Under Vera’s care Meowzebub—so christened because of her bone-chilling yowl, akin to some netherworld denizen—was restored to robust health, and became a member of the family. Meowzebub possessed in spades the calico’s infamously temperamental nature. Vera preferred to say that Meowzebub simply had cattitude, which she regarded as a virtue. The mischievous cat was likely to turn up anywhere in the house, at any time, and loved to ambush unsuspecting victims. Oliver tolerated her, the dogs were terrified of her, the kids loved her, as did I; she was a living link to Vera.

Suddenly Meowzebub gave her trademark yowl from hell and darted out from under the bed, careening down the stairs at breakneck speed. The crazy cat often got the zoomies in the middle of the night, racing around the house until she was exhausted, but not before waking the entire family. Syd and Eliot found these antics hilarious. Oliver wanted to turn Meowzebub into an outdoor cat. Over my dead body!

Ambling to Vera’s desk, my gaze settled on a framed 1910 tintype of her great-great-grandmother Alvera Fields. We had found this photo when digging into the family archives for Vera’s school project on the women’s suffrage movement, in which Alvera had been a prominent and outspoken figure. In the yellowed photo, Alvera and her millionaire husband Robert were resplendent examples of Edwardian-era haute couture. Alvera looked smart in a dark twill suit with a hip-length jacket, lace gloves, and a whimsical hat bedecked with white roses and ostrich plumes, her arms wrapped around her newborn daughter, precious in a white lace gown and bonnet.

Robert was dapper in a cutaway morning coat with paisley vest and puff tie, walking cane in one hand, the other holding his top hat in the crook of his arm. Following the fashion of the day, the couple wore dour expressions, which had prompted Vera to joke that they looked like they had a hellacious case of hemorrhoids. But that was just teenage irreverence talking. Vera had in fact been named in honor of the pioneering suffragette, and the school project had sparked in Vera an obsession with her ancestor’s life…and eventual disappearance.

Alvera had vanished one fateful day without a trace, a baffling event chronicled in newspapers from coast to coast, and sparking countless theories from professionals and detectives alike as clues came to light. As a cause cèlebré, and to some a controversial and polarizing figure, it was widely believed Alvera died in service to the cause of establishing women’s right to vote, but no one knew the truth. Now, a hundred and eleven years later, my Vera had followed in the footsteps of the woman she revered—in the most tragically distressing way imaginable. A terrible coincidence, a family curse.