Chapter 10 #3
Mercy looked from the broken stickpin to the elegant script engraved inside the compartment, then to the tiny maker's mark near the edge. Three discoveries, each raising more questions than it answered.
Wilson broke the silence. "What do you make of all this?"
She let out a slow breath and reluctantly shook her head.
"I don't know." She rested her fingertips lightly against the edge of the locket.
""The engraving lends weight to the parchment's claim that the locket belonged to Martha Washington.
But beyond that..." She looked again at the broken stickpin.
"Someone deliberately hid this away. Whether it was Martha Washington herself or one of the women who carried the locket after her, we have no way of knowing. "
Her gaze drifted once more to the tiny keepsake resting on Wilson's handkerchief.
"I hope we manage to strike up a correspondence with Kate Fletcher. She's our best chance of finding answers to our questions."
Wilson nodded. "I'd say she's our only chance."
With a nod, Mercy carefully returned the broken stickpin to its hidden compartment before easing the tiny door closed until the catch clicked softly into place.
She reached for the curl, then paused, looking at the loose bezel resting on Wilson's handkerchief.
"I'm not certain I can get it back the way it was."
Wilson held out his hand. "May I?"
She didn't hesitate. If anyone could coax the delicate piece back into place without damaging it, it was Wilson.
She laid the bezel in his palm.
He studied it for a moment, turning it slightly before fitting one edge into its narrow groove. His movements were unhurried, almost instinctive, each careful adjustment guided by the same quiet confidence she'd watched him bring to broken toys, weathered furniture, and rough salvaged lumber.
It struck her then that she had stopped wondering whether he could manage a task. Somewhere along the way she'd simply come to expect that, given enough patience, his capable hands would find a way.
"There."
She leaned closer. The bezel rested as neatly as if it had never come loose.
Relief loosened the last of the tension she'd carried since the locket slipped from their hands. "That's perfect.”
She lifted the pale curl, taking an extra moment to settle it gently into the shallow recess. Someone had placed it there with loving care. It deserved no less from her.
When she closed the locket, her fingertips lingered against the cool silver. So many women had carried it before her. For one brief afternoon, their stories had brushed unexpectedly against her own. She could only hope she'd honored those stories rather than intruded upon them.
"It seems only right," she murmured, "to leave everything just as I found it."
Wilson looked at the closed locket, then at Mercy. "Except now we know one more of its secrets."
Mercy settled the locket once more inside its box before carefully lowering the lid.
For several beats, neither of them moved. How had so many questions emerged from so small an object?
At last Mercy gathered the box into her hands. "I should put this away before I let it distract me again." Now why had she reminded them both of those awkward moments?
A hint of amusement touched Wilson's face. "Distractions aren't always a bad thing."
She laughed softly, though warmth crept into her face. "I suppose that's true."
She turned toward the Porter trunk, then slowed before taking another step.
The shelves were finished. Most of the repairs were as well.
Wilson could have returned to the livery full-time days ago with a perfectly clear conscience.
No one would have questioned it. Instead, he'd continued coming back each morning, patiently helping her work through countless decisions that had little to do with carpentry or repairs and everything to do with preserving and sharing the stories behind the objects.
Somewhere along the way, he'd quietly made her work his own.
She looked back at him. "Thank you."
His brow lifted in question.
"For helping me preserve these stories," she explained. Though it was more than that, more than she could explain right now, even to herself.
He held her gaze for just a heartbeat. Then he gave a small nod. "Glad to help."
Mercy smiled as she carried the locket to the trunk and carefully returned it to its place. She'd record the morning's discoveries once she returned to her desk. The questions still far outnumbered answers.
But somehow, they no longer felt quite so heavy to carry.
Wilson watched Mercy close the trunk then rest her hand on the lid for a moment.
Straightening, she looked back toward him.
The flustered young woman who'd stood before him wearing the locket only moments ago was gone. Now Mercy's brow drew together slightly, the same look she wore whenever she was trying to untangle something in her mind.
"The reason I had the locket out this morning wasn't simply to examine it." She hesitated. "I've been trying to sort through something for several days now, and I was hoping you'd help me think it through."
He'd been about to retrieve an empty crate, but he let the impulse go. Whatever was on her mind deserved his full attention. "If I can."
She inclined her head slightly.
"The more I study that locket, the more uncertain I become about what ought to happen to it.
" Her gaze drifted briefly toward the trunk.
"From a historian's perspective, it's difficult to imagine an artifact of greater significance.
It was commissioned by George Washington, presented to Martha Washington, then passed from one woman to another throughout our nation's first hundred years.
With the Centennial only weeks away..." She gave a small shake of her head.
"Can you imagine what it would mean for people to see something like that with their own eyes? "
Mercy fell silent, her gaze resting on the trunk.
Wilson had come to recognize those pauses. They weren't invitations for him to answer. They simply meant Mercy was still working her way through a problem, laying one thought beside another until the whole of it finally made sense.
"It isn't simply that the locket is beautiful," she said at last. "Or even that it belonged to Martha Washington. It's that people could stand before it and know it was real. They could see something that had been present at the very beginning of our country."
She glanced toward him before looking back at the trunk.
"During the Centennial, I can't help wondering what that would mean to people."
Wilson didn't doubt it would leave folks talking for years. He'd seen men grow quiet standing before a faded battle flag or the worn Bible a soldier had carried through the war. Holding history in your hands wasn't the same as reading about it on a printed page.
"If I were considering only Hawthorn's celebration, and if we decided to display it, I suspect it would become the centerpiece of the entire exhibit. It might even draw visitors from other towns."
A faint smile touched her lips.
"But that's exactly what troubles me." Wilson was beginning to understand that Mercy didn't just argue for the answer she wanted. She argued all sides. Every time she reached what seemed the obvious conclusion, she immediately began searching for the reason it might be wrong.
"But something of this importance doesn't really belong only to Hawthorn, does it?" she continued quietly. "If it truly ought to be shared, should it remain here after the celebration? Or should it be entrusted to a national museum where people from every part of the country might see it?"
Truth be told, until Mercy had come into his life, Wilson had never given much thought to where historical objects belonged once they were found.
Mercy had. Apparently, she'd been carrying the question around for days.
"And then there's the parchment." Her voice softened.
"If the locket is displayed—whether here or somewhere else—do the marriage notes remain with it?
Those seem...different. More personal. I can't imagine placing them under glass for strangers to read any more than I could the letters Colonel Briggs entrusted to us. "
Wilson remembered that conversation. She'd wrestled with those letters too, but not like this. This question reached deeper somehow.
She rested one hand lightly against the trunk once more. "But is it right to separate them? The notes are part of the locket's history too. If they're removed..." Her words drifted away before she quietly continued, "Am I preserving its story—or changing it?"
She fell silent again.
When she spoke once more, her voice was scarcely above a whisper. "And perhaps I've been overlooking the hardest question of all."
Wilson said nothing. He could tell she had more to say and he knew it would be worth waiting for.
"For a hundred years this wasn't simply something to be admired." Her fingertips brushed the trunk almost absently. "It was entrusted from one woman to another. Each added her own marriage note before passing it along."
She looked up at him.