The door swung inward with the same protesting groan it had made yesterday. The additional lighting transformed the small chamber, revealing details that had been lost in shadow during her first visit with Patrick.
Isabel gasped as she stepped inside, her head ducked low to avoid the ceiling. “Oh, Kathleen. Look at all of this.”
The Victorian baby clothes seemed even more poignant with the extra lighting. Lynda studied one of the tiny gowns, examining the delicate embroidery. “I’m not going to touch anything in case I damage it, but someone spent hours on this. Days, maybe. Look at these French knots. They’re perfect.”
Susan had moved toward the scattered papers, kneeling carefully amongst them. “These aren’t just medical records,” she said, her voice tight with excitement and something else. “Kathleen, look at this.”
She pointed to a partially legible document, squinting in the LED light. “I think this is a marriage certificate. But something’s not right about it.”
Kathleen knelt beside her, holding her phone’s flashlight above the paper. The ink had run in places, and water damage had obscured much of the text, but she could make out fragments: “Marriage performed this day... County of Flathead... witnessed by...”
“The date’s wrong,” Susan continued, pointing to a smudged section. “It says 1892, but then down here it says 1891. And look at these signatures.” She carefully collected several more papers from the floor. “They don’t match. The same person’s handwriting is on different documents.”
Lynda and Isabel crowded closer.
“That’s strange,” Isabel whispered, studying another document Susan had picked up. “Unless this wasn’t only a safe house. Do you think the papers are real?”
Susan shook her head. “I don’t think so. Look at this death certificate. The name at the bottom is different to the other papers, but the handwriting looks the same.”
“They’re forged documents,” Lynda said, the words hanging heavy in the cramped space. “Someone was creating false papers.”
Kathleen felt a chill that had nothing to do with the basement’s temperature. “But why? What would be the point of forged marriage certificates and death records?”
The four friends looked at each other. Isabel spoke first, her voice barely above a whisper.
“To give those women new identities. Clean slates. If you were an unmarried mother in the 1890s, you’d be ruined socially. But if you had documents saying your husband had died, if you could start over somewhere new?—”
“You could raise your child without shame,” Susan finished. “You could create an entire new life.”
“And if the documents were good enough,” Lynda added, “no one would ever question your story.”
Kathleen sank back on her heels, overwhelmed by the implications. “This wasn’t just a safe house. It was an entire operation. Someone was helping desperate women completely reinvent themselves.”
The silence stretched between them as they absorbed the magnitude of what they’d uncovered. Finally, Isabel spoke again, her voice filled with wonder and sadness.
“Do you realize what this means? Your house wasn’t only sheltering women during their pregnancies. It was giving them the tools to build new lives for themselves and their children. Whoever ran this operation was risking everything to help people society had thrown away.”
Susan placed the documents on a shelf. “Creating false documents would have been a serious crime. Getting caught could have meant prison, or worse.”
“It must have taken a lot of courage to do this,” Lynda murmured. “For the women who came here and for whoever helped them.”
Kathleen looked around the small chamber. The medical instruments, the carefully preserved baby clothes, the scattered papers—all of it told a story of women helping women, of people willing to risk everything to offer hope to the hopeless.
“I can’t believe this was hidden in my basement all this time,” she said softly. “All these months of renovation, and I’ve been living on top of this incredible piece of history.”
Isabel shone her flashlight on the shelves. “Maybe it was waiting for the right person to find it. Someone who would understand what it meant, who would care about these women’s stories.”
“And someone who would have the right friends to help her figure out what to do next,” Susan added with a meaningful look around the group.
They spent several more minutes in the room, examining different items and talking about what Kathleen and Patrick had discovered.
“We should head back upstairs,” Kathleen said reluctantly, checking her phone for the time. “Isabel, the hairdresser?—”
“Will be here soon,” Isabel said with a smile. “We should start getting ready, but this is amazing. It’s the most incredible start to my wedding day that I could have imagined.”
As they climbed the stairs back to the main floor, Susan turned to Kathleen. “What are you going to do? About the room, I mean.”
“Patrick and I talked about contacting Percy and Chloe,” Kathleen told her. “If what we found is authentic, it could be incredibly valuable, especially to historians.”
