Jubilee's Journey (Wyattsville #2)(28)

“Surely you’re kidding me!” Frances Margaret cackled. “What makes you think I’d know a thing like that?’

“Well, I just thought maybe…” Olivia’s hope fell as rapidly as it had soared.

“You sure there ain’t no Southern Atlantic reunion?” Frances Margaret asked again.

Olivia assured her there wasn’t. “If you think of anything else, can you give me a call back?” She rattled off her telephone number.

“Yeah, okay,” Frances Margaret said and hung up, obviously disappointed about the fact that there was no reunion.





Once it was too late to continue calling, Olivia sat in the silk chair and began thinking back through the conversations of the evening. Of all the calls she’d made, only Frances Margaret Jones offered even the slightest bit of information, and even that was pitiful little. Anita was not going to be as easy to find as she’d originally thought. Wyattsville was not a sprawling metropolis and given enough time a person could find something as small as a lost earring, but now there was not only the chance that Anita’s last name was neither Jones or Walker there was also a chance that she didn’t come from or live in Wyattsville.

Frances Margaret said Bartholomew’s wife had swam in the bay, but there were dozens of bays dotting the east coast shoreline and hundreds of towns—maybe even thousands—along the way. Then there was also the possibility that the bay she swam in wasn’t on the east coast. When Olivia began to consider the number of bays in California alone, the count soared to unimaginable heights.

Without glancing at the grandfather clock that had hours earlier chimed twelve, Olivia picked up the telephone and dialed Clara’s number.

The telephone rang seven times before a sleepy voice asked, “What now?”

“I think Anita may not be from around here!”

“It’s two o’clock in the morning! Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

“It’s two o’clock?” Olivia echoed.

“Yeah,” Clara replied grumpily, “and I’m trying to get some sleep.”

“Oh. Well, this seemed important, so I figured you’d want to know right away.”

“It can wait until tomorrow,” Clara repeated. Then she hung up.





But once you’re awake and thinking about a problem, sleep is not easy to come by. After almost twenty minutes of tossing and turning, Clara called back.

“We’re gonna need a new plan,” she said. “Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock. I’ll get Fred and Barbara to meet us at your place; we’ll figure out what to do.” She then suggested Olivia get some sleep and stop bothering people in the middle of the night.

After Clara hung up Olivia tried to sleep. She slipped into her coziest nightgown, plumped a pillow beneath her head, and stretched out on the sofa. Sleep was impossible. First she tossed and turned, thinking about the number of bays stretched across the country. Then she came to the conclusion that even if Anita had lived near a bay as a child, she could be living anywhere now. It was a transient world. People grew dissatisfied with one spot and moved on to the next place. All she really knew was that Anita mailed five letters from Wyattsville almost seven years ago. Although Olivia couldn’t imagine someone being unhappy in Wyattsville, the truth was Anita could have moved on. She could be anywhere now. Texas, Arizona, even Paris.





Olivia was trying to imagine the look of Anita when she heard the soft sobbing. At first it was so faint, she imagined it to be coming from someplace else—blocks away, perhaps even miles. She stilled her thoughts and listened carefully. The sound became more distinct. It was a child crying. Olivia followed the sound, and when she snapped on the bedroom light Jubilee was sitting there with a stream of tears rolling down her face. In four long strides Olivia crossed the room and took the girl in her arms.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” she said softly.

Jubilee slumped into the embrace. “I had a scary dream.”

“Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry. But it was just a dream. That’s all.”

Jubilee continued to sob, her tiny shoulders quivering and breath coming in short gasps. For several minutes Olivia held her and whispered comforting words of how a dream was nothing to be afraid of, it was just scary things picking at your imagination. “Don’t worry. There’s nothing here that can hurt you.”

When the sobbing slowed, Jubilee spoke in a small thin voice, “He’s not coming back, is he?”

“No, sweetheart, the monster isn’t coming back.”

Jubie pulled back and looked up quizzically. “What monster?”

“The monster in your dream.”

“There wasn’t no monster.”

Now it was Olivia’s turn to look baffled. “If there was no monster, what was so scary?”

“The bad place.”

“What bad place?”

“The keep-out place with yellow ribbon.”

“Oh.” Olivia’s voice was weighted with apprehension. “You mean the store where your brother was working?”

Jubilee nodded. “People who go in keep-out places get dead.”

Fumbling for words, Olivia said, “Why would you think such a thing?”