When I Meet You

by Olivia Newport

  Praise for When I Meet You

  “Readers are in for a top-notch mystery in When I Meet You. Using a stepping-stone trail of documents, photographs, and letters to bridge past and present, Olivia Newport delivers a dual time line tale of intrigue. From the timeless setting of a mystery bound by train journey, to the involvement of Pinkerton agents and passengers of questionable identity, this well-researched story is sure to carry readers away!”

  –Amanda Dykes, author of Whose Waves These Are

  “Olivia Newport has penned both a lively and cozy story in When I Meet You. Fans of family origins and faith will love this dual time line exploration of history. An element of mystery and romance (not to mention mouthwateringly scrumptious foods!) add to this delightful read. Truly a pleasant story with a fantastic setting readers are sure to enjoy!”

  –Heidi Chiavaroli, award-winning author of The Tea Chest

  “An ancestral mystery told in split-time format, When I Meet You is a charming book that will leave readers fascinated and intrigued to discover the prologues of their own stories.”

  –Sarah Monzon, award-winning author of the Carrington Family time-slip series

  © 2020 by Olivia Newport

  Print ISBN 978-1-68322-996-4

  eBook Editions:

  Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-64352-585-3

  Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-64352-586-0

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.

  All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design: Faceout Studio, www.faceoutstudio.com

  Published by Shiloh Run Press, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., 1810 Barbour Drive, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.shilohrunpress.com

  Our mission is to inspire the world with the life-changing message of the Bible.

  Printed in Canada.

  DEDICATION

  For Kara, an unflagging cheerleader for my writing who will drop everything for a trip to Canyon Mines. When I met you was a happy day. I love you.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  CHAPTER ONE

  Jillian supposed she should be grateful he hadn’t gagged and blindfolded her when he intruded into her home office, snatched her, and stuffed her in the truck. She’d already been out for a morning run and wasn’t planning to spend all of Saturday afternoon working. Tidying up was all she had in mind. And then he burst in, and now she was strapped into the front seat without her phone as the truck rolled out of town.

  She gripped the passenger door armrest. He clicked the power button to lock all the doors.

  “Dad. You can tell me where we’re going.” Jillian side-eyed her father. “I’m hardly going to leap out of a moving vehicle on the highway.”

  “Why do you demand to know every detail about everything?”

  From behind the steering wheel of his pickup, which he’d been driving so long he talked about it like an old friend, Nolan grinned at Jillian with green eyes that mirrored hers. Spring mountain sunlight bounced off his pupils, and he reached in the console for his dark glasses and set them on his face. In his midfifties, he still cut a fit, youthful figure. Rediscovering skiing over the winter, after a long hiatus, had suited him.

  “And why do you insist on doing everything by the seat of your pants?” Jillian raised both hands to draw her long, dark waves under control behind her neck. He hadn’t given her a chance to grab a band or clip before leaving the house, a circumstance she was likely to regret if there was any wind once they were out of the truck at their mystery destination.

  Her retort was halfhearted. Who could complain about a Saturday afternoon drive on a day like this? The rainy mid-April week was behind them, the bounty from the sky having nourished the earth and coaxed forth undulating, ripe, burgeoning greens of the season. They were barely out of Canyon Mines, so the mountains still cradled them, and a mammoth burning flare of sunlight radiated across the landscape. Immaculate snow lingered on the shoulders of the Rockies. The views, as they did on so many days when she paused from her work to raise her eyes to the dazzling Colorado terrain, tugged at her spirit.

  “I promise you’ll like it,” Nolan said. “You have to admit I know you well.”

  “The people stipulate to that point, Your Honor.”

  “Someday I might give up lawyering and become a judge and you’ll really have to use that title with me.”

  “And I would do so proudly,” Jillian said. “Now let’s see. Heading east. Probably downtown Denver.” Unless they would turn north to her Duffy grandparents’ home once they got to I-25.

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “So it is Denver.”

  “You think you’re so smart.”

  “I am smart.”

  “The court stipulates to that point.”

  “What’s going on in Denver that we need to go today?”

  “A museum. You like museums. And you’ve never been to this one.”

  “Why not? Did I have a deprived childhood?”

  “Hardly. I always let you bring home souvenirs, and you’ll get a doozy today.”

  “Okay, you’ve got me curious.”

  “Good. You need to get out more.”

  “We’re both going to St. Louis in a few weeks for Tucker and Laurie Beth’s wedding,” she pointed out. Jillian had already started on the complex genealogy project Tucker hired her for—which would likely take years for the number of individuals involved. In addition to the nuptials, visiting St. Louis meant she would see where the story of Tucker’s family history first tangled in the baby snatching that had nearly undone him when he found out.

  “And we’ll have a spectacular time,” Nolan said, “but we have our own great city right here with history and culture and all the good stuff. You liked it when you went to college.”

  “I still do. I just haven’t had a lot of reason to come down lately.”

  “Well, today you do.” Nolan merged into a faster lane and accelerated.

  “I have a feeling there’s a story here,” Jillian said.

  With her dad, there was always a story. People liked to talk to Nolan. He was one of those people who made friends wherever he went and stuck in people’s minds. In his work as a family law attorney and legal mediator, he met a variety of people other than his clients, but he could still drop into a random coffee shop or a hardware store and come out having met four new people—and probably would talk with them long enough to find a common connection with at least one. Sho
ps, parties, sporting events, business meetings. People remembered Nolan Duffy. He thrived on it. Not Jillian. She inherited some sort of recessive introvert gene—and another one for preferring a well-ordered life.

  “The curator called me,” Nolan said.

  “And how do you know a museum curator?”

  He shrugged. “We had coffee once.”

  That meant Nolan had chatted with the curator in the line ordering coffee or something else equally ordinary and forgettable to most people.

  “And?” Jillian said.

  “And he has a situation he thinks may require legal attention. Or at least he’d like to probe a legal opinion about the advisability of legal representation around matters of liability and financial consequence.”

  “Now that’s legal speak if ever I’ve heard it.”

  “Do not mock my profession, young lady.”

  “Never!” Jillian laughed. “What does this have to do with me? Or a souvenir? Is this all just an excuse to get me out of the house?”

  “What if it is? It’s a fine day for a drive, and I enjoy your company.”

  “You don’t have to charm me. I already love you.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “It’s Saturday. And you’ll be in Denver on Monday. Why the special trip?”

  “Because I wanted to bring you along, obviously.”

  “Dad.”

  Nolan checked his mirrors and changed lanes again. Clearly they were headed to Denver now.

  “Here’s what I know,” he said. “It’s not much. Years ago—decades, I think—the museum received a trunk that was abandoned at Union Station.”

  “Decades?”

  He nodded. “The curator is relatively recent, but the museum is about fifty years old. He’s not at all sure of the story, but from what he can tell, the trunk arrived at Union Station over a hundred years ago and somehow was separated from its owner.”

  “Surely the railroad would have had a procedure for unclaimed luggage.”

  “We don’t know what happened, Jilly.”

  “How did the museum get the trunk?”

  “I don’t know that either. He didn’t say. I’m not sure he knows. It’s not a large museum. It’s one of those places where a historic home in a notable neighborhood has been converted to a museum and gradually they collect pieces that might have been authentic to the period. My guess is that they ended up with the trunk that way.”

  “Union Station wouldn’t just give away lost luggage.”

  “Not at the time, no. Perhaps never, officially. But at some point, someone took possession of it. Maybe someone just thought it was in the way of a renovation project. Rich—the curator—discovered it just a few days ago while he was overseeing an effort to clean out and organize overcrowded storage space in the house’s basement. There’s no record of the item being logged into the collection of the museum, yet there it is.”

  “Very irregular.”

  “Yep.”

  “Somebody must have had it in between. Whoever’s hands it ended up in after Union Station got tired of it and dumped it on the museum because the thrift store didn’t want it. It’s probably been painted and full of junk while somebody used it as a coffee table after finding it at a flea market.”

  “Nope. It’s the real deal. Rich brought in a locksmith to pick the locks as carefully as possible to preserve the integrity of the trunk,” Nolan said.

  Jillian’s jaw dropped. “You mean it hadn’t been opened before this? In a hundred years?”

  “As I understand it, that seems to be the case.”

  “They didn’t find a body, did they?”

  Nolan chortled. “I’m pretty sure Rich would have recognized that as a legal matter without requiring my opinion.”

  “Then?”

  “The usual personal items,” Nolan said, “along with a considerable stack of business records from a company in Ohio. Financial records.”

  “Enter the legal questions.”

  “Maybe or maybe not.”

  “It is a curious question why someone travels from Ohio to Colorado with a trunk full of business financial records and then abandons them.”

  Nolan wiggled one eyebrow. “See? Isn’t this better than cleaning your office?”

  “Just tidying.” Jillian turned her palms up. “But my piles can wait.”

  “As a historian, Rich is intrigued. But he’s concerned both for the matter of the museum having custody of these records and whether there might be legal liability without due provenance of the alleged donation if there should prove to be any value connected to it because of the records. He’s also worried about the issue of the financial documents and what they might mean for who could have benefited by how the matters they represent were—or were not—resolved.”

  “But you said it was over a hundred years ago,” Jillian said. “Can you really figure that out now?”

  Nolan nodded. “These are all questions I’d have to look into. My instinct is that Rich merely wants to dot every i and cross every t but that there won’t be any legality to pursue.”

  “But you don’t know for sure.”

  “Not until we see what he has.”

  They weren’t far from Denver now. In a few minutes, Nolan exited the highway and began a series of turns along surface streets taking them through downtown.

  “What’s this place called?” Jillian asked.

  “Owens House Museum.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Me neither, until I met Rich. From what I understand, it’s just a turn-of-the-century house.”

  “Denver has a lot of those.”

  “That we do.”

  Nolan pulled up in front of a house and put the truck in PARK. Jillian considered the structure as they got out.

  “Considering what this neighborhood was like a hundred years ago,” she said, “this house is fairly modest.”

  “I agree,” Nolan said. “No wonder I couldn’t place it. It must have been an ordinary family’s home, not the mansion of a silver mine millionaire.”

  “I wonder how it came to be a museum then.”

  “I’m sure Rich will tell you if you want to ask.”

  Jillian pivoted in a circle. “And how did it survive all the demolition and modernizing in the immediate neighborhood?”

  “You have an inquisitive mind,” Nolan said. “Now let’s go see a man about a trunk.”

  Side by side, they proceeded past the sign that welcomed visitors to the Owens House Museum and up the wide walk at a pace that allowed them to absorb the details. The sandstone house, built in the Queen Anne style popular in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, was a simple two-story home in contrast to some of the three- and four-story homes of the era popular among Denver’s most wealthy. With a downtown location, it likely never had much of a lawn, but the carriage house set back from the street suggested that it supported at least one pair of horses with space for a full-size carriage, a service cart, and living quarters for liverymen above. The house itself boasted the requisite rounded tower, steeply pitched roof, twin chimneys, and generous windows of Queen Anne architecture.

  “This house could be in Canyon Mines,” Jillian said.

  “It’s certainly the right era.” They went up the front steps, and Nolan pushed the door open. A young man at a welcome desk looked up expectantly, and Nolan asked for the curator.

  “They’ve done an amazing job with the restoration,” Jillian said while they waited. “The woodwork is gorgeous. Nia and Leo would love to see this. Even Veronica and Luke.” The Dunstons had undertaken an ambitious renovation of a sprawling Victorian home and opened a bed-and-breakfast in Canyon Mines, and the O’Reillys ran the Victorium Emporium because Veronica was enthralled with all things Victorian.

  “I’m sure they have some brochures you could take home,” Nolan said. “Here’s Rich now.”

  “Thank you for coming.” Rich offered a handshake.

  “This is my daughter, Jillian
Parisi-Duffy.”

  “I’m glad to meet you,” Jillian said. “Your museum is very inviting.”

  “We have the standard drawing room, music room, dining room, and kitchen on the ground floor,” Rich said, “and offices in the back. Bedrooms and attic upstairs. And of course the basement, which is what has brought you here today.”

  “Are we going downstairs?” Nolan asked.

  Rich shook his head. “I have the piece in my office. We’ve taken the liberty of cleaning it up a little bit.”

  Nolan rubbed his palms together. “Then let’s have a look at it.”

  They followed Rich through the house, bypassing a tour in progress and slipping past a red-lettered No ENTRANCE sign to an area behind the kitchen that originally might have been a back porch, enclosed at a later stage. Rich opened the door to his unassuming office. Centered in the space between the door and his desk stood a steamer trunk. Its sonorous presence beckoned to the most profound calling of Jillian’s work. Her breath stopped, and the pulse at her temples audibly magnified.

  “Can I touch it?” she blurted out.

  Nolan smiled.

  Rich nodded. “The gloves are on the desk.”

  “Of course.” Jillian donned the pair of white gloves that would keep her oils off the antique piece and ran her hands around the upright form of the wardrobe-style steamer. “Did my dad tell you what I do for a living?”

  “Genealogist. I can imagine you have special appreciation for what you’re looking at and the story it might tell in the hands of the family.”

  “I don’t usually get to look at the past quite so directly,” Jillian said. “It’s stunning.”

  The stenciled blue beryl and muted gold canvas was far more captivating than the brown or green metal trunk Jillian had mentally prepared for. This was sheer enchantment, artistry created and selected with care. And monogrammed. Someone’s story.

  “It doesn’t have many stickers,” Jillian observed.

  “I noticed that too,” Rich said. “It might have been used for regional rail travel, but it was a steamer trunk only in name. This trunk was never on the water. I would stake my reputation on it.”

  “But my dad said you think it came from Ohio. Colorado is not regional to Ohio.”