Ellen opened the envelope. There was a copy of a photograph, just a Xerox, but remarkably clear. It was a photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Naile and their two (unnamed) children.
“This has to be an elaborate practical joke, Jack.”
“Lemme see, princess.”
She handed it to him. Despite the age of the photograph and the fact that it was a Xerox, the resemblance between the Naile family of nine decades ago and the Naile family of today was enough to make her want to throw up.
She’d been looking out the Suburban’s open window but now focused on the other items in the envelope. There was a summary of its contents, typed on an old-seeming machine, Arthur Beach’s name scrawled at the bottom.
“The Naile family arrived in town in 1896. They were apparently on their way to California for some new business when their wagon suffered an accident and was destroyed. Reduced to only a few personal belongings, the Nailes seemingly had considerable financial resources. There is no material yet available to me mentioning the fate of their descendants, nor concerning how or when Mr. and Mrs. Naile eventually died. The county medical examiner’s office burned to the ground in the 1940s, all death certificates archived there destroyed. I’ll keep looking.’”
“Holy—”
“Tell him to stop looking, Jack!”
“Startling resemblance, that photograph. I’ll say that.”
“Jack, it’s you and me and David and Elizabeth, and the picture was taken almost a hundred years ago!”
ISBN 13: 978-1-4391-3399-6 First printing, November 2010 Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For our children and our children’s children and our nephew; in family, there is strength.
PROLOGUE
John Naile turned the Cadillac off the county highway and onto the black pavement of a pine-flanked single lane road. Not yet that familiar with his latest vehicular acquisition, he took his eyes off the road and glanced at the wood-accented dashboard in order to find the cigar lighter. He found the lighter and pushed it in. There was a half-filled package of Luckies in the cigarette pocket of his single-breasted gray suit. He started to reach for a cigarette.
“You should try being pregnant sometime, John.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to do that, sweetheart,” Naile replied, looking over at his wife in the front seat beside him. Audrey was nearing the end of what she called her “first trimester,” but hardly looked pregnant at all. The A-line skirt of her maroon suit barely showed a bulge, even when she was sitting.
“No, what I mean is these seats. I don’t know what it was about the ‘63. I mean, John, I really didn’t notice it until I got pregnant. But there was no back support!”
“I think it’s more your back than it was the seats, babe. The New Yorker was a comfortable car.” He’d gone through two Chryslers, one Lincoln, a Mercedes and a Ford Country Squire in search of the perfect car for his wife, all because his father wouldn’t buy anything but a Cadillac. When the ‘64 model year was announced, John Naile surrendered to fate and ordered one.
But John Naile had no intention, however, of abandoning his longtime personal car, the red Thunderbird. He was vice-president of Horizon Industries, the family business. He was married to the girl of his dreams and the arrival of their first child was only six months away. Behind the wheel of the T-Bird, its top off, the sound of its exhaust when he changed gears as throaty as Peggy Lee’s singing—sometimes that sporty little roadster was the only way of reminding himself that he wasn’t yet thirty.
Adulthood had gotten him used to driving vehicles the size of a sport boat on wheels, but he didn’t have to like them.
“You want me to try the radio, John, and see how it picks up out here?”
“Sure, honey.”
Audrey apparently found WLS at 89 on the AM band from Chicago, or at least it sounded like she had; it was an Elvis Presley song playing. “Do you think Elvis will last, John?