Page 99 of Legacy Elite

I look at her. "Three."

"Two daughters and a son. Which is where this became considerably more work than tracing your ancestry backward."

"Because all three could have descendants."

"Exactly." Hess gives me a look that suggests I've finally said something useful. "Once we had a possible surviving child of the Fourth House, following only the line that eventually reaches you would have proved very little. We had to follow all of them."

She taps the first name.

"The son dies at twenty-three. Unmarried, no children that I've found. The older daughter marries and has two children. One dies in infancy. The other lives to thirty-one, marries, but there are no children in the parish records, no children named in either probate record, and no later claimant through that household."

"So that branch ends."

"As far as the surviving records can establish, yes."

Her finger moves to the younger daughter.

"This is your branch."

The next sheet has another surname.

Then another.

"She marries," Hess says. "Her daughter marries. Two generations later it happens again. Every time, the family I'm following changes names. There is nothing remarkable about any of them. Farmers. One schoolmaster."

Hess moves on.

"Some of those families have several children, so each time the line divides, we follow every branch again. Most end exactly the way ordinary families end. Children die. People don't marry. Couples have no children. One branch produces six children and looks extremely promising until you discover that none of the surviving three had children of their own."

"Jesus."

"Genealogy is largely people dying inconveniently."

Faris makes a small sound that might be disapproval.

Hess ignores her.

"By the time we reach the nineteenth century, there's only one branch I can carry forward."

She lays her hand on the next enlargement.

"And that's the one that eventually gets us to Emil."

"Eventually?"

"Unfortunately, Emil appears to have had a personal objection to being found."

"That sounds common in this family."

"It may be hereditary."

Faris looks over her glasses.

Hess continues before either of us can enjoy that.

"The household immediately before Emil is documented. Marriage, burial, probate, children. One of those children is a son of the right age, born in the right place, who disappears from the local record at exactly the point Emil appears elsewhere."

"That's Emil."