Family Skeletons: A Spunky Missouri Genealogist Traces A Family's Roots...And Digs Up A Deadly Secret by Rett MacPherson Page B

different shades of mauve and pink. How out of place it looked in this sterile room, and on a hospital bed.
    â€œNot unless collecting them counts,” I answered her. “I have several quilt tops my grandmother left me.”
    â€œWell, you’d best get them quilted,” she answered. “I made that one just before I came here. My hip is bad. I can’t get around by myself.”
    Several seconds ticked by as I thought about how bizarre it was that this woman would know who my grandmother was. It is a small world.
    â€œMrs. Ortlander,” I began, “the reason I’m here is because I am tracing the family tree of Eugene Counts. Does that name mean anything to you?”
    â€œCounts,” she repeated. “Oh, Genie boy,” she stated. “Yes. He and my son were great friends. Michael was very happy when he found out they were in the same platoon. It was like a miracle to actually find somebody that you knew.”
    â€œYour son died in the war?” I asked, reconfirming a fact that I already knew, and being thrilled that I had found the correct Ortlander family.
    She never answered me; instead, she put her crochet work down. “In that top drawer is an album. Let me show him to you,” she said. “He was my only son. I have three daughters, but he was my only son.”
    I did as she told me to. Never missing a beat, she went right on talking. “Genie boy was the only survivor.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I asked, skin prickling.
    â€œGermans circled them in a valley and all were lost. It was a gruesome, bloody battle. Genie boy was taken to a camp.”
    A Nazi POW camp. In my opinion that could change any man. It would leave him a skeleton of who he was.
    â€œDon’t know what happened to him after that.… I asked specifically…” she said.
    â€œAsked what?”
    â€œWhat happened to Michael. I wanted to know if it was a bullet or a mine. You know, did he suffer?”
    â€œDid they tell you?”
    â€œWalt spent many years tracking that down,” she said after a pause. “We got his body way too late to view it, so we didn’t know. Finally, when he found out … I wished I had never asked.”
    â€œWhat happened?” I hoped that she would tell me, even though it was a very personal question.
    â€œHis throat was cut from ear to ear,” she said, and made a swooping motion that covered the entire throat.
    â€œGod, how horrible,” was all I managed.
    She had turned the photo album around to me, and one slender, age-spotted finger pointed out her son in his service photo. His hat was cocked to one side, he had blondish hair, and even though the photo was in black and white, I could determine that he had one blue eye and one brown eye. It was very striking.
    â€œWhy do you think Eugene survived?” I asked.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYour son was very handsome,” I finally said. I didn’t know what else to say to her, and she had seemed to run out of things to say to me. The awkwardness that arises when one has run out of things to say is very blatant. And embarrassing.
    â€œI should probably be going,” I said. “Thank you for your time.”
    Rising, I walked to the bed and touched her quilt. “It is truly magnificent,” I said. “Just beautiful.”
    â€œThank you.”
    She had been so peaceful when I arrived. Now there was sadness in her eyes and she worked her left hand in a nervous twitch. I wondered when the last time was that she had thought about her son’s death. Had I brought up something that she had succeeded in burying? He was her only son—it would probably never be buried.
    â€œI’m sorry, Mrs. Ortlander. About your son.”
    Suddenly, her face went blank and she looked at me in the oddest way. “Whatever for?” she asked.
    â€œHis suffering,” I answered.
    â€œHe didn’t suffer. Oh, he’s