When I Meet You

by Olivia Newport

  “The creek bed has some running water. Spring snow melt must have started already.”

  Jillian raised her eyes toward the western mountains, still solidly white. They could look that way for several more weeks while water flowed to the plains below.

  “I don’t see any cattle,” Veronica said.

  Jillian shook her head. “More of a legacy ranch now than a working ranch.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Way too small to be profitable in today’s beef market.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “I read. I learn things.”

  “Well, even I know you saw that on a T-shirt,” Veronica said. “There are some buildings up ahead.”

  “Stop here for a few minutes.”

  Veronica eased the car alongside a fence, and they both got out. “How’s your foot?”

  “I can tolerate a little exploring.” Jillian hadn’t come this far to be foiled by pain in her foot.

  Veronica hit the LOCK button on her key fob, and they sauntered forward at a pace that allowed Jillian to be cautious about how she stepped.

  “A Quonset hut barn,” Jillian said.

  “It looks original,” Veronica said. “Not Victorian, obviously, so not my specialty, but World War II surplus Quonset huts were used for a lot of things.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  “You probably looked at Google Earth images of the whole property,” Veronica said.

  Jillian turned up one corner of her mouth. Acreage. Number of outbuildings. Property taxes. County assessment. In a job like hers, she’d learned to dig for information of all sorts, but once she’d found that first suspicious name from 1909 on a marriage record, the rest had been easy. Most of it would be accessible to just about anyone. What she needed was some clue about the origin of the name.

  The fault line that would trace back and prove the family story was all fabrication and the money ill-gotten.

  Getting people to chat was more her dad’s easy way, but he would never have agreed to come on this outing. She was on her own.

  Not entirely on her own. She had Veronica, whose inquisitiveness could be charming.

  Behind the Quonset hut barn stood a cluster of much smaller structures, likely storage sheds and perhaps a long-idle chicken coop. Jillian wasn’t enough of a farmer or rancher to speculate, and probably their original purposes had been adapted through the decades to a chain of more convenient uses.

  The path was uneven, making it hard for Jillian to put her injured foot down with steady compression and disguise the urge to limp. Yet the panoramic invitation to ramble on a spring day evoked the sensation of being in a state park or historic preserve featuring a living history museum. If the walls in her office at home weren’t covered with correspondence and financial records from an abandoned steamer trunk, she’d be tempted to let go of the mission that had brought her down here—and the private property sign she’d urged Veronica past. They could soak up the sensations of a bygone era for a few minutes and be on their way to Veronica’s estate sale.

  “Uh-oh,” Veronica said. “I think we’re busted.”

  Astride a white horse, a man cantered toward them, pulling on the reins when he got close. Jillian blinked at the image. Against the scenic backdrop, with ranch land and mountains behind him, he was like an illustration torn out of a book.

  Or the cover. The handsome hero. Dark hair, with tangled curls clinging at the base of his neck, scruffy cheeks that suggested he hadn’t bothered to shave that morning, and a bemused dimpled smile taking form.

  “Can I help you?”

  A horse. An actual man on a horse. Well, it was a ranch. People still rode horses on ranches, apparently, even if there wasn’t a cow in sight. Among all the questions swirling in Jillian’s mind, though, she hadn’t thought how she might answer this simple question, one someone who lived—or perhaps simply worked—on the land had a right to ask.

  “The gate was open.” Veronica’s words came to the rescue as they looked up at him. “I drove through it. It’s so beautiful down here. I suppose we wanted to see more.”

  His smile flashed. “My eyes never get their fill. That’s why I prefer a horse rather than my truck. I get the whole experience.”

  Jillian recovered herself. “This is your land?”

  “Not mine personally,” he said. “But it’s family land, and right now I’m living in one of the houses.”

  “One of the houses?” Veronica said.

  Jillian knew the answer but held her tongue. Listening, her father always said, was the best way of learning. What would this man tell her that she might not already know? He was young, not much older than she was, if at all. Living on family land—had he grown up here?—he must know family stories.

  “There are two,” he said, “the main house and the little red house, as we call them. I live in the little house.”

  “We’ve been admiring the history in the buildings we’ve seen so far.” Jillian shielded her eyes to get a better look at him. It was silly, but with brilliant Colorado sunlight filling the day, he seemed to glow on that white horse.

  “We do try to keep them from falling down around us,” he said.

  “We’re both sort of history buffs,” Veronica said. “Two houses? There must be a story to that.”

  Bless you, Veronica. Bless your curiosity.

  “One is original,” he said. “It predates 1910, though it’s been added onto and fortified a few times, so the original footprint is hard to see from the outside. The other was built a few years later and has never been much more than a nice cozy cabin. That’s why I get to live there. I’d sleep in a covered wagon if that’s what it took to be out here.”

  Veronica and Jillian laughed.

  “We live in Canyon Mines,” Veronica said. “Do you know it?”

  “Only by name. Haven’t been there. It’s a bit off the beaten path, even when I get to Denver.”

  “Part of why we love it,” Jillian said.

  “What brings you all the way down here?” the man asked.

  Veronica ran a hand through her sophisticated hair layered in a cut just to the shoulders. “We didn’t come strictly for trespassing purposes, I assure you. I buy small antiques for my shop. There’s an estate sale not far from here.”

  “So you’re just taking a drive first?”

  “Something like that,” Jillian said. “It’s such different landscape than where we live. We couldn’t resist.”

  “I’m Drew Lawson.”

  “Jillian Parisi-Duffy.”

  “Veronica O’Reilly.”

  “Come on, then,” he said. “I see no reason you can’t have a look around, as long as you’re on good behavior.”

  “That’s very gracious.” Drew Lawson. Jillian stored the name in her mind. Later it would become a leaf on a genealogy tree, a starting point to work backward toward the name she’d found. He was walking and talking DNA. Maybe there was hair in the hatbox in the trunk, fibers trapped in a hairpin or under a feather.

  She was getting ahead of herself. She could hardly ask a stranger to let her swab his cheek.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Drew said. “I have to put the horse away, but if you want to see my place, I don’t mind. For the cause of history. It’s the little red house next to the curve in the creek bed.”

  Jillian and Veronica looked at each other.

  “We’ll go back for the car,” Veronica said. “We’ll find it.”

  “Just don’t poke around too much.”

  “Right,” Jillian said. “Private property.”

  “Not everybody is as friendly as I am.” Drew clicked his tongue, and the horse went into motion.

  “What do you suppose he meant by that?” Jillian asked.

  “I don’t know,” Veronica said, “but I think we should respect the boundary. Let’s just get the car and find the little red house.”

  At the car, Jillian sank with gratitude into the passenger s
eat, glad to have the weight off her aching foot. She reached into her day bag for two items, her water bottle and over-the-counter pain relievers. Her knuckles brushed her phone, dropped into the depth of the bag hours ago with the ringer off. She’d heard it vibrating a couple of hours ago and ignored it—she knew who it would be.

  Nolan would have discovered her gone.

  She looked at the phone now.

  Five missed calls. Six text messages. All from Nolan.

  “Everything all right?” Veronica started the car.

  “Yep. Just need to send a text.”

  DON’T WORRY. EVERYTHING IS FINE. She hit SEND. Then she powered off her phone.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Denver, Colorado

  April 21, 1909

  Dear Miss Bendeure,

  While I don’t purport to be a financial or business adviser, because of the nature of our discussions, I’m pleased on your behalf that your father has taken the decision to communicate to his representative his instructions that for the time being he is suspending business in Colorado. As you have observed, it is not necessary to withdraw his registration and licensing with the state. I do have a short list of recommendations for representation if you should decide to take up activities after our business together is concluded and you are confident that it is fully safe to continue. Of course, it is my intention to make sure you feel such confidence without the least hesitation. To that end, I will conduct further inquiries regarding the names on my list to reassure you that the person you select, should you select one, has not crossed paths with the representative you have discontinued. In the interests of both justice and business, I am sure we share the goal of expeditious resolution of these matters. In the meantime, I suggest your father contact, personally or through an authorized bank executive in Ohio, the bank holding his funds in Denver and freeze all transactions immediately pending further instruction. As I indicated in the telegram I sent, because I believed the matter to be urgent, if you have not already done so, impress upon the Denver bank that Bendeure & Company has no authorized representative in Colorado until further notice.

  Yours sincerely,

  James McParland

  Manager, Western Division

  Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency

  Saturday, May 22, 1909

  Traveling across Iowa

  Cousin Marabel’s picnic basket, which Lynnelle had tried so politely to refuse in Chesterton, now allowed her to remain in her sleeping compartment nearly all the time.

  Two days ago. It had been Willie ducking into that shop in Chesterton.

  But why?

  Lynnelle wasn’t sure she wanted to know—at least not while she was on the train. Mrs. Sweeney might be right. They were trapped in the middle of nowhere—in the middle of hundreds of people. Lynnelle needed Mr. McParland’s help. He would know what Willie—and Carey with his shiny dimple—had to do with all this.

  They weren’t on an adventure to find a place to settle down.

  They probably weren’t even Willie and Carey Meade.

  Somehow, they knew she would get on the train in Cleveland.

  Somehow, they made sure they had the seats outside her compartment on the train that left Chicago.

  How was this even possible?

  Bribes, she supposed. Bribes could get a person the seats he wanted no matter who else was inconvenienced.

  She’d tried to change to another compartment where she didn’t have to think of the Meades—or whoever they were—sitting on the other side of a shared wall, but the accommodations were all booked, and she didn’t dare expose herself by moving to another car to sit up and not be able to lock herself away at all.

  The knock on her door made her jump. “Who is it?” Perhaps the porter had a telegram for her.

  “It’s Clarice. We’re worried about you.”

  Lynnelle checked her reflection in the mirror before opening the door.

  “You’re not unwell, are you?” Clarice’s blue eyes clouded.

  “A smidgen overtired.”

  “You need something to eat.”

  “I’ve been eating from Marabel’s basket.”

  “Biscuits and green olives are hardly enough. Come out with Henry and me. The railroad brought in food from the countryside somewhere. The dining car has a whole new impromptu menu. Hearty fare. It’s all the talk.”

  Lynnelle glanced at her basket, still half-full. “I haven’t had much appetite.”

  “Soup, then. Something hot will do you good.”

  Lynnelle looked in the mirror again, considering. “Have you seen Willie and Carey Meade lately?”

  “Only in passing.”

  “They weren’t outside?”

  “Not when I went past their seats.”

  “Give me a moment to pull myself together.” Lynnelle tidied her appearance and picked up the satchel. She didn’t know what Willie had seen or how many of the pages she had digested before Lynnelle returned to the compartment, but she wouldn’t take another chance. The Moroccan red satchel would go where she went, hanging across her body by its long strap so she could not forget it even while she ate a bowl of soup and was distracted by conversation.

  “Ready?” Clarice opened the door.

  Henry was waiting outside. Moving single file up the aisle, Lynnelle fell in behind Clarice and ahead of Henry, welcoming the safety of the Hollises and the relief of not spotting the Meades as they moved through several carriages.

  “The cows!” Lynnelle said when she took her eyes off the aisle and looked out a window.

  Dozens. A hundred. Probably more.

  Clarice laughed. “This will make a great story to tell the aunts. We’ve been outside to see for ourselves.”

  Lynnelle’s nose wrinkled. “How did I not smell that before?”

  “You probably haven’t had your window open,” Henry said. “The wind shifted a few minutes ago. They say that the replacement engine is almost here, but now there are cows all over the tracks.”

  “Mrs. Sweeney was right about a broken fence, I guess.”

  “It would seem so. Now they have to be sure the cows are off the tracks, and no one seems to be able to find the farmer who owns them.”

  “He must not be a dairy farmer or he would have noticed by now that they’d wandered off,” Clarice said. “Trying his hand at raising beef, I suppose.”

  “So now we have to wait for the cows, of all things,” Lynnelle said.

  The Hollises both nodded.

  “This is slightly less endearing than it was earlier.” Surely the men who worked at the depot knew the farmers in the area. How difficult could it be to track one of them down and hold him responsible for his herd?

  “On the other hand, supposedly the chickens in the chicken noodle soup were clucking only yesterday,” Clarice said. “I’m almost tempted to come back later in the summer and see what the fresh sweet corn tastes like.”

  “Country living at its best.” Lynnelle did her best to keep up with the light tone.

  They found a table in the dining car. The elegantly printed menus were partially obsolete because an entire passenger train was parked miles away from the usual places where food stores were replenished. Instead, waiters were verbally listing the substitutions available. Based on the options, Lynnelle concluded someone had negotiated an impressive supply of eggs from area farms. Deviled. Poached. Scrambled. Omelets. Benedict. Egg salad. But the knot in Lynnelle’s stomach prevented her from dabbling in anything but soup and the quota of coffee she’d missed when she skipped breakfast.

  “I don’t know what ails you,” Clarice said, “but the aunts would say you must keep up your strength.”

  “I’m probably just afflicted with a bit of impatience,” Lynnelle said. “You said you got off the train. Perhaps I need some air as well.”

  “A constitutional. We’ll all go. As long as the new engine is not here, there’s no fear of missing the train! But we may have to pinch our noses against the bovine
invasion.”

  Lynnelle made herself smile. Apparently, nothing squelched Clarice’s cheery disposition, though every hour lost took her perilously closer to missing her cousin’s wedding the next evening, if it wasn’t already too late. This was already Saturday, and the Hollises already planned to begin the journey home on Monday morning. They might just as well reclaim their luggage and get on the next train going east right now.

  Lynnelle didn’t have that option. Getting to Denver was imperative.

  “Let’s have some dessert first,” Henry said. “Lynnelle can forget the soup and skip right to the cherry pie.”

  “Yes, let’s,” Clarice said. “Oh look, here are the Meades. We can make room, can’t we?”

  Lynnelle moved both hands to the satchel as Clarice waved hers toward Willie and Carey.

  Henry shifted his chair to make space. Willie and Carey approached, smiling.

  “Here we all are,” Carey said, seeking Lynnelle’s gaze, “together again.”

  That dimple. That hair. Those eyes.

  No.

  Lynnelle pushed her chair back. “Here, take my seat. I was just about to leave.”

  “What about our constitutional?” Clarice said.

  “Perhaps there will be time later if the new engine has not arrived.” Lynnelle stood. “At the moment, I think I’ll rest.”

  “Shall I check on you later?”

  Lynnelle nodded. Agreeing seemed the quickest route to an exit.

  One advantage to the stalled train was the ease of walking through the carriages, and stepping between the porches, without constantly rebalancing to the sway of the train. Lynnelle went directly to her compartment and heaved out her breath. Going out again would require a very good reason. An open window could provide all the fresh air she needed. She raised the satchel strap over her head, unlatched it, and pulled out the dog-eared sheets yet again.

  It was all there.

  Every suspicion her father feared.

  Every conjecture Mr. McParland intimated. More than intimated.

  The more Lynnelle reviewed the financial lines and the hidden agenda in the dismissed agent’s correspondence, the more the narrative took firm shape. She was right to make this trip. To go in person. To take the evidence. To carry the files in the steamer, but most of all to keep these pages on her person.