Chapter 18 #2
The old woman peered up at her with a glint in her eyes.
“I like to think of myself as M, with the people on the other end as my agents.” She rubbed her hands together.
“Now let’s see who’s awake in the fine state of Mississippi.
If we’re lucky, Norman Clintock is at the dials—his brother was in state government, so he’s connected. ”
Frankie watched as Thora did her thing, unsure what to think of this unusual method of communication.
“Couldn’t you just call him?” she asked.
Owen chuckled next to her as if anticipating the answer.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Thora said. “Every Tom, Dick, and Harry knows how to use a phone. This baby requires sophistication.” She patted the box in front of her. “Oh, hold on.” She yanked her headphones on and listened.
“Yes, this is Purple Partridge. Over.”
“They use code names too?” Frankie asked Owen.
He grinned. “You don’t know the half of it.”
They were in luck, and Thora’s contact was “on the air” or whatever they called it. Frankie stopped caring about the minutia of how the technology worked as soon as she heard Thora mention Stella-Jane and Greg and the year the baby had supposedly been born.
“I have their parents’ information too,” Frankie said, pulling the marriage certificate out of her bag and placing it in front of Thora, who gave her a thumbs up.
“Anything you can find on either of these folks would be much appreciated,” she said finally. “Yes. Yes. Over and out.”
“Well?” Frankie asked as soon as Thora pulled off her headphones, mussing her dark gray curls in the process.
“He’s going to look,” she said. “No guarantees, but if anyone can help us, it’s him.” She let out a great big huff of air and patted both hands on the desk as if she’d just finished a long day’s work. “Now who’s in for a game of cribbage?”
As unconventional as Thora’s information network was, it did pay off. Less than twenty-four hours later, Owen messaged Frankie to stop by when she got a chance, and she was there within a half hour.
“Norman faxed me this a little bit ago,” Thora said, waving a stack of papers in front of Frankie from her perch in her easy chair.
“Greg Milne, born December 13, 1957, in Mobile County, Alabama,” she read.
“Stella-Jane Milne, nee Sutton, born July 10, 1958, Jones County, Mississippi.” She handed the papers to Frankie.
“This has a couple addresses, and their parents’ and grandparents’ information too.
Norman’s wife is big into genealogy, so if time wasn’t of the essence, you might have gotten more than that. You need only ask.”
Frankie poured over the information, skimming names she’d never before seen and places she’d had no idea she was connected to. Biloxi, Montgomery, Baton Rouge. She’d only expected facts relating to her parents, but suddenly her family tree had branches that stretched much farther skyward.
She sank onto the couch at once filled by the connection to her ancestors and stupefied by the fact that none of these names had ever crossed Estelle’s lips.
Well, except for her grandfather’s, who she’d called Pepe.
She ran her fingertip under his name, Joseph Martin Sutton, then onward to his wife’s.
“Imgr., Kildare,” she read in parenthesis by their names before looking up. “What does that mean?”
“I assume they were immigrants,” Thora said.
Owen typed something on his phone. “Kildare is a county in Ireland,” he supplied. “That must be where they were born.”
“No, they were French,” Frankie said. “My great-grandpa was a bugle boy for the French army during the Great War and went on to play—” She was about to say “some of the finest venues in Paris” but cut herself off when something Estelle had said when they were struggling on the road rose to her mind’s surface.
Music saved my pepe’s life in the trenches.
It will look out for us too. Back then it had nipped any complaining from Frankie in the bud, but now, the words skewed dissonant when contradicted by the facts on the documents in her hands. It must have been another lie.
“I take it that’s what she told you?” Thora asked gently.
Frankie nodded, feeling a headache creeping up her temples. “It rolled off her tongue like the truth. Like she believed it herself.”
“Maybe she did. Or you misunderstood. Greg had ancestors in Baton Rouge—lots of French descendants there.”
“I don’t think so,” Frankie said. “She’d have been more hesitant if it was speculation. This was fact. Something she was proud of even.”
“Maybe she wanted it to be true,” Owen said. “Some people lie because—”
Thora cut him off with a sharp glare.
Frankie’s eyes trailed between them, sensing something solidifying in the building tension. “What?”
“It’s not important,” Thora said.
“If it’s about my mom, I want to know.”
Thora stalled, something Frankie hadn’t seen her do before.
“Please?” Frankie said.
The older woman relented. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I didn’t know Estelle, and I don’t want to speculate.”
“But?” Frankie urged her on.
Thora looked at Owen. “What my grandson was about to say is that some people lie because something within them compels them to. I learned about these things when Owen had his struggles. I was looking for an explanation, trying to understand.”
“My family didn’t know about my drinking at first,” Owen said. “But they could tell something was off.”
“So I wondered if there was a mental illness at play,” Thora filled in. “That’s how I learned about compulsive lying. It seems to me that Estelle might have had some trouble distinguishing between reality and imagination is all.”
The knee-jerk urge to protest was too strong to resist. “No, she was a success,” Frankie said. “In every part of her life. If she was ill, someone would have caught on. I would have caught on.”
Thora peered at her for a long moment. “But aren’t you?”
Frankie stared unseeingly at the papers in her hand. Was she? Had she been oblivious to the ruse all these years, or worse, had her vision been obscured? The answers were out there somewhere.
“I need to go there,” Frankie said, more to herself than to the others.
She looked at the first address listed, recognizing the county name from the marriage certificate.
“Ferrisville is the only town in the right county, so it’s probably where they lived when they got married.
Someone might remember them.” Heck, maybe she still had family there.
She stood up, readying herself to leave. “Tell Norman thank you from me, okay?”
“You’re leaving now?” Owen asked. “It’ll be dark soon, and it’s a long drive.”
She checked the clock on the wall. He was right. “Tomorrow morning then.”
“What about your job?”
“I’ll figure something out.” She had to. This wasn’t something she could put off.
“Owen will go with you,” Thora said.
“I will?” Owen asked at the same time Frankie said, “Why would he do that?”
“Those are backwater towns, not known for embracing strangers,” Thora said. “And since you have no idea who you might encounter, you’ll be safer traveling with a”—she gestured to Owen—“friend.”
“But what about you?” Frankie asked. “Don’t you need him here?”
“I can make do for a day or two,” Thora said. “The Word Birds will look in on me.”
Owen and Frankie looked at each other, the decision dangling between them.
Frankie reached for it first. “If you don’t mind,” she said.
He let out a breath. “No, no. I’m fine with it as long as you are.”
It was settled. First thing in the morning, they’d head south.