Read Online The Blood Ballad by Rett MacPherson - Free Book Online

textile artist. I’d learned a lot from her, but without her, I wouldn’t have known a two-hundred-year-old quilt from one made fifty years ago. She pulled a shift once a week at the Kendall House and said it was the highlight of her week.
    At any rate, this took a lot of my time now, which is why I was hiring somebody to take over giving tours for me at the Gaheimer House. Of course, I was still head of the historical society and the only genealogist in town. Not that there was a huge rush on people needing me to trace their family trees, but I still did, on occasion, have somebody request that I find an ancestor of theirs. The sad part about genealogy as a hobby is, well, once you’ve sort of flushed out all of the lines on your family tree, all that’s left are brick walls. Those aren’t a whole lot of fun, until they come tumbling down, and then you have this whole new family to absorb. That’s the point that I was at now. My family tree was pretty much traced, with the exception of those brick walls.
    I opened the museum at ten o’clock, and exactly five minutes later a man walked in and rushed toward me. “Are you Torie O’Shea?” he asked.
    â€œYes,” I said, extending my hand. “You must be Glen Morgan.”
    He shook my hand, glanced around the room, and said, “I must speak with you at once. Alone.”
    Well now, I’d been known to do some stupid things in my time, but when a perfect stranger told me that he must speak with me at once, alone, I was a bit leery. Especially when I was the only one working the museum. I’m not saying it would have stopped me from speaking with him alone—because I’d been known to do some pretty silly things—it just made me nervous.
    â€œWell, I can’t really disappear, Mr. Morgan. I’m working.”
    Glen Morgan was about my age, maybe even a few years younger, so late thirties or early forties. He was tall and lean, like a teenage boy. His body was sort of long in the torso and he had big hands. His face was pleasant enough, with expressive black eyes, and he had a head full of brown hair. The resemblance to his grandfather was slight, but I could find it around the chin and the curve of his mouth.
    â€œI’ve made a huge discovery,” he said.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    As he leaned in toward me, he whispered, “I don’t think your family tree is what you think it is.”
    I laughed, until I realized he was serious. “What do you mean?” I asked, suddenly somber. Nobody, I mean nobody, tells me my family tree is incorrect.
    â€œA few months ago, your cousin Phoebe contacted me.”
    â€œPhoebe … what, Uncle Ike’s daughter? Why would she contact you?”
    â€œShe’s been tracing the family tree,” he said.
    â€œShe has? Why would she do that?” I’m not sure why the news was so upsetting to me, but it was. Maybe because Phoebe was a nutcase most of the time. She was notorious for just taking off and living in the woods in a tent for weeks on end. Then she’d reappear with some new “vision” that the spirit of the oak tree had given her. Now, I’m not knocking trees. I’m not saying that there isn’t wisdom to be learned from our natural environment, because I think there is, but Phoebe was also the same cousin who’d said that Lee Harvey Oswald had impregnated her mother from prison and was really her father. So that sort of put that whole tree wisdom stuff in a bad light.
    While her acid-tripping days were over, and she realized that she was the daughter of Ike Keith after all, I still couldn’t understand why she’d retrace what I’d already traced. I’ll be the first to admit that every family has its secrets. I’ll be the first to admit that ancestors pass on their familial “knowledge” and stories to us, and I think for the most part our ancestors are telling the