Jeff Abbott - Distant Blood

I shook my head; I was filling my mind full of nonsensical fantasies based simply on old photographs. Claudia Toussaint Goertz could have been an unfeeling witch who posed well for the camera and Charles Throckmorton might've been a bear of a man who never showed a glimmer of real affection to his wife. I had to stop inventing stories to go with faces; such flights were stumbling blocks to truth. I glanced back at both photos and found I couldn't shake my initial impressions.

The next picture made me pause. It was yellowed with age, taken perhaps in the early twentieth century. The gentleman's clothes certainly suggested the time of World War I. The face was very much like my own: wide-set, pale eyes, high cheekbones, a lock of heavy blond hair falling across the temple, much like that damnable curl that I could never keep combed back. The jaw was heavier, stronger than mine, and the nose wider, but the smirkish half smile the subject allowed himself was one I'd seen on my own face. I touched my finger to the cool glass that covered his countenance.

This, I felt sure, was my great-grandfather, Thomas Goertz. He had been born over a hundred years ago and he'd died years before I was born. His eyes stared into mine, the arch grin he wore wrinkling the corners. I felt his smile's twin creep into its familiar bed on my face. I let fancy take my mind again; had he had a raspy drawl like mine, one that charmed ladies and befriended a rambunctious rebel like Uncle Jake? He had died, I remembered, when Bob Don was twelve or thirteen. Had he hugged his grandson, dreamed great dreams for him, let him play with his pipe?

I suddenly felt dizzy and I sat on the springiness of Aunt Lolly's cold bed. What on earth was I doing, strolling along this rogues' gallery of photos and inventing stories to go with each picture? These people were my family, but they were also strangers.

It didn't matter that I was Bob Don's bastard child.

Thomas Goertz had died years before I first drew breath. He never would have known me, legitimate or illegitimate. And I knew nothing of him; my childhood had not been filled with amusing or tragic stories about Thomas Goertz. I was composing my own family history for these faces too achingly like mine. I realized, with a soft laugh, that I did not even know what his grandchildren and greatgrandchildren called him: Papaw Tom, Pop-Pop, Granddad, Gramps, Big Daddy, or any of the other mutated endearments I'd heard uttered for a patriarch. I studied his face for a moment and decided I would have called him Pop-Pop. Don't ask me why.

This was stupid. I ignored the other pictures: I could see some were of the twins, Bob Don and Gretchen, Aubrey and Sass, and Deborah, in various ages and stages. Those folks I knew enough about not to linger on. Only two other photos made me pause. The first was a picture of a rather plain young man, perhaps in his mid-thirties, with straw-colored hair and wire-rim glasses. He sat on a stool, food piled up on a table behind him, a beer bottle in his hand; no doubt some family function from years ago. His clothes were of the Sixties (a copper peace necklace adorned his neck) and he did not want his photo taken. His reluctance was obvious, a half sneer marring his mouth as the flashcube detonated in his face. I wondered who he was and why he earned a spot on Lolly's wall. His picture frame was grimed with dust, the others were clean.

The other photo was of a young boy, buck-toothed, perhaps nine or ten, with blondish bangs and a wide smile. His clothes suggested the photo was from the early Eighties. A distant cousin, perhaps.

I looked for photos of Deborah with her dead parents, but I did not see any. There were only two photos of Deborah, one as a skinny but pretty teenager, and another from her graduation from nursing school. Deborah looked miserable in every photo, as if that was the only way Lolly wanted to remember her face.

I gave the rest of the room a cursory glance, wondering what Deborah had done in here. Nothing seemed to be dis-turbed, although I'd never been in the room before and had no point of reference. But Lolly seemed a tidy woman (unless someone had neatened up her room since she died, which appeared unlikely) and no object called attention to itself by being glaringly out of place. Why had Deborah come in? What had she taken? Or had she possibly returned some item?

Feeling uneasily like a burglar, I opened one of the drawers; Aunt Lolly's underwear. This I could not do. I shut the drawer and opened the one below it. Pullovers and sweatshirts. I ran my fingers through the garments, not sure of what I was looking for. Nothing.

The third drawer also offered no items of interest-it was mostly folded-up slacks and shorts, along with an assortment of decorative collars for the well-dressed Chihuahua. I stood, shaking my head. I was jumping at shadows here. Deborah probably had some completely justifiable reason for coming into Aunt Lolly's room.

Then why the sneakiness?

I glanced quickly through her closet. Nothing hung there but orderly rows of dresses, all ironed. I wondered how Lolly's mind could have lent itself to such groomed order while embracing the ludicrous fiction that Sweetie possessed her husband's spirit. Compare that childish confection of fantasy with the hard-edged voice that had dissected Deborah so vengefully at the dinner table. Or the slowly maddening woman that Jake described. What kind of woman had Lolly Throckmorton truly been?

A shelf above the dresses held a menagerie of colorful shoe boxes. A quick exploration of these revealed nothing but paper and worn shoes. She'd had small, delicate feet, befitting the smiling, pretty girl in the weathered photo. The next-to-the-last box I took down contained letters. Lots of them. They were postmarked from Port Arthur, Texas, and the name on the return address was that of Charles Throckmorton and the letters were addressed to Lolly Goertz. The dates on the faded, whisper-thin envelopes suggested this was their courtship correspondence. I felt the sharp distaste of having pawed through someone else's memories, dirtying them, and I did not open any of the letters. I quickly returned the box to the shelf, pushing it back with my fingers, nearly turning the box on its end to boost it up. I was clumsy, though, and the box tumbled end over end, spraying out a fan of old, weathered papers.

I cursed myself and began to gather them quickly, feeling even more like an intruder. The aging paper felt dusty and smooth at the same time, crusted with its presence near the sea and worn with handling. I abandoned sorting the letters, gathered them in a fist, and shoved them back into the box. I stood to replace the box on the shelf and only gasped when I looked down at the ground to see if I'd missed any correspondence.

A couple of stray words, pruned from magazines, lay on the floor. I knelt down on the ground again and began to paw through the box, my breath feeling tight in my chest. I found the first card wedged in a rubber-banded mass of old love letters to her husband.

The card was a festive one, a gaggle of puppies and kittens gathered around a humongous birthday cake. The preprinted message on the inside read: YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE A SPECIAL BIRTHDAY!

Words culled from other sources spelled out an additional wish below: CAUSE IT'S GOING TO BE YOUR LAST ONE

My hands trembled as I replaced the card. A quick survey through the rest of the box provided no further evidence of Lolly's peculiar pastime.

She had been sending me this hateful mail? Why? And what did this have to do with her death? I stood-I had to call Mendez.

That's when the door to Lolly's room opened. Or rather, I heard it open. I'd shut the closet door behind me when I'd come in as a precaution (this makes me sound like a professional prowler, but I did it without overmuch thought) and I jerked my hand back from the closet door as though it were a hot stove. I tried to think of an explanation for what I'd done, and unfortunately, my imagination dried up. I reached for the light pull, thinking that whoever it was might notice that the closet light was on. But the snap of the string and the sudden quenching of the light would be a sure indicator of my presence. I quickly replaced-with careful quiet-the box of letters on Lolly's shelf. I hunkered down on the floor and tried to peep through the narrow crack of the closet door. It was too thin to permit viewing into the room. I cursed silently and listened carefully.