“Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. My phone was dead. I just plugged it back in an hour ago.”
There was a brief silence as I imagined she was debating on whether to confront me about the lie.
“Why’d you call?” I asked, hoping to avoid having to make up any more lies.
Her hesitation was clear in her voice. “I made progress on your search.”
“Already?”
She would have only begun work on it after the gala last night.
“I gave it to one of my TAs the night you gave it to me. He’s pretty good at family trees. He’s writing a dissertation on the migration patterns to the west during the mid to late nineteenth century so he had plenty of sources he’s familiar with,” she explained.
My eyes started sliding close. I was so tired.
“Your friend Peter was also helpful today in compiling that information and finding a few other sources for us to check.
Wait a minute. My eyes popped open. “Peter is there. He’s been helping you?”
Her pause this time seemed a bit wary. “Yes. I assumed you’d be ok with that. Is there a reason you’re not happy about that?”
“No, of course not.” I was going to skin that sorcerer and make a rug of his flesh when I saw him next. “I just wasn’t expecting he’d be that interested in helping you. He has a bit of a short attention span.”
“I don’t think I could have done it this fast without him. He’s got an amazing knack for research, especially in one so young.”
If she only knew. His research ability was probably refined over centuries.
“What did you learn?”
“It wasn’t easy, but I found out the family you were tracking lost most of its members during the flood. Only two survived. A girl, aged three, and a boy of fourteen. The siblings left the state at that time.”
I was afraid of that.
“How were they able to leave?” Normally orphan children would have been remanded to whatever orphanage was open at the time.
“Family friends took the children under their protection and relocated to California.”
I didn’t know if that would help us. I got the feeling Liam and Thomas were relying on his descendants being local.
“Ok. Send me the names, and I’ll take it from here.”
“Wait, don’t you want to hear the rest?” Caroline asked.
“There’s more?”
She laughed. “I wouldn’t be much of a researcher if I didn’t look below the surface.”
“Don’t leave me in suspense,” I said.
“Hold on, someone just knocked. Tell you what, head to my house. What I have to tell you is pretty big, and all this research has made me hungry. You spring for pizza and we can discuss the rest when you get here.”
Pizza. I hadn’t had that in a while.
“That sounds good. I don’t think I have your new address though.”
She rattled off the address as a doorbell rang.
“What the?” Caroline said, angrily.
