Page 28 of Buried Secrets

“Hello there Jasper,” Matt greeted as the man stepped into the light, his eyes shaded by an ancient baseball cap.

Jasper Holloway stood momentarily still on the porch, looking down at Matt. After an awkward moment of silence, as was his nature, he replied. His voice was deep and rusty as if he hadn’t spoken in days. “Sheriff.”

“I see you’ve been working with the construction crew over at the mansion. Sullivan treating you all right?”

A hand as large as a catcher’s mitt lifted the ancient cap off a shock of white hair. Matt was surprised by the color; Jasper had aged since Matt last saw him close up. He guessed Jasper was somewhere in his late seventies. He’d been drafted into Vietnam when he was nineteen. He came home with a purple heart and was never the same man who’d left.

The whole town treated him gently. Some avoided him, some treated him as if he never changed. Sullivan, the owner of the construction company renovating the mansion, was one of those people. Sully’s father, then Sully, had always kept him employed in some capacity, typically in manual tasks that used his physical strength and size. Matt knew the Sullivans were somehow related to the Holloways, and Sully had continued to employ Jasper as his father had when he took over the company.

“Yeah,” Jasper answered. He pointed to the take-out bag in Matt’s hand. “Got pie?”

Matt considered the bag for a moment. “Yeah.”

With that, Jasper lumbered off down the street, leaving Matt feeling a little guilty over the treat in his hand. However, that was the most Jasper had said to him in years. He watched him walk down the darkened street, likely heading home to where he lived with his sister.

The afternoon light slanted through the filmy basement windows, thick with dust motes that spun in slow eddies above the records table. Kaitlin didn’t notice the hour, only the ache in her shoulders and the rapid flutter of her pulse as she turned another brittle page. The hush around her was absolute but for the muffled creaks and groans of the mansion above, a restless old beast shifting in its bones.

She had spent seven hours combing the ledgers, and her fingers were blackened by ink and time. Most of the names were meaningless scrawls in faded pencil, notations about wages or duties, an occasional “discharged” or “transferred” in the margin. But then, half buried in a ledger marked “Births—1991,” she found it: a woman’s name, awkwardly blotted, the surname only half legible. And beside it, a delivery date. The day her baby girl was born.

Her own birthdate. March 14, 1991.

Kaitlin’s heart stuttered. She pressed her palm flat atop the open page, as if she could make the paper yield more than ink. There was no baby name listed, only the mother’s and a gap where the father’s information should have been. Her throat tightened at the emptiness of it, at the realization that this, this scrap, might be all she’d ever have.

She fumbled unsteadily for her phone and took a quick photo of the entry, then jotted the details in her notebook. Possible mother: Melissa, or Lisa. The surname on the line was a smear but looked like maybe an M or an N or even an H.

She set the ledger aside, mind racing with questions she’d asked a hundred ways before. Had her mother been forced to give Kaitlin up? Had she left the island, or was her fate in one of shallow graves?

The thought that the adoptions here hadn’t always been legal pressed cold against her ribs. Knowing her adoptive parents paid a hefty fee moved her to consider the cash outflows she’d identified for Matt.

She was so deep in her search, sorting through another battered file, muttering her mother’s half-name under her breath, that she didn’t hear the door open or Matt’s heavy boots on the stairs. Only when she felt his presence at her shoulder did she startle, nearly knocking a stack of files to the floor.

“Sorry,” he said, hands raised in apology. “Didn’t think I was sneaking up on you.”

Kaitlin’s pulse hammered. She tried to school her features, but her notebook and phone were still open with the entry exposed. Matt’s eyes flickered over the materials. Curiosity and suspicion battled on his face.

He nodded at the ledger. “That a birth? From the early nineties?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “I think so. It’s… hard to read the name, but the dates line up. Might be something.”

Matt’s gaze lingered. “Glad you found a name from the right period. Can you read it? I can cross-check in the town records, see if she stayed on the island or left after the birth.”

She handed him the ledger, heart still thudding. “It’s probably a dead end, as we can’t read the name fully. Looks like Melissa or Lisa—beginning with an M or an L and ending with an A. The last name is a guess, begins with an M, N, or H. Whoever kept these books, they weren’t thinking about future readers.”

He offered a small, wry smile. “Or maybe they were hiding something.”

“There’s more to look through if you want to try to match the name,” she handed him a stack of files.

They worked in companionable, if tense, silence. Matt started on a stack of personnel files while cross referencing the town list he’d brought.

Kaitlin tried to focus, but finding what could potentially be a record of her own birth and the name of her biological mother had her mind scattered elsewhere. Glancing around the room she was suddenly overcome with just how many records she would need to go through to find anything more. Although she knew professionally that research took time, her impatience was maddening.

She rose to her feet and focused on a file cabinet drawer that had been stuck when she tried to open it earlier. It was directly beneath the drawer where she found the entry with her birth date, so logically, there could be relevant information inside. She tugged hard on the handle and cursed under her breath as metal ground against metal.

“Here—let me.” Matt stepped behind her, and his hand covered hers on the drawer’s handle. The drawer abruptly gave way as they pulled in combined effort. Kaitlin stumbled backward into Matt’s chest. Matt kept her from falling by holding onto her waist.

For a split second, time hung suspended, her back pressed to the warmth of him, his breath at her ear. She was acutely aware of the strength in his hands, the clean scent of soap and wool. Her heart skittered and her cheeks burned with heat, surprised at herself for her reaction to him.

She drew away, mumbled a thanks, and bent quickly to retrieve the files they’d uncovered. But the nearness lingered, a ghostly charge in the air between them. Her skin tingled where they’d made contact.