Page 35 of A Lullaby for Witches

“It looked like there were papers and some photos in them.” She paused. “I think they belonged to Dad.”

Now her mother’s hand stilled. “I think I put some of his things in there to store, now that you mention it.”

Augusta knew that her mother didn’t want to talk about it, but she pressed anyway. “I’d like to go through it all, maybe do some research on our family.” Working in the archives looking for Margaret had made her hungrier for answers about her own origins.

Finally turning, her mother gave her the patented Pat-Podos-Is-Not-Doing-This-Today look. “I already told you, you don’t need to ask my permission. Do whatever you want with it.”

Augusta brushed her mother’s cheek with a kiss. “Okay, Mom. We don’t have to talk about it,” she said. She grabbed a plate of pancakes to placate her, and then went back to her room.

Her parents had been separated when her dad had died, and his death had left a host of what-ifs in its wake: what if he had lived—would her parents have eventually gotten back together? What if they hadn’t split up in the first place? Would his heart still suddenly have stopped beating while he was eating dinner alone in his apartment?

Apparently, her father hadn’t updated his will in a while, because her mother had been listed as his beneficiary, and after he’d died, all his boxes and personal stuff came back to the house. Augusta doubted her mother had even so much as looked in them, and she was curious to see what there was.

Coffee in hand and music on, Augusta got comfortable on the floor of her old room and pulled out the boxes. Most of them looked like old work papers, invoices and receipts, and that kind of stuff. A thick envelope held snapshots from what must have been her parents’ honeymoon in Hawaii. A younger version of her mom with big, curly hair stood in front of a waterfall with a broad smile on her face. There were a couple of them snorkeling, her dad looking goofy in his flippers and too-small swimming trunks. Underneath the honeymoon photos there was one of her dad at a Red Sox game, wearing a faded Boston sweatshirt and eating a giant hot dog. That had been his lucky sweatshirt, and he’d worn it for every single postseason game.

Putting aside the photos, she pulled out a big manila envelope full of what looked like legal documents including her father’s discharge papers from the navy and her parents’ marriage certificate. Then something else caught her eye. Augusta sat up straighter, ignoring the stabbing pins and needles from sitting in the same position for so long. A family tree.

Her father’s side didn’t have any surprises; his family had emigrated from Poland in the 1920s and had married into other Polish-American families. But her mother’s side had always been a bit of a mystery. Since her parents had been older when they had her, her paternal grandparents had died before she was born and her maternal grandparents while she was in grade school. Her mother had been an only child, and her father had one sister with no children of her own. Family gatherings had always been small and subdued affairs.

She traced her finger up her mother’s side of the tree. Her grandmother’s maiden name sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place why or where she might have seen it. The line went back almost to the mid-nineteenth century, when her mother’s ancestors had made the journey from Italy to Ellis Island. But there was an American line, too, full of names and offshoots that Augusta had never known even existed, like Hale and Montrose, Barrett and Bishop. She wanted to copy them all down and put them in some sort of spreadsheet, maybe even get an account on a genealogical website to investigate further. It was an overwhelming prospect at the moment, so she carefully folded the family tree back up and put it in a folder for later.

There wasn’t much else of interest in the boxes, but as she was putting all the papers and photos back in, something slid out from between them.

It was a tortoiseshell comb, glossy and delicate, and clearly very, very old. There was something familiar about it, as if she’d seen it before, maybe as a child, and she wondered if her mother had once used it. On a whim, she lifted it and ran it through her hair. It snagged on her curls almost immediately, but that wasn’t what made her breath catch. She’d felt this comb before, felt the weight of it in her hands, felt the teeth slide through her hair. It was the comb that Margaret—thatshe—had been using in her dream.

Monday couldn’t come fast enough. As soon as she stepped foot inside Harlowe House, Augusta said some cursory hellos to Jill, Sharon and Reggie, and ran upstairs to her office. She hadn’t been able to forget the dream or the tortoiseshell comb. There had to be something about Margaret, somewhere. What was the link between her and the comb? Could it really be a coincidence that she’d had a dream about Margaret using a comb, only to find theexactsame one later that day?

Reaching for the book of Tynemouth oral histories, Augusta flipped through it for the umpteenth time, rereading the scant lines about Margaret as if she hadn’t already memorized them. Maybe there were some other mentions of her in the book, however oblique. Hopefully, Augusta began at the beginning, hungrily reading every interview. Eventually her need for information about Margaret faded to the background as she lost herself in the stories of other people who had lived long ago.

As she read, an idea took root in her mind. There were a lot of other interesting interviews with women in the book that would be good for her exhibit, but they were all older, from at least the 1970s. It would be great to get new interviews done, bring in a fresher perspective of Tynemouth from the women who lived there. The only problem was, Augusta had no idea who lived in Tynemouth or where to start. She decided to solicit some advice at lunch that day.

“You should interview my aunt,” Reggie told her. He was leaning against the counter, eating leftovers out of a Tupperware container. “She’s lived here since she came from Portugal in the ’60s and has some wild stories about going out on the fishing boats with her father and brothers.”

“Oh, you know who else?” Jill chimed in. “Who was that artist that did the driftwood sculptures for our winter exhibit? She was fantastic, and I remember her having tons of stories about Tynemouth from when she was a child. Claudia Linton. She lives right in town.”

Augusta returned to her desk buzzing with excitement. Her afternoon consisted of phone calls and emails, setting up interviews, and putting the word out on the local community website that Harlowe House was looking for women to be interviewed for an upcoming exhibit.

The sculptor who Jill had suggested answered her phone right away, and Augusta had barely had a chance to get organized before she found herself at a cottage tucked on a little side street. Clouds had moved in from the ocean, a light rain starting to fall on the large driftwood sculptures in the yard. Ringing the doorbell, Augusta stood back, drumming her fingers on her thigh. As she waited, she found that she was suddenly nervous. She had no experience conducting interviews, and this was all happening faster than she had expected.

But she didn’t have a chance for second guesses, because the door opened revealing an older woman with warm brown skin and a broad, friendly smile.

“You must be the girl from Harlowe House,” she said, extending a hand that jingled with bangles. “Come on in.”

“Thanks for agreeing to speak with me, and so quickly,” Augusta said, returning her handshake.

Claudia waved her inside. “Are you kidding? I love Harlowe House. They’ve always been good to me and the local artist community. It’s the least I can do.” She invited Augusta to get comfortable on the couch, then turned off the music that had been playing on a record player. “Can I get you some tea or coffee? I think I have some pop, too.”

“No, thank you.” Augusta wanted to get started as soon as possible and hopefully put her nerves to rest.

“I’ve never done something like this before,” Claudia said, sitting on a chair and carefully arranging her wool poncho. “Are you going to record it?”

“I do have a recorder, if you’re comfortable with that,” Augusta told her. “I’ll take notes, too, but Harlowe House would love to also have the oral record. It’s totally up to you, though.”

Claudia nodded. “Yeah, okay. That’s fine. Just to warn you, though—I’ve been told I have the gift of gab, so you might get more than you need.”

Breathing an inward sigh of relief that her interviewee was making this so easy, Augusta set up her phone to record. “When you’re ready, just tell me your full name and age.”

Claudia sent her a sharp look. “You can have my name, but I don’t even tell my children my age.”

---