Free Here Lies Linc by Delia Ray Page B

loved it too. Lincoln and Crenshaw are such strong, sturdy names, and Raintree seems to balance everything out. It sounds so clean and peaceful.”
    “Whatever happened to that Bible?”
    “It’s packed away up in the attic,” Lottie told me. “Your father came across it in his parents’ basement after his mother passed away.”
    “I can’t even remember her.”
    “I know. It’s a shame.” Lottie shook her head. “You were only three when Ellen was diagnosed with cancer. And your grandfather died just before you were born. He would have been smitten with you, just like she was.”
    She let her sad gaze linger on me a little longer before she reached for one of the stacks of paper on her desk, ready to get back to work. But then she stopped. “Wait a minute. Why are you asking all these questions?”
    “You know that Adopt-a-Grave Project that Mr. Oliver assigned us? There’s a girl in my class who picked a grave withthe name Robert Raintree on it. Maybe he’s a long-lost relative,” I said, trying to sound mysterious.
    I was halfway kidding, but Lottie tilted her head to one side. “Huh, that’s funny. Your father used to joke about having some sort of family connection in Iowa City.”
    “Really?” I leaned forward. “Why would he have joked about something like that?”
    Lottie eyed her waiting pile of papers. “Please, Lottie,” I said quietly. “I want to hear everything.”
    She tipped her head back with a resigned sigh and stared at the ceiling. “Well,” she finally began, “I used to tease your father about his so-called
signs
. Sometimes he would make big decisions based on what he thought were little omens—silly things like a black cat in his path, or it could be a coincidence like a report on the radio that mentioned whatever he had been stewing over.”
    “Oh, I bet you loved
that
,” I interrupted, thinking back to her rants about the Black Angel yesterday.
    “Oh, it drove me crazy. Here was this very science-minded geologist crossing the street so he wouldn’t have to walk under a ladder.” Lottie shook her head as if she were feeling the exasperation all over again. “Ridiculous!”
    She pushed her curls away from her face and went on. “When we decided we wanted to find new jobs, your dad and I interviewed at four universities around the country, and we ended up with four sets of job offers.” She gave me a smug little nod. “But we had a terrible time deciding which offer to accept. Then about this same time, your father was cleaning out his parents’ house, getting it ready to sell. We had beenrenting it out ever since his mother died. One day he came home and announced that he knew where we should move. Without a doubt! He had seen one of his signs.” She rolled her eyes.
    “What was it?” I asked.
    “He said he had been going through a crate of old mail that had been left behind over the last few years. The renters were always terrible about telling the post office where their mail should be forwarded. Anyway, your father found a letter in the pile that was addressed to his mother. Of course Ellen had been dead for quite a while by that time, so he opened it.”
    Lottie squinted, trying to remember. “He showed the letter to me. It was very odd, just one or two lines long, and it said something like ‘I apologize for writing, but I’ve been worried about you. Please let me know if you’re well.’ That was it. But here’s the mysterious part. There was no name on the letter—just some initials.” She frowned in thought for a second. “Now I can’t even remember what they were. The only real clue was a return address from Iowa City.”
    Lottie threw up her hands. “Anyway, you see how crazy your father was?
That
was his sign for us to move here, that this was the offer we had to accept. I tried to argue with him about it at first, but he would just laugh and say
obviously
his mother had a long-lost lover in Iowa City, and that was as good a reason as any