“They are just as tame as they can be, aren’t y’all?” Aunt Grace said, nuzzling one of them.

All I could imagine was one of those little vermin latching onto one of the Sisters’ necks and me having to drive them to the emergency room to get the twenty shots in the stomach you have to get if you’re bitten by a rabid animal. Shots that I’m sure at their age might kill any one of them.

I tried to reason with them, a complete waste of time. “You never know. They’re wild animals.”

“Ethan Wate, clearly you are not an animal lover. These babies would never hurt us.” Aunt Grace scowled at me disapprovingly. “And what would you have us do with ’em? Their mamma is gone. They’ll die if we don’t take care of ’em.”

“I can take them over to the ASPCA.”

Aunt Mercy clutched them against her chest protectively. “The ASPCA! Those murderers. They’ll kill ’em for sure!”

“That’s enough talk about the ASPCA. Ethan, hand me that eye dropper over there.”

“What for?”

“We have ta feed them every four hours with this little dropper,” Aunt Grace explained. Aunt Prue was holding one of the squirrels in her hand, while it sucked ferociously on the end of the dropper. “And once a day, we have ta clean their little private parts with a Q-tip, so they’ll learn ta clean themselves.” That was a visual I didn’t need.

“How could you possibly know that?”

“We looked it up on the E-nternet.” Aunt Mercy smiled proudly.

I couldn’t imagine how my aunts knew anything about the Internet. The Sisters didn’t even own a toaster oven. “How did you get on the Internet?”

“Thelma took us ta the library and Miss Marian helped us. They have computers over there. Did you know that?”

“And you can look up just about anything, even dirty pictures. Every now and again, the dirtiest pictures you ever saw would pop up on the screen. Imagine!” By “dirty,” Aunt Grace probably meant naked, which I would’ve thought would keep them off the Internet forever.

“I just want to go on record as saying I think this is a bad idea. You can’t keep them forever. They’re going to get bigger and more aggressive.”

“Well, of course we aren’t plannin’ on lookin’ after ’em forever.” Aunt Prue was shaking her head, as if it was a ridiculous thought. “We’re going ta let ’em go in the backyard just as soon as they can look after themselves.”

“But they won’t know how to find food. That’s why it’s a bad idea to take in wild animals. Once you let them go, they’ll starve.” This seemed like an argument that would appeal to the Sisters and keep me out of the emergency room.

“That’s where you’re wrong. It tells all about that on the E-nternet,” Aunt Grace said. Where was this Web site about raising wild squirrels and cleaning their private parts with Q-tips?

“You have ta teach ’em ta gather nuts. You bury nuts in the yard and you let the squirrels practice findin’ ’em.”

I could see where this was going. Which led to the part of the day that had me in the backyard burying mixed cocktail nuts for baby squirrels. I wondered how many of these little holes I’d have to dig before the Sisters would be satisfied.

A half hour into my digging, I started finding things. A thimble, a silver spoon, and an amethyst ring that didn’t look particularly valuable, but gave me a good excuse to stop hiding peanuts in the backyard. When I came back into the house, Aunt Prue was wearing her extra thick reading glasses, laboring over a pile of yellowed papers. “What are you reading?”

“I’m just lookin’ up some things for your friend Link’s mamma. The DAR needs some notes on Gatlin’s hist’ry for the Southern Heritage Tour.” She shuffled through one of the piles. “But it’s hard ta find much about the hist’ry a Gatlin that doesn’t include the Ravenwoods.” Which was the last name the DAR wanted to hear.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, without them, I reckon Gatlin wouldn’t be here at all. So it’s hard ta write a town hist’ry and leave ’em outta it.”

“Were they really the first ones here?” I had heard Marian say it, but it was hard to believe.

Aunt Mercy lifted one of the papers out of the pile and held it so close to her face she must have been seeing double. Aunt Prue snatched it back. “Give me that. I’ve got myself a system goin’.”

“Well, if you don’t want any help.” Aunt Mercy turned back to me. “The Ravenwoods were the first in these parts, all right. Got themselves a land grant from the King a Scotland, sometime around 1800.”

“1781. I’ve got the paper right here.” Aunt Prue waved a yellow sheet in the air. “They were farmers, and it turned out Gatlin County had the most fertile soil in all a South Carolina. Cotton, tobacco, rice, indigo—it all grew here, which was peculiar on account a those crops don’t usually grow in the same place. Once folks figured out you could grow just ’bout anything here, the Ravenwoods had themselves a town.”

“Whether they liked it or not,” Aunt Grace added, looking up from her cross-stitch.

It was ironic; without the Ravenwoods Gatlin might not even exist. The folks that shunned Macon Ravenwood and his family had them to thank for the fact they even had a town at all. I wondered how Mrs. Lincoln would feel about that. I bet she already knew, and it had something to do with why they all hated Macon Ravenwood so much.