Page 50 of Sipping Seduction
I hadn't told him about the diary yet because I wasn't sure if it would amount to anything, and I didn't want to get his hopes up. He’d also been busy with wedding plans. Now seemed like a good time to share some more details, with the wedding being over and all. I told him about finding the diary in the small antique shop over in Bordent.
“Frannie looked into it at the historical society, but wasn't able to come up with anything except a birthday for the guy. Where did you get your information?” I asked.
“I was over at Mom and Dad's last night and dug through some of the papers in his office. Most of the records we had on file burned in that fire, but he still had a few things left in the filing cabinet.”
“A few things like what?” I asked, not missing the way Cole looked down at the mention of the fire. Even though it had been years ago and he'd just been a kid, he'd always blamed himself for the accident that wiped out most of our family history and took our grandfather's life. He’d done a lot of work on himself over the past year or so, and I was really proud of him. But if anyone knew how ghosts from the past could haunt us, even into the present day, it was Cole.
“So, what's the significance of Cornelia Bishop and Logan Scott?” Cole asked. “And what kind of information is in this diary?”
I knew as soon as I told him what Frannie and I’d read so far, he would want to see it for himself. Frannie still had a ways to go, and I wasn't about to take it away from her before she finished. She was just as invested as I was about figuring out who my ancestors really were, though for Frannie, I think she was more interested in the possibility of a love story, whereas I was more interested in learning more about my family's history.
“Frannie’s still reading it, but I can get it to you in a couple of days,” I offered. “She's been filling me in every night. Turns out Cornelia had been meeting on the sly and writing letters back and forth with this mystery guy, but we're not sure who he was. I suppose back in those days you couldn't just go out on a date with anyone.” Our family hadn't come from money. As immigrants, they’d settled in the mountains of Tennessee and decided to do one of the only things they knew how—make whiskey. “According to the dates, Frannie’s reading the diary of a sixteen-year-old Cornelia Bishop, who would have been writing her entries around the same time that our ancestors were founding the distillery.”
“She mention anything about the Stewarts?” Cole asked. “It would be really interesting to get a firsthand account about what things were like around those times.”
I shook my head. “She hasn't really mentioned the distillery yet, but I'll let you know if that changes.”
Cole nodded. I could tell how much he wanted to get his hands on the diary, but he’d have to wait.
“Yeah, that sounds good,” he said. “Though I doubt Frannie will get much reading done this weekend. Won't you both be at the big fundraiser race?”
“Yeah, I went for a run this morning. My time is getting better and better.” My chest puffed out a little at the admission. It was going to feel so good when I crossed that finish line. Not even my dad would be able to put me down once I proved to everyone there was nothing holding me back. Maybe he'd even stop with the snide comments like the ones he made at the football game on Friday night. No matter what I did or how many medals or championship trophies I won, he always seemed to focus on the negative.
“Are you sure you should be tackling a 10k? Just a few weeks ago, you were still walking around here with a limp,” Cole said. “I'm the last person to give anyone advice about not pushing it, but we’re all worried about you.”
“We’re?” I asked. “Do you mind telling me who the ‘we’ is in ‘we're’?”
Cole shifted his gaze, breaking eye contact. “Everyone, man. Danica, Mom, Dad, Vaughn, Miller, Ruby… we’re all worried about you.”
“I don't need anybody worrying about me, not anymore. I told you I was going to get myself pieced back together, and I have. I don't know why everybody can't just be glad that I’m not limping around here anymore and be happy for me.”
“It’s not like that.” Cole reached up and rubbed the back of his neck.
The guys in my family weren't known for opening up to each other on a regular basis. Since Cole had started seeing Danica, he’d definitely become more in touch with his softer side. And I wasn't the only one who noticed.
“Are you going soft on me?” I gave him a playful nudge in the belly. “Next thing you know, you'll be talking about feelings and shit.”
Cole smirked. “It's not so bad talking about feelings. Turns out once you get going, it's pretty easy.”
No way was he going to get me to start talking about feelings. He was probably just poking around trying to get the inside scoop on what was happening between me and Frannie. Everyone in my family had been very interested in getting the intimate details, and we’d both been sitting in the hot seat over the past couple of weeks.
“What else did you find out about Cornelia? Anything else I can pass along to Frannie?” I asked.
Cole slid a legal pad of paper in front of me that was attached to a clipboard—the one he usually carried with him every day as he went through the production line. “Yeah, it looks like she died when she was only eighteen years old.”
“Seriously? She’s sixteen in the diary. Frannie just got to the part where Cornelia mentioned Logan would be asking her dad if he could call on her.” If Cole was right and Cornelia died at age eighteen, there wouldn’t be many more entries in the diary. There also wouldn’t be much of a love story between Cornelia and Logan.
“There wasn’t a cause of death noted, though they didn’t have much in the way of healthcare back then. It could have been anything… pneumonia, tuberculosis… hell, she could have broken her leg walking up the mountain and lost her life to gangrene.”
“Things are so different now than they were back then. I bet you're glad you didn't have to go visit Danica's dad and ask for her hand before you started dating. What a pain in the ass that probably was. Can you imagine having all of your dates chaperoned?”
Cole shook his head.
“I suppose with our family starting the distillery, they wanted to find a good match for Cornelia. Status in society played a much bigger role back then than it does now, and thank God for that,” I said. “No telling who Mom and Dad would have matched either one of us up with if we had to rely on them setting up an arranged marriage.”
Cole jotted down a couple of notes. “Let me look into it a little bit further. There's got to be something more somewhere in our family notes.”
“Sounds good. How’s the quest to recreate Devil’s Distinct coming? Sounds like you got some promising results from that lab.”
