Peggy Moreland - Miss Lizzy's Legacy

Callie parked beneath an elm tree and sagged back in her seat as she looked around, overwhelmed by the number of markers scattered across the hill. “Come on, Baby,” she muttered in resignation as she climbed from her car. “We might as well get started.”

Baby bounded out of the back seat and trotted along beside her. They walked for over an hour, with Baby occasionally darting away to chase a squirrel up a tree or a rabbit into his burrow. With each passing marker, Callie’s original purpose for the trip was forgotten as emotion built, tightening her throat. Infants, young children, young wives. Each marker she read reflected the hard life of the early settlers of Guthrie and the tolls it took. One in particular caught her attention, and she stopped, studying the grave of a mother and infant buried together.

Sighing, she walked on to the next marker. The surname BODEAN topped the double-wide marker and below it the names Jedidiah to the left and Mary Elizabeth to the right.

Mary Elizabeth? She knelt in front of the marker and, using her thumbnail, scraped away the gold-brown moss which had attached itself to the etchings in the granite and noted the dates. The age according to the year of birth would be approximately right for her great-great-grandmother’s, but the stone read that the woman had died in 1938. That would have made her sixty-seven years of age when she’d passed away, and Papa’s mother had died in childbirth.

Certain that she was wasting her time, she took a pen and paper from her purse and jotted down the dates of the couple’s births and deaths in order to check them with the court records later.

With a little less than half the cemetery covered, she pushed to her feet. “Come on, Baby. Let’s go.” She strode off, but stopped and looked back when she heard Baby whimpering. The dog stood at the edge of the plot, clawing at the ground. Dead grass and dirt flew beneath his front paws.

“Baby! No!” Callie ran to clamp a hand around the dog’s collar and haul him back. “You mustn’t dig here.” Feeling responsible for the dog’s desecration of the grave site, Callie dropped to her knees to scrape the dirt back in place. She bit back an oath when her finger rammed something hard. Curious, she smoothed the dirt away and saw the edge of a flat granite stone. Using the palm of her hand she whisked away the dirt and dead grass covering it, then shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head.

William Leighton Sawyer

Infant Son of Mary Elizabeth Sawyer

June 14, 1890

She sat down hard on her heels and dragged her hands to her knees. “No,” she murmured, shaking her head in denial. “No, it can’t be.”

She dug her nails into the fabric at her knees, clinging to reason. William Leighton Sawyer hadn’t died at birth. He had lived a very full life, fathering two sons himself while parlaying the Boston Sawyers’ wealth to new highs in Texas oil.

He’d outlived both his sons and saw three of his grandchildren—one of which was Callie’s mother—start their own families, giving him four great-grandchildren. He had ruled the dynasty he’d created from the eighteenth floor of the office building he owned in downtown Dallas before he’d been forced into retirement at the age of ninety-eight by Callie’s father and a handful of greedy relatives who couldn’t wait for him to die so they could get their hands on his money.

They’d said he was crazy, although the legal papers they’d drawn against him read mentally incompetent. Callie had never considered him crazy. Eccentric, yes, but who wasn’t in their own way?

Throughout her life, she’d heard the stories about Papa. How his mother had run away from home, chasing after some smooth-talking stranger on his way to the Oklahoma Territory to seek his fortune. How the man had gotten her pregnant and abandoned her without marrying her once they’d arrived in the wild territory. And how she’d died giving birth to Papa.

Cousins from Boston who’d come to Texas to visit during the summers would whisper stories of how Papa was considered the renegade in the family, just like his mother. It was that streak of wildness that had carried him to Texas, they’d said, much to the dismay of the grandparents who’d taken him in and raised him as their own. Papa had thumbed his nose at them all and their high-society ways and proceeded to build a fortune that made the Boston Sawyers look like poor white trash in comparison.

Always strong and full of energy, but with the power of his businesses stripped from him, Papa’s health had quickly faded and his focus had shifted to his past. His mother had become his obsession. Her life in Oklahoma and his part in her death seemed to haunt him. He wanted to find where she’d been buried and ensure she’d received a proper burial. Although the rest of the family had pooh-poohed his request as just one more outrageous demand from a crazy old man, Callie had agreed to help him.

A tear streaked down her face followed quickly by another, then another, until her shoulders shook with sobs as she stared at the slab of granite. Guilt stabbed at her, for her reasons in agreeing to help Papa weren’t purely unselfish. Yes, she loved him and wanted to help him, but she’d also wanted to get out of Dallas, and Papa’s request for help had been the excuse she’d needed.

With the deadline quickly approaching for a signed commission sculpture she couldn’t seem to create, and Stephen’s and her mother’s constant pressure for her to set a wedding date, she’d needed to escape it all. In her mind, that put her in the same category as the rest of her family. Selfish, greedy and spineless. She’d thought she could locate the grave, take a picture for Papa and maybe find a few tidbits of information about his mother for him, then spend the rest of her vacation working out her own personal problems.

And now this.

Baby dropped down beside her, nuzzling his snout against her hand. Hardly aware of her movements, she shifted a hand to scratch his ears. He lifted his head and licked at the tears on her cheek, whimpering low in his throat.

“Oh, Baby.” Callie threw her arms around the dog’s neck and buried her face in his fur. “Now what am I going to do?”

“You can start by letting loose my dog.”

Callie opened her eyes to find a pair of scuffed boots planted not a foot from her knee. She raised her gaze, skimming it over jeans and a black duster until her eyes met the accusing ones of Judd Barker.

She immediately turned away, hiding her tears. Heat flooded her face as she remembered all too clearly the way she’d responded to him the night before. “I didn’t steal your dog,” she mumbled.

“Didn’t say you did,” Judd replied, although that was exactly the thought that had crossed his mind when Frank had told him he’d seen Callie drive away earlier that morning with Baby riding in the back seat of her car.

Callie dropped her hands from around Baby’s neck and swiped at her cheeks. “You insinuated as much. But the truth of the matter is, your dog jumped in the back of my car and wouldn’t get out. It was easier to just let him ride along.”

Judd hunkered down beside them, placing a hand on Baby’s head. “When he sets his mind on something, he’s hard to sway.”

Callie sniffed and gazed off in the distance, refusing to look at him.

Judd nodded in the direction of the stone. “I see you found what you were looking for.”

Without favoring him a glance, Callie replied sharply, “I don’t know that I have.”

“Seems clear enough to me. There’s the stone bearing the name William Leighton Sawyer, infant son of Mary Elizabeth Sawyer. And there—” he said with a nod toward the larger upright stone “—is the grave of Mary Elizabeth Bodean. What more proof do you need?”