Sheila Connolly - Relatively Dead 02 - Seeing the Dead (8 page)

• • •

Abby presented herself at the historical society promptly at ten on Saturday. There was no doorbell that she could see, but the nineteenth-century door sported a large brass knocker, so she tried that. A woman’s voice called out from inside, “It’s open,” so Abby pushed the door open, to reveal a woman who looked to be about a hundred years old—and whose weight matched. Abby swallowed her first response: maybe this woman had actually known the minutemen.

“Hi, I’m Abigail Kimball I have an appointment to meet someone to help me with my family history.”

“I’m Esther Jewett. Come in before we lose all the heat in here—it’s expensive. Wish spring would hurry up.”

Esther waited for Abby to enter and close the heavy door behind her. “What is it you’re looking for?” she demanded.

“I’m trying to find an ancestor who I believe was a Littleton minuteman.”

“What’ve you got so far? Oh, we might as well sit down. This might take a while.” She led the way to a massive oak library table. Abby took a moment to admire the handsome building—nineteenth-century, with high ceilings and lots of woodwork. “Sit,” Esther said in a no-nonsense tone, gesturing toward a chair. She took one on the opposite side of the table.

Abby sat as ordered. “I work at the Concord Museum, but I’ve lived in the state for only a few months. I discovered some relatives I never knew about, buried in Waltham, and they led me to Weston and Concord. I’ve been looking in the communities surrounding Concord to see if I can identify anyone else from my family.”

“Who’s buried in Concord?” Esther snapped. She was certainly direct, and not one for social graces. Maybe at her age she’d decided it was a waste of time.

“My three-times great-grandmother, Mary Ann Corey,” Abby told her. “She married William Reed. It’s the Reeds and the Flaggs I found in Waltham.”

“No Coreys among the minutemen,” Esther said with a sniff.

“I know—I checked.”

“When was your Mary Ann born?”

“1821,” Abby told her, from memory.

“Huh. Too late to be a daughter of a minuteman. Maybe granddaughter. What’s your source?”

“That’s what the cemetery record said. Mary Ann was the first one buried at the family plot at Sleepy Hollow. I would have looked further back, but then I got this new job and moved, and I got busy. But now I want to see if I have a link to the battle at the Bridge in Concord, and I understand the men from Littleton took part.”

“Patriots’ Day stuff,” Esther said dismissively.

“Yes, exactly. But I’m having trouble finding my Mary Ann Corey, going back.”

“You check the vital records?”

“Of course. I didn’t find anyone who fit.”

“I’m not surprised. Sometimes those transcribers back in the day were idiots, or maybe illiterate. Plenty of mistakes. But I think you’re in luck. We just wrapped up a project, scanning all the records in the town clerk’s office. You been there?”

Abby shook her head. “They’re only open days. My job keeps me pretty busy, and I haven’t been working there long enough to have any vacation time coming. Are those records online?”

“Not yet. But we had a professional hard copy made—some people like to look at the real thing, not a picture on a screen. Cost a bit, too. Want to see them?”

“Of course I do!”

“Wait there,” Esther said, and disappeared into another room. While she was gone, Abby stood and strolled around the room, examining books on the shelves, pulling one out now and then. Even from a quick inspection she could tell that there was a wealth of information here. There were typed manuscripts on flimsy paper; there were transcriptions of someone else’s earlier diaries; there were copies of individual families’ Bibles. If it had been food, Abby would have been drooling shamelessly. As it was, her fingers itched to start leafing through the books.

She was startled when Esther spoke behind her. “Come on back,” she said. “We keep them in the back to protect them. Sometimes people think they can help themselves to whatever they want.” Abby followed her into another room, where Esther pointed to a pair of folio-size bound volumes laying on a table.

“That’s the entire history of the town?” Abby thought there would have been more.

“That’s just births, marriages, deaths, burials and the like up to 1850. The town records are in other volumes. Thought you wanted to find specific people?”

“I do. Thank you. This is a great place to start. Tell me, do you work here?”

“I’m a volunteer. I’ve been working on my family’s history most of my adult life, and I’ve spent a lot of time here. Once my husband died I got bored, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life polishing the furniture. So I started helping out here. I come cheap. You can pay me by the hour, though.”

“Sure, fine.” Abby wasn’t about to quibble: she had research to do, and the clock was ticking. “Are you staying around or do you have to be somewhere else?”

“Trying to get rid of me, are you?” Esther softened her comment with a flicker of a smile. “I let you in, so I’ve got to keep an eye on you, make sure you don’t stuff our documents down your shirt.”

“People do that?” Abby said in dismay.

“Sure do. I’ve got to watch them like a hawk. If you want to be alone, I’ll go sit in the office—the chair’s more comfortable in there. Yell if you need me.”

Funny woman,
Abby thought. She settled herself at the table and pulled the first heavy volume toward her. It took her a few moments to get used to the handwriting, although it was still remarkably legible after a couple of hundred years. They certainly knew how to make ink back then. She wondered if the originals would outlive anything produced now.

All right, she knew when Mary Ann had been born, and when she died. She also knew that she had married William Reed in Concord in 1845, so that narrowed her search. The bound volumes didn’t make it easy, though: when they had been started they had been neatly divided into categories like birth and death, but some parts had filled up earlier than others, so later dates ended up out of sequence; details like deaths had been inserted on the same page as births. In addition, the amount of detail given varied from entry to entry. Some death records gave only a date, while others added burial, where interred, cause of death and even more. It was interesting reading, and as the same names occurred over and over, Abby began to feel as though she knew the people of Littleton, in a different time.

The first volume yielded nothing pertinent, although Abby enjoyed reading through the entries. She swapped it out for the second one and started over. This one picked up around 1840, Abby guessed. The writer had changed again, and his handwriting was crabbed, his spelling atrocious. Still, this was the original source, so Abby plowed through the pages. Then stopped.

There was Mary Ann Corey of Littleton marrying William Reed of Concord. That part she knew. But what was new to her was the name written in parentheses after the “Corey”—in the same hand, with the same ink—that said “Perry.” Was this a correction of somebody’s earlier mishearing of the surname? Or something more?

Abby started leafing through the pages in reverse order until she came to pages for 1841 and stopped. Mary Ann Perry, daughter of Reuben Perry and Hannah, his wife, had married Stephen Corey in 1841. Making her Mary Ann Corey. Who had married William Reed four years later.

There was a Perry on the Littleton monument—two, in fact: Henry and Benjamin. She had her man on the green.

8

She was so boggled by her find that she found herself leafing through the books randomly, hunting for other Perry appearances. There were plenty. Who was this Henry Perry? Perrys cropped up regularly in the books in front of her, and she hadn’t even touched on any of the surrounding communities. She’d have to start from scratch with them.

She was jerked out of her focus by a cough from Esther, now standing behind her. “Hey, you been here four hours already. I didn’t figure you’d take so long, being your first visit. Kind of like a scouting trip?”

Abby wanted to snap at her to go away and leave her alone, but she figured she’d need Esther’s help later. “I’m sorry, am I keeping you from something? Actually I should go—I want to sort through what I’ve found and work out what my next steps are, and I shouldn’t waste your time by doing it here. Can we get together again? I mostly have time on weekends. I could manage an appointment at night, if you’d rather.”

“I like my shows at night, and I don’t drive after dark. But weekends are good. How about this? You go home and sort out your notes, then we can figure out a good time to meet again. Don’t know that you’ll have time the next week or so, what with Patriots’ Day and all that fuss. You might want to come watch the real muster here.”

“I saw the guys practicing the other day—that’s what started me thinking.” Not exactly the way Esther might have imagined, but true enough. “That sounds like a plan. And thank you for pointing me in the right direction.”

“You owe me sixty dollars—I charge fifteen an hour.”

Abby thought that was extremely reasonable, but maybe she was still giddy with her discovery. “Check? Cash?”

“Cash is good, if you’ve got it.”

Abby rummaged through her purse and came up with three twenty-dollar bills. Esther said, “Just leave it on the table for now. Good luck.”

“Should I call you?” Abby asked.

“No, just call this place and set up something. I’m always around.”

“Thanks!”

Esther walked Abby to the door, then disappeared back inside. Abby stood on the steps for a moment, breathing deeply. She had a name: Henry Perry. He was the right age to have fought in the Revolution. She could check his military records online. Esther was right: no need to waste her time hunting for information she could get somewhere else. Abby’s mouth twitched at the thought of Esther—it wouldn’t surprise her to learn that Esther was providing research services on the side, at least in part. But at least she was affordable, and more important, knowledgeable.

Abby checked the time: it was closer to three than to two. Esther had been generous. Abby had time to run her weekend errands, and then she wanted to go home and start digging. But as she walked to her car, she wondered if she should look around at bit more, since she was already in Littleton. There was an old cemetery right in the heart of town—she could at least stop there and take a look and see if there were any Perrys there. She turned her car around and went back to where she had seen it, then parked.

The cemetery was midsized by local standards, and most of the stones were slate, which suggested dates in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. That would be about right. They were scattered in no particular order rather than in tidy rows. Not that Abby cared at the moment: this was a first pass, and she wanted to see who was there. She stopped at the gate that led through the stone surrounding wall: should she be worried about meeting more relatives? Did she want to, here? She felt like a hunting dog, sniffing the air for … spirits? She was glad there was no one else nearby, because she’d look like an idiot, stopping every few feet not to look at a particularly interesting stone but to see if she could pick up any vibrations or emanations or …
This is ridiculous!
she told herself.
Just get on with it.
Find out if there are any Perrys here and say hi—and see if they answer.

There were none. If she had any deceased relatives in this nicely kept and pretty cemetery, they weren’t interested in communicating with her. She wasn’t disappointed: if there had been Perrys in this town, they could have been buried somewhere other than the center of town, even on their own land, which was not uncommon in earlier centuries. Or they could all have moved away, after the Revolution, looking for better opportunities farther west. Or … No, too many questions that she couldn’t answer while standing here and staring. She needed to do more homework, then come back. And there must be a newer cemetery too, but she didn’t have time to investigate that yet. It was beginning to get dark, and she still had to stop at the market on her way home.

• • •

The house was dark and quiet when she arrived. No ghosts. Abby wondered whether, if she were staying somewhere long term, she’d get a pet—a cat or a dog to welcome her home, even if all they wanted was their dinner. Her family had had a few when she was growing up, but since then the timing had never been right. Brad hadn’t wanted small furry things that would get in his way and shed all over his business suits. Abby had always suspected that Brad didn’t want anything around that diverted her attention away from him, even for a little while. Well, Brad was gone, but she still had no pets. She’d have to make sure that the next place she lived would allow one.

After another quick supper she settled in front of her laptop, but sat there, staring at the screen, her shoulders slumped. She wanted to talk to Ned. It had been a week since they’d had any contact—since she’d more or less demanded that he give her some space. But now she had this great new discovery, and she wanted to tell him all about it, ask him what the best way to research it would be.
Oh, Abby, be honest! You miss him
. She’d given him a list of reasons why they shouldn’t rush into anything now—and they weren’t worth warm spit. If she could erase the Brad years, would she have acted differently? Yes, she thought so. She wouldn’t be so cautious now, so suspicious of Ned’s motives and of her reaction to him.

She’d been attracted to him from the beginning, but she had buried that deep, out of loyalty to Brad. She wasn’t about to carry on with two men at once, no way. She had been open about Ned with Brad—heck, she had made a point of introducing them, to make sure everything was aboveboard—and Brad had dismissed him, even suggested that Ned was gay. In other words, based on one quick meeting, Brad had decided that Ned was no threat to him, and that was that. She had been so pathetically grateful that anybody had noticed her that she hadn’t dared examine too closely whatever was going on.