More Than Pride by Kell, Amber (good books to read for beginners TXT) 📕

must have meant the world to me, began to feel real. It was odd to know that we’d been a family. It felt strange knowing that I’d been a completely different person for the first three years of my life than I’d been for the next twenty-five years. I felt like I should feel something when I looked at photos of Avery and me as babies. I did feel a bit of a connection toward Avery, but when I looked at photos of myself, I felt like I was looking at a stranger. I thought back to my dad, the man who’d raised me. I could remember his crooked grin and sense of humor that was often offbeat. I remembered the way he’d roll the ice around in his whisky for a good minute before taking a single sip, and I also remembered the strong arms that held me tight when life proved to be cruel and my heart or spirit was harmed in some way.

My dad was real to me when I thought of him, but when I looked at Arthur and Adora, they mostly felt like strangers. I wondered if that would ever change. I supposed that even if I ended up finding all my answers, I could never really know them. Not really. Not the way I’d known the cop who’d raised me. It was sad that my parents would always be a mystery to me, but I supposed that given their deaths when I was so young, that inevitable fact had been sealed early on. Even if Marilee hadn’t taken Avery and me away, even if we’d stayed in our childhood home, our memories of the man and woman who’d bore us would have been limited to what others shared rather than what we’d experienced.

Setting the box aside, I headed into the bedroom. It was late, and I was tired but also discontent. I really wanted to feel something when I looked at the photo of my mother. Anything. Maybe if I fell asleep picturing my mother’s face, I’d be able to remember something, even if that memory did exist only in my dream space.

Chapter 7

I woke early Thursday and decided to head out for a long run with the dogs. I wasn’t sure how my day was going to work out, and I suspected that the dogs might end up being alone for much of the day. Not that they’d mind. Not really. Both Kai and Kallie tended to sleep a lot, and as long as they had a good long walk in the morning, they were usually good for the rest of the day.

As I ran along the bay trail, I thought about my plans for the day. I’d meet with Jemma this morning, and I supposed that what I did next depended on the outcome of that conversation. If she was able to put together some clues relating to the charm bracelet, I supposed I’d spend the rest of the day tracking down those clues. Ellery was leaving town Sunday, and I really hoped that we would have found an answer before she left if there was an answer to be found.

As I climbed up onto the point, I thought about the charms. The shoe and the book seemed to have offered us the best chances to actually track down the person who at one point had owned the charms. Jemma had said there were seven names that she found on both lists. Seven was actually a reasonable number of people to track down and speak to. When Ellery had come to me with her quest, I’d wanted to help if I could, but to be honest, I hadn’t held a lot of hope that we’d actually be successful, but now it seemed that we might come out of this investigation with a name. What she did with that name would be up to her.

I really thought that the lists we had would give us our answer, but if not we’d need to turn our attention to the remaining charms. As we’d speculated the previous evening, I was pretty sure that the Ferris wheel charm had most likely been a token from the annual carnival. I wasn’t sure what more we could do with that clue. The carnival wasn’t even in town, so trying to find employees who were around back then probably wasn’t a realistic goal.

And then there was the ice cream cone charm. We all agreed that the charm was too general to be of much use unless we could tie it to a specific ice cream shop. It was a long shot, but I supposed if we were able to do that and the ice cream shop was still around, it might lead us to someone who would remember the bracelet.

The rose, like the ice cream cone, seemed too general to provide much information. We’d discussed that the rose charm might lead to a florist, although there were other possibilities as well. There were lovely gardens in the area and when we’d visited the museum, I noticed that rose bushes were planted along the building. I supposed we could look around for other gardens, or perhaps a hothouse or nursery was the link we needed to find.

And then there was the ship. It could represent any boat or even the ferry, I supposed, but the charm looked more like a Navy ship. Could Ellery’s father have been in the Navy? Perhaps her mother had entered into a summer romance with a boy she’d met in Gooseberry Bay only to find that he’d shipped out for a tour overseas at the end of their time together. I had no idea how to follow up on a theory such as that since we didn’t have a name for either parent. Still, an explanation that included a summer love with a military man might explain why Ellery’s mother felt she was