Escape from Heartland: A Contemporary Paranormal Romance, Ghost Story: A Heartland Cove County Romance

by Jacquie Gee

  “But you are—”

  “No, I’m not!”

  “It says so here!”

  “Well, it’s wrong.”

  “Edgar confirmed it.”

  “Edgar, the ghost! Ha!” I laugh and spin around. “Are you possessed?” I jerk toward him. “Is that what this is? Were your adoptive parents, right about you?”

  “That’s not fair—”

  “Yeah, well, neither is trying to drag me into your little delusion!” My fists land on my hips. “What are you trying to do here, blow up my life?”

  “No. I’m trying to put it back together.” He looks deadly serious. “Along with my own.”

  “Yeah, well, mine was fine until you showed up!” I shout, a cold bolt of lightning traveling. “Where did you get this anyway?” I toss the parchment back at him.

  “Edgar lead me to it.”

  “Where?”

  Jayden heaves out a breath, then studies at the sand. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

  “Tell me!” I shout.

  “From a woman named Glory.” He hesitates before looking up.

  “Glory.” I squint, sarcastic.

  “Yes, Glory. Short for Glorianna.” He points her name on the family tree. “The woman who claims to be your grandmother.”

  I glance at the box by his finger containing the name Glorianna Magda Longbottom, and scowl. "Well, she's not," I say confidently. "My mother's mother was a Stein before she married a Gibbs. So, you see, her claims in no way fit!"

  “Glory said you’d say that.”

  “Hmm, I’ll bet she did.” I roll my eyes.

  “How else do you explain the woman knowing both you, and your mother’s dates of birth?”

  “The internet.” I scowl. "You can find anything about anyone on the Internet today."

  “A recluse, who lives in the backwoods swamps?”

  “Huh! How convenient.” I cross my arms.

  “According to Glory, that woman is not your mother’s real mother.”

  “Oh, and I should believe this Glory woman, why?”

  "Because when I met with her in Mississippi, she gave me this." Jayden produces a copy of a birth certificate of the Julieta Magda Longbottom, born in 1959."

  “So, what does this prove?” I flit the paper back at him.

  “It is the birth certificate of her one and only daughter.”

  “Who’s in no way related to me.” I glower at him hard.

  “She also gave me this.” He passes me a worn copy of my mother’s famous book The Beveled Edge of Far and Nigh, the one he claimed he must read, the very first day we met.

  “You lifted that from my father’s store.” I snatch it from him, infuriated, he had it all the time. That’s how he knew the title, the history, the quote!

  “Look inside.” He flicks his chin up.

  I flip open the cover, and a photograph drops out. A faded photo of my mother, sitting pressed shouldered to a woman I don't know. On her lap, she holds a child I recognize as me. My heart turns in my chest.

  I stoop wildly plucking it from the sand, my hands trembling as I hold it staring.

  “It was taken the one and only time you and your mother ever visited her,” Jayden quickly says. “If you don’t believe me, check the back, it’s dated.”

  “I don’t understand.” My voice hitches. “How do they know each other?”

  “I told you, they met.”

  “But—” All my history comes crashing to my feet. My mother never mentioned this woman, ever.

  “She said you wouldn’t understand,” Jayden mutters under his breath.

  “Then tell me…” My eyes beseech him.

  He hesitates, pacing and pulling a hand through his hair until I want to shake him. Turning, he clears his throat and reluctantly begins.

  “Glory had a child out of wedlock,” he mutters, his eyes finding the ground. “She wanted to marry the father, but her father didn’t approve, so he sent her away to live with a distant aunt in Mississippi just until she had the child, so no one, back here in Heartland Cove, would know.”

  “She was from here?”

  "Yes. She and her father moved here for his work when she was twelve. The young man was from Hopewell Rocks."

  “Up the road.”

  He nods. "She was going to defy her father, keep the baby and raise it on her own, but before she could leave the hospital, the baby was taken from her, and put up for adoption— arranged by her aunt. That’s how your mother ended up being raised in New York City, by the Gibbs couple— the people she called her parents. Your grandparents. But your mother was actually Glory’s baby.”

  “I don’t believe you.” My chin wavers.

  “You don’t have to. Your mother left you proof.” He nods to the book, encouraging me to turn the page.

  An inscription appears in handwritten ink on the following page.

  My mother’s handwriting, along with her signature.

  To Glorianna, the mother I’ve never known, but glad I’ve found, from the daughter she’s never known, but does now.

  I’m thrilled to share my baby daughter with you.

  All my love,

  Julieta Magda Longbottom

  A.K.A. Helen Gracie Gibbs.

  “Gibbs?” I whisper.

  “I didn’t understand that part either,” Jayden says. “Perhaps she was making the distinction between the two sets of parents?”

  “Or there’s something else amuck, here.” I stare off over his shoulder.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” I hug myself. “Is there more, or is that it?” I shake when I ask.

  “Glory told me, she then asked your mother if she’d do her the honor of adding your name to the family tree.” He holds up the document again. “The last entry, the Julieta Magda Arquette, that’s her handwriting.”

  I quickly check the entry against her handwriting in the book. Jayden’s right. It’s a match. I tremble, holding it, my eyes still disbelieving.

  “Glory’s the one who told me exactly where to find you, what to say and how to handle things. She knew everything about you, every tiny detail. Your mother kept her up to speed, sending her packages of photos and drawings you made in school until the day she died. After your mother passed away, Glory hired a private investigator to let her know how you were doing. She couldn’t bear the idea of losing touch with you again—”

  “So, she spied on me?”

  “She had to. Your mother asked her to keep their relationship a secret.”

  “Why?”

  “She didn’t want to offend the mother who raised her.”

  “After all she did to her?”

  He shrugs. “That’s just what Glory said.”

  “I see.” I glance down at my feet. “So, this thing between you and I,” I hate what I’m about to say, but I have to ask the question, “it’s all just been one, big manipulation.”

  “In the beginning, yes, but not now," he quickly says, emphasizing the ‘not now.' He floods toward me, hands outstretched for me to take, but I don't, not just yet. "Not since the day I walked into your shop," he continues, his breath coming heavy and hard. "Not since the moment I laid eyes on you, standing there with worm-dirt on your cheeks." He smiles, his voice shaking. "Not since the moment I held you in my arms.”

  He looks deep into my eyes, and I feel the sincerity, flowing hot, like blood— coursing through my veins.

  “What I felt for you, I guarantee you, it’s real. Very real.” He reaches for me, threading his fingers slowly through mine. “You have to believe me,” he whispers, pulling in close to my ear. “I can’t bear the thought of you thinking otherwise.”

  I close my fingers around his hands. His thumbs gently stroke the backs of my hands. “What do I do with this?” I look up into his face, our lips nearly brushing. “It doesn’t make sense. I’m still not an Arquette. And Arianna, she went missing and died before she and Edgar had any children.”

  “I thought the sam
e, but it’s not true.”

  I pull back.

  “Edgar and Arianna did have a child. A boy. Born in late September 1920. Arianna was only eighteen at the time, and the child was said to be born weak. It wasn’t expected to live the night. Thus, it was never baptized, so, the birth was never recorded on any official family chart. According to Edgar, Arianna left the baby asleep in his pram on the back porch to take in the healing sea air, and when she returned an hour later, the child was gone, along with his blanket and rattle.

  “So, he was, what? Stolen?”

  “That’s what Edgar and Arianna believed. They searched for him for days, but could not find the child. Arianna was inconsolable. She blamed herself, and so did the police when they called them. Arianna, as Edgar put it to me, was considered a delicate flower at that time, meaning, unstable and a woman—”

  “Wonderful times,” I say.

  “Yeah. As a result, the police did not completely believe Arianna’s story, in fact, in later recounts, they were quoted as not even believing there was a missing child.”

  “What?”

  “Edgar showed me the newspaper clips. Despite it all, an investigation was conducted where Arianna was listed as suspected of foul play. That's when Arianna ran, according to Edgar. She was terrified of being put away for something she didn't do. They had an argument, and she ran off. Edgar pursued her, but he could never find her, and then the police showed up.”

  “So, she was being hunted, not looked for.”

  “That’s the part of the ghost story that’s always been missing from the legend. Along with this…” Jayden walks me over to his car, where he produces a transcript of an old newspaper from nineteen twenty-three. “I did a little homework myself, being in the business.” He hands it to me.

  It’s a hospital roster, where Arianna is listed as a patient. “Her name appears here, first in nineteen twenty, and then again, here,” he hands me a second document, "in nineteen forty-one. Edgar of course, had no way of knowing any of this as it all occurs in a neighboring province, so continues his search for his missing wife until 1930, when—"

  “He hangs himself.”

  “Right.”

  “Have you shown this to Edgar?”

  “No. I haven’t the heart.” He frowns. “It says here,” he points to the first medical record, “Arianna was found wandering in the woods not far from here, only a few days after she went missing. She was picked up by strangers to the area, who took her to the authorities two town’s away. Thinking she’d suffered a psychotic break, and unable to tell them where she came from, the authorities placed her in an institution for the mentally insane called, Marybrooke.”

  “Marybrooke? But that’s way up province. It’s so remote, no one would ever find her there.”

  “And that’s what happened. Especially, since no one knew who signed her in, or what her name was, until many years after. Look here, it says she was admitted in catatonic-like state, name unregistered until ten years later.”

  “Ten years.” I can’t imagine.

  "Arianna was then later released, in nineteen thirty-three, after a lengthy stay. She's recorded as having started a relationship with a doctor at Marybrooke, whom she later married, upon her release.” He shows me another document.

  “How convenient.” I sneer.

  "Their union produced another child, a girl, she gave birth to in her mid-forties, she called Glorianna— or Glory for short. The Doctor she married was a Longbottom.”

  “Oh, my gosh, there it is!”

  “Yeah. Arianna is recorded as dying shortly after giving birth to Glory, from complications of birth.”

  Jayden hands over a copy of Glory’s birth certificate.

  “The poor woman.”

  “Crazier than all that,” Jayden adds, reaching for his phone, and scrolling through his texts, pulling up a clipping from an old newspaper. “The missing child. Seems he turned up.”

  “What?”

  “See for yourself.”

  Missing Locklear Baby Possibly Found, the headline reads, November 9th, 1929. “The child was taken by a passing woman on the beach, who claimed to be his mother when the child was illegally found in her care, ten years later.” I look up. “Oh, my goodness. The child was removed from her care and put into orphanage as by the biological father was considered too unstable to parent, at the time. Edgar. They’re talking about Edgar.”

  “Sadly, yes.”

  “Although the father fought to regain custody of the child, he was denied. And then he hangs himself the next month.”

  “Exactly,” Jayden says. “December of 1930.”

  “Oh, Edgar.” I bring my hands to my mouth.

  “That’s right. He couldn’t take anymore, he told me. It was the final blow. After searching for his wife and child all that time, and then finding one and being denied access…it was more than he could stand. Even in death, he never gave up the search. That’s why he’s never been able to move on. He's remained in the house, just hovering there, waiting for one or the other to come back. That's why he was desperate for me to bring you to the house. That’s why he lured me there.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I kept seeing Edgar, during the day, and in my sleep, for years,” Jayden continues. “Always willing me to come to this place, to this house, but I could never find it. I didn’t know where it was. In the vision, I was to bring a woman there. A lost one.” His eyes float dreamily out over from the sand. “It wasn’t until I saw the woman with dark hair and striking eyes in my dreams that I understood, who that was— or so I thought.

  She was wet, and covered in seaweed, wandering a seashore in every one of my dreams. It was like I knew her like she was a part of me— the part that was missing. So, when the visions became so intense I could no longer stand them, I packed in my job and went on a journey to find the house and the woman," he looks to me. "Which led me here, to the Cove, and you."

  His eyes glass over, his voice is whisper soft. He squeezes my hands hard and studies me hard. "All this time, I thought the woman I was searching for was my mother," he laughs. "When really… now I see, it was you.”

  “What?”

  “You are my missing link, the missing piece of my puzzle—the woman with the dark hair at the seashore…”

  I look at him, perplexed.

  “Don’t you see, you are her, because I am him.” He smiles.

  “What are you talking about?”

  "Edgar helped me piece it all together. He said, I had to ask you the questions to get to my own truth, and he was right."

  “I don’t understand.”

  "I texted a friend back in Milan, the one I mentioned, and asked her to check my research. She was able to confirm what I've discovered to be the truth. Despite deaths and abandonments and unwanted adoptions— I am the living great grandson of Edgar and Arianna's missing son."

  “What?”

  “And you, are the great granddaughter of the late Arianna. Together, we are the essence of Edgar and Arianna reincarnated.”

  I stare.

  “That’s why Edgar was so desperate to have me bring you— to look into your eyes for himself, and see his lost bride. For me to bring you home, where he has been forever waiting for Arianna’s return.”

  His bottom lip shakes, and I have the urge to lean up and kiss it.

  I heave in a breath, taking in the whole strange story, that still seems like it can't possibly be true. But it appears to be. The world as I've always known it lies in tatters around my feet. Questions about my identity haunt me. But for the first time ever, the empty feeling I was left with when mother died, lifts… and I feel warm and whole, like the sun.

  “May I?” I gesture to keep the stack of articles in Jayden’s hand.

  “Absolutely.” He passes them over.

  I tuck them in my pocket and turn.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Fact checking.” I step up into the truck, closing the door aft
er me.

  Chapter 31

  Jules

  “Dad!” I press through the front door of the bait shop looking for him, and find him alone in the back office, thank goodness. “Dad?” I hesitate in the doorway, not wanting to interrupt him. He sits commiserating over a stack of bills.

  “What’s up, darling?” He looks up, and his eyes brighten. He drops the overdue electric bill from his hands.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Of course, you can.” He waves me on.

  I skitch forward and take a seat on the opposite side of the desk from him. I stretch out a hand, and he reads the look in my eyes. "What is it? What's the matter?” He grows tense.

  “There’s something I want to talk to you about. Something important.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s about Mom.” I meet his gaze and he drops his to the desk.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” He swallows. “What is it that you want?” He looks instantly worried when he looks up.

  I don’t want to upset him, but I need to ask this. I must know the answer.

  "Dad?" I say, my voice, shaky. "Dad, was Mom, did Mom ever… was Mom…" His Adam's Apple jumps and the muscles at the sides of his jaw tense and churn.

  He glances up from the desktop. “What have you found out?”

  “Dad?” I swallow. “I don’t know how to put this, so, I’ll just put this.”

  I don’t know how to say it. I don’t know how to shatter his world.

  I don’t want to be the one to do that. Maybe he doesn’t even know like grandma never knew. Maybe Mom took the secret to her grave…

  Or maybe, I’ve got everything wrong.

  “Dad?” I start again. “Was Mom…was she ever…” I draw in a breath, gathering as much courage as I can. “Was Mom—”

  “Married before,” Dad blurts—at the same time as I blurt, “Adopted?”

  “She was what?” I draw back in my chair.

  “You found out she was adopted?” He cringes.

  “Yeah, what are you saying?”

  “Nothing.” Dad gulps.