“That can’t be,” she moaned.
“Can’t be what?” I glanced from her to Henry.
Henry looked as confused as I was.
Grandma didn’t explain. She shuffled over to the couch, reached under a decorative cushion, and hauled out a heavy, leather-bound photo album.
She sat and placed it on her lap.
Her fingers moved with frantic energy as she flipped through the yellowed pages, bypassing decades of family weddings and birthdays.
She stopped near the front and turned the album toward me.
It was a black-and-white photograph from the early 1950s. A young man stood in front of a brick wall, wearing a sharp suit that looked a size too big for his frame.
He had Henry’s face.
My lungs seemed to forget their primary function for a second. I looked at the photo, then at my fiancé.
The resemblance wasn’t just familial; it was like looking at a mirror that reflected 70 years into the past.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“That’s…” Henry stepped back and stared at Grandma. “It can’t be.
You’re that Margaret?”
Grandma eyed him sharply. “Indeed.”
Grandma tapped the photo with a finger. “That is James.
He was my fiancé.”
“And my grandfather.” Henry met Grandma’s steely gaze. “I can’t believe I get to face you, after all these years…”
I looked at the man I was going to marry and then at my grandmother. I felt like I’d accidentally stepped on a nest of yellow jackets.
“I knew he looked familiar…” I heard Belinda mutter.
“Wait.
So, you were engaged to Henry’s grandfather?”
“Jim and I were deeply in love. He worked in the mill, and my father thought he was beneath us, but we didn’t care. We got engaged anyway, but then…” Grandma looked down at the photo.
“Then he betrayed me.”
Belinda leaned forward and put a hand over Grandma’s wrist. “It was a terrible business, what happened. Truly terrible.”
Henry shook his head.
“That’s not true.”
“I was there,” Grandma snapped. “I heard raised voices coming from my father’s study one night. I opened the door, and Jim was standing right there by the desk.
He had a stack of cash in his hands. Thick rolls of bills. My father caught Jim stealing from the safe.”
“$5000, a small fortune in those days,” Martha said.
“It was all anyone talked about for months.”
“My father told me to call the police immediately,” Grandma said. “I remember just standing there… I couldn’t believe it. Then Jim ran.
Why would he run if he wasn’t guilty?”
“That’s not the full story,” Henry said.
“Young man, your grandfather vanished that night. My father made sure the whole town knew by sunrise. Everyone was looking for Jim, but he was gone.”
“The police never caught him either,” Belinda added.
