the need to conduct those meetings in private—in his workshop or out on the boat. My grandmother never liked any kind of business talk in the house, real estate or otherwise. I didn’t know anything about my grandfather’s hobby, or side business, or whatever it was, until I helped him take care of the remaining files before he died. He asked me not to read the papers, and I didn’t. Not until Avery came to Edisto a few days ago.”
May’s mouth falls open. Tears rim her eyes. “He’s passed, then? I knew he was very ill.”
Trent confirms that he lost his grandfather months ago, and May pulls him close for a kiss on the cheek. “He was a good man and a dear friend.”
“Was he adopted from the Tennessee Children’s Home Society?” Trent asks. “Was that why he was interested in it?”
A somber nod answers. “Yes, indeed he was. And I was as well. That was where we met. Of course, he was just three years old then. He was such a cute little thing, and sweet. His name wasn’t Trent at the time. He didn’t change it to that until years later, when he found out who he really was. He had a sister who was separated from him during our stay at the home. She was two or three years older, and I think he always hoped that using his real name might help her to find him. But that’s the irony of it. The man who aided so many of us in reconnecting with one another again never was able to locate his sister. Perhaps she was one of those who didn’t survive. There were many….”
Her voice cracks and trails away. She pushes upright in the bed, clears her throat. “I was born on the Mississippi River in a shantyboat my father built. Queenie was my mother and Briny was my father. I had three little sisters, Camellia, Lark, and Fern, and a brother, Gabion. He was the youngest….”
She closes her eyes, but I can see them moving under thin, blue-veined lids as she continues her story. It is as if she’s dreaming, watching the images float by. She talks about being taken off the boat by the police, ending up in the children’s home. She describes weeks of uncertainty and fear, workers who were cruel, separation from her siblings, horrors like the ones Trent and I have read about.
The story she tells is heartbreaking yet mesmerizing. We stand on either side of the bed, barely breathing as we listen. “I lost track of my other three siblings at the home,” she says at the end. “But Fern and I were fortunate. We were kept together. Adopted.”
She stares out the window, and for a moment, I wonder if she’s told us all she intends to. Finally, she returns her attention to Trent. “The last time I saw your grandfather as a child, I was afraid he would be one of those who wouldn’t survive the home. He was such a timid little thing. Always in trouble with the workers without meaning to be. He was practically like a little brother by the time I left. I never thought I’d see him again. When a man named Trent Turner contacted me years later, I assumed he was a fraud. I didn’t recognize the name, of course. Georgia Tann habitually gave new names to the children—to help prevent their birth families from finding them, no doubt. I can tell you that I remember her as a horrible, cruel woman and that I believe the extent of her crimes may never be fully told. Few of her victims were able to do what your grandfather did—reclaim a birth name and a heritage. He even found his biological mother before she died, and he reunited with other relatives. He became Trent again, but when he was little, I knew him as Stevie.”
Her attention wanders again, her mind seeming to travel with it. I shift the photo of the four women just a bit, make a few inferences. In court, this would be leading the witness, but here it’s just helping to uncover the story. “Are these your sisters in the photo with you and my grandmother?”
I know the three women on the left must be sisters or cousins. It’s obvious enough, even with the hats shading their faces. I’m still troubled by their similarities to my grandmother. The hair color. The pale eyes that seem to reach beyond the photo. But