The Inheritance Paradox
Thirty-Four (My Story)
NATHANIEL VINCENT HOLBROOK, born March 11, 1981. Me. I was born seven and a half months after Mom and Dad were married.
Dad dropped the piece of lead back into his treasure box and sorted around in it until he pulled an envelope off the bottom of the box. It looked pretty old and had a broken red wax seal on it.
“Share this with Brenda,” he whispered. Tears were leaking from his eyes. “You want more proof? Go look in the Forest Hill Cemetery. You’ll see.”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t want to dredge up so many sad memories for you.”
“The memory of Sarah is one of the happiest I have. Leaving her was what was sad.”
I felt I needed to write down the story about the Civil War before I could deal with the letter Dad gave me. Meg wanted me to tell her everything right away, but Brenda understood that sometimes I needed to write things before I could tell them. She convinced Meg to let it rest until I’d written it all down, then we could read it and all start discussing it and asking questions from the same base. Meg huffed a little, but said she understood. She was the same way with her research. If she presented a theory too soon, her colleagues would tear it down with arguments that belonged much further down the line in her investigation.
“The agency the Institute hired found me a nice apartment,” Meg said while reporting on her own activity this week.
“That’s wonderful!” Brenda said. “Not that you wouldn’t be welcome to stay here as long as necessary.”
“Except Zach should be home by Friday and I can’t move in until Monday as it is. Of course, there isn’t much to move. Just the suitcases I brought. The apartment is furnished. Maybe I should move to a hotel when Zach gets home. He shouldn’t be denied his room because I’m here,” Meg said.
“I think Zach would be upset to think you moved to a hotel so not to inconvenience him for a couple of days. I’d guess he’ll find an apartment to share in Dearborn before the week is up. Driving in traffic every morning is going to get old real fast,” I laughed.
When we all got ready for bed that night, I went back into my study and got my journal out.
“Don’t stay up too late,” Brenda chided me as she kissed me on the head. I pulled her to me.
“I promise. I’ll set an alarm for midnight and come to bed then.”
“Okay. You need to be rested before you go to work tomorrow.”
I kissed her lovingly and she quietly extracted herself from my arms so she could go to bed. We’ve been married twenty years, and I still can’t keep my hands off her. I almost skipped the alarm and just went to bed right then. But I’d committed and sat to write.
I was absorbed in the story and almost missed the alarm when it rang. I reluctantly put the journal aside and joined my wife in bed. As soon as my weight hit the mattress, she rolled to meet me and held me tightly.
I finished the story Thursday night but had no time to discuss it or type it. I forwarded the scans to Brenda and Megan. Zach got home Friday and we all went out to dinner to celebrate his getting back. He looked in pretty good shape and there wasn’t a scratch on the car. Both good signs.
“Was the trip okay?” Dad asked. “No problems with that old car?”
“No. It was cool. I discovered a school in San Francisco that has a certification program in classic car restoration. I stopped by to see if there was a possibility I could transfer out there,” Zach said. “They looked at the Corvair and said I’d done a good job.”
“And?” I prompted. “About transferring out there?”
“They advised me to complete the full year of my qualified mechanics’ course in Dearborn, then they would be happy to have me transfer to the specialized restoration program,” he said.
“So, you plan to move to California next year?” Brenda asked.
“Well, you know Val and I are really committed to each other,” Zach said. “I guess it will depend on whether she thinks having me out there would distract from her studies. We’re discussing it and I think we’ll have a better idea after she gets through her first term at Stanford. She’ll be back here in mid-December and we’ll sure be talking about it all then. Not that we aren’t talking already.”
“I’ll bet,” Megan laughed. “I suppose you’d like your room back in the meantime. I can move into my new apartment tomorrow. My lease doesn’t start until Monday, but since that’s a holiday and the unit is vacant, they’ve given me the key and permission to move in.”
“Oh, I thought that wasn’t going to be until Monday,” I said.
“Well, it’s a good thing I can get in tomorrow. I’m going to fly back to North Carolina on Sunday. I need to meet with the board and then I’m driving my car back. I didn’t want to do that initially. I wanted to make sure everything was set up correctly first. I’ll be making a massive transfer of files and test results now that my computer at the university is set up,” she said.
“I could… uh… housesit for you while you’re gone,” Lisa volunteered.
“Miss, you are still only sixteen,” Brenda said. “If you went there for the week or ten days, I’d have to go with you.”
“And if your mom went, I’d have to go, too. That would leave poor Zach to housesit our place while he’s trying to get his own term started,” I laughed.
“One thing always leads to another,” Lisa sighed. “Tell me again how old you were when you went to college in Boston, Aunt Meg.”
“I was a high school graduate and was in supervised housing,” Meg said. Yes, she’d been sixteen.
“Will you help me get accepted somewhere good next year?” Lisa persisted.
“Next year? Do you plan to graduate early?” Meg asked.
“Well, they told me I could. I haven’t decided yet whether I should.”
I knew this was going to lead to a long conversation.
Saturday, I helped my sister move her suitcases to the apartment, just a few blocks from her office at the university. She expected she’d do a lot of walking since the nearest faculty parking was almost as far from the Human Genetics Department as her apartment was. But she didn’t want to be dependent on other people and public transportation for the next few months.
Brenda stayed home and closeted herself in the study with my journal to read the Civil War story.
“Where’s the letter?” she demanded at once.
“I have it. And I haven’t read it yet. I wanted to get the story down the way Dad remembered it before I fed in some other evidence. You know, this will be a lot like reading Rachel’s letters. I’d guess it’s pretty personal,” I said.
“Except this time, we have Dad’s permission to read it, so I won’t feel guilty about it,” Brenda answered.
“Okay. Here it is. I’ll have to scan it and send it to Meg, too.”
“Let’s sit on the bed to read it.”
My Dearest Eugene,
If this letter has come into your hands, you have attained the age of thirty years, and I have been dead for fifty or sixty years. I feel mortality in my bones, though I’ve not often been ill in my life. Perhaps my time with you improved my own resistance to disease, as it seems to have affected our children. I have held your mission in my heart, even as I raised your children in our home. It is hard to believe the things you told me about the future, though already, I have seen horseless carriages on the streets of Ann Arbor and a new factory has started in Detroit. Those things solidified my commitment to helping avert the future disaster you worried about in any way I can.
We have a grandson-in-law who is an attorney. I explained that I wanted to leave our house and a small sum of money to help you in the future. He is a clever boy, and I am confident this trust will survive until your thirtieth birthday. Of course, if you are not found by your thirty-first birthday, the contents of the trust will be donated to a historical society. Somehow, I am confident it will find your hands by then.
You built this house with my father and brother. Over the years, it has been added to and remodeled. I hope you will fill it with children and a loving wife, just as I have loved you and raised our children here.
As I write this in 1917, we have founded a small clan. We have three daughters—Celestine, Miracle, and Lynn—eight granddaughters, twenty-four great-granddaughters, and fifty great-great-granddaughters. I can only imagine how many there will be when you open this in 1979 or 1980. I constantly quoted scripture to our progeny: ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.’ I wonder, however, if you have ever sired a son. Our direct line has been all women so far. I have compiled a record of our family and have given it to one of our granddaughters who has a good head on her shoulders.
I lived just three years with you by my side and fifty years with you in my heart. You will reside there until the last trumpet calls and I am taken to whatever reward awaits me. May you be blessed with many more children and grandchildren, my love.
Yours until the end of time,
Sarah
Brenda had taken over reading about halfway through the letter when I found my voice would no longer shape the words. How could we do anything but believe the stories now? No matter how absurd they seemed.
“Why?” Brenda whispered as we held each other for several minutes, the letter lying on the bed beside us. “Why did Dad have to spend a year traveling to so many different times and places?”
“He said it was to spread some genetic trait,” I said. “Perhaps that’s what Megan has discovered in her genetics lab. Dad has never been clear regarding the significance of the trait but says the fate of the world is in our hands.”
“That’s a little dramatic. What could even a hundred descendants contribute?”
I got out my phone and used the calculator to tap in the numbers from the letter and then estimate the generations since then.
“Over a thousand if they continued to breed at that rate,” I said. “Maybe as many from Sasha’s line in Chicago. Then there were close to forty others, going back as far as the thirteenth century. That could be… maybe over two-and-a-half million. Wow!”
“There’s a verse about that, too,” Brenda said, searching on her phone. “Here it is. ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven.’ You need to let Megan know about all this.”
“I think she already has an idea. Remember, she’s moved here to Ann Arbor because there seems to be a large concentration of the gene she’s researching here.”
We were simply awed by the scope of what we’d discovered.
I went through everything with Megan when I drove her to the airport on Sunday. She’d read the scanned story and letter Saturday night.
“You have to go to the cemetery and verify this,” she said. “It fits. All your stories suggest a migratory path that would lead back to here in Michigan or even specifically Ann Arbor. It has to be related to the nucleic acid I’ve discovered. And if it is related to our good health, this whole thing could make sense.”
“What kind of global catastrophe do you think that could avoid?” I asked.
“Well, if we go back to the COVID outbreak a few years ago—and understand that it is still very present, but we’ve developed some immunity or at least resistance now—it seems there are labs still experimenting with new viruses. They want people to believe it is so they can better fight them, but it’s just as likely they are developing biological weapons. Maybe this gene is the antidote for a virus gone wild.”
“My God! Tell us what we need to do to help.”
“I’d have to say you’ve done your part in reproducing. Maybe I’ll need to get married and pop out one or two so there are more carrying the gene. Honestly, I don’t know what else we can do. I need to gather statistics regarding how common the gene is worldwide. And I still need to isolate exactly what it does. If it promotes good health, all well and good. It still means that only those who carry the gene will survive.”
I let her off at the departures drop-off. I had a lot to think about on the way home.
Monday, Brenda and I took a drive over to the old cemetery. The place was perfectly cared for. It’s one of those old park-like cemeteries that were designed to truly be a garden of peace. We parked in the visitor lot and looked at the map in front of the gatehouse. Dad had provided the gravesite as if it was burned into his soul: Avenue R, Lot 132.
We walked along the avenue in the still fall air. It was the last day of August, so leaves had not yet started to turn. At one time, the avenues that divided sections of the cemetery from each other had names, but those had fallen into disuse long ago. We found what we thought was Avenue R and simply looked at every stone we saw along the way. It looked like there were three rows of stones that all had addresses on this avenue.
Brenda had thought to get a rubbing kit from the local craft store. Eventually, we found the stone and the bronze star marker. I photographed them and Brenda did the rubbings. Then we noticed the graves next to hers.
A single stone marked the grave of Elaine and Finn Gilland. Next to it was a simple stone memorializing Horace Gilland, interred at Gettysburg. There was a piece of history Dad’s story hadn’t included. There was no marker for Jonathon Gilland, but he might have left town or been buried in a different cemetery altogether. We didn’t see any other markers for Holbrooks in this section or anywhere near.
So, was Sarah Gilland Holbrook really Dad’s wife in 1863-1866? Or was there another E.W. Holbrook she was married to? But there were the unusual dates on the part of the stone for E.W. Holbrook. Born 9-18-49. Taken from us 5-15-66. Sarah’s birthdate in 1842 would have been seven years before E.W.’s. In 1866, she would have been twenty-four and he would be… seventeen. No, with that date, sixteen and a half. Thirteen when they supposedly married.
“I think we have to assume that Sarah believed she was married to a man who wouldn’t be born for another eighty-three years,” Brenda said. “I have to say, that is some remarkable faith in a phenomenon that has never been truly tested.”
“Time travel. We actually have to accept that, don’t we? How can we do that?” I asked. My head was still rebelling against the idea.
Brenda and I walked back to the car and then went out for a late brunch at a nice place in the historic district of Ann Arbor. Then we just walked around. The library, of course, was closed for Labor Day. We wandered through the market and shops that were apparently open for holiday shoppers. Not far from there, we saw the Lennox House Museum. It was open, so we decided to go in for a tour. According to Ruby, this was an ancestor of hers. If we believed what we’d seen in Sarah’s letter, they could have been descendants of Dad’s.
Lennox House is one of the old historic homes in Ann Arbor, named for its last residents, Albert and Nichole Lennox. Of course, we’d also discovered that Mom and Dad’s house, inherited from Sarah, was built during the Civil War. It had been built onto and remodeled so many times that it wasn’t considered all that historic—just old. The Lennoxes donated their house to the city near or just after World War II to preserve the historic architecture.
The story told in placards as we moved from room to room, was that Albert was a professor at the university. He and Nichole had four children who had all gone on to do spectacular things elsewhere. They were all girls.
The house furnishings were bought in different historical eras and there was a lot of art on the walls—mostly portraiture. I remembered Ruby having mentioned a signed portrait of Ulysses S. Grant. We found it. If for no other reason than my recent interest in local history, the museum was fascinating. Someplace along the line, I got involved in reading a lengthy story about the Lennoxes in World War I on one of the placards. Brenda had gone ahead and came rushing back into the room to grab my arm and pull me on.
“You need to see this!” she practically shouted, pulling at my arm.
“What?” I asked. “What’s in here?”
“Over the mantel,” Brenda said, pointing.
I looked up and saw a rifle hanging next to a Civil War ammunition pouch.
“Read the card,” Brenda said.
“Civil War era Henry rifle, probably manufactured circa 1860. The brass receiver is engraved with the name E.W. Holbrook. The ammunition pouch still holds shells of that era. The firearm was said to have belonged to Nichole Lennox’s great-grandfather, though no matching military record has been found.”
I stood staring at the old rifle. My world was spinning. How could all these notions of time travel be real? Could this have been my father’s rifle in the Civil War?
I was one of those people who couldn’t understand why so many people in our country didn’t believe the evidence of our representatives’ and other leaders’ wrongdoing when it was right in front of their eyes. They always had a reason they clung to. Fake news. Inconclusive evidence. Conspiracy. Ideas that didn’t have a shred of evidence but were clung to so their opinions would not be disproved. Yet here I was standing in front of solid evidence of my father’s time travel looking for any reason it couldn’t be.
“Holy shit!”
We stopped by Mom and Dad’s cottage on the way home. They’d called and said the kids were coming for hot dogs and we should, too. Lisa and Zach had spent the day ‘playing’ with his car. They’d had to pull the front seats in order to install the back seat. Then they’d cleaned it thoroughly and went to Mom and Dad’s to take them both for a ride.
Dad no longer had a big grill, but he could set up a little hibachi on the patio. He was just as happy grilling hotdogs as he would have been with steaks. Zach had been helping him and talking about how the Corvair handled on the long trip. Lisa had gotten a lesson in making potato salad and deviled eggs. We all had a good time.
“Brenda and I went to the cemetery,” I said to Dad after the kids left. He nodded but didn’t say anything. “She’s there. So are her parents and one brother. We didn’t have anything better to do this afternoon, so we had lunch down in the historic district. That historic museum, the Lennox House, was open, so we decided to take a tour.”
“I remember Ruby Johnson mentioning that was in her family at one time. When does that date from?”
“1890s according to their brochure. It was carefully preserved and donated to the city after World War II. It was an interesting glimpse into a different era. There was something there, Dad.”
“What?”
“There’s a Henry rifle hanging over the fireplace with an ammunition pouch. The brass receiver is engraved ‘E.W. Holbrook.’ The information placard says it belonged to Nichole Lennox’s great-grandfather, though no service record has been found,” I said.
“I’ll be. Wells was rather upset that I left it behind. Said if anyone really examined it, they’d discover it was a copy. Don’t suppose anyone really took a look at it since it was part of her inheritance. Hmm. It’s nice to know,” Dad said.
“Do you realize what that means?” I asked. “Val and her mother are your descendants. Maybe seven generations down.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff.”
“Dad… When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. I think I’ve become a believer.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
