could be further from my mind.” Then he touched her. Her stomach drew in and her pulse quickened as he rested his hand at the base of her spine and ushered her though a doorway she’d never noticed before, marked “Hall of Heritage.”
It led into a large, gallery-like room with polished wood floors and high walls. Glass cases held artifacts and sleek, printed text and pictures decorated the walls. “It looks like a real museum.” She walked ahead of him, curious. One of the first exhibits was a glass case containing a sheaf of age-tinted pages and a quill pen. There was a blown-up photograph of the front page on the wall next to it.
“That’s the original treaty between the Nissequot and the governor of Massachusetts in 1648. Two thousand acres of land was given to us then.”
“Two thousand? I thought the reservation was less than two hundred.”
“They chipped away at it bit by bit over the years.”
“The state?”
He shook his head. “Mostly private individuals, farmers, businessmen, greedy people.”
“Your ancestors must have sold it to them.”
“I could say that greedy people come in all creeds and colors, but research has taught me to give my ancestors the benefit of the doubt and respect that they were just trying to survive.”
“You can’t really fault them for that. Apparently they managed.” She smiled at him. The museum didn’t have that many items, but they were carefully arranged and displayed with a good deal of written information accompanying them. A long green cloak in one case caught her eye. It didn’t have feathers or beading, but an embroidered trim in black brocade.
“Not what you’d expect, is it?” He looked at her curiously.
“I don’t know what I’d expect.”
“People seem to want baskets and moccasins and old pots. Precontact stuff. They forget that the history of the Nissequot continues after the settlers arrived. That cloak was worn by Sachem John Fairweather, the man I was named after, when he opened the doors to the first free school in this part of Massachusetts. It remained open until 1933, when the last pupil dropped out to look for work during the Depression.”
“Is the building still there?” She could see a grainy photograph of six people in Victorian-era clothing standing outside a neat white building.
“It is indeed. I’m restoring it along with my grandparents’ old farmhouse.”
“That’s very cool. I have no idea of my own family’s history before my grandparents’ generation.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “I don’t suppose any of us thought it was that interesting.”
“Where is your family from, originally?”
“I don’t know. All over, I suppose. Maybe that’s the problem. It’s easy to get excited about ancestry when it’s all from one place with a distinct culture. If one person’s from Poland and another from Scotland and another from Italy or Norway, no one really cares.”
“Well, the truth is that the Nissequot are from all over the place, at this point. I don’t even know who my own father was. The Fairweathers are my mother’s family. Sometimes you just have to pick a common thread and go with it, and that’s what we’re doing here. We did find an eighteenth-century Bible with the New Testament written out phonetically in the Nissequot language, though. That’s our biggest coup so far. A scholar at Harvard is putting together a Nissequot dictionary by comparing it with a contemporary English version.”
She looked up at an enlarged line drawing of a man and woman in more traditional-looking dress. “Is that how you imagine your ancestors looked?”
“Nope. That’s a real drawing done by the daughter of one of the first governors of Massachusetts in her personal journal. It was found by relentless digging through old records and hoping for the best. It’s time-consuming and way outside my realm of expertise, but it’s all coming together piece by piece.”
“Impressive.”
He led her through the gallery, then disarmed the emergency exit with a key code and pushed through an exterior door out into the bright sunlight. A large black truck was parked right behind the building. “My unofficial vehicle. Get in.”
“Where are we going?”
“To meet my grandparents.” Curious, she climbed in. His truck wasn’t quite as pristine as his sedan. He lifted a pile of papers off the passenger seat so she could sit down. There was an unopened can of soda in the cup holder, and music—the Doors—started as soon as he turned on the engine. There was also a Native American–looking thing with feathers on it hanging from the rearview mirror. “They’re going to like you. I can tell.”
“Why?” They were hardly likely to appreciate someone who was there for the express purpose of digging up dirt on their reservation.
“You’re nice.”
“Nice? I’m not nice at all.”
His loud laugh echoed through the cab. “True, it was cold of you to blow me off at lunch yesterday. But they’ll think you’re nice.”
She glanced at her reflection in the wing mirror nearest to her. She wasn’t sure anyone had accused her of being nice before. Organized, efficient, polite, helpful, exacting, prim, persnickety...a range of flattering and not so flattering words sprang to mind, but nice was not among them. “I’m not sure that nice is good in my line of work.”
“Maybe you’re in the wrong line of work?” He shot her a challenging glance.
“Look who’s talking.”
“I’m nice.” He glanced in the rearview mirror, then over at her. She jerked her eyes from his gaze and stared out the window, taking in how they were traveling along another featureless wooded road to nowhere. “Ask anyone.”
“I’m not sure that’s the first word that would spring to mind if I asked someone to describe you. I’d think bullheaded, relentless and determined would be right up there. And that’s just going from the newspaper articles I read about you.”
“Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”
“I don’t, but where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.” That was one of the first tenets of forensic accounting. The tricky part was finding a live ember after someone had carefully tried to put the fire out.
“They do say I’m an arrogant SOB. I’m guessing you’d agree with that.” She saw the corner of his mouth lift in a smile.
“For sure.” She felt her own treacherous mouth smile along. “And they say you cooked up the entire Nissequot tribe just so you could open a casino and rake in billions.”
“That’s pretty much true.” He turned and stared right at her. “At least that’s how it started, but it’s snowballed into a lot more than that.”
“Don’t
