And yet, hers had certainly been the only family in Atlanta without a story to share, a plantation to grieve for, at least a dozen family members to memorialize. The Civil War had simply never been a topic of conversation in the house. In fact, the only inheritance that had even been acknowledged was the island. And that had come with the unspoken understanding that the only treasures there were the sea and the salt marshes.
Gen wondered why. She wondered now more than ever.
Then she opened the next trunk, and the questions became more important. Because she found clothing she somehow recognized.
Practical dresses, frilly gowns, fans, slippers. Jewelry, some of it exquisitely delicate. Gen pulled it out, held it in her hands and felt an odd heat from stones unworn in over a century. A small fortune in precious and semiprecious stones, which had been callously shut away in a moldering attic rather than handed down with fond stories of their owner.
It made Gen angry. She should have known something about this woman, her great-great-grandmother, if she was right, and she didn’t even know her name.
She found her answer beneath nightdresses that still held their starched form, as if waiting for their owner to return for them any minute. It was a journal, of the sort all ladies and gentlemen kept in the last century. A small, careworn book with a leather cover and a faded ribbon for place marker. Gen’s hands shook as she reached for it.
Was that a noise?
Gen whipped around without the book, almost expecting to see her ancestor materialize out of the dark. She could feel her here, could feel that old, old grief, the joy that had shattered into a million sorrows. The lost soul of a woman who had loved too much. Gen wanted to speak to her. She wanted to hear her voice and know what terrible legacy she had passed to her unknowing great-great-granddaughter.
Evidently it wasn’t to be. Gen heard another scraping sound, but this was from the floor below.
“Is it all right if I come up?” asked a voice.
Gen instinctively drew her hand away from her find. She wasn’t sure she could share this with anybody. It was, after all, only hers. Her family, her history, her dreams.
Rafe’s memory.
“Thank you for asking,” Gen answered, reaching for the little journal again. “Considering how eerie it is up here, I would have had a heart attack if you’d popped up out of nowhere.”
He looked even more unreal in this light, just an impression of life. Towering, gleaming oddly in the half-light with that shirt on that opened at the throat.
Gen wanted to look. She wanted to enjoy. She was afraid to.
“Are you okay?” he asked, crouching beside her. “You’ve been up here forever.”
Startled, Gen looked around as if she’d find verification in the clutter. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been... reacquainting myself with my past. There are some boots over there you might like. Try ’em.”
Rafe obliged. Gen went back to the trunk.
“They fit perfectly.”
Gen didn’t even smile. “What a surprise.” She carefully set the journal atop the things she was saving from the other trunk. Procrastinating. Putting off the inevitable as long as she could. Instead, she lifted out the little box of jewelry again.
“He must have loved her very much,” Rafe unaccountably said behind her.
Gen couldn’t keep herself from jumping. This place just wasn’t good for her health. Her heart was stumbling around again, as if trying to hold her life and another’s at the same time. As if the memories that had been confined in this trunk were too much for one person to survive.
“Why do you say that?” she asked, still looking down at the filigreed-gold-and-garnet necklace.
“Those. They’re breathtaking.”
Gen nodded. They were. Not only that, they were individual, not the usual kind of jewelry one saw from the Civil War. Someone had designed these to fit perfectly around one neck, to slip onto one well-loved finger….
She hadn’t even thought about it, but there it was. Her wedding ring. A gold band with a unique design—a heart held on each side by hands.
“ACladdagh ring,” Gen whispered, awed. Amazed by the delicate workmanship, the emotion expressed in its giving.
“A what?” Rafe asked, crouching next to her.
Gen had trouble holding still. He was too near, especially now, with her holding Rafe’s most sincere expression of love for her in her hand…. She meant the other man’s…. She didn’t know what she meant. Because suddenly, inexplicably, she was overcome by the certainty that this ring had been forged for her.
It belonged in her hand, on her finger. It should never have been taken off, no matter what anybody thought. She could have wept with the feeling of relief at finding it again.
