“But who’s the woman?”
“Genevieve Duchannes, but I expect you know that.”
“I didn’t, actually.”
“Hasn’t your uncle taught you anything about your genealogy?”
“We don’t talk much about my dead relatives. No one wants to bring up my parents.”
Marian walked over to one of the flat archival drawers, searching for something. “Genevieve Duchannes was your great-great-great-great-grandmother. She was an interesting character, really. Lila and I were tracing the entire Duchannes family tree, for a project your Uncle Macon had been helping us with, right up until—” she looked down. “Last year.”
My mom had known Macon Ravenwood? I thought he had said he only knew her through her work.
“You really should know your genealogy.” Marian turned a few yellowed pages of parchment. Lena’s family tree stared back at us, right next to Macon’s.
I pointed to Lena’s family tree. “That’s weird. All the girls in your family have the last name Duchannes, even the ones who were married.”
“It’s just a thing in my family. The women keep the family name even after they’re married. It’s always been that way.”
Marian turned the page, and looked at Lena. “It’s often the case in bloodlines where the women are considered particularly powerful.”
I wanted to change the subject. I didn’t want to dig too deep into the powerful women in Lena’s family with Marian, especially considering Lena was definitely one of them. “Why were you and Mom tracing the Duchannes tree? What was the project?”
Marian stirred her tea. “Sugar?”
She looked away as I spooned it into my cup. “We were actually mostly interested in this locket.” She pointed to another photograph of Genevieve. In this one, she was wearing the locket.
“One story in particular. It was a simple story, really, a love story.” She smiled sadly. “Your mother was a great romantic, Ethan.”
I locked eyes with Lena. We both knew what Marian was about to say.
“Interestingly enough for you two, this love story involves both a Wate and a Duchannes. A Confederate soldier, and a beautiful mistress of Greenbrier.”
The locket visions. The burning of Greenbrier. My mom’s last book was about everything we had se
en happen between Genevieve and Ethan, Lena’s great-great-great-great-grandmother and my great-great-great-great-uncle.
My mom was working on that book when she died. My head was reeling. Gatlin was like that. Nothing here ever happened only once.
Lena looked pale. She leaned over and touched my hand, where it rested on the dusty table. Instantly, I felt the familiar prick of electricity.
“Here. This is the letter that got us started on the whole project.” Marian lay out two parchment sheets on the next oak table. Secretly, I was glad she didn’t disturb my mom’s worktable. I thought of it as a fitting memorial, more like her than the carnations everyone had laid on her casket. Even the DAR, they were there for the funeral, laying those carnations down like crazy, though my mom would have hated it. The whole town, the Baptists, the Methodists, even the Pentecostals, turned out for a death, a birth, or a wedding.
“You can read it, just don’t touch it. It’s one of the oldest things in Gatlin.”
Lena bent over the letter, holding her hair back to keep it from brushing the old parchment. “They’re desperately in love, but they’re too different.” She scanned the letter. “‘A Species Apart,’ he calls them. Her family is trying to keep them apart, and he’s gone to enlist, even though he doesn’t believe in the war, in the hope that fighting for the South will win him the approval of her family.”
Marian closed her eyes, reciting:
“I might as well be a monkey as a man, for all the good it does me at Greenbrier. Though merely Mortal, my heart breaks with such pain at the thought of spending the rest of my life without you, Genevieve.”
It was like poetry, like something I imagined Lena would write.
Marian opened her eyes again. “As if he were Atlas carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.”
“It’s all so sad,” said Lena, looking at me.
“They were in love. There was a war. I hate to tell you, but it ends badly, or so it seems.” Marian finished her tea.