She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,206

our row finished exiting, traffic reversed, the waiting vehicles filed in, and the ferry pulled away. A practiced dance.

None of the other disembarking vehicles lingered. They quickly maneuvered the various painted lines of the lot and disappeared down WA-525 North at the back. Five minutes after arriving, we were alone.

“Now what?”

“We go inside,” Stella said, scooping up both copies of Great Expectations and the Penn State yearbook.

When she opened her door and stood, I thought she might pass out. She swayed and gripped the roof of the car for support.

I raced around and held her, kept her upright. She was shivering again. “Maybe you should wait in the car.”

“I’m okay,” she assured me.

She wasn’t, though.

Leaning back into the car, she looked at Dewey. “Mr. Hobson, do you need to use the facilities?”

“Yeah,” Hobson replied, his voice flat.

Without another word, he got out of the car and went inside.

Stella and I followed after him, moving slow. She tried to put up a strong front, but much of her weight fell on me. Her breathing seemed labored.

The welcome center was unattended. There were two vending machines, one with soft drinks, the other with various candy bars and snacks. They were flanked by a women’s restroom on one side and the men’s on the other. Posters about the island covered the opposite wall along with a large map and several racks of pamphlets for area attractions.

Stella sat the books down on a bench, and the two of us studied the map.

“Any idea?”

She opened both copies of Great Expectations to the image of the map in the inlay. “Other than the spelling of Whidbey and Whitby, do you see anything else different?”

I leaned in closer and compared both maps—the lines, the colors, the remaining city names, and other markers. I shook my head. “Nothing.”

“Me either. But I don’t believe your father would go through all this trouble to get us here and not give us some kind of clue as to where to go next. There’s something, we’re just not seeing it.”

I returned to the map of Whidbey. The island was huge. Most of the land was undeveloped, though. There were several large farms, beaches, a few small clusters of businesses, and residences along the coast. Nothing stood out, though.

Behind us, a toilet flushed in the men’s room. Then Hobson came out, walked past us out the door. He got back in the car and stared forward.

“That is so weird.”

Stella moved on from the map and sifted through the tourist pamphlets. Her finger slipping from one to the next. “Beaches, parks, wineries and vineyards, restaurants, art galleries, museums, sightseeing tours, a lighthouse…”

I was beginning to think this was hopeless when one particular pamphlet jumped out at me. A picture of a large house on a cliff overlooking Puget Sound filled the front. It advertised tremendous views, a friendly staff, and spacious rooms. None of this mattered to me, because my eyes were locked on the name.

“Stella?”

I showed it to her, and her eyes grew wide.

By Hand Bed and Breakfast.

By Hand.

“She had brought me up ‘by hand,’” Stella said softly. “Joe and I were both brought up ‘by hand.’ She must have made Joe marry her ‘by hand.’”

We both recognized the phrase as one Dickens used numerous times in his novel. A phrase odd enough that it stood out even to me when I first read the book so many years ago. Pip’s aunt said it regularly.

“Do you think that’s it?”

Stella went back at the map, tracing a line with her finger. “6600 Still Creek Road. It’s on the other side of the island, about eight miles from here. Jack, that must be it.”

I grabbed her gloved hand and quickly got her back to the car.

2

The only flight Fogel was able to find on short notice back to Pittsburgh left Nevada at 7:23 in the evening and came with a two-hour layover at O’Hare Airport in Chicago from 11:30 to 1:30 in the morning. She was dead tired. She tried to sleep on the plane, but did so in fits and starts, much to the dismay of the elderly man sitting beside her. At one point, he shook her awake and told her she cried out. Fogel had no recollection of what she had been dreaming, nor did she remember screaming, but the leery eyes of the other passengers told her she had, and she found herself reluctant to try and sleep again.

At O’Hare, she found her gate, then wandered the terminals to pass the