Chapter 26 Harper #2
He kissed Ingrid’s cheek and then smoothed his hand over a mahogany-striped tie. “Do I need an excuse to see my grandmother?”
See his grandmother. Like Harper would believe he was just popping by for a visit when he was actively conspiring against her.
“Why are you all dressed up?” Ingrid asked.
“Had an early meeting.” He glanced at Harper before looking back at his grandmother. “Is she harassing you?”
“Hardly.” Joy spilled over in Ingrid’s laugh as she patted his long sleeve. “Harper wants to honor Olivia’s life, just like the rest of us do.”
“She has a funny way of showing it,” he said like she wasn’t even on the patio.
“You two should chat.” Ingrid picked up the coffee pot. “I’ll make some fresh coffee.”
“Thanks, Gram.”
Finn opened and then closed the sliding door behind his grandmother, leaving Harper to once again face this infuriating man alone.
She crossed her arms. “Harassing?”
Not that it mattered what Finn said. His opinion of her had already tunneled under the lowest possible bar.
“Seemed like the right word.”
Harper eyed the gutter above the porch. “Do you have cameras here too?”
“None that I know of.” He pulled a third chair up to the table, sitting across from her. “I heard through the family grapevine that my grandmother was expecting a guest from California.”
She shrugged. “Could have been someone else from California.”
“Right.”
“I guess you don’t have many Californians show up at your door.”
“Do you think she’s going to give you those film rights?” he asked.
While she was hardly relaxed, Harper’s arms fell to her side. “I was hoping she could tell me more about how Eli—your grandfather, it seems—knew Olivia. She told me that I needed to talk to you.”
He stretched out his khaki-covered legs. “Here I am.”
“I told her that we already spoke.”
“You’re remarkably resilient, Harper.”
“I’ve had some practice.”
“And now I have a few questions of my own.” He swiped his hand down his tie as if preparing for an inquisition. “Like why you thought I was Simon Farrow.”
“I found something engraved with his name, and I thought you might have lost it. I didn’t realize he’d been married to Olivia.”
His brow crinkled. “Where did you find this something?”
Her gaze traveled over his shoulder to the windswept grain, wishing she could lose herself in the stalks. “Two can play the stonewalling game.”
“I’m not trying to stonewall. I just can’t tell you everything you want to know.”
“I only want to remember Olivia, like your family does.”
He leaned back on the patio chair like he had all the time in the world. “Why don’t you tell me your story?”
“I’m afraid there’s not much to tell,” she said with a shrug. “Born and raised near Los Angeles. My mom wanted to be an actress but ended up as a housekeeper for a host of rich and famous. She had me later in her life.”
“And your dad?”
“One of the rich and famous.” A man who already had a wife and three children.
“I did a little digging and found out your mom is not actually related to Marcia Sutton.”
“Okay.”
“Marcia was adopted from the Lititz Children’s Home,” he pronounced like he’d somehow trapped her in a lie.
“That’s right, Sherlock, but you don’t have to be a great sleuth to find that info. I suspect half the town knows.”
“So who is your mother’s family?”
The manila envelope with her mom’s papers was stored in the truck, but they contained no information about a family. “Marcia was like a sister to my mom. Sadly, my mother was never adopted.”
“So your mother was—”
“Abandoned. Probably orphaned like your grandfather. We’ll never know for sure.” Harper reached for her purse, ready to be done with this conversation. “A lot of kids lost their parents around the Great Depression.”
One of the many reasons why her mom liked happy endings. Without a family to ground her, she’d craved resolution to feel whole.
It was probably why Harper wanted a happily ever after too.
She stood. “I wasn’t trying to hide that information.”
“I’m sorry.” Finn hopped up beside her to reopen the door for Ingrid. “I said too much.”
After Finn took the tray from his grandmother, Harper shook the woman’s hand. “Thank you for having me.”
“You’re leaving already?” Ingrid asked, seemingly confused, but Harper could hardly think straight, much less come up with a better excuse for running away.
“I’m afraid so. It was lovely to meet you,” she said, attempting a casual stroll around the corner of the house. Then she bolted to the truck.
“Harper!” Finn shouted behind her, but she flung open the door, not daring a glance back as she sped out of the drive.
She felt terrible about disappointing Ingrid, the gracious woman who’d made her stew and shared her home-roasted coffee and a piece of her story. Too bad her grandson was a jerk.
Harper pulled the truck over near the covered bridge and watched snowy petals from a cigar tree riding the wake of the breeze before they salted the stream.
Why did Finn care if her mother and Marcia called each other sisters?
The women had spent so much of their childhood together that they were practically related.
Even after Marcia was adopted, the two girls had attended school together in Catawba, promising they’d remain forever friends.
Not that it mattered to Finn. He seemed much more interested in illusions than actual truth.
Why did she even care what he thought? It wasn’t like she’d been trespassing on Ingrid’s patio. The woman had invited her. No matter what Finn said, she shouldn’t have run. Cowering again when she should have stood her ground.
Thinking about that man would only drive her crazy. Finn Sterling could do what he pleased. Spend the rest of his life protecting the truth about Olivia. It didn’t matter to her.
She needed to reset and refocus on writing the best possible screenplay for Sissie and for herself, but she couldn’t think clearly right now. Before she continued researching Olivia’s story, she had to confront her own ghosts.
Horses pulled an Amish buggy across the covered bridge, and she followed the buggy into town. South of Lititz, she turned onto a winding farm road until she saw the abandoned orphanage with its ivy-clad walls and a columned front porch. The place her mom once called home.
So different from Ingrid’s fairy-tale house.
This place was as desolate now as when she visited with her mom more than a decade ago, right after they searched unsuccessfully for Angeline’s birth record.
For many years, her mom had longed for a family, the loneliness carving a black hole inside a woman who’d desperately wanted to be tethered.
But when they visited this site, she told Harper that she was grateful for a safe place to live as a child and her sweet friendship with Marcia.
What would she have said to Finn’s unwelcome questions? Since she had no idea who brought her to the orphanage, her mom probably would have laughed and said a stork transported her from some exotic location.
The lonely feelings she kept between herself and her only child.
Harper opened her mom’s manila envelope and dug through the school reports and medical records until she found the single sheet that recorded her mom’s admission into the children’s home.
According to the summary, a girl had been found wandering in a nearby forest in October 1943, dragging a pillowcase with an apple, an old Hollywood magazine, and the novel Sparrow Island, autographed to someone named Izzy.
The child of a drifter, the note read. Perhaps one of many in that era.
Since the orphanage didn’t know when Angeline had been born, they’d assigned her a birth date of July 1, 1941.
Her mom once told her she’d worn holes in the pages of Screenland during her younger years, fixating on celebrities from days gone by.
She’d been devastated as a teenager when the magazine disappeared, probably disposed of by someone who thought it trash, but the dream had already been planted in her to move west. The day after she turned eighteen, she spent her small savings on a train ticket to California.
Harper paced around a broken plank on the porch, trying to reconcile the details. Olivia Belle Farrow disappeared in October of 1943. Could her mom’s arrival at the orphanage be somehow related? Or was her imagination out of control again, begging for a better ending?
Finn would think her crazy if she even suggested it, but not Kelsey or Betsy at The Book Barn. They would support her wondering.
If she found out why Olivia disappeared, perhaps she could also find out what happened to her mom.