Page 13 of Two Hearts Reunited

She got the coffee pot going, deciding that the first thing she should do was shovel the driveway. There hadn’t been toomuch snow yet this year, so she was dreading it because it was probably going to take a while this time around.

A few moments later as she walked outside onto the porch, her mouth dropped open in shock.

Someone had plowed out her entire driveway, which couldn’t have been a quick or easy thing to do.

Puzzled, she stepped down from the porch, glancing around the property. Whoever had been here had done a really great job of clearing out the space, which even included the area around the back porch.

She couldn’t believe she hadn’t woken to hear what was going on. But last night, she’d slept harder than she had in a very long time. Anya hated to think it had anything to do with Eric’s call. It had probably been because of the added warmth inside the house from the new fireplace insert, she decided.

Whocould have gone to so much trouble for her? The only people she had any contact with besides the Danielsons were her employees at work—none of which would have the means to do something like this. There wasn’t a direct road from the Danielson’s place to here, so she was pretty sure it hadn’t been the chief who’d cleared the property.

Well, as long as she was already outside, maybe she’d shovel the path from the front door to the staircase leading down to the pier on the lake.

Another twenty minutes later, she was back inside the house, still trying to puzzle things out. At least there wasn’t any more snow in the forecast until after Christmas, she thought as she sat drinking coffee at the kitchen table. Now that it was about fifteen degrees warmer in here because of the electric fireplace, she could actually get some cleaning done before opening her laptop and continuing her research. She’d get started after having a bowl of cereal first.

A few hours later, with one of the notebooks Mom had been hanging onto open in front of her on the kitchen table, she was busy researching multiple names on her laptop.

It was very slow-going though, as many of the people who were listed didn’t appear to be from anywhere around Crystal Rock, which was what she was trying to narrow down first. Anya agreed with Mom. If Shanna had been taken, there had to be a connection to the community. Mom had apparently investigated many of the locals one at a time and had done her surveillance for weeks on end when she hadn’t been satisfied by whatever the police had told her.

Which was more than likely the reason why everyone thought she’d been having a breakdown.

Even Anya, for a while, although she’d done everything she could think of to help at the time, she’d felt helpless. She’d been reeling after losing Eric, followed by her dad, so when Shanna disappeared, Anya had felt like there was no one to turn to since Mom was never there.

It had been Penny Danielson who’d been reassuring, making Anya promise to concentrate on school and not give up on her plans to go to college. Shanna had multiple people searching for her, and the FBI had even become involved because of the recurring trafficking activity in Crystal Rock through the years.

As far as Anya could tell, Mom had found the notebooks much later during her investigations, after she’d decided that everyone else had given up. Anya had been unable to discover where and how she’d come upon them, although, according to the notes that had been left on Mom’s thumb drive, she’d begun going through the names about a year before she’d died. Understanding that for whatever reason, these notebooks had been important enough for Mom to research each name, Anya had known what she needed to do.

It had taken almost two years, but Anya had finally been able to sort through an entire notebook which had been filled with hundreds of names. The problem was, there were only names without addresses or phone numbers listed in the notebooks, which was why Anya had narrowed the parameters drastically by searching just within Wisconsin. Unfortunately, there’d only been four names that had panned out so far.

It had taken nearly two years to get somewhat back on her feet financially after taking care of Mom’s debts. She’d taken on two jobs here in town and was making close to what she’d been making as an accountant at a law firm in Madison. Anya had finally hired Charlie Andrews a few weeks earlier, and he would be shadowing the men whose names and addresses Anya had handed over.

Although Chief Danielson had looked at her curiously when she’d asked if he could recommend an investigator, he’d given her the name of a former cop who’d retired ten years ago and took on occasional jobs as a hobby.

Anya had liked Charlie immediately. When she’d explained what she was doing, he’d understood and had agreed to take on the job. Although he resided in Eau Claire, he’d remembered Shanna’s disappearance from his days with the state police. He had a no-nonsense attitude about her approach to the information and research her mother had left, and understood that she truly couldn’t move forward without trying to discover what had happened to her sister.

It was getting close to noon, she realized, so she needed to get ready for work. She’d thought about digging through some of Shanna’s belongings to see if she could find the diary and journals, but she’d moved all of Shanna’s things upstairs into the room they used to share when their grandparents had lived at the cabin during the summer months. Everything that Anya had wanted to hang onto from the house had been hauled hereto the cabin before the house had gone on the market. It was hard to believe that it had been nearly two years ago. Anya had unpacked almost everything else this past summer since she kept much of the house closed off during the winter and wanted to be sure she wouldn’t have to worry about any destruction from mice.

She’d have time to go through everything belonging to Shanna on Christmas day. At least she’d been organized with her packing and all the boxes had been labeled.

Anya grimaced. She hadn’t forgotten for a minute that she was going to meet Eric tonight. She’d been thinking all morning about what she should wear. She had a tendency to dress kind of drably these days since she’d lost some weight and had stuck to basics to save money when she’d bought new work clothes. She still had a lot of decent clothes from her time at the law firm since she’d had to look her best.

“Hopefully, I can find something to wear that doesn’t look two sizes too big on me,” she mumbled, quickly finishing her coffee before closing her laptop.

Chapter Six

The place was sure well-insulated, Eric decided, when he woke at around six the following morning. With the door closed at the top of the staircase, he heard nothing upstairs, even though Brian had mentioned they’d be up early. Brian would plow the driveway while Ashley relaxed with her coffee before the baby decided she was hungry.

Thinking he would be awake for a while last night after speaking with Anya, Eric had taken a quick shower and left the television on when he’d slipped under the comforter on the bed.

He grinned wryly. Apparently, he’d fallen asleep immediately. He’d sure had some pretty crazy dreams though. Anya would have slapped him for sure if she had any inkling about what he’d dreamt about.

One thing was for sure—he’d never quit caring about her, despite being only sixteen when he’d been forced to leave town.

He needed to think about how he was going to handle this. The fact that she was so mad at him was a good thing, he couldn’t help thinking. If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t still be so upset.He’d had so little interest in other women, he’d begun to wonder about himself. Maybe it was because the women he met these days were kind of aggressive, and he preferred to be the one who did the asking when it came to dating—or anything else.

But he supposed that it was because in the back of his mind, the wordsI love youhad echoed.

Her words had haunted him.

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