The Evening Spider by Emily Arsenault Page A

potentially screaming baby.
    We met at the side door, as we’d agreed. Gerard was about fifty, with a very pink face, a receding hairline of close-cut blond-white hair, and a firm but sweaty handshake.
    â€œYou getting anything?” he asked after we went inside and selected a table by the windows. “Cuz I’m not.”
    I felt one of us had to order something, so I got a coffee—plus a plastic spoon for Lucy to hold. By the time I returned to the table, Gerard had shed his jacket to reveal a Bruins T-shirt that was slightly too small for his blush biceps.
    â€œCute kid,” Gerard said, a smile spreading across his fleshy cheeks. Up close, I saw that his face wasn’t a robust sunburn sort of pink. Rather, his skin seemed thin and delicate, with a surprising rosiness bursting through. In general, he had sort of a football coach way about him. I wondered what his job had been before he’d lost it.
    â€œThanks.” I lifted Lucy out of her car carrier and positioned her to face Gerard.
    So,” he said. “Give me an idea of what you’re looking forhere. Old-timey history, or like when was the last time Ed and Shirley replaced the roof?”
    â€œMost of the structural stuff we know about from the sale documents.”
    â€œUh huh. So you’re wondering about . . . what part of the house, exactly?”
    â€œWell,” I said hurriedly. “I don’t know if Patty told you in her text that I’m a history teacher. So maybe it’s just a personal quirk of mine. But when a building is that old, I just start to wonder about everyone who passed through there. A lot of the time you wonder but you’re not going to get to find out. But in this case . . . well, Patty told me you found some very old materials relating to your family as you were cleaning the house out.”
    Gerard nodded. “Yeah. There was a little trunk in the storage space behind the wall.”
    â€œDidn’t you find a whole bunch of old letters, or something?”
    â€œOld letters? No. Books. Mostly old law books. They belonged to a guy named Matthew Barnett—who lived in the house in the late 1800s. I remember my grandfather talking about him—he was a pretty well-known lawyer, I guess. His name was in some of them. Anyway, I got a few hundred dollars for them, total, on eBay. I think that’s what I mentioned to Patty.”
    â€œDidn’t you want to keep them?”
    â€œI kept one. One with his name in it. They didn’t all have it. Just the one in case I get sentimental in my old age. I’m not a big reader, and I don’t have a kid to pass this kind of stuff along to.”
    â€œOh.” I said. I tried to hide my disappointment. I’d hoped Gerard would have a stash of letters and photographs he’d let me look through—as Patty had implied.
    Lucy pumped her plastic spoon up and down like a drunken drum majorette. Gerard watched her for a moment and chuckled before speaking again.
    â€œNow, I have one thing I thought you might like to have, though. Thought of it right away when Patty texted me. Stacked in with all those law books I found this one thing . . . this little book of handwritten recipes, baking notes, stuff like that. I’ve got it in the trunk of my car.”
    â€œWho wrote it?” I asked. “When?”
    â€œLady named Frances. Frances Flinch Barnett. She wrote her name on the inside cover. She dated some of the recipes. Eighteen seventy-eight, mostly.”
    â€œWell.” I hesitated. “That sounds cool.”
    â€œDoesn’t it? Recipes of a real lady who lived in your house. You and your daughter could cook some of that stuff together.”
    â€œYeah, maybe. I’m kind of a crappy cook, but—”
    â€œIn the same kitchen,” Gerard interrupted. “Think of that, huh? It’d be a real experience for you.”
    I realized in that moment that I had walked into a sales pitch.