My Sister's Keeper

Chapter 33

33

I RODE TO MOM'S and I found Martha sitting in her wheelchair at the desk in the corner of her room. She was hunkered over a sheet of newspaper with all the parts to the cassette laid out on it.

"Hey, hey! How's it going?" I asked spreading myself across her doorframe.

She raised her hand. "Shhh. Mom's upstairs asleep."

"Oh, sorry."

"What are you so excited about?"

"I just had lunch with Sydney Deagan."

"A date?"

"Sort of." I browsed the bookcase in the hall, removed the oldest photo album, and carried it into Martha's room where I sat on her bed.

"Tell me everything," she said without looking up.

I opened the dark leather cover on the album. It crinkled as it folded back. "Not much to tell. I picked up a couple of wraps and met her at the gazebo on the back of Greenfield Lake."

"Mmmm. Sounds romantic."

"It really was." Each page of the album contained one sepia-toned photograph inside a thick matte with arched tops and gold embellishments. The album looked expensive. "What do you know about Uncle Charles?"

She was leaning over the cassette with a magnifier in one hand and a brush in the other. "Didn't he die kind of young?"

"I think so."

"Nobody's ever talked much about him that I can remember. I just figured he died real young and that was that. Why?"

"Just wondering."

"No, you weren't just wondering. I know you better than that. What made you think about Uncle Charles?" Martha dipped a brush in a dish of white powder and flipped it back and forth across a piece of the cassette case while peering through a magnifier.

"It was just something Dad said this morning."

She twisted around and faced me. "What did he say?"

I turned another page. "I promised him I wouldn't tell anyone."

"Tell anyone what?" Her voice was emphatic, but low.

I raised my index finger to my lips. "Shhh!"

"Don't shush me. Tell me what he said."

"You're the brilliant investigator. Can't you figure it out?"

She turned back to her cassette. "Forget it."

I turned another page and studied the pictures. She pressed a wide strip of cellophane tape to a hunk of the black plastic. "Will you tell me if I guess it?"

"Of course. Now who in here could be Uncle Charles?"

She slowly peeled the tape off the cassette. "No one. That book's too old. That's the early 1900s. There's another one where you found that one."

She pressed the tape onto a square of black paper while I stepped into the hall and exchanged the book for one that was more like a scrapbook. The photos in this one were attached to thick black pages with little black glue-on corners. Some of them had comments written under them in white ink. It was the history of my grandparents, Charles and Georgia Lynn Baimbridge and their children; Beverly, Charles Jr., and Augustus.

There were photographs of the kids as infants, as children on bicycles and ponies, at the beach, and at family gatherings. As the kids got older, there were fewer photos. When I turned the page, I found myself staring at what I'd swear was an old photo of me! A teenage boy with no shirt on, leaning back against a 1950s Chevrolet. His arms were crossed over a strong upper body. Under it was written, "Charlie's first car—1958." His hair was thick, dark, and wavy, and his eyes were deep-set like mine. I jumped off the bed and held the book in front of Martha.

"Look."

She stared at the photo a moment. "What?"

"Who does that look like?"

"Who? What are you getting at?"

She turned the next page and there was a picture of Uncle Charles with a girl under which had been written, "Prom - 1960." Martha gasped and the hairs on my arms stood on end. The girl was our mom.

Uncle Charles had on a white dinner jacket and Mom had on a ball gown with a huge corsage pinned to her shoulder. He had his arm around her and a lit cigarette hanging from his lips. They were standing in a line along with dozens of others dressed similarly. Uncle Charles had a mischievous look in his eye. Mom leaned against him with one arm around his back and the other on his chest.

"It looks like Mom used to date Uncle Charles," she whispered.

I didn't say anything. She flipped the last page over. There was a single picture of a crowd of people gathered around a funeral casket holding umbrellas. It was hard to tell who they were. Many held handkerchiefs to their faces. "That's probably Uncle Charles' funeral," I whispered. I found it hard to take my eyes off the photograph.

"So Mom dated Charles before she dated Daddy."

"Looks that way."

"So?"

"So, maybe they were..." I lifted the book over her head and stepped back to the bed where I laid it in front of me and studied the picture of Charles with his arm around Mom. "I wonder how he died."

"What are you saying? That maybe they were lovers?"

"Could have been." I slipped the photo of the two of them from the album and into my shirt pocket.

"Oh, my God!" Martha screamed. "Oh, my God!"

I leapt from the bed. "Wha-a-a-t?"

"Come here! Look at this!"

I left the album on the bed and leaned over her shoulder. She held the magnifier up to me and pointed at the sheet of paper. "Look! Look at this!" She bounced in the chair as I moved around her, held the lens over the print, and looked through it. I saw a partial fingerprint. She tapped a finger on another fingerprint lying next to it. "Compare it to this one."

The one on the sheet was not a complete print either, but what was there appeared to match the other one. "It's the same, isn't it?"

"Son of a bitch!" She wheeled the chair back from under the desk. Her chin quivered and her face turned red. "You know whose print that is?"

"Whose?"

Her eyes glossed over. "That print came from the windowsill at the warehouse. That bastard is still around and has something to do with that house you were in last night."