Beautiful Creatures
Page 25

“There was a wolf up at the house. Silas kept it like it was a pet!” Aunt Mercy shook her head.
“But those boys, they moved back and forth between Silas and their mamma, and when they were with him, Silas treated them somethin’ awful. Beat on ’em all the time and barely let ’em outta his sight. He wouldn’t even let ’em go ta school.”
“Maybe that’s why Macon Ravenwood never leaves his house,” I said.
Aunt Mercy waved her hand in the air, as if that was the silliest thing she’d ever heard. “He leaves his house. I’ve seen him a mess a times over at the DAR buildin’, right after supper time.” Sure she had.
That was the thing about the Sisters; half the time they had a firm grasp on reality, but that was only half the time. I had never heard of anyone seeing Macon Ravenwood, so I doubted he was hanging around the DAR looking at paint chips and chatting up Mrs. Lincoln.
Aunt Grace scrutinized the locket more carefully, holding it up to the light. “I can tell you one thing. This here handkerchief belonged ta Sulla Treadeau, Sulla the Prophet they called her, on account a folks said she could see the future in the cards.”
“Tarot cards?” I asked.
“What other kind a cards are there?”
“Well, there are playin’ cards, and greetin’ cards, and place cards for parties…” Aunt Mercy rambled.
“How do you know the handkerchief belonged to her?”
“Her initials are embroidered right here on the edge, and you see that there?” she asked, pointing to a tiny bird embroidered under the initials. “That there was her mark.”
“Her mark?”
“Most readers had a mark back then. They’d mark their decks ta make sure nobody switched their cards. A reader is only as good as her deck. I know that much,” Thelma said, spitting into a small urn in the corner of the room with the precision of a marksman.
Treadeau. That was Amma’s last name.
“Was she related to Amma?”
“Of course she was. She was Amma’s great-great-grandmamma.”
“What about the initials on the locket? ECW and GKD? Do you know anything about them?” It was a long shot. I couldn’t remember the last time the Sisters had ever had a moment of clarity that lasted this long.
“Are you teasin’ an old woman, Ethan Wate?”
“No ma’am.”
“ECW. Ethan Carter Wate. He was your great-great-great-uncle, or was it your great-great-great-great-uncle?”
“You’ve never been any good with arithmetic,” Aunt Prudence interrupted.
“Anyhow, he was your great-great-great-great-granddaddy Ellis’ brother.”
“Ellis Wate’s brother was named Lawson, not Ethan. That’s how I got my middle name.”
“Ellis Wate had two brothers, Ethan and Lawson. You were named for both of ’em. Ethan Lawson Wate.” I tried to picture my family tree. I had seen it enough times. And if there’s one thing a Southerner knows, it’s their family tree. There was no Ethan Carter Wate on the framed copy hanging in our dining room. I had obviously overestimated Aunt Grace’s lucidity.
I must have looked unconvinced because a second later, Aunt Prue was up and out of her chair. “I have the Wate Family Tree in my genealogy book. I keep track a the whole lineage for the Sisters a the Confed’racy.”
The Sisters of the Confederacy, the lesser cousin of the DAR, but equally horrifying, was some kind of sewing circle holdover from the War. These days, members spent most of their time tracking their Civil War roots for documentaries and miniseries like The Blue and the Gray.
“Here it is.” Aunt Prue shuffled back into the kitchen carrying a huge leather-bound scrapbook, with yellowed pieces of paper and old photographs sticking out from the edges. She flipped through the pages, dropping scraps of paper and old newspaper clippings all over the floor.
“Will you look at that… Burton Free, my third husband. Wasn’t he just the handsomest a all my husbands?” she asked, holding up the cracked photograph for the rest of us.
“Prudence Jane, keep lookin’. This boy is testin’ our memory.” Aunt Grace was noticeably agitated.
“It’s right here, after the Statham Tree.”
I stared at the names I knew so well from the family tree in my dining room at home.
There was the name, the name missing from the family tree at Wate’s Landing—Ethan Carter Wate. Why would the Sisters have a different version of my family tree? It was obvious which tree was the real one. I was holding the proof in my hand, wrapped in the handkerchief of a hundred-and-fifty-year-old prophet.
“Why isn’t he on my family tree?”
“Most family trees in the South are fulla lies, but I’m surprised he made it onta any copy a the Wate Family Tree,” Aunt Grace said, shutting the book and sending a cloud of dust into the air.
“It’s only on account a my excellent record keepin’ that he’s even on this one.” Aunt Prue smiled proudly, showing off both sets of her dentures.
I had to get them to focus. “Why wouldn’t he make it on the family tree, Aunt Prue?”
“On account a him bein’ a deserter.”
I wasn’t following. “What do you mean, a deserter?”
“Lord, what do they teach you young’uns in that fancy high school a yours?” Aunt Grace was busy picking all the pretzels out of the Chex Mix.