Chapter 23
“It’s true,” Hannah announced.
Zane’s eyebrows winged upward at the sight of them.
Hannah slipped into the booth at the downtown ice cream shop that featured an old-fashioned soda fountain counter complete with stools and scrolled woodwork.
Jennie spooned a bite of Neapolitan ice cream into her mouth and waited, opting for silence over adding to the chaos.
She’d already filled Zane in on Gladys Quincy’s rather passionate revelation from Allison.
She’d sent Jennie away with the shoebox of Allison’s notes and the locket.
Now it sat in the middle of the table with the lid on so as not to bring undue attention to it.
“Allison was right,” Hannah insisted. She’d opted against ice cream in exchange for excitement.
Her green eyes sparkled as she unzipped her backpack.
She tugged out two high-school textbooks and her tablet computer, piling them on the table.
Then she pulled out a notebook filled with sticky flags of multiple colors, jutting out from the places she wanted to revisit.
Thumbing through the notebook, Hannah selected a page with a neon-green flag.
“When I was at the historical museum, the lady there helped me pull up records of the Traeger family. When Leopold was murdered, the only person left behind was his niece by marriage, Waverly Pembrooke.” Hannah glanced between Zane and Jennie as if to make sure they were listening.
Assured of their attention, the teenager continued, “Then we searched the online records to see where Waverly Pembrooke came from before moving to Traeger Hall. She lived at a boarding school out east. The same boarding school that Allison confirmed Louisa Theophilus had attended.” Hannah folded her hands and rested them on her notebook.
“Put bluntly, it appears Leopold Traeger helped finance not only Waverly’s education after he married her aunt Cornelia but he sponsored Louisa Theophilus’s education too. ”
“But Louisa Theophilus wasn’t an artist, right?” Zane said.
“No.” Hannah shook her head, her ponytail bobbing. “At least not anywhere I could find. I don’t know what made Allison think that.”
Jennie poked at her ice cream with her spoon. “What about the name Vallée?”
Hannah tapped the page in her notebook. “That’s where it gets weird. Not long before Waverly Pembrooke died, a reporter sat down with her to get her account of what had happened. She mentioned that her uncle had a fascination with the artist Vallée and with fine art in general.”
Zane nodded. “So it’s possible Allison was right about the Hall having a treasure trove of art inside it.”
“Except Vallée’s art never grew in demand, and then it faded into obscurity,” Jennie said.
Hannah grinned. “Maybe. Still, we don’t have Waverly Pembrooke’s explanation because a portion of the journalist’s notes was lost.”
Zane grimaced. “Let me guess. There was a fire?”
“No.” Hannah laughed. “The journalist moved and took his stories with him. He never published the piece about Waverly Pembrooke. In fact, the museum director said it was an accident they found what they did, seeing as the reporter’s notes somehow got mixed in with some other paperwork and left behind by mistake. ”
“How do you know the documents are authentic?” Jennie asked, mouthing a cold spoonful of delicious heaven.
“Because there was a black-and-white photograph clipped to the first several pages of the journalist’s notes after interviewing Waverly Pembrooke.
She was in her eighties when the photo was taken, and it matches another photograph from roughly the same time period that has been confirmed to be of Waverly.
” Hannah thumbed through more papers. “The people at the museum in Newton Creek were a bit reticent to let me see them because—” she paused and shot a wary glance in Zane’s direction—“well, the last time someone asked about them . . .”
“It was Allison.” Zane saved Hannah from having to dance around the painful truth.
“It was.” Hannah winced. “So while no one ever said Allison’s disappearance was directly related to her research of Traeger, the museum felt it better to file away the account from Waverly Pembrooke since all it did was raise more questions.”
“Did they let you see them then?” Jennie asked.
“What they had on file, yeah.” Hannah shrugged.
“But the only thing they’d let me copy was this.
” She pulled out a diagram of a family tree, which she spread out so Jennie and Zane could see it.
“Tell me this doesn’t set your mind on fire.
This is supposedly the Traeger family tree that Waverly Pembrooke provided the journalist with. ”
Jennie stared at the family tree. “Louisa Theophilus?”
“No mother is listed,” Zane verified.
“Nope. But this shows she was Leopold Traeger’s daughter.”
“Hold on.” Zane looked sideways at Jennie. “Are you saying the portrait we saw in Traeger Hall is an unknown daughter of Leopold Traeger?”
Hannah’s scrunched up her face. “That’s what everything seems to be pointing to. But no one is going to hang a portrait of their illegitimate daughter in the front hall of their home. So why is it there? Not to mention it’s always been thought that Traeger had no heirs.”
“Except he wouldn’t claim an illegitimate daughter,” Zane said, “but he would add a clause in his will keeping his estate from passing to any Traegers who might come out of the woodwork after his death.”
Jennie didn’t contribute her opinion. All she could hear was the imaginary or hallucinatory whispers, Come, know my secrets. She looked back down at the family tree. “What’s this?” Jennie pointed to a line that extended horizontally from Leopold Traeger to the edge of the page and ended there.
Hannah shrugged. “A line? Bruh, how should I know?”
“Why?” Zane studied Jennie, but she didn’t meet his questioning eyes. She kept staring at the line that led to nowhere.
“I thought every line on a family tree meant something.”
“What are you getting at?” Hannah pressed.
Jennie cleared her throat. “Well, the lines are what connect people and generations stemming from the same family roots. Why would there be a line extending from Leopold’s name that goes nowhere but to the edge of the page?”
Hannah and Zane both redirected their attention to the family tree.
“It’s like . . .” Jennie hated to say it out loud because it would only muddy the waters, but she did anyway. “It’s like part of the tree is missing.”
Trixie had invited Jennie for dinner. It was the first time Jennie had met Zane’s dad, Greg, who was a down-to-earth rural Wisconsin man if she’d ever met one.
She was cautious around him until she was reassured by his demeanor and actions that he was authentic and kind.
Bratwurst on the grill was on the menu, and Trixie was busy tending the spitting and popping sausages.
Hannah and Milo were in the backyard throwing a tennis ball, with Midas woofing and loping after it, creating a form of entertainment that seemed to have captured Greg’s attention.
He shouted something to his daughter, and Hannah waved at him before tossing the tennis ball his direction.
Midas charged the older man, and Greg laughed and threw the ball in the direction of the cornfield that abutted their yard.
“Is this what it’s like?” Jennie mumbled to herself as she stood at the kitchen window and watched.
“Is this what what’s like?” Zane came up behind her so stealthily that Jennie jumped, which caused her to bang her shoulder into his chest. He steadied her.
His musky juniper scent tickled her nose. She wasn’t sure if she liked it or not, but it was Zane. It was warm. It trailed along his skin and his shirtfront and enveloped her . . . and suddenly Zane was very close. Too close. Jennie jumped and hit her elbow against the window frame.
“Hey . . .” Zane stepped back. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” Concern emanated from him.
She hadn’t fooled him for a second. Jennie knew that now. She could see it in his eyes, in the way he was careful to back away from her. He knew she was wounded.
“You can trust me,” he said, his voice lowered. He didn’t say anything more. Didn’t reach for her. Didn’t try to come closer.
They stood staring at each other in the kitchen, while the rest of the crew still congregated outside.
Jennie crossed her arms over her chest—a classic defensive position, she realized.
She quickly uncrossed her arms and then didn’t know what to do with them.
She wanted to get away from this uncomfortable situation.
At the same time, she wanted Zane to stop being so careful and to just come and hold her.
She noticed the muscles in his upper arms that were partly hidden under his T-shirt, also the breadth of his chest. She hadn’t ever really been held.
Just held. With no other ulterior motive.
This was stupid. He had no reason to hold her. That was taking a drastic leap from being new friends to . . . she didn’t know what.
Jennie sniffed and looked down at her shoes, crossing her arms again.
Mom was gone. She was the only one Jennie had ever trusted receiving affection from.
But something inside of her felt as though that was crumbling.
Something bad and good at the same time.
She didn’t understand it. Didn’t know how to explain it.
“Jennie.”
Shoot. Zane had stepped closer. He had dared to invade her personal space, just like he had earlier when he combed through her hair with his fingers and she’d—oh, gosh! She’d forgotten she’d leaned into his hand. She’d probably sent him some sort of signal when she did that. Did he think she was—
Zane tilted her chin up, and his eyes bored into hers. She felt him step even closer until their bodies were only a few inches apart.
“I know we haven’t known each other for that long, but . . . would you please open the door just a little bit?” His quiet words caressed her face.