Chapter 96: The Third Twin

We drove back to the territory that night with Ruth in the truck and the box on her knees and the photograph in my jacket.

We came over the ridge at dawn and the pack square was full and Harlan was on the steps and June was beside him with the ledger under her arm and Maeve was at the back with her shawl around her shoulders.

I got out of the truck and went to the middle of the square.

“Pack,” I said. “I have been to Walla Walla and I have come back with a thing you need to see.”

I held up the photograph.

“This is the founders’ field in 1911. There are three children in it and they are Margaret’s children. And there is a woman at the edge of the field and she is Margaret and she is the founder’s wife and the Luna’s cousin. And there is a fourth child.” I turned the photograph around. “She is standing apart from the others and she is not holding hands with them and she is the daughter of the miller’s daughter. Her name is Clara Renn.”

The square was quiet.

“And on the back of this photograph there is a line in Margaret’s hand that says Mary’s girl is one of us. Margaret is saying that Clara Renn is the Luna’s line.” I looked at Clara Renn, who was standing at the back of the square with her white hair down. “Clara. You are the Luna’s line and you have been the Luna’s line your whole life and you did not know it.”

Clara Renn put her hand on the fence post.

“I did not know,” she said.

“And there is a second thing on the back of this photograph,” I said. “There is a line of numbers. Eleven, four, seven. My brother wrote those numbers on the wall of the mill room the night before he died. He wrote them under the initials of Erik Renn and the year 1954. And they are on this photograph in Margaret’s hand in 1911.” I looked at the pack. “I do not know what they mean yet. But I am going to find out.”

I put the photograph in my jacket and went to the pack house.

My mother’s grave was in the churchyard on the hill at the north end of town.

I had not been to it in four months. I had been to my brother’s grave and I had stood at the churchyard wall and looked at my mother’s stone from a distance and I had not gone in. I had not been able to.

I went in at noon.

The churchyard was small and the stones were old and the snow had melted off the grass in patches. My mother’s stone was a plain gray stone with her name on it and the dates and a line from a psalm that she had picked out herself.

Mary Hale. 1930 to 1975.

I sat down on the grass beside it.

“Mama,” I said.

The wind came up from the river and moved the grass.

“I have been to Walla Walla,” I said. “I have met a woman named Ruth and she is eighty-six years old and she is your cousin. And she has a box with a ring in it and a photograph and a piece of a stone and a page from her mother’s ledger, and on the page there is a list of names.” I put my hand on the stone. “And your name is on it. Not Mary Hale. Mary Halloran. Born 1952. And there is a note at the bottom that says you changed your name in 1970 so the Council would not find you in the register.”

The wind moved the grass.

“You changed your name to Hale,” I said. “And I did not know that. I have been a Halloran my whole life and my mother was a Hale and I did not know it.” I put my other hand on the stone. “There is a claim in the Council register on a Luna named Mary Hale. It is dated 1954 and the claimant is Erik Renn and the parcel is the mill land. And you paid rent on that land for fourteen years because you thought it was the Council’s.”

I sat on the grass.

“I have been angry at you for a year,” I said. “I have been angry at you since you died and I did not know why. And now I know. You knew the whole of it and you did not tell me. You knew about the curse and the stones and the Luna and the Council and you kept it all in a tin box and a ledger and you paid the rent and you kept your children out of the pack records and you never said a word.”

The wind moved the grass.

“And I have been thinking about it all the way back from Walla Walla,” I said. “And I have been thinking that you were nineteen years old when you wrote to the Council in 1968 and you were twenty-five when they wrote back and told you to be quiet, and you had a son and a daughter and a house and a co-op job and no mother and no father and a sister up the hill who was the only one in the county who knew what you were.” I put my hand flat on the stone. “And I have been thinking that you were braver than I have ever been, because you did it alone and you did it for twenty-five years and you never once told anyone.”

I sat on the grass.

And then I saw the stone next to my mother’s.

It was small and it was gray and it had a name on it and a date. The name was Mary. The date was 1936.

I had seen it a hundred times. It was the miller’s daughter. Clara Renn’s mother. The girl who brought the Luna water.

I looked at it.

And then I looked at my mother’s stone and then back at the miller’s daughter’s stone.

They were the same stone. The same gray. The same size. The same lettering.

I got up and went and crouched down and read the lettering.

Mary. 1856 to 1936. Beloved daughter. She brought the water.

And under it, in smaller letters, there was a line I had never read.

Mother of three.

I sat down on the grass.

“Three,” I said.

Mary the miller’s daughter had three children. Clara Renn was one. And there was a son who was Margaret’s son, the founder’s wife’s son, and he was Clara Renn’s father. And there was a third.

I got up and ran.

I ran down the churchyard hill and through the town and up the co-op road and into the pack house yard with my boots slipping in the mud.

“June,” I said. “June. My mother’s birth certificate. Where is it?”

June looked at me.

“It is in the box under the bed,” she said. “The one with the papers.”

I went into the house and got the box and turned it out on the kitchen table.

There were papers in it. The deed to the house and the co-op share and the tax notices and the church record and my mother’s birth certificate.

I picked it up.

It said Mary Halloran. Born the twelfth of March, 1930. Mother: Ruth Halloran. Father: unknown.

And under it, in a different hand, in the hand of the county clerk, there was a note.

Twin born same day. Second child. Ruth Halloran. Died at birth.

I sat down at the table.

“Wren,” June said. “What is it?”

“My mother was a twin,” I said. “And there was a second child and she died at birth and the county clerk wrote it down.” I looked at the paper. “But the county clerk did not know about the third.”

“What third?”

I put the paper down.

“My mother was not a twin,” I said. “She was a triplet. And there were three of them and one of them was sent to Boise and one of them was sent to the Kessler pack and one of them stayed here and there was a fourth who was born and died and the county clerk did not know about her.” I looked at June. “My mother was one of four. And she never knew.”

The kitchen door opened and Silas came in with his gray suit and his folder and his face white.

“Beta,” he said. “The photograph. The one Halloran gave you. It is gone.”

I stood up.

“What?”

“It was in the pack house office,” Silas said. “I put it in the drawer with the register and the letters and the crates and I locked the drawer and I went to get a cup of coffee and when I came back the drawer was open and the photograph was gone.” He put his hand on the table. “And there is a man in the yard who says he is from the Council of Alphas and he has a warrant for the photograph and for the box and for everything in the office.”

I went to the window.

There was a car in the yard and there was a man standing beside it and he was not the district officer and he was not Halloran. He was older and he had gray hair and he had a folder under his arm.

And he was holding the photograph.