There she was, standing on the back porch, oblivious to the couple canoodling behind the rosebush. She paused her comically furious sweeping to holler for the boy, then placed her hand on her hip, waiting.
Dini paused the video.
Quin leaned closer. “Are you sure that’s the same woman?” He leaned over, picked up the magazine, and held it next to the laptop screen. “She looks…darker.”
“I think,” Dini said, choking past the unexpected tears forming in her throat, “she has makeup on. They put a black actress in blackface to make sure she was black enough for the role.” She paused the movie at a moment where Thalia was midshout and said, “Hand me the Christmas picture?”
Quin handed her the magazine and reached for the photograph. This too they held next to the screen. The clothing was nearly identical—drab, nineteenth-century calico and apron, though Sallie wore a white cap and Thalia’s character, a dark kerchief. But the resemblance was unmistakable. The blurred phantom in the photograph, the starlet in the magazine, and the actress on the screen were all the same person.
“Do you think,” Quin asked, “that’s what she meant when she said her life was ruined from that night?”
“Like she’d been cursed for her crime? Punished in ways other than prison?” Dini closed her laptop and moved away, creating breathing space between the two of them. “Her visit to Hedda was a couple of years after this film. Not only did she have to watch her career die because of racism, but the man she loved had to watch it die too. That had to have been humiliating.”
“I don’t know if I can feel sorry for a man who didn’t stand up for his wife.”
“They probably weren’t married. It wasn’t legal yet. But if I put this together with what Mom told me, that child was my great-grandfather, whom I never met. I’ve only ever known the grandfather who lived in this house—and he’s barely a memory—from my mother’s family. And nobody from Dad’s. I guess I’m just a sad little orphan, all alone in the world.” She hadn’t meant for the final sentence to sound so mournful and pathetic, but apparently it did, because Quin reached for her and took her to him, her head cradled on his shoulder.
“I don’t ever want you to feel alone, Dini.” He touched the bottom of her chin and raised her face to meet his. “And I don’t know exactly what that means, but I know I hate the fact that I have to leave and I won’t see you tomorrow.”
“I hate that too.”
“Mostly, though, I hate leaving you with all of this. It’s so much. How are you feeling? About…everything.”
“Good,” she said, and with the next thought, reached for her laptop again, opening it and typing “IMDb” in the search bar. From there she typed in “J. Preston Hale Photographer.” “I can’t believe I have to go to a website to learn when my own ancestor died,” she said, attempting levity before looking at the date. “Wow. Just a few months before Sallie—Thalia—came to Hedda.”
“Does it say how he died?”
“No, but it could have been…anything. Hedda was right not to name her. She’d been through enough. And Carmichael too.”
“Maybe he didn’t put it all together.”
“I think he did. Maybe he didn’t cut the corner in his notebook, but he did in the magazine. And, maybe …” She stretched for the notebook, hating to leave the cocoon of Quin’s embrace, but wanting to check a final detail. Finding the page with the list of Valentine’s party attendees that night, she saw that most were marked out, a few were left blank, and two had a tiny star etched beside them.
Thalia Hale
John Hale
“He knew.” Dini showed him the list. “Why do you think he didn’t say anything? Do anything?”
Quin took out his phone and began to scroll through, finally stopping and tapping on a picture, which he showed to Dini. “It’s the family Bible. Remember? This shows when he was married. April 12, 1921. By the time he got the Christmas picture in the mail, he had a wife. Maybe even a kid. He wasn’t going to go back to Hedda Krause.”
“But he kept everything.”
“Kept it away. All wrapped up with a bow. Literally.”
“And never recorded another case in his notebook.”
“Case closed.” He touched her cheek.
She turned her head and kissed the center of his palm. “Case closed. Do you want to watch the rest