by Melissa Tagg
Beckett reached into his pocket and pulled out a flat, square paper envelope.
New guitar strings.
Three years of motherhood had aged Dani Malone, but in a good way, a graceful way, Amelia decided. Gone were her dark, waist-length curls, and in their place, a stylish pixie cut framed her face. Her cheeks were fuller, sprinkled with freckles and a few faint lines that made her seem older than her twenty-one years.
But there was a peace in her eyes that Amelia had never seen back when she was a scared barely-eighteen-year-old. High school senior. Pregnant. Desperate.
“Amelia?”
Amelia stood on the front steps of the miniscule bungalow home on 31st Street in Des Moines. Hadn’t even had to look up the address after writing it on so many unmailed envelopes, the letters to Mary she’d never sent. She’d simply ignored the turnoff for Maple Valley on her way back from the Cranford offices and found herself here.
“I know I should’ve called.”
Dani’s smile shifted out of surprise and into something warm as she ignored Amelia’s hesitance and lunged for a hug. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been waiting for this.” When she stepped back, there were tears in her eyes. “Come in. You’ve got good timing. My aunt watches Mary a couple days a week while I’m in class, and she just dropped her off ten minutes ago.”
Mary.
Weirdly, her heart didn’t even lurch at the thought of seeing the baby—no, now a three-year-old, just like Charlie—she’d once considered her daughter. Instead, a humming curiosity had settled in someplace between Dixon and here.
She followed Dani through the modest living room. Futon in place of a couch. Old fireplace that must not be usable considering the candles crowded into its base. A pile of textbooks on the coffee table.
“You’re taking classes?”
“Yep, summer courses just started. I’m finishing up my gen eds this summer at the community college and then transferring to ISU this fall.”
“What are you studying?”
Dani stopped near the kitchen. Its appliances looked like remnants of the seventies, the gold refrigerator crammed with crayon pictures. “Actually, you kind of helped me choose without realizing. I don’t know if you’ll remember this, but before I even got pregnant, when I’d only been coming to church a couple months, we were talking once after youth group about going to college and picking a major and all that. And I told you I had no idea what I wanted to do, that I didn’t think I had any major skills or talents, and all I knew was I didn’t want to end up living on welfare like my mom. I wanted to have a dream, I just couldn’t find one.”
Amelia did remember that. They’d been sitting on one of the ratty couches in the church youth room. Just that night Jeremy had told the group of kids it was his last night. His speaking career was getting off the ground, and he’d just landed his first book contract.
“I’ll never forget what you said. You said, ‘Dani, if you really want the dreams and desires in your heart to come into any kind of focus, maybe start by getting to know the one who gives us dreams in the first place.’”
“I said that, huh?” And she’d probably believed it, too. A wistfulness crept in then—for the faith she used to cling to.
“When Mary turned one and I started thinking about finally doing the college thing, it came back to me. I realized I wanted to do for other kids what you did for me—help them get to know God, I guess. But I’d like to do it outside church walls, so I’m double majoring in nonprofit administration and social work with the hope of eventually working for a youth organization.”
Could this really be the same kid who’d shown up at church an angry teenager, sullen and sick of her life? Amelia couldn’t find the words to express the mix of disbelief and pride and yes, even joy warming through her.
So when Dani turned toward a hallway, she just followed, wordless.
“Hey, Mare, I hope you finished picking up your bedroom like I asked, because we’ve got a visitor.” She turned to Amelia. “Just a warning for when you see her: She got this new bike helmet last week, and for the life of me, I can’t get her to take it off. She begged to wear it to bed last night.” Dani paused. “You knew I kept the name, right?”
Amelia nodded, gaze caught on the collage of photos hanging in the hallway. Photos of Mary as a baby, as a toddler, in a kiddie pool, going down a slide.
“It worked out well, actually,” Dani continued. “Mary is my grandmother’s name. She thinks Mare is named after her, of course, and she’s the only one I’ve never corrected. I tell everyone else the truth, though—that it’s Amelia Earhart’s middle name. Which always gets me funny looks from anyone who doesn’t . . . know.”
Dani’s explanation had slowed to a crawl before it stopped, probably because she’d seen what photo Amelia stared at now. The one of Dani holding Mary in the hospital—in that rocking chair in the nursery. Might have been snapped at the very moment the social worker had told Amelia and Jeremy the adoption wouldn’t be moving forward.
“I’m so sorry, Amelia.” She took a step closer. “Not sorry that I kept Mary because . . . because she’s my world, you know? But sorry it hurt you so much. After all you did for me, helping pay for all the medical bills, taking me to appointments when my mom refused to have anything to do with it all, everything. That’s why I’ve been trying to contact you. I just . . . wanted to say sorry.”
This time when Dani hugged her, Amelia let herself lean into it. She soaked up the apology, but more than that, the healing that came along with it. “And I’m sorry for holding it against you.” Tears stung her eyes. “I’m sorry for not responding when you called and wrote and . . . I’m just sorry.”
She’d turned into a weepy mess. A weepy but suddenly so very liberated mess. “I actually wrote letters to Mary. For years, I wrote letters, things I’d tell her if I were her mother. But . . .” She stepped back. “But I realize now that I was writing them for me. She doesn’t need them. She has a mother.”
Dani’s eyelashes batted at her own tears.
“Moooom.”
The voice came from behind, and they both turned.
Mary wore a polka-dotted shirt and pink jeans with an elastic waistband . . . and a bike helmet, just like Dani had said.
“I cleaned. Do I get a snack? Can I have a popsicle?” She stuck her tiny fists on her waist. “Who’s that? Do you have to study tonight?”
Dani’s lips tipped into a smirk. “She’s talkative.”
“Clearly.” Same age as Charlie, but so different. Cute, though. Amelia crouched. “Hey, Mary. I’m Amelia. I . . . well, I’m your mom’s friend. I even helped pick out your name.”
“Do you want a popsicle?”
Dani laughed and reached for her daughter’s hand. “We might be able to offer her something a little more substantial.”
She watched mom and daughter walk down the hall in front of her.
“If you really want the dreams and desires in your heart to come into any kind of focus, maybe start by getting to know the one who gives us dreams in the first place.”
That was where she’d gone wrong, she knew now. And Logan was right. She’d chosen a hiding place over a home. Chosen to let her life widen rather than deepen. Not that there was anything wrong with the town and job and people and events that filled her days.
But they couldn’t take the place of old dreams . . . or the one who’d planted them in her heart.
Dani stopped at the end of the hallway. “You coming?”
She picked up her feet. “Coming.”
“You planning on wearing your helmet all night again, Mare, or—?”
Amelia froze, brain snagging on the word helmet.
“Oh my goodness.”
Dani looked back. “Amelia?”
Kendall Wilkins. Buried with an aviator’s helmet. That photo of Kendall and Harry, where Harry looked so much like Lindbergh, helmet and all.
Could it really be?
“You all right, Amelia?”<
br />
She blinked. “I might’ve just solved a five-year-old mystery.”
Except that wasn’t quite true. If what she was thinking was correct . . . well, try a nearly ninety-year-old mystery.
18
Are you sure you want to do this? Because now would be the time to back out, Jen.”
Logan held his phone to his ear while he crossed his nearly empty office. Just one more desk drawer to empty and pack away in a bank box. He could hear Charlie chattering from the reception area, where she hung out with Alena on her last day. She spoke in bare sentences in short spurts, but those words were like splashes of ocean water against his face on a hot day.
Or an Iowa breeze brushing over prairie grass.
“I’m sure.” Confidence anchored Jenessa Belville’s voice. “I’ve already got the check written. Fax me the papers and it’s a done deal.”
The papers Jenessa was talking about were spread over his otherwise empty desktop. He fished in one of the boxes he’d already packed for a pen and resisted the urge to review the documents one more time. He’d scanned them at least half a dozen times already, and Beckett had stuck his lawyer eyes on them.
It was time.
Logan bent over his desk and signed his name. “All right, it’s done.”
Jenessa’s whoop sounded over the phone. He hung up seconds later, the first real peace he’d felt in weeks settling over him.
Or maybe not the first, because there’d certainly been something easing about seeing Beckett three weeks ago. And even talking to Senator Hadley two weeks ago.
The senator had made the call herself. “I want you on staff, Logan. I want you working with me. But a police report and a potential custody suit, it’s too much for a lead position. I’ll need communications people in several key cities, though. So once I’ve got a new communications coordinator on board, we’ll be in touch.”
It should’ve ripped through him. Instead, all he’d been able to feel was relief.
Not too long after that, he’d had the conversation with Theo, sitting on the patio outside his apartment, after he’d realized he didn’t want to keep their consulting firm going without his partner.
“We ran a great business for almost six years, Theo. It’s okay to let it go now. You go to Allentown. Maybe we’ll meet up in D.C. eventually.”
Then just last week, the call from Jenessa. The one that had left him slack-jawed and stunned, but . . . strangely certain this wasn’t just chance. God had just whisked the last thing off his plate, leaving him with a wide-open and plan-less future.
Probably right where he wanted him.
Logan pulled the last drawer from his desk, and instead of carefully pulling out each item and arranging it in his last empty box, he simply dumped the thing over and then reinserted the drawer. There. Done.
He grabbed the signed legal docs off his desk and roamed into the reception area. “I’m about to admit something horrible, Alena.” Charlie sat on his intern’s desk, legs dangling as Alena arranged a necklace made of paperclips around her neck.
“What’s that, boss?”
“I never once learned how to use the new copier-faxer-printer thing we got after the new year.”
Alena spun. “You’re kidding.”
“You always jumped in when I was on my way to the machine and did it for me.” Like Amelia jumping in to un-jam the press.
He could still smell the ink she’d smeared all over her arms and face that day in the office. Picture the blush she’d tried to pretend away when she’d realized Ledge had known all along she was fixing the machine the hard way.
Alena stood and plucked the papers from his hand. “You do know you owe me an explanation, right?”
He fingered the paperclips around Charlie’s neck. “Cute necklace, Bug.” He trailed Alena to the copier. “An explanation about what?”
“The girl. I asked before Theo left for Allentown last week why you weren’t keeping the business going on your own. He did it for a couple months.”
“Yeah, there’s a difference between a couple months and a couple years.” More than a couple years, really. Even if Hadley didn’t win the election, Theo would most likely end up doing something much bigger than freelancing from a tiny office in LA.
“You were destined for a big life.”
That lawyer back in Maple Valley had said those words the second day Logan was home, and at the time, Logan had agreed—easily and maybe even a little pridefully. Because hadn’t he chased after big career goals? Hadn’t he been on the brink of seeing his hard work pay off?
But big had begun to take on a new meaning lately. And his dream, a new shape. Even if it didn’t have clear lines just yet.
“Well, anyway,” Alena continued, “when I asked, Theo said you were closing up because of a girl.”
The rat. “Not because of a girl.”
But because of a prayer. One he’d prayed more than once since that night with Beckett. If you need to take everything off my plate in order for me to hear you, go for it. If a clean slate and an invisible roadmap means I’ll learn how to trust you, then all right.
Alena stopped at the machine. “Fax number?”
Logan held out his hand, where he’d scribbled the number Jenessa had given him.
Alena punched in the number. “Well, you can deny there’s a girl, but I’m not going to believe you. You wouldn’t be grinning like you are right now if there wasn’t.”
He set the papers in the tray at the top of the machine. “Of course there’s a girl. She’s sitting over on your desk wearing your office supplies.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do, and you don’t seem to understand that I’m politely ignoring it.”
Alena waited until the machine hummed to life, then turned to him. “Well, I’ll tell you this: You aren’t doing Charlie any favors by ignoring your own heart.”
He stared at her, felt his forehead bunch and a whisper just lately becoming familiar trek in. Listen to her. “Say that again?”
“You aren’t doing Charlie any favors by ignoring your own heart.” She sing-songed it this time and rolled her eyes. “You want to be a good dad? Kids need to know what love looks like.”
“Whoa, I didn’t say anything about love.”
The fax machine spit out the last page, and Alena pulled it from the side tray, smacking the original against Logan’s chest. “You didn’t have to.”
“Amelia, this is some incredible writing.”
Eleanor’s voice drifted from outside the changing room in Betsy’s Bridal. A mauve curtain separated Amelia from her sister and provided a backdrop for her reflection in the full-length mirror. The bridesmaid dress, a fallish shade of amber, had sheer straps that bunched over her shoulders and a form-fitting bodice. The skirt bowed at her waist before reaching to her knees.
“Did you hear me?”
Amelia pushed aside the curtain and stepped into the dressing room’s lounge area.
Eleanor dropped the flat electronic tablet she’d been reading from into her lap. “Oh my word, it’s perfect.”
“I like it. Very autumn-y.” Just right for Eleanor’s October wedding.
“It looks amazing with your eyes.” She rose from the tufted circular cushion in the middle of the room.
“Will all the bridesmaids’ dresses be the same?”
Eleanor reached out to adjust one of Amelia’s straps. “What other bridesmaids? You’re my maid of honor. Trev’s brother is his best man. Skipping the rest.”
Amelia fanned her skirt around her, the tulle underneath scratching her knees. “Really? After all those years of scolding me for eloping and missing out on all the hoopla of a big event, I’d have thought you’d go with a massive wedding.”
Eleanor laughed and stepped back, giving the dress one more once-over. “Nope. It’s taken us too long to finally make this happen as it is. We’re keeping it simple.”
The store’s owner slipped into the room. “Ah, it’s gorgeous
on you. And you were worried the style would make you look short.”
“No, she was worried I’d think it made her look short and then force her to wear high heels,” Eleanor corrected. “Amelia would rather roll into the church on skates than wear heels.”
“Truth.” Amelia nodded into the mirror. “But you were right, Gabrielle. It’s a good fit.”
The woman tsked. “Never doubt me again.”
At the sound of the bells over the shop’s entrance, she disappeared again.
“Question.” Eleanor dropped back onto the circle couch. “If her name’s Gabrielle, why’s the store called Betsy’s Bridal?”
“I asked her that very thing when I did a story on her grand opening a year ago. She said it was because she wanted alliteration in the name.”
“She didn’t think of Gabrielle’s Gowns?”
Amelia laughed. “I don’t know. But you chose to shop for a dress in Maple Valley, El. You were basically asking for quirky.”
“Well, there’s nothing quirky about that dress. We’re getting it.” She poked one finger at the iPad on the couch. “And this article—you have to do something with this. It’s not just the writing, but the whole feel of the article. There’s heart and depth, and your voice just shines.”
The Kendall Wilkins story. Amelia had thought it was dead after the newspaper’s centennial issue failed to happen. Two months of following the story through history and even across state lines, for nothing.
Except not for nothing. Because even if it never saw print, that story had changed her. Reminded her of her love for history. Pulled out her taste for a different kind of writing—the kind fueled by mystery and research and even a little investigative journalism.
If it had stopped there, it would’ve been enough.
But it hadn’t. That day two weeks ago in Dani’s house, laughing at Mary’s refusal to take off her bike helmet, the pieces had finally come together in her head.
The Elm Society. Kendall Wilkins’s The Elm Foundation. Harry Wheeler’s The Elm Company.
The luck of Lindy.
Kendall’s love for anagrams.