by Becky Wade
Man, this was hard to admit even to herself because she wanted wholeheartedly to be content in her singleness. Instead, ever since Harrison had consigned her to the single life, she’d felt as though she’d been handed a ticket to a second-class ship cabin when she’d paid for first class.
What a horrible thing to confess! God was all she needed. Singleness was not second-best. She had to get her head straight on those facts before she could consider dating again.
Dating. The word alone roused fear in her, confusion as to how to begin, and—worst—a disgusting, chilling whisper that assured her she wasn’t attractive enough or woman enough or whatever enough to keep a man long term.
Yikes. Um . . . no wonder she’d been hiding behind dowdy clothes and her beloved spinster persona.
It was time, past time, to stop hiding. To move beyond the scars Harrison had left. To repair her self-image. And to step into the future wearing a pair of fashionable high heels.
John’s sense that he and Nora were destined to be friends was no fluke. No, it was a fact that became more and more clear to him over the next two weeks.
They met every few days to work on their search for Sherry. Together, they dug up all the thirty-three-year-old school directories and yearbooks they could find. No luck locating Sherry there.
They called or visited each of the churches that had been around thirty-three years before. No luck.
They hunted through old Shelton newspapers in hopes of coming across a mention of Sherry or Deborah. No luck.
They searched for marriage announcements and marriage certificates for either woman. No luck.
Their efforts had hit a frustrating wall. That didn’t mean, though, that the time they spent together was frustrating. For John, the time they spent together was golden. Nora cracked jokes. She charmed every person they came in contact with. She used ridiculously big words. When he was with Nora, he forgot for whole spaces of time about his diagnosis. When he was with her, he could breathe.
He began to think about Nora even when they weren’t together. At work, driving home, or running on the treadmill, he’d find himself wondering what Nora was doing and whether she was busy or happy or tired.
He and Nora both behaved professionally and respectfully. They said nothing that fell outside the boundary of friendship. They did nothing Allie would disapprove of. Each time he saw Nora, he talked to Allie about their meeting and updated her on the progress of the search.
So while he didn’t exactly feel guilty about Nora, he did sometimes wonder how much time he should be spending with her. How much was okay? How much was too much? When you put hours of concentration into something or someone, you got to know that thing or that person well. He’d spent a lot of hours with Nora, and every meeting, every text message they exchanged, every phone call they made to plan strategy had helped him know her. In fact, he knew Nora better after a month of friendship than he knew Allie after more than six months of dating.
That wasn’t a slam on Allie. There were just some people you felt close to after an hour because you had chemistry with them . . . and others you felt the same amount of closeness to after a year. Maybe it also had to do with the difference between friendship and dating. Friendship was more relaxed. You weren’t hung up on trying to impress the other person.
John prayed over it. He didn’t hear God leading him to call off the search or to limit his friendship with Nora, which was good because he didn’t want to hear God leading him to call off the search or limit their friendship.
When they’d tried everything Nora could think of to turn up information on Sherry, and failed at all of it, it started to look like the decision to call off the search might be taken out of John’s hands. Nora had told him that first day at the Historical Village that if she could no longer help him, she’d pass him off to a private investigator or an organization that handled cases like his. She hadn’t suggested either of those things to him yet. But John could feel those options coming for him, like two buses he didn’t want to ride.
Nora wasn’t good at accepting failure. However bad she was at it, he was worse. He was the guy who hadn’t rung the bell during BUD/S.
How about we return to Regent Street? he asked Nora at the end of May via text. We can go back and knock on the doors of the neighbors who weren’t there the first time.
It’s worth a try, she wrote back. Let’s go in the early evening this time. In my professional opinion, we’re long overdue for a break in this case.
“Yes, I knew Deborah. My husband and I have lived here for forty-five years.”
Nora stilled. After this house, she and John only had two houses left to try on Regent Street. They’d received so many blank looks and so many friendly and unfriendly “Sorry, but I didn’t know Deborah or Sherry” responses so far this evening that Nora had grown accustomed to disappointment. She hadn’t expected the cute little lady at 3423 to be the needle in their haystack.
Goose bumps shimmied down her arms. “You . . .” Nora chased after her thoughts, which had raced off excitedly in all directions. “You knew Deborah?”
“I did,” the woman answered. “Deborah and I were friends.” She extended a hand. “I’m Sue Hodges.”
Nora and John took turns exchanging handshakes with her.
Sue looked to be in her mid-seventies. She had curly light brown hair and a slim build. Her outfit of jeans, white shirt, and a royal blue sweater came across as both informal and classy. “Come in.” She encouraged them to make themselves comfortable on her floral sofa, then disappeared into the kitchen to prepare glasses of ice water.
Great Scott.
The man who’d led worship at their church since Nora and her sisters were young often peppered his speech with a hearty, “Great Scott!” Nora, Willow, and Britt had adopted the phrase and also taken to calling the man himself Great Scott, though his name was Arnold.
Whenever Nora spoke with him after the service or ran into him around town and he tossed a “Great Scott!” into the conversation, she had to pinch the inside of her elbow to keep from laughing. If Nora spotted Great Scott while with one or more of her sisters, she’d rush them into the nearest restroom until danger passed. They all knew that the tiniest knowing glance from a sister in response to a “Great Scott!” would be enough to bring on a storm of inappropriate giggles.
Of all the words Nora knew, Great and Scott were the two that seemed most equal to today’s state of affairs. Their patience had finally paid off!
Nora met John’s eyes. “A lead,” she whispered.
“Maybe.” He gave her an uneven smile. “Possibly. It depends on the data.” A five-o’clock shadow cast a faint darkening across his cheeks. He was looking at her with his rock-in-a-clear-mountain-stream hazel eyes and projecting his usual aura of competency.
“I stand corrected by my own protégé,” Nora said. “Everything will depend on the data. That’s very true.”
“In order to be your protégé, wouldn’t you have to be older than me? And wouldn’t I have to be interested in becoming a genealogist?”
“Ah, protégé of mine. There’s much you don’t know.”
“There’s much you don’t know.”
“About Navy SEAL-type stuff?” The phrase had become an inside joke between them.
His smile widened. “About the definition of protégé.”
“Shh! Here she comes.”
Sue placed two tall glasses on the coffee table for them, then took a seat in one of the chairs opposite. “What was it you said when I answered the door, about why you’re looking for information on Deborah and Sherry?”
“We’re researching the genealogy of one of their relatives,” Nora answered.
“We’ve hit a dead end,” John added.
“Which relative are you researching?” Sue asked.
“Sherry Thompson’s son,” John answered.
“Mmm.” Sue nodded. Her gaze appeared to focus on a point beyond her living room window. Though if Nora had to
guess, she’d say Sue was actually focusing on a point several decades before. “Deborah and I were around the same age, so we naturally gravitated toward each other.”
If Deborah was around the same age as Sue, then Deborah was also the right age to be Sherry’s mother and John’s grandmother. “Do you have a best guess as to how old Deborah would be now?” Nora asked.
“Seventy-seven, maybe? I like to think we would have become close if our schedules had been more alike. Deborah was single and worked long hours. I was married and a full-time mom. My husband, Adam, and I have three kids. They were in high school during the years when Deborah lived on the street.”
“I see,” Nora said. Her heart thumped eagerly. She and John had been working hard to uncover information on Deborah and Sherry without a shred of success. Concern that her best efforts at guiding him might not be enough had been keeping her up at night lately because she wanted, badly, to provide him with the information he sought.
“Deborah and I would visit whenever we saw each other out in the yard,” Sue continued. “She came over a few times for dinner parties Adam and I hosted. She was a nice person. A generous person. I remember that she used to run a garage sale at her church every year to raise funds for church programs.”
“Which church was that?”
“Bethel. It closed down long ago.”
Which explained why their investigation into local churches hadn’t paid off.
“Deborah was successful,” Sue said. “She had a wonderful career going.”
“What kind of work did she do?” John asked.
“She worked in banking. She always wore suits.” Sue chuckled fondly. “In those days, professional women like Deborah wore power suits and had, you know, big hair and”—she gestured expressively—“big shoulder pads.”
“Do you know which bank she worked for?” Nora asked. She took a drink of water to be polite, even though she was technically too riveted by Sue’s revelations to be thirsty.
“She worked for Myer Bank. It’s gone now, too. So many things have changed.”
“Do you know why she sold the house down the street?” John asked.
Nora peeked at him proudly. He was actually beating her to some of the questions. The way a protégé might.
“Deborah moved because she was offered a promotion in Elma. We sent each other Christmas cards for a few years after she left, but then I’m afraid we lost touch.”
“Would you happen to have her Elma address?” Nora asked.
Sue paused, thinking. “I might. In my old address book. I’ll go and check.”
Sue made her way to the office across the hall. Nora had a direct line of sight into the small room. She watched Sue bend and open a desk drawer.
Her intuition tingled the way it did whenever she was on to something with one of her searches. Finding a birth mother brought with it a different set of challenges than did tracing a person’s ancestry. But the two pursuits also had plenty in common. In both cases, you followed one piece of information to the next to the next. And along the way, you typically needed fortune to smile on you a time or two.
Sue was carefully copying something onto a piece of paper.
Nora reached over and squeezed John’s forearm with exultation.
He froze, and instantly regret flooded Nora. What had she just done? The corded power of his wrist and forearm brought back sensory details from the day he’d carried her through the faux office building. The feel of him . . . of touching him . . .
It wasn’t like she’d taken hold of his hand. Even so, this was way too intimate. Too dizzying. A mistake.
Awkwardly, she patted his arm twice in a motherly way, then returned her hand to her lap. She didn’t dare look at his face. “I think Sue has the address,” she whispered.
“Maybe,” he said. Was she imagining the strain in his voice? “Possibly. It will depend on the data.”
Sue handed Nora the sheet of paper before returning to her chair. “I’m surprised that I did still have Deborah’s address in Elma. No wonder Adam calls me a pack rat.”
“Thank you.” Nora trained her attention relentlessly on Sue while willing away the blush that threatened. She’d just squeezed John’s arm, something she had absolutely no right to do. “Do you know where Deborah was from originally?”
“Oregon. Let me think for a minute.” The older woman tilted her face toward the ceiling. “The name of the town will come to me.”
Nora sure hoped so. Oregon was a big place.
She was excruciatingly aware of John’s big body sitting beside her motionless, his weight dipping down the sofa cushions.
Sue snapped her fingers. “Blakeville. She was from a town called Blakeville . . . I think.”
“This is so helpful. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your time.” Nora pulled a pen from her purse and wrote Blakeville, Oregon on the back of the paper containing Deborah’s Elma address. “Do you think you might have a picture of Deborah somewhere?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t. I didn’t take as many pictures back then, before cell phone cameras.”
“What did she look like?” Nora asked, curious.
“She was nice-looking. Very much so. Dark blond hair, down to about here.” She indicated her shoulders. “Average height and build.”
“What about Sherry?” John asked. “Do you remember her at all?”
Sue peered at John for a few moments, clearly trying to dredge through her memory. “Vaguely.”
Based on the fact that Sherry had been just twenty-two at the time of John’s birth, it was possible that she’d been away at college the first few years that Deborah had lived at the house.
“She kept to herself.” Sue shook her head. “I can’t remember now if we ever spoke or not. She was pretty, I do remember that. She had long, dark hair.”
“Was Sherry Deborah’s daughter?” John asked.
Sue’s eyes widened at the suggestion. “No, no. Certainly not. Deborah had no children.”
“Yet again, the computer searches I’m running are yielding nothing,” Nora said.
John could only see the upper half of her face over her laptop’s screen.
She growled. “Arrgh. So frustrating.”
Had the librarian just growled? He would have laughed, except he didn’t think Nora would appreciate him laughing in the face of her irritation.
They’d driven straight from Sue’s house on Regent Street to the nearest coffee shop, and John had carried her big bag inside for her. While she’d gone to work on her computer, he’d ordered a tea for her, a water without ice for himself, and two plates of what the girl behind the counter had told him was their specialty: cinnamon apple cake with cream cheese frosting.
He moved the last of the items from the tray to their table. “I’m starting to think you don’t know how to run computer searches.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid you’ll think! You’ll have to trust me when I say that, despite the evidence to the contrary over the last few weeks, I’m excellent at running computer searches. A search is only as good as the records in the system. If there are no matching records, then the search yields nothing.”
“Thanks for explaining that, Nora. When you have a moment maybe you can explain why two plus two equals four.”
“Oh, John,” she murmured apologetically.
He leaned back in his chair and smiled across the table at her. “Do the people around you need for you to explain every little thing to them? Or do you just enjoy explaining things?”
“To be honest, it’s probably more that I enjoy explaining things. Sorry for talking to you like you’re a first grader.”
“A sixth grader, maybe.”
“It’s only that I want you to think I’m adding something to this process so you won’t fire me.”
He stilled in the middle of sectioning off a bite of cake. “You are adding something. There’s no way I’m going to fire you.”
Her shoulders relaxed.
“My inability to generate new information these past few weeks has been hard for me to accept. I’m a high achiever.”
Yeah, he’d noticed. He’d also noticed that her brown eyes were the exact color of gingerbread. That she always fidgeted with her teacup until the handle was positioned exactly to the side at a right angle. That she clicked her key fob twice to lock her car as if the first time hadn’t already successfully locked it. That she loved ice cream. “I feel like I’m a low achiever as your employer,” he said.
She blinked at him. “How so?”
“I’m not paying you enough.”
“How about you let me work for free? Please? After all, I’ve hardly helped your search along so far.” She slanted her head hopefully. “What do you think?”
“No way. Send me another bill. I can’t imagine why you’d want to continue working on this without getting paid.”
“Because I’m fascin—really interested in your . . . case, of course.”
“Send me another bill, Nora.” He took a bite of cake.
Turning her focus to her computer, she scrunched her nose and thumped her fist on her keyboard lightly, as if scolding it. “I ran searches for Deborah and Sherry in both Elma and Blakeville. It looks like Blakeville only has a population of two thousand, so there’s no telling how much information they’ve made available online. Admittedly, hoping for a hit there might have been a bit of a stretch.”
Admittedly. It amused him, the way she talked.
“Elma is slightly bigger, so I was hopeful. Alas.” Who said alas these days? “No trace of Deborah or Sherry there, either.”
He nudged her plate toward her. “Eat cake.”
“You bought me cake?”
“You’re just now noticing?”
“Yes.”
“I bought you cake and tea.”
“Thank you.”
“Sure.”
He watched her admire the dessert, then take a few bites. She ate in a ladylike manner, spine straight, one hand and her napkin politely in her lap. A strand of her hair had fallen out of her bun. It rested against the side of her neck, curling a little. Red hair against that pale skin—