Free Show, The by John A. Heldt

should be able to find something."
    "Thank you."
    "How about the young man? What can you tell me about him?"
    "I know only his name and that he lives in Seattle," Grace said, wondering, and not for the first time, whether Joel had been honest even about his name and town. "His name is Joel Smith. I believe he is about twenty-two years old."
    The librarian jotted down the information on a third piece of paper and attached it to the other two with a paper clip. She looked at her watch, peeled a slip from the top of a small yellow pad, and affixed it to the stack. The slip apparently came with its own adhesive.
    "The biggest problem I see, assuming that the women are still alive, is that they are likely using married names. They may have also moved beyond the Seattle area. If they have, then this search might take some time. The alumni office has the addresses and phone numbers of all graduates but won't release them without the written permission of the graduates."
    Grace frowned and lowered her eyes. Joel could be a mile away. He could be in the next room. But until she learned more about him, he might as well be on the moon.
    "I don't mean to discourage you, Miss . . ."
    "Vandenberg. Grace Vandenberg."
    "I don't mean to discourage you. This will be a challenge, but I like challenges. I'll work on this over the weekend, if need be. Unless these people are living in a cave, I'll find them. I will need a way to contact you though."
    Grace tried to think of Penelope's number but couldn't. So she wrote down a street address that she now knew by heart. She gave the address to the librarian.
    "I'll send you what I find, Grace. One way or another, we'll get this done."
    Grace beamed. She didn't know if she approved of the tattoo or the nose ring, but she definitely liked this lady's style. She finally had some help – good help. All she had to do now was wait.
     

CHAPTER 13: GRACE
     
    Monday, June 12, 2000
     
    Grace stepped out of Penelope's house and walked west along Fifty-Second Street. She hated leaving the woman alone. She loved her company, in fact. But after spending all day in the house cooking and cleaning, she decided that she needed to stretch her legs and see a few sights that she had not yet seen on her millennial tour of Seattle. So she did the dinner dishes and left.
    She felt less self-conscious than she had on previous walks, in part because she looked less like an extra in a forties movie and more like a contemporary college woman. She had a modern wardrobe now, thanks to two of Penelope's neighbors, recent graduates that Grace had met while watching them move out of their rental house. The coeds had planned to donate two boxes of old clothes to a thrift shop but gave them to Grace when she had asked if she could buy them.
    Wearing a short-sleeved top and a blue skirt, Grace walked a few blocks toward University Way Northeast, which was still called the Ave. She stopped in front of a vacant lot that featured tall weeds and a cement foundation but not a lot more.
    Penelope had told Grace at dinner that a fire a few months earlier had claimed a two-bedroom residence that had once been the envy of the neighborhood. Penelope had known the house as the home of a good friend, who had been away for the weekend when her Christmas tree had caught fire and taken the house with it.
    Grace knew the place as something else. It was the house Joel and Tom had rented in the fall of 1941, the house Grace had visited one cold Thanksgiving night when she had first given her love to a man she had decided she could not live without.
    She paused to think about that incredible night and about the world she had so recently given up. She missed Aunt Edith. She missed Ginny and Katie. She missed the familiar trappings of a simpler time. But she missed Joel Smith more, a lot more, and she vowed that her attempt to find him would not be in vain.
    She turned north along the Ave, a major north-south arterial of the university district, and