M.J. Rodgers - Father By Choice

“That still doesn’t explain why you aren’t downstairs shaking hands and drinking the very best in champagne.”

“I’ve found that I react to people best when I take them like a potent prescription—one at a time and never mixed with alcohol.”

His explanation filled her with relief. Maybe she hadn’t been quite so prepared for that confrontation as she’d convinced herself.

“Too bad your weekend turned into such a disappointment,” she said.

“Oh, I’d say things are definitely looking up. So, what do we do first?”

He had the kind of smile that made a woman want to smile back. She resisted.

“Go through everything and make a list of what type of things we have and how many,” she answered. “Then we can start the process of scanning them into the hard drive.”

She handed him a pad and pen. “You get the task of record keeping.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“You consider it beneath you?”

“I consider it far above me. All those stories you’ve heard about how doctors can’t write legibly? They’re absolutely true.”

It was the serious look on his face that had her lips twitching, despite her best efforts. “How are you at typing?”

He held up all ten fingers. “My hand-eye coordination has always rated within the top one percent.”

“Of E.R. doctors?”

“Of volleyball players. You can catch our games Sunday afternoons out on the beach near the big barbecue pit.”

The smile was getting harder to contain.

“You’ll recognize me,” Brad said nonchalantly as he shifted in his chair. “I’m the one who’s always falling into the pit.”

She was grinning now, couldn’t help it. Brad Winslow had a very nice personality beneath his staid doctor’s countenance.

“So what do you and your husband do for fun?”

Emily’s grin subsided. “I’m not married.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m not.”

She faced the computer monitor and opened a word-processing document. After naming it “Time Capsule Artifacts” she came to her feet.

“Okay, Mr. Nimble Fingers, you get the job of entering a list of the contents into the computer file as I read them off to you.”

They switched chairs so he could have access to the computer, and she was closer to the time capsule.

Once settled, she raised the lid and slipped on some protective gloves. “First item is the letter Patrick O’Shea read that was signed by the mayor and the eleven other men who were chosen to set the sundial in place.”

She heard the confident click of keys as Brad entered the information. Peeking over at the screen, she could see he’d already finished the identifying sentence. Nimble fingers indeed.

“What do you want to list about the letter?” he asked.

“Let’s put in the names of those who signed it, starting with the mayor’s. This is the first time I heard that there were twelve men chosen to put the sundial in place. There are only eleven initials carved on its surface.”

“Whose initials are missing?” Brad asked.

“Something I plan to check on later.” One by one she read the signatures at the bottom of the letter to him.

“What’s next?”

“The pictures.”

Emily picked up the first—a gorgeous shot of a ship in full sail. Even though it was in black-and-white, her mind’s eye filled in an azure sky and turquoise sea. Turning it over, she found to her delight that someone had printed the name of the vessel. Every item in the cargo unloaded at the Courage Bay dock was listed.

“I can see why this could become a very time-consuming task,” Brad said.

Her head came up at his comment. It was only then that she realized she’d been studying the photo for some time. After describing it briefly for Brad, she set the picture aside.

“Good thing you’re here,” she admitted. “I could so easily get lost in these.”

“Are you one of those people who feels as though she were born a hundred years too late?”

She shook her head. “I admit I’m drawn to the natural beauty of their less crowded time, their deeper connection with one another that came from a slower pace of life. But I’m spoiled. I want my hot showers, Internet access and an epidural when the time comes to deliver Sprout.”

He nodded. “When it came to medicine, there was a lot about the good old days that wasn’t that good.”

“This is the photograph of the young woman that Phoebe Landru showed to the crowd,” Emily said as she picked it up. She turned it over and was happy to see a printed identification.

“She’s Serena Fitzwalter. I knew I recognized her. Looks as though Gerald Fitzwalter had more than one family member represented in this time capsule.”

“He was the one in the crowd who seemed the most irritated when Councilman Himlot balked at having his ancestor’s letter read,” Brad said as he entered the information about the second photo into the computer. “Is Himlot always so…self-focused?”

“Of all our city’s councilmen, Dean’s normally the easiest to get along with. I don’t know what made him decide to demand that letter from his ancestor. He and his family have generously shared a lot of their historical documents with the Society.”

“Maybe he missed out on his bran muffin at breakfast,” Brad said.

Emily smiled. “His ancestors as well as many others who settled Courage Bay are represented in family portraits downstairs,” she said.

“I’ll have to take a look at them sometime. There seem to be a lot of interesting things to study in this building.”

There was absolutely no readable expression on his face. Emily decided she’d interpret his comment to mean he was developing an interest in Courage Bay’s history.

“Serena Fitzwalter here has a double claim,” Emily said gesturing to her picture. “She married into another prominent family, Landru.”

“And Phoebe Landru didn’t say anything about holding up her ancestor’s photo?”

“She wasn’t wearing her glasses,” Emily said as she set the photo aside. “It was probably just a blur to her.”

Most of the next dozen or so photographs were scenes of fishing boats, birds and low tidelands alive with sea creatures and shells. As Emily read off the descriptions, Brad added them to his growing list on the computer.

The next photograph she picked up was of the Smithson Apothecary. She showed it to Brad. “This is where Oliver’s pharmaceutical company got its start.”

“His was one of the original families?”

Emily explained that the Smithsons weren’t descendants of the Ranger crew. They’d been Nevada miners. When the silver petered out of their claim, they came to Courage Bay in the latter half of the nineteenth century looking for a new start. Using the Indians’ knowledge of native medicinal plants, they opened the apothecary. It grew into a multimillion-dollar business.

“A Smithson ancestor originally owned this building and left it to the Historical Society when she passed,” Emily said as she set the apothecary picture aside and came to another set of photographs of people.

She recognized more names. “Look, an O’Shea. Wait until the mayor finds out he has an ancestor represented. Oh, and here’s a Giroux. I have to tell Natalie when I see her. She works at the hospital. You must know her.”

“I work with her brother, Alec, in the E.R.,” Brad said. “I don’t really know Natalie. Alec rarely mentions her.”

Most brothers rarely mentioned their sisters, a fact for which Emily was growing more thankful by the moment.

“Is Dot a descendant of one of the pioneers?” he asked.

Emily nodded. “Her family arrived from the East toward the end of the nineteenth century. Dot’s doctoral thesis chronicled the local history of Courage Bay at the beginning of the last century. She was in time to rescue copies of the old Courage Bay newspaper as well as other memorabilia from neighborhood attics.”