Chapter 17 #2
“It’s like she just disappeared,” I say. “I can’t find any current info for her online. And there are about a million Dorothy Rosses, as it turns out.”
“Well, I could run the name for you,” Erika offers. “What other details do you have?”
Gratitude wells up inside me. I knew she’d come through.
At the Post, I always had Erika’s back and she always had mine.
Even when that idiot councilman called my editor to accuse me of stalking him, she didn’t flinch.
In fact, it had been her idea to involve our union rep.
He made the case that I’d only been doing my job—I needed the interview and that asshole had been ignoring my calls—so wasn’t waiting for him outside his house just dogged reporting?
The councilman claimed he’d seen me in his backyard, but he had no proof that I’d trespassed.
So, that had been that. My editor had to drop it.
I rattle off the other attributes that will make the right Dorothy Ross easier to isolate: “She was born in 1997, so she’d be twenty-four or twenty-five now. And she’s lived in both Florida and DC.”
“Okay, that should be enough. Just give me a sec.”
It takes a while for her to log onto the Post’s secure server and bring up LexisNexis. But once she plugs in the few things I know about Dorothy, the top search result appears to be the winner:
Full name: Ross, Dorothy Lilian.
Date of birth: 2/1997 (Age: 25).
The whole report is five pages—quite short, from what I remember of these. Erika downloads a PDF and emails it to me.
“Is this the real reason you wanted to have lunch?” she asks when she’s done.
“No!” I lean away from the table in shock. “Not at all. It didn’t even occur to me.”
“Mm hmm.” She narrows her eyes. “Well, whatever the case, I hope you find what you need.”
I race the five blocks back to Buzz as fast as I can without looking like a total psycho, ignoring the blisters screaming from my heels.
On the way, I tear through my inbox, most of it non-urgent.
But I do respond to an editor at Imbibe who wants to interview one of my distillery clients about some new cocktail trend.
When I’m finally enclosed behind the glass of my office, I open the PDF, my heart raging.
The defunct cell number and Gmail address that I already have for Dottie are listed first. Then comes a Georgetown University email address that obviously won’t do me any good now, and three additional phone numbers, all 850 area codes—the Florida panhandle, the internet tells me.
I lean in closer to my screen, sipping in fast, shallow breaths, and scroll down a little further to her address history.
The most recent entry is for the Georgetown apartment that she must’ve shared with Chloe; earlier, she appears to have lived in a dorm on campus.
And before that, she lived at two different addresses in Pensacola.
I quickly Google both of them. One belongs to the management office of a trailer park.
The other belongs to a small rambler with peeling powder-blue paint.
I make my way to “Potential Relatives”—often a useful section of these reports, in my limited experience, when it comes to finding people who don’t want to be found.
I see both Pensacola addresses there, too.
The trailer park is listed next to Ross, Jessica Lynn (Age 44), and the blue rambler belongs to Ross, Patricia Dorothy (Age 68).
Dottie’s mother and grandmother, I’m betting. I don’t see a father.
The other parts that I thought might hint at Dottie’s whereabouts are out of date. The most recent entry under “Employment Locator” is a Mexican restaurant in Georgetown from her college years, and her only voter registration, also from her time in DC, is categorized as inactive.
But there is one thing, toward the very end of the report, that stops me. It’s under “Criminal Filings.”
In August 2020, Dottie was charged with a misdemeanor for driving with an expired license—in Morgan County, West Virginia. That was a year and a half ago. But it’s the most recent location I have for her.
Jordana approaches right as I’m opening the site for Morgan County’s local court. I expand the Rivière media dinner spreadsheet to full screen just in case, giving her a quick smile. When she keeps going, I put in my earbuds so I can pretend I’m on the phone whenever she passes again.
The courthouse website looks like something from the AOL days of the internet; I can practically hear the dial-up sound. I click around a bit to be sure, but the result is what I expect: I can’t access digital case files here. This is the kind of place that makes you come in person.
Jordana returns—I pause my fake typing and pretend to laugh at the very witty thing that the fake client on the other end of my fake call has just said; then I give her another smile and a wave. She nods back.
To keep her off my scent, I speed through a little actual work, responding to meeting invites and adding comments to a couple of Slack chats.
The Imbibe editor has gotten back to me with the list of interview questions I requested.
They look easy enough, so I forward them to the client with my recommendation to do it: Seems like a fun opportunity! Lunch soon?
That should hold me for a while. Now it’s time for some real phone calls. The first of the three 850 numbers is out of service. My guess is it may have been Dottie’s cell phone before she moved to DC.
The second one rings a half dozen times, then goes to voicemail: “You’ve reached the Sunset Dunes Trailer Court. Our lots are full up right now, but if you wanna get on the wait list, leave a message and we’ll get back to ya.”
Only one number left, then. If it’s a dead end, I don’t have a plan for what happens next. For the first time since lunch, a creeping doubt starts to dull the adrenaline.
I suck in a deep breath and dial.
The line rings once, then a second time …
“Hello?”
An older woman’s voice on the other end, raspy and deep.
“Um, hi,” I stammer. “I’m not sure if I have the right number, but I’m trying to reach Dottie Ross.”
The line goes quiet, but I can hear the woman breathing. I know she’s still there.
“Ma’am?” I press. “Do you know Dottie?”
The woman sighs.
“What do you want with Dottie?” she says finally. My mouth goes dry.
“I’m a classmate of hers from Georgetown. Chloe Nelson,” I say, pulse pounding. “We were really close in school, but we lost touch. And I’m getting married soon, so I’d like to invite her to my wedding.”
“Oh, yeah. Chloe. She mentioned you once or twice.”
Exactly the response I was hoping for.
“She did? That’s so nice to hear. I miss her a lot,” I say. “She talked about you, too. Her … grandma.”
The guess seems safe enough.
“Yeah, well, I always made her call me GiGi. I was too young to be a grandma when she was born.”
“Right. GiGi. I remember that now. Very cute. Um, so, do you happen to know how I might reach Dottie? The number I have for her doesn’t work anymore.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t. That girl doesn’t wanna be reached.” GiGi’s voice is the bitter kind of sad, the way my mom’s sounded all the time after we lost the house. “She calls here every six months or so, to let me know she’s okay. But she hasn’t come around in years.”
“Gosh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. “She cut me off before graduation, but I didn’t expect she’d do the same to her family. I always thought I must’ve done something to upset her.”
“Oh, no, honey, I don’t think it has anything to do with you.
She said she was just tired of everything.
Just burnt out on, uh, what’d she call it?
The grind. I think she just wanted to start over, and I can’t really blame her for not wanting to come back here.
Her mama was never very good to her. I’m sure she told you some of that. ”
“Um, yeah, I knew they weren’t close.”
“You say she talked about me, though? Is that how you knew where to find me?”
The hopefulness in her voice breaks my heart a little. The least I can do is throw her a bone.
“Oh yeah, I could always tell she really loved you,” I say. “We were roommates for a while, and she gave me your number as an emergency contact. I’d forgotten I still had it. But I’ve been thinking more about her lately, with the wedding and all.”
“That’s sweet. Thank you for telling me that,” GiGi says. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful to you, I really am. Only thing I know is she’s in West Virginia somewhere.”
Jesus, lady, way to skip over the fucking headline.
“That’s something!” I say brightly, feeling the adrenaline build again. “But you don’t know where in West Virginia?”
“Not for sure, no. She sent a postcard once from Berkeley Springs. Maybe you’ve heard of it? The front of it said they’re famous for being America’s first spa.”
I type Berkeley Springs into my search bar. It’s in Morgan County, same as Dottie’s misdemeanor.
“Well, thank you for all your help,” I say, desperate to hang up and start gaming out this road trip. “It was really nice to talk to you.”
“Sure, I’m glad you called. Would you mind letting me know if you end up getting a hold of her?”
“Yeah, of course, happy to.”
“Thanks, hon. Oh, and congratulations.”
“I’m sorry?”
“On your wedding.”
Ian is in the kitchen, his head in the fridge, when I get home from work. A sturdy-looking cardboard box—about double the size of a shoebox—sits on the counter.
“Hey, babe,” he says, backing out, some terrible IPA in his hand. “The mailroom had that for you.”
I give him a quick kiss and inspect the box. What did I order from Rejuvenation? When I lift it, something solid slides around inside.
Shit. The house numbers. They’re here early.
“What is that?” he asks.
“You know, I can’t quite remember…”
“Why don’t you just open it, then?” He hands me the scissors from the knife block.
“That would be one way to figure it out,” I say with a laugh.
I push one of the blades into the taped seam as slowly as I can, trying to think how I can possibly explain this away. Right as it begins to split, I pull back.
“Whoops, you almost got me. I just remembered, this is something for you.”
“For me?” Ian asks.
“Your birthday isn’t that far off, you know.”
“Is June that close?”
“I just really liked it and I didn’t want to wait,” I say, playfully clutching the box to my chest. “Enough questions! Leave me alone while I try to think of somewhere you won’t be able to find this in six hundred fucking square feet.”
He smiles. “All right. Well, thanks, I guess.”
I bring the box into the bedroom and open it with my keys.
I take out the numbers—heavy and handsome, like jewelry that’ll tell everyone the house belongs to me—and divide them between two purses that I rarely use, shoved into the far reaches of the top closet shelf.
(My fabric swatches and wallpaper samples are already hidden there, too.) Then I break down the cardboard so it’s flat enough to stuff into our recycling bin, and change into sweats.
Ian frowns when he sees me. “You already took off that smokin’ dress?”
“You mean that extremely uncomfortable dress that I’ve been stuffed into all day?” I settle in next to him on the sofa.
“I would’ve gotten it off quick enough,” he says, grinning.
He pulls me onto his lap, so that I’m facing him in a straddle, then he kisses me deeply.
Somehow, the roughness of his stubble and the beer on his breath aren’t ruining this.
Are they making it better? It’s because I was at the Tavern today, I realize.
This is how it felt—how it tasted—to make out with him when we were first together.
He moves his hand under my T-shirt, then over my stomach and up to my boobs. He has a point that sweat pants aren’t as fun as real clothes for these purposes. We both wriggle awkwardly out of ours—none of the sexiness involved in wrestling with zippers or belt buckles.
When we’re done, he spoons me on the couch. Erika was right. Ian and I are going to be fine—better than fine, fucking spectacular—just as soon as we get out of this apartment.
I turn to face him. His arm, draped heavily over my waist, feels like a security blanket.
“Hey, I meant to tell you when I got home, I have to go out of town for work for a couple days. We’re pitching some wineries out in Virginia.”
“Cool, when?”
“Leaving tomorrow, back Sunday morning.”
He scrunches his face. “That’s short notice.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” I say. “Beth was supposed to go with Jordana, but she tested positive for Covid this morning, and Jordana doesn’t want to do it alone. She only asked me to come this afternoon.”
“Huh, okay. No big deal, I guess.”
“Really? And you don’t mind if I take the car?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. Maybe I’ll ask Brant if he wants to hang out this weekend.”
“Thank you. I really appreciate it,” I say, rubbing the back of his neck. “Oh, one other thing—can you take Fritter out for his walk Saturday night? And maybe just let him sleep here? Natalie has a shift.”
“Sure.” He laughs and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Man, you really love that dog.”
I kiss him again, then get up to shower and pack a bag.