Tess Gerritsen: The Bone Garden: A Novel

— He's disappointed. But he's also a patient man. —

— Well, I do like him. —

— So what's the problem? —

— Maybe I like him too much. It scares me. I know how fast love can fall apart. — Julia turned to the window again and looked at the sea. It was as calm and flat as a mirror. — One minute you're happy and in love, and everything is right with the world. You think nothing can go wrong. But then it does, the way it did for me and Richard. The way it did for Rose Connolly. And you end up suffering for it all the rest of your life. Rose had that one short taste of happiness with Norris, and then she had to live all those years with the memory of what she'd lost. I don't know if it's worth it, Henry. I don't know if I could stand it. —

— I think you're taking the wrong lesson from Rose's life. —

— What's the right lesson? —

— To grab it while you can! Love. —

— And suffer the consequences. —

Henry gave a snort. — You know all those dreams you've been having? There's a message there, Julia, but it's wasted on you. She would have taken the chance. —

— I know that. But I'm not Rose Connolly. — She sighed. — Goodbye, Henry. —

She had never seen Henry look so dapper. As they sat together in the director's office of the Boston Athenaeum, Julia kept stealing glances at him, amazed that this was the same old Henry who liked to putter around his creaky Maine house in baggy pants and old flannel shirts. She'd expected him to be wearing that same wardrobe when she'd picked him up at his Boston hotel that morning. But the man she'd found waiting for her in the lobby was wearing a black three-piece suit and carrying an ebony cane with a brass tip. Not only had Henry shed his old clothes, he'd shed his perpetual scowl as well, and he was actually flirting with Mrs. Zaccardi, the Athenaeum's director.

And Mrs. Zaccardi, all of sixty years old, was obligingly flirting right back.

— It's not every day we receive a donation of such significance, Mr. Page, — she said. — There's a long line of eager scholars who can't wait to get their hands on these letters. It's been quite some time since any new Holmes material has surfaced, so we're delighted you chose to donate it to us. —

— Oh, I had to think about it long and hard, — said Henry. — I considered other institutions. But the Athenaeum has, by far, the prettiest director. —

Mrs. Zaccardi laughed. — And you, sir, need new glasses. I'll promise to wear my sexiest dress if you and Julia will join us tonight at the trustees' dinner. I know they'd love to meet you both. —

— I wish we could, — said Henry. — But my grandnephew is flying home from Hong Kong tonight. Julia and I plan to spend the evening with him. —

— Then next month, perhaps. — Mrs. Zaccardi stood up. — Once again, thank you. There are few native sons so deeply revered in Boston as Oliver Wendell Holmes. And the story he tells, in these letters… — She gave an embarrassed laugh. — It's so heartbreaking, it makes me choke up a little. There are so many stories we'll never get to hear, so many other voices lost to history. Thank you for giving us the tale of Rose Connolly. —

As Henry and Julia walked out of the office, his cane made a smart clack-clack. At this early hour on a Thursday morning, the Athenaeum was nearly empty, and they were the only passengers in the elevator, the only visitors who strolled through the lobby, Henry's cane echoing against the floor. They passed a gallery room, and Henry stopped. He pointed to the sign outside the current exhibit: BOSTON AND THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS: PORTRAITS OF AN ERA.

— That would be Rose's era, — he said.

— Do you want to take a look? —

— We have all day. Why not? —

They stepped into the gallery. They were alone in the room, and they could take as long as they wanted to examine each painting and lithograph. They studied an 1832 view of Boston Harbor from Pemberton Hill, and Julia wondered: Is this a view that Rose glimpsed when she was alive? Did she see that same pretty fence in the foreground, the same vista of rooftops? They moved on, to a lithograph of Colonnade Row, with its tableau of smartly dressed ladies and gentlemen standing beneath stately trees, and she wondered if Rose had passed beneath those very trees. They lingered before portraits of Theodore Parker and the Reverend William Channing, faces that Rose might have passed on the street or glimpsed in a window. Here is your world, Rose, a world that has long since passed into history. Like you.

They circled the gallery, and Henry came to an abrupt standstill. She bumped into him, and could feel his body had gone rigid.

— What? — she said. Then her gaze lifted to the oil painting he was staring at, and she, too, went instantly still. In a room full of strangers' portraits, this face did not belong; this face they both knew. The dark-haired young man gazing back at them from the painting stood beside a desk, with his hand laid upon a human skull. Though he had the heavy sideburns and topcoat and intricately tied cravat of his era, his face was startlingly familiar.

— My God, — said Henry. — That's Tom! —

— But it was painted in 1792. —

— Look at the eyes, the mouth. It's definitely our Tom. —

Julia frowned at the label mounted beside the portrait. — The artist is Christian Gullager. It doesn't say who the subject is. —

They heard footsteps in the lobby, and spotted one of the librarians walking past the gallery.

— Excuse me! — Henry called. — Do you know anything about this painting? —

The librarian came into the room and smiled at the portrait. — It's really quite nice, isn't it? — she said. — Gullager was one of the finest portrait painters of that era. —

— Who's the man in the painting? —

— We believe he was a prominent Boston physician named Aldous Grenville. This would have been painted when he was around nineteen or twenty, I think. He died quite tragically in a fire, around 1832. In his country home in Weston. —

Julia looked at Henry. — Norris's father. —

The librarian frowned. — I've never heard he had a son. I only know about his nephew. —

— You know about Charles? — asked Henry, surprised. — Was he notable? —

— Oh, yes. Charles Lackaway's work was very much in vogue in his time. But honestly, between you and me, his poems were quite awful. I think his popularity was mostly due to his romantic cachet as the one-handed poet. —

— So he did become a poet after all, — said Julia.

— With quite a reputation. They say he lost his hand in a duel over a lady. The tale made him quite popular with the fair sex. He ended up dying in his fifties. Of syphilis. — She gazed at the painting. — If this was his uncle, you can see that good looks certainly ran in the family. —

As the librarian walked away, Julia remained transfixed by the portrait of Aldous Grenville, the man who had been Sophia Marshall's lover. I now know what happened to Norris's mother, thought Julia. On a summer's evening, when her son lay feverish, Sophia had left his bedside and had ridden to Aldous Grenville's country house in Weston. There she planned to tell him that he had a son who was now desperately ill.

But Aldous was not at home. It was his sister, Eliza, who heard Sophia's confession, who entertained her plea for help. Was Eliza thinking of her own son, Charles, when she chose her next action? Was it merely scandal she feared, or was it the appearance of another heir in the Grenville line, a bastard who'd take what her own son should inherit?

That was the day Sophia Marshall vanished.

Nearly two centuries would pass before Julia, digging in the weed-choked yard that was once part of Aldous Grenville's summer estate, would unearth the skull of Sophia Marshall. For nearly two centuries Sophia had lain hidden in her unmarked grave, lost to memory.