7
My dad took me camping every summer when I was growing up. It was always just the two of us—Mimi wasn’t much of an outdoor girl—and we’d spend a week at El Capitan Beach.
By the time I rolled my groggy little self out of my sleeping bag each morning, he would have the camp stove burning full tilt. I’d unzip the tent and follow my nose toward the smell of bacon and scrambled eggs, my mouth watering in anticipation. He’d have a spatula in one hand, and he’d gesture toward the sky with the other. “’Bout time you got up. We’re burning daylight,” and with that, the adventure would begin. Days spent hiking the cliffs, digging in the sand, and playing in the waves. He never grew tired of building sandcastles and pretending for hour after hour that seashells were magical chariots with pebble princes and princesses riding them all around the moat.
By the time the sun started to set across the ocean, Daddy would throw me on his shoulders and carry me up the hill to the campground. The whole way up, he made neighing sounds and bucking motions, like he was a renegade horse. People looked at us like we were idiots, but we didn’t care. We were happy. Completely happy.
Actually, maybe it was only me.
The printer whirred and zipped as it printed out page after page. By the time Kelli left her laptop to check on the progress, there were well over thirty pages in the tray. She pulled them out and began to sort it all by subject. So far, everything fit into one of four categories: Mother. Sister. Brother. And her father’s friend named Ken Moore, who was a little easier to find information about.
Knock. Knock.
Kelli turned the stacks upside down before she went to answer the door of her apartment. Probably her landlady. Since Kelli lived in the mother-in-law unit above Mrs. Rohling’s garage, she dropped by for one reason or other several times a week. Although she wasn’t the nosy sort, she did tend to tidy up as she talked, a habit she acknowledged as being annoying but unbreakable.
It was a relief to find Denice at the door instead. “How’s the research coming?” She hurried inside and kept her voice low. “I’ve been doing some of my own, and then it occurred to me that we could accomplish more by working together. You know, pooling our collective wisdom.” She reached into her purse and pulled out her iPad.
“Sounds like a good idea, although I seem to have more or less hit the dead end of having found most everything there is on the Internet.”
“I’ve got the same problem, that’s why I came over.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
“I called in sick.”
“Why?”
“So I can help you figure this out. I’m not leaving you out here all alone to suffer like this. We are best friends, and this is what friends do for each other.”
“I doubt seriously your boss would agree.”
Denice grinned. “He won’t be my boss for much longer. Three more months and then I am free of that man forever. I’ll be in charge of my own destiny.”
“You’ll be in charge, huh? What about your partners?” Kelli smiled.
“Eh, they’re pushovers. I’ll rule the place as a kind, humble, yet firm queen.”
That made Kelli actually laugh out loud. “I don’t know that I’ve ever heard Jones’s name and pushover in the same sentence before.” Jones had a heart of gold, there was no denying that, but he also had a mile-wide stubborn streak.
“Well, that’s because Jones isn’t crazy about everyone else the way he is about me. Basically, he’ll do whatever I tell him.” It was a joke, yet at least half true at the same time.
“Well, I, for one, have not fallen into your evil little spell. I’m not a pushover. I’m a stickler, even if you are a queen.”
“But, just like my husband, you love me to your own detriment. Yep, I’m planning to kick back and relax and enjoy the fruits of your labor soon enough. But first”—she opened her iPad case—“I’ve got to help my best friend figure out what exactly is going on here. What’s your story, so far as you’ve found?”
“Best I can figure, we lived in a small town in Tennessee. We were supposed to take a family trip to a coastal cabin in South Carolina. Dad and I went a couple of days earlier than the rest of the family—something about looking over a cabin he was thinking about buying. The day before everyone else was due to arrive, Dad rented a little boat, the two of us went for a ride, and the boat washed ashore twelve hours later in a storm. He must have planned it all pretty carefully. The timing, the boat. His car was left at the dock. All our things were still in the hotel room. He must have hidden another car somewhere up the coast, I don’t know, then somehow set the boat adrift, knowing a storm was coming.”
“Yes, it does, but everything about this seems farfetched.”
“Okay, so what have you found about your family in recent years? I haven’t seen much other than a notice in the local newspaper that your sister got married about four years ago.”
“You did? Where’d you find that?”
“The Shoal Creek Tribune. Here, I copied it.” She shuffled through her papers until she found the right one, then slid it across the table. “The two of you favor each other a fair amount.”
Kelli looked at the wedding picture of the sister she’d believed dead for the past twenty-four years. Her smile was huge as she stood beside her groom, a lake in the background. What had her wedding day been like?
Kelli handed the picture back to Denice. “I don’t see a resemblance at all.”
“That’s because she’s got a fancy wedding updo and makeup. Take all that away, and I’m saying there are several similarities.” Denice didn’t bother to look as she put the article back into her file. “Your brother has been a little harder to track down.”
“For me, too. You know what? I think I’m going to need to take a trip back there and see a few things for myself.”
“Go back there? Absolutely not. Nothing good would come of that.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. You’re the one who keeps telling me I have to work forward and get some closure. Maybe my father had some reason to do what he did. Maybe my mother is an addict, or an abuser, or mentally unstable. Even Jones said she must be a piece of work for this to have been necessary.”
Denice looked doubtful, but she nodded her head slowly. “Perhaps if you went back there and saw the truth, you could move forward with your life with a sense of peace, and quite frankly, that’s what is at stake here. I still think it is very risky. You would need to set some boundaries and hold firm to them, and I do mean hold firm.”
“Of course.”
“You know I’d come with you if I could.”
“I know you would, but this is something I’ve got to do myself.” Kelli turned back to her stacks of paperwork. “I wonder if there are other members of the family, too—aunts, cousins, grandparents . . . Grandparents! Why didn’t I think of this before?”
“Think of what?”
“Opal. I wonder if she knows anything.”
“Mimi’s mother?”
“Yes.”
“Your father and Mimi married after the two of you moved here, right? Surely even if Mimi knew the whole truth, or even if she was involved, they wouldn’t have told Opal.”
“I’m not so sure. Mimi tells Opal pretty much everything. Who could say what she might know?” She nodded her head, liking the thought more and more. She picked up her cell and scrolled to Opal’s number in her contacts. “Opal? I was thinking I might come visit tomorrow afternoon. Can I take you out for dinner?”