The next morning, I arrive at Harold Washington Library at ten o’clock with six everything bagels, cream cheese, napkins, plastic knives, and a coffee thermos in the bottom of my backpack. I’m hoping security won’t take my breakfast gift for the two ladies helping me with my latest drama.
I reach the other side of the checkpoint, breakfast still in the bag, and Lula is waiting. “Hello.”
“Good morning, Sawyer.” She hooks her thumbs on the belt loops of her pants.
This is my first time seeing her in something other than blue scrubs. She looks just as lovely in a sleeveless pale yellow blouse and khakis as in her uniform. She signals me to follow her to the elevator bank.
“Remind me what we’re looking for again.”
“We are on a hunting expedition. In search of Honoree Dalcour, who claims my grandmother Maggie White Hendrickson is her daughter, making Miss Honoree my great-grandmother.”
The elevator doors open, but we don’t step forward. We stand in the small hallway, alone. Lula is staring at me with a slack jaw and a gray pallor that tempts me to check her pulse.
“It is what we were shouting about yesterday,” I explain. “I don’t believe she’s lying.”
“Oh my God, Sawyer. Is that even possible? Are you okay?” She sounds appropriately shocked. Her concern for my well-being is a bonus. “I don’t understand. Why would she make up such a crazy story?”
“I don’t believe she made it up,” I repeat.
The elevator door opens again, and we step inside but do not speak. I want to give her a few minutes to wrap her head around this news. I spent the entire night mulling it over.
We disembark on the sixth floor, and I follow Lula to an open space, the size of a small cafeteria, except without food, only desks and partitions and computers and rolling metal carts.
Lula’s aunt Deidre is a librarian and archivist, and her office is in one of those open environments that remind me of a maze of desks, ergonomic chairs, twentysomething-inch computers, laptops, and printers.
“Deidre, this is Sawyer Hayes. He’s the filmmaker I told you about who’s interviewing Miss Honoree for a documentary for his doctorate thesis.”
“A pleasure to meet you.” She gestures for us to sit. I remove my bag of goodies from my backpack. The ladies smile appreciatively, as I do my best not to stare. Deidre is not what you might expect. Two or three decades older than Lula and me, but clearly she’s hipper than either one of us.
Her generous Afro is freestyle and dyed a shade of red you might call crimson, which she adorns with different-colored hairpins and bows. A long, loose dress flows as she moves, but her boldest statement is her eye gear—oversize, round-rimmed glasses with red bedazzled frames. I learned about bedazzling from my sister, so I have a fondness for Deidre.
“Thank you for your help with Honoree’s mystery visitor,” I say, still taking in her workspace.
“I understand he’s your father.”
“Yes. A long story I would rather not go into.” I say this with a smile and without a hint of rage. “That’s a lot of books.” I nod at her desktop.
“Yes, it’s a mess.” Deidre settles into the chair behind her desk, and a pile of books and papers. “I have a method to the madness, I assure you.”
“I believe you and am all ears,” I say.
“We are in luck. I found several documents I believe you’ll find interesting.” Deidre pushes a stack of papers aside. “Take notes, but I will give you photocopies of most of this.”
I remove my iPad, thumbs poised. “Ready.”
“Honoree Dalcour was listed in the 1910 census in Baton Rouge with her parents, Cleo and Rufus Norman. She was five. In 1920, she and her mother were in the census in Chicago. After that, Honoree didn’t appear again until 1970. She lived in an apartment on Sixty-Seventh Street and South Shore Drive.”
“Is that unusual, the census gap?”
“Yes and no. It happened in the poorer neighborhoods,” Deidre says.
“She lived by herself?” Lula asks.
“No. She lived with a woman named Gertrude Morgan, a grocery store owner who passed away in 1982,” Deidre adds, fishing for something in her desk drawer. “Is that name familiar?”
“No.” I glance at Lula. “So this was three years before Honoree moved into the facility. Maybe this woman was her caregiver.”
“Or her friend. We don’t know. Remember, Miss Honoree didn’t move in on her own,” Deidre said. “Your grandmother arranged Honoree’s move into the senior-care facility. I was working there then, and the same age as Lula.”
