by Kathi Daley
Chapter 7
Kai and Kallie met me at the door when I arrived back at the cottage. It had been drizzling off and on all day, but so far, all we’d really gotten were a few sprinkles. I’d brought an umbrella into town with me, but I’d ended up leaving it in the car. The first large drops of rain hadn’t blown in until I’d reached the dirt road that took me from the main road leading out to the peninsula to the cottages that shared a single parking area.
I knew the dogs would need to go out, and I knew the rain would just get harder, so I pulled on a waterproof slicker and set out for the beach. Taking shelter under a large tree, I watched as the dogs chased each other up and down the sand. They, of course, didn’t mind the rain a bit, but I didn’t want them getting soaking wet, so once I felt they’d done what they needed to do, I called them, and we went inside where I tossed a couple logs into the fireplace and lit a match. Once that was accomplished, I made a cup of coffee. By the time it had brewed, the rain was already coming down much harder.
Settling in with a novel I’d bought ages ago but never had gotten around to reading, I curled up on the end of the sofa and tried to relax both my mind and body. After several minutes of trying to focus on the story, I finally got up and headed upstairs to the room at the top of the cottage that Uncle Bucky had used as an art studio. The room really was amazing. Small, to be sure, but the entire room was encircled with windows. Today, the sky was dark, and large drops of rain marred the windows, but on a clear day, it really did seem as if you could see forever. My plan at this point was to paint the room and set the space up as an office. I could totally picture myself sitting in this room, working on something I’d yet to define as life below the room made of windows continued to play itself out.
I’d just returned to the first floor of the cottage and was about to make another cup of coffee when my cell rang. “Hello.” I hadn’t recognized the number, and I usually let unrecognized numbers go straight to voicemail, but today I decided to pick up.
“Ainsley?”
“Vanessa?” I asked, unsure if the timid voice on the other end of the line was actually the woman I’d spoken to in front of the Hamish home the other day.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“I’m so glad you called.” I smiled. “I’ve been hoping you would.”
“I can’t talk long. I really just wanted to know if you’d had a chance to look into the blue sedan I mentioned to you.”
“I have, although I’m afraid I don’t have any news to share. Parker looked through all her old notes and was unable to find anyone who’d mentioned a blue sedan during the initial investigation. Then the two of us canvassed the neighborhood on Sunday and spoke to those neighbors who were home. I’m afraid no one remembered seeing a blue sedan parked on the street during the week before the Hamish family disappeared.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“You told me that a neighbor mentioned it to you. Would you be willing to tell me which neighbor that was?”
“It doesn’t matter. I really need to go.”
“Wait,” I said, hoping I could figure out something to say to keep her from hanging up.
She didn’t respond, but she didn’t hang up either, so I continued.
“I really want to talk to you about what you might know. I understand that you might want to stay out of it, but I keep thinking you might know something important. Maybe even something you aren’t aware that you know.”
She still didn’t answer.
“If you’re willing to speak to me, I can keep your name out of it,” I tried.
“I need to think about it. I’ll call you back in a couple days.”
With that, she hung up.
Well, I supposed that was something. If Vanessa and Hannah were the same person as I initially suggested they might be, it seemed like she might be ready to talk to someone about what she knew. If not, why would she have approached me in the first place? Parker wouldn’t be happy about the whole anonymity thing. She’d already had to shelve a story she’d helped investigate relating to a murder a few weeks ago in order to protect the witness. The way things were looking, this story, even if we were able to resolve it, might be another one that she wouldn’t be able to commit to ink and paper, which had been her objective in the first place.
After Vanessa hung up, I returned to the living room and sat down on the sofa. The rain and the wind had increased in intensity, making doing anything outdoors impossible. I had to admit that since I’d been here in Gooseberry Bay, I’d had very little downtime. I’d either been working on one mystery or another with the peninsula gang, or I’d been working on my own mystery, and when I hadn’t been doing either, I’d been painting or settling in. And then, of course, there was the time I spent hiking and running with the dogs. I’d enjoyed it all, but I think this was the first time I found myself with absolutely nothing to do.
Which I supposed was nice, although I felt myself becoming antsy. Deciding to make use of my time, I gathered up my laundry and headed into town where I’d seen a laundromat. I’d noticed that Jemma and Josie had a laundry room in their cottage. There was plumbing in the little closet next to the bathroom with enough room for a stackable washer/dryer. Perhaps I’d look into buying something if I did decide to stay for the long haul.
By the time I’d washed, dried, and folded my laundry, it was time to head over to meet up with Jemma and Josie for our evening wine and cheese wind down. I’d even picked up wine and a deli platter while I was in town today. I’m not sure how Jemma, Josie, and I had settled into the nightly ritual, but it was one that the dogs and I looked forward to every day. Still, I didn’t want to be presumptuous, so I had called Jemma to make sure that it was okay for the dogs and me to drop by that evening. As predicted, she said that she’d been planning on it.
“So, how was the meeting for the Christmas Village?” Jemma asked after I’d opened the wine I’d brought and poured us each a glass. Josie wasn’t home from work yet, but Jemma had informed me that she was expecting her at any minute.
“It was good. I am pretty flexible, so I volunteered to fill in wherever Hope needs me. She’s going to look at the hours and jobs everyone else volunteered for and let me know. She mentioned that Josie and Tegan are doing the food.”
Jemma nodded. “They have taken over that part of the event for the past few years, and Hope knows I can be plugged in wherever. I think today’s meeting was more for first-time volunteers to get an overview and those returning volunteers who still needed to sign up for a particular event or shift. Did you meet anyone new?”
“Actually, I met Adam Winchester.”
Jemma’s brow shot up. “Really? Adam was there? I’m somewhat surprised. He helps out every year, but Hope usually just calls him, and they discuss his contribution of time and resources over the phone. Either that or she goes out to his place so they can talk about it.”
“Well, he was there today.”
“Did you have the chance to talk to him?”
“Actually, I did.” I told Jemma about our lunch and the brief conversation we’d shared. “Adam had a meeting he needed to get to, so he didn’t linger after we ate, but he did invite me out to the house on Thursday so we could have a more in-depth conversation. In the meantime, he’s going to talk to some people, and try to round up some information for me.”
“That’s wonderful.” Jemma grinned. “Maybe he can help you figure out the final pieces that will allow you to really begin to understand what might have happened.”
“I hope so. It would be nice to be able to make sense of the small pieces I currently have.”
“Do you think you might try to find your sister?” she asked. “Assuming, of course, that you’re able to pick up a trail of some sort.”
I nodded. “Actually, if I can get a lead out of this whole thing, I do intend to follow it and see where it goes. At this point, I pretty much assume that my parents are dead since I didn’t seem to have been with them while I was he
re in Gooseberry Bay, but I don’t actually know that for certain.”
“So, have you decided that the woman in the photo was definitely not your mother?”
“I don’t think she was. The dreams are becoming more vivid, and the woman doesn’t feel like a mother. I’m actually thinking she was a babysitter or an aunt.”
“I suppose that would make sense. Do you still feel that the baby in the photo is your sister?”
Again, I nodded. “I do, and I’m sure her name was Avery. During the dream I had last night, I also think I figured out that my name was Ava.”
“Ava?” She looked surprised. “Not Ainsley?”
“No. My dad told me that he’d named me Ainsley, which was his mother’s name, and he gave me his last name, Holloway. It occurred to me that by the time I was three, I would have known my own name, so if my name was Ava and he’d asked me, I should have been able to tell him that. I suspect, given the fact that he changed my name, that I was in some sort of danger, and he figured that cutting all ties to Ava and her past was the best way to go.”
“But you don’t remember what sort of danger you might have been in?”
I shook my head. “No. I have no idea. I remember the flash of memory of myself with the baby birds on the patio. I remember going somewhere in the car with the baby and the woman with blond hair. I have these tiny pieces of the puzzle, but they don’t, by any means, make up a whole.”
“And what about after you were here in Gooseberry Bay on Piney Point? Do you remember any of it? Where you went next? How you ended up in Georgia? Who you were with?”
“No. I don’t even remember being in a burning building, although that’s what my dad told me occurred. My dad’s old partner told me that there was a fire on that Christmas Eve. That doesn’t prove that he found me in the burning building as he’d told me, but it could have happened that way.” I paused and thought back to the conversation I’d had with Uncle Gil. “He also told me that if my dad had called a social worker, which is what he’d told me he’d done, it would most likely have been a friend of theirs named Sherry Young. Uncle Gil told me that she was a nice woman with good intentions who most likely would have allowed my dad to take me home on Christmas Eve if she wasn’t able to place me in a home immediately.”
“So maybe you should call her,” Jemma suggested.
“That was my thought as well until I learned that she died in a vehicle accident two days after Christmas the same year I was found in that burning building.”
Jemma frowned. “Three days after she would have spoken to your father, assuming she was the person he called.”
“Exactly. That makes me wonder if her accident was really an accident.”
“Do you think someone killed her? Someone who was looking for you or maybe someone who didn’t want you found?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. I have no proof. In fact, all I have is the conviction that the only person, other than my father, who even knew that he had me with him died before the new year when everyone went back to work.”
“You don’t think your father…”
“No. Of course not. Not Dad, but maybe her death was tied into whatever was going on. Maybe it really was just a horrible accident, but the timing seems suspect to me.”
“Yeah, it is a little odd,” Jemma agreed. “I know it occurred a long time ago, but maybe I can dig around and see if anything about her accident pops as being suspect.”
“Thanks, I’d appreciate that. While you’re digging, do you think you can discretely look around for any evidence that I was adopted? I don’t want to open any sort of official inquiry until I know more, but I am curious.”
“Absolutely.”
“Also, see if you can find a record of me ever being in the system with social services as a child. I know it was a long time ago, and records weren’t always digitized back then the way they are now, but it seems like there would be a file somewhere with either my name or maybe my dad’s name attached to it.”
“I’ll look.”
“And, Jemma, please be stealthy. I don’t want to alert anyone to the fact that I’m digging around, and I don’t want to do anything to sully my father’s memory.”
“I understand.”
“Besides the fact that I wouldn’t want to do anything to shed a negative light on my father, I don’t want to do anything to stir up the wrong hornets’ nest, either.”
“What do you mean?”
“I suspect I was in some sort of danger back then, and I mostly feel that even if I was in danger then, I wouldn’t be now. But the reality is we don’t have the entire story, so there really isn’t any way that I can know for certain whether or not the bad man from my childhood is still a threat to me as an adult.”
“Do you think he might be?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
“I’ll be careful not to leave a trail back to us,” Jemma assured me. “I’ll take my time and poke around slowly so that hopefully no one will even notice I was looking around in files I’m not exactly authorized to look around in.”
“Thanks, Jemma. You’re the best.”
Josie showed up shortly after I’d finished filling Jemma in, which meant that I had to go over everything again. In a way, that wasn’t a bad thing. The more times I went through it with the people in my life who I trusted to help me, the more solid the clues I’d picked up became in my mind. I will admit to feeling a little overwhelmed, but I also felt like I was a lot further along than I was a few weeks ago. Maybe by the time the new year dawned, I’d know who I’d been and how a child from Washington State had ended up all alone in a burning building in Georgia on Christmas Eve.
Once I’d exhausted the subject of my mysterious childhood, I changed the subject to the call I’d received from Vanessa.
“She called you?” Josie said. “Just like that? Out of the blue?”
I nodded. “I’m not totally surprised. A little surprised, maybe, but not totally. I seriously doubt that when she set out on Friday, she planned to talk to me or anyone else about the Hamish family, but I also suspect that once she realized I was working with Parker, she hoped I might be able to provide some information that she wants.”
“Like what?” Josie asked.
“I’m not totally sure, but she seems really interested in the blue sedan. If she is Hannah as we suspect she might be, she took a risk by talking to me Friday. And then today, when she called me, her primary reason for having done so seemed to be to see if I’d found out anything about the blue sedan. She’s definitely holding something back, but it really does seem that gaining additional information about that car is important to her.”
“I don’t suppose she told you anything else.” Jemma queried.
“Not really. I did ask her if she might be willing to talk to me if I kept her name out of it. She told me that she’d think about it and call me back.”
“Parker’s going to love that,” Jemma mumbled.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Even as I made the promise to keep her name out of things, it occurred to me that we’ve already asked Parker to do that this month, and maybe twice is asking too much. But even though Parker loves her job and wants to have the opportunity to be the first to print the news as it happens, she’s also a good person who really wants the best for everyone. She chose not to tell what she knew to protect Sophia, and I think if she really believed that Vanessa was in danger, she’d do what she needed to do to protect her as well.”
“I agree,” Josie said. “Parker is the best. She’ll grumble a bit once we bring up the fact that anything Vanessa tells you will be off the record, but I think she’ll honor your promise as well.”
Jemma got up and opened a second bottle of wine, and topped off everyone’s glass.
“It would really be something to figure out what happened to that family after all this time,” Josie said. “The disappearance of the Hamish family is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in our area.”
“It would b
e nice to have some answers,” I agreed. “If Vanessa is Hannah, she probably knows the rest of the story, but even if she seemed to be a well-adjusted young woman and mother when I spoke to her, that doesn’t mean that something really tragic didn’t happen. If she is willing to tell her story, I think we should be prepared for anything.”
“It is true that the way things are now is much easier to deal with than the what-ifs. I’ve settled on imagining that the family left of their own free will and that they’re fine and living elsewhere. If Vanessa has proof that the family was murdered on that long ago Thanksgiving, it’s going to be a hard pill to swallow,” Jemma agreed.
“I guess if that is what happened, we’ll deal with it at the time,” I said. I took a sip of my wine. “When I spoke to Vanessa, I had the feeling she was protecting someone. If she is Hannah, and her family is dead, then there wouldn’t be anyone left to protect. I guess if you think about it, it makes more sense that at least part of the family is alive and probably in hiding.”
Again, I thought of Avery and me as young children. I thought of the women who seemed to have been with us. I thought about the reasons we might have been with those women. The longer I thought about what might have led to my eventual arrival in Georgia, the more certain I was that the real tragic story waiting to be told would end up being my own.
Chapter 8
Jemma, Josie, and I decided to meet with Parker today to go over everything we knew, including Vanessa and her call to me. Parker had plans that evening, so we decided to meet at the Rambling Rose for lunch. I wanted to be sure that we were all on the same page when it came to Vanessa’s anonymity before she called me back, and I was forced to make a promise that wasn’t only mine to keep.
