Part 2

Chapter 4

Robin put her bag on the foyer bench and turned from the photos to her living room.  She was glad she had spent her evening with Jane. She could count on her to keep up a steady supply of laughs.

She was always glad to come home to this house. Here she found solace. It had been the place where her father grew up. She couldn’t imagine this little house filled with children. It was a funny house, a little vestibule at the front led to steps up to the living room. Robin had kept it much as her grandmother had. Even the furniture was her grandmother’s: the scratchy green loveseat, the heavy side tables and slightly tired easy chairs. She loved the brown leather rocker with the armrests carved to resemble the graceful curves of a swan’s neck and head. She had a vague memory of her grandfather relaxing in that chair, smoking a Pall Mall and delighting in the antics of his energetic grandchildren. The dining room was the biggest room on the first floor, filled with heavy furniture and Audobon’s bird drawings framed in delicate silvery moldings and hung on the walls. Behind, the kitchen appeared to have been added later, jutting out from the back of the house. Upstairs was only one bath and three tiny bedrooms. In the basement, a niche had been carved out for children to do their homework and play. But the rest of it was dark and filled with boxes of -- Robin wasn’t sure what was in some of those boxes yet. The Formstone on the front had been the height of fashion when her grandmother had it installed. Robin knew there was brick underneath as there was on the back of the house – but she still loved the pastel-colored fake stone.

Robin was glad the house was hers. Her grandmother had hung onto it when everybody was telling her to move to the suburbs, when living in the city was no longer “desirable.” But Alice Browne didn’t want to live in Glen Burnie. She liked being able to walk to St. Mary’s Church or to the Cross Street Market. As she grew older, she didn’t walk to Federal Hill much any more but she liked knowing she could if she wanted to. True, many of her friends had gone onto those pretty little bungalows down Ritchie Highway. She visited them frequently. But here was where she raised her son with her beloved Joseph. Why would she leave? It took a heart attack to make Alice leave south Baltimore. She was waked in her own home and buried from St. Mary’s. And to make sure the home and all its memories were well cared for, she’d left it to Robin. What a surprise that had been — Robin was thrilled while her parents were relieved they didn’t have to worry about rehabbing and selling the old house in an old city neighborhood. Unloading it, they had agreed then, would have been only a headache. Now it was Robin’s and it was home.

Robin crossed into the dining room and flipped on her laptop on the table. She clicked on the internet connection and entered her sister’s name into the search engine. “No matches,” the search engine said. Robin looked again and realized she’s misspelled the name. She entered again, carefully. She’d Googled her own name so many times – and usually had a laugh about the other people named Robin Browne and what they were doing. She kept up with the saloon keeper outside of Memphis. That Robin owned The One Eyed Dog Saloon. She had a busy website with bands playing all the time, an occasional wet-t-shirt contest or sometimes she got one of those mechanical bulls in for really big occasions. Robin knew she was going to have to go to that saloon some day. 

“Results 1-10 of 370 for Eleanor Browne.” Robin recognized all ten of them as the news stories about Eleanor’s disappearance. She scrolled through the pages, deciding tonight she would read carefully every entry looking for a clue. Jane wanted her to be Nancy Drew -- well, okay, then. This would be the first step. 

Pages and pages later, Robin had turned up the usual Eleanor Brownes and Eleanor Browns and Eleanor Browne Granbys. Since the first time she’d “Googled” Ellen, she’d rejected these people and the likelihood that one of them could be her sister living a secret life.

They related a photo exhibit in a London art gallery; a wedding and a baby; an architecture book; and an arrest for drunk driving in the English countryside. These couldn’t be about her sister, Robin thought, as she began to read every link. And certainly, they couldn’t all refer to her sister – if she was still alive. 

She hoped a photograph of the bride would accompany the wedding announcement. Maybe it did in The London Times, but there was no photo here, Robin discovered as her frustration mounted. No photo accompanied the gossip column about the woman’s adultery, divorce or drug possession, either. But they surely didn’t sound like her sister, either. 

“This isn’t going to be easy,” she thought, scribbling notes as she read. She’d scribbled the same notes hundreds of times. And always she had had the same thought: Every one of these could be a dead end – since Eleanor was dead. But the coincidences never failed to bother Robin.

Robin looked at the clock on the screen. She’d been looking through these pages for over an hour. The phone rang.

“What are you doing calling me at 11:30?”

“Hello to you, too. I always call you at 11:30,” Jane said. “Did you see the article about the photo exhibit in England?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I looked Eleanor up on Google after you left. Have you seen it?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“I found it on page 17. Who knows if it’s there in your search.”

Robin clicked on 17 at the bottom of the page. Robin could hardly breathe as she read about the photo exhibit: Alpine landscapes, portraits of residents of Salzburg, scenes of London and Vienna. There wasn’t much about the photographer, Robin thought as she wrote down the name and address of the gallery and searched for a web address. Oh there has to be one, she thought. But there wasn’t; only a London address.

“Robin?”

“Jane, I found it.”

“Well?”

“Yes, it could be Ellen.”

“Nancy, shall we start sleuthing?”

“Jane, there’s something else here. Right under that article, there’s a link I’ve never seen before. A daughter of Eleanor Browne Carrington was an accident victim, in critical condition. And the crash had occurred only 50 miles away on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and only last year.

“That settles it,” Robin said, turning off her laptop. “I’ve got to find out if any of these people could possibly be my sister – or my niece. Jane? Hey, would you like to drive over to the Eastern Shore on your next day off? I think I’ll take your advice and look for Ellen.”

Chapter 5

“Why wouldn’t the police notify us if Eleanor was found alive?” Diane asked, sinking into an armchair in her office.  Robin remembered the chair from their living room in Annapolis. Tweedy and overstuffed, it had been her dad’s chair. He always sat in it to read the Capital when he got home from work. Robin knew back in those days to look under the cushion whenever she needed change for the soda machine at school. 

“Maybe nobody was still looking for her,” Robin said, surprised by her mother’s obvious discomfort. “Even we weren’t looking any more.”

Diane could hardly speak. Robin watched her mother and could tell she was struggling through so many emotions. As Diane tried to hold back tears, Robin found tears rolling down her own face. She dropped into her mother’s desk chair and her eye caught a photo of all of them on their sailboat. Ellen was at the tiller. 

“Mom, I’ve wondered about all these people on the web for years.  We’ve got to find out, especially since I may have found a daughter,” Robin said as she hunted in her bag for a tissue. “I’m going to take a leave of absence when I get to work on Monday and start contacting all these people. The government offices are closed until Monday. I’ll track down the daughter’s birth certificate then. I am going to start in Talbot County -- Jane said she’d go with me on Friday -- and then I’ll check out the accident. I found out who Lord Edward Granby is. He’s as old as the queen who is also his distant cousin. He has an estate out near Oxford. In England, not the Eastern Shore. Doesn’t seem like Eleanor’s type to me.”

“Lord who? Oh the man Eleanor Browne married. None of this sounds like our Eleanor,” Diane snapped. “How could it? We waited so long while the police looked for her. She vanished.”

“I know, Mom,” Robin rushed over to her mother’s chair and put her hand comfortingly on her shoulder. “But what if it is her?”

“What if it is? What happened to her? Why would she walk out of our lives and stay gone for 15 years? Why?”

“I want to know, Mom.” 

 

Chapter 6

Robin took another sip of her coffee and looked out at the Chesapeake Bay. Traffic was awfully heavy for a Friday morning, she thought. But as she scanned the Eastern Shore’s shoreline, she realized a lot more people lived there now. She remembered visiting Kent Island as a little girl. She had an aunt who lived near Love Point then. As she looked north, she saw that the woods she had run through as a child had given way to mansions. The farmhouses and small cottages were gone. It was just another suburb of Baltimore and Washington.  

The time was gone, she thought, when a newcomer to the Shore would stick out among all the “locals.” Her aunt had laughed about being a stranger on Kent Island – when she’d lived there since she was a little girl herself. By then she’d lived there for more than 20 years. She was gone, too. The island was now filled with “strangers.” She wondered if it was at all possible that the close-knit community her aunt had talked about could still exist. Perhaps it was easy to disappear – as easy as it could be in any ordinary suburban community where nobody paid attention to their neighbors. If Eleanor was still alive, maybe she could be here, Robin thought, confused at the hope building in her heart.

“I’d rather be sailing,” Jane laughed, recalling a bumper sticker common to this area.

“Not in February you wouldn’t,” Robin replied. “I don’t think there’s a colder month for sailing.”

“Well, there are crazy people down there on sailboats.”

The sun was shining but it couldn’t keep those sailors warm with the frigid wind blowing from the north. Whitecaps dotted the dark green waters. 

“We’ll go sailing when it warms up,” Robin promised her friend.

“Deal. I haven’t been on a boat in years.”

The two young women rode into Easton without another word. Robin was relieved that her friend understood how uneasy she was about looking for the birth certificate.

Easton was only about 30 minutes from the Bay Bridge. One of the Shore’s oldest towns, its downtown was a quaint mix of Colonial and Victorian homes and businesses. Tourists loved the place so much they packed up their belongings and moved here to live. The old town was now ringed with bland, beige subdivisions and chain restaurants that could have been built anywhere. 

Robin turned off the highway to find a parking spot on Washington Street. The Court House was an unimposing structure but a guard sent the two to another brick building, something a little less historical but typical for government offices. 

It turned out to be an easy search. No one else came into the Vital Records office so a clerk had been willing to help Robin find the document.

“Thank goodness birth certificates are public information,” Robin said, clutching the envelope against the wind that had begun to swirl through town. Thank goodness, too, she thought, the clerk couldn’t find a death certificate for Samantha Robin Carrington, born July 31, 1995. 

She sat on the bench where Jane waited and together they examined the document: Samantha Robin Carrington, born in Easton at 8:02 p.m. Maiden Name of Mother: Eleanor Diane Browne. Age 30. Mother’s Place of Birth: Maryland.

Robin felt her heart pounding. “This couldn’t be possible. This couldn’t be my sister. Could it?” she turned to her friend.

“If it is, she named her daughter after you,” Jane replied.  Robin smiled. Her own name was Robin Samantha. 

She looked down to the name of the father. Sean Matthew Carrington. Age 40. Father’s Place of Birth: Great Britain. “Who was this person?” Jane asked.

Robin wondered. Her brother-in-law perhaps? “Never heard of him.”

There was nothing more. Nothing important anyway. Seals and dates and signatures of bureaucrats who had had nothing to do with the actual birth.

Robin carefully slid the document back into its envelope and stowed it in her gigantic leather bag. She now had a new name and was beginning to believe her sister could still be alive – but keeping away from her family. “What’s next?” she wondered. 

“The newspaper office we saw from the bypass but first lunch,” Jane answered. “Let’s go down to that little pub in town. “You know the one. It’s got that great cream of crab soup.”

“And oysters. Good idea,” Robin said.

 Jane couldn’t pass up cream of crab soup and a crab cake even in February. Robin ordered her favorite fried oysters – fresh local oysters was one, possibly the only, good reason to love winter, she thought. While they waited, they looked around at the wood-paneled room dominated by an enormous bar trimmed in brass. It was crowded for a Friday, she thought, filled with a lot of government types. 

“Umm, Robin, there’s a woman watching us. Don’t look! In the booth beyond the bar. Blonde bob, reading glasses. Damn, she’s so blind she can’t eat without reading glasses. I’d die,” Jane had a way of going on. 

Robin couldn’t help herself. She turned to look and saw the woman looking at her over her readers. The woman blushed and looked down at her sandwich when her eyes met Robin’s. 

Their lunch arrived so the two dismissed the nosy woman from their thoughts. The small town mentality still exists, Robin thought, as she took a bite of the hot, juicy oysters padded in a crunchy cracker coat. 

“Perfect,” Jane said, dipping her spoon into the thick creamy soup.

As they finished, the woman stopped at her table. She looked to be nearly 40, pretty with pale hair and a sprinkling of pale freckles that made her face childlike. 

“I’m sorry to bother you but you look so familiar,” she said. 

“I’ve got one of those faces,” Robin said, with a kind smile. “Everybody thinks they know me from somewhere.”

 “My name is Debbie Cain,” she said, reaching to shake hands and obviously hoping she may remember the name. “Do you work around here?”

“Mmm. No.”

“Are you a member of the Academy of the Arts?”

“Sorry.”

“Kids at Easton High? No, sorry. You’ve got to be too young for that,” the woman said and blushed again. “Maybe you went to Queen Anne County High School? No. Do you have a sister? Maybe I know her.”

“I did but Eleanor died 15 years ago,” Robin said quietly. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry to have bothered you. I guess you do have one of those faces. Well, I better get back to the museum. Busloads of kids coming this afternoon,” Debbie said. “Nice meeting you.”

“That was weird,” Jane said, turning to watch the woman scurry out into the cold afternoon. “Oh maybe it’s a clue.”

“A clue! A clue! You’re just clueless. Let’s order some cheesecake.”

“And then let’s go down to that handbag shop. You need something a little, well, smaller.”

“We’ve got to go to the newspaper office,” Robin reminded her.

“Yes, of course. But the handbag shop first. This is an emergency.”

The trip to the handbag shop was more successful than the visit to the newspaper office. Robin came out of the shop with a neat new tote. But the newspaper office had no one who remembered the story — the reporter was long gone and so were the editors who might have remembered. The lone reporter and office clerk offered to let them into the “morgue” to look up articles but shrugged when asked if there was an index of some kind. The drive home was quiet. Jane drove while Robin stared out at the passing scenery, lost in thought.

Chapter 7

It didn’t matter that Robin had lived in her south Baltimore row house for nearly eight years now. It still had that comforting feel of Grandmother’s house. Robin always thought she smelled cinnamon when she walked in, as it usually did when she came here to visit her grandmother as a little girl. Grandmother always was baking cookies for her two granddaughters. 

Robin needed that warm feeling now. The ride home had made her feel nostalgic for those sweet afternoons. The mystery she seemed to be uncovering hurt. The loss of her sister flooded over her while a shred of hope mixed with the painful possibility that Eleanor had deliberately cut her family out of her life. And then maybe there was a child to think about, too. 

Running her hands through her hair, Robin took refuge in the chair by her tiny fireplace. She avoided even looking at the computer across the room. She had more names to “Google” but she wasn’t sure she was ready.

The message light on her phone blinked at her. Probably her mother had called. She knew she had to call her back but what was she going to tell her? All she really knew was that someone named Eleanor had had a baby named Samantha Robin. The coincidences were after all, only coincidences. It couldn’t be her sister. It just couldn’t.

A gust shook the windows and Robin pulled the crocheted afghan around her. Something else from her grandmother. She closed her eyes as the soft wool warmed her. 

Then, she imagined for a second she heard her grandmother clattering pans in the kitchen. The aroma of cinnamon grew strong as she remembered an afternoon of baking just before Eleanor went to college. 

Ellen had been full of hopes that day. She pulled snicker doodles from the oven as she talked about someday moving to Australia to shoot photos of the Outback.

The look of shock on Grandmother’s face was hard to forget. She laid down a spoon full of cookie dough and wiped flour from her hands. “You can’t be serious,” she said to her granddaughter. “That’s no place for a young girl. It’s on the other side of the world.”

“Grandmother, it’s what I’ve wanted to do all my life. I’ll be fine,” the pretty blonde collegian said, pushing hair off her overheated face. “Lots of people go there. Nothing happens. I want to see Ayres Rock and dingos. And I want to shoot pictures.”

“Then take pictures here. Work for The Sun or take portraits down at Udel Brothers,” her grandmother said.

Eleanor groaned and fell back on a hard kitchen chair. 

“We’d miss you, Ellen,” Robin remembered saying. The idea of her wonderful big sister leaving her made the 11-year-old want to cry. And 11-year-olds don’t cry, Robin told herself, fighting the urge. “It’s bad enough you’re going to college next week – all the way over on the Eastern Shore. And we won’t see you again until Thanksgiving.”

“I promise to write to you,” Eleanor said. She squeezed her little sister, smiled and handed her a fragrant, warm cookie. Robin remembered she was too old to cry. And the cookie did smell good.

And a week later, Ellen was packed and moved into a dorm room in dreary old Salisbury. It wasn’t far away even though Robin thought it was. Although there were seven years between them, the two sisters had been close. Robin had counted on Eleanor to take her to Girl Scouts – she’d even gone camping with them. They went to the mall on Saturdays when Eleanor wasn’t working or going out with her own friends. Robin looked up to her sister. She admired her pretty looks, her outgoing ways, and her sense of humor. She was so different from Robin who considered herself shy and much too serious. Robin loved it when Eleanor talked to Robin about what they’d do when they were both grown up. She talked about traveling all over the world, taking pictures. She dreamed up adventures in Africa or Europe and promised Robin she’d save all her best pictures for her little sister. 

The phone rang, drawing Robin back to the present.

“Yes, Anita, I remember you,” Robin said, double-clicking the internet connection.

“I’ve been thinking about you since we met on Friday,” Anita said. “Are you free for lunch tomorrow? I’d really like to talk to you.”

“Thanks. But I don’t think so, Anita,” Robin answered. 

“Please,” she said. “I’d like to show you the photos. I dragged them out of storage after we met. There’s a reflection of Eleanor in one of them that I just noticed today. Isn’t that strange? Please say yes.”

“I really don’t think so,” Robin responded. “I have so much to do tomorrow.”

But Anita persisted. And, though she was sure it was a bad idea, Robin agreed. “Petit Louis? No, I know where it is. No, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten there. Sure. Fine. See you at 1.” 

She hung up and turned to the internet again. She wanted to find out more about Sean Matthew Carrington and Debbie Cain. No, Robin stopped and thought. What she really wanted was to talk to Jane. She dialed her friend’s number and left a message when Jane didn’t pick up. Jane called back immediately. 

“Sorry, I was grading essays. I needed to get them done,” she explained. “What’s up, Nancy?”

“Very funny. But I had to call you about the ‘date’ I just made.”

“Really!?” Jane exclaimed. “A guy -- you have time for a guy?”

“Wish I did but no, not that kind of a date. This was about Ellen. Anita -- you remember, the woman who said she knew Ellen at Fordham -- well, she called and asked me to meet her.”

She related their conversation but before she could finish Jane interrupted. 

“I’m going with you,” she said. “I want to meet this so-called friend.”

“Don’t call her the ‘so-called friend’.”

“Why not? That’s what she is,” Jane said.

“I don’t know. It sounds, oh, rude,” Robin said.

“Okay if I call her a witness?”

“To what? It’s not like there was a crime.”

“Witness to a mystery then.”

“Sure, Jane. Meet me here and 12:30. Lunch is at 1.”