Thanksgiving Past

by Kathi Daley

  Josie got up to check on the lasagna. Jemma got up to refill everyone’s wine glass. I continued to look through the yearbook Jemma had pulled up on her laptop. I was about to give up when I had an idea. Instead of looking for Vanessa Hudson, I decided to look for Hannah Hamish. Her photo was missing from the headshots, which had been provided for pretty much every other student in the school. A search for her name prompted the reply that no matches had been found. I wondered if she’d simply been sick on picture day or if the fact that her photo was missing had been intentional.

  “If the family left without taking anything, they must have left behind items that could provide clues. Photos and other keepsakes. Bills and financial records,” Jemma said.

  “Probably,” Parker answered, “but I didn’t have access to any of that. Most of what I know is because someone I interviewed shared a specific piece of information with me. I know that Hannah was a senior in high school and that Courtney was in the eighth grade. I know that Sarah was ten, and Laura was six. I picked up tidbits of little things about what each member of the family enjoyed doing as well as some personality traits for each. This helped me to formulate a picture in my mind, but didn’t help me to determine what had happened to them.”

  “Dinner is ready,” Josie announced. “Let’s make our plates, and we can talk while we eat.”

  The others got up, but I continued to scroll through the yearbook. I really wasn’t sure what I hoped to find since a search for both Hannah and Vanessa hadn’t turned up a single thing. I supposed my desire to try to find something in the book that helped to make sense of this whole thing could wait until after we ate.

  I got up, served myself, and then took a seat at the dining table with the others. Once I was settled, I asked the question that had been filtering through my mind. “Does anyone know if the neighbors closest to the Hamish family noticed them at home earlier in the day on Thanksgiving Day?”

  Parker shoveled a large bite of lasagna into her mouth before reaching for a file that she’d left on the table next to her plate. She opened the file and took out a sheet of paper. She swallowed and then took a drink of her water before she answered. “According to my notes, Mrs. Gilroy was asked about the last time she remembered seeing any member of the Hamish family, and she answered that the last time she remembered seeing any of them was on the Wednesday before the holiday. I guess there was a half-day of school, so Mrs. Hamish had taken off work early to pick the kids up from school. Mrs. Gilroy reported that she didn’t remember seeing them after that, but assumed they were inside watching TV, doing homework, and getting ready for the holiday meal.”

  “And Mr. Hamish?” I asked.

  Parker sorted through the file to a sheet of paper near the bottom of the stack. “Mrs. Gilroy didn’t remember seeing him at all that day, but a man he worked with named Devon Butler told me that he’d dropped Mark off at home around five o’clock the evening before the holiday. The entire crew was off for a four-day weekend, and Mark had asked to take Monday off as well. He’d told his employer he had some business to take care of and could use the extra day. When Devon dropped Mark off at home, Devon reported that Mark waved to him and mentioned seeing him Tuesday. According to Devon, Mark was in a good mood and looking forward to the long break. Devon didn’t think he seemed stressed.”

  “So, no one you spoke to claimed to have seen the family at all Thursday?” I asked.

  Parker shook her head. “No one that I talked to. Mrs. Franktown reported that she hadn’t noticed anyone in the family coming or going for several days, but both her kitchen and living room are at the back of the house, so she probably just hadn’t been looking. As I’ve already indicated, Mrs. Gilroy saw the mom and kids come home Wednesday, but she swore that she never saw anyone from the family after that.”

  I returned my attention to the neighbors we all agreed lived in the area. Mrs. Gilroy had been the one to first notice the family was missing. On the one hand, it seemed odd that she hadn’t seen a single member of the Hamish family after Mary and the girls came home Wednesday, but on the other hand, the houses weren’t all that close together, and I guessed it was possible that everyone stayed inside once they got home from school and work. I asked if the drapes were opened or closed, but Parker didn’t know. If the drapes at the front of the house were closed, then it would be very likely that the neighbor hadn’t noticed anyone. I knew the windows at the back of the house had been uncovered. Otherwise, it would have been impossible for Mrs. Gilroy to have seen the food on the counter, which is what made her call the police in the first place.

  “There was one sort of odd detail I made a note of that may or may not have been important,” Parker said.

  “Oh. And what was that?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Hamish normally bought meal tickets for all four children every month.”

  “Meal tickets?” I asked.

  “Our elementary and secondary schools share the same campus, although they are located in different buildings. The cafeteria is shared by the elementary, middle, and high school. A lot of kids bring sack lunches, but there is a hot lunch option that can be purchased with coupons that must be acquired in advance. Mrs. Hamish had bought meal tickets for her four daughters every month that school was in session since the very first month the family moved to town, but she didn’t buy tickets for the December following the disappearance of the family.”

  “Maybe she was just going to buy them after the holiday break,” I said.

  Parker shook her head. “No, it doesn’t work that way. The tickets for each month are sold at the end of the prior month and aren’t available once the sales period is over. I suppose that’s so the staff who work in the kitchen know in advance how many hot lunches they’ll need. Anyway, the monthly tickets for December went on sale the Monday before the Thanksgiving holiday that year, and due to the holiday being late in the month, they were only going to be on sale until Wednesday of that same week. A woman named Betty Sutter runs the hot lunch program, and I guess she ran into Mrs. Hamish when she came to the campus to pick up the girls on the Wednesday before that fateful Thanksgiving. Betty wanted to be sure Mary knew that due to the holiday, the deadline to purchase the tickets had been moved up from the last Friday of the month to the last Wednesday of the month and wondered if she planned to buy meal tickets as was her custom. Mrs. Hamish thanked her for the reminder, but told her that she wouldn’t need tickets for December.”

  “Maybe she just figured that December would be a short month, and the girls could brown bag it for a couple weeks,” Josie said.

  “Or maybe the early deadline threw her budget off,” Jemma added.

  “Maybe,” Parker agreed. “But given what happened, I did find it interesting that she veered from her custom on the day before the family’s disappearance.”

  Talking about the meal tickets reminded me that I wanted to finish looking through the yearbook before I left, so I pulled the laptop in front of me and continued to study each page.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” Josie asked me.

  “I don’t know. I realize that neither Hannah nor Vanessa came up in a search, but I have a hunch.”

  “What sort of hunch?” she asked.

  My brows shot up. “I think I found her.”

  “Found who?” Parker asked.

  “Vanessa. Only her hair is different.”

  Josie, who was sitting next to me, leaned in, and Parker got up and crossed the room. I pointed to a young girl with dark hair who was standing with two other girls in front of a building that appeared to be the school library.

  “That girl has dark hair. You said Vanessa’s hair was blond,” Josie pointed out.

  “I guess she might have bleached it.”

  “That girl you are pointing out is Hannah Hamish,” Parker said.

  Now it was my turn to be shocked. “It is?”

  She nodded and then headed back to where she’d left her files. She pulled out a photo of the family she must
have obtained during her initial investigation. I looked at the oldest of the four girls and realized that with the exception of the change in hair color and the five added years, the woman I’d spoken to today looked an awful lot like the eldest Hamish daughter.

  “Do you think Vanessa Hudson and Hannah Hamish are the same person?” I asked.

  “If Vanessa looked like this, then yes,” Parker answered, looking a lot more animated than she had at any point that evening.

  “But how?” I asked. “And why? Even if Hannah is alive and living in the area under another name, why would she stop and talk to me? That part makes no sense. If her family was on the run, it makes no sense that she’d be anywhere within a thousand miles of the place.”

  “I don’t know,” Parker admitted. “Hannah was almost eighteen at the time the family disappeared. I have a note here from a friend of the family who told me that before moving to Gooseberry Bay, the family had moved around a lot. Maybe Hannah was tired of moving, so when the family fled, she decided to stay. Maybe she had a boyfriend and had plans to marry after graduation. Are there any senior boys with the last name of Hudson?”

  I looked down at the laptop and did a search. “Yes. Kyle Hudson.” I passed the laptop to Parker so she could take a look.

  “It appears that I might want to track this Kyle Hudson down and have a chat with him.”

  “Do you think that Hannah’s family fled from an unknown foe, and Hannah chose to stay for the boy?” I asked.

  Parker shrugged. “I really don’t know. At this point, I don’t even know that the family fled. But if someone was after them, and if that someone was determined to do them harm, it would explain why they moved around so much. If Hannah was almost eighteen when the family fled, she might have decided that she was tired of running and opted to stay.”

  “Yeah,” Josie said with a tone of doubt. “I’m not sure I buy the fact that not only did Hannah Hamish choose to stay behind when her family fled, but that she stopped to talk to Ainsley when she noticed her at the house today. Seems like a huge risk to take if she’s supposed to be in hiding.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  “And where has she been all this time?” Josie asked. “There is no way she stayed in the same neighborhood. Folks would have noticed, even if she did bleach her hair.”

  “Yeah, I guess the idea that Vanessa is Hannah is a longshot,” Parker admitted.

  Suddenly I had a bad feeling. “I think we need to be careful. Just in case. I’d feel awful if Vanessa really is Hannah, and we put her in danger by digging around.”

  “Yeah,” Parker agreed. “I don’t want that either.”

  “Okay, I’m going to ask this again,” Josie said. “If Vanessa is Hannah, why on earth would she stop and talk to Ainsley, and why would she just stand there in front of her old house and tell you about her family.”

  “Maybe she wanted Ainsley to know something,” Jemma theorized.

  “The blue sedan,” I said. “Maybe she wanted someone to know about the blue sedan, but couldn’t risk talking to anyone who might recognize her. I told her I was working with Parker. I told her we were relooking into the family’s disappearance. Maybe she wants us to find the truth, so she gave us a clue.”

  “That seems like a pretty big risk to take,” Josie said, still sounding doubtful.

  “Maybe we’re totally off track,” I agreed. “But what if the blue sedan is an important clue? What if Hannah got away, but there were others in her family who didn’t. What if she wants justice for those who died, or what if she hopes to find missing family members by tracking down the car she believes belonged to whoever took her family? I know that makes for a lot of what-ifs, but in the absence of facts, what-ifs are all we have.”

  Parker sat forward, resting her arms on her thighs as she appeared to be thinking things through. “Okay, let’s assume, just for a minute, that Vanessa is Hannah, and she has a piece of information she’s been dying to share. A piece of information that she feels might, in some way, help her family, whether it’s to find justice for family members who were killed or to find clues that might lead to family members who were taken. She just happens to see Ainsley standing in front of the house and decides to approach her. Either she actually lives in the area, or she lives somewhere else and just happened to be driving by when Ainsley was standing there. My question is, why now? The family disappeared five years ago, and then, all of a sudden, from out of the blue, this woman decides to stop and talk to a stranger after all those years?”

  “I guess it really doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Surely, if Vanessa really is Hannah, she would have found a way to pass on whatever information she might have long before this.”

  “Yeah, and the fact that she stopped and talked to you is odd, right?” Josie said.

  “I guess.” I looked at the photo of Hannah Hamish. “She did look a lot like the girl in this photo, but I guess it doesn’t make sense that they’re the same person. Maybe she just has similar features. And she did have a kid with her. Even if she did randomly drive by when I was there and finally decided to tell someone what she knew, it doesn’t track that she’d spill the beans while standing outside the house she fled from with a three-year-old in tow. Besides, she walked down the street. I didn’t see a car, although I did walk around to the rear of the house, so she could have driven by when I was in the backyard, saw my car parked at the curb, noticed the back gate was open, and decided to check it out. She might have parked around the block and then came strolling down the sidewalk as if she was just out for a walk. Still, the whole thing really doesn’t make sense. Maybe Vanessa really was just a friend of Hannah’s who happens to look a lot like her.”

  Parker stood up and began to pace around the room. “Okay, let’s focus on the clue for a minute rather than the bearer of the clue. Vanessa told you she heard from a neighbor that a blue sedan had been parked in front of the Hamish home in the days before the family disappeared.”

  “Yes, that’s what she told me.”

  “Okay, I need to ask the neighbors who still live in the area about the sedan. I’ll do it tomorrow. Maybe we should meet again,” Parker said.

  “I told Tegan I’d provide a presence at the bar tomorrow night,” Josie said. “Her weekend manager is off this week, and Tegan and Booker have plans, so she wanted to be off by six. She asked if I could cover from six to ten. I don’t have to do anything other than be there in case there’s a problem of some sort, so I can reserve that table back in the corner of the indoor/outdoor room for us. I can help you all theorize and be a presence at the same time.”

  “Fine with me,” Parker said. “Is that okay with the two of you?” She looked at Jemma and me.

  We both agreed that would be fine. After a bit of discussion, we agreed to have dinner at the bar. Josie thought it might be busy during the six o’clock hour, so we decided to meet at seven.

  Chapter 4

  The dream had returned, keeping me awake for much of the night. As they always had, this dream featured a young child playing on a sunny patio situated off a large room with arched windows that framed the sea. When I’d first come to Gooseberry Bay in search of answers to my past, I hadn’t been certain that I’d actually visited the house in my dreams, but after a trip to the mansion on Piney Point, I now knew without a doubt that the house in my dreams had actually been based on a real structure. I still didn’t know exactly when I’d spent time in the mansion on the bluff, but I suspected it would have been right around my third birthday.

  The photo of a woman holding a baby standing next to a young girl had haunted me. While I didn’t know it for a fact, my heart told me that the baby in the photo was my sister, Avery. She’d only been a toddler when the photo was taken. Actually, she looked to be no more than a year in age, so probably not a toddler at that point. Now that my mind had settled onto the idea that the baby and I were related, I couldn’t get her out of my mind, and I couldn’t help but wonder what had become of her. Was she
still alive? I’d been found in a burning warehouse on the other side of the country just months after the photo had been taken. If I’d started here with my sister and the woman in the photo and somehow ended up alone in a burning building on Christmas Eve, I had to ask myself if a similar fate had befallen the baby.

  My heart ached as I remembered my dreams. Unwilling to face the day quite yet, I pulled the covers over my head and closed my eyes. The dreams I’d experienced in the past had been different than the one I experienced last night. Before, I’d watched the scene unfold from afar in my dreams, but last night, I’d had the presence of mind to realize while still in the dream that the child I was watching was actually a memory of a younger me. I couldn’t communicate with the child. At least not yet. All I could do was watch the same script that had played itself out over and over in my mind for months and wonder at the purpose of the whole thing.

  It was odd, actually. While I experienced last night’s dream from a vantage point outside the scene, watching the child rather than seeing the action of the child through her eyes, I could still feel the smooth surface of the baby birds as tiny hands cradled them, and I could still hear the sound of the sea and feel the warmth created by sunshine on her shoulders.

  While the dream last night had been very much the same as those of the past few months, there had been differences as well. This time, there had been voices clearly understood. In the past, there had been voices, but they’d been communicated as sounds rather than words, or at least that’s how I remembered them once I’d awakened.

  “Ava.”

  I remembered a distant voice in my dream. It was a female voice that had sounded far away, as if someone had been calling out from the other side of a long dark tunnel, creating an echo that rumbled and rolled until it eventually faded away.

  The child in my dream had looked up at the sound of that voice. Grabbing the small pieces of colorful sea glass she’d been playing with, she’d hidden behind the shrubbery. I could feel her tremble as she’d watched the woman who’d called out to her.