The slight disappointment of finding some of the diary's pages stuck together, therefore, barring them from reading at least a month's worth of entries, lasted only a short time.

"I found that YouTube video," Abe happily announced.

As Henry and Jo drew closer to him, a female voice from the video playing on his laptop became clearer.

"What YouTube video?" Jo asked.

"On how to separate these pages that are stuck together," he replied. Most of his concentration was focused on the video screen. "I've done this before. Just needed to refresh my memory." He followed along with the onscreen demonstrator, the diary on the kitchen table in front of him.

" ... a very thin sheet of a hard material must be used. Using this sheet, force has to be applied gradually, starting from the inside of the pages and progressing outwards. Get a thin, hard sheet such as a file cover, plastic folder, thin spatula or steel foot ruler."

He held up a steel ruler to them, grinning. Then quickly returned his attention to the step-by-step instructing video.

"Choose a starting point and apply gentle force to effectively unstick two stuck pages, choose the starting point that has the most surface area in contact with the thin sheet that you're using."

"Aw, she's cute but she's just - talking too much now." Abe waved his hand in frustration at the video screen, collapsed it, and paused it. While he worked the ruler gently in between the pages, he also waved off any help or advice from his father or stepmother. "I got this, I got this. Be done in a minute, here."

"Careful, Abraham," Henry warned him anyway. "Gauge your progress, and add steam if required. If the pages are stuck very firmly together they have a high likelihood of tearing if you apply more force than needed."

"I know, Dad," Abe replied, squinting at the tedious progress of his delicate task.

"Steam the pages by placing the book above a pan of hot, boiling water," Henry continued.

Abe sighed and sat back in his chair. "Looks like I'll have to do that."

"Steam the pages?" Jo asked. "Won't that just make them soggy and then you'll never be able to pull them apart."

"Not if just enough is applied to soften the pages and allow them to separate with less force." He walked over to prepare the teapot still on the stove and turned on the eye underneath it. With a wink and a smile, he said, "Scoot. You guys got about 20 minutes to catch up on your smooching."

Jo's jaw dropped but she fought to control an embarrassed but amused smile. Henry slowly stood up and came face to face with his son. Try as he might, though, he struggled against his own smile.

"Why on earth do I continue to put up with your impertinence, Abraham?" Henry asked in his best fatherly tone of disappointment.

Abe looked smugly at him and replied, "Because I'm too big for you to punish me and because you love me."

Henry walked away, shaking his head and muttering something about his son being impossible. But he had to admit that it was true. Not that he and Abigail had spanked him often but a time out would definitely do him some good right now, he thought.

"C'mon," Jo told him, pulling him back into the living room by the hand. "I've got some questions, anyway."

"Alright," he said, sitting down next to her on the settee. "Questions about what?"

"Boy or girl, what are we going to name our baby?"

"Oh, well, ah ... I'm still going over the baby names in that little book and ... actually, whatever you decide is fine with me."

"No, no. You're not getting off that easily," she told him. "We decide to - geth - er."

"Alright, alright, let me see, let me see," he replied. He paused and closed his eyes, then opened them. "I rather like ... Brianna if it's a girl."

"Brianna," Jo repeated thoughtfully. "Hmmm. Yeah, I like that, too." She shifted in her seat and brought one leg under her. "Now. If it's a boy ... Henry?"

"No," he quickly replied. "No. Let him have his own name. Be his own person."

"Okay, um ... how about ... Ricardo? Or ... Lorenzo?" she asked.

"Lorenzo," Henry repeated. He sat silently considering it as his smile tugged upward more and more. "Yes. If it's a boy, Lorenzo."

"Worked like a charm," Abe happily called out to them from the kitchen. "The pages have to dry, though." They then heard the sound of a hairdryer.

Baby names decided upon, they gave their attention back to the diary and the strange entry regarding old Dr. Barton having persuaded Nora to bury Baby Henry in his father's empty grave with no accompanying grave marker.

"Henry, what could have been going on?" Jo wondered. "Sounds strange to me."

He frowned, pursing his lips as he mulled over some possibilities, then let out a sigh. "All I can really recall about the Barton family was that there were rumors about them not being as financially well off as they pretended to be. Something to do with failed investments and Edward's gambling habits. He loved the horses and Derby Day. But, mind you, Nora's mental health also may not have been the most sound."

"Meaning she could have just imagined something like that?" Jo speculated.

"Meaning she should have been committed," Abe said.

Jo laughed softly and asked, "Wouldn't there have been an old birth record or something to at least confirm that she gave birth?"

"A church record if the child had lived long enough to have been christened," he replied. "A burial record but only if it had been done properly."

"How about a birth announcement - oh," Jo began, then checked herself. "Old Dr. Barton probably would have advised against that, too."

"Baby announcement cards didn't start becoming popular until sometime in the 1870's," Henry pointed out. "However, news of a birth would still have spread throughout the community." What had old Dr. Barton been up to? Henry asked himself. 'Get rid of the baby when it was believed that I, the father, was already dead. Then get rid of me after I'd most unexpectedly returned.'

Unable to curb their highly-piqued curiosity, they eyed the box of documents and Jo finally rose from her seat and walked over to it. She rummaged through it and Henry waited anxiously for her to produce whatever it was she was looking for. She returned to her seat next to him, in her hands a bundle of envelopes tied up with a leather strap.

"Okay, let's start in on the letters," she said. "Maybe something will turn up in them." She untied the strap and handed the top two to Henry. After placing the bundle on the settee to the left of her, she took one of the envelopes from him and they each carefully opened one.

"This one's from ... " Jo paused, frowning at the faded but fanciful handscript similar to Henry's. "Can't make it out," she said, shaking her head and passing it to him.

"Hmmm. Not a letter but a bill dated September 4, 1861 from ... Huw MacGregor." Henry read over the bill and chuckled softly, handing it back to Jo. "He worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the 1850's. It's a bill for having hunted me down and located me in Nice, Brussels, and Antwerp." He smiled sadly and shook his head.

"You traveled to all those places during that time?" Jo asked. She could only imagine him abandoning one locale for another in order to avoid being locked up or harmed.

"Yes, to those places and more, many times," he replied. "But not during that time period. In the early 1850's, I died in an avalanche while searching for gold in Alaska when it was still a Russian territory. In 1849 a Russian mining engineer named P. P. Doroshin had discovered gold in the gravels of the Kenai River on the Kenai Peninsula," he explained further. "Thank God I was alone when I met that end. The waters were deathly cold but I was able to ... recover in private; dry off and warm up."

"Gold, hmmm?" Jo mused. "Were you lucky?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, very lucky," he replied, smiling. "But ... " his voice trailed off and he seemed reluctant to continue. He heaved a big sigh at Jo's look of curiosity and continued. "In 1855 I died in a powder keg explosion aboard a schooner on Hudson Bay." He paused again, frowning and pursing his lips.

"Th-that sounds awful, Henry," Jo told him, genuinely sorry to hear about two of the deaths he'd experienced.

"Yeah, and what makes it more awful," Abe called out to her from the kitchen again, "is that the gold was part of the ship's cargo. Easy come, easy go."

"Uh ... no ... oh, no," an appalled Jo said, looking from the direction of Abe's voice and back at Henry. "I mean I'm sorry you died but the gold - bummer."

Henry had closed his eyes and bowed his head, cringing from Abe's words. He opened his eyes and turned to look at Jo and said, "At least I know where it is in case there's ever a need to retrieve it."

Jo fought to hide her look of amusement, patting him on the arm. "First you die getting the gold then you die and lose it! Oh, poor booby," she said, patting his cheek and kissing the other.

"Sorry, Pops," a grinning Abe said as he joined them in the room again, diary in hand. "Couldn't resist providing that little, uh, tidbit of information for Jo." Henry shook his head and muttered a weary thank you to him.

"But the good thing is - the pages are separated and, hopefully, we can find out what happened to my big brother." Noticing the pensive look on his father's face, Abe asked, "You okay with continuing with the diary, Pops?"

"Yes, yes, Abraham, by all means, do continue," he told him. "It's just that ... it appears that old Dr. Barton may not have been the only one to have taken advantage of her in her fragile mental state. This MacGregor fellow billing her for falsified services."

Henry couldn't help but feel pity for his long deceased wife. If only she had believed him, he thought to himself. He would have protected her, spared her from the avarice of others.

Abe sat in the chair previously occupied by Henry and gently handled the delicate, recently-separated pages as he read.

February the 28th, 1815

I sent the cook's boy, Micah, out to pick currants. As it was quite late last night when I came home, I had not time to write down yesterday's events. I was being kept abreast of the wine making near all day - and butter. In the afternoon, I went to Mrs. Allen's to tea. I met Mrs. Brinley coming over to see me, but she insisted on my going with her. In the evening we went over to Mrs. Potts's and had a _ romp . Sally was dressed as a little Dutchman and introduced as Mrs. P's beau.

My days are filled with busy but it helps to keep my mind off of the child. Alone out there. Unnamed to the world, only in my heart. Have I done the right thing? What real shame is there to bear a child of your husband's after his death? And Mama and Papa and Hunter know not of old Dr. Barton's powders he's prescribed to help me attain mindful peace. If only this grief could truly be lifted from me, thought may become clearer for me.

"Powders? Mindful peace?" Abe repeated loudly, frowning. "That old quack kept her drugged!"

"Right under her parents' and brother's noses," Jo added. "Did they live with her? I thought you and she had your own place to live."

"We did," Henry replied. "It's not clear in her diary but they either lived with her during her troubled times or visited regularly."

"Maybe not regularly enough if they didn't notice that she was on a high every time they saw her," Abe grumbled. Ever since he'd learned of Nora's betrayal of his father, he'd held a grudge against her. But after what he'd just read, he found himself wishing there had been a way to help her back then. Wishing that someone had stepped in to keep that old quack away from her. And his father and his centuries old big brother.

"My recollection of her parents were that by this time, her father was falling deeper into senility, quick to share with a willing or unwilling ear of his past experiences as a captain in the British Navy." Henry shook his head. "He would not have noticed anything suspicious."

"A mother knows her child, though," Jo asserted. "Why didn't Mrs. Perth try to do something to protect her daughter and grandchild?" Jo was nearly indignant at the thought of the two women allowing themselves to be cowed by the shady old Dr. Barton.

"Her mother was a trusting soul," Henry said. "Too trusting, at times. And, perhaps, too preoccupied with her husband's failing health and deteriorating mental capacity."

"Deteriorating mental - " Abe began. "That old quack probably had all of them drugged," he laughed. "He was a pusher!"

"Well, I can say with all certainty that he never gave me anything," Henry said. Except one of the worst experiences of my life, he acknowledged, regarding his committal to the asylum.

Jo held onto one of letters in her lap. "Hmmm. You're probably right, Abe. This is also a bill from that so-called doctor. He billed her for several visits to you, Henry, while you were in the asylum and later on in the prison. Did he ever really visit you?"

"Sometimes," Henry replied. The memory of that time held his gaze, she could tell. "He'd stand and watch while they administered what Dr. Stewart called ... treatments ... to me." The memory darkened his eyes and deepened his voice.

"He never said a word. Never lifted a finger to help me. Just ... stood there and watched." He blinked and lowered his eyes. "After a while, I began to think that he was merely a figment of my imagination."

"Bastard!" Jo whispered hoarsely. "When we go back to England, is there some way we can find out where these fools are buried so we can spit on their graves?" The two men laughed at how preposterous that sounded but she lifted her voice over theirs, protesting that she was serious.

Henry quieted his laughter and looked at her, holding her hand. "Darling, time took its toll on Nora. I'm very sure that the, ah, fools on whose graves you wish to spit, paid for their misdeeds, as well."

"I don't care," Jo insisted. "They deserve it." She frowned then asked, "Probably laws in England against doing that, though, right?" She frowned more and made a growling sound through clenched teeth.

"Can you read the pages now?" Henry asked Abe while he squeezed Jo's hand to comfort her. Abe nodded and proceeded to do so.

March the 1st 1815

This has been another very rainy day, and I have been doing needlepoint most of the day till about five o'clock when it left off raining. Matilda has been altering a frock and working some trimming for me, for soon I shall doff my widow's black. If Mama has something to say against it, I refuse to hear it.

The child has begun to invade my dreams. Old Dr. Barton says I must think of future things and that his son, Edward, would be a prime catch. But my heart still belongs to Henry. Edward has been rather overly considerate but how can I let another in when my heart holds fast to the memory of my beloved Henry?

And there's something else. Mama has always said that she could feel when her children were in trouble. She insists that I am now. That perhaps old Dr. Barton is just that - too old now. That I should seek the services of a younger doctor, more capable, with more modern training, she says. Hounds me! I trust the old doctor but he is moving slower these days. Mama might be correct in her assumptions. And, God help me, I feel my child! How is that possible if he is dead and buried? Clear thought remains elusive much of the time. Heavens!

It has rained very hard today. I am too spent to shed any tears so I'll borrow from the rain. I sincerely hope tomorrow may be fine. It is so cold this evening that I have been sitting by the fire. Winter is holding fast. Warm weather would be a blessing.

"That's the first entry for March," Abe told them. "Sounds like her mother was trying to convince her to dump the old quack while his shady son was puttin' the moves on her. But here's the first entry for January."

January 3rd 1815

Old Dr. Barton broke the news to me. Our baby, a son, did not survive his birth of 8 days ago, 8 days that I have been out of sorts! I simply can't believe it. His cries still ring in my ears, he was so much alive and I was so much ready to cradle him, love him, protect him as a mother should. I was so ready! The doctor says that I was not of a mental state to care for him even if he had survived. Hopeless is what I feel. He would have been a living part of my Henry. A living part to keep loving but now he is gone, as well. To compound my grief, my child, our child was buried in his father's empty grave. But without a marker of his own or anything added to Henry's to let the world know that he existed for a few precious hours.

Move on, the old doctor says. Move on from the Morgan family. All ties cut, he says, for the best. I should look forward to a new life, a new beginning, a new future - with Edward? That it's unhealthy to hold onto the past with so many painful memories.

"Brainwashing her!" Abe shouted. "No wonder she was so bejeebered up by the time you returned!"

Henry cringed a bit and said, "She definitely appears to have been a woman well put upon."

"Part of the grieving process is receiving condolences from others. It helps a person deal with loss when others show sympathy. Since that old doctor had talked her into keeping secrets regarding the baby, she had a harder time dealing with things," Jo opined.

"What are the other entries for January 1815?" Henry asked.

"Not much, actually," Abe replied. "She added dates but ... maybe didn't have the heart to write anything," he somberly speculated. "Oh ... here's something on the 22nd of January."

Papa stays home more now, no longer able to receive visitors. Mama visits less and less but on her last visit brought news from the colonies of slaves escaping from the Empress. One of the last of the ships that had belonged to the Morgan Shipping Lines.

"News didn't travel nearly as quickly as it does nowadays," Henry explained when Jo and Abe looked questioningly at him.

Abe nodded and continued reading the rest of the entry.

I stopped at my little bower this afternoon, but it looked so dull I could not stay long. The weather was also dull and hurried me from the spot where I have spent many happy moments walking with Henry. I have not seen anyone since I came home, and time passes heavily on. Night has thrown on her sable mantle. I now prepare for bed.

"Oh, she's going dark again," Abe warned them.

"Can you blame her?" Jo asked, surprising herself at how much sympathy she felt for Nora.

"Maybe we should pick this up later," Abe proposed, closing it. "I've gotta start getting ready to go over to Fawn's to meet her youngest daughter and her husband and kids."

"Perhaps you're right, Abraham," Henry said. "Let's all find something a little more uplifting to do."

Abe retreated to his bedroom to shower and change. Jo and Henry did likewise in their bedroom as they planned later to take in a play with Jo's older brother and his wife.

Two hours later, Abe had left the shop, headed for Fawn's. Henry had lost the battle of jockeying for space in front of the bathroom mirror to Jo, settling for his reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom door. They traded good-natured taunts while putting the finishing touches on their appearances.

"You beat me this time," Jo called from the bathroom.

"Well, I have an unfair advantage. You're preening for two now," he joked. The lure of the diary drew him out of the bedroom and over to where Abe had left it on top of the bundled letters in the box in the chair. He laughed loudly enough for her to hear when she told him "Very funny, Mister".

Jo, finally ready to depart, came out of the bedroom looking for him and paused when she saw him holding the diary and staring at it. She walked over to him and placed her hand on his arm.

He rubbed one hand on top of the diary and looked at her. "The answers to the fate of my son are on these pages," he told her.

"It does look like we have another mystery to solve," she said. "I'm up for it if you are."

"Oh, absolutely," he happily responded.

vvvv

The play they were attending was a middle-school production of the Broadway hit, "Annie", in which Jo's young niece, Jasmine, was playing the lead. It was (thankfully) enjoyable because the cast members were blessed with great singing voices. The fact that one of the biggest production numbers took place in an orphanage triggered a memory of Henry's from the early years of his marriage to Nora.

1809

"Many young couples in our situation choose to adopt," Nora had told him.

"You mean choose to give up," Henry had stated, contentiously.

"Not give up. Henry!" Nora had replied. "Dr. Barton says he can help us."

Henry had scoffed. "Old Dr. Barton? Help us to do what?" he'd demanded.

"Why, adopt," she'd answered as if it were the obvious and only answer. "He and his son, Edward, have been involved for years with caring for indigent children and helping them find proper homes with proper families."

He recalled that orphans were normally adopted by their immediate relatives, neighbors or childless couples. He and Nora had been such a couple but he'd refused to give up on having a child of their own, as she apparently had. Laws related to adoption did not prevail in England until the 1920s. Prior to that, most of the instances of adoption were informal. Adoption of a child of the lower class by people of higher class, however, did not permit the child to maintain relations with the higher class. That had always troubled Henry, as well. What was the point of taking a child into your home, he'd thought at the time, only to cage them with unfair and outdated rules of class?

Some of the orphans considered themselves lucky to get placed in educational institutions. The philanthropists of the Victorian era had considered it a social responsibility to donate money to schools which were formed to educate the orphans and provide boarding facilities. Food, clothing, shelter and education were given to orphans until they turned seventeen after which they were expected to work and earn on their own.

'Boarding facilities,' he thought to himself. 'Philanthropists donating money.'

There had been talk swilling around the Barton family for years about the dismal state of their financial affairs but ... something else. Something ... something to do with some of the children in their so-called boarding facility. How some of the children conveniently resembled the "proper families" with which they had been placed. Was it merely coincidence? Several of the families had also lost a child in childbirth or infancy. At least, that's what old Dr. Barton had told them. And had apparently told Nora about their own son.

The play was just ending and he realized that he'd missed a great portion of it by having entertained his own private musings. But he would still be able to discuss and critique the play since he was very familiar with it in all of its forms.

The diary's pages were calling to him, though. A leisurely read would have to be abandoned in place of a speedier skim through it. Because what if the children had simply been stolen and spirited off to Barton's boarding facility with the intent of making money off of them by using them to obtain donations, monetary and otherwise, from sympathetic philanthropists? And sometimes selling some of them back to heartbroken families? If he was correct in his assumptions, old Dr. Barton's ugly secrets would be uncovered.

vvvv

Notes:

Slight reference to "Forever" TV show S01/E18 episode Dead Men Tell Long Tales"

Information on the middle passage, Victorian-era birth announcements, adoptions, workhouses, and Pinkerton Detective Agency found on the Internet