Chapter Fifty-Eight Kiersten
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Kiersten
Kiersten leaned closer to the screen and began to read the engagement announcement.
Miss Anderson, also the daughter of the late Mrs. Marie Anderson, is a graduate of St. Margaret’s Academy and is currently employed by her father’s auto dealership, Anderson Motors.
Mr. Davis, a graduate of the University of Virginia, is currently employed as Vice President of Sales at Anderson Motors.
A New Year’s Eve wedding is planned.
She snapped a picture just as the librarian poked her head through the door.
“Any luck?”
“Lots of luck. Now I just need to find out if she’s still alive. And if she is, I need to figure out how to contact her.”
“I suggest Google for that. If she’s still living, you could also try a white pages search or even Facebook. If she died anytime in the last twenty years, her obituary will be digitized. And if she grew up in this area, her obituary likely appeared in The Washington Post. I’d try that.”
“What if she died . . . earlier?”
“If she died before they digitized the obits, you’d have to hunt through microfilm for that. And if you don’t have a death date, it could take quite a while,” the librarian conceded.
Kiersten nodded, still shaken by what she’d found. “Thank you so much for all your help. I’d never have found all this on my own.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” the librarian said. “Take care.”
Kiersten stumbled out of the library and into her minivan, a sick feeling twisting her gut as she argued with herself.
Maybe this meant nothing. Maybe it was all a coincidence.
Anderson and Davis were common last names.
Maybe the Richard Davis who lived next door was a completely different person from the Dickie Davis who’d made Dottie’s life a living hell on Beaverbrook Lane in 1965.
And what about Peggy? Wasn’t Peggy a nickname for Margaret?
She rubbed her hands over her face, then stared out the window. She had to face it. Richard and Margaret, her sweet next-door neighbors, had to be the Dickie and Peggy in Dottie’s diary.
Her mind flashed back to the Beaverbrook Harvest Festival supper, where they’d toasted Richard and Margaret’s fifty-nine-year marriage. What had Chip said last night? We’ve been married for fifty-nine years, all of those years happy, and spent here on Beaverbrook Lane.
How was that possible? Richard was living with Dottie on Beaverbrook in 1965. But in 1966 he was living on Beaverbrook with Peggy?
And they were still there. So what happened to Dottie?
She leaned back against the headrest. Garrett and the boys would be home soon. She couldn’t sit here at the library for days, sorting through boxes of microfilm.
But she could search every obituary for Dorothy Davis on Google tonight. And she could listen to Dottie’s words.
She drove home as fast as the law allowed, ran inside, and removed the second diary from its hiding place and began to read.