Iris leads me to a storeroom lined with shelving cabinets with long, thin drawers. She scans dates on the front of the drawers, opens one and pulls out an old, hand-drawn map.

“This is a plat from the late 1800s,” she says. “Let’s start here. This shows division of land by family name.”

Iris lays the large plat on a desk and turns on a lamp. “Look,” she says, pointing with a polished nail to a large square of land on the lakeshore. “Collins. And here. Collins.” She continues, her voice rising in excitement. “More here, here and here.”

“Wow. They owned hundreds and hundreds of acres. How rich was her father?” I ask.

Iris goes to a bookshelf and pulls down a big, hardbound volume with an old spine. “This is a history of Saugatuck,” she says. Iris flips through the book and stops. She points at a series of old black-and-white photos. “Grover Collins owned the orchards here. Peaches, apples, all the fresh fruit that was shipped to Chicago. He also owned fishing boats. They froze fresh whitefish and salmon from Lake Michigan and sold that in Chicago, too. He was a very rich man.”

A stern-looking man in a suit and hat is standing in his orchards, arms by his side, unsmiling.

“Any idea what happened to Sadie?” I ask. I stop and pull her letter from my bag. “He forced her to get married.” I stop. “She couldn’t even make her own decisions.”

Iris reads the letter with a hint of a frown. “Like so many young women of her time,” Iris says in a voice that’s barely audible. “Like so many young women of my time.” She looks at me. “Hold on. I think I might know where to look.”

Iris leaves, and I can hear her footsteps in the museum. I look at the photos again and then return my attention to the plat on the table.

Collins. Collins. Collins.

Dragoon. Dragoon. Dragoon.

What? I think, my eyes widening.

I lean down and study the plat. The Dragoon name covers a large swath of the map.

“What’s so fascinating?”

I jump at the sound of Iris’s voice. I lean up so quickly that my head bumps the lamp on the table. “Nothing,” I say.

She walks over and lasers her eyes on the map and then me. “I knew you were a bright girl,” she says.

“Your family...” I start.

“Not my family,” Iris says, her voice cold but pointed. “My husband’s family.”

Iris squares her shoulders and looks at me, unblinking. My blood runs cold.

“I am not much of a sharer,” Iris starts, her tone softening, catching me off guard. “As you might have noticed.”

I giggle uncomfortably.

“Please,” she says, gesturing toward two chairs by a desk. “Sit.”

I do, and Iris joins me.

“Did you know I was married for over fifty years?” Iris asks me.

“Amazing,” I say. “Congratulations.”