Legacy, page 20
If you are able, please send word. I am willing to let you go if that’s what’s in your heart, but I cannot continue to live in this uncertainty and keep the remains of my sanity. If I have not heard from you by the end of this summer, I will know that one of two things have happened: you have moved on, or you have died. I cannot imagine anything else that would prevent a simple note.
Please write,
Aurora
Chapter Twenty-One
Jo put the letter down, her eyes filling with tears. Even though she knew the end of this story—Sarah had, after all, been on the next year’s census—she couldn’t help feel the desperate sorrow and worry that poured off those pages and into her heart. She got up off her knees again and sat back on the couch.
Andy put a hand on her knee and squeezed. “Are you okay?”
Jo started to nod and then shook her head. “No—not really. I mean, I know everything was okay in the end, but I feel terrible. Empty. Almost like I’m feeling what she felt.” She frowned at Andy. “Does that make any sense?”
She nodded. “Of course. It’s hard to see someone suffering, especially someone you identify with. She was clearly crushed and lonely. There she was, in a new place, raising two boys basically on her own.” She shook her head. “That’s rough.” She scooted closer on the couch and put her arm around Jo’s shoulders. “Just so you know, I’d never do that to you.”
Jo stomach clenched, and the tears that had been threatening spilled down her cheeks. She turned into Andy, face in her hair, and sobbed. Andy squeezed her, and the warmth of her was comforting, soothing. Jo pulled away, wiping her tears.
“I don’t know why I’m crying. That’s twice today. You must think I’m a basket case.”
Andy shook her head. “Not at all. You feel for her, that’s all. It’s a good thing to have empathy.” She leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose. “Loving other people is the best part of life.”
Jo nodded, a hot flash of recognition piercing her heart. Andy was right. She loved this woman, Aurora, whom she’d never met, could never meet—a person she had barely even heard of before today. She wanted the best for her, wanted her to find happiness. In part, it was because of the similarity between them, their family connection and what they shared, their love of other women, but it was also more than that. No, in fact, the link seemed to reach through time, like a thrumming heartstring across the many decades that separated them. Aurora felt like a kindred spirit, her spiritual ancestor in addition to a blood relative.
“What do you suppose happened?” Andy asked, gesturing at the second bundle of letters. It was still tied together with the red ribbon.
Jo grinned. “Let’s find out.”
She sat forward and reached for them, but Andy put a hand over hers. “Could I read these?”
Jo flushed with pleasure and nodded. “I’d love that.”
That gorgeous smile flashed across her face, and then Andy knelt down, untied the ribbon, and centered two envelopes under the lamp. She held one of them up to the light.
“This one’s earlier, and it’s a telegram.” She slipped it out of the envelope and read aloud: “Safe. More Soon. Love S. Bell.” She looked back at Jo. “That’s all it says.”
Jo held out her hand for it and examined it. Rather than the typewritten telegrams she’d seen before in movies, this one was handwritten, by the operator, she assumed. It was dated May 1889.
“Well, at least Aurora didn’t have to wait very long after that last letter,” Jo said.
“See the transmission line?”
It took Jo a moment to find it. She frowned at Andy, puzzled. “It says this telegram was sent from San Francisco. What the heck was she doing there?”
Andy shrugged.
“Is the next one a telegram, too?”
She shook her head. “No—it’s a letter. It’s thick.” She turned the envelope over in her hands. “Also from San Francisco. June 1889.”
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense!”
Andy laughed and then slid out and unfolded the letter, holding it under the brightest part of the lamplight.
* * *
June 1889
Dearest,
You will receive this letter with surprise. No doubt, you have moved on. No doubt, some cowboy has swept you off your feet. All the better, if it means that you are safe and cared for. You are too beautiful, too lovely to live on your own or toil too heavily in this sad world of ours. In the last words I read, you had arrived with Albert at Estes Park. I have no doubt that he or someone else has claimed you for his own. I don’t make the same kind of claim on you, fruitless as our love was or ever could be. I only send this in hopes that you wintered well and that the boys are still alive and safe with you. I think on John often. John, who is so much like my little brother Jacob, lost to that same insidious disease. I pray John and Robert made it through the winter in that bleak, harsh climate, better and stronger for having survived.
I do, however, hope that the memory of our love—for it was love—has left you some fondness for me, such as for a lost friend, if nothing more. I struggled for a long time deciding whether to send you word. I knew it was best to leave you be, let you live on without guilt, without blame, as I blame myself for what happened. That is my burden, not yours, and I hope you can accept that. I weakened, however, and sent you that telegram last month when I got here, and now I find myself wondering if I should continue this letter or desist. I promised you more, however, and that promise compels me to continue.
My life has been an empty, worthless thing without you. Moreover, it has become a thing of horrors. If you could see me now, you would not recognize me; more, you would run screaming from the sight of me. I cannot even recognize myself. I struggle with whether to tell you of it. I cannot explain what has happened without, perhaps, causing pain, and I cannot bear to think of you in pain. Even if your heart has changed, I don’t believe you could ever be callous to another human being, even one as lowly as I am, and not perhaps feel some sorrow on my behalf. I also delude myself that perhaps you have wondered about me some little bit, but that is likely my own vanity. Therefore, if the above was enough, know that I am alive and as well as I can be and discard the rest of this missive. I will never bother you again, and you can live the rest of your life with a clear conscience. If, however, your curiosity, prurient or otherwise, leads you to wonder how I find myself in this strange, floating city so far away from where we began, I provide the story here.
It begins when I received your last letter in September. You may have sent another letter after that, but I did not receive it. I could go into many excuses as to why what follows happened, but the main cause was impatience. That impatience, which you have often chastised me for, was my own doom. Rather than follow the clear directives you gave me, to move from the post office quickly, to take a meandering path back to my apartment, in sum, to do all the things that would hinder him from following me, I made a terrible mistake. I tore your letter open right there on the street and read every word of it. I have it now, as well as your other letters, both as a reminder of your former feelings for me and as a kind of albatross—the cause of all of this. Again, I don’t blame you, my darling, or the letters you sent. What I reveal here is not your fault—you gave me clear instructions on how to avoid him. I simply didn’t listen.
He followed me home that very day. I had been careful on every other occasion leaving work, leaving the post office—the only places he might have seen me. I wore disguises every time, just as you told me to do, but I was careless that day. I was near the post office too long reading your letter—long enough for anyone to see through my disguise. Then, walking home, I didn’t take the usual precautions. There is no other explanation, so again, you can see that it is my fault that he found me, not the letter you sent.
I must pause here to reassure you. I had a little hiding spot in my apartment where I kept all your letters and mementoes, so you needn’t worry that he knows where you are. Indeed, it is the next part of my story that will explain how I came to be here in San Francisco.
He followed me home, and then he waited until I was asleep to make his attack. He slipped in the window like a fiend, and the hours that followed are something I cannot bring myself to describe. He beat me, Rory, and cut me, among other things too horrible to say.
I had been reading about San Francisco that week. There was a series of articles in the Times that discussed its connection with Chicago on the new train line, and I met a girl at work whose brother had recently struck it rich out there in the goldfields. You might, then, say I had that city on my mind, which is how I managed to convince him that you had moved there. After the first hour of torture, I knew I needed to say something, some place you had gone, so I told myself to simply repeat that same city’s name, over and over again. I claimed that you’d met a prospector and had set off with him to California. It took until morning for him to believe me, and he did believe, which I will explain. Still, I think he might have killed me, but for a most fortuitous event—the rent collector came that very morning. Your husband was scared off and escaped the same way he’d come.
The next few months are lost. I was locked in pain, my bones broken, unconscious, and then delirious with fever. After the fever passed, I recovered, albeit slowly, with the help of my sister, Beth. I am, however, a shadow of myself, and my face is a horror to behold. Children shudder and groan at the sight of me, and grown men and women cringe and look away. I also acquired a tremendous opium habit. I took it up to help mitigate the pain, and the drug was, briefly, my master.
When I could, I did some investigation at his work and home, and found evidence three months ago that he had gone west, to San Francisco, in search of his lost wife and children. I had to use the last of the money we’d saved to come here myself, and it was quite easy to find him. I haunt him and watch him as he did to us for so long. I know you are safe as long as I observe him here.
I have a purpose now and no intention of harming myself more than I already have—you can rest easy in that regard, if it was a concern. I have managed to pass myself off as a man, which means I have work, and I have a more important task: to observe Henry for the rest of his life. You will never see him again, I swear it. Even if I have to kill him, he will not cause you harm or come near you again.
You would find me a changed woman in every way but one: my love for you, which has never wavered, never paused. Even now, if you should send word, I would come at once. I don’t expect that you would keep me as I am now, a broken, hideous thing, but if you would allow it, I should dearly love to see you and the boys one last time.
My love to you and yours,
Sally
* * *
They were quiet for a long time after Andy finished. Jo took the letter from her, eyes burning, reading it to herself over and over again. She was dimly aware of Andy getting up, going into the kitchen, but she didn’t focus again until Andy brought back two toasted bagels and some hard, sharp yellow cheese. They ate in silence.
Jo felt drained, worn. She’d heard the name Henry Lemke before, knew that he was the original patriarch, the son of the first immigrant to America that had started their family line in the States. Again, family legend had it that Aurora came to Colorado on her own with her children, and these letters proved exactly that fact, but everyone had always assumed that she came alone simply because Henry had died. The revelation that he was an abusive, violent psychopath was gut-wrenching. It cast a pall over everything she ever knew about her family.
“Hey,” Andy said, touching her knee.
Jo looked at her, blinking through her tears. “What?”
Andy’s face was pale, almost sickly, and her eyes seemed almost sunken. The tension Jo had seen earlier was back, Andy’s shoulders and movements stiff and unnatural. “It’s a terrible truth, but this happens in a lot of families.” She pursed her lips, frowning deeply. “More often than you think.”
Had Andy’s father been abusive? It seemed as if she’d found this revelation personal, somehow. Jo told herself not to pressure her about it, that it was Andy’s story to tell or not, but she hoped she might say something.
“I didn’t know about Henry until now,” Jo said.
Andy nodded, once, her eyes still sad and sympathetic. “People, especially women…cover this kind of thing up. No one likes to talk about trauma. Your great-grandfather Robert might not have even known it happened. He was pretty little when they left Chicago.”
“But John knew. He would have remembered. He and Robert spent their whole lives together. John lived here with Robert and Robert’s family until he died.”
“That doesn’t mean he wanted to bring it up again. No one does, Jo.” Her gaze seemed to shift inward. She swallowed, eyes on the fireplace. If something like this had happened in Andy’s family or to someone she knew, that would explain why she seemed so reluctant to say anything.
A flash of frustration, for both Andy and for her family’s silence, made Jo clench her fists.
“So much is lost because people are too afraid to talk about things, to face facts. My great-great grandmother was queer, for God’s sake, and no one knew it.”
“There were laws—”
“Fuck laws!” Jo shouted. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. It just pisses me off. I hate secrets. I always thought of my family as open, caring. We share everything with each other. It would have been very easy for Carter to keep her mouth closed—not come out to her parents until college, but she couldn’t. That’s the kind of people we are, or at least that’s the kind of people I thought we were.”
Andy nodded and gestured at the letters on the coffee table. “So this is something to share with them.”
“What do you mean?”
Andy’s smile lit her up from within, some of the tension seeming to melt away. Her eyes were warm with compassion and sympathy—whatever she’d been worrying about, forgotten. “Think about it, Jo. These letters hold a secret that has been sitting inside this cabin for generations. It’s been literally hidden from everyone in your family, and now here it is, out in the open, ready for you to reveal. It showed itself to you for a reason, because you’re the one it feels connected to.”
Jo’s heart seized, and her lungs constricted. She felt a momentary terror, so deep and so strong she would have cried against it if she could breathe. The terror passed almost as soon as it had come, and she took in a large, gulping breath, her entire body relaxing. Andy was right. It had chosen her. It was now her secret to share.
She pulled Andy into a tight hug, kissing the side of her head. “Thank you.”
Andy laughed. “For what?”
“For calling me out on my shit. I needed that.”
Andy nodded in simple agreement. “What are you going to do now?”
Jo shook her head helplessly. “I don’t know. I mean, I’d like to know what happened next. Aurora must have sent word to Sarah to come to Colorado, but there’s no record of that here. She’s on the census in 1890, and I’d bet money she’s the one buried outside with Aurora, but again, I can’t know either way from these letters.”
“Kevin, Drew’s boyfriend, might know how to find those records, if they exist. I’m pretty sure we can find death certificates all the way back to that time, even in a small town like Estes.”
“I wish we had more letters, or at least some photographs,” Jo said. “It would be nice to know what everyone looked like. My dad has a couple pictures of Robert and John, but not many. Too expensive at that time, I guess.”
Andy frowned, seeming thoughtful and far away. “It’s funny you should mention photos, actually. You know the Stanley Hotel?”
The Stanley, an Estes Park landmark, had been famous for over a century, but more recently due to its association with the author, Stephen King, who’d set his famous novel The Shining at a hotel based on it. It was one of the main tourist attractions besides Rocky Mountain National Park.
“Sure, of course.”
“Well, the Stanleys were originally famous inventors, especially of two things: a steam-powered car and a photographic method that they eventually sold to Kodak. It made taking pictures much cheaper and easier. They used some of their wealth to build that hotel. Anyway, I think I read that one of the brothers did a photographic series of the entire population of Estes in the early 1890s. Maybe your great-great-grandmother was in it.”
Jo smiled. “How cool would that be? If she is, do you think I could get a copy? I’d love to hang it up in here.”
Andy shrugged. “No idea. But let me ask Kevin about it—he knows all about that kind of thing. He might know how to get the photos for you, at least.”
Jo stared her, her heart swelling with simple joy. Here Andy was, in the midst of what was clearly a family drama, ready and willing to help. No, more than help, she was instrumental to this discovery. Jo would never have had the courage to look in the dresser on her own—she would have sat, terrified, waiting in the living room until Carter and Daniela returned, then possibly run away forever. Now here she was, relaxed, sitting in front of a treasure trove of family memories, on the brink of uncovering a major part of their history. Already, Jo felt closer to Andy than she ever had with any previous girlfriend or lover. They’d known each other less than two weeks, yet she was certain that close, tight feeling in her chest wouldn’t change. She was already hers and hers alone.
