Cottage on Gooseberry Bay: Charmed Summer by Kathi Daley (fb2 epub reader .TXT) 📕

needed to let my memories come to me when they were ready to be felt and experienced. Maybe, if I just sat with my thoughts, the quiet of a spring night would take me where I wanted to go.

Chapter 3

I headed into my office the following day. Part of me wanted to lie around the cottage and torture myself with thoughts of the sister I so wanted to find, but another part of me knew it was best to stay busy. There didn’t seem to be a lot I could do at this point. I didn’t have any new leads to follow up on, and after having been home for several months, Adam was away on business. I knew this was going to be an extended trip, so I didn’t expect him to return for another week or two at the very earliest. I figured that when he got home, we’d jump back into the investigation. In the meantime, I supposed that spending some time and having a presence in my new office was a good idea.

I’d decided to bring Kai and Kallie with me today, so I settled them onto the dog beds I kept on-site for their use, and then I sat down at my desk to go over the notes I’d jotted down regarding the upcoming holiday weekend and my commitment to Hope to help out with the planned activities. Hope seemed to chair most of the events the town sponsored, but I knew that she couldn’t do what she did without a massive number of volunteers to help out.

“Are you Ainsley Holloway?” A young woman with curly dark hair who looked to be about my age came into the office through the front door. Kai and Kallie looked up, but they’d been trained not to approach until invited, so they stayed put for the time being.

“I am,” I answered, standing up behind my desk. “How can I help you?”

“I was next door at the antique shop, and they suggested that you might be able to help me with my project.”

I motioned toward the chair across from my desk. “Have a seat.”

She did as I suggested.

“So, what’s your name?”

“Ellery. Ellery Adams.”

“Nice to meet you, Ellery. Now, what sort of project do you have?”

She held out her hand, palm side up, and presented a charm bracelet.

“A charm bracelet. It’s lovely. May I?” I asked before taking it from her hand.

“I hoped you could help me track down the owner of this bracelet.”

I looked up at the woman, who seemed hesitant and obviously uncomfortable with the situation. “Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me how you came to have this and why you want to find the owner. Once we get that out of the way, I should be able to tell you whether or not I can help you.”

“Okay.” She swallowed hard. I could see that she was nervous, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure why. Tracking down the owner of a lost bracelet didn’t seem the sort of thing that would cause a person a lot of anxiety. “I was adopted when I was an infant,” she began in a soft voice. “My adoptive parents were wonderful people who I loved with all my heart, but they were killed in an auto accident last summer.”

“I’m so very sorry.” I knew how hard it was to lose a parent.

She offered me a look of thanks and then continued. “After I got over the shock of losing them, I decided to look for my biological parents. I’d asked my adoptive parents about them when I was a teenager, and all they could tell me was that I’d been abandoned in a church when I was less than a day old. The blanket my naked body was wrapped in and this charm bracelet that was found wrapped inside the blanket are the only clues they had as to my identity. I know it’s not a lot to go on, but it is something. A starting point, if you will.”

I looked down at the bracelet I still held. “It’s a lovely bracelet.” I looked at the charms, which featured a book, a ship, an ice cream cone, a tennis shoe, a movie reel, a rose, and a Ferris wheel. “Do you have reason to believe that the bracelet is in some way linked to Gooseberry Bay? The charms are pretty common.”

“I’m actually not certain that the charms are linked to Gooseberry Bay, but I did notice that the tennis shoe charm has an inscription.”

I looked at it more closely. “B2B with the number ninety-six under it.” I looked toward the woman. “Is that significant?”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I’m a runner, and my adoptive mom was a runner, and I know there is a run in Gooseberry Bay every summer called the Bay to Boardwalk Run. I suppose there are other runs that might work with B2B.”

“Bay to Breakers,” I said, mentioning a famous run that takes place each year in San Francisco.”

“Yeah,” Ellery sighed. “I did think of that. And there are others that would fit as well. A lot of them, in fact. I know it’s a longshot, but I noticed the book was also inscribed.”

I looked at the back of the book. “Brewster’s.”

“There was a bookstore named Brewster’s Books here in Gooseberry Bay back in the nineteen nineties. I was born in nineteen ninety-seven, so Brewster’s Books would have been around during that same time frame.”

I looked down at the bracelet again. “So why do you think this bracelet was left with you, and how do you think it can help you find your biological parents?”

She hesitated.

“It’s okay. Whatever you’re thinking is fine. I just need to get a better feel for things.”

She lowered her head and then raised it again.