14,900 ~ 16,900

Chris opened the box and they peered inside. It looked like Aunt Jane had packed away all of her high school mementos with her yearbooks. Sam pulled out an old pair of pom-poms and several playbills for school plays. They set aside a shoe box filled with old photos to get to what they came for. In the bottom of the box, there were four year books. Two had dark blue covers and said ‘The Oaks’ on the spine. Two were maroon and thinner than the others.

“Here we go. This one has to be the one,” Sam said as she grabbed one of the maroon books. She set it on the table so she and Chris could both look. Embossed on the cover were the words “South Hamilton High School” and the date, “1959”.

“Alright, so unless something weird happened, the woman you are looking for went to South Hamilton, just a few years after Mom”.

“Yep.” Sam stared at the book a moment silently. She continued, “So, what does that get me? I know where she went to high school. But that was a hundred years ago. She could be anywhere now. Hell, my mom moved a zillion times after high school. First to California, then to San Diego, then back to Muskegon, then to Minnesota. Ruth could have done the same thing. Or worse”.

Chris could hear the frustration in her voice. “At least it’s a start. Why don’t we do this? Why don’t we check Classmates.com? Scott got on there last year and ordered one of his yearbooks he’d lost. They have yearbooks from everywhere, even from the early 1900s, and you can actually look at them.” He saw the disbelieving look on Sam’s face.

“Check this out,” Chris had opened his mother’s yearbook to the senior class pictures. He pointed at one and read, “’Hawley, Jan. Sweet Jan was a member of the pep squad and proudly served as our Homecoming Queen. She was junior class president and secretary of the Latin Club. She hopes to study law at The University of Ohio.’ Samantha, if we can find Ruth’s senior yearbook, she might have an entry like that. It might get you a clue as to where she went next. Come on”.

He was already taking the stairs two at a time. Sam jogged to catch up. He led her down the hall to a back bedroom. They had turned it into an office. There were two computer stations set up at a large desk that covered nearly two full walls of the room.

“Ikea,” Sam stated. “I have the same one in Espresso instead of black. I think mine’s a little smaller. I don’t need quite this much space”. Sam smiled.

Chris sat down at one of the computers and waved Sam into the other chair. As he waited for Classmates.com to respond, Sam turned to the other computer and clicked on Google.

“Wha’cha doing?” Chris asked.

“The way I see it, you never left here, Aunt Jane never left here, Scott left and came back, Laura never left here. A lot of people don’t leave their childhood homes. Maybe Ruth didn’t either. I know it’s a stretch but what if she never got married? What if she’s still living in Hamilton, Ohio, just outside of Cincinnati, and still using the name Ruth Goldman? We could spin our wheels for days and the information could be right under our noses. I’m going to see if there’s a telephone listing for her. If there is, I’ll use the reverse look up and get her address”.

“That makes a little sense. I think it’s a long shot, a super long shot, but it’ll only take a couple minutes so why not? What do you have to lose at this point? In the meantime, I’m going to login over here and see what I can see”.

They both looked up a moment later when they heard the screen door open and close.

“Hellooooo?” It was Scott, Chris’ long time friend and partner.

“We’re in the office,” Chris called out.

Scott stuck his head in the door. “Hey, guys. The food is in the kitchen. I’m going to go change then I’ll whip up some margaritas. You guys just keep working.”

“How was rehersal?” Chris asked as Scott retreated down the hall. Scott taught theater and dramatic arts at West Michigan Christian, a private Christian school in Muskegon. It was spring musical time and as usual Scott tended to be a bit stressed out.

“Oh my. Remember Tyler and Brittney, my leads, decided to date? Well, now they’ve decided to break up. I’m about done with teen angst and drama.”

“Not exactly the ‘drama’ you signed up for?” Sam laughed at him. She thought it was great that a town like Muskegon and a school like West Michigan Christian would hire a man like Scott, who, while not ‘out’, certainly wasn’t ‘in’. While Chris could fool people with his good looks and athleticism, Scott could not. He was slightly built and could ‘butch it up’ when he needed to, but in his private life he tended to be more effeminate. After all, he was an actor first and a drama teacher second. He still spent every summer working summer stock productions at the Howmet Theater in just north of town in Whitehall. He knew how to play a role when he needed to.

“Hey, look at this,” Chris pulled Sam’s attention back to the task at hand. He had found South Hamilton High School on the Classmates website.

“What year would she have graduated?” he asked.

“Same year as my mom, I think. 1964.”

“Alright, keep your fingers crossed that yearbook is here and that she’s in there.”

Chris scrolled down through the years and clicked on 1964.

“So far, so good”, said Sam. She had abandoned her search at the moment and had wheeled her chair over to his computer.

Chris used the mouse and scroll bar to click through the yearbook pages until he found what he was looking for, the senior class pictures.

“Let’s see. Fordham. Giddings. Golden. Here we go. Goldman, Ruth Ann.”

Sam’s stomach leapt. The woman existed, at least she had existed in 1964. She peered at the picture and studied the face of her mother’s oldest friend and Bucket List Wish. In Sam’s eyes, she didn’t look at different from any of the other girls. Same 1960s hair style, same sweater vest, same smile. She had dark hair, dark eyes, and an olive complexion.

Chris magnified the screen and read, “Voted Most Athletic and Most Artistic, Ruth is our Renaissance Girl. There is nothing she can’t do. Ruth plans to major in Art History at UK and own her own gallery one day. We have no doubt she’ll be successful.”

“UK? Kentucky? She wanted to go to Kentucky? With all the good schools in Ohio?” mused Sam skeptically.

“Don’t forget your geography, Sam. Cincinnati is on the border of Kentucky so it’s not like she wanted to go to the back of beyond or anything.”

“Dude, Kentucky in the 60s was the back of beyond. Hell, I think it still is.”

“We went to the Kentucky Derby a few years ago. It seemed ok. Didn’t need a passport or anything,” Chris laughed.

“Well, fuck. What are the chances she moved back to Hamilton after graduating from college?”

“You never know. But now you have two leads. Maybe she stayed in… Where’s the University of Kentucky? Lexington?”

Oh fuck, Sam thought. Lexington. Holly was in Lexington. Fucking Holly. Sam and Holly had broken up couple years before. Why did they all want rings and commitment ceremonies? Why couldn’t they just be content with life as is? Holly was typical of the women Sam had dated since Shay. They were all in their early thirties and looking to settle down. Sam was the polar opposite. She enjoyed dating, but wanted freedom. Sam supposed that she loved these women, just not on the level that they wanted to be loved. Eventually Holly, like many others, grew tired of Sam’s non-committal attitude and broke up with her. Holly found a job coaching volleyball back home in Lexington, loaded up a U-Haul, and left in a flurry of I hate yous. In all honesty, Sam was used to it. No matter how much they insisted that they loved her and would never hate her, Sam knew the truth. Eventually, everyone hated her, at least a little.

“Yep. It’s in Lexington,” Sam tried to shake off thoughts of Holly. “Hey, where’s Scott with those margaritas?”

“Great idea. Let’s have a few cocktails and dinner. We can come back to this in later”.

 

~

 

“So, Chris tells me you have a woman in Minnesota,” Scott shouted over the whir of the blender. He was making his signature mango margaritas. Before deciding to settle down into teaching, Scott had spent his twenties bartending while he sought out acting jobs in New York. Even though many years had passed, he could still mix a great drink.

“What the fuck woman in Minnesota, Christopher?!?” Sam was not happy with this line of questioning.

“Annika Olssen? Hot, hot, hot. I read your books, Samantha J., and I know things,” teased Scott. “She’s based on a real person. An American ex-pat living in Stockholm, owns a restaurant? I’m not even going to talk about those sex scenes.”

He wasn’t going to let up. “Then the trip to New York. I saw a picture on the Internet of the book release party. Hot woman with you with some Swedish name? Come on, Sam. Dish the good stuff.”

“Maybe she’s really from Sweden. Maybe I met her when I went there to do research.”

“Chris told me she’s from Minnesota. Owns a bar. You go there to avoid your mom.”

“Dammit, Scott. You need to stop reading my books. And believing everything you see on the Internet.”

Scott was one of Sam’s biggest fans. Chris was proud of her, but Scott was prouder. He had always loved mystery-thriller books and was delighted when Sam created Nicola Martin, her lesbian lead character. Nic had appeared in four, going on five, of Sam’s novels and had grown into a fan favorite, especially among the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered community. It may have been Sam’s goal to be mainstream, but she had to give credit to the GLBT community, to people like Scott, for jumping on her bandwagon and promoting her books.

“We just want you to be happy. When are you going to find a nice woman and settle down?” asked Chris.

“Especially with someone as smokin’ hot as Annika Olssen,” Scott chimed in.

“Annika is fiction, Scott. Fiction.”

“Yeah, but the woman in Minnesota isn’t,” Chris added.

“Look guys. That woman you’re talking about - Malin Jonassen? She has a girlfriend. Some triathlete from Wisconsin named Jackie. She’s super nice. It’s not going to happen. Even if I wanted it to happen. Which I don’t.”

They looked at her skeptically.

“I don’t. For real. Scott, give me a shot of tequila. Y’all are driving me crazy. Can’t we just talk about Ruth Goldman. Remember her? The whole reason for my visit with y’all?”

They continued to look at her skeptically.

“I can see we aren’t going to get any farther. Let me clear this one up again. Christopher Harrison, you know damn well I’m not the girlfriend type. Before you bring up Shay, stop. That was the past. I’m too busy and have too much going on these days. I don’t want to share all that with anyone.”

“But you shared your book release with Malin, the Minnesota hottie,” Scott dared to say as Sam and Chris both shot him a look. Chris knew his cousin and he knew that this portion of the conversation was over.

“Leave it alone, Scott. Ok, Sam what’s your next step?” Chris said, changing the subject.