Sins of the Fathers

Katharine Murray could have missed the call because of her kettle. The thing was so loud, Tom swore it had started life as a Romanian factory whistle.

“If Susan had listened to you before she bought you, you’d still be languishing in a New York department store,” she told it as she reached for the phone.

With Tom gone from Monday through Friday almost every week, she often talked to inanimate objects.

The voice on the other end was deep and well modulated, its vowels rich and round. “Katharine? It’s Florence Gadney. I have a favor to ask you. A big one. A matter—” she gave an odd little laugh—“you might say a
grave
matter has come up. I need—what on earth is that racket?”

“My kettle. Isn’t it awful? I was just making a cup of tea.” Katharine slid the kettle off its burner and hoped Dr. Flo thought she was fixing a midmorning snack. The retired college professor was so efficient she had probably finished her breakfast before the early bird started looking for the worm.

Katharine could picture her sitting on a white brocade couch in a designer pantsuit, for Dr. Flo was not only brilliant, she was also independently wealthy and chic. Hopefully Dr. Flo could not picture Katharine barefoot, tousled, and still wearing the faded red T-shirt and gray knit shorts she had slept in since Tom had had to fly out the evening before.

“What can I do for you?” Katharine asked.

“Well…”
Hesitant
was not a word Katharine usually associated with Dr. Flo, but she seemed to be having a hard time getting to her point.

Never in a hundred years could Katharine have predicted Dr. Flo’s next sentence, spoken in a rush. “I need to run down to McIntosh County tomorrow morning, and wondered if you’d be interested in going with me. Just for the day.”

Katharine held out her phone and looked at it in bewilderment. Why on earth was Dr. Flo asking her? While they knew each another to speak to at the symphony or opera, had served on a few committees together over the years—had even worked together unraveling an old murder case earlier that summer
*
—they had never been the sort of friends who went away together, even for a day. Their lives touched at very few points.

In her forty-six years, Katharine had never been employed. She had spent over half her life raising two children and taking sole charge of the house while Tom climbed the corporate ladder. Her preferred volunteer activities were tutoring children or teaching ESOL classes. A month before, with her daughter working in New York, her son newly graduated from college and teaching English in China, and her last elderly relative gone, Katharine had begun to wonder what she was going to do with the long stretch of years that lay ahead until Tom’s retirement.

Dr. Flo, on the other hand, was childless, and had taught business at Spelman until her retirement. She served on numerous committees and boards, and was a generous patron of the arts. Until her husband’s death the prior year, she and Dr. Maurice, a prominent orthopedist, made a striking couple on opening nights—he tall and handsome, almost as black as his tux, and she dainty and sweet-potato gold, wearing a series of Parisian creations with her hair in a sleek chignon. Even since his death, Katharine suspected Dr. Flo had no concept of what it meant to have too much time on her hands.

“I don’t know where McIntosh County is,” Katharine hedged, trying to come up with any conceivable reason why Dr. Flo should be inviting her along. “Georgia has so many counties, I do well to remember those in the metro area.”

“It’s on the coast, between Savannah and Brunswick. Could you drive down with me?”

“That’s five hours each way! Surely you mean to stay overnight.” After all, Dr. Flo must be seventy.

“No, I plan to drive right down and back. The business I have there shouldn’t take more than an hour, so with two drivers, it won’t be strenuous.” She paused and added with diffidence, “Say no if you can’t go. I know this is sudden. Maurice used to say, ‘Flo-baby, you expect too much spontaneity from folks. The rest of us need time to mull things over and arrange our calendars.’ But if you could go, I’d be grateful. We’d take my car, of course. I thought of you because I would appreciate your insight once we get there.”

Katharine had recently raised two teenagers to young adulthood. Anybody who appreciated her insight got her attention. “Insight about what?” She poured water over her tea bag while Dr. Flo explained.

“I had a call this morning from Maurice’s cousin Mary, who is visiting her son down in Savannah. She saw an ad in today’s paper asking descendants of a Claude Gilbert who was buried in McIntosh County in 1903 to contact an attorney. Mary remembered that my father’s father was Claude Gilbert, so she wondered if he came from down that way.” Dr. Flo stopped. She often did that in committee meetings to make sure people were listening.

“Did he?” Katharine asked dutifully. Dr. Flo did a lot of genealogical research. She had probably traced her father’s family all the way back to a line of African chieftains. They would have been chieftains, of course.

Katharine was surprised to hear her admit, “I don’t know. My granddaddy
was
Claude Gilbert and he
did
die in 1903, but my research on the Gilbert branch of my family tree only stretches back to Claude’s graduation from Morehouse in 1891. I’ve never been able to determine when or where he was born, who his people were, or where they came from. He died when Daddy was two, and Grandmother Lucy married again a couple of years later. Her second husband was like a daddy to my daddy, and he was buried with her here in Atlanta, but my birth grandfather is not in the family plot. It’s probably a coincidence, of course, but I felt I ought to call and see what this lawyer wanted.” She chuckled. “Mary thought maybe Claude left money nobody had claimed—you know, one of those bank accounts people open, then forget.” Dr. Flo needed more money like Atlanta needed another Peachtree Street, Road, Circle, or Avenue.

What Katharine needed was breakfast. Her stomach grumbled as she poured a small glass of orange juice and took a sip.
More is coming eventually,
she promised.

“However,” Dr. Flo continued, “it wasn’t anything like that. The attorney, Mr. Hayden Curtis, represents a developer who wants to build on property where there is a small cemetery, and he needs permission to move graves. Apparently you can’t move a grave in Georgia without authorization from the next of kin. The lawyer said he’s run the ad for two weeks in every paper from Charleston down to Jacksonville and nobody else has called, which make sense if this is my relative. I am an only child, Daddy was an only child, and so far as we know, Granddaddy was an only child. I don’t have cousins that I’ve ever been able to find on the Gilbert side.”

“So what’s the problem?” Katharine still couldn’t see why she was being invited to drive ten hours to look at a grave. Her insight concerning grave removal was nil.

She took the tea bag out of her cup, added a dollop of milk and sugar, and carried the mug to her breakfast room table. While she sipped, she looked wistfully at a bright yellow butterfly nuzzling the pink buddleia and two hummingbirds fighting over the feeder. Everybody was getting breakfast except her.

“Mr. Curtis says there are actually three graves: the one for Claude Gilbert plus two with the name G-u-i-l-b-e-r-t. In French, that would be
Geel-bear
, but he pronounced it
Gwilbert.
I suppose that’s the way it’s pronounced down there.”

“Do you have French ancestors?”

“Not that I ever heard of. But because this Claude Gilbert was buried the same year my granddaddy died, I am intrigued. In case these
are
my ancestors, I’d like to see the graves before they are destroyed. Could you go with me tomorrow?”

When Katharine hesitated, she repeated, a tad anxiously, “Say no if you can’t…”

“What’s the hurry?”

What Katharine wanted to ask was “What’s the big deal?” She hadn’t started researching her own family, so she hadn’t yet experienced the excitement of finding a sought-after piece in a genealogy puzzle.

“Mr. Curtis says the developer wants to get started and needs the graves moved next week, but Mr. Curtis will be out of town from Wednesday through the weekend. If I plan to see him and sign papers after viewing the graves, I have to go tomorrow. Of course, he’s as convinced as you are that I’m crazy to drive all the way down there, but if this is my grandfather’s grave, I would never forgive myself if I passed up a chance to see the original plot. However, my reason for wanting you to go is that Mr. Curtis raises all my flags.”

For the first time, Katharine felt a flicker of interest. “Why is that?”

“Based only on his hunch that the graves could be related, he originally wanted to FedEx me documents today to sign and send right back, authorizing the removal of all three graves. He never asked for a single proof that I am Claude Gilbert’s granddaughter, nor did he offer proof that the three graves are connected. That makes me as curious about Mr. Curtis as I am about his graves. You demonstrated rare acumen about that situation back in June. I’d like your opinion of Mr. Curtis when I meet with him.”

“But he didn’t refuse to meet with you?” Katharine couldn’t think of any scam that involved moving neglected graves, but scammers were getting increasingly creative.

“Oh, no. He said he could see me tomorrow. Could you possibly come along?”

“May I think about it and call you back?”

“Of course. I’ll be here all morning. Just let me know.”

How could she possibly go?

Four weeks ago, her house had been vandalized. What the vandals had not carried away, they had destroyed. Since then, she had spent every waking hour on the slow, painful process of reconstructing her home, and she still was far from finished. She spent most of her sleeping hours dreaming about the break-in.

This morning, the reason she was so late with breakfast was that she had lain awake until after two thinking of everything she still needed to do. When she had finally slept, the nightmares, ever vigilant, had returned. She had wakened at dawn dry-mouthed, drenched with sweat, and disoriented, with wisps of dream clinging like cobwebs. When she opened her eyes, she was bewildered to see yellow walls, not taupe, and a floral spread on her bed, not a plaid one. She had struggled to remember what the dream had been, for she was learning that bringing nightmares to light is the fastest way to dissolve them.

Nuggets had returned, spiders among the cobwebs:

A party. The house looking great. Guests she didn’t recognize but who seemed to be having a good time. Standing in the dining room smiling up at the portraits of her children over the sideboard. A hand that shot over her shoulder with a knife. Watching it slash, slash her children’s faces while she stood by, helpless.

Reality had surged over her like a tsunami, leaving a desolation of grief in its wake. Her worst nightmares were real. Her children’s irreplaceable portraits, painted eighteen years before when Jon was three and Susan five, were gone, their destruction senseless and vicious.

Thinking of those flower faces reduced to ribbons and buried beneath tons of garbage in an Atlanta landfill, Katharine had wept until her pillow was soggy and her body exhausted. Then she exchanged the pillow for the cool, unused one on Tom’s side of the bed, and had fallen into an exhausted sleep. Since the break-in, she always slept better after the sun came up.

Grief had gripped her again when she started to wash her face and reached for the soap. What triggered it was such a small thing—the absence of a lopsided clay duck Susan had made in fourth grade, which Katharine had used as a soap dish. When she reached for the soap and the duck wasn’t there, she saw again the crumbs of red clay the vandals had ground underfoot. She had pressed her forehead against the beige tiles of the bathroom wall and fought back a shriek.

She was getting used to the mood swings—a sudden plunge from cheerful normalcy to times when she wanted to careen around her lot like a balloon gone berserk. Memories took you like that, sneaking up on you from behind or around a corner. Tom’s sister, Posey, the health and exercise guru of the family, recommended three deep, cleansing breaths whenever she felt overwhelmed. Katharine gave that another try, but the only thing deep breathing had accomplished so far was to make her dizzy.

Eating, now—that worked. She had gained five pounds in the past month. She headed downstairs to scrounge up breakfast.

In the kitchen, she had lifted the head of a cheerful pig, reached inside his round yellow shirt, and brought up a couple of chocolate chip cookies she had made the night before. “Don’t look so approving,” she mumbled through crumbs and chunks of pecan. “You’re supposed to remind me of what I’ll look like if I keep eating these.”

The pig—a whimsical newcomer to the kitchen—beamed a benign benediction.

She had flicked his snout lightly with one finger and ambled to the breakfast room bay window to inspect the impersonation of another beautiful day. She was not fooled by the blue, cloudless dome. In another few hours the sky would be a white haze of heat. Atlanta baked in a midsummer drought, and her own yard was lush and colorful only thanks to the hard work of Anthony, her yardman, and Tom’s willingness—and ability—to pay enormous water bills.

Theirs was not one of the largest homes in Buckhead (which one writer accurately called “the most well-to-do and elegant residential area within Atlanta”), but it stood in lovely grounds. That morning, the glittering pool enticed her across the backyard:
Forget the nightmares. Come get rid of your cobwebs with a quick dip before breakfast.

Why not?

Because she had to buy lamps that day and was already late. There wasn’t a lamp left in the house, not one place Tom could sit down to read. He’d remarked on that the past weekend.

With a sigh, she had turned toward the stove. As the kettle shrilled, Dr. Flo had called.