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enough to do something like this.”
    Denice reached over and shoved his shoulder. “Watch what you say, you big lug. We’re talking about Kelli’s mother. You can’t just insult her like that.”
    “I’m just saying, it makes me wonder. But then again, why would he have left your brother and sister to face that all alone?”
    Kelli rubbed her forehead with her thumb and middle finger, the way she’d watched her father do all his life when he was overwhelmed. She pulled her hand away. “It doesn’t make sense. None of it does.”
    “These are answers that you are going to need to find. You need to figure out and accept what happened before so you can start moving forward to the life ahead of you.”
    Jones looked up. “You mean she should call her mother and tell her who she is?”
    “Are you crazy? Of course not. She might be a raving lunatic, for all we know. It is imperative that the secret stay in this room only.”
    “Agreed.”
    “Agreed.”
    They did an around-the-circle handshake in their own little custom of promise-making.
    “It’s a good thing you have that journal I gave you, because you need to focus all your energy on getting through this. Don’t you even think about anything else. We’ve got you covered as far as anything at the restaurant goes, right, Jones?”
    “Absolutely. You do what you need to do, Kelli.”
    “Thanks, you two. Figuring out what happened in my past is the black bog I’m about to have to wade through. Opening our restaurant in the fall, well, that is going to be the solid ground ahead where I keep my eyes fixed. As long as I have that, it gives me a reason to keep going. To tell you the truth, I’m concerned that for a while, it might be the only thing that does.”

7
    M y dad took me camping every summer when I was growing up. It was always just the two of us—Mimi wasn’t much of an outdoor girl—and we’d spend a week at El Capitan Beach.
    By the time I rolled my groggy little self out of my sleeping bag each morning, he would have the camp stove burning full tilt. I’d unzip the tent and follow my nose toward the smell of bacon and scrambled eggs, my mouth watering in anticipation. He’d have a spatula in one hand, and he’d gesture toward the sky with the other. “’Bout time you got up. We’re burning daylight,” and with that, the adventure would begin. Days spent hiking the cliffs, digging in the sand, and playing in the waves. He never grew tired of building sandcastles and pretending for hour after hour that seashells were magical chariots with pebble princes and princesses riding them all around the moat.
    By the time the sun started to set across the ocean, Daddy would throw me on his shoulders and carry me up the hill to the campground. The whole way up, he made neighing sounds and bucking motions, like he was a renegade horse. People looked at us like we were idiots, but we didn’t care. We were happy. Completely happy.
    Actually, maybe it was only me.

    The printer whirred and zipped as it printed out page after page. By the time Kelli left her laptop to check on the progress, there were well over thirty pages in the tray. She pulled them out and began to sort it all by subject. So far, everything fit into one of four categories: Mother. Sister. Brother. And her father’s friend named Ken Moore, who was a little easier to find information about.
    Knock. Knock.
    Kelli turned the stacks upside down before she went to answer the door of her apartment. Probably her landlady. Since Kelli lived in the mother-in-law unit above Mrs. Rohling’s garage, she dropped by for one reason or other several times a week. Although she wasn’t the nosy sort, she did tend to tidy up as she talked, a habit she acknowledged as being annoying but unbreakable.
    It was a relief to find Denice at the door instead. “How’s the research coming?” She hurried inside and kept her voice low. “I’ve been doing some of my own, and then it occurred to me that we