Chapter 25
Emily was breathing hard and laughing when she fell into a seat at the coffee shop. Adam plopped into the chair beside her, equally breathless. They’d tied in a power walk from her house, probably because he’d held back.
Adam craned his neck, looking out at the street. “Where is she?”
Scanning the little coffee shop’s midmorning patrons, Emily shrugged. “She’ll be here.” Dorothy’s brief, urgent call said simply, “Meet me at the coffee shop in five minutes.”
“This is so cool.”
Emily pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and slid it across the table. “Get me a regular coffee and a turnover and whatever you want.”
As she watched the front door, she added to the mental list of things she should have told Jake yesterday. But the laughter had felt so good and telling him now would put a damper on his get-even-with-Lexi scheme.
Adam returned with two blueberry turnovers just as Dorothy walked in.
“I got to thinking about that letter Hannah sent from Missouri, so I contacted a friend”—words tumbled out as Dorothy pulled out a chair—“in St. Louis and told her about it and she and her husband drove down to Fredericktown and started asking around. Look what they found.” She shoved a curling scroll of shiny paper, the kind used in old fax machines, across the table. Adam secured the corners with salt, pepper, and the turnover plate.
“My friend Delores talked to a man who does Civil War reenactments, and he got her in touch with a lady who’s writing a book about several families in the area, and she directed Delores to the Dillard family who are shirttail relatives to the Greenes and a Marvin Greene, who is five generations down from the woman this letter was written to, let her copy this letter and said he might have more written by this same man.” She stopped for a desperately needed breath. “Read it.” She dabbed her flushed face with a tissue. “This is like a puzzle, isn’t it? We had one piece, and now we add this. If only…”
Adam’s toe did a steady tap on Emily’s shoe as she tried to read over Dorothy’s endless words. What would happen to the woman’s blood pressure when Emily revealed the other pieces to the puzzle? With discreet finesse, Emily let her hair fall over her cheek and slipped her finger in her ear. With the commentary muffled, she read:
Rochester, Wisconsin
June 27, 1854
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Greene,
With some distress I write this letter, hoping not to alarm you, but that you may put my mind at ease. I have received a good word that is of great importance to a mutual friend of ours, but our friend has not answered the letter I posted on April 21. Something in her most recent letter leads me to believe she may have departed in search of the good news I wish to report to her. I do hope I am wrong and she is safe and sound with you and her father. If they are not with you and you know where I might find either of them, please answer as soon as you are able.
James P. Thornton
Adam squinted. “I don’t get it.”
Dorothy clapped her hands. “Neither do I. But isn’t this delicious? A true mystery. James P. Thornton is Big Jim, the blacksmith, so we’ve solved one little part. But what is the good news and who is the friend?”
Hand sliding over his mouth, Adam grabbed the crumpled dollar bills on the table. “I’ll get you some coffee, Mrs. Willett.” With that, he jumped up and bolted to the counter. All, Emily was sure, to keep from laughing or blurting something he shouldn’t.
Emily stared at the little woman on the other side of the table. Dorothy knew people. She had connections and resources that could prove invaluable in discovering if Hannah and her man were ever reunited. But could she be trusted? Emily traced the outline of a purple iris on the side of her cup. Should she take a chance? “Dorothy, if I told you something in confidence, something very, very important, could I trust you to keep it to yourself?”
“They talked to you, didn’t they? I knew they would.”
“They? They who?”
“The ghosts. Hannah, Elizabeth…you’ve heard them, right?”
Adam returned at just the wrong time. Though he clearly tried to temper his reaction, coffee splashed over the side of the cup, just missing the fax. “You heard the ghosts?”
“No.” Emily couldn’t look at him and maintain any level of composure. A gulp of coffee scalded her mouth, but quelled the laugh spasm. “We found other letters. In the house.”
Dorothy shrieked. A bald man at a table near the window mopped coffee from his newspaper. “You okay, Mrs. Willett?”
“I’m fine, Ernie. I just heard some good news.”
“Good news is meant to be shared.” The man winked at her.
“I know.” Dorothy sighed. “Just not quite yet.” She turned back to Emily. “Oh my.” She fanned her face with a napkin. “May I see them?”
“Of course.” And maybe I’ll throw in a little extra surprise. Should she have portable oxygen on hand if she decided to show her the cellar?
“We haven’t had a new discovery for quite some time. When Madison hears…eventually…” Dorothy shielded her mouth with her hand. “You do plan on making them public, don’t you? I won’t tell a soul what’s in them or who wrote them, I promise, but at some point…”
“Yes. Of course. But don’t you think we should keep it quiet while we solve a bit more of this puzzle?”
“Ooh.” Faded eyes seemed to draw color from the excitement. “Yes.” She glanced at the bald man. “Absolutely.” One finger crossed her lips. “Mum’s the word, my dear.”
Adam held Mrs. Willett’s car door open as she said good-bye to Emily for the fourth time.
“You talk to your lawyer and I’ll talk to mine and as soon as you get the papers drawn up I’m ready to sign.” She finally sat down in the car, but before Adam could close the door, she popped out again. “Don’t worry about landscaping. It will be a good reason for my son to come home.”
“All right.” Emily waved from the front step. Her arms must be getting tired. “Good-bye.”
Five good-byes. The lady finally lifted her foot off the ground and Adam added his good-bye, closed the door, and walked quickly away from the car. He didn’t really think Mrs. Willett looked like she should be driving. She’d practically passed out in the hidden room, but he had more important things on his mind.
“So, you sold your house.”
“Can you believe it?”
He couldn’t tell if Emily looked happy or not. Maybe she was just in shock at how easy it was. Or maybe she was changing her mind. He hoped so. He stepped onto the first step and announced his idea. “We have to go to Missouri. We have to figure out what Hannah and her dad were doing there and what happened to them.”
“We do?”
“Yes. We have Mrs. Willett working on things here, so we need to go down there and see what we can dig up.” He stood a step lower than Emily. Looking up at her, he used what Grandma Blaze called his puppy dog eyes. If his grandmother couldn’t say no to them, maybe Emily couldn’t either. “Pleeease?”
Emily burst out laughing. “I’m not the one you have to convince! I think it sounds like a blast, but I don’t know who would go. Your uncle probably couldn’t leave his jobs and your grandma might not feel up to it and—”
“Just you and me. And Lexi if she quits being stupid.”
“Your grandma has temporary guardianship. I don’t know if you can even leave the state legally. And they’re not likely to let you go all that way with someone they hardly know.”
“So we convince Grandma to go. We can get a hotel and she can stay there while we hunt around if she’s not feeling good.”
“Hotels cost money.”
“Then we can take our pop-up.”
“You’ve thought of everything.”
“Everything. Come on, let’s go talk to—” He didn’t bother finishing because Jake’s truck drove into the driveway. “Don’t tell him,” he whispered.
“You can’t plan—” She quit talking when Jake slammed the truck door and waved.
“What are you two up to?”
“Conspiring.” Emily smiled at him with a goofy look on her face. They were getting married. Definitely. “Adam is hatching a plan.”
Great. Just blurt it out. This is where his plan died.
Jake put his hands on his hips. “What kind of a plan?”
Here goes nothing. “Mrs. Willett talked to a lady in St. Louis who knew a guy who had a letter.” He rubbed his hand on his forehead and looked at Emily. “You tell him.”
Emily told it way faster than Mrs. Willett. “So now Adam thinks some of us need to go to Missouri to search out more information.”
Jake smiled at her with the same goofy look. “Sounds fun.”
What?
“I don’t think I can get away, but my mom might jump at the chance to do something adventurous.”
Seriously? Jake wasn’t going to try to talk them out of it?
Jake grinned. “It would be good for all of you. But you’d need to go before”—he bit his bottom lip—“you need to be back here to work on the trim.”
Something was weird there, but Adam didn’t try figuring it out. “Yes! Let’s go talk to Grandma! I’ll map out our route and put it in my GPS and find campgrounds, and we should talk to the guy with the letters and see if we can…” He was halfway across the road when he realized Emily was still on the step making goo-goo eyes at Jake. He laughed and kept on going.
Vacation with Emily? Lexi threw her shoe at the giant purple penguin in the corner. Emily finally moved out and then invited herself along on a family vacation? The other shoe bounced off the wall and landed on the bed. Pansy looked up and gave her the evil eye. Even her cat was against her.
Plopping onto the purple spread, she stared at the phone she’d grabbed as she stomped through the living room. Naomi’s mom would invite Lexi to go with them on their trip to Wisconsin Dells. Mrs. Benner was like that.
Visions of boat rides, water slides, and candy stores danced in Lexi’s head as she dialed. Mrs. Benner answered.
“Lexi, how are you?”
“Not the greatest.”
“What’s the matter, sweetie? Anything some chocolate chip cookie dough could fix?”
Lexi smiled. “It would sure help.”
“What’s going on?”
“My grandma’s making me go on a trip next week with her and Emily.” Naomi told her mom everything—Mrs. Benner knew about Emily.
“And you don’t want to go, do you?” There was a slight pause. “I wish we could take you with us. We’re taking my mother and it’s kind of a family trip, you know. Here, talk to Naomi. She’ll cheer you up.”
“Hey, Lex. What’s up?”
The picture she painted for her best friend made her eyes burn. “Can you imagine? Stuck in the car for hours and hours with my grandma and Emily blabbering in the front seat and Adam reading to me about UFOs or one-celled animals or plant moss the whole time? I’ll go crazy.”
“I wish you could go with us. I asked a couple days ago just ‘cause it would be way more fun with you there. My mom’s being weird.”
“This stinks for both of us.”
“Yeah. I’m downloading a ton of cool music. You should, too. You can plug in and shut them out.”
“I don’t want to shut out, I want to get out! How can I get out of going?”
“Get sick.”
The two words were prettier than any music she’d ever put on her iPod. “Yessss. That’s why you’re my BFF. You’re a genius.”
“I know.”
“What should I get? Bronchitis? Tonsilitis? Something I can fake good without making myself throw up.”
“It can’t be so bad that they want to take you the doctor, but something contagious. How about poison ivy? There’s tons of it down by the river.”
“Nah. I had that when I was ten. Mom put stuff on it and still made me go to school.”
“I faked a fever for a couple days by rubbing the thermometer on my bedspread really hard.”
“My grandma has the kind you stick in your ear. I got it to a hundred and three once by holding it on my lamp, but then Mom stuck it in my ear and I got grounded for trying to get out school.”
“When I was five I drank my grandpa’s prune juice and I couldn’t get off the toilet for a whole day. My stomach hurt so bad I couldn’t even stand up straight.”
“That might work.” A day of horrible stomach cramps would be way better than a week of Emily acting like she was part of the family. Then again, who would know if her stomach actually hurt? “Only I don’t think I need the prune juice.”
“Let me hear your best stomachache sound.”
Lexi groaned and flopped back on the bed. Pansy yowled and Naomi laughed. “Perfect, Lex. It’s gonna work.”