If Catfish Had Nine Lives(18)
Chapter 6
“Oh, my, I am so embarrassed,” Esther said as she sat up straight on the stool. Jake and I were on either side of her, at the ready in case she went down again. “I don’t think I’ve ever fainted. Ever. It was just so strange to maybe suddenly be connected to a family member, someone dead for so long but whose existence was partially responsible for mine. It was like . . . well, like his ghost was in the room with us for a minute.”
Jake looked at me with raised eyebrows. I shook my head. No, the ghost of Astin Reagal wasn’t in the vicinity, but I was really beginning to think he’d ridden into town earlier. I wanted to confirm before I got Jake’s hopes up too high, though. Disappointment flickered over his face, but he normalized quickly. He loved the entire idea of our historical ghosts, and he knew about their visits with me and Gram. Much to his chagrin, he wasn’t able to see them—well, he’d had a brief glimpse of Sally Swarthmore, but that was a planned and rare moment.
“It’s okay,” I said to Esther, “if you’re okay.”
She waved away my concern. “Fine.” She blinked and then looked at Jake. “May I look closely at the mochila again?”
“Of course,” Jake said hesitantly.
Esther laughed. “I’m so sorry, Jake. I won’t faint again, I promise. I was just momentarily overwhelmed.”
If I wasn’t mistaken, Esther batted her eyelashes at him.
“Sure. I know,” Jake said as the two of them smiled at each other a beat too long.
Esther looked away first and then sat even straighter.
I relaxed back onto my own stool, and Jake scooted the mochila closer to Esther.
“Go ahead, touch it all you want,” he said. “I keep it wrapped up most of the time; but if anyone has the right to look it over closely, it’s you.”
“Well, if that really is Astin’s signature, I guess.”
“Let’s go with that being the truth. If we need to rethink later, we can.”
“Thank you.” Esther smiled at him again.
“For a minute I thought it was truly amazing that Jake might have a mochila with Astin Reagal’s signature, but it kind of makes sense, too,” I said, interrupting all the smiling and reminding them I was there. “Since Astin was from Broken Rope, and historical items tend to be left in attics and closets around here for a long time, maybe it’s not so strange after all.”
Esther nodded. “You know,” her fingers rode over the tooled letters of, presumably, her ancestor’s name, “apparently his disappearance was a huge mystery, and it broke up his family.”
“Hang on,” Jake said. “I’d love to hear everything you have to say, but would you mind if I recorded it?”
“As I mentioned earlier, Jake keeps track of our history better than anyone,” I said. “He likes to make sure he’s as accurate as possible.”
Jake laughed. “Truthfully, accuracy isn’t always the point. Stories are passed down and passed around. I just like to make sure I have as many versions of the stories as possible. I suspect there is some truth, some fabrication, in them all, but I think it’s important. History is important. If I record, I’ll transcribe what you say and make a file. I hope to open a museum someday. I would use your story—and make sure everyone knew that it came from you—for some sort of display.”
Esther thought a second, and then said, “Certainly.”
Jake pulled out his phone and moved his finger over the screen a couple times. “This is Esther Reagal, great-great-granddaughter of Astin Reagal. She’s visiting Broken Rope and is looking at the mochila that I had in storage. There is evidence in the form of a partial tooled name that Astin might have used it when he was a Pony Express rider. He died on the trail and his body was never found. Go ahead, Esther, tell us whatever you’d like to share.”