Katie dragged her gaze away from Peter and turned toward the hallway. “We’re in the kitchen, Mrs. Princeton.”
Wrapped in a soft blue jacket and matching hat, Mrs. Princeton walked toward them. “It’s so nice to see you again, Katie. And this must be your friend, Peter.” She held out her hand. “My husband is parking our truck in the garage. It’s lovely to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you, too.” Peter shook her hand. “Your home is amazing.”
“Thank you. I’ll just take off my jacket and then you can tell me about yourself.”
While she was in another room, hanging up her jacket, Katie grinned at Peter. “She likes you.”
“How do you know?” he whispered.
“Female intuition.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Katie knew she was. Especially when the chief executive of BioTech was pouring two more cups of coffee and moving them to the kitchen table. You’d have to be crazy not to see that this man, with all the weight of his company’s future on his shoulders, wasn’t the perfect person to rent this house. Or the perfect person to spend the rest of your life with.
CHAPTER14
Aweek later, Barbara rushed into the kitchen at The Lakeside Inn. “Where’s Diana and Penny?”
Katie looked up from the croissants she was baking. Her sister wasn’t often flustered, but she was definitely worried about something. “Charlie was due for his vaccinations, so Diana drove him to the vet and Penny’s working at the cottages on Anchor Lane. What’s happened?”
“Chloe called. She’s ninety-eight percent positive that she knows where our great-grandfather is buried. The information they found has been verified as much as it can be.”
Katie’s eyes widened. “How did she find him?”
“A person in her team found a book about old cemeteries in Montana. She already knew Patrick died in a boating accident near Whitefish, so she looked at the cemeteries around that area. A man called Patrick James Kelly is buried in the Gregory Family Cemetery. It isn’t far from Whitefish. There’s something else you should know.”
Katie wondered why her sister sounded so worried. Finding the grave was a fantastic discovery. It might give them more information about their great-grandfather and what had happened to him.
Barbara handed her a sheet of paper. “This was in the book. If the grave belongs to him, he was buried beside a woman and three children. They all had his last name.”
Katie’s eyes widened as she studied the picture. The second headstone belonged to a woman called Johanna Kelly. Buried with her were her children, Alice, Mary, and James. “They can’t be his family. He was still married to Maggie when they died.” She searched her sister’s face, hoping she had more information about the people buried beside their great-grandfather.
“The Gregory family still own the land the cemetery is on. Chloe’s contacted them to see if they haveany information about the people buried there. Johanna could be his brother’s wife or a cousin, but we don’t know if any of his siblings immigrated to America.”
“Maggie never mentioned anything about her husband’s family in her journals. I don’t think Mom or Grandma ever said anything, either.” Katie sat at the kitchen table before her legs gave way. Patrick James Kelly was always a shadowy figure in her grandmother’s life. After he’d faked his death, he’d visited his family in Polson on more than one occasion. But, in all their research, no one had mentioned the possibility of him having another wife and children.
Taking a deep breath, she tried to think logically instead of assuming the worst. “We know Patrick worked on the steamboats and that he was a gambler. But that doesn’t mean he married another woman when he was already married to Maggie. It might not even be his grave. There must have been a lot of men with his name who came to Montana from Ireland.”
Barbara sat beside her. “He staged his own death to get away from his gambling debts and gave his wife a letter written by Abraham Lincoln. Who knows what else he did?”
“Maggie loved him.”
Barbara gave a resigned sigh. “I know, but would she still have loved him if he had another family?”
“I don’t know.” Their great-grandmother’s life had been hard. There were many moments of sadness and despair in her journals; times when she didn’t think she could support herself and her child. Imagining what Maggie would have done if Patrick had been unfaithful was foolish. She lived in a different time with issues Katie couldn’t begin to understand. But if the grave beside Patrick’s was his brother’s wife and children, they could have more family living in Montana than they knew about.
Katie handed her sister the piece of paper. “Apart from contacting the Gregory family, is Chloe doing anything else to see if this Patrick Kelly is our great-grandfather and who the other people are?”
Barbara shook her head. “I don’t think so. It could be a long wait to see if he’s our great-grandfather.”
Katie didn’t want to wait that long. “The Smithsonian is getting ready for the opening of the exhibition about the letter. Chloe will appreciate having more information about the grave and the people buried there. Is the cemetery open to the public?”
“Don’t even think about it,” Barbara said quickly. “It’s the middle of winter and the people buried in the graves might not be related to us.”
With a determined glance at her sister, Katie pulled out her phone. “Someone named Patrick James Kelly was buried in the cemetery around the same time as Maggie received a condolence card from a friend. I want to see the grave.”
