Page 42 of The Gallagher Place
Marlowe nodded and looked back to the map. She got the feeling Jeanine was passionate enough to go on an environmental history tangent if Marlowe didn’t redirect.
“I’d love to see some family trees,” Marlowe said. “Do you have records for all the properties around here? I live closer to town, but I’m interested in the history of the older homes in the area.”
“I have them organized by geography.” Jeanine squinted at the map, mumbled a coordinate, and then turned to the shelves, pulling out a hardcover book.
“Here.” Jeanine opened the book. “The Pulvers.”
Jeanine flipped through the pages, reading names aloud. The third one was “Gallagher.”
“I’ve heard that name,” Marlowe said.
“Yes,” Jeanine said and sighed. “It was in the local news recently. Someone from the family was killed. That type of thing never happens up here. People leave the city to get away from all that—that’s why my husband and I moved up here.”
Jeanine shook her head as she examined the list of births and deaths.
“Old family,” she said. “They were around awhile, but the farm went down with most of the others in the eighties.”
It had been a slow death, Marlowe thought to herself. Jeanine wouldn’t have known all the details of how those three old brothers held on a few years longer.
“Oh, Victoria Gallagher.” Jeanine smiled as she tapped on the name. The note accompanying it was brief:Born 1875, married William Pulver 1896, died 1898.
“Victoria was interesting, and a bit of a local legend,” she said. “Nothing as big as the Headless Horseman or Captain Kidd, but rumors said she went a little mad as a teenager. That’s what they always said back then about odd girls. She might have been put on trial as a witch a few centuries earlier.”
The Gallagher daughter. The one who sat up in the hedgerow until she saw demons and was locked away. Marlowe didn’t know she was married, let alone to a neighbor.
“What happened to her?” Marlowe asked. “She died so young.”
“Likely childbirth,” Jeanine said, turning the page. “If you run into any Pulvers, you can ask if she’s haunting them. Most of the old houses come with a ghost story or two.”
Marlowe tried to conceal a chuckle at the dark irony of Jeanine’s comment, and she forced herself to remain impassive when she saw the square, faded ink on the next page:Tom Gallagher b. 1935. Leroy Gallagher b. 1938. Dave Gallagher b. 1945.
Notices of their deaths were not included. The records likely hadn’t been updated in decades. Jeanine flipped another page, revealing a small pencil sketch that made Marlowe’s heart drop. It was the Gray House, as it had once been, long before Marlowe was born: smaller, and without a front porch, but it was unmistakable, like seeing a photo of her dad in high school—thick, dark hair, his youthful smile wide and carefree. The antique front door, twowindows on either side. The stone chimney. Where the thin birch trees now stood there was an old oak tree that must have died and been harvested for firewood. The clapboard of the house was etched with a light hand. The artist wasn’t particularly skilled, and the sketch was far from refined, but it was a true rendering.
“I just love the architecture of the farmhouses.” Jeanine brushed her wrinkled hand over the sketch, and Marlowe nearly swatted it away. “When weekenders buy them and turn them too boxy and smooth and modern or, worse, buildnew, it’s just a travesty.”
“There’s construction near me, and the neighbors are upset. It’s on a hill, and they’ve cut down a bunch of trees.” The false story fell easily from her mouth. “When you have a great view, you’re ruining someone else’s.”
“Exactly.” Jeanine glanced up. “I have a whole book of photos and sketches of barns.”
Jeanine was off, moving from shelf to shelf. Marlowe sank into the chair at the table.
“Do you mind if I just flip through these for a bit?” Marlowe asked.
“Oh, of course.” Jeanine smiled. “I just get lost in these old records sometimes.”
Jeanine pulled down a few more books and then, at last, left Marlowe alone. Marlowe flipped back to the Gallagher records and quickly took pictures of every page. There was an old map as well, and some black-and-white aerial shots. It was all muddled, and she had no sense of the landscape from a bird’s-eye view, but she could study it and perhaps find a familiar road.
She made a show of flipping through the old barn pictures and then returned to the sketch of the Gray House. There were a few scribbled lines in the corner:The Gallagher Place, July 1934. The drawing was unsigned but dedicated to a Robert Gallagher. Sheturned back to the page of the Gallagher extended family and rifled through her purse for a notebook and pen. After snapping a picture of the page, she jotted down the names in a slapdash family tree. She wanted it on paper so she could distinguish the repeated names and see the generations lined up.
The records went back to 1851, starting with Victoria’s parents, and then tracked through the generations. It appeared that Robert was one of Victoria’s nephews, born in 1905. If he had been in possession of the sketch, Marlowe reasoned that he must have been the one who lived in the Gray House at the time. He had a son named Harry and a daughter named Caroline.Caroline Rodine, née Gallagher. Marlowe shuddered. This was who had sold Frank Fisher the property after Dave had died.
Continuing on the opposite page was a lineage of Robert’s older brother, Thomas. He had a wife, Abigail, and three sons, Tom Jr., Leroy, and Dave.
There it was: Robert Gallagher with his children on one side of the street, Thomas and Abigail and their sons on the other. A farm split between two brothers. Cousins growing up together. Caroline didn’t sell off an inheritance from a distant relative. She sold what was left of her childhood home, long after she had left it.
The final entry was for Harry’s only child, Peter Gallagher, born in 1962.
Marlowe lifted her fingers, counting out the years she had been too hesitant to calculate before. If Peter was born in 1962, he would have been in his mid-twenties when Frank Fisher purchased the Gray House.
