“Bonjour, mademoiselle!”
It was Brent, wearing his usual black jeans, gray Converse, and white button-down shirt.
“Good morning,” Arden replied. “You’re in a chipper mood.”
Brent patted his stomach. “Kurt made roast chicken for dinner last night. Roast chicken always puts me in a good mood for days.”
“I wish something as simple as a chicken dinner had the same effect on me!”
“There’s nothing simple about a roast chicken. It’s Ina Garten’s meal of romance.”
Maybe that’s why it didn’t send her into ecstasies, Arden thought. No lover with whom to share the meal.
“Whoopie pies make me smile,” she said, refusing to indulge in self-pity.
Brent grimaced. “Whoopie pies make me fat. But, oh, are they worth it!”
Chapter 5
A flight of marble stairs led up to the three-story, redbrick building that served as the Port George Public Library. The shutters of the front-facing windows were white; the large double doors of the building were red. The date on the cornerstone was 1901.
Laura climbed the stairs, passed through the doors, and walked into the impressive foyer. The floor was pale marble; the walls were painted white; darkened portraits hung at intervals, town mothers and fathers, no doubt. There was a faint smell of old books. Laura was never mistaken about that smell.
A middle-aged woman sat on a stool behind the circulation desk; a boy of about twelve lounged at the far end of the room, his nose buried in an oversized graphic novel; and an elderly man was seated at one of three reading tables, a huge volume of old maps opened before him. Otherwise, the place seemed empty.
Laura approached the circulation desk. She felt nervous, even though she had decided there was no need to tell the librarian her podcast tale.
The librarian smiled. “How can I help you?”
Laura cleared her throat. “I’d like to see back editions of the local paper. I’m researching a story, you see, and I couldn’t find anything online.”
The woman frowned. “I’m afraid I can’t help you. We don’t have that archive, in any format.”
Laura was disappointed. “Do you know anyone who might have them?”
“You’ll want to talk to Edward Meyer. He was the paper’s chief editor for over thirty years. I hear he has print copies of every edition published from 1965 until the paper shut down in 1998. I can’t guarantee he’ll give you access to his archive—I’ve heard he’s very protective of it—but you can ask.”
The helpful librarian gave Laura directions to Mr. Meyer’s house. Then she looked closely at Laura. “I’m sorry, but have I seen you before?”
Laura was startled. She hadn’t expected this question. “No. This is my first time in Port George.”
“It’s just that for a moment you looked familiar. I can’t really say how, but . . .” The librarian shrugged. “Oh, well.”
Laura thanked the librarian and took her leave. Had the librarian seen in her a resemblance to a local man or woman, someone she had known long ago? Or, Laura thought, maybe she just had one of those faces, unremarkable, a bit like so many other unremarkable faces, common, familiar. It was better not to read into small incidents.
With Mr. Meyer’s address in hand, Laura continued on her way.
Chapter 6
Arden yawned, glad no one was in the shop at the moment. She didn’t want a customer to assume that she was bored. She wasn’t. Only tired. The morning had dragged a bit; only two people had come in, and only one had bought anything. Traffic had picked up a bit after lunch but had fallen off again after three o’clock.
Oh, well, Arden thought. At least now she had a moment to consider the window display. She liked to change it every week, keep it looking fresh with new titles as well as old favorites. As she reached out to straighten a book that had gone awry, she spotted a teenage couple walking past the bookshop, hand in hand. She didn’t immediately recognize them, which was surprising as she knew most everyone who lived in and around Eliot’s Corner.
Then it came to her. The girl was wearing her hair differently but it was definitely Aria, daughter of Judy Twain. The boy was harder to place, but then Arden recognized the way he was loping along. It was Ben Jones, youngest son of a man who ran a catchall business that included dump deliveries, minor carpentry jobs, and dead-tree removal. Arden would never have imagined Aria and Ben as a couple, but then again, love didn’t play by rules, had little to do with reason, and showed no respect for social barriers.
She knew that all too well.
Arden stepped back from the window display and touched the pendant that hung on a thin chain around her neck. The small silver charm was in the shape of a foot, worn now with time and caressing.
Our time will come to walk together barefoot in the sand. Our time will come to be together always.
And suddenly, it was 1984 and she was right back in Port George.
Ronald Reagan was president. The virus that caused AIDS had just been discovered and revealed to a panicked population. She had been enthralled with the British band the Smiths. After school, she had lived in high-waist, front-pleat jeans and bright polo shirts. Every other word out of the mouths of her classmates was airhead or awesome or to the max. The Port George Daily Chronicle had run a short-lived but popular advice and gossip column called Helpful Hattie. In June, she had graduated from high school. In July, she had turned eighteen.
Oh, that summer. It had been glorious in so many ways. And then it had all gone wrong. So very, very wrong.
As suddenly as the past had overtaken her, it was gone and Arden was a fifty-five-year-old woman in 2021. Owner of an independent bookshop. Owner of Juniper End. Caretaker of three cats. A woman on her own.
It had been a long time since this sort of emotional experience had occurred, a long time since she had been catapulted into the past with such immediacy and force. She felt a bit dizzy and was contemplating sitting down for a few minutes while she recovered when the door of the shop opened and in walked Etta Wolf.
Arden forced a welcoming smile. She liked Etta, a longtime customer. It wouldn’t do to be rude. “Hi, Etta. How can I help you today?”
“It occurred to me only last night that in all the years of my life I have never read Anna Karenina! How could that have happened?”
Arden smiled politely. “All sorts of strange things happen.”
“Well, I said to myself, ‘Arden is likely to have a copy for sale,’ and so here I am. I could, of course, have gone to the library, but, you know, the older I get the less I like touching books hundreds of other people have touched.” Etta shuddered. “The strange stains on pages! Ugh!”
A first-world problem, Arden thought as she led Etta to the fiction section. But a problem for her customer nonetheless. “I have a nice, recently translated hardcover edition.” Arden pointed to the Classics shelf. There was no use in mentioning that there was a “used” paperback copy available.
“Is the translation good?”
“I can’t vouch for it myself, not knowing Russian, but the reviews are very positive.”
“Well,” Etta said firmly, “I’ll give it a try. How bad can it be?”
When Etta had gone off, new purchase under her arm, Arden did finally sit. Funny, that as she was still reeling from her unwanted visit to the past, to the summer that had changed her life in so many ways, Etta Wolf should show up requesting one of the greatest and most tragic love stories in European literature. Poor Anna and Count Vronsky, Arden thought. So many great love stories were sad, short-lived things, doomed to failure. And therefore, popular. Not many people wanted to read about the other sort of great love stories, the quiet, mundane ones, the relationships built on affection and companionship as much as they were built on passion. Pain made stories interesting. That was just the way it was.
Enigma, too, compelled people, Arden thought, getting up and returning to the display window to gaze unseeingly out at Main Street. Like
the ending of Lucy Snowe’s great love story in Villette. Arden had always believed that Paul Emanuel had drowned in that terrible storm, not far from shore, not far from the woman who had been waiting three long years for his return. But others needed to believe he had survived the tempest and been reunited with the woman he loved.
The bell over the door of the shop announced another arrival. This time it was Arden’s neighbor on Juniper Road, Marla Swenson. She was always a welcome sight, and Arden hurried over to greet her.
“I brought some of my famous homemade fudge!” Marla announced gleefully.
Saved from melancholy by the timely arrival of chocolate! “Fudge,” Arden told her neighbor, “is exactly what I need right now.”
Chapter 7
Laura knocked on the door of the large, well-kept house at 12 Broad Street. It was painted white, with black shutters; a front porch was reached by a broad set of stairs. The lawn was beautifully manicured. The azalea bushes that bordered the lawn were neatly trimmed.
A moment or two later, the door was opened by an old man, possibly in his mideighties, neat as a pin in a pair of pressed chinos and a short-sleeved dress shirt buttoned to the neck, a thin woolen vest, and a pair of clean brogues. He was wearing a slim gold wedding ring; Laura wondered if his wife was still alive.
“Mr. Meyer?”
“Yes?” The word was spoken with an unmistakable tone of wariness.
Laura introduced herself and explained that the librarian had given her his address. She presented herself as a researcher for a podcast about the effects on a small community of a resident gone missing. She was interested in perusing the archives of the Port George Daily Chronicle to see what she might find in relation to the topic.
Mr. Meyer was not impressed. He was suspicious of podcasts, he said. He thought them amateurish at best and dangerous at worst. Besides, he thought the topic somewhat flimsy.
Undaunted if a bit weak-kneed, Laura admitted that his concerns about podcasts were valid in many cases. About her topic being flimsy, she admitted nothing. Maybe it was the way she held his eye while speaking, but somehow she managed to convince Mr. Meyer of her seriousness of purpose.
Mr. Meyer sighed. “You might as well come in,” he said not ungraciously. “It’s been a while since anyone’s shown any interest in my archive. I’d be lying if I didn’t appreciate the fact that someone cares.” Mr. Meyer finally smiled. “Even if that someone is working on a podcast.”
Laura thanked him—and her lucky stars—and followed the editor to the basement of his house. It was a clean, dry, well-lit space. A washing machine and matching dryer were in one section of the room; another area was set up with a simple desk and straight-backed chair.
“I do most of my work in the den upstairs,” Mr. Meyer explained. “But this setup is for when I need to hunt for a piece in the archive. I like to keep the papers all here and not risk an edition getting lost or damaged in transit.”
The archive Mr. Meyer spoke of was a virtual wall of black storage boxes lined up on a series of shelves. Each box was carefully labeled with the dates of the enclosed editions.
“Take your time. I’ll be upstairs in the kitchen.” At the foot of the stairs, Mr. Meyer stopped and looked back to Laura. “I just remembered something. One of our own went missing in late summer of, oh, I think it was 1983 or ’4. Never came back, never found. Maybe that will get you somewhere.”
When Mr. Meyer had gone upstairs, Laura selected the box labeled June/July/August 1984 and settled at the little desk to read. She didn’t know what, exactly, she hoped to find, but even a snippet of gossip might be helpful, a stray comment made by the town busybody, something that might point in some way, no matter how tortuous, to one or both of the people who had given her life.
The first pages of each edition were devoted to important local, state, and federal government news. No big surprise there. Many of the advertisements had been placed by Port George businesses, as well as by a few businesses located in what Laura assumed were neighboring towns and villages.
Midway through each of these summer editions, Laura found a chatty column written by a person using the pen name Helpful Hattie, in which Hattie dished out advice and old-fashioned gossip in equal amounts. What eligible middle-aged bachelor was seen squiring what single gal around town on Saturday evenings. What to say to an overbearing mother-in-law when she insists on rearranging your carefully planned holiday table setting. How to get a lazy husband to get out of his favorite armchair on a Saturday afternoon and mow the lawn as promised.
In spite of the possibilities such a column suggested, Laura could find nothing that remotely touched upon real scandal, and in a small town such as Port George, a teen pregnancy might well have been considered scandal. The contents of each of the columns Laura perused were uniformly good-natured and earnestly helpful. In other words, dull.
Laura was getting ready to give up her search when finally, in the edition for a Wednesday in late August, she came across a story of a missing person. The story to which Mr. Meyer had referred? A well-liked and popular nineteen-year-old boy had disappeared. His parents had reported him missing when he failed to return home Sunday evening for dinner. This sort of behavior was completely out of character for Rob Smith. A manhunt was begun.
Laura followed the story in the editions for the following days. Search parties were mounted. Public appeals for witnesses to come forward were made by tearful members of Rob Smith’s family. Interviews with the missing boy’s friends and family revealed nothing other than the seemingly universal opinion that Rob Smith was a wonderful young man. A candlelight vigil was held in the town square, sponsored by the Smiths’ church. Theories were floated and abandoned. Classmates and teachers at the local community college had been eager to speak to the paper, though not one of them had anything remotely resembling a clue to offer. Rob’s employer, a John Willis of Willis Construction, gave glowing praise of the young man’s work ethic: “He was a summer employee, going back to school in September, and I’d already promised him work at his next break.”
Through all of this coverage, there was no mention of a girlfriend. Laura found this a bit odd. A popular, handsome nineteen-year-old without a girlfriend. Unless Rob Smith had been gay and closeted; in 1984 being closeted was not so unusual, especially in a small, parochial town in the midst of the worldwide AIDS crisis. And if Rob Smith had come out as gay, there was the dreadful possibility that he had been the victim of a hate crime, or if he had tested positive for the virus, he might have taken his own life in despair.
Laura studied the grainy black-and-white high school graduation photo of the young man. He was handsome and pleasant looking in an all-American sort of way. As with most if not all such portraits, little of the sitter’s real character came through. At least, that was Laura’s assessment.
When she had reached the last paper in the storage box, Laura retrieved the box labeled September/October/November 1984. The story of Rob’s disappearance continued. A coworker at Willis Construction reported seeing a scruffy young man out along the highway. The man was found; he turned out to be a harmless wanderer who had shown up in the area a week earlier. A psychic had offered her services to the Port George police. They had turned her down. Again, the Smith family issued a public plea for anyone with any information to come forward. Their hearts were broken. There was still no mention of a girlfriend. Another picture was published; this one showed Rob Smith with his three sisters. Now Laura could see a glimpse of the real person. His smile was open and genuine. He was square jawed and broad shouldered, but there was nothing aggressive about his bearing.
Laura read on. The psychic who had been rejected by the police approached Rob’s older sister, Frannie Smith, with an offer of help. Frannie agreed. After ten days with no forthcoming information, the psychic was fired from the case. There was no further mention of Miranda Applebee in the Port George Daily Chronicle.
Suddenly, midway through the month of October, all mention of
the case vanished. Laura went back through the September and early-October editions to be sure she hadn’t missed something. She hadn’t.
Laura thought it strange. As a researcher, she was used to coming upon dead ends; recorded history was notoriously full of holes and misdirection. Still, Laura made a note of the name of the reporter who covered the story, just in case she wanted to speak with him. He might know if the missing boy ever reappeared, or if he was indeed the person Mr. Meyer had mentioned, the one who had never been found.
But she wasn’t in Port George to focus on a missing boy. She was there to search for an unknown teenage girl who had gotten pregnant. Old story. Why would a teen pregnancy make the news, especially one that had presumably been kept secret from the residents of Port George?
Laura looked at her watch; it had been a present from her parents on her college graduation, and though she knew she could sell it for some much-needed cash, she couldn’t bring herself to let go of the timepiece. The inscription on the back of the face meant far more to her than any amount of money could: To our lovely daughter. Mom and Dad. Simple words. Big sentiment.
She had been in Mr. Meyer’s basement for close to an hour. She replaced the old editions of the Chronicle in their storage box, returned the box to its proper place on the shelf, and hurried upstairs.
She found the former editor in the kitchen as promised, finishing a cup of tea. “Did you find what you were looking for? Anything about that old missing-person case interest you?”
“Maybe. Thank you for your assistance. You’ve been very kind. I’m sorry I took up so much of your time.”
“That’s all right. You showing up like you did got me thinking about the old days. That’s not always a bad thing.”
“No. Not always. Goodbye.”
Barefoot in the Sand Page 3