“It’s fun. Like buying a lottery ticket.”
“Do you gamble?”
He shook his head. “John discourages us from gambling. He thinks it’s better to put your money in the bank. As far as I know, Don Fairweather is the only gambler in the family. Have you met him?”
“I have. He seems like quite a character.”
“I heartily agree.”
John burst into the room at that moment. His piercing gaze zeroed in on her. “I was looking for you.”
“Now you’ve found me.” She tilted her chin up, proud that she managed to sound so calm. “I was just observing how the cashiers work.”
“I see you’ve met my cousin Darius. He only graduated from college two years ago and he’s turning into my right-hand man.”
Darius smiled. “I’ve learned everything from the best.”
John put his arm around Darius. “He moved here all the way from L.A. to join the tribe. We’re working on the rest of his branch of the family.”
“They’re not quite ready to move into the backwoods.” Darius shrugged. “But the way things are going, this won’t be the backwoods for long.”
John looked at Constance for a moment. “I’d like to show you around some more.”
“I think I’ve seen everything there is to see. I came through the gaming rooms and passed the slot machines on my way over here.”
“Not just the casino and hotel. The whole reservation.”
She felt herself frown. Was he trying to shunt her away from here for some reason? She’d barely had time to observe anything. Suspicion crept over her.
On the other hand, she had a feeling Nicola Moore would want her to see as much of the place as possible. “Okay.”
“Excellent. We’ll start with the museum. Darius can tell you what a passion of mine that has become.”
Darius nodded. “It’s a labor of love, all right. And thousands of hours of expert research.”
“It’s not easy to uncover history that’s been deliberately buried. Let’s go.” John gestured toward the door, and she went ahead of him, nodding and smiling to the other employees, and grateful that John hadn’t tried to take her hand or put his arm around her.
They walked back through the gaming rooms to the lobby. Retirees were busy wasting their savings in the slot machines, and a surprisingly large number of other people were hunched over the tables as well.
“I didn’t know you had a museum.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know.” He smiled mysteriously. “All of it good, of course.”
“If you’re covering up a fraud, you’re doing it very well.”
“I take pride in everything I do.” He lifted a brow slightly, taunting her.
“Are you trying to make me suspicious?” She was conscious of matching his stride as they strolled out of the gaming room and across the lobby.
“Nothing could be further from my mind.” Then he touched her. Her stomach drew in and her pulse quickened as he rested his hand at the base of her spine and ushered her though a doorway she’d never noticed before, marked “Hall of Heritage.”
It led into a large, gallery-like room with polished wood floors and high walls. Glass cases held artifacts and sleek, printed text and pictures decorated the walls. “It looks like a real museum.” She walked ahead of him, curious. One of the first exhibits was a glass case containing a sheaf of age-tinted pages and a quill pen. There was a blown-up photograph of the front page on the wall next to it.
“That’s the original treaty between the Nissequot and the governor of Massachusetts in 1648. Two thousand acres of land was given to us then.”
“Two thousand? I thought the reservation was less than two hundred.”
“They chipped away at it bit by bit over the years.”
“The state?”
He shook his head. “Mostly private individuals, farmers, businessmen, greedy people.”
“Your ancestors must have sold it to them.”
“I could say that greedy people come in all creeds and colors, but research has taught me to give my ancestors the benefit of the doubt and respect that they were just trying to survive.”
“You can’t really fault them for that. Apparently they managed.” She smiled at him. The museum didn’t have that many items, but they were carefully arranged and displayed with a good deal of written information accompanying them. A long green cloak in one case caught her eye. It didn’t have feathers or beading, but an embroidered trim in black brocade.
“Not what you’d expect, is it?” He looked at her curiously.
“I don’t know what I’d expect.”
“People seem to want baskets and moccasins and old pots. Precontact stuff. They forget that the history of the Nissequot continues after the settlers arrived. That cloak was worn by Sachem John Fairweather, the man I was named after, when he opened the doors to the first free school in this part of Massachusetts. It remained open until 1933, when the last pupil dropped out to look for work during the Depression.”
“Is the building still there?” She could see a grainy photograph of six people in Victorian-era clothing standing outside a neat white building.
“It is indeed. I’m restoring it along with my grandparents’ old farmhouse.”
“That’s very cool. I have no idea of my own family’s history before my grandparents’ generation.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “I don’t suppose any of us thought it was that interesting.”
“Where is your family from, originally?”
“I don’t know. All over, I suppose. Maybe that’s the problem. It’s easy to get excited about ancestry when it’s all from one place with a distinct culture. If one person’s from Poland and another from Scotland and another from Italy or Norway, no one really cares.”
“Well, the truth is that the Nissequot are from all over the place, at this point. I don’t even know who my own father was. The Fairweathers are my mother’s family. Sometimes you just have to pick a common thread and go with it, and that’s what we’re doing here. We did find an eighteenth-century Bible with the New Testament written out phonetically in the Nissequot language, though. That’s our biggest coup so far. A scholar at Harvard is putting together a Nissequot dictionary by comparing it with a contemporary English version.”
She looked up at an enlarged line drawing of a man and woman in more traditional-looking dress. “Is that how you imagine your ancestors looked?”
“Nope. That’s a real drawing done by the daughter of one of the first governors of Massachusetts in her personal journal. It was found by relentless digging through old records and hoping for the best. It’s time-consuming and way outside my realm of expertise, but it’s all coming together piece by piece.”
“Impressive.”
He led her through the gallery, then disarmed the emergency exit with a key code and pushed through an exterior door out into the bright sunlight. A large black truck was parked right behind the building. “My unofficial vehicle. Get in.”
“Where are we going?”
“To meet my grandparents.” Curious, she climbed in. His truck wasn’t quite as pristine as his sedan. He lifted a pile of papers off the passenger seat so she could