I blinked, trying to unspool some of the threads. “But what does this have to do with the sampler?”
“Well, Lucille may have had her reasons for not using the Vanderhorst name, but she made sure her daughter knew about her parentage, although for reasons I’m sure you can figure out on your own, she wasn’t allowed to advertise it.”
My hand flew to my mouth. “John was Evangeline’s father! Oh, my gosh. Why did it take so long for us to figure that out?”
“?‘Us’?”
I blinked. “Sorry. You. You figured it out.”
Yvonne cleared her throat. “As I was saying, I’m certain Evangeline knew who her father was, just as I’m certain by studying the sampler that she knew she couldn’t advertise it. That’s why she was clever about hiding her initials in her embroidery.”
“Wait. What? Where?” I put Yvonne on speaker and flipped through my photos on my phone, stopping on the sampler, then using my fingers to get a close-up. “I don’t see them. Where are you looking?”
“The gold-embroidered symbol between the dog faces in the border. It’s the inverted letters E and V, done in a spindly nineteenth-century textura font known as Cuneiform. It was very popular with the Victorians. It’s difficult to read right side up and almost impossible upside down unless one knows what one is looking at.”
I made the picture even larger, and unsuccessfully turned my phone to view the photo upside down before giving up and tilting my head instead. “Oh, my gosh. You’re right.” I straightened. “It’s—”
“The same symbol on the grave marker you saw yesterday at Magnolia Cemetery. You said you thought it looked familiar, and now we know why.”
I stood and began pacing, the marble floor cold under my bare feet. “So that’s where her father must have moved her body. Close to the Vanderhorsts, but not too close.”
“Sad but true,” Yvonne said.
“What about the clock dial? Were you able to make any sense out of that?”
“I’m afraid not. I’ll keep looking, but I’m afraid I’ve hit a dead end with that one.”
I was wide-awake now with no hope of going back to sleep. I looked at the three clocks I had placed around the bathroom, all set precisely seven minutes fast, and saw it was nearly four o’clock. “I’m dying to tell Jack what you’ve discovered, but I don’t want to bother him.”
“Melanie, may I give you some advice?”
“About research?”
“About marriage. Forgive me if I’m overstepping, but I’ve spent too many years analyzing research and studying human behavior not to have learned a thing or two. I’ve known Jack long enough to know that he’s conflicted right now, and you’re both at a loss as to what to do.” She paused. “Sometimes all it takes is acceptance that you’re both wrong. And then hold your breath and take a leap of faith.”
I looked down at my phone, not sure how to respond, remembering Nola telling me pretty much the same thing.
“And one more thing,” Yvonne continued. “I doubt that you waking Jack up in the wee hours of the morning will bother him at all.”
* * *
? ? ?
I peeked into Nola’s bedroom, where I found her sleeping on her side, Porgy and Bess spooning against her chest. A faint scent of ash mixed with roses floated past me, evaporating as soon as I detected it. Either the Frozen Charlotte had returned to Nola’s bedroom or Evangeline had. Either way, I wasn’t afraid. Not of Evangeline or Louisa, anyway.
A strip of light shone under Jack’s door, but for once his keyboard was silent. I tapped gently on the door and waited a moment. With no response, I tapped again. “Jack? Are you in there?”
The air seemed suddenly saturated with the heady sent of fresh roses just as the latch clicked and the door slowly moved inward. I stuck my head in the opening. “Jack?”
I looked behind the door, then allowed my gaze to travel around the room until it settled on the large bed and the shirtless man sprawled on top of it, facedown, his laptop still open and sitting precariously near the edge of the bed.
I tiptoed across the room as quickly as I could, avoiding stacks of books and notepads, and lifted the computer, my only intention to place it on his desk. Instead, my gaze was drawn to the rotating album of family photos he used as his screen saver. I stood in the middle of the room smiling at the photos of our children and of our intact family, which included me. He’d removed the photos of the children from his office when he’d left the house to live in an apartment, leaving behind all photos of me. This display gave me a sparkle of hope, a glimmer of light the new Melanie tried to extinguish with the thought that the screen saver was old and forgotten, since nobody really looked at their screen savers anyway.
My thumb accidentally brushed the computer’s trackpad, replacing the photos with a full page of text. My gaze automatically traveled to the header. power, greed, and dirty deeds: the hoax that felled a criminal family dynasty.
“Can I help you?” Jack stood in front of me, his pantherlike stealthiness a reminder of his having been in the Army. His eyes blazed as he took the laptop from me and shut the lid, almost pinching my fingers. With deliberate movements, he placed the computer on the far edge of his desk, out of my reach.
“I wasn’t . . . I mean, I didn’t . . .” I swallowed, mobilized the new Melanie, and took a deep breath. “I just spoke with Yvonne and learned something interesting. She said you wouldn’t mind if I woke you. I was just moving your computer so it wouldn’t fall on the floor.”
The shadow of a smile graced his face. “Did she, now?”
I nodded, surreptitiously appreciating his shirtless status and how the shadow of his unshaven beard summoned unwholesome thoughts of his pirate ancestor. He watched me swallow again as I attempted to ease my dry throat.
“We’re pretty sure we know who Evangeline was. It’s a lot of conjecture and coincidence, but everything points to John Vanderhorst as her father. Because . . .”