Page 94 of The Lost Book of First Loves

He had been in love, possibly with June’s mother. A married woman. They had created a child together.

“I suppose we never really know everything about our parents. Have you ever known anything about your parents’ romantic lives?” She was stalling, she knew.

“Not much,” June answered, looking surprised at the question. “I don’t know much about my dad at all. My mom said the two of them met in North Carolina when he was stationed there. They had only dated a few months when they decided to get married before he was deployed overseas.”

“Oh?”

“He came back briefly when I was born and she always said he adored me and loved showing me off to all his buddies. He had to go back when I was only a few weeks old and he was killed in a friendly fire accident while he was deployed.”

“Oh, how sad.”

“Yeah. My mom was heartbroken.”

“That must have been so tough for your mom. A young widow with a new baby. Did she ever talk about... anyone else?”

“No. Never.” June looked pensive. “And she didn’t date anyone else, either. I was always telling her to go out, assuring her I wouldn’t mind. She insisted I was her priority, not some guy who probably wouldn’t stick around, anyway.”

A pretty grim message for a mom to pass along to her daughter, and quite ironic when she hadn’t bothered to tell Carson about his daughter.

“I was fifteen when she died. She might have changed her mind once I left for college. When I look back from the perspective of an adult, I think she might have been deeply lonely.”

Why hadn’t June’s mother told Carson about their baby? Ali couldn’t imagine being a single mom doing everything on her own for fifteen years.

“What about your parents?” June asked. “How did they meet?”

“My mother worked at his publishing house. She was an associate editor while she was in law school. She never worked on his books, though. That would have been too weird. They met at a book event and started a correspondence. We mightfind her letters. If we do, I certainly don’t want to include those in what we’re sending to the archive. They’re personal.”

She had the sudden thought that maybe they would find letters fromJune’smother among her father’s papers that might explain the mysteries around Elizabeth’s and Carson’s relationship.

Beck came out with his arms full of three dusty boxes. He looked warily between the two women, and his mouth tightened when Ali gave a tiny shake of her head to let him know she hadn’t said anything yet.

“I tried to sort through and find the oldest boxes I could,” he said. “These two appear to have documents inside dating them to right before Carson bought the ranch.”

“That’s too late in our hypothetic timeline,” June said.

“But not everything is perfectly organized,” he said.

“My dad was hopeless at that kind of thing,” Ali admitted. “Especially before he married my mom. I think she was more concerned about his legacy than he was so she tried to come up with a system to keep things straight, but I’m not sure how far back in his past she might have gone to put things in order.”

“I grabbed the oldest I could find. Maybe he has others somewhere else, but this is at least a place to start.”

They each took a box and began sorting through the various ephemera. Ali found royalty statements, review clippings, memorable fan letters and a printed manuscript that had her heart pumping until she realized it was for his fourth book that had come out shortly after she was born.

“Find anything?” Beck asked, setting aside his own box.

“Lots of interesting things,” June said. “But not what we’re seeking.”

“The other boxes in there all seem more recent. We can look through them, but I don’t think we’ll find anything.”

He grabbed more and they started the process all over again.

“Did he keep any papers anywhere else?” June asked after they each had sorted through four boxes, to the same negativeresult. “A safe deposit box? A secret vault somewhere in the ranch house?”

“If only,” Ali said with a laugh. “There might be some boxes in the attic over at the house. We could always check.”

“But not tonight,” Beck said. “You’re leaving early in the morning.”

Ali looked at her watch and was shocked to see it was past nine and she still had to throw together a few more supplies for their trip.

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