“Show me the walls.”
“What?” I could not think straight with his hands on my shoulders.
“As in show me the problems. The things that don’t connect. Maybe there’s a pattern that I can help find.”
It wasn’t a bad idea. I gathered the documents I’d flagged and spread them across the table.
“Okay. Here is a list of Order members from 1746, with one entry scratched out so hard the paper tore. Here is a bundle of correspondence that references earlier letters that aren’t in the collection, well, at least not that we’ve found yet. And here”—I pulled over a family tree Graham had found earlier—“is a whole section cut out. See?”
Graham studied the documents, his brow furrowed. “Aye. It’s not been ripped, has it? So, this date... 1748. And the scratched-out entry is from 1746. That’s the same decade.”
“The decade I keep findingnothing from, 1745 to 1755, is almost completely blank.” My senses were tingling, and I knew we were close. Something had happened then.
“So whatever happened, it happened then. And someone went through afterward and removed the evidence.”
“Or someone removed it to hide what happened.” I stared at the mutilated family tree. “What if the Wright family split apart in the 1740s? What if some of them left Loren Brae and the others stayed?”
“Why would they split?”
“I don’t know. But look.” I pointed at the fragmented family tree. “The branch that was cut out, it’s dated right around 1746. The same year as the scratched-out Order member. The same decade all the records disappear from.”
“Something happened in the 1740s that made the family scatter,” Graham said slowly. “And whoever stayed behind tried to erase the people who left.”
“Or tried to protect them by erasing their trail.” I was thinking out loud now, the pieces starting to form a shape. “If you wanted to hide where someone had gone, you’d remove any record of them or any connection that could be traced.”
“But why keep the references to those who fled at all? Why not erase everything?”
“Because the connection mattered. Whoever stayed—whoever this Keeper was—their job was to maintain contact with the ones who left. They couldn’t erase that completely without erasing their own purpose.”
Graham was quiet for a moment. “The Three Queens.”
“What?”
“The Three Queens united. What if that’s the three branches of the family? Would that make sense?”
I stared at the documents, my mind racing. The Wrights had split in the 1740s—that much seemed clear. Some had stayed with the Order, some had fled, and possibly a third group had gone somewhere else entirely. And the person responsible for keeping them all connected had been called the Keeper of Records.
Or something like that. Maybe it was just how they referred to the person. Maybe it wasn’t even an actual title.
“Let’s dig more into the 1700s,” I said. “See if we can find what actually happened.”
“On it,” Graham said, striding to a shelf.
“The Three Queens,” I muttered to myself, trying to think back through what kind of significance that might have.
“Jackpot,” Graham said, pulling out a stack of leather-bound volumes. “1700 to 1750 or so.”
He carried them back to the table, and we dove in.
The earlier 1700s records were in fairly good condition. The ink was still dark and the paper remained intact. I found the Wright name almost immediately.
“Here. M. Wright, daughter of A. Wright, to be trained in the traditional arts as befitting her station.” I flipped to the next page. “M. Wright has shown great aptitude for the record keeping and oath designation.”
“So we’re looking for a bookkeeper,” Graham said, glancing up at me. “I mean, that tracks for your family, no?”
“Aye, I suppose it does.” I kept reading, my excitement building. “Graham, I think the Wrights had aspecific role. Not just members of the Order, but specialists in something. Record-keeping, witnessing, some kind of?—”
I stopped.
