South of Superior by Ellen Airgood

the wool she had clipped from the sheep and not yet spun into yarn. She even showed Madeline the family plaid, for she was a Scotswoman, the great-great-granddaughter of one of the earliest white settlers in the Upper Peninsula, or the U.P. as everyone in Michigan called it.
    â€œWas this his place then?” Madeline asked and Mary frowned with impatience—of course it wasn’t!—forgetting in a way that Madeline hadn’t grown Up here and had no reason to know one way or the other.
    â€œI bought it myself, years ago. Saved my money hard to get it. Always did like it Up here near the big lake. I was born down in Crosscut. My mother run a hotel there when I was young.” Same as Glad and Butte’s ma and dad did here , she had been about to say, but got distracted by the look on Madeline’s face.
    â€œI was there today, in Crosscut. I saw my grandfather’s house. It was pretty awful.”
    Pretty nice, is what Mary would’ve said. Gas heat, indoor toilet, two bedrooms Upstairs if she recalled right, a good many closets and cupboards, which is something she felt the lack of. But of course to this girl it mightn’t look like much. “I know the house. I knew Joe.”
    Madeline looked startled, alarmed even. “You did?”
    â€œOf course I did. He played a mean fiddle. Always played at the fiddle jamboree they hold in Crosscut every summer, you should have heard him.”
    â€œI didn’t know that.”
    â€œYup. Nobody could play ‘Sally Barton’ like your granddad.”
    Madeline nodded, seeming speechless.
    â€œYou play?”
    â€œWhat? Me? Oh, no. I don’t play anything.”
    â€œI’ll bet you can draw.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œJoe was a dab hand at drawing. Used to do these little cartoons at the jamboree. You paid him a dollar, he give you a drawing of yourself. Did it in about two minutes flat, I never saw the like.”
    â€œOh,” Madeline said, looking shaken. Mary would’ve bet the farm the girl was good with a drawing pencil.
    â€œYou look a mite like him. But more like his ma—your great-grandma, I mean.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œYou got her eyes, and that same dark hair, though she always wore a cap, I can’t recall if I ever saw her without it. You got her build, too—” Mary made a shape with her hands in the air.
    â€œSquare,” Madeline said glumly and a smile flickered over Mary’s face.
    â€œSturdy,” she said. “Real pretty, in her own way.”
    There was a long moment of silence and then Madeline said, very softly, “What was her name?”
    Mary frowned. Didn’t this girl know anything? “Ada. Ada Stone. You give me a start when you got here. I always liked her real well, so I remember.”
    â€œI—I didn’t know. I don’t know anything about them. Joe Stone didn’t want me. The authorities tracked him down but he said no.”
    â€œOh well, a man. It don’t surprise me. Course he probably could’ve found somebody to help out, if he tried. Jackie’s ma took off on him when Jackie was pretty young, and Ada would’ve passed on by the time you came along. I expect he was too proud to go asking.”
    Madeline bit her lip, and then she said, like she was admitting to something she might rather not’ve, “I looked in Gladys’s phone book. It said it covers this whole area, three counties. There weren’t any Stones. I just thought maybe—you know.”
    Mary nodded. There wouldn’t be any Stones in the book, she could’ve told the girl that. She studied Madeline, sizing her Up, considering saying something more, but in the end she didn’t. It wasn’t her place. If Gladys and Arbutus hadn’t told Madeline about her family, it wasn’t Up to her to butt in.
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    Madeline saw in her rearview mirror that Mary watched Until she was out sight. The rain beat down,