Page 51 of Promise Keeper

"Yes, all right? I'm descended from a cursed circus mummy! Now my disgrace is official. I'll write a formal letter to the Daughters telling them all I'm a fraud. A town founder wasn't my ancestor. The only history I can claim is in that spectacle Steve Longo has set up beside the canal. Cursed indeed!"

"Fiona, nobody is going to think less of you. I won't say a word, so it's in your hands, but can you tell me what happened to Joseph and Dalton?"

She slumped on a stool behind the counter. "I have the missing pages. They're humiliating."

"What do they say? I already know the outcome, just not how Estelle got there."

Fiona wrung her hands. "They were like Metamora's own Bonnie and Clyde. He was a train robber, a common thief. If he got close enough, he'd steal a shirt off another man's back, and she was his champion. It was sick. She became pregnant and planned to run away with him, but on the day they were to leave, he was killed. I don't know how, but likely during the commission of a crime."

"He was still working for Joseph Longo when he was killed?"

"Estelle wrote that Joseph had heard rumor that Dalton was planning on skipping town before paying off his debt and she felt it was urgent that they leave before Joseph talked Dalton into staying."

"Did Paul Brooks ever find out about Estelle and Dalton?"

"He did, but Estelle wrote that he never cared for her and only wanted a wife for social standing. Married men were considered more serious and trustworthy. It was good for business."

"Do you think he killed Dalton?"

Fiona took a deep breath and sighed. "I've wondered of course, but I have no way of knowing."

"I suppose not. But the important thing for you is that you don't know where the bones came from. You don't, do you?"

"No! I've said it a million times. I don't have any idea where they came from or whose they are!"

"I have an idea whose they are. I think you do too."

"I told you, I don't know how he died or who killed him, so how would I know it's him?"

"You don't. A DNA test might help us figure it out though."

"A DNA test? Irrefutable proof that the train robber turned circus freak was my relation." She shrugged. "Why not? I've hit rock bottom, there's no pride left inside me."

"We can't choose our relatives," I said. "It doesn't make you any less of a person than who you were yesterday or last year."

"It feels like it does. I'm not a Daughter anymore. Even if it was a lie, it was my lie."

"Maybe it's time the Daughters turn to a new chapter in their own history."

"I don't think there's a choice."

Since the president and sergeant-at-arms were both out of their good graces, Cass's dinner club might not be a pie in the sky idea after all.

"Can I call Ben and tell him so he can have the DNA test done? They have a rapid results test, so they may be able to tell if you're a match with the bones by this afternoon."

"Go ahead. Give him a call. I knew this would all come out someday. A skeleton never stays in the closet."

This skeleton hadn't stayed wherever it had been stowed for all of those years, and I had a feeling the DNA test would come back as a match.

* * *

Ben,Walter, Pamela, and I paced around my family room waiting for the lab to call with the DNA test results. It had been a long afternoon and the clock read a quarter after four. We were fast approaching evening and on edge.

"My patience is being tested," Walter said. "We may be able to put the question of identification behind us today."

"My patience was gone around noon," I said. "This is torture."

I'd nibbled more cookies than I could count and it did nothing to subdue my nerves.

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