“Oh, how sad!” Mary Beth exclaimed.
“For his mother and for your great-great-grandmother, evidently,” Alice added. “What happened to Georgianna?”
Annie shook her head. “I saw a copy of an obituary from November of 1865. It reported she had passed away ‘after several months of decline.’ Probably starved. Those were hard times in the South.”
“Poor woman, and poor Angeline,” Alice said. “You don’t have anything else of hers that could have been from him, do you, Mary Beth?”
“I don’t think so. There’s a white rose in the back of her Bible pressed inside a folded sheet of paper. All it says is ‘Easter Sunday 1861.’ I’ve always wondered who it was from, and why she always kept it. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know for certain.”
“How romantic,” Alice breathed. “It must have been from the last time she ever saw him.”
“If it was from him,” Annie reminded her. “Maybe it was from another beau or from her father. Or maybe she picked it herself.”
Alice scowled. “You’re no fun.”
“Anyway,” Mary Beth said firmly, “whether the rose was from him or not, she must have gotten over his death. From all accounts, she and my great-great-grandfather were very happy together.”
“You’re no fun either,” Alice grumbled. “How are we going to uncover a tragic romance if you both keep spoiling things?”
Just then Mary Beth’s phone rang.
“Hello?”
Annie could hear the indistinct tones of a man’s voice from where she sat. Mary Beth was nodding excitedly.
“Yes, Bob. Thanks for calling me back. I was wondering if I could come take a look at that writing desk I sold you. Just for a minute.” Mary Beth paused, listening, and then her face fell. “I see. No, of course.”
Annie and Alice exchanged glances. This couldn’t be good.
“No,” Mary Beth said after another pause. “I was just afraid I had left something important in it.”
As the man replied, Mary Beth grabbed the pencil and pad of paper that was next to her phone. She jotted down a name and a phone number, and then smiled again.
“Thank you. I’ll give them a call.”
“Well?” Alice asked once she hung up. “What happened to the desk?”
Mary Beth sighed. “He sold it to another dealer in Portland with a lot of other pieces. They picked it up on Monday.”
Annie frowned. “Can you call them?”
“Not until Monday now.” Mary Beth folded the piece of paper with the phone number on it and slipped it into her purse. “Bob says they close at four o’clock weekdays and don’t have any business hours on the weekends. It’s probably one of those posh, by-appointment places.”
Annie frowned, thinking. “OK, so we can’t look at it tonight. What do you remember about the desk, Mary Beth. Did it have any hidden drawers or cubbyholes? Any secret places?”
“What did it look like anyway?” Alice asked.
There was a sudden wistfulness in Mary Beth’s eyes. “It was really pretty, solid cherry with a little inlaid pattern of teak and ash around the edge. It had three drawers in the front, and on top it had another stack of drawers and slots, and little cabinets with doors on them. Wait a second.”
She scurried out of the room and came back a few minutes later with a framed photograph in her hands.
“You can see some of it in this picture.”
Alice took it from her. “Ooh, isn’t that pretty?”
Annie looked over Alice’s shoulder at the large black-and-white photograph. It showed a little more than half of the writing desk that looked just as Mary Beth had described it. In front of it, an old woman sat in a rocking chair holding a wide-eyed baby in a lace christening gown. The woman wore a high-necked black dress with a pearl brooch at the collar, and her snow-white hair was twisted into a bun at the back of her neck. Her expression was solemn, but there was something vivid about her eyes, which were dark and expressive, and something still lovely in the curve of her cheek. She must have been a beauty in her day.
“Is that her, Mary Beth?” Annie asked. “Is that Angeline?”
“As a matter of fact, it is. She was holding my mother a few weeks after she was born.”
Annie smiled. “My goodness, how long ago was that?”
“It was 1922,” Mary Beth said. “Angeline had just celebrated her eightieth birthday. Mom was her first great-grandchild.”
“Amazing.” Annie took the picture from Alice so she could take a closer look at the writing desk. “It looks like there are a lot of potential secret places in the desk.”