She used to say we were two halves that made a whole, the yin and the yang. For better or for worse, the times that I’d felt most whole, most like myself, I’d been with my sister.
When I went up to my room, I grabbed the binders I’d bought and pulled the boxes over to the bed. I started with the ones Terri had been going through.
She was just looking for a photo, I told myself.
But what if she’d been looking for something else? And the photo was just a cover-up?
Stop it, I told myself. You’re being paranoid.
I began pulling things out of the boxes and sorting them: more journal pages, which went into the red binder, sorted by date as best I could. There was one that I found particularly unsettling:
June 2
Something was in the house last night. There was water on the floor. Wet puddles leading from the open door and up the stairs.
Had there really been an intruder? If so, who? Orwhat?
Something was in the house last night.
I kept digging through the box and came across the birth certificates of my mother, Rita, and Diane. Obituaries for Rita and my mother, and prayer cards from their funerals. I put each of these into plastic sleeves and into the binder I’d dedicated to family documents.
I opened up an old leather-bound diary with a cracked spine. The pages were wrinkled and mildewed, like the book had gotten wet. The ink was blurred, washed away in places. I made out a name on the front cover: Mrs. Ethel O’Shay Monroe. My great-grandmother. I flipped through it, but could only read bits and pieces: a trip my great-grandparents took to the Brandenburg Springs Hotel, a woman named Myrtle with a sick husband, a sick baby, the building of Sparrow Crest. Most of the diary was illegible.
I set the diary aside, continued digging. At last, I came to a worn blue envelope—one I was sure Terri had pulled out and set aside. I opened the envelope and found several newspaper clippings, the first about the hotel fire.
Samuel Claiborne, a bellboy at the hotel, was first to see the flames and has stated that he witnessed recently widowed Mr. Harding in the halls with a can of kerosene shortly before. Claiborne broke down the door to the Harding suite, and was able to rescue the Hardings’ infant daughter.
The Hardings had a daughter! A girl who lived. Why hadn’t Shirley told me about her?
There was another short article clipped from a yellowed newspaper:
Flemming family takes out-of-state doctor to court in dispute over the Brandenburg Springs property
Walter Flemming of Lord’s Hill is legally contesting the sale of the Brandenburg Springs property, which was the site of the Brandenburg Springs Hotel and Resort. The property was apparently deeded to Dr. William Monroe of Lanesborough, New Hampshire, after winning a poker game with the former owner of the hotel, Mr. Benson Harding. Flemming, whose daughter Eliza was married to Mr. Harding before her tragic drowning at the hotel, contests that the land should legally belong to the child of Benson and Eliza Harding, Shirley Harding, now just one year old.
“It’s all she has left of her parents,” Mr. Flemming stated. “The property should stay in the family.”
Mr. Benson Harding took his own life shortly after turning over the hotel property to Dr. Monroe.
Shirley Harding is being raised by her grandparents, Walter and Eureka Flemming of Lord’s Hill.
The final newspaper clipping was a wedding announcement from June 21, 1951:
Miss Shirley Harding, granddaughter of Mr. Walter Flemming and his wife, Eureka, of Brandenburg, was married to Mr. Christopher Dufrense of Chickopee, Mass., on June 17. The ceremony took place at the Brandenburg Methodist Church and was officiated by Reverend David Thorn. The bride was given away by her grandfather, Mr. Walter Flemming. Best Man was Mr. Stephen Dickerson of Chickopee, Mass., and Maid of Honor was Miss Margaret Monroe of Brandenburg.
My mind whirled. Shirley, Ryan’s grandmother, was thedaughterof Benson and Eliza Harding, the owners of the Brandenburg Springs Hotel. And their family had contested the sale to my great-grandparents.
Shirley must have known who her parents had been and what had happened to them.
Did she also believe the springs and land were wrongly sold? That Sparrow Crest should be hers? Did she grow up believing that everything my grandmother had should all rightly belong to her? Wasthatwhy she couldn’t stay away from Sparrow Crest, the springs, and my grandmother?
Had Terri come to find these papers, to take them, so that I wouldn’t learn the truth?
How much did they all know? What were they trying to cover up?
Fats was singing “I Hear You Knocking” on the turntable downstairs. Over the music, I started to hear knocking, actual knocking on the front door. I wasn’t sure it was real, but it was. I went downstairs, wishing I wasn’t still so stoned. Whoever was out there was trying to open the door, the knob turning in place.
“Ted?” I yelled up the stairs, hoping for a little backup. But either he couldn’t hear me, or he was too caught up in his artwork to tear himself away.
