“Jasper Singletary’s ancestors?” Sean asked.
I nodded. “Yes, the same family. The head of the family at that time was also Jasper, and he had a son, Franklin, by his first wife. She died, and when Franklin was around ten, Jasper remarried, a young woman named Vidalia. They had three children, one right after another, and they were all under six in 1861. Franklin was sixteen, I think.”
I paused for the final spoonful of sorbet. “Times were hard for the Singletarys. Jasper had a heart condition; plus he was around sixty by then, and couldn’t work. Franklin, though much younger, had similar heart problems. Their only hired hand left to enlist in the war. Jasper didn’t condone slavery, you see.”
“Good for him,” Laura said. “I like him already.”
“They didn’t have enough food, but Jasper refused to ask for help, particularly from the Longs. He hated them, and Rachel’s father-in-law wasn’t too fond of Jasper, either. Vidalia, on the other hand, couldn’t stand seeing her children go hungry. Without Jasper’s knowing about it, she went to Rachel and begged for food. Her children also needed clothes. Rachel, being a compassionate woman, gave Vidalia food and bolts of some material she had but had never used.” I paused, trying to remember the name of the cloth. I had meant to ask Laura about it.
“That was kind of her,” Alexandra said.
“She was a good woman,” I said. “Green tarlatan, that’s it.” I looked down the table at my daughter. “That was the name of the cloth Rachel gave Vidalia. I’d never heard of tarlatan before, and I’ve been meaning to ask you about it.”
Laura’s nose wrinkled. “I’ve heard of green tarlatan, Dad. It was actually poisonous.”
“What do you mean?” I was stunned, and, I could see by their expressions, everyone else except Frank was equally taken aback.
“It had arsenic in it,” Frank said. “Arsenic was used in many things in the nineteenth century. In wallpaper, for example, and in cloth.”
“It helped fix the dye in the cloth,” Laura said. “But it was deadly. There were cases of people getting really sick and even dying from it because of the fumes it gave off.”
“I read somewhere recently that they examined some wallpaper produced by William Morris,” Frank said. “It still had enough arsenic in it to be deadly, even after more than a century. I’d never heard of it, but Laura and I were doing some research on nineteenth-century clothing and stumbled across it. We’re thinking of putting on a stage version of Little Women.”
“What happened to the Singletarys, Dad?” Laura asked with a frown. “Were they affected by it?”
“Yes, they were, sadly.” I paused for a breath to steady myself. The unintentional tragedy of Rachel’s charitable act upset me. “All three of the little children and Vidalia died several months after Rachel Long gave them the cloth. The winter was harsh, and I suppose the children were already weak from malnutrition. Vidalia probably died from heartbreak as much as from exposure to the cloth herself.”
No one spoke when I finished. Even Diesel was silent.
To think that Jasper Singletary and his family had been right all along. Rachel Long did kill Vidalia and the children, but never knew she had.
Helen Louise reached out and placed her hand on mine where it lay on the table. I curled my fingers around hers, glad of the warmth and the loving concern in her touch. I looked around the table at my family, and I could see they were all deeply affected by the tragedy, even though it took place a hundred and fifty years ago.
Laura pushed back her chair and came to put her arm around me. She gave me a brief squeeze, and I looked up into her loving and beautiful face.
“I’m so sorry, Dad,” she said. “I know you had no idea about that cloth. It was a terrible tragedy, and I know we all feel sorry for those poor children and their mother.” She paused and glanced over at Frank. He gave her a slight nod.
“Frank and I have some news that will cheer you up, though,” Laura said, tears starting to form in her eyes. “In about seven months, you’re going to be a grandfather.”
I stood, unable to speak, and pulled my daughter close, tears now streaming down my face. Diesel meowed loudly, and the rest of the family noisily gave their congratulations to the parents-to-be.
I would never forget Rachel Long or Vidalia Singletary and her children and how an act of charity brought about so much sorrow. I would say a prayer for all of them later. Now, however, I looked to the future and the expansion of my own family and was grateful to be so blessed.
See how it all began!
Turn the page for the never-before-published bonus short story . . .
WHEN CHARLIE MET DIESEL
I looked out the kitchen window at the wet, gray November morning, and I wanted to go back upstairs and climb into bed. Surely they could get along fine without me today at the Athena Public Library. I was only a volunteer, after all.
On days like this I sometimes wondered whether I’d made the right decision a little over a year ago to leave Houston—my home for twenty-five years—and move back to my hometown in Mississippi. With my wife gone—thanks to pancreatic cancer—and my two children grown and out of the house, suddenly what had been a happy home felt more like a prison. Though loving memories abounded in that place, I no longer felt that it was home, with only one person to occupy it.
Not long after my wife, Jackie, died, my dear, sweet aunt Dottie, my father’s sister, also passed away—ironically, from pancreatic cancer. She left everything she had to me, her only surviving relative. That included her beautiful old house, a place I loved with all my heart. Along with the house came a surprisingly large amount of money, and that meant I could afford to retire from my job in the Houston Public Library system and move home to Athena.
That’s what I did, and most days I didn’t regret it. Other days I felt mildly depressed—all part of the grieving process, I knew, but recognizing that didn’t help much. Volunteering at the public library once a week got me out of the house, as did a part-time job cataloging rare books at the Athena College library three days a week.
“You need something, Mr. Charlie?”
The voice of my housekeeper, Azalea Berry, broke into my melancholy thoughts. I turned away from the window to face her. She set a basket of laundry on the kitchen table and regarded me, her head tilted to one side.
I offered her a faint smile and shook my head. “No, I was only looking at the weather. Trying to talk myself into getting out in it and going to the library.”
“That’d be better than moping around here like a dog done lost his favorite bone.” Azalea didn’t mince words. I didn’t think she meant to be unkind, but a year’s experience had taught me that she didn’t believe in mollycoddling, either. I also realized, guiltily, that Azalea had had to come out into this same weather to take care of the house. “Miss Dottie sure wouldn’t like to see you dragging your tail-feathers.”
Azalea had worked for my aunt for many years, and on the day I moved in, Azalea told me she would stay on because Aunt Dottie made her promise to look after the house—and me. I hadn’t argued because I knew a superior force when I met one. Besides, Azalea took such good care of the house—and of me—that I had quickly grown used to being looked after and fed delicious Southern food. My expanded waistline attested to that.
For a moment I fancied I saw my aunt standing right behind Azalea and nodding her head at what her housekeeper had said. I blinked, and the image faded. This wasn’t the first time over the past year that I’d had these hallucinations—if that was indeed what they were.