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She was going to put thoughts of kissing Murdoch Lake out of her head, and focus on her interview with the Hope Life Church’s pastor.
His house was a mile past the old Coleson Hospital. Zoey slowed down when she approached the curve. The hospital relic would be just up ahead. It always freaked her out a little to see what amounted to a massive estate just sitting out in the middle of Coleson Hollow, rotting with time.
There were about half a dozen other buildings on the estate, but they were spread out. Old Coleson Hollow Road was the local name for the highway she was on now. There were two or three even older roads that wound through the estate and intersected a mile up the road. Coleson Hospital Road and Old Coleson Road. It could be confusing at first.
Very few people lived in Coleson Hollow now. Most of those were around the old church. The church had been a quarter of a mile or so up the road from the hospital. Originally the church had been on the Coleson family property, but had been parceled off several decades earlier.
It hadn't had a functioning congregation in almost thirty years, she thought.
Signs of time passing always stung. Zoey understood that. Churches such as the Coleson Hollow Hope Life Church had once been the center of social activity for these tiny communities. There had even been a small elementary school out there on the Coleson estate at one time, but it had faded from existence a good fifty years ago. Kids in Coleson Hollow were bussed to Garrity now. The church was defunct. The school was gone. The hospital had closed decades ago. The post office had burned down thirty years ago and never been rebuilt.
Nothing really remained there in Coleson Hollow.
Just the ghosts.
Had Denise been from Coleson Hollow? Maybe her parents had been workers at the hospital? The school? The small Coleson ranch that had operated until about twenty years ago, when Andrew Coleson and his wife had passed away in car accident?
Denise had worked as a lounge singer and a cashier. She hadn't been highly educated. Or if she had, her career path hadn’t shown her living up to that potential. If she had been from Coleson Hollow, it was possible career opportunities just hadn't been available.
If she had had Luc as a teen, she might not have been able to take advantage of what opportunities there had been, even if she’d wanted to. An unwed, teenage mother in a small almost nonexistent town—no.
Opportunities wouldn't have just been jumping out at Denise. Things had been hard enough for Zoey at twenty-two with an eleven-year-old. It would have been hard for Denise, with Luc. She understood that.
From what Zoey had found, Denise had bounced around Dallas, Wichita Falls, Finley Creek, and Garrity from the time Luc had been born until Zoey had. They’d found sparse employment records under Denise's name—she had worked low-end, low-paying, high-turnover jobs. And even those had been sporadic.
How had she managed to feed herself and Luc? Zoey hadn't found the answer to that yet.
The pastor of the Hope Life Church invited her in warmly. She'd known Wilbur Hunter since just after she and Pen had moved to Garrity. He'd visited her in the hospital after the shooting. She would never forget that. "Hello, Pastor Wil. How have you been?"
He was in his midfifties, had two sons—very nice, attractive successful men she had met and liked before, though both lived in Wichita Falls now—and lived alone in a small bungalow near the church. "I'm a little slower than I used to be, but I can still get around well enough. Have a dinner engagement with a young lady on Saturday. Phyllis Burns. We're going to dinner in Dallas."
Phyllis Burns was around fifty. Very nice, with two daughters and two grandchildren. She’d lived two houses down from Zoey and Pen. Pen had babysat her grandchildren a few times. Zoey fought an unexpected twinge of what felt like homesickness.
She'd really loved life in Garrity. In knowing the people who lived there, made it their home.
In...belonging.
Even though the only family she had had in Garrity had been Pen, she'd still felt like she belonged.
She reminded herself the truth—Finley Creek was forPen.She'd do anything for her sister. Anything.And she would belong with her family. Time would just strengthen those ties. Time.
"So where are you ending up?" Wil asked.
"Right across the road from my older brother and his family. They are having their second baby in December. A boy. Our eldest brother built a house there. He lives in St. Louis, though. So Pen and I will stay there until she's out of college."
"And what will you be doing while she's using that brain of hers?"
"I'm starting a new job soon. With a small firm that specializes in helping lost relatives reunite. It's...where I'm supposed to be now. That's partially why I am here, actually."
"Still looking for the past?" She'd told him some of the story, in the hospital that day he'd visited. When he'd met Ariella and Paige.
"Something like that. We've found a few things that have turned the search in Coleson Hollow and Garrity direction. My mother is buried in the church cemetery. She was the last funeral held there."
"I've not had a burial there in five years."
"She was my mother. A woman named Denise Daviess. She wanted to be buried in the same cemetery as her father. And her infant son who died shortly after birth. Only problem was—she never named her father."
"You are here to find your grandfather's name?"
