In movies, grandmothers were soft and sweet or zany and loving. They baked cookies and wore cozy sweaters.Mygrandmother was like iron, tough enough to break any fairy-tale notions. Grandma, if she’d been a holiday candle, wouldn’t be cinnamon-and-nutmeg scented but something cool, like snow and pine, amber and lavender. She twisted her hair in a chignon, wore necklaces and earrings every day, and drank an inch of Grand Marnier after dinner without fail.Excited, perhaps, would never be the right word for her. “What word, then?”
“I’m... interested. In how people will behave.”
“People? Like Dad and Uncle Harry and the others? Or like your brothers?”
She shrugged. “Everyone, I suppose.”
“Like Grandpa? Is this all because of him?”
“Not everything’s about a man, dear.”
“I know.” Who was the twenty-first-century woman here? I changed the topic. “I found an old box when I went up to the attic to get the decorations. Filled with old stuff. I brought it to my room, but I thought you might want to see it.”
“What’s in it?”
“Things from the 1800s, I think. A painting and seashells and some other things. I think maybe it used to belong to a Barbanel woman. It was hidden beneath a floorboard.”
Her brows rose. “A floorboard? Well. This house is full of secrets.”
“Not unlike this family,” I said, and her lips quirked up. “Do you know any old stories about Barbanel women from back then? Like if any of them had forbidden lovers?”
“Who didn’t?” she asked dryly.
I gaped at her. “Did you?”
“No. IfI’dbeen in love with someone, I would have married them.” She gave a bouquet of white lilies a final touch in its slate-blue vase, her movements jerkier than usual, her expression tight. “There’s plenty of books in your grandfather’s study about the family. Let’s see what we can find.”
I followed her in silence. She’d clearly been alluding to how Grandpa used to be in love with Abby’s grandmother, which had all come out last summer. I wanted to sayI’m sure Grandpa married you because he loved you, but I wasn’t sure he had, was I? It made me sick to my stomach to think of the two of them being unhappy.
Grandpa’s study was in the original wing of the house, a low-ceilinged room with dark wood and heavy furniture. Grandma knocked once, firmly, then opened the door.
My grandfather looked up from behind his desk, his weathered face surprised. “Helen.”
“Shira wants to look at some of the old family history,” Grandma said coolly. “I thought you could help her.”
“Of course,” Grandpa said, but before he could say anythingmore, Grandma had glided out the door, regal as a queen.
I smiled tentatively. “Hi, Grandpa.”
Grandpa was old, even for a grandfather—he hadn’t had his kids until he was in his thirties, and the next generation had done the same. Every time I saw him, I was surprised anew by how ancient he appeared.
Also, Grandpa and I didn’t, like, hang out. I liked to sit next to him on the couch and read silently, and I helped him walk around the house when he needed an arm, but I didn’t have much tosayto him, other thanYup, school, still happening. New York, still there. “Um, so like Grandma said, I was hoping we had a family tree from the 1800s. I found this old box in the attic...”
He looked pleased, and I immediately felt bad. Maybe I should have tried harder earlier to find common ground. “What sort of box?”
I pulled a chair over next to him as I told the story again, and his creased face brightened. He stood—a slow, laborious moment in which I wasn’t sure if I should assist or not. His back was bent as he made his way to the bookshelves, scanning through them and pulling out one volume after another until he found the one he wanted. “Here we go,” he said, reseating himself with a long groan. He placed a binder before us and flipped through to a family tree.
“It sounds like you’re looking for our family on Nantucket but before photography, then,” Grandpa said. “Joseph Barbanel came to Nantucket at the turn of the nineteenth century. Hisfather had a successful accounting office in New Bedford, which Joseph’s older brother inherited. Joseph came to Nantucket, since the towns had a strong connection to the whaling trade.” He flipped a page, showing me a sketch of a small house. “At first the Barbanels lived in town, but in the 1830s, Joseph’s son, Marcus, had Golden Doors built.”
I flipped back to the family tree, peering at the names. Joseph and Esther Barbanel were connected by a line at the very top, and two children descended from them: Marcus and his sister, Naomi. Marcus had three daughters; the family line descended from the eldest, Shoshana.
I pointed at Shoshana’s name. “What’s going on here? How come she kept her last name, and we have her name, not her husband’s?”
Grandpa smiled, his finger wavering slightly as he tapped the page. “Shoshana married Nathaniel, her father’s apprentice. He took the name Barbanel to continue the family line, and he helped her lead the business.”
I studied the dates. Shoshana had been only eighteen when she married, and she had had five children. The eldest, Rebecca, would have been twenty in 1860. So we had three generations around before photography really took off: Marcus and his sister, Shoshana andhersisters, and potentially Rebecca and her profusion of siblings and cousins. Didn’t exactly narrow down possibilities for the owner of the box. “Can I take pictures of these?”
“Of course, sweetheart.”
