“Are you one of those people who feels as though she were born a hundred years too late?”
She shook her head. “I admit I’m drawn to the natural beauty of their less crowded time, their deeper connection with one another that came from a slower pace of life. But I’m spoiled. I want my hot showers, Internet access and an epidural when the time comes to deliver Sprout.”
He nodded. “When it came to medicine, there was a lot about the good old days that wasn’t that good.”
“This is the photograph of the young woman that Phoebe Landru showed to the crowd,” Emily said as she picked it up. She turned it over and was happy to see a printed identification.
“She’s Serena Fitzwalter. I knew I recognized her. Looks as though Gerald Fitzwalter had more than one family member represented in this time capsule.”
“He was the one in the crowd who seemed the most irritated when Councilman Himlot balked at having his ancestor’s letter read,” Brad said as he entered the information about the second photo into the computer. “Is Himlot always so…self-focused?”
“Of all our city’s councilmen, Dean’s normally the easiest to get along with. I don’t know what made him decide to demand that letter from his ancestor. He and his family have generously shared a lot of their historical documents with the Society.”
“Maybe he missed out on his bran muffin at breakfast,” Brad said.
Emily smiled. “His ancestors as well as many others who settled Courage Bay are represented in family portraits downstairs,” she said.
“I’ll have to take a look at them sometime. There seem to be a lot of interesting things to study in this building.”
There was absolutely no readable expression on his face. Emily decided she’d interpret his comment to mean he was developing an interest in Courage Bay’s history.
“Serena Fitzwalter here has a double claim,” Emily said gesturing to her picture. “She married into another prominent family, Landru.”
“And Phoebe Landru didn’t say anything about holding up her ancestor’s photo?”
“She wasn’t wearing her glasses,” Emily said as she set the photo aside. “It was probably just a blur to her.”
Most of the next dozen or so photographs were scenes of fishing boats, birds and low tidelands alive with sea creatures and shells. As Emily read off the descriptions, Brad added them to his growing list on the computer.
The next photograph she picked up was of the Smithson Apothecary. She showed it to Brad. “This is where Oliver’s pharmaceutical company got its start.”
“His was one of the original families?”
Emily explained that the Smithsons weren’t descendants of the Ranger crew. They’d been Nevada miners. When the silver petered out of their claim, they came to Courage Bay in the latter half of the nineteenth century looking for a new start. Using the Indians’ knowledge of native medicinal plants, they opened the apothecary. It grew into a multimillion-dollar business.
“A Smithson ancestor originally owned this building and left it to the Historical Society when she passed,” Emily said as she set the apothecary picture aside and came to another set of photographs of people.
She recognized more names. “Look, an O’Shea. Wait until the mayor finds out he has an ancestor represented. Oh, and here’s a Giroux. I have to tell Natalie when I see her. She works at the hospital. You must know her.”
“I work with her brother, Alec, in the E.R.,” Brad said. “I don’t really know Natalie. Alec rarely mentions her.”
Most brothers rarely mentioned their sisters, a fact for which Emily was growing more thankful by the moment.
“Is Dot a descendant of one of the pioneers?” he asked.
Emily nodded. “Her family arrived from the East toward the end of the nineteenth century. Dot’s doctoral thesis chronicled the local history of Courage Bay at the beginning of the last century. She was in time to rescue copies of the old Courage Bay newspaper as well as other memorabilia from neighborhood attics.”
“Are we likely to find a Corbin in here?” Brad asked.
“No. My grandparents relocated here after World War II, like so many other military families who flocked to California.”
“What got you interested in the Historical Society?” he asked.
“Dot recruited me into it last year. There’s so much history in the origins of the beautiful plants here at the Botanical Gardens. The origins of the people who planted and cultivated them began to draw me as well. Courage Bay is one of those few Southern California communities where you can still find four-, five-, even six-generation families. I’m still a novice when it comes to the history of the people, of course. But it’s nice to live in a place with such sturdy roots. What about the Winslow clan?”
“Don’t know much about it,” Brad said.
His voice had gone curiously flat. She tried to remember the part of his sperm-bank questionnaire where it asked about his parents, but the only thing that came to mind was that there had been no known illnesses on either side of his family tree.
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask, but too many questions could make him suspicious. Better to err on the side of prudence and let the matter drop.
As she turned her attention back to the photographs, she found some very interesting group shots of the townspeople, even one of a traveling salesman.
She went through each, reading off the descriptions on the backs so Brad could enter them into the computer. Then she placed each photograph within sheets of acid-free paper and laid it inside a chest in the corner of her office.
“Are the photographs getting special attention for some reason?” Brad asked, as he watched her close the lid of the chest.
“They’re in such great shape, I hate to expose them to the elements even for a short time.”
“Where will the originals of all these things eventually be placed?”
She retook her chair next to the capsule. “In the basement of this building. Light, heat, humidity and acid are the four enemies of archival treasurers. That dark dehumidified dungeon is climatically controlled to near perfection.”
“Oliver Smithson mentioned something about your research. Is it in this kind of preservation?”
“No, my research is the kind that grows in the Botanical Gardens’ greenhouse.”
“Let me guess. Your favorite TV shows are on The Learning Channel and the Home and Garden Network?”
“Pretty close,” she admitted. “I suppose you were hooked on the TV E.R. series?”
“Naw, too much blood. What’s next?”
Emily caught herself smiling again. Seemed he did have a really good sense of humor, after all.
She began to rethink her earlier comment about this job taking less time because he was here. It might actually take more if she didn’t get her mind back on business. She turned back to the time capsule.
A cylinder at the side of some packaged items caught her eye. As she pulled it out, she wondered for a moment what she held.
“Of course,” she said finally. “This is an old phonograph record. I doubt there’s even a machine around that can play it.”
“Probably the newest gadget of its day,” Brad said. “If we put the latest CD in a time capsule today, I doubt there’d be an antiquated computer around in the year 2104 that could retrieve the information on it, either.”
“By 2104 I imagine most machines will be obsolete. We’ll all have a computer chip in our