island served as the hub while narrow paved lanes fed off of it like spokes, dividing the cemetery into neat sections.
Callie parked beneath an elm tree and sagged back in her seat as she looked around, overwhelmed by the number of markers scattered across the hill. âCome on, Baby,â she muttered in resignation as she climbed from her car. âWe might as well get started.â
Baby bounded out of the back seat and trotted along beside her. They walked for over an hour, with Baby occasionally darting away to chase a squirrel up a tree or a rabbit into his burrow. With each passing marker, Callieâs original purpose for the trip was forgotten as emotion built, tightening her throat. Infants, young children, young wives. Each marker she read reflected the hard life of the early settlers of Guthrie and the tolls it took. One in particular caught her attention, and she stopped, studying the grave of a mother and infant buried together.
Sighing, she walked on to the next marker. The surname BODEAN topped the double-wide marker and below it the names Jedidiah to the left and Mary Elizabeth to the right.
Mary Elizabeth? She knelt in front of the marker and, using her thumbnail, scraped away the gold-brown moss which had attached itself to the etchings in the granite and noted the dates. The age according to the year of birth would be approximately right for her great-great-grandmotherâs, but the stone read that the woman had died in 1938. That would have made her sixty-seven years of age when sheâd passed away, and Papaâs mother had died in childbirth.
Certain that she was wasting her time, she took a pen and paper from her purse and jotted down the dates of the coupleâs births and deaths in order to check them with the court records later.
With a little less than half the cemetery covered, she pushed to her feet. âCome on, Baby. Letâs go.â She strode off, but stopped and looked back when she heard Baby whimpering. The dog stood at the edge of the plot, clawing at the ground. Dead grass and dirt flew beneath his front paws.
âBaby! No!â Callie ran to clamp a hand around the dogâs collar and haul him back. âYou mustnât dig here.â Feeling responsible for the dogâs desecration of the grave site, Callie dropped to her knees to scrape the dirt back in place. She bit back an oath when her finger rammed something hard. Curious, she smoothed the dirt away and saw the edge of a flat granite stone. Using the palm of her hand she whisked away the dirt and dead grass covering it, then shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head.
William Leighton Sawyer
Infant Son of Mary Elizabeth Sawyer
June 14, 1890
She sat down hard on her heels and dragged her hands to her knees. âNo,â she murmured, shaking her head in denial. âNo, it canât be.â
She dug her nails into the fabric at her knees, clinging to reason. William Leighton Sawyer hadnât died at birth. He had lived a very full life, fathering two sons himself while parlaying the Boston Sawyersâ wealth to new highs in Texas oil.
Heâd outlived both his sons and saw three of his grandchildrenâone of which was Callieâs motherâstart their own families, giving him four great-grandchildren. He had ruled the dynasty heâd created from the eighteenth floor of the office building he owned in downtown Dallas before heâd been forced into retirement at the age of ninety-eight by Callieâs father and a handful of greedy relatives who couldnât wait for him to die so they could get their hands on his money.
Theyâd said he was crazy, although the legal papers theyâd drawn against him read mentally incompetent. Callie had never considered him crazy. Eccentric, yes, but who wasnât in their own way?
Throughout her life, sheâd heard the stories about Papa. How his mother had run away from home, chasing after some smooth-talking