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THE FINAL IN A SERIES OF SIX STORIES.

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It took him a while to decide what to get her for their anniversary.  The 25th was a big one.  Silver.  A milestone.  But then when he saw it, it was the clear choice.  The perfect compromise.  The best way possible to combine their automotive tastes.

After all, she had always preferred big American land barges.  She’d been a fan of Buicks since way back when.  She was driving a Buick Electra convertible when they started their relationship.  After they got married he continued to buy her a new Buick every few years, as was her preference.  Although, just like the rest of the country, her fondness for convertibles waned.  She received a new Electra 225 coupe in 1968, a boat tail Riviera in ’71.  But after their second child was born it was a steady stream of sedans or wagons.

He never shed his fondness for European cars.  Impractical as they were in Fort Stockton, he could never succumb to the giant land barges that the American companies continued to grind out, not to mention the lack of quality they embodied.  Not that quality had been the determining factor in his automotive choices.  After all, he bought a string of Jaguars and half of them were in the shop more than they were in his driveway.  He’d switched to Mercedes, which riled up a couple of his clients who were VFW members.  When he went to BMW it was only slightly less offensive, but by then there were far fewer members of the VFW to be appalled by a BMW.

The 1991 Jeep Grand Wagoneer Final Edition represented more than just an automotive choice that was outside the mainstream.  It embodied something meant to last, just like their marriage.  In fact, the design for the GW had been around longer than their actual marriage had been.  Tested, tried, and true.  When he saw it on the showroom floor he thought she’d look perfect behind the wheel.  It’d be great for travel.  Comfortable, with plenty of power to pull the RV they’d been talking about when he retired.  It was an easy call.

Of course, she loved it.  Especially when he had it delivered to the driveway with a special glittery silver bow stretched out over the full length of the roof in honor of the Big Day. The Big Two-Five.  As they had worked more and more closely to settle her first husband’s estate and then make the journey together to discover her own real past, the concept of ‘Final Editions’ became a theme.  The perfect metaphor for their 25th wedding anniversary.

By the time they actually tied the knot in 1966 nobody in Fort Stockton was surprised.  Vince Edwards had been gone for two years.  They’d been seen around town together for a solid 18 months.  It was obvious Arabella Edwards and Franklin Danbury were in love and meant to be together.  When they finally said their vows at the Fort Stockton Country Club, Perry Silverman stood as Franklin’s best man; Eileen Parker was Arabella’s maid of honor.  Trixie from the Klip-N-Dye of course made some biting comments about Eileen being as far from a ‘maid’ as possible and not even being able to spell ‘honor,’ but nobody paid any attention to her.

Nobody was surprised when they adopted a child.  The fact that it was a girl raised some eyebrows.  Everyone assumed Franklin Danbury would want a male heir to carry on the family name.  After all, the Danburys went back generations in Fort Stockton.  “It’s important to ‘Bella to have a girl,” he told fiends.  “She has her reasons.  I wouldn’t deny her that.”

What did surprise everyone was what happened next.  As so happens many times without any known explanation, Arabella became pregnant and gave birth to their own biological child less than a year later.  Of course they didn’t love Jocelyn any less when Franklin Danbury Jr. burst onto the scene.  In fact, their family was complete at that point.  Enough to fill up the big Buicks Arabella drove.

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What very few people knew, not even their closest friends, was what the investigation Franklin and his private eye, Freestone, had turned up.

In searching the records for anyone still alive that might be related to Esther Kimble, Freestone was able to locate Eunice Kimble, her cousin.  The same cousin, in fact that, she’d gone to the dance with at the Rivercrest Country Club.  She was reluctant to talk to Freeman.  In fact, she would hang up when he called in the beginning.  But then, when a beige 1962 Ford Galaxie showed up in her driveway in Fort Worth one day and the man was at her front door, she lost her will to keep secrets.

“It was a different time, back then,” she said.  As though that would excuse what happened. “A girl getting pregnant out of wedlock would ruin a family’s name.  Especially in Fort Worth.  Not that it didn’t happen.  In fact it was more common than most people believed.  Not like nowadays, of course.  But it happened.”  

She had her maid bring the two of them tall glasses of iced sweet tea.

“Esther was determined to keep the baby, though.  That’s what really caused the issue.  Most folks would send their daughters to ‘a year of study abroad’.  They’d have the baby, give it away, and come back and resume their lives.  Occasionally they’d get married to whomever the erring father was.  But not that often.  That still raised eyebrows. It was best to pretend it never happened an go on about one’s business.”

“Why didn’t Esther marry the father if she was determined to keep the baby?” Freestone asked.

Eunice raised her own eyebrows.  “So I am assuming you are not familiar with Mr. Brooks?”

Freestone got out his spiral notebook and started writing.  “I am not.  But I would like to be.”

Eunice sat back in her chair.  The maid refilled her sweet tea.  She stared out the picture window for a moment.  It looked like her eyes welled up, but Freestone wasn’t sure of that.  He remained silent and waited.

Eunice began talking and spoke in low hushed tones for nearly an hour as she relayed the entire story.  The story that she had been carrying inside for over three decades and never shared.  The story that only she had been told.  The story that finally explained who Arabella was.

“Esther and Francis Brooks were besotted by one another.  From the moment they first laid eyes on each other at the Rivercrest Country Club.  He was older and as handsome as the day was long.  After they danced together for the very first time, she and I went to the Ladies Room and she told me she’d found the man she was going to marry.  I thought she was crazy.  She told me I just didn’t understand.”

“They were inseparable.  Well, as inseparable as they could be without attracting too much attention, anyway.  Her father would not have approved and she knew it.  The young man was military.  He was Baptist.  And he wasn’t from Fort Worth.  He may as well have been the devil himself.  I’m not so sure those things didn’t even make him more attractive to Esther.  And then that green Ford convertible he drove.  My goodness.”

Freestone started to say something but then held back and just let the woman speak.

“After a while the attraction became so strong that my cousin let it be known that she wished to know her paramour in the biblical sense.”  Eunice looked at Freestone for a reaction.  He just kept jotting down notes.

“The two of them got a room at the Westbrook Hotel.  Of course it was a lot nicer then.  Not that it mattered.  They weren’t there for the architecture or decor.  They enjoyed carnal knowledge of one another.”  Eunice fell silent for a moment, as though she was searching for the right words.  “The only time was that night.  He told her she couldn’t get pregnant the first time.  Of course, she knew better.  She either thought the chances were small, or she was so infatuated she didn’t care.  He took her home later that night.

They weren’t able to see each other for the next two days, which almost drove the poor thing crazy.  But not as crazy as the third day when he was killed in a training flight over Weatherford.  She read about it in The Fort Worth Press.  She was inconsolable.  She came to my house, closed the door and cried for two days.  I cried for her.  It was six weeks later she realized she was pregnant.  Of course, the young man never knew he’d fathered a child.  But Esther was determined to keep it.  That’s how she wound up in Arlington instead of overseas.”

“Who knew that’s where she was?” Freestone asked.

“Just me.  And I never told anyone,” Eunice replied.  “We’d write letters back and forth.”

“And what was she going to do once the baby was born?” Freestone inquired.

“She didn’t know.  I think she hoped her family would welcome her back and accept her and her child.  She said something once about going to Wichita Falls and seeking out the boy’s family, but then never mentioned it again.  And then she stopped writing.  It took me months to find out she’d died in childbirth.  The home she was in closed shortly after she died. Financial reasons, I read.”  Eunice had to stop to contain the emotions.

Freestone remained silent.

“The boy has a brother in Wichita Falls.  Well, he did, anyway.  It’s been years since I tried to find anything out.  I started to call him a time or two, but stopped myself.  Didn’t want to open a can of worms.  Anyway, his name is Tyrone Brooks.”

The two of them sat in silence for a bit.

“You know what happened to the child, don’t you?”  Eunice asked.

“I do.  It was a girl.  That’s really all I can say at this point.  I’m sure you understand.”  Freestone felt guilty withholding information, but had limits on what he was able to share.

“Tell her I tried to find her.  It got complicated.  It wasn’t that I didn’t care.”

Freestone thanked his hostess for the iced tea, more so the information, and the time she had spent with him.  “I know it wasn’t easy.  But it was important.”

“I know,” she replied.  “I know.”

Once he got back to the Galaxie he considered driving to Wichita Falls and looking for Tyrone Brooks.  It was only an hour and a half away.  But then, he turned the beige Ford around and headed southwest instead.  Brooks didn’t have any information to provide, anyway.  In fact, if he’d have found Brooks, Freestone would have been the one giving information and that’s not how his business worked.  

He would provide all the information to Arabella.   Just to know the facts was what she’d been waiting for.  She would finally know exactly who she was, what her story really was.

What she did with that story was up to her.

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