When I Meet You

by Olivia Newport

  “I’m sure you will. But are you certain you shouldn’t take a maid as companion for propriety’s sake?”

  “There’s no one to take. Joan’s mother only fell ill three days ago, and I will not cheat her of what might be her last weeks with her.” Lynnelle knew what it was like to sit at the bedside of a dying mother. When the news came that her maid’s mother had a consumptive illness, Lynnelle dispatched her immediately. There was no one else she trusted for a journey of such delicate nature. “Besides, these are modern times, Papa. You know what women are capable of or you would not have trusted me with this.”

  “I only want you to come home safely to me.”

  “There is no reason I won’t.”

  “You’re wearing your mother’s brooch.”

  “It makes me feel close to her.” Lynnelle fingered the porcelain piece at her neck. Ever since she was a little girl, she had admired the hand-painted florals with tiny sapphires and amethysts at their centers. The gold filigree around the oval had been the height of fancy to a dreaming child.

  “Your mother would like that,” her father said, “but is it wise?”

  “I would never part with it, even for a week. Not even for a day.”

  He sighed. “Very well. You have all your tickets?”

  “Right here. You really did not have to book compartments for every leg. I’m hardly going to need them during the portions that are not overnight.”

  “You might like to rest or wish some privacy. Considering what you are undertaking on my behalf, the least I can do is ensure you are comfortable.”

  Lynnelle had urged her father more than once to release himself from the guilt that had morphed his posture from shoulders held straight to a chronic discouraged slump. Certainly she did not blame him. She had grown up in a well-to-do household, attended some of the best schools in Cleveland, and wanted for nothing throughout her childhood because of her father’s business acumen. Not every endeavor had met equal success, yet this one—and his inability to untangle the circumstances—personally distressed him to a degree she’d never witnessed. Perhaps he’d protected her more than she’d known. Perhaps the loss of her older brother made him see her differently. Perhaps the withdrawal of his brother’s wife from the family—with the grandchildren—bound them in a new way.

  “Cousin Marabel is looking forward to seeing you.” Her father brightened. “It’s thoughtful of you to take the time to visit in Chesterton.”

  “It’s only a few stops from Chicago. An extra day before resuming the trip is no trouble. Besides, I’ve always enjoyed Marabel.”

  “Your mother would appreciate the effort to stay in touch with her family.”

  “I should go. The driver is waiting.” Lynnelle circled the desk to kiss her father’s cheek. “I will send a telegram from Denver as soon as I have news. See you in a week or so.”

  She held on to her unpretentious gray hat with its single yellow feather during the ride to the train station. The driver her father used was respectful enough with the speed of an automobile, but Lynnelle grew up with horses and carriages. Although automobiles had joined the traffic of Cleveland years ago, she never felt at ease with the way her stomach moved out of position going around corners, and drivers squeezing the bulbs of their horns in impatience with people still using carriages never sat well with her. One hand on her hat and one hand gripping the side of the car was her standard posture.

  Cleveland to Chicago, with a brief respite in nearby Chesterton, Indiana. Then Chicago to Omaha. Finally Omaha to Denver on the Colorado Special of the Union Pacific. Traveling in mid-May should avoid snow, and spring rains shouldn’t slow the trains. Lynnelle was well versed in rail travel around Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York and to some degree a few Southern cities along the Eastern seaboard. She’d even been to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago as a child in 1893, though of course she traveled with her entire family on that excursion. Nothing about the travel itself rattled her nerves. Only the possibility of reporting an unsatisfactory outcome to her father discomforted her, but she had long hours on the rails to review the documents in her satchel yet again. She could be twice as confident as she was now that she could answer any question Mr. McParland raised in connection with the investigation he had been undertaking already for some time now.

  “Here we are.” The driver pulled up in front of Union Depot and set the brake on the car. “I’ll get your trunk and find a porter.”

  The massive brick building, with its arched tunnels and long narrow windows, had stood since the Civil War era and showed its age. For the last twenty years, authorities had debated how to fund the necessary replacement, but for now, it still served the network of railroads in and out of Cleveland. Lynnelle would see a string of stations in the next several days. Denver’s Union Station had been remodeled more recently. Photographs of the new Welcome Arch from only three years ago had been in all the newspapers. She would breathe relief when she walked beneath it.

  Lynnelle opened the Moroccan satchel and extracted the first set of tickets she required, the first-class ticket to board and the second ticket to her private compartment. Perhaps her father was right and she would appreciate a quiet space to continue mental preparations for what was ahead once she reached Colorado. She stared at the ticket that bore her name and the descriptions the agent would punch before long to verify her identity.

  Slim. Medium. Stout.

  Tall. Medium. Short.

  Hair: Light. Gray. Dark. Red.

  Beard: Mustache. Side. Chin. Full. None.

  No beard, certainly. If she pulled herself to her full height, she might pass as medium at best. And she wasn’t stout. Light hair. She could be one of any number of women on the trains she would board, even any number carrying first-class tickets.

  “I’ve found a porter, miss,” the driver said. “He’ll help you with your trunk and make sure it gets aboard and ticketed all the way to Denver, just the way you asked.”

  “Thank you. I’m sure I can manage the smaller case from here.” Lynnelle showed the porter her ticket, and he nodded and led the way. She was tempted to inquire whether she could simply take the trunk with her to the compartment rather than the baggage car. Though the most important papers were in her satchel, having the trunk out of sight disquieted her. Yet even a private compartment hardly had space for the trunk, and squeezing it down the aisle of the train during boarding seemed an unreasonable request. She tipped the porter generously and watched carefully as he loaded the trunk and handed her a claim check before turning to find her way to her Pullman compartment.

  A porter aboard the train guided her, opened the compartment, and handed her the key. Alone, she stepped inside and pulled the door closed. Without Joan’s companionship there would be no need to open the upper berth that swung down from the ceiling on any leg of the journey. Even the lower berth, made by converting two facing seats, would be narrow and short enough to make her glad she did not qualify for a Tall punch on her ticket. The private sink would be nice if she wanted to splash water on her face, and she could check her face in the mirror before venturing out to the dining car. Otherwise she hardly had space to do more than make herself comfortable on one of the high-backed benches.

  “Well, Mr. McParland,” Lynnelle said aloud, “when I meet you, we will straighten this out once and for all.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I’m going to grab Luke before he heads out for his Sunday afternoon date with ESPN.” Nolan wedged past Jillian in the church pew.

  “I suspect you won’t be far behind him for that engagement,” she said.

  He wagged a finger at her. “You don’t know that.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “I don’t have time to argue the point. Luke has a banking background. He might be able to help us.”

  “Go for it.”

  Nolan eyed Luke across the sanctuary, anticipated his exit path, and calculated an intercept trajectory.

  “Now, Nolan,” Luke
said, “you know there’s a game I want to watch this afternoon, and it starts in less than thirty minutes.”

  “Softball? High school soccer? Maybe a ping-pong tournament?”

  “Very funny. Major League Baseball is well underway. Tell me again what people find so likable about you?”

  “Everything you do and more,” Nolan said. “I’ll pay your cable bill for a month if you give me five minutes.”

  “I think you’re making a symbolic gesture with all the teeth of your pathetic golf swing.” Luke tilted his head. “But I’m listening.”

  “You worked in banking in a past career, correct?”

  Luke nodded. “Until I saw the charms of making far less money running a shop in a small mountain town.”

  “That’s what the love of a good woman will do for you,” Nolan said. “But in that fine-tuned noggin of yours, I’m pretty sure there are still residual numbers smarts, and I have some papers I’d love for you to take a look at.”

  “Made a bad investment, did you?”

  “Way more interesting than that. A hundred-year-old mystery.”

  Luke scratched his nose. “Isn’t that up Jillian’s alley?”

  “She’s part of the team.”

  “There’s a team? I’m being recruited?”

  “Yes! A sports metaphor! Why didn’t I think of that sooner?”

  Luke tapped his watch.

  “Right,” Nolan said. “I’ll get to the point. Jillian and I haven’t had a chance to digest all the documents yet, but we’re trying to help someone interpret financial records in a trunk from 1909. I was hoping you could assist.”

  “What is the nature of these records, if I may ask?”

  “If I had to guess, records of bank transfers and payments by check, some of them across state lines. But I could use help determining the picture the patterns make. And considering how old the records are, you might have ideas for how to proceed.”

  “Maybe,” Luke said, “but doesn’t your firm have a division for things like this?”

  “I will be consulting a wide swath of experts.” Nolan winked.

  “Flattery, huh?” Luke said. “A desperate move. Well, without seeing the papers, I can’t speculate. But because you’re my friend, and because I want to get home to my game—which is neither softball, nor high school soccer, nor ping-pong—I’ll be happy to look at the papers. If I saw them, I could probably decipher enough of the old transactions to point you in the right direction.”

  “Then the recruitment effort has been successful!”

  “Bring the papers by the Emporium this week, and I’ll have a look.” Luke raised his glance to catch Veronica’s eye six pews back, where she was chatting with Nia Dunston, and headed toward her.

  Nolan joined the general exodus from the church building and found Jillian waiting for him in her small SUV. At home he tossed his own keys in the copper bowl on the granite kitchen counter, as usual, and stared down the hallway running through the center of the house.

  “Shall we uncrate your souvenir today?” Nolan said.

  “I can’t get attached to it,” Jillian said. “Rich is not going to let me keep it.”

  “You don’t know that. His primary interest seems to be liability and legality. We don’t know that he wants the piece itself for the museum.”

  “He’d be a fool not to. It cleaned up beautifully, and the personal items inside are gorgeous.”

  “Be that as it may,” Nolan said, “we do have to unwrap it if either of us is going to be able to help him.”

  “Then I’ll get a crowbar.”

  “Scissors will do the trick. We only used museum-grade duct tape to secure the crate closed.”

  “Museum-grade duct tape? You’re making that up.”

  She may have doubted him, but Jillian pulled open a kitchen drawer to extract a pair of scissors while Nolan began loosening the clasps on the straps holding a blanket around the crate. Within a few minutes they had the straps unhitched, the blanket spread on the floor, the tape cut, and the crate open.

  “You hold the crate, and I’ll slide the trunk out,” Nolan said.

  Jillian complied, and in another few moments, they had cleared away the debris and relocated the trunk near the piano at the end of the elongated room that served as a cozy TV space. Jillian slid her hands into the gloves Rich made sure to send along in the crate and unfastened the latches for the second time in two days.

  “You’ve spoiled me, Dad,” Jillian said. “I thought I knew what projects I was going to work on this week, and you plopped this in my lap. How am I supposed to walk past this and not want to spend every moment solving this mystery?”

  He cocked his head and grinned. “You’re not. I want you to have some fun with it. However, I’m certain I heard your tummy rumbling, and I feel obliged to feed you.”

  Jillian nodded absently as he wheeled on one heel and left the room. He could rustle up some leftovers for lunch without too much trouble, perhaps revive the seasoning in the butternut squash soup he’d made a couple of days ago and throw together a plate of fresh vegetables. At the doorway to the kitchen, Nolan turned and looked back at Jillian. She squatted in front of the trunk, careful not to handle the contents frivolously but lost in curiosity. Nolan would have to borrow those gloves at some point to have a close look at the papers and figure out where to start on the financial questions. Those were his marching orders. But between the information on the correspondence and the entries in the family Bible, Jillian would soon theorize who the traveler might have been and what trail she left behind.

  The landline rang, an unusual occurrence in a household with two cell phones, and Nolan picked it up in the kitchen.

  “Nolan, it’s Marilyn.”

  “Good afternoon!”

  “I’m calling around to remind everyone about the organizing meeting tomorrow evening.”

  “At the Heritage Society,” he said.

  “Seven o’clock sharp. And make sure Jillian comes too. I need you both.”

  Nolan reported the reminder to Jillian and let his mind drift to his schedule. Mondays often were long and busy days in his Denver office, especially in anticipation of more peaceful atmosphere of working from home on Tuesdays. This week was no different. He’d have to find several corners to trim the edges out of to ensure being back in Canyon Mines on time for an evening meeting. If he worked through lunch, delegated his four o’clock meeting to an associate, and pulled his five o’clock mediation session to the earlier slot, it might just work.

  On Monday, by the time Nolan and Jillian slid into their seats in the community room at the Heritage Society, he’d barely had time to stop by the house to drop off his briefcase and trade his navy suit and tie for a pair of khakis and a comfortable gray knit pullover. The chicken Jillian had roasted would have to wait while a small paper plate of cheese cubes and green olives speared by toothpicks with multicolored paper flags staved off his appetite.

  Jillian handed him a cup of black coffee. “Maybe we’ll be able to scoot out early.” She wiggled her fingers across the room at the Dunstons from the Inn, Luke’s wife Veronica, and Jillian’s friend Kris Bryant, who ran Ore the Mountain Ice Cream Parlor.

  Now Nolan wanted ice cream, not cheese and olives.

  Nolan shook his head at the notion of an early exit. “Marilyn has been working on this for months. If the idea works, the Legacy Jubilee can raise enough money to get all the new windows she needs.”

  At the front of the room Marilyn clapped her hands to call everyone to attention. The group wasn’t large, mostly comprising downtown business owners, a representative from the chamber of commerce, and a few other individuals who had committed to donate supplies or time.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Marilyn said. “Our Legacy Jubilee is less than three weeks away now, so I’m afraid you will find me cheerily pestering you a bit more often as we nail down the details we’ve discussed in previous planning meetings and circulated by email. I am grateful for ev
eryone’s willingness to undertake this effort to raise funds in a way that celebrates not only our little museum but also gives us a chance to show off our jewel of a town to people from the surrounding area. We’ve had some good press, with articles and listings of special events in various regional newspapers and small magazines. Reservations for some of our events are already quite encouraging.”

  Banners to hang.

  The stage to erect for the schedule of regional bands that would play beginning Thursday evening and continuing through Sunday afternoon.

  Extended evening hours for many of the Main Street shops.

  Children’s activities under tents at Thunder Way Park behind the elementary school.

  Docent orientation for the extra visitors they expected at the Heritage Society building and the special displays still in process.

  Additional vendor stations around town to feature ice cream from Ore the Mountain, hand-tempered candy from Digger’s Delight, pastries from Ben’s Bakery, and other food options to keep people circulating and spending money, a portion of which would go to the Legacy Jubilee fund.

  Schedules.

  Lists of volunteers.

  Follow-up phone calls to make.

  “She does have help, doesn’t she?” Nolan whispered to Jillian.

  “Theoretically there’s a committee,” Jillian whispered back. “She’s had trouble letting go of the details.”

  “And then of course,” Marilyn said, “we are thrilled to be showing off our most delicious talent in one of our spectacular local venues. Nia and Leo have agreed to open the Inn at Hidden Run to dinner on Saturday evening. Veronica O’Reilly is handling the decorations. Nolan Duffy will prepare the food, and if you’ve ever tasted any of his menus, you know it will be utterly scrumptious. As the meal comes to a close, Jillian will favor us with a presentation in her area of expertise. I can’t wait to hear how she weaves genealogy into the theme of the weekend.”