kid nodded and dug into the pocket of his too-big shorts, pulling out something that looked like a credit card. “This belongs to Mom,” he said. “She told me I would probably need it. It’s her library card. And she told me that it’s okay for me and Topher to look at the letters.”
Jackie handed the card over, and the librarian examined it closely before shooting another gaze at Jackie and then Topher. “Well, imagine that. Y’all are the first to come looking for those letters in a very long time.”
She stood up. “I’ll have to keep this until you’re finished with the collection.” She waved the library card, then stepped from behind the desk and led them to a small room at the back of the building with a single oak desk and a couple of straight-backed chairs. “The original versions of the letters are kept at the main branch of the library in Georgetown. But we do have photocopies.”
“If you don’t even have the real letters, why all the cloak-and-dagger about getting permission?” Topher asked.
The librarian turned her back and opened a flat file cabinet in the corner, pulling out a large black portfolio. “I have no idea,” she said. “I just know that Mary Howland, God rest her soul, made it clear that she didn’t want anyone reading these letters. And since Mary Howland gave the money to establish this branch of the library, she got her way.”
“But Aunt Mary is dead now,” Topher said.
“She’s your aunt? Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”
“I’m not a Howland, and neither was Aunt Mary. She was born a Martin.”
The librarian shrugged. “I know, but she was the matriarch of the Howland family nevertheless.”
Arguing with the woman was a futile exercise, so Topher shut up. He waited for the librarian to leave and then turned toward Jackie. “I wonder what your great-grandmother didn’t want people to read about in these letters?” he asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
The boy hopped up onto one of the chairs and opened the portfolio. There were a lot of pages in the file, all hand-written in an old-style script that would be hard for the third grader to read. There weren’t any transcriptions. Obviously Aunt Mary wanted to keep whatever was in these letters under wraps.
“Can you read handwriting?” Topher asked, as a sudden preternatural shiver worked its way up his spine. What the heck? The library was damned drafty for a warm day in early September.
Topher looked up at the ceiling, searching for a nonexistent AC vent while the kid pawed through the pages, pulling one out seemingly at random. “This one. Read this one.”
“Why this one?” Topher asked.
The kid focused over Topher’s shoulder, and for a moment he thought Jackie was giving him the stare. But Jackie had never done that before.
Another shiver worked up Topher’s spine. He turned, finding nothing, and then glanced down at the kid. “The captain’s here, isn’t he?” he asked.
A sly smile tipped Jackie’s mouth as he nodded. “The cap’n says you could see him once.”
Topher didn’t say a word as he took the page from Jackie’s hand.
It was a letter from Rose to her father, John Howland—the man who had disowned her when she’d bedded William Teal and produced a child out of wedlock. The letter was dated 1719, six years after the hurricane that had taken William Teal’s life. If Topher remembered his history correctly, Captain Teal and Rose Howland’s son, Thomas, would have been about seven or eight by this time.
Thomas was the subject of the letter. Rose’s father wanted his grandson back at Oak Hall, the family plantation, which had once stood along the banks of the Black River. Rose didn’t want to give up her son, and her letter enumerated all the reasons she regarded her father as an unworthy guardian for the young Thomas Howland. At the end of the letter she wrote:
You will not force me to leave this island as you forced me to live here in the first instance. I am well here. I have made a home. I am cared for. I am not alone.
And I feel close to the captain here, as I cannot feel close to him any other place, but perhaps in death. If you make me leave, or take young Thomas from me, it will be the death of me.
“Wow,” Jackie said. “You think she died because she had to leave the island and never see Cap’n Bill again?”