Page 46 of So in Love
Mom returned a couple of minutes later with the envelope.They sifted through the stack of legal documents.“I didn’t realize there was so much here,” Mom said.
“Your family was pretty hard-core about saving stuff.”
“Somestuff,” she muttered.“It would be nice to have those missing pictures from the albums—maybe they’d fill in some of the blanks in this horrible story.”She looked over at him, her eyes bright.“And they’reyourfamily.Warts and all.”
Yes, they were.
“Here’s Turner Stowe’s birth certificate.”She handed the paper to Jamie and kept looking.
He wanted the death certificate.Actually, he wanted Hoyt’s death certificate to see how he’d died.
Mom continued going through the certificates, and suddenly, her hand stilled.
“What?”Jamie leaned over and saw that she held Hoyt’s death certificate.He died October 30, 1923 of stab wounds to the chest.
Mom’s jaw dropped as she turned her head to look at Jamie.“He was killed.”
“It certainly looks that way.”He didn’t know if Crystal and her researcher friend had found anything about that, but Jamie meant to look into it.“I’ll add that to my research.See if I can find a newspaper article or something.”
Mom touched his arm, her eyes softening.“Thank you.I don’t mean to be difficult.This is just… It’s a shock.”
“I get it.We’ll figure it out together.But people will have to know at some point.”
She nodded.“I don’t have to like it.”
He pressed his lips together.“Nor do I.Nevertheless, we can’t change the past.All we can do is work to prevent it from happening again.”
