Page 22 of The Inquirer

The historian I’d contacted to help with my research had found that Camilla Lake, ancestor to Kathie Mae, had been listed as an employee of the Calvert family in an old newspaper article he’d sent me the picture of. I hadn’t looked past that because I’d already had the rest of the Mae family tree from the birth and marriage records I’d found in other ways.

I couldn’t believe I’d missed the most obvious path to the information I needed. If I could find probate documentation that listed the Adams family as property, passed from one generation to the next, it’d help Min’s case.

It might also get me the information I needed about the Traylors family’s knowledge of it. I had the names of Clancy Traylor’s parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, which meant I could get more names of people, of items…and the name of the law firm or lawyer who’d handled the estate.

I hurried back to my laptop and immediately started searching probate records in Savannah, Georgia, for Verne Traylor, Clancy’s father. I’d found his obituary from 2016, when I’d worked on the original family tree, and gotten other names and dates from that. Since only a few years had passed since then, the chances were that the same lawyer who’d handled Verne’s estate would still be the Traylors’s attorney for that sort of stuff.

It didn’t take long for me to find it, but when I did, it was as if all the air in the cabin had been sucked out, leaving me suffocating, vision blurring, darkening, until the world shifted.

The smells.

Tobacco smoke.

Lysol.

Irish Spring.

I gagged. Coughed. Choked. Couldn’t breathe.

Couldn’t breathe.

The world shifted.

“Please, don’t.” My voice was thin, weak. I wanted to shout at him, but he said I had to be quiet.

“We’ve talked about this, darlin’.” His hands were on me, bunching up my nightgown.

I tried to wear pajama bottoms two weeks ago, but he got mad and said little girls wore nightgowns. I hadn’t seen those PJs since. I think he threw them away, and Mom got mad when I asked for more. She said ladies wore nightgowns. When I asked what she wore, she told me to mind my own business.

“Give me your hand.”

I shook my head, stuffing my fists behind my back. I was gonna be thirteen in two months. A teenager. Almost a grown-up.

“Delia. Give me your hand.”

I made a sound I didn’t like, but he smiled.

I didn’t like his smile. It just made my stomach hurt more.

He grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand to him. I closed my eyes, but he told me to open them. He didn’t like it when I didn’t look at him. Sometimes, he made it hurt more if I tried to look away.

“I know you’re gonna be a teenager soon, but you’re always gonna be my little girl, Delia.”

I pressed my lips together, but I wanted to say I wasn’t his little girl. I didn’t care what a piece of paper said. He wasn’t my dad. My dad had been a good person. Art wasn’t a good person.

“Are you gettin’ attitude, darlin’?”

I shook my head. I felt like I was gonna throw up now, and if I did, it’d just make things worse.

“I think you need a little remindin’ of how good girls behave.” His grip on my wrist hurt now. “Good girls are what?”

“Quiet. Polite,” I recited the list automatically. “Smiling. Agreeable.”

He lifted my hand and kissed it. I wanted to pull away, to tell him to stop, but I couldn’t. I must not have hidden my thought good, though, because he gave me a mean look.

“You aren’t thinkin’ of doin’ somethin’ bad, are you, darlin’? Like maybe tellin’ someone about our secret?”

I shook my head, new fear spiking through me. “No. No. I won’t tell anyone.”

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