“Lived with her and worked at a bookstore for a summer.”
I never knew this. I never knew my mom ever went to Charleston at all.
She pulls a photo from the box and slides it across the desk.
In sepia tones, I recognize my young mother instantly: She looks exactly like she does now but with younger edges and sun-kissed skin. Next to her is a man I don’t know, shirtless and standing in front of a boat, lean with mouse-brown hair.
“I fell in love, Rue. Real love.”
“Okay ...” I look from the photo to her. “Who is this?”
“Your father.”
I snort a laugh. “That isnotDad.”
“Not Dad,” she says. “Yourdad, Rueben Vance.”
“What?” My mouth goes dry. “What are you talking about?”
“I thought I loved Ed—and I did—in a comfortable way. A safe way. Different. And don’t ever let this confuse you, Ed was a good man, Rue. He was. He gave us all a good life, and he loved us. But I never felt about him the way I felt about Rueben. I was content, but I was never really the same after that summer. Incomplete.”
I sag back in my chair, struggling to compute what she’s saying.
She continues. “It was only a couple of months, but I loved him with my whole body and every breath I took, and until I went crazy. I was besotted. It was fast and hot and all-consuming from the first day to the last and drove me mad. That’s what it means to be besotted with someone, really. So overwhelmed with them it makes you crazy. Foolish, even.”
Again, I say, “What?” But what I really mean is:What the fuck?What I really mean is:This can’t be fucking happening.
She sighs. “Anyway, I ended up pregnant with you. Only twenty-one and far from home. As soon as I saw those pink lines I knew I wanted to come back to Fontain. My parents were here. My sister, Mabel, before she failed at being a nun.” She smiles warmly at that. Somehow, I do too. Aunt Mabel died a few years ago, but she was unlike any other. A nun turned romance author with zero regard for social norms. “But Rueben ...” Her eyessearch mine. “I told him I wanted to move back, and he said he wouldn’t leave Charleston. He just flat-out refused, and it terrified me. I wanted the things I had growing up—the family, the dinners—everything I tried to give you girls—but I wanted him too. Only he wasn’t made for it. He was—” She cuts herself off.
“Mom?” I don’t know if she’s forgotten or it’s just that terrifying. “He was what?”
“Well.” She takes her glasses off and squares up to me. “He was a treasure hunter, Rue.”
“Hewhat?” This is not real life. It can’t be. This cannot be reality. “That’s not even a real profession.”
She pulls another paper out of the box, this one an old newspaper clipping dated nearly thirty years ago. She hands it to me, silent as I read.
X Marks the Crime: Local Man Arrested While Digging for Lost Civil War Gold in Historic Park
Local man Rueben “Cap” Vance was arrested at 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning for trespassing when officials found him digging in White Point Garden for what he claimed to be a possible burial site of lost gold from the Civil War.
While police noted Vance smelled of alcohol and didn’t have any gold on him (nor was there any in the hole he was digging), in his statement to the police he claimed: “People think the gold stayed in Georgia where it was stolen, but I’m telling you it came to Charleston with Anson Burns!”
For non-history buffs, Anson Burns was a homebound Confederate soldier from near Florence, South Carolina who was found dead in 1865 outside of Charleston. On his person was an unsent letter from him to his wife, seemingly detailing the new life he was planning for them in the cityand the “treasures” they would find, leading legends to form regarding his connection to the stolen reserves. Burns’s cause of death is unknown, but history has romanticized it as a broken heart after he found out his wife had passed.
The robbery cited took place on May 25, 1865, just after the end of the war, and some reports say that possibly $150,000 in gold and silver coins is still missing—worth millions today.
An official statement has not been made about the legitimacy of the treasure claims, and Vance is being held in the county jail awaiting his hearing.
“It was a profession for him,” she explains as I eye the mug shot below the article. “Thought he was the next Mel Fisher or something. Convinced he’d find some Civil War gold and be set for life. Either way, I couldn’t handle it. He loved the idea of that treasure more than he could ever love me. I may have been besotted with him—” Her tone turns sharp. “But he was besotted with that damn gold. A fool for it. I gave him an ultimatum—me or the treasure—thought it would be the nudge for him to choose me, but it didn’t work. He picked the gold. I left. Spent the next forty-two years wishing it would have worked out differently.”
“And Dad?” I can’t think straight. Or at all. “He didn’t care?”
“He didn’t know.”
The longer I look at the photo, the more I see the resemblance between us. The hair color. The thin lips. Reese favored Dad, and Remy was all Mom. I assumed I was a mash-up. I never gave it much thought. Why would I? Ed was my dad.Mydad.
And my mom, apparently, cannot be trusted.
