across and laid her hand on his. “I’m so sorry, John. It must be a terrible thing to watch your child suffer like that.” Meg hesitated, unsure whether her next conjectures would give John relief or cause him pain. “But that’s not where this story ends. Take a look at the sampler: not long after the youngest child died, Jacob Lampson died, and two days later, so did Unity. Violet had family in Vermont, but she came back here to live with Eli Warren, her uncle. And she married here in Granford, and had children of her own. Her husband’s name was Abiel Morgan.” She stopped, watching John’s face.

“You mean, Jenn’s descended from this Violet? And her mother?” he said at last.

Meg nodded. “There’s more. I read some early records that hinted at some awful event that made it wise to let Violet grow up somewhere else, away from the scandal, and there’s a diary that spells it out. Unity watched her babies die, one after another—like you and Jenn, John. Back in those days, with little medical knowledge, she probably blamed her husband. After all, she’d borne one healthy child, so the problem couldn’t be hers. It obsessed her, so much that after her children were gone she killed him. And then herself, a few days later. All those deaths just pushed her over the edge. And that’s what may have happened to Jenn. This whole thing with your mother and her crazy scheme was the last straw.”

They were all silent for a long minute. Meg found herself thinking of young Violet, all her near family dead, sent away from the only place she’d known in her short life, to end up here, in this house. Had Eli welcomed her, been kind to her? Violet had set about commemorating her lost family in the sampler, and then she—or someone—hid or put it away. It had lain in the house, forgotten, for two hundred years.

Meg began again, “John, Jenn did something foolish, but I can understand why. She’s fighting for her son, and for you and whatever happiness you can find. Maybe she’s a little out of control, but I can’t blame her. Nobody got hurt. I’m not going to press charges, against any of you.”

John stood up abruptly. “Thank you, Meg. Maybe it helps a little, to know that this didn’t happen just to us, that it goes back a lot further. It’s just lousy luck.” He turned to Seth. “You want me to come by tomorrow morning?”

“Sure. Eight?”

“See you then.” Without looking at them again, John grabbed his coat and went out the back door, leaving Meg and Seth alone at the table.

Seth waited until John had shut the door behind him before saying, “Wow. That’s quite a story. Unity Warren Cox Lampson was a murderer and a suicide, and now John and Jenn Taylor are part of the same story, two hundred years later. Donna Taylor was driven to harassing you because she saw getting this house as the only possible bright spot in an otherwise lousy life, and she felt she deserved it. And you’re descended from Eli Warren?”

“That’s about it,” Meg agreed.

“Tell me you’re going to explain how Jacob Lampson and his wife died?” Seth joked.

“Maybe. I think Violet left us another clue.” She pointed to the sampler. “See the Bible verse? I thought it was just a reference to the deaths of the children, but I think there’s more to it.”

“What?”

“The verse includes the word ‘flower.’ What do you see next to the row of tombstones there?”

“Lily of the valley, clearly. So?”

“Most people don’t know it, but lily of the valley is poisonous, and it grows throughout the Northeast. My guess—which I know I’ll never prove—is that Unity poisoned her husband and waited long enough to make sure that he died, and then took the same thing herself. And I think young Violet knew what had happened. Why else would she have included that particular flower in her sampler? Either her mother told her what she had done, or Violet witnessed it. Poor child! She left this one tiny clue, and then she put the sampler away and went on with her life: she married Abiel Morgan here in Granford, and had children. And Jenn Taylor is her lineal descendant. Sad to say, Violet couldn’t have known she was passing on a defective gene; and even then it might not have mattered if Jenn hadn’t had the bad luck to marry another carrier here in Granford, where it all started. That’s one of the downsides of small-town living.”

“I guess so. Do you think you’re a carrier? I mean, if it’s on the Warren side then you’re descended from the same line, if you go back far enough.”

“I haven’t had time to think that far. Although as far as I know, no other local Warrens have had this problem—not that I’ve looked. I only figured it out this morning. For that matter, the Chapins could be carriers, too.”

“Let’s hope not,” Seth said, smiling. “And now I really had better get some work done, if John’s coming back in the morning.”

“Go.” She waved him off. “I’ve got plenty of genealogy to keep me busy.”

 

Saturday morning Meg found Seth pounding at her back door yet again. “It’s Saturday. What are you doing here? Are you working today?”

“Nope, but I’ve got a project. We need to find you a Christmas tree.”

“Christmas? Oh, my goodness—it’s next week. Where do you want to go?”

“Uh, you’ll notice that you have a woodlot back there?” Seth made a sweeping gesture toward the back end of her property.

“You want to cut down a tree?”

“Yes, I do. Don’t worry—there are plenty. Nobody’s taken a tree out of there for decades, and the woods can use some thinning.”

“Okay, if you say so. Sounds good. But I don’t have a tree stand.”

“I have plenty. You have any more quibbles?”

“I guess not. You have an axe?”

“We’re not taking down a huge tree. I’ve got a saw.” Seth waved it at her.

“And how do we get it back to the house?” Meg said dubiously.

Seth recoiled in mock horror. “And here I thought you were a farmer, not a city girl. We carry it. Put your boots on.”