As he left Waverly Place the evening before he had been introduced to most of them, returning from the excursion on the river. He made excuses for Anna, who had slipped away upstairs to put herself to rights. Jack wondered what she could have possibly done to chase the flush from her neck and face, and grinned to himself.
All of the family members he had met so far were friendly, but seven-year-old Martha Bonner had assigned herself as his companion and inquisitor. She had come to the city from Albany with her grandfather Adam. Adam Bonner, as he had introduced himself, was lean and straight, with pure white hair cut unfashionably close to the scalp. It set off the warm brown of his complexion and eyes of an unusual shade that could be called golden. Jack was reminded of the glow of Sophie’s skin and realized that the connection must be through the New Orleans branch of the family, though he could not think of a way to ask that would not be rude. He might have come up with something if not for Martha, who demanded his attention.
Like her grandfather the little girl had a complexion that seemed to draw in sunlight. Her eyes were a milder and deeper brown, in stark contrast to the energy that bubbled out of every pore. She wanted to know his whole name, if he had sisters and brothers, how tall he was (too tall, she announced, when he told her), if he liked eggs, and whether he had dogs. Now, it seemed, she had come to a matter of greatest importance just as he realized he had lost the thread of her conversation.
“You’re not listening,” she told him with a touch of impatience.
“Sorry,” Jack said. “Pardon me. My attention wandered, but you have it now. What did you need to know?”
“Who is the flower girl?” And in response to his blank face: “A bride needs a flower girl. Who is Sophie’s flower girl?”
Jack thought back to the chaos at the house on Waverly Place when he had stopped by just an hour ago.
“I don’t think she has one.”
“But she has to,” Martha Bonner said. “Are you sure?”
Jack said, “Fairly sure, yes.”
“Well,” she said, straightening narrow shoulders. “I am Sophie’s second cousin once removed. Her great-grandfather Nathaniel is my great-great-grandfather, and she has no flower girl and really, that’s not the way things are done.”
To his own surprise, Jack followed this reasoning. “They must be very distracted to have forgot something so important.”
She nodded her approval and smiled, showing off the gap where her front teeth were coming in. “Anna says you have lots and lots of flowers at your house.”
“That is true,” Jack acknowledged. “But my house is far away from here.”
“You could take a cab,” she suggested. “I could help you find one.”
“Martha,” said her grandfather as he came up to hear this part of the conversation. “What devilment are you up to now?”
The elderly woman on his arm gestured to her. “Martha, child, come here to me. Nobody has introduced me to this young man, so you’ll have to do it.”
The girl didn’t hesitate. “This is Auntie Martha Bonner. Martha Bonner like me, except old. This is Detective Sergeant Mezza—” She paused.
“Mezzanotte,” Jack finished for her, “Jack Mezzanotte,” and he gently shook the hand the old lady offered, aware of the swollen joints. She looked nothing like any other member of the family; there was still a touch of red in her hair, and her skin was so fair he could see a tracery of veins just below the surface.
“Aunt Martha,” Adam said. “Excuse me, please. Your namesake and I are off in search of flowers.” He winked at her. “So you can conduct your interview in private.”
? ? ?
“YOU INTEND TO marry our Anna,” Martha Bonner said, cutting right to the heart of the matter.
“As soon as she’ll have me,” Jack agreed. “But I may need a little time to learn all your names and faces. Especially the names. How many Martha Bonners are there?”
“Four at last count, but only two of us here today. We are a confusing family,” she said, taking his arm. “So now, pay attention.”
What followed was a rapid-fire sketch of the descendants of Nathaniel Bonner by three different women, one a youthful indiscretion followed by two marriages.
“But not at the same time,” she clarified. “So think of the family as divided into three branches for the three women, Somerville, Wolf, and Middleton.”
“And you are?”
“I married into the Middleton line,” she said. “My husband was Lily’s twin brother. Their little sister Birdie—your Anna’s ma—was a favorite of mine.”
“Lily is—”
“They call her Aunt Quinlan these days, but you’ll have to ask Anna why. Now, Birdie was the youngest of the Middleton line and the twins the oldest, born some twenty years apart, mind you. Adam—” She looked over her shoulder, but he had disappeared with the younger Martha. “Is the Somerville line.”