The Mystery Man of Whitehorse. B.J. Daniels
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have a reception when we get back,” Laney said. “And you can cater it.”
“Okay,” Laci said but without her usual enthusiasm. Her mind was back on Alyson.
“We can talk more when I get home. It won’t be that long, which is why I’m resuming my honeymoon now,” Laney said, and Laci could tell by her sister’s tone that Nick had joined her on the balcony. Nick was gorgeous and crazy in love with her big sister. “'Bye, sis.”
“Oh, Laney, I forgot to tell you. Alyson and Spencer are spending their honeymoon in Hawaii, too. Maybe you’ll run into them.” But Laci realized her sister had already hung up.
AFTER WRITING UP AN offer for the building, Bridger Duvall spent the rest of the day digging through old newspaper archives, looking for any mention of Dr. Holloway, the Whitehorse Sewing Circle or Pearl Cavanaugh.
As he searched, he thought of Pearl’s grand-daughter Laci and their chance meeting at the wedding. Fate? Not likely given the size of Whitehorse, Montana. Laci lived five miles south of town in what was locally known as Old Town. The now near ghost town had once been Whitehorse. That was, until the railroad came through in the 1800s and the town moved north to the rails, taking the name with it.
He recalled the first time he’d seen Old Town. If a tumbleweed hadn’t rolled across the dirt street in front of his car, he wouldn’t have slowed and would have missed the place entirely.
Little was left of the small ranching community. At one time there’d been a gas station, but that building was sitting empty, the pumps long gone. There was a community center, which was still called Whitehorse Community Center. Every small community in this part of Montana had one of those. And there was the one-room schoolhouse next to it.
There were a few houses, one large one that was boarded up, a Condemned sign nailed to the door, an old shutter banging in the wind.
For years the community had been run by Titus and Pearl Cavanaugh, both descendents of early homesteaders and just as strong and determined as the first settlers.
Titus was as close to a mayor as Old Town had. He provided a church service every Sunday morning at the community center and saw to the hiring of a schoolteacher when needed.
Pearl’s mother Abigail had started the Whitehorse Sewing Circle. The women of the community got together a few times a week to make quilts for every new baby and every newlywed in the area.
The old cemetery on the hill had also kept the Whitehorse name. The iron on the sign that hung over the arched entrance was rusted but readable: Whitehorse Cemetery.
Bridger had learned a lot about the area just stopping at a café in Whitehorse proper, five miles to the north and the last real town for miles. All he’d had to do was ask about Old Town Whitehorse and he got an earful. The people were clannish and stuck to themselves. The old-timers still resented the town moving and taking the name. And, like Whitehorse proper, both communities were dying.
A lack of jobs was sending the younger residents to more prosperous parts of the state or the country. The population in the entire county was dropping each year. People joked about who would be around to turn the lights out when Whitehorse completely died.
While Bridger had learned a lot, he hadn’t gotten what he’d come here to find. Not yet, anyway.
And now he’d made the acquaintance of Pearl’s granddaughter, Laci. She was a cute thing, fair skinned, slender, with short curly blond hair and blue eyes.
Life was strange, he thought as he continued to search the old newspapers. In a way, his life had started here. And now here he was, thirty-two years old and back here in hopes of finding himself.
The one thing he’d learned quickly was that being an outsider was a disadvantage in a small Montana town. Not that he’d expected to be accepted immediately just because he lived here and was now opening a restaurant.
But he’d found it was going to take time. Fortunately, time was the one thing he had plenty of.
His eye caught on a notice in one of the old news-papers he’d been thumbing through. A city permit for a fence at a house owned by the late Dr. Holloway.
Bridger felt a rush of excitement. For months he’d been trying to track down his birth mother after finding out that he was adopted.
Not just adopted—illegally adopted. The story his adoptive mother told him on her deathbed involved a group of women called the Whitehorse Sewing Circle.
Thirty-two years ago, his parents, both too old to adopt through the usual channels, had gotten a call in the middle of the night telling them to come to the Whitehorse Cemetery.
There an elderly woman gave them a baby and a birth certificate. No money exchanged hands. Nor names. Bridger had surmised over his time here that the woman in the cemetery that night was none other than Pearl Cavanaugh.
How a group of women had decided to get into the illegal adoption business was still beyond him. Nor did he know how many babies had been placed over the years.
He’d come to town months ago, rented an old farm-house just outside of Old Town and begun his search.
Unfortunately, his quest had come at a high price. Most of the people involved were now dead. The doctor who Bridger believed had handled the adoptions—Dr. Holloway—had been murdered by one of his coconspirators, his office building burned to the ground, all records apparently lost.
The woman he believed to be the ringleader, Pearl Cavanaugh, had suffered a stroke. Another key player, an elderly women named Nina Mae Cross, had Alzheimer’s. Both women were in the nursing home now. Neither was able to tell him anything.
But Bridger was convinced Holloway was too smart to keep records of his illegal adoption activities with his patients' medical records at the office. So he held out hope that the records would be found elsewhere.
But where would the doctor have hidden them to make sure they never surfaced? Maybe in this house Bridger had discovered.
Or maybe no records had been kept. Certainly no charges had been filed against anyone involved, for lack of evidence.
But even if Bridger found proof, not one of the women in the original Whitehorse Sewing Circle was less than seventy now. None would ever see prison. The only thing he could hope for was learning his true identity.
“Even if you had proof that would stand up in court,” the sheriff had said, “you sure you want these women thrown in jail? If they hadn’t gotten you and your twin sister good homes, neither of you might be alive today.”
Bridger knew he probably owed his life to the Whitehorse Sewing Circle. The women had taken babies who needed homes and placed them with loving couples who either couldn’t conceive or were ineligible to adopt because of their age.
Also, something good had come out of his quest: he’d found his twin sister, Eve Bailey. Eve had grown up in Old Town and suspected from an early age that she was adopted. She’d come back here also looking for answers and, like him, had ended up staying.
As he copied down the address of the house that Dr. Holloway had owned, he felt a surge of hope. The doctor had lived in an apartment over his office. So what had he used the house for?
Bridger tried not to get his hopes up, telling himself that if he didn’t find anything at the house, there was always Pearl Cavanaugh’s granddaughter.
One way or the other, maybe he’d finally get lucky.
LACI JUMPED WHEN THE phone rang and picked it up before even checking caller ID. She’d been thinking about Alyson, so she’d just assumed it would be her.
“Laci?”
“Maddie?” She realized she hadn’t heard from her cousin in weeks, not since Maddie Cavanaugh had moved to Bozeman to attend Montana State University. “How are you?”
“Great. Really great,” Maddie said, sounding like her old self