Page 95 of Stay Buried

The waitress set down a coffee for Ashley and a drink for Cheryl. “Rum and Coke,” she said.

The waitress looked at Ashley. “You want any food?”

“She’s fine, Denise. She’ll just have the coffee—put it on my tab,” Cheryl said.

She took a long sip of her drink. “Can hardly taste the rum,” she announced loudly. Denise rolled her eyes, went back into the kitchen.

“I’m allotted one drink a day,” Cheryl said. “You’d think the least they could do would be to make it a good one. But they’re always weaker than hell.”

“What do you mean, you’re ‘allotted’ one drink?” Ashley asked.

“Mother’s orders. It wouldn’t do to have me making a spectacle of myself. To have mespeaking out of turn.” She spat the last words out, took another gulp of her weak drink, then sighed again. “You’ve got about five minutes, go ahead and ask what you wanna ask.”

“I’m trying to make sense of all this: Your mother, Josephine, she married a Banks?”

“Uh-uh. She was born a Banks. Youngest child of David and Mercy.”

“But she was married. She didn’t take his name?”

“She did, but right after my father died, she went back to calling herself a Banks. Being a Banks, it means something here.”

“So if she’s the daughter of David and Mercy, that means she’s my grandmother’s—”

“First cousin,” Cheryl filled in. “And best friend. They grew up like sisters, the two of them, in that house. It broke my mother’s heartwhen Charlie—Charlotte took off.”

“Wait, they…what?”

Cheryl nodded surely. “They lived there, in the Endicott house. The Banks family, plus Margaret and Charlotte. Chauncey had moved out by that time, but the two younger boys, Josephine, and Charlotte grew up there.”

Ashley shook her head. “No. You’re… mistaken. My grandmother grew up in Boston. She never evenvisitedBoone’s Ferry.”

Cheryl chuckled. “Is that what she told you?”

Cheryl gestured to the picture on the wall above them. It was the one Malcolm had noticed yesterday of the two girls, the one he’d pointed out, saying the older girl reminded him of Ashley.

“There they are. My mother and your grandmother. And look where they’re standing.”

Ash looked at the face of the taller girl. It really did look like it could be Gram. She studied the familiar house in the background of the photo. There was a sign by the front door, and she could just make it out:DR. THOMAS ENDICOTT.

“Charlotte lived here in town until she was fifteen or sixteen,” Cheryl continued. “You can go to the church and look it up—they’ve kept track of every birth, marriage, baptism, and death here in Boone’s Ferry since sometime in the eighteen hundreds.”

Lorelei Prentice had specifically said all the town’s vital records were destroyed in the town hall fire—what reason would she have to lie like that?

“Wait a second.” Ashley held up her hand. “Josephine said herself she wasn’t close to my grandmother; she made it sound like they were only connected because their mothers had been friends. Why would she try to hide that?”

Cheryl smiled an unhappy little smile. “That’s an important question. But an even better one is: What else is she keeping from you?”

Ashley stared at her, her skin prickling, every hair standing on end.

Cheryl drained the last of her rum and Coke in one long swig, slapped the table with an open palm.

Outside, the factory whistle blew.

“Time’s up,” she said. “This place will fill up in a minute. It’s bad enough that Denise saw us. She’s probably been on the phone back in the kitchen.”

“But why would she—”

“Leave town while you still can,” Cheryl interrupted, standing, just as people in work clothes began flowing in, talking loudly. “I tried to warn your mother,” Cheryl said, voice low. “But she didn’t listen.”