When I Meet You

by Olivia Newport

  Jillian eyed her dad. “As long as no one wants to know what the menu is, right, Dad?”

  “Hush,” Nolan said.

  “I have to scoot,” Veronica said. “Luke will start wondering what happened to me. He doesn’t have any help at the store right now. See you tonight.”

  Despite their steepness, Veronica tapped down the wooden attic steps with admirable speed.

  Jillian replaced the tray in the trunk, lowered the lid, and buckled the leather straps. She let her fingers linger.

  “Your mother loved that trunk too,” Nolan said, “and she didn’t know everything about it either. From the day you were born, she hoped someday you would value it. And you do.”

  Jillian nodded. I should have valued it better when she was here to know that I do. There was no changing that regret.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Denver, Colorado

  March 26, 1909

  Dear Miss Bendeure,

  I am in receipt of the additional documentation you provided by courier. You’ve chosen wisely what information was significant, and a brooding picture does indeed emerge. With the name and credentials of the agent your father has authorized to act on his behalf in Denver, and the several financial institutions involved in the transactions, I believe we will be able to get to the bottom of things. Please relay to your father that he is right to have suspicions and to take no further actions at this point in time that will shift the balance of matters in the midst of the investigation. I will assign my best operatives. Although Pinkerton’s has made inroads into these sorts of activities of late, we have multiple details yet to pin down in order to move forward persuasively on the legal front with this particular group of associates. I am hopeful that you have given us just what we need. As long as you take no action on your end, I do not believe you are in immediate danger. I will send further reports as they materialize.

  Yours sincerely,

  James McParland

  Manager, Western Division

  Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency

  Wednesday, May 19, 1909

  Traveling across Ohio

  The compartment was private. The compartment was quiet. The compartment swayed in its stillness. Other than the mechanical sounds of the train propelling its massive weight along the track as a backdrop to her own breath, Lynnelle heard very little from outside the privacy her father had ensured. Even turning her head occasionally to the scenery rolling by outside did not make the compartment feel larger. If Lynnelle had Joan with her, as originally planned, they might have had something to chat about in their facing seats. Instead of Joan, her mute wicker case, with its leather corners and handle, sat on the opposite seat. It held nothing of value, just personal items for travel and what she might need for a couple of nights before she was reunited with her trunk. The thought of not having the steamer in her possession even for the night at Marabel’s was unsettling, but Lynnelle and her father had spent two entire dinners discussing the impracticalities of claiming the trunk repeatedly with every transition when the railroads were well qualified to make the transfers and assure it arrived in Denver, and some of the transfers were very brief in time. Especially after it was clear she would be traveling alone, practicality won out.

  She would like to have kept her mother’s Bible with her, but it was bulky. Given the size of her wicker case, Lynnelle might have been willing to do with fewer fresh blouses on the journey, but the weight of the large, ceremonial tome would have added enough to the case to make it unwieldy as she navigated the aisles of passenger cars, hotel lobbies, and cavernous train stations.

  Denver was more than thirteen hundred miles from Cleveland. Lynnelle had looked it up in one of her old school geography textbooks when she and her father first discussed this journey. That was too many miles to sit alone in a compartment, no matter how well intentioned her father was in arranging these accommodations.

  No harm would come from going out to the main seating area. At least she could sit comfortably without having to twist her neck to look out the window to avoid having her gaze jolting into the barricade of a wall. Better yet, a cup of coffee in the dining car would perk her up, or she could read in the library car. The numbers were running together on the pages Lynnelle had in her lap. She scooped them up, evened out the edges, and returned them to the satchel—making sure to fasten and check both the latch and the strap. Locking the compartment door behind her, she turned in the direction of the dining car and progressed forward along the aisle. A few people caught her eye, and she nodded and smiled. A porter opened the doors between the cars to ease the transition across the porches, and she continued through the next car and two more after that. In the dining car, she aimed for a tiny table. Sitting alone with a cup of coffee wouldn’t require much space.

  “Hello there!”

  The cheery voice made Lynnelle glance toward its owner, and to her surprise the words were aimed at her. A young woman, perhaps three or four years her junior, waved her over. Lustrous blue eyes were irresistible above a skirt and printed shirtwaist in a color nearly matching them.

  “We have plenty of room at our table,” the woman said. “I never like to see people alone at a table on a train. Why not use the journey to make new friends? That’s my philosophy.”

  Lynnelle shifted her satchel. The papers could wait a few more minutes. “I was only going to have coffee.”

  “We were just about to order coffee ourselves, weren’t we, Henry?”

  “As a matter of fact, we were.” The man’s tone matched the woman’s, though his gray pin-striped suit was more muted garb than hers. “Henry Hollis here. My wife, Clarice.”

  “Lynnelle Bendeure. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  Henry pulled out a chair, and Lynnelle arranged herself in it as he signaled a waiter. “Bring us a pot of the best coffee you have. One does get sleepy with all this chug-chug-chugging.”

  Lynnelle couldn’t help smiling. A pot. She was only planning on a cup. “What brings you aboard the chug-chug express?”

  Henry laughed. “I like you already.”

  “We’re going to a wedding!” Clarice said. “We’ve only been married ourselves for a few months. Somehow the Ohio family thought that made us the best ambassadors to represent everyone who couldn’t make the trip. We have a trunk full of glittering gifts in the baggage car.”

  “Which I’m sure you will deliver with aplomb,” Lynnelle said.

  “The aunts would be impressed with your vocabulary.” Henry winked at his wife.

  “The aunts?” Lynnelle said.

  “Three of them, if you can believe it.” Clarice leaned toward Lynnelle. “Ivy, Ida, and Iola. Great-aunts, actually, all of them on my mother’s side. They favor the fancy comforts of life and don’t believe anyone can get married without racks and racks of silver this and that.”

  “At the very least silver plate.” The coffee arrived, and Henry took the pot from the waiter and poured.

  “But of course.” Lynnelle entered the banter.

  Clarice spooned sugar. “We tried to point out that since the cousin to whose nuptials we have been dispatched lives in Colorado, the land of mines, there is a bit of irony about carting a trunk load of silver wedding gifts halfway across the country, but I’m afraid the humor was lost on the aunts.”

  Lynnelle chuckled. “Colorado?”

  “Denver. Gateway to the wild west.”

  “I rather think it’s not as wild as it once was.”

  “But wouldn’t it be fun if it were? I’ve never been. Have you?”

  “No, actually,” Lynnelle said. “I’m also heading to Denver for the first time.”

  “Don’t tell me you have a cousin getting married. That would be too much coincidence.”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Clarice, dear,” Henry said, “give our new friend some room to breathe.”

  Clarice tilted her flowered hat conspiratorially. “My husband thinks I can be a bit much at times. You can t
ell me to be quiet at any point. You don’t even have to be polite about it.”

  “No, no wedding.” Lynnelle tested the coffee. “But your aunts do remind me of my mother’s elderly cousin, Marabel. I’m stopping off to see her near Chicago for a day. She’s a precious soul, and I don’t get to see her often. Like your aunts, she doesn’t travel any longer.”

  “I wouldn’t trade my aunts for all George Pullman’s wealth,” Clarice said.

  “Then we have that in common.”

  “I told you, Henry.” Clarice wagged a finger. “I knew it the moment I saw her.”

  Lynnelle enjoyed two cups of coffee with the Hollises before excusing herself. She’d gotten out of the compartment, and they’d taken her mind off her dilemma briefly, but the satchel in her lap seemed to gain poundage by the minute, and eventually she asked a porter where the library car was and made her way there. Two older gentlemen sat in opposite corners reading newspapers, but otherwise Lynnelle had the space to herself. She chose a table between facing seats, unlatched the satchel, and slid out the slim stack of carefully curated papers. Two dozen sheets of the most provocative financial information from among the files in her mother’s steamer. Numbers. Telegrams. Transactions. Together they told a story. If only her father had been wrong.

  Mr. McParland did not think so, but when they met in a few days he could ask his questions, she could ask hers, and they would find out for sure.

  Lynnelle folded a blank sheet of paper in half to guide her reading. She’d been over the pages—and dozens of others—so many times, but when she met Mr. McParland she must have no hesitation about any detail. Questions of interpretation, yes, but no hesitation about the content of what she held in her hands. If he, or anyone he introduced her to, began talking rapidly about the columns and lines on the pages, her mind must immediately know what the type or handwriting said, even if she did not have the particular page in front of her. She would murmur these lines under her breath as many times as necessary to be able to repeat them back flawlessly. If in the process some new perspective or inconsistency leaped out, she would point it out to Mr. McParland and see if he thought it significant. He himself was not a banker, but he did say the agency was well versed in matters of this sort.

  Whatever this sort was.

  Lynnelle blew out her breath and readjusted a crucial hairpin holding her hair up on the back of her head under her gray hat.

  The door at the back of the car opened, and a pair entered. The man, in a dark blue blazer and subtly striped trousers, gently guided the elbow of the woman, who wore a deep burgundy traveling suit. Lynnelle offered a vague smile.

  “Are there any more newspapers?” the woman asked.

  “I’m not sure.” Lynnelle gestured at her own pages. She hadn’t paid attention to what the racks offered.

  One of the men in a corner grunted. “Over there.”

  “Thank you.” The young man took a couple of papers from the rack and handed one to his companion. “Let’s sit here.”

  Other than the isolated men in the corners, the car was empty, yet the pair sat in chairs directly across from Lynnelle’s table.

  “Oh look.” The woman snapped her paper open. “This one’s from Memphis. The Commercial Appeal. I didn’t expect that.”

  “You never know what you’re going to get on a train,” the man said. “I once ran across a journalistic account of the yellow fever outbreaks in Memphis in the 1870s.”

  “Of course you did,” she said. “What paper did you get?”

  “Newark.” He smoothed the paper down on the table.

  “Newark?” The woman looked up. “Not New York?”

  “Not New York. Newark.”

  “I would think people would prefer to read a New York paper rather than a Newark rag.”

  “Now, Willie, behave yourself,” the man said. “For all we know this nice gentlewoman is from Newark.”

  Willie looked at Lynnelle, her gray eyes wide beneath hair the color of Lynnelle’s. “Are you? From Newark?”

  Lynnelle shook her head. “Cleveland.”

  “That’s a relief. I should mind my tongue. I’m sure the Newark paper is a perfectly fine publication.”

  “No doubt.”

  “I’m Willie Meade. This is Carey.”

  “Also Meade,” he said. His eyes were a darker shade of gray, and the long and deep dimple in his right cheek was a smile of its own.

  “Lynnelle Bendeure. Nice to meet you.” Lynnelle had never met a female Willie before. Perhaps her name was Wilma. She didn’t seem like a Wilma. Willa, then. Lynnelle had once known a girl in school called Willeen. In any case, Willie suited this sassy woman. Lynnelle slipped her papers under her satchel. “Where are you headed?”

  “We’re not sure.” Carey’s dark hair, on the long side compared to the men Lynnelle knew, had a wave she found attractive.

  What was she thinking? A strange man she’d just met. A married man. Lynnelle pursed her lips and immediately drew them back in, trying not to look rude.

  “We really don’t,” Willie said. “We’re taking a few weeks to ride the rails, see the country.”

  “That sounds like an adventure,” Lynnelle said. “No destination at all?”

  “We want to see the West. We might ride all the way to San Francisco,” Carey said. “Or maybe we’ll find someplace along the way that appeals and stay there.”

  “No one is expecting you back wherever you came from?”

  They both shrugged.

  “Not really,” Willie said. “We’re looking for a place to put down roots. If we find a place we love, we’ll stay. If not, we’ll go back to Buffalo.”

  “I for one have had enough of the snow in Buffalo winters,” Carey said.

  Lynnelle laughed. “I suppose by comparison we have it easy in Cleveland, but I have an idea how you feel.”

  “What about you?” Willie said. “Where are you going? Chicago?”

  “Nearby, for a stop. Eventually Denver for a few days. And then home again. No grand adventure for me.”

  “Somebody waiting for you?”

  “My father. I could never leave him.”

  Willie met her eyes. “I’m sure he’s lucky to have you.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  At least you’re going out to another meeting properly fortified this time.” Jillian pulled the front door shut behind her, gave it a second tug to be sure it was locked, and fell in step beside her father going down the porch steps.

  “Thanks to your leftover roast chicken, stretched into dinner two nights in a row,” he said.

  “When you offered to make the biscuits and gravy to go with it, what could I say?” Jillian tried to do her share of the cooking, but she was no fool. Her father’s food was delectable. Whatever she knew about cooking she’d learned from him, but she didn’t have the finesse or spontaneous repertoire he mustered. No one would ever suggest she should prepare a sit-down meal for a fundraiser dinner.

  “I still wish we had Kris’s ice cream,” Nolan said. “Now that would be fortification.”

  The walk to the Inn at Hidden Run would take ten minutes at most on a mild spring evening. They made it often, Jillian more than Nolan. When her former babysitter had returned to Canyon Mines, husband in tow, and bought a rambling, neglected Victorian more than twice the size of Jillian and Nolan’s home and set about renovating it to open a bed-and-breakfast, Jillian giggled with delight at the thought of having Nia just down the street.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you with the trunk,” Nolan said. “I thought you would enjoy it. I didn’t think about what it might stir up in you. I’m sorry.”

  “Dad, no. You can’t protect me from myself forever.”

  “As much as I’d like to.”

  “I do like having the trunk in the house, even if it’s only on loan while we—mostly you—figure out if there’s anything to be worried about. I’m going to try to clear some time to dig into it myself soon.”

  “Now you sound lik
e yourself. But you surprised me when I found you in the attic.”

  “You’re the one who said when I was ready I’d go at it again.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “Trying to be.” It seemed like she should be. What would being ready feel like? At least this time she’d managed to put everything away herself rather than storm out of the attic in tears, leaving Nolan to store everything, slide the trunk out of the way, and cover it with blankets as she had six years ago. “I’ll be all right. Let’s focus on what Nia needs.”

  “If this is about decor, I don’t know what she needs me for,” Nolan said.

  “It’s about the dinner as a whole.” Jillian made a large circle with her hands. “Besides, we’ve both learned not to argue with Nia unnecessarily, haven’t we?”

  They went in through the front door of the Inn. Nia recently had changed the round table in the large entry area, buying one that Veronica had come across at an estate sale and assured her came directly from the only other home it ever had. Some elbow grease and wax was all it took to make the table shine, and with a large vase of flowers it was the perfect welcome to visitors. A couple of midweek guests sat in the parlor enjoying the evening fire, where Leo leaned against the mantel. Nolan crossed the room to shake Leo’s hand, while Jillian went through the dining room in search of Nia. She found her in the kitchen with Veronica.

  “Where’s your father?” Nia asked.

  “In the parlor with Leo.”

  “Oh no, no, no. That is not what he’s here for.”

  “He’s just saying hello.”

  “Jillian, don’t be naive.” Nia tossed the dish towel in her hand on the counter and her dark single braid over her shoulder. “You know those two can jaw on half the night about nothing. I’ll be right back.”

  Nia left the room, and Jillian and Veronica burst out laughing.

  “She means business,” Jillian said.

  “You know she’s right,” Veronica said. “The only thing that would make it worse is if Luke was here.”