The picture of Travis in a tuxedo with a blonde model haunted her. Was that his real life? Had Travis adapted to the glamorous New York life better than his father thought he had?
Kim knew that whatever happened she needed to keep her cool. She couldn’t go running to the two sons of Randall Maxwell and gush about what she’d just been told. Would they smile at her in an indulgent way and say they knew all that? That they’d figured it out long ago? Kim didn’t think she could bear that humiliation.
She stopped outside the door to the diner and took a deep breath. She needed to keep a straight face and do what the Maxwell boys did and keep secrets to herself.
There were few people in the diner, and Travis and Russell stood out. They were at a little round wooden table close to a wall, with their backs to her. There was a big bowl of popcorn between them and they were eating and drinking beer as they looked up at a TV screen. A soccer match was playing and both men seemed totally absorbed in it.
Yet again, Kim marveled at how alike the two men were. If they changed clothes, and she saw them from the back, she wondered if she could tell them apart.
Travis turned and saw her. For a moment he looked at her so hard she thought he knew where she’d been. But then his face relaxed, he smiled, and moved a chair out for her.
“You didn’t buy anything?” he asked.
“Buy . . . ?” She had to remember that she did go to a store. “I didn’t see anything I liked.”
Russell was staring at her. “You look like something happened.”
“Just looking forward to the company of two gorgeous men,” Kim said quickly. So much for keeping secrets, she thought. “So what’s good to eat here?” she asked.
“We waited for you,” Travis said. He was still looking at her as though he was trying to read her mind. “Ol’ Russell here has something to show us, but he wanted to wait until you were here.”
Kim refused to meet Travis’s eyes. She didn’t want him seeing more than she wanted him to know. “That sounds interesting. What is it?”
Russell got up from the table and went to the side wall where there was a package, about two feet by three feet, wrapped in brown paper. As he picked it up and began to open it, he put his back to them so they couldn’t see what he had. When he turned around, he was holding what was obviously a picture and from the look of the back of the canvas, it was quite old. He held it facing him, concealing it from them.
“Ever the showman,” Travis said.
“You should talk, Maxwell,” Russell said as he looked at Kim. “I was curious about these Dr. Tristans so I did a search and some photos came up. Distinctive-looking man is your cousin.”
Kim couldn’t help smiling. That was one way of putting it about her cousin’s extraordinary beauty.
Still looking at Kim, Russell turned the picture around, and she gasped. The man in the portrait looked very much like her cousin Dr. Tristan Aldredge. “Is that him? The doctor who was killed in the mine?” she asked.
Russell leaned the portrait against the wall and took his seat at the table. They were all three facing it. “That’s James Hanleigh, born 1880, died 1982.”
“But . . .” Kim began. “He really does look like my cousin Tristan.”
Travis looked back at the two of them. “Wrong side of the blanket?”
“That’s my guess,” Russell said. He started to say more but the waitress came to take their orders. Kim ordered a club sandwich and Travis got crab cakes with a triple order of coleslaw and a beer. She wasn’t the least surprised when Russell said he’d have the same. She tried not to glance at him but she couldn’t help herself. As she knew he would be, Russell’s eyes were dancing with merriment. She wanted to kick him under the table.
Their lunch conversation was about how the portrait had been found. It seemed that Russell’s uncle Bernie had discovered it.
“I needed to give him something to do to work off all that food,” Russell said. “He told me that last night he’d run off some photos of the present Dr. Tristan Aldredge that he’d found online, passed them around to his mother’s relatives, and told them to see if anyone in town recognized him. Sometimes blood relatives look like each other,” Russell said—and again he looked at Kim with a smile.
“And he found this portrait in one of the stores?” Travis asked.
“No. That would be too easy. He found some old man who said he thought maybe he’d seen a picture of Dr. Aldredge but he couldn’t remember where. Uncle Bernie sent relatives out looking and asking and—”
“This all happened while we were at the Old Mill?” Travis asked.
“Every bit of it. I think my relatives were like a locust invasion on little Janes Creek.”
“And where did they find it?” Kim asked.
“In the home of a little old lady who bought it at a yard sale thirty years ago for fifty bucks.”
“How much?” Travis asked.