“How do you know the handkerchief belonged to her?”
“Her initials are embroidered right here on the edge, and you see that there?” she asked, pointing to a tiny bird embroidered under the initials. “That there was her mark.”
“Her mark?”
“Most readers had a mark back then. They’d mark their decks ta make sure nobody switched their cards. A reader is only as good as her deck. I know that much,” Thelma said, spitting into a small urn in the corner of the room with the precision of a marksman.
Treadeau. That was Amma’s last name.
“Was she related to Amma?”
“Of course she was. She was Amma’s great-great-grandmamma.”
“What about the initials on the locket? ECW and GKD? Do you know anything about them?” It was a long shot. I couldn’t remember the last time the Sisters had ever had a moment of clarity that lasted this long.
“Are you teasin’ an old woman, Ethan Wate?”
“No ma’am.”
“ECW. Ethan Carter Wate. He was your great-great-great-uncle, or was it your great-great-great-great-uncle?”
“You’ve never been any good with arithmetic,” Aunt Prudence interrupted.
“Anyhow, he was your great-great-great-great-granddaddy Ellis’ brother.”
“Ellis Wate’s brother was named Lawson, not Ethan. That’s how I got my middle name.”
“Ellis Wate had two brothers, Ethan and Lawson. You were named for both of ’em. Ethan Lawson Wate.” I tried to picture my family tree. I had seen it enough times. And if there’s one thing a Southerner knows, it’s their family tree. There was no Ethan Carter Wate on the framed copy hanging in our dining room. I had obviously overestimated Aunt Grace’s lucidity.
I must have looked unconvinced because a second later, Aunt Prue was up and out of her chair. “I have the Wate Family Tree in my genealogy book. I keep track a the whole lineage for the Sisters a the Confed’racy.”
The Sisters of the Confederacy, the lesser cousin of the DAR, but equally horrifying, was some kind of sewing circle holdover from the War. These days, members spent most of their time tracking their Civil War roots for documentaries and miniseries like The Blue and the Gray.
“Here it is.” Aunt Prue shuffled back into the kitchen carrying a huge leather-bound scrapbook, with yellowed pieces of paper and old photographs sticking out from the edges. She flipped through the pages, dropping scraps of paper and old newspaper clippings all over the floor.
“Will you look at that… Burton Free, my third husband. Wasn’t he just the handsomest a all my husbands?” she asked, holding up the cracked photograph for the rest of us.
“Prudence Jane, keep lookin’. This boy is testin’ our memory.” Aunt Grace was noticeably agitated.
“It’s right here, after the Statham Tree.”
I stared at the names I knew so well from the family tree in my dining room at home.
There was the name, the name missing from the family tree at Wate’s Landing—Ethan Carter Wate. Why would the Sisters have a different version of my family tree? It was obvious which tree was the real one. I was holding the proof in my hand, wrapped in the handkerchief of a hundred-and-fifty-year-old prophet.
“Why isn’t he on my family tree?”
“Most family trees in the South are fulla lies, but I’m surprised he made it onta any copy a the Wate Family Tree,” Aunt Grace said, shutting the book and sending a cloud of dust into the air.
“It’s only on account a my excellent record keepin’ that he’s even on this one.” Aunt Prue smiled proudly, showing off both sets of her dentures.
I had to get them to focus. “Why wouldn’t he make it on the family tree, Aunt Prue?”
“On account a him bein’ a deserter.”
I wasn’t following. “What do you mean, a deserter?”
“Lord, what do they teach you young’uns in that fancy high school a yours?” Aunt Grace was busy picking all the pretzels out of the Chex Mix.
“Deserters. The Confederates who ran out on Gen’ral Lee durin’ the War.” I must have looked confused because Aunt Prue felt compelled to elaborate. “There were two kinds a Confederate soldiers durin’ the War. The ones who supported the cause of Confed’racy and the ones whose families made them enlist.” Aunt Prue stood up and walked toward the counter, pacing back and forth like a real history teacher delivering a lecture.
“By 1865, Lee’s army was beaten, starvin’, and outnumbered. Some say the Rebels were losin’ faith, so they up and left. Deserted their regiments. Ethan Carter Wate was one of ’em. He was a deserter.” All three of them lowered their heads as if the shame was just too much for them.
“So you’re telling me he was erased from the family tree because he didn’t want to starve to death, fighting a losing war for the wrong side?”
“That’s one way a lookin’ at it, I suppose.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Aunt Grace jumped up out of her chair, as much as any ninety-something-year-old woman can jump. “Don’t you sass us, Ethan. That tree was changed long before we were born.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am.” She smoothed her skirt and sat back down. “Why would my parents name me after some great-great-great-uncle who shamed the family?”
“Well, your mamma and daddy had their own ideas ’bout all that, what with all those books they read about the War. You know they’ve always been liberal. Who knows what they were thinkin’? You’d have ta ask your daddy.” Like there was any chance he would tell me. But knowing my parents’ sensibilities, my mom had probably been proud of Ethan Carter Wate. I was pretty proud, too. I ran my hand over the faded brown page of Aunt Prue’s scrapbook.
“What about the initials GKD? I think the G might stand for Genevieve,” I said, already knowing it did.
“GKD. Didn’t you date a boy with the initials GD once, Mercy?”
“I can’t recollect. Do you remember a GD, Grace?”
“GD… GD? No, I can’t say as I do.” I’d lost them.
“Oh my goodness. Look here at the time, girls. It’s time for church,” Aunt Mercy said.
Aunt Grace motioned toward the garage door. “Ethan, you be a good boy and pull the Cadillac around, ya hear. We just have ta put on our faces.”
I drove them four blocks to the afternoon service, at the Evangelical Missionary Baptist Church, and pushed Aunt Mercy’s wheelchair up the gravel driveway. This took longer than actually driving to the church because every two or three feet the chair would sink into the gravel and I’d have to wiggle it from side to side to free it, nearly tipping it and dumping my great-aunt into the dirt. By the time the preacher took the third testimony from an old lady who swore Jesus had saved her rosebushes from Japanese beetles or her quilting hand from arthritis, I was zoning out. I flipped the locket through my fingers, inside the pocket of my jeans. Why did it show us that vision? Why did it suddenly stop working?
Ethan. Stop. You don’t know what you’re doing.
Lena was in my head again.
Put it away!
The room started to disappear around me and I could feel Lena’s fingers grasping mine, as if she was there beside me—
Nothing could have prepared Genevieve for the sight of Greenbrier burning. The flames licked up its sides, eating away at the lattice and swallowing the veranda. Soldiers carried antiques and paintings out of the house, looting like common thieves. Where was everyone? Were they hiding in the woods like she was? Leaves crackled. She sensed someone behind her, but before she could turn around a muddy hand clamped over her mouth. She grabbed the person’s wrist with both hands, trying to break their hold.
“Genevieve, it’s me.” The hand loosened its grip.
“What are you doin’ here? Are you all right?” Genevieve threw her arms around the soldier, dressed in what was left of his once proud gray Confederate uniform.
“I am, darlin’,” Ethan said, but she knew he was lying.
“I thought you might be…”
Genevieve had only heard from Ethan in letters for the better part of the last two years, since he had enlisted, and she hadn’t received a letter since the Battle at Wilderness. Genevieve knew that many of the men who had followed Lee into that battle had never marched back out of Virginia. She had resigned herself to die a spinster. She had been so sure she had lost Ethan. It was almost unimaginable that he was alive, standing here, on this night.
“Where is the rest a your regiment?”
“The last I saw, they were outside a Summit.”
“What do you mean, the last you saw? Are they all dead?”
“I don’t know. When I left, they were still alive.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I deserted, Genevieve. I couldn’t fight one more day for somethin’ I didn’t believe in. Not after what I’ve seen. Most a the boys fightin’ with me didn’t even realize what this war is about—that they’re just spillin’ their blood over cotton.”
Ethan took her cold hands in his, rough with cuts. “I understand if you can’t marry me now. I don’t have any money and now I don’t have any honor.”
“I don’t care if you have any money, Ethan Carter Wate. You are the most honorable man I’ve ever known. And I don’t care if my daddy thinks our differences are too great to overcome. He’s wrong. You’re home now and we’re gonna get married.”
Genevieve clung to him, afraid he might disappear into thin air if she let go. The smell brought her back to the moment. The rancid smell of lemons burning, of their lives burning. “We have to head for the river. That’s where Mamma would go. She’d head south toward Aunt Marguerite’s place.” But Ethan never had time to answer. Someone was coming. Branches were cracking like someone was thrashing through the brush.
“Get behind me,” Ethan ordered, pushing Genevieve behind him with one arm and grabbing his rifle with the other. The brush parted and Ivy, Green-brier’s cook, stumbled into view. She was still in her nightgown, black with smoke. She screamed at the sight of the uniform, too frightened to notice it was gray, not blue.
“Ivy, are you all right?” Genevieve rushed forward to catch the old woman, who was already starting to fall.
“Miss Genevieve, what in the world are you doin’ out here?”
“I was tryin’ to get to Greenbrier. To warn y’all.”
“It’s too late for that, child, and it wouldn’t a done no good. Those Blue Birds broke down the doors and walked right into the house, like it was their own. They gave the place the once-over to see what they wanted to take, and then they just started settin’ fires.” It was almost impossible to understand her. She was hysterical, and every few seconds she was wracked with a fit of coughing, choking on both the smoke and her tears.
“In all my life I never seen the likes a devils like that. Burnin’ a house with women in it. Every one a them will have to answer to God Almighty Himself in the hereafter.” Ivy’s voice faltered.