Chapter Fifty-Six Kiersten
Chapter Fifty-Six
Kiersten
Kiersten climbed out of her car at the Martha Washington Library. Her entire body felt like a pool noodle, and she once again questioned the premise that exercise gave people more energy.
But all the tension in her sore shoulders evaporated when she entered the hushed building, where sound itself was absorbed by thousands of books.
She walked up to the front desk to conduct today’s business: getting a new library card, finding some books on teaching and creating lesson plans, and figuring out Dottie’s last name.
She waited patiently while the librarian helped a mother with three small boys check out the greater works of Thomas the Tank Engine. Then she turned to Kiersten.
“How can I help you?”
“I’m looking for advertisements for a Chevy dealership here in Alexandria back in 1964 and 1965. Do you have any idea how I could find something like that?”
“Hmm. Interesting request.” The librarian stacked three copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince beside her computer. “You could try the Fort Hunt Gazette.”
Kiersten frowned. “Never heard of it.”
“That’s because it went out of business in 1972,” the librarian said, peering at her over reading glasses.
“Our region used to have countless newspapers. The whole country did. Back when journalism was profitable. Now of course most of them are defunct. But the Gazette served readers in Alexandria from 1946 to 1972. I’d start with that.
If you don’t find what you’re looking for there, you could go wider and try The Washington Post archives online. ”
“Okay, but how do I search a defunct newspaper?”
“Microfilm.” The librarian picked up the Harry Potter books. “Follow me.”
Kiersten trailed after her through a forest of shelves. The librarian stepped into a dark room tucked in a far corner and flicked on the lights. Then she pointed to a machine sitting on a table. It looked kind of like a computer monitor.
“Have you ever used microfilm before?” the librarian asked.
“Sorry.” Kiersten shook her head. “I’m new to all this.”
“Is this genealogy research?”
“Not exactly.” She explained how she’d found the diaries in her basement. “All I have to go on is her first name and the fact that her father owned a car dealership in the area.”
The librarian pursed her lips in thought. “You’re on the right track. A lot of businesses back in the day bore the owner’s name, like ‘Smith and Sons.’ If we can figure out her last name and the year she graduated, we can figure out where she went to high school and find a picture.”
Her use of the word we made Kiersten feel lighter. She wasn’t doing this research alone. “That would be great. I’ll do the microfilm first and look through advertisements. Then I can try the yearbooks.”
The librarian led her to a row of file cabinets, then opened a drawer and removed three boxes of microfilm. “Start here,” she said.
They returned to the room with the microfilm reader, where the librarian showed Kiersten how to load the spool of film into the reader, how to move backward and forward, and how to zoom in and out.
“Good luck,” she said with a smile. Then she left Kiersten alone.
It took Kiersten a few minutes to get used to using the equipment, but after some trial and error, she figured out how to scroll through the newspaper, zooming in to examine the many ads sprinkled throughout the pages.
Looking up at the screen, she read an advertisement for shoes that cost $2.99 a pair and girls’ cotton play sets for just 99 cents, plus ads for flameless “electric heat,” an amenity advertised as “not just for the rich anymore.”
She had to force herself to focus because she kept reading the articles. The year 1965 didn’t seem like the distant past, yet everything was so different back in an era before cell phones, social media, and the instant gratification of deliveries and DoorDash.
Leaning back in her chair, she stretched her tired muscles and glanced at the time on her phone.
She’d gone through the first box of microfilm and started on the second, but she still hadn’t found a single clue about Dottie.
She’d try one more box; then she’d have to head home.
Garrett and the boys would be back from the museum soon.
She loaded a new roll and started again, flipping through the images on the screen.
Suddenly she sat up straight and leaned forward.
There. On the lower left side of the page. An advertisement for Anderson Motors, a Chevy dealership with locations in Arlington, Fairfax, and Alexandria, Virginia.
She squinted at the ad, then zoomed in to make it bigger.
The Alexandria location was in Old Town, just a few miles up the parkway from Beaverbrook Lane. She’d seen no other ads for a Chevy dealership.
This had to be it.
But as she zoomed in further, doubt dampened her elation, and she slumped in her chair.
Anderson. Could there be a more commonplace last name than Anderson? It could be the right name but the wrong family.
She took a picture of the ad with her phone, stacked the boxes neatly beside the machine, and went to find the librarian again.
“Progress!” she whispered. “I think her last name is Anderson. Now can I see those yearbooks?”
The librarian smiled. “This way.”
She led Kiersten into another small room lit with overhead fluorescent lights. “We have yearbooks from every high school in Alexandria right here, some of them going back further than others. Both public and private schools. Do you have any idea where to start?”
“She was the valedictorian of her class,” Kiersten said slowly, “and she said something once about ‘good old SMA . . .’”
The librarian frowned. “That could be a reference to St. Margaret’s Academy. It was an all-girls Catholic high school back in the 1960s. Then it merged with an all-boys Catholic school in 1990. Today it’s a coed high school called Bishop Ignatius.”
“That could be right,” Kiersten said slowly. “I think she got married the same year she graduated, so she would have been a senior in 1964.”
The librarian moved around the room with precise steps. She knew exactly where everything was. Kiersten wished her home were as organized as this library.
The librarian pulled a volume from the shelf and handed it to Kiersten. “Try this.”
Anticipation warmed Kiersten’s cheeks as she opened the cover. A musty odor rose in the air as she carefully turned the yellowing pages to photos of the senior class of 1964.
A small class, all girls. She ran her fingers under each name. Then she inhaled sharply.
Dorothy Marie Anderson, Valedictorian
A strange pang of recognition pierced her heart. She knew so much about this woman, what she thought and felt, what she ate for breakfast. But she’d never actually seen her face. Until now.
Dottie Anderson looked back at her from the yearbook. Wide, intelligent eyes, high cheekbones. Smooth hair. Cat’s-eye glasses. Not pretty exactly, but dignified, with a quiet integrity.
Kiersten sat down in a metal folding chair and went back to the very first page of the yearbook, working her way through it slowly, from beginning to end, seeking to confirm that Dorothy Marie Anderson was indeed the Dottie who’d penned the diary.
Bingo.
Her fingers brushed a picture centered on a page entitled “Future Homemakers of America Hone Their Skills in Home Economics Class.”
Candid black-and-white photos filled the two pages. Her eyes rested on a snapshot of two girls in a classroom kitchenette, wearing aprons, holding a tray of gingerbread cookies. The caption read “Dottie and Ruby finally catch the gingerbread man.”
She squinted down at the picture. Dottie was a full head taller than her best friend, and thinner. They stood beside a stove, grinning at the camera.
“This is her,” she said softly, looking up at the librarian.
“Now that you have her first, middle, and last name, we can look for her engagement and wedding announcements,” the librarian said.
Kiersten snapped a picture of Dottie’s yearbook photo with her phone, then followed the librarian back to the microfilm machine.
“Do you know what month she got married?”
Kiersten squinted up at the ceiling, trying to remember what she’d read. “She graduated in May and met her husband the day after graduation. She got pregnant on her honeymoon, and the baby was due in October. So she would have gotten married in . . .”
“December or January?” the librarian supplied.
“Yes. That’s right,” she said, remembering. “They had a New Year’s Eve wedding. The last day of 1964.”
“So she got engaged at some point between May and December.”
Kiersten nodded. “Correct.”
The librarian left the room and returned with a new box of microfilm. “Start here. Let me know what you find.”
The librarian left, and Kiersten resumed her search, flicking patiently through the black-and-white pages that filled the screen in front of her. Suddenly a headline leaped out at her. Her mouth dropped open as she read the words.
Dorothy Anderson Engaged to Wed Richard Davis.
The back of her neck prickled as she leaned closer to the screen, incredulous.
The sweet old man who’d given her coffee this afternoon .
. . the kindly eighty-something-year-old gentleman who’d offered to read the diaries for her .
. . Chip’s father and Trey’s grandfather.
He was the monster who’d stolen his wife’s shoes so she couldn’t leave the house?
He was the man who’d blamed his wife for having a miscarriage?
He was the husband who’d threatened to kill his wife if she left him . . . ?
This couldn’t be the same man.
Or could it?
And if the monstrous husband in Dottie’s diary was alive and well and living at the end of the cul-de-sac with a wife named Margaret . . . then what happened to Dottie?