Margaret tried to remain straight-faced, but a smile broke free. “Okay, the truth is you could use a break, and I could use some company. An arrangement like this works for both of us. I’ll pay you the same as the Portlands, and the work will be a whole lot easier.”
Josie turned away, looking off into the distance. When she turned back, her dark eyes were misty.
“It’s a real sweet offer,” she said, “but I can’t take it.”
“Why not?”
“With no real work to do, it’d be like charity.”
“It most certainly is not. It’s a kindness that I never got to do for my mama.”
“Doing for your mama is different; that’s family.”
“Family’s not just blood relatives,” Margaret countered, “it’s anybody you care about. Would you deny a woman with no other family the small pleasure of doing something nice for somebody she cares about?”
Josie chuckled. “You may not have a family, but the good Lord sure enough gifted you with a lofty way of thinking.”
“Are you saying you’ll do it?”
“I’m saying I’ll give it a try. All things considered, I suppose that tea service does look like it could use a good shine.”
Margaret laughed, and they settled back with a fresh pot of coffee and the oatmeal cookies Josie brought. They were both on their second cup when the doorbell rang. Claiming this was part of her expanded duties, Josie hurried to answer it. A minute later she was back.
“There’s a Mr. Tom Bateman asking to see you. Do you want to—”
Before she finished the sentence, Margaret was on her way to the door.
Tom Bateman was waiting in the foyer. He was tall, broad shouldered, and carried a bit of extra padding around his waist. He wore a tweed sports jacket, and his shirt was open at the collar. Unlike what Margaret had pictured, he was extremely good looking and seemed to be in great physical shape.
“I thought you were going to call,” she stammered.
“I was, but then I thought better of it. There was a reason why your husband didn’t want you to know about this, so before we get into what I was investigating we should talk.”
She winced. “Please don’t tell me Albert had another family.”
“It’s nothing of the sort,” he said.
The relaxed look of his expression and the way his eyes crinkled at the corners made Margaret think Tom Bateman was someone who smiled often. On the telephone he’d sounded bristly and impatient. Curt almost. She’d imagined him short, bald, and portly; he was none of the three.
Trying to hold back the anxiety clawing its way up her throat, she thanked him for coming and led him into the living room where they sat across from one another. He pulled a thick folder from his briefcase and laid it on the coffee table in front of him.
“You were right, I did a job for your husband back in forty-four, but it wasn’t about anything he was involved in. He was looking for information on your family.”
Margaret looked at him with wide eyes.
“My family?”
He nodded. “This was over twenty years ago so when you called the name didn’t register, but once I pulled the file I remembered it quite well. Most people hired me to check out things like a cheating wife, an unscrupulous business partner, or a runaway kid, but this case was very different and it stuck with me.”
“We’d been married over twenty-five years by then. Why in the world would he be checking on my family?”
“It’s not what you think. He wasn’t looking for background dirt or anything like that. He just wanted to find them. He said you’d lost track of your siblings years earlier, and he wanted to locate them. We agreed that I wouldn’t send any reports to the house because he was planning to surprise you. The investigation was making decent headway until I discovered something pretty troubling. When I told him about it, he said to drop the case.”
“Drop the case? Why?”
Tom smiled. It was a warm smile, one that came from the inside. In the depth of his eyes, she could see a genuine look of compassion.
“I remember your husband really well. Like you said, he was a good man. He felt that hearing about what I found would only cause you more heartache, so he paid me for my time and told me to forget it. I put the report in the file and hung onto it. I thought there was a chance he’d change his mind and come back wanting to know more, but he never did.”
“I haven’t seen any of my brothers or my sister for over fifty years,” she said. “Mama and Louella were both dead and buried before I married Albert, so I won’t be too surprised if some of the others are as well. I lost my husband a month ago. He was the love of my life, and losing him was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. I made it through that; I think I’m strong enough to handle a little more bad news.”
He reached into the folder, pulled out a Blair County criminal complaint dated 1910, and handed it to her. “This is about your father.”
Margaret’s hand trembled as she held the paper and read through the report.
“Martin Hobbs, a union representative for the National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, has been reported as a missing person. He is suspected of embezzling almost $1,000 in union membership dues entrusted to him. Hobbs was last seen on January 27, 1910. The following day he sent a message that he was sick and would be unable to report for work. He was scheduled to return on Monday but failed to report.
“In an earlier incident which occurred in 1908, Hobbs abandoned his family in West Virginia and took up residence in Pennsylvania. His latest disappearance, we believe, shows a tendency to repeat this behavior pattern. At this time, his wife and children claim to know nothing about his whereabouts. Subsequent to his disappearance, Mrs. Hobbs and the children left Barrettsville and returned to her maternal home in Coal Creek, West Virginia.
“Hobbs also maintained a spousal relationship with a Martha Mae Keller and was residing with her since his transfer to Altoona. While Keller does not deny the relationship, she claims to have no knowledge of Hobbs’s prior marital status or the missing funds. Union officials have offered a $100 reward for information leading to the arrest of Hobbs.”
When she’d finished reading the report, Margaret sat there feeling the memory of that time come alive again. It had happened a lifetime ago and she thought she’d forgotten it, but here it was as painful and ugly as it was during those terrible years. She’d known about her daddy’s mistress and his disappearance; they all did. That’s why they left Barrettsville.
She’d also known about the earlier time when he’d left them in Coal Creek, and they’d struggled along until there was nothing left in the money jar. She was only five when he’d disappeared that time and could barely remember him. But she remembered the years that followed. She remembered being hungry and watching her mama cry.
She hadn’t known about the missing money.
Pushing back the tears and trying not to feel the ache of it, she looked at Tom and asked, “Was this the only thing you found? What about my brothers or my sister, Nellie?”
“Nothing on Nellie.” He opened the folder and read from a page of handwritten notes. “Ben Roland settled in Farstack, Alabama, married a woman named Rebecca Sawyer, and spent twelve years working for the Woodward Iron Company. In October of 1937, he lost his life in the Woodward coal mine explosion. There is no record of them having had children, and there was nothing more on Rebecca Sawyer. You said you already knew about Louella. She never married and died of tuberculosis in 1916. Your brother, Dewey…”