Was there an edge of the world, or a doorway, that you could fall through and be lost forever?
Was that what had happened to her mama?
CHAPTER 22
Helen
AUGUST 5, 2015
“I’ve got good news,” Riley said when she called. “They’ve finally finished the repairs to the historical society. Mary Ann gave me the okay to go back in and start putting the place back together again. I’m heading over this afternoon. Want to join me?”
“Definitely!” Helen said. “I’ve got news, too.”
“About the mill? How’d your trip go?”
“You’re not going to believe it. Hattie’s daughter died in that fire,” Helen said on the phone.
“What? No way!”
“I’m sure of it!” Helen was pacing back and forth in the tiny trailer kitchen. “I can’t prove it exactly, but I know it was her.”
Helen looked out the trailer window, saw Nate carrying boxes of electrical supplies into the house: rolls of cable, metal junction boxes, plastic boxes for all of their outlets and switches. She’d promised she’d be up to help him get started in a few minutes. She’d told him nothing about what she’d seen in the house, about her research this morning. When he saw her on the computer, she told him she was looking for roofing materials. Nate had been advocating for basic gray asphalt shingles. He said they’d be easiest to acquire and install, and they were affordable—he’d long ago calculated how many bundles they’d need and put it in the budget. Helen was hoping to find something more unique: reclaimed tin roofing, slate, maybe cedar shakes.
“Tell me everything,” Riley said.
Helen took a breath and started at the beginning. She told Riley about her trip to the mill, the bricks, the stories the foreman told her, and what she’d seen in the house last night.
“It was Jane. I’m sure of it. And I think bringing the bricks here helped her come back. I know it sounds crazy, but I think Hattie wanted me to go to that mill to bring something back to the house.”
Riley was quiet for a few seconds.
“Doesn’t sound crazy at all,” she said.
“I think you were right—if they have an object, a physical thing connecting them to their lives, to the way they died maybe, it acts as a kind of doorway—a way back into our world.”
“It would be nice if we could confirm it,” Riley said. “You know, prove that Jane really did die in that fire.”
“Agreed. I found this website that lists the names of the people who died at the mill that day and there’s only one Jane—a Jane Whitcomb. I did a little more research—checked out genealogy sites and public records—and found marriage records for a Jane Smith and Silas Whitcomb in 1934. They lived right in Lewisburg. According to the records I found, they had two children, Ann and Mark. I haven’t looked into what happened to them yet. After Jane was killed in the fire, Silas remarried and had several more children. Do you think the historical society might have more information on Jane? Photos, even? I found a photo of the mill workers taken the year of the fire. Jane’s in it. I just know it’s the same woman I saw last night. Maybe we can match her to an old photo of Jane Breckenridge?”
“I think there are a couple photos, but Jane was just a girl when her mother died and she disappeared, so I’m not sure we’ll be able to recognize her,” Riley said. “Let’s plan to meet at the historical society at three. We’ll see what we can find.”
“See you at three.”
. . .
It amazed Helen how little could be left when a person was gone. A human being lived an entire life full of family and friends, dinner parties, work, church, and what was left? A couple of photos, a line or two in a town newspaper, an obituary usually, a tombstone with a name and dates and little else. Unless you kept digging. This is what she loved about history: the thrill of filling in the blanks, digging for and finding the hard evidence—birth and death records, marriage licenses, census data, photographs, diaries, and letters—and then using hunches and intuition to put it all together into a cohesive narrative. Studying a person or an event from long ago was like trying to solve a mystery: following clues, piecing things together.
There was no gravestone or obituary for Hattie Breckenridge. No mention of her or what had happened to her in the local paper. Very little proof that she had existed at all.
“It’s like she was a ghost even back when she was alive,” Helen said. She sat across from Riley at a big table in the center of the historical society. The space was in a disheveled state because of the flood—boxes and plastic totes were piled up on desks and shelves, files and documents haphazardly thrown in to save them from water damage.
Riley had arrived earlier to attempt to start putting things in some semblance of order, and she’d pulled what little she’d found on the Breckenridge family aside, started making notes. Helen had her own little notebook out now, hoping for a chance to jot down some solid facts about Hattie and Jane, something that might tell her where to go from here, how to find out more. Seeing them together in her house last night had made her more determined than ever to learn their stories, to follow the family tree and see if there might be more information, living relatives even.
“I know, it’s crazy,” Riley said. “We have whole boxes full of stuff on some families in town: letters, diaries, photographs. But there really isn’t much on the Breckenridge family.”
She pulled down another box and opened it up.
“Like I said, you’ve gotta bear with me here. Things aren’t usually in such disarray.”
