"Maybe, but my motivations are murky. "
He laughed and brought her hand to his lips. "If your motivations were always pure, I doubt I'd find you as fascinating as I do. "
"I do love astute flattery. Let's walk around to the stables. I'll show you Spot's marker. "
"I'd like to see it. It might be a good place for me to broach another theory. One I've been chewing on for a while now. "
As they walked down the path, she gauged the progress of her flowers and kept out an eagle eye for weeds.
"I'd as soon you spit it out as chew on it. "
"I'm not entirely sure how you're going to feel about this one. I'm looking at dates, at events, at key moments and people, attempting to draw lines from those dates, events, moments, and people to Amelia. "
"Mmm-hmm. I've always enjoyed having these stables here, leaving them be. As a kind of ruin. "
Head cocked, hands fisted on hips now, she studied the crumbling stones, the weather-scarred wood. "I suppose I could have them restored. Maybe I will if I get those grandchildren and they develop an interest in horses. None of my boys did, particularly. It's girls, I think, who go through that equine adoration period. "
She studied the building in the half light, the sagging roof and faded trim - and the vines, the climbers, the ornamental grasses she'd planted around it to give it a wild look.
"It looks like something you'd see in a movie, or more likely, in a storybook. "
"That's what I like about it. My daddy's the one who let it go, or never did anything to preserve the building. I remember him talking about having it razed, but my grandmother asked him not to. She said it was part of the place, and she liked the look of it. The grave's around the back," she said. "I'm sorry, Mitch, I interrupted. Mind's wandering. Tell me your theory. "
"I don't know how you're going to feel about it. "
"Poison sumac," she said, nudging him away before he brushed up against a vine. "I'll have to get out here and get rid of that. Here we are. " She crouched down, and with her ungloved hands plucked at weeds, brushed at dirt until she revealed the marker with the hand-chipped name in the stone.
"Sweet, isn't it, that he'd have buried his old dog here, carved that stone for him. I think he must've been a sweet man. My grandmother wouldn't have loved him as much as she did if he hadn't been. "
"And she did," Mitch agreed. "You can see the way she loved him in the pictures of them together. "
"He looks sort of cool in most of the photographs we have of him. But he wasn't cool. I asked my grandmother once, and she said he hated having his picture taken. He was shy. Odd thinking of that, of my grandfather as a shy man who loved his dog. "
"She was more outgoing?" Mitch prompted.
"Oh, much. She liked to socialize, nearly as much as she liked to garden. She loved hosting fancy lunches and teas, especially. She dressed up for them - hat, gloves, floaty dresses. "
"I've seen pictures. She was elegant. "
"Yet she could hitch on old trousers and dig in the dirt for hours. "
"Like someone else we know. " He skimmed a hand over her hair. "Your grandfather was born several years after the youngest of his sisters. "
"Hmm. There were other pregnancies, I think. My grandmother had two miscarriages herself, and I recall, vaguely, her mentioning that her mother-in-law had suffered the same thing. Maybe a stillbirth as well. "
"And then a son, born at the same time we've theorized Amelia lived - and died. Amelia, who haunts the house, but who we can't verify lived there - certainly not as a relation. Who sings to children, gives every appearance of being devoted to children - and distrusting, even despising men. "
She cocked her head. Twilight was moving very quickly to dark, and with dark came a chill. "Yes, and?"
"What if the child that was born in 1892 was her child. Her son, Roz. Amelia's son, not Beatrice Harper's. "
"That's a very extreme theory, Mitchell. "
"Is it? Maybe. It's only a theory, in any case, and partially based on somewhat wild speculation. But it wouldn't be unprecedented. "
"I would have heard. Surely there would have been some mention of it, some whisper passed along. "
"How? Why? If the original players were careful to keep it quiet. The wealthy, the influential man craving a son - and paying for one. Hell, it still happens. "