Ben sat alone with his father and listened while the Lt. Colonel told him about his life for the last seventeen years. His search and persistence were admirable. Ben told him bits about his life, mostly about his battles and the life-altering wound to his arm.
“The lady told me how you were willing to fight me for her, without knowing who I was.”
“Yes,” Ben said, turning to look at her where she stood with Bernadette. “I would fight anyone for her.”
His father didn’t answer but watched them both for a moment and then looked into his cup.
His silence did not go unnoticed by Ben. “Father,” he began, then laughed softly and shook his head in disbelief. “I look at you and I feel as if I’m dreaming.”
“I must admit,” his father confessed, “On the day I brought her back here, I went to the house and saw you when you left on your horse with another tall man. You had grown from a boy to a man, but I recognized you. I would have recognized you at any age. If she had never told me that you saved the king more than once,or how you fought eighteen men and found victory without help, or especially how endlessly patient you are with your sister, I would have been proud of you the instant I saw you and how you carried yourself in the saddle.”
Ben smiled and lowered his eyes. “I feel as if my life has always been about making you proud. I was robbed of that. To hear you say it now…” He wiped his eyes and laughed at his tears, but his father had many of his own.
They talked over coffee until Fable returned and slipped into the seat next to Ben’s. Bernadette’s break was over and she had to return to work but she left Fable the phone.“We didn’t find anything.”
“You are clever,” Ben’s father remarked. “Have you figured out how to use the device?”
“A little. I can ask Siri whatever I want and it’ll send me the information I want…if it’s on the web. “I was wondering if there was a name she might have gone by back then, when your life was normal?”
Ben’s father thought about it for a moment. “Thea! It’s short for Dorothea. It was the name by which I called her when we were alone. Thea!”
Fable immediately spoke into the device asking it for information on Thea West. When the screen changed, she handed the phone to Ben to read the results.
“There are three. One is in her eighties, one is in her twenties, and one…hmm, she’s the correct age.”
“Hold that pointer over her name and tap it–”
“Tap it?”
She helped him, then waited with him.
When the screen changed he looked it over. “There’s no image of her. It says she’s a social worker and won the National Social Worker Award in twenty-fourteen. “Ms. Thea W. Halstead received the–”
“That’s her!” Fable and his father both blurted at the same time.
“She was born in Halstead, Essex,” Ben’s father informed them. “The W obviously stands for West.” He turned to Fable and cast her a curious look to match Ben’s. “How do you know her?”
“I don’t,” she told them. “I was supposed to meet her the day after you brought me into the past. She’s my social worker.”
Chapter Seventeen
With Bernadette’s permission, Fable used the waitress’s phone to call the social worker’s office. They were all disappointed to hear Ms. Halstead was upstate in meetings with HR and would not be back in the office until tomorrow. No, the receptionist could not give Fable Ms. Halstead’s cell number, even if it was an emergency. They would have to wait until tomorrow.
When they told Bernadette about it, she noted that it was especially clever of Fable to search other names her husband would know. Once he found ‘Thea’ he would recognize Halstead, and as he had said, the W obviously stood for West. “Your wife is also clever. You could have found twenty Dorothea Wests and spent more time trying to find the right one. This way, with just one Thea W. Halstead, it guarantees that when you find her, you will have found the right woman.”
“Without you,” Ben turned to Fable with a look that bound her to him for a lifetime and beyond, “we might not have found her.”
“We haven’t found her just yet.”
“Tomorrow,” he said confidently and smiled at her and then at his father. “Let’s go find a place to sleep tonight and plan what we need to do and where we need to go tomorrow.”
They promised Bernadette they would see her for dinner and when Ben rose up to pay the bill, Fable rose with him and stood on her toes to whisper in his ear that it was customary to leave a tip.
He gave Bernadette a hundred dollars, and took Fable’s hand to leave.
“Go to Liz’s B&B.” The waitress paused to write the address on a check. “Tell her that Bernadette sent you.” She tore it from the pad and handed it to him.
Fable watched him smile at the pretty waitress, and she was thankful that her boyfriend was learning how to get along with people, even people socially beneath him.
