The Lost Hours (39 page)

I’d become a regular fixture at the Georgia Historical Society during my years of burying my past life by hiding in someone else’s as a genealogist. Tucker and I climbed the familiar broad brownstone stairway with heavy curving balustrades to the solid mahogany doors tucked under a two-columned portico.

When we entered the great hall with its soaring three-story-high ceilings, Tucker stopped and looked up. “I guess they’re pretty serious about their history here.” I followed his gaze to the wall above the entrance, where engraved in gold leaf on red mottled marble were the words
No Feasting, drinking, and smok-ing or amusements of any kind will be permitted within its walls
.

I put my finger to my lips. “Quiet. They’ll ask us to leave.”

He raised an eyebrow, then rolled his eyes in an exaggerated version of Lucy’s favorite move, and I had to cough to hide my laughter. Shaking my head, I led him over to the reference desk to show my ID and sign in.

I was already a registered user, and after doing an online search of their catalog, I’d called in ahead of time so that the boxes and folders of information I’d requested had already been pulled from the repository. I clasped my laptop—one of the few articles for note-taking actually allowed in the library—and we headed through the main hall with its large, vaulted windows, which had been designed in a time when there was little artificial light or ventilation, and into the reading room. We sat down at one of the four large tables made of slabs of solid walnut supported by cast iron, and stared at each other over the boxes and folders that had been pulled for us.

“What do we do now?” asked Tucker.

I slid a large box across the table toward him. “These are all from various personal collections housed here. I asked for them to be pulled because they contained newspaper clippings and obituaries from the years nineteen twenty-five through nineteen sixty. I want you to look for anybody with the last names of Montet, O’Hare, Harrington, or Ross—either birth or death information. My preliminary online searches have only shown Josephine’s death information, but only because she was relatively well-known at the time of her death. But I can’t find any of her birth information, and there’s nothing on Freddie, which makes me think that he used another last name for legal documents. Anyway, after we verify that we’re looking at the right person, we’ll look through the newspaper obituaries on microfiche. That’s where you find all of the interesting data—as in remaining family, where they were living, and where they’re buried.”

He frowned. “What will you be doing?”

“I’ll be upstairs going through microfiche. They’ve got death registers from nineteen nineteen to nineteen ninety-four, so I’m bound to find something—assuming I can find the right name.”

He continued to regard me. “You’ve done this a lot, then.”

I nodded. “Kept me busy.”

Tucker eyed the boxes in front of him. “What time does the library close?”

“Five o’clock. And at four forty-five they’ll come and start making you pack up. They’re very strict about it.”

Sliding the box toward him, Tucker said, “Then I’d better get started.”

I made my way to the microfiche machines and, after retrieving the films for the dates I’d requested, worked in relative silence for several hours and through lunch, my stomach rumbling its protest but I was unwilling to stop. I was no longer afraid of discovering my grandmother’s story; I was simply eager to know it. Somewhere in the last months I’d begun to see my malaise of the last years as less of an inevitability, or a genetic response to failure. Instead, in discovering my grandmother, I realized that I’d inherited a lot more from her, and my curiosity and need to push further and get there faster might even be related to the drive she’d once had as a young woman.

My stomach rumbled again and I thought of the granola bar I’d tucked in the pocket of the sweater I’d brought to keep me warm in the cool air-conditioning. But the staff ’s eagerness to keep the researchers alert by the near-arctic temperatures was matched only in their desire to keep crumbs off of rare manuscripts and documents, and the first sound of a crinkling wrapper would bring staff from all corners of the building, resulting in us being tossed out on the sidewalk.

I went back to work, blinking my tired eyes and sighing in frustration when I realized we only had two more hours until closing. My first perusal of the death register had yielded nothing unusual, only the death information for the fathers of both Lillian and Annabelle. I could find nothing for either Josie or Freddie, although I did find the death register for their mother, Justine.

The only alternative that I could think of was to guess Freddie’s birth dates and start flipping through the birth registers in the hope that my guess had been accurate.

It was nearly four thirty when I stopped, my finger held in midair over a page of scrawled names of the dead. I’d been focused on the death register of a woman with five different names, either given to her at birth or she’d been married multiple times, when it had occurred to me that we might know exactly where to look for Josie and Freddie, after all. Quickly, I shoved the book out of the way and pulled out the register containing deaths for the year nineteen eighty-one.

I flipped open the nineteen eighty-one book, the year of Justine’s death—and found her name again, tucked in with the other Ms. In my experience in researching people’s genealogies, unwed mothers tended to use creative license on their children’s birth certificates to either hide the identity of the biological father, or protect their family name from scandal by using their middle or even their mother’s maiden name as a last name for their illegitimate children. Still keeping the name in the family, but not close enough to warrant scrutiny.

I scanned the entry again. Justine’s middle name had been Marie, but her mother’s maiden name was Latrobe. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, I pulled out my forbidden cell phone and sent a text to Tucker. “Check Latrobe for last name.” Glancing at my watch again, I quickly skipped to the book containing the year of Josie’s birth, nineteen eighteen, and flipped to the Ls.

A member of the staff approached the table. “The library will be closing in fifteen minutes. You may leave the books on the table, but you’ll need to start finishing up now.” Her smile indicated that we would be locked inside the frigid library with the documents if we dared to linger any longer than the five o’clock closing.

I nodded, then quickly went back to the book again, looking for the last name of Latrobe. I knew the information would still be here after we’d left, but I’d have to wait two more days before the library reopened the following Tuesday. Despite all of my foot dragging up to this point, I didn’t think my patience could take having to wait even one more hour.

I felt nearly weak with relief when I found what I’d been searching for. The same staff member appeared again in the reading room doorway. “We’re closing. It’s time to leave.”

I stood as I scanned the entry quickly, not having time to take notes on my laptop, and instead committed the information to memory. I stopped, forgetting to breathe for a moment as I recognized a familiar name.

“My friend is downstairs,” I explained. “I’ll just go get him and we’ll leave together.” Without waiting for an answer, I headed down the stairs.

Tucker stood as we entered and smiled. “All done? If not, we can come back on Tuesday if we need to.”

I stared at him dumbly, irrationally thinking that the overhead lights that were now being shut off should be shining with brighter intensity or at least flashing on and off to illustrate my discovery.

With Tucker taking hold of my elbow, we were escorted out by two staff members and a security guard, who made a great show of jangling keys and locking the door behind us. I stopped on the front step, unable to go any farther without sharing my newfound knowledge.

I faced Tucker, my hands grasping his upper arms. “Leonard O’Hare was Josie and Freddie’s father. Being a doctor, he must have filled out and filed the birth certificates himself so nobody would know. Josie and Freddie were Annabelle’s half brother and half sister.”

He raised both eyebrows, then tugged on my arm. “Let’s keep walking. I think I found something, too, and I don’t want anybody else knowing.”

I walked with him down the steps, impatiently following him as he led us into Forsyth Park, finally stopping at a bench near the fountain. Looking around us, he said, “Sit down.”

I did and waited for him to join me. We must have been walking relatively fast because I was a little out of breath, but was surprised to find that my knee wasn’t hurting me as much as it should have been. I wondered if the exercises Emily was forcing me to do might actually have been doing some good.

“Do you think Lillian knew about Josie and Freddie’s father?” he asked.

“No, I’m pretty sure she didn’t. I guess we’re going to have to tell her.” I squinted at him in the bright sunlight. “You said you found something, too.”

He waited for a moment before reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a yellowed newspaper clipping.

“You stole something from the archives!” My outrage raised my voice enough to have several passersby glance in our direction.

“Shh,”
he said. “I only borrowed it. I promise to be there at ten o’clock sharp Tuesday morning to put it back where I found it. But there was too much information for me to memorize and not enough time to jot it down, so I borrowed it.”

“If they find out, they’ll never let me back in.” I tried not to let my curiosity overtake my indignation, but I failed. “So what is it?”

“Well, when I got your text, I knew immediately where to go. A good friend of mine in med school was a Latrobe, so I guess when I first saw the name on a folder, I went through the whole thing to see if it might be the same family. It wasn’t, but the name and the folder I’d pulled it from sort of stuck with me.” He handed the clipping to me, a look of smug satisfaction on his face. “This was one of the items in the folder. It must have been filed there by accident because of the last name.”

I smiled, my guilt lessened somewhat by the promise of discovering something new. Taking the clipping, I held my breath and began to read. It was an obituary for Justine Marie Montet, who’d died on May twenty-fifth, nineteen eighty-one, interred at Laurel Grove Cemetery in Savannah. Predeceased by her son, Frederick Latrobe, and daughter, Josephine Montet of New York City and survived by granddaughter Alicia Montet Jones, of Tattnall Street, Savannah.

I looked up at Tucker. “Josie had a daughter, who lived in Savannah and might still be here.” I looked back again for the street, ready to start walking there now.

“Am I forgiven then? Because if I am, I have something else, too.”

My indignation all but forgotten, I held out my hand. “Show me.”

From under his shirt he produced what looked to be a photocopy of an official document. At least he hadn’t folded it up to fit in his back pocket. He handed it to me. “This was clipped to Justine’s obituary.”

It was a copy of Freddie’s death certificate. I glanced at the birth and death dates to see if they corresponded with what we knew about Freddie, then let my gaze roam over the document to see if I could find whatever it was that had made Tucker borrow it.

“Look at the cause of death,” he said.

My gaze went back to the correct box. “Suicide. By hanging.” I closed my eyes for a moment, and shook my head. “He was only twenty-six years old. What would have made him want to kill himself?”

“Piper, it was Georgia in nineteen thirty-nine and Freddie was a black man. It’s entirely possible that it wasn’t a suicide. Your grandmother mentioned in her scrapbook that he was involved in registering black voters. Back then, men would have killed for less.”

I sat back, my mind spinning. “Josie’s daughter—what was her name?”

“Alicia Jones.”

“We need to see if she still lives here—and it should be easier because we have the street name, too. I know I’m pushing my luck, but let’s look in the phone book and see if we can find her. If not, I’ll go online. I hate to pay for that kind of information, but if I need to, I know a great search engine.”

He stood and reached for my hand. I took his and let him pull me up. “You’re pretty good at this stuff, Piper.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling oddly pleased. “A lot of it is dull and routine, but every once in a while you’re given a little bit of a mystery to solve, and it makes everything else worthwhile.”

Tucker didn’t move away. “I have a feeling that you’d be good at anything you set your mind to.”

I looked away, embarrassed. “Come on. Let’s get back to the house to find what Helen and George turned up and to see if I can locate Alicia Jones.”

We walked the short blocks back to Taylor Street, and I didn’t think once about how hot it was or even if my knee hurt. I was too busy thinking about what Tucker had said.
I have a feeling that you’d be good at anything you set your mind to.

I practically bounded up the steps when we reached the house and then fumbled impatiently with the keys to get inside the front door. Helen was laughing, although it sounded a lot closer to giggling, in the front parlor, and when I walked in I found her and George sitting on the love seat and her hands were clasped in his. He didn’t even have the decency to drop her hands when he spotted us.

“Hello, Earlene,Tucker. We were wondering what was taking you so long. I was just telling Helen about a few of my court cases, some of which have been rather humorous.” He patted Helen’s hand and then stood. “So, did you find out anything new?”

I plopped down in my grandmother’s armchair. “Quite a bit, actually. I discovered that Josie and Freddie were my grandmother’s half siblings. Apparently my great-grandfather had a longtime relationship with their mother and employed her as his housekeeper to keep it simple.”