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Chapter One
“Ican’t understandthis, Mom. This island? In the middle of Michigan? You were the one who always said as Californians, we don’t need to go anywhere else.”
Penny stabbed her foot on the brake just in time as they staggered through Los Angeles traffic. Her blonde hair stuck to sweaty patches across her arms and neck, and she glanced anxiously toward Elise. Probably, Penny thought her mother was going through some sort of nervous breakdown in the wake of her own mother’s death.
And maybe that was true. Perhaps this all really was an elaborate nervous breakdown.
“Maybe I’ve seen enough of California for now,” Elise told her daughter. No matter how many years passed since that first driver’s license, her heart still pattered anxiously when Penny drove. It had been kind of her to offer to drive her to the airport, so kind that Elise hadn’t found it possible to refuse. Still, she wished she had just hired a taxi.
“You’re only going to be gone a week, right?” Penny’s eyebrow arched as she waited in response.
“I’m going to feel it out,” Elise told her. “I’ll make up my mind as I go.”
“Mom. I don’t like to hear that,” Penny replied, heaving a sigh. “You’re too old to run away from home, you know.”
“Now you’re just being melodramatic. I like to think we’re never too old to do anything,” Elise said with a mischievous grin.
“All right. All right.” Penny’s palms stretched over the top of the steering wheel as they paused in traffic yet again. “To be honest, I wish I was headed out there with you. This audition is freaking me out, especially since classes are about to gear up again.”
“You couldn’t pay me to go back to college,” Elise stated. “The stress was impossible.”
“Gee. Thanks.” Penny chuckled. “Just tell me why did you choose this island again? Is it really all because of that movie we watched?”
Elise hadn’t told Penny about the gritty details of her mother’s diary, her tumultuous past, or the fact that, assuredly, her grandfather lurked somewhere in the Midwest, potentially without knowledge of Elise or Penny or Bradley at all.
“It looks beautiful. And you know I’m in the middle of writer’s block. Isn’t this what writers are supposed to do? Get away from it all? Get some inspiration?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m an actress. Actresses like to be in the middle of it all,” Penny said.
“Good point.”
Penny left the car buzzing beside them as they hugged goodbye one final time outside of the terminal at LAX.
“Why do I feel like you’re my daughter and I’m worried about you instead of the other way around?” Penny demanded.
“I don’t know. That sounds like something we should work out in therapy,” Elise said teasingly.
“Mom. No joking around here. You’ll tell me if you need anything, right?”
“Of course, I will. You too, okay?”
“No matter what.”
After making her way through security, Elise inspected herself in the airport bathroom: adding a dash of mascara and a layer of lipstick. A woman shot into the bathroom behind her and made eye contact in the mirror. Embarrassed, Elise shoved her makeup in her bag and headed into the hallway. It was like the woman had peered into her soul and seen just exactly what Elise was up to.
She was on a silly mission that may never come to fruition.
And she had put far too much stock in it.
After that first night with the film and the diary, Elise had investigated the staging company thatSomewhere in Timehad hired from, the one that was based in Chicago. There was no record of the staging company in operation after 1983, which meant that whoever this Dean person was, he no longer worked there. Elise had hunted for a list of possible staging workers, but the internet revealed almost nothing.
Dean. Dean was the only name she had to go on. Dean and any details she could glean from the 1979 diary. Since that first night, Elise had found it almost too difficult to open it again, as though the binding itself was made of fire.
“One secret at a time,” she muttered to herself as she slipped into line to grab yet another coffee before the plane.
As she sipped the hot liquid and nibbled on a scone, her eyes scanned the tarmac outside. The planes caught the blaze of the California sun and reflected it back. Again, she stirred in a panic: demanding of herself why her mother had found it necessary to lie to her only daughter for all these years.
Was it because whatever lurked out in the Midwest would be too difficult for Elise to uncover?
