LITMIR.BIZ

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picked up the tray.

      “I was just teas—Wait.”

      She paused midstep.

      He swallowed. “I thought we could do some fieldwork on the mountain after church tomorrow. No need to put it off.”

      Linden’s neck burned. You’d think she’d been born a redhead. “Good idea. Get it over with.”

      His cheeks puffed, splotching. “I didn’t mean—” He raked a hand over the top of his head.

      “Now you’re going to have to wash your hands again, Crowe.” She gave him her best Madison Avenue smile. “Lesson number three? Two o’clock?”

      A glint of something sharpened in the fathomless depths of his dark eyes. “Lesson three. Two o’clock. You got yourself a date, Miz Birchfield.”

      She sniffed and moved toward the table loaded with tea pitchers. His mocking laugh echoed behind her.

      With a great deal of relief, she spotted Quincy—newly PhD-endowed Dr. Sawyer, an American Indianist anthropologist—chomping on a chicken thigh. Hips swinging—she so hoped that obnoxiously-pleased-with-himself Walker Crowe was watching—she flounced over to Quincy.

      Flounced? She crinkled her nose. This was what a week keeping company with Marvela and by extension, Miss Ophelia, produced.

      She plunked her plate on the laminate tabletop. “Quince.”

      A goofy smile lit his face at the sight of her.

      Some of her ruffled female feathers settled. At least one man appreciated her finer qualities.

      Not that she cared if Walker Crowe appreciated her qualities.

      “How’s your head?”

      Museum curator by day, avid downhill skier in season. He’d admitted the proximity of the ski slopes north of Asheville as much as anything had enticed him to the area.

      Quincy shrugged. “I’ll live. Proves what Mom said all along about my hard head.”

      “I see you replaced your glasses, too.” She reached for her shoulder bag and withdrew a manila folder. “Look what I found in this diary from 1838.”

      His baby blue eyes almost bugged out from behind his retro black, horn-rimmed glasses. “A diary? Let me see . . .”

      “Didn’t bring it with me.”

      His shoulders slumped.

      “I’m reading through it when I get the chance. I’ll pass it on soon as I’m done. I wondered with your ancestry database if you could find some info about the people I’ve run across in the diary.”

      Out of the corner of her eye, she watched his doctoral candidate assistant—on loan from the Western Carolina Archaeology Department’s satellite office in Cherokee—stroll over to the counter Walker worked and . . .

      Her eyes widened as the tawny-complexioned Emmaline threw her arms around Walker Crowe’s neck. Comprehension dawned. The Emmaline, her stomach clenching, he’d spoken of being late to pick up.

      Linden’s fingers clawed the folder.

      “Careful, Lin. You’re going to crush whatever you wanted to show me,” Quincy warned.

      She thrust the packet at him and cut her eyes around the room. No one but her seemed to think it unusual Emmaline Whatever-Her-Name-Was had just . . . just . . .

      Whatever you called that sort of public—and totally inappropriate in her opinion—display of affection.

      Quincy removed the daguerreotype. “Wow.”

      Everyone continued with their own conversations as if such carryings-on were commonplace with the likes of Walker Crowe and his . . . girlfriends.

      Which perhaps, for all Linden knew, they were.

      Not that she cared.

      Not that his relationships were any of her business.

      Maybe he was like The Jerk.

      “These are great, Lin. Have you identified the people yet?”

      She tore her gaze from Crowe and his paramour.

      Paramour?

      She grimaced. Maybe Gram was right. Maybe she did need to get out more if all she could do for entertainment was immerse herself in the nineteenth century world of a long-dead woman whose love life modeled her own.

      As in lack thereof.

      She bent over the picture of the family. The man she could tell even from the faded photograph was fair-haired and handsome, although his face wore a stern countenance. “From their clothing, I’d guess mid-nineteenth century.”

      Quincy nodded. “Circa 1850s or pre-Civil War, for sure.”

      She flipped the photo in his hand and pointed to the spidery, inked documentation on the back. “‘Home of Dr. Horace Hopkins,’” she read aloud. “The little boys are labeled—Gram thinks they range in age from eleven to four—Ethan, Caleb, Johnathan, and David. The man’s identified as Pierce.”

      A trace of excitement laced her voice. “The diary talks about a Dr. Horace Hopkins, medical missionary to the Cherokee at the time of the Removal and his daughter, Sarah Jane. Maybe the woman in the photo is Sarah Jane.”

      He whipped his iPhone out of his shirt pocket. “Horace Hopkins, you say.” He typed in the name. “Sarah Jane Hopkins what? You think she married this Pierce guy? Is that his first or last name?” He glanced at the photos on the table between their plates. “Doesn’t look too happy, does she?”

      The sadness on the woman’s face pricked at Linden’s heart. About as happy as she’d look if she’d married The Jerk. For the first time, Linden thanked God she’d been spared that on top of everything else.

      “I don’t know whether it’s his first or last name, although I do know that like Dr. Hopkins, he was a medical missionary, too.” She gave Quincy a brief recap of the story she’d gleaned thus far.

      She examined the picture under the florescent lighting of the church hall. The photo depicted Pierce on a striped settee in an old-fashioned frock coat, vest, and starched cuffs. “At this point in my reading, I’m not even sure Sarah Jane ultimately marries this Pierce or not. The woman may or may not be Sarah Jane Hopkins.”

      On either side of Pierce sat two of the younger boys—clothed in knickers and wide shirt collars. Behind the sofa, a boy leaned against the armrest. Another, the oldest boy, had his arm draped around the woman’s shoulders.

      The woman’s hair parted in the middle of her scalp and pulled to the nape of her neck in the severe style Linden recognized from the antebellum era. The woman gazed into the camera, her beringed left hand resting atop the carved back of the settee. Her eyes caught at Linden, their expression wide, round, and . . .

      Vulnerable? Or was Linden projecting her own sensibilities upon the woman?

      “I’ll see what I can learn and get back to you.” He tucked the photo into the folder, handing it to her. “What’s your interest in this?”

      She placed the folder into her purse and smiled. “You know me and one of history’s mysteries.”

      He laughed.

      “I’ll try to run that next donation to you tomorrow afternoon before my . . .” she grimaced, “. . . appointment if you think you’ll be there on a Sunday.”

      He chewed his lip. “I’ll be there all right. Trying to erase the graffiti. Cleaning up the mess. Sheriff has no leads on what he calls a racial hate crime.”

      “Who does he think is behind it?”

      “Lot of mixed feelings on both sides about the changes the festival’s bringing.”

      She

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