The Disappearance of Emily: Destiny Falls Mystery & Magic Series Book 2 Elizabeth Pantley (notion reading list .txt) 📖

going on. I grabbed my phone and sent the photos to my e-mail to make sure I had a backup copy. Then I sent a second copy to my Natural Living e-mail, just to be sure. Perhaps I should share the photos with Jaxson today? The photos weren’t part of the box. I could ask him to keep it in confidence. If he knew, but told no one else, would that lead to danger . . . or to an arrest?

I dragged the box out of the closet and placed it in the middle of my bedroom floor. It seemed critical now to get a handle on what was in those files. If this box was what they were after, there must be something of great importance in here. But what exactly? Now that I’d learned more about Gladstone, I suspected it had to do with that forbidden island, the magical lakes, and the fountain of youth.

Time to get serious. I had a couple of hours before meeting up with Axel. I would spend the time searching through the files. I took a deep breath and slapped my hands on the top of the box, then cringed at the loud bang. No need to wake the cats!

“Yowzer! What was that?” Latifa asked.

Oops. Too late. Cat number one was up.

“Sorry, Latifa. I didn’t mean to wake you,” I whispered.

“If you didn’t mean to wake me, you shouldn’t be playing bongo drums on that box.”

“Go back to sleep.” I used a kind voice to take the edge off my words. “I have work to do.”

“Too late, Honey Pie. I’m up now.” I heard her moving around on the bed. “Aww. Look at this cutie patootie sound asleep. Isn’t she precious?”

“Um, hmm.” I was already removing files from the box.

“Hayden! I said look at the cutie patootie!”

To keep her quiet, I stood up and looked at the bed. “Ah, yes. She’s the sweetest little thing.”

“And look at Chanel. She’s like a sleeping angel.”

I sat back down until I heard Latifa clear her throat. That meant a reply was necessary. I stood back up and looked at Chanel curled up on the bed. Her pristine, white fur a contrast to Lola’s rich, black fuzz. “My, she’s such a pretty cat. You can feel the softness of her fur without even touching it.”

Appeased, Latifa lay back down, yawned, and closed her eyes.

The brief exchange with my cat helped to calm my spirit. I felt a touch more back on earth. I pulled more files out of the box. I opened the two folders with the payment ledgers. Then noticed there were two more just like them. There had to be fifty pages of names altogether. The lack of dates was odd.

The large dollar amounts had me thinking. These were not normal boat fares, not that anything in Destiny Falls was normal, but the prices in stores and restaurants here seemed typical. Using that as a gauge, these were excessively high. I’d traveled on many ferry boats back in Seattle, and even the most expensive trips were just a fraction of these amounts. The cruise ship idea popped back in my head, but it made no sense. Perhaps this all had to do with the island of Gladstone. People would pay sizeable sums to achieve the fountain of youth. Many would risk dangerous situations to find it.

I noticed that they often wrote one column in different color ink, so it was likely filled in at a different time. It was the column that showed either Approved or Denied. Why would you need approval for a journey? And who did the approving or denying?

Then there was the column for Agent—either A, K, or V. And finally Paid—to either L or M. And every person showed paid, whether approved or not.

I scanned the pages of names. Mostly, the names were common enough. There were a few that sounded foreign, but not an excessive amount of those. The names were handwritten, printed first, and then a signature as if the people themselves had signed in on the page. Interestingly, I noticed that a few names were listed more than once—sometimes just a few pages apart, other times in an entirely different folder. I was speeding through the pages now, not seeing anything unusual, until my eye caught the name Caldwell.

I rubbed my eyes, then leaned closer to the page to decipher the curvy handwriting. As the name became clear to me, the hair on the back of my neck stood up and my throat went dry.

Shock and confusion washed over me. I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. I sucked in a breath and bolted upright. The file dropped off my lap onto the floor. It lay there, looking like a normal file, filled with normal papers. But I knew that it wasn’t. I reached out to the desk for support and stared down at the papers. There was nothing normal about this at all. Clear as day, the name on the page was Emily Caldwell . . . Denied.

23

Why was my mother’s name on this page? I ran my finger over the curvy, bold signature. Was this really her? Did she sign this page? Was she trying to leave Destiny Falls or trying to come here? She had been denied. There was no date. Was this recent or from years ago? Was this one of the secrets that the ferry captain was warning me about? Was my mother in danger? Or . . . was she the danger?

Emotions traveled through my body in waves. My mother who disappeared when I was two days old. My mother who never explained why she left or where she went. Was she somehow tied to the mystery of the ferry?

My father’s life originated in Destiny Falls, and he had escaped from here to Seattle as a young man, where he met and married my mother. They had a wonderful life together. They lived with my nana