That afternoon Daisy returned to the Library of Congress, where she immersed herself in census records from Nebraska in the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies. She was able to find Trudy’s name in the Nebraska Territory Census of Eighteen Sixty as a member of the Hauchfen household. She was also able to find the Hauchfen family in the Census of Eighteen Seventy, but there was no mention of Trudy. There was no Sheridan household listed in either the Census of Eighteen sixty or the Census of Eighteen Seventy.
Next she looked at the records of births, deaths, and marriages in the Nebraska Territory. After a tedious search, she found Trudy’s birth record and the marriage record of Trudy and Thomas. But as hard as she looked, she wasn’t able to find a death record for Trudy. She looked under every name she could think of: Gertrude Sheridan, Trudy Sheridan, Mrs. Thomas Sheridan, and even Trudy Hauchfen and Gertrude Hauchfen. There was no mention of her at all.
It was like Trudy had disappeared. Daisy had come to a dead end.
The Sheridan household had obviously existed in the mid-eighteen sixties, but Thomas and his children, if they were still alive, had moved away from the Nebraska Territory. But where had they gone? And was it possible Trudy had lived and gone with them?
Daisy had spent the entire afternoon searching for the long-ago whereabouts of Trudy and Thomas and the children, and the announcement that the library was closing startled her. Lost in thought, she packed up her belongings and returned to the coat check station to retrieve her tote bag.
On the way home Daisy called Grover, against her better judgment. She wasn’t sure he would want to talk to her, but she figured she could offer some kind of olive branch if he was angry with her for some reason.
He answered on the second ring.
“Hey--want to go somewhere for dinner? I have to get out of my own head for a while,” Daisy said in greeting.
“Sorry, but I have plans tonight. Maybe some other time,” Grover replied. He didn’t elaborate. Daisy could feel the heat rise on her face. She couldn’t pinpoint the reason for her embarrassment, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had just been summarily brushed off. Maybe he had a date and didn’t want to jinx it, she thought. Maybe he was lying and didn’t have plans at all. Maybe he hadn’t gotten over whatever made him upset with her in the first place.
She was faced with the prospect of spending the evening alone, so she picked up a sandwich at a shop near her apartment and set up her laptop on the kitchen table as soon as she got home. Might as well work if there’s nothing else to do, she thought.
She pulled up a genealogy website and typed Trudy’s name into the search bar. Immediately there were some leads, and for the next three hours Daisy followed the clues where they led. She learned that Trudy’s father had been born in Germany and that her mother was from the state of Ohio. Daisy wondered how they had met. If they were like so many other young couples in the territories in the nineteenth century, they had met while the man made his way west looking for greater economic opportunity or more space to farm. From what Daisy could gather on the website, both of Trudy’s parents had passed away while living in Nebraska.
As hard as she looked, Daisy could not find a record of Trudy’s death on the website. There were death records for both her parents, so it wasn’t a question of there being insufficient record-keeping at the time.
Having reached a place in her research where she couldn’t find any more information about Trudy, Daisy turned her attention to Thomas. What she found surprised her: the only records of Thomas Sheridan existed in the Nebraska Territory. There were no records of his birth, his death, or his first marriage. There were no records of any marriage he may have had after his marriage to Trudy. Daisy sat back in her chair, staring at the computer. It wasn’t until then that she realized how sore she was from sitting hunched over at the computer—her shoulders hurt, her neck hurt, her back hurt. She stood up and stretched to get the kinks out, then turned off the computer.
As much as she loved this research, it had taken the entire day. She vowed to get work done on her women’s history articles the next day.
She had just crawled into bed when the phone rang. Glancing at the caller ID, she was surprised to see Grover’s name.
“Hey. What’s up?” she answered.
“Nothing. Did I wake you?”
“No, I was just getting into bed. Another five minutes and I would have been sound asleep. Everything all right? Any news?”
“Everything is okay, I guess. No news.” She could picture him shrugging. “Work is slowing down a bit because of the thing with Walt.” It’s more than just a ‘thing,’ Daisy thought. But she knew he didn’t like to talk about it.
“When’s your next party?”
“Thursday night.”
“Need help?”
“Sure. You can help if you want.”
“I know you didn’t call to talk about the party on Thursday night. What’s going on?”
“I had a date tonight. It was awful.”
“Oh. I wondered what you were doing tonight. Why didn’t you want to tell me earlier that you had a date?”
“I dunno. I just didn’t.”
“What was so bad about it?”
“It’s a woman I met at one of my parties a few weeks ago. She called me at the office and asked me out.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Just dinner. She was so boring. Didn’t talk about anything but herself all night long.”
“I’m sorry. Too bad you had to spend your evening that way.”
“Daisy, I…” Grover stopped talking.
“What?”
“Nothing. I forgot what I was going to say.”
“Why don’t we talk tomorrow? I’ve got to get some sleep.”
“Sure. Talk to you then.” There seemed to be a tinge of sadness in Grover’s voice, but Daisy couldn’t be sure. It was an uncommon emotion for him, so she didn’t hear it in his voice very often.