The first bit of information she needed had been found rather quickly, once Ella settled into a seat by a large window in the hall upstairs. She had her feet up on the matching chair, her computer open on her lap, a view of the sea out the window not enough to distract her from her search.
She’d learned quickly that Rome had purchased the house from a couple with the last name of Brand. While she’d been able to find the seller’s name online, the buyer was undisclosed in most places she found and listed under Rome’s lawyer’s name elsewhere. At least there seemed to be no public record that Rome Verona had purchased the property, not at the moment anyway.
After that, Ella hit a brick wall. There seemed to be no documentation as to who Mr. and Mrs. Bill Brand had purchased the house from. Frustrated, she decided to take another route and searched for Fae Ward’s information on an ancestry site. That led her to her husband’s name--Harrison Ward. After what seemed like hours of searching, she finally found where he’d purchased a home in 1974, but the address was different than her current address. Was it possible the address had changed at some point after the Wards moved in? Or was it during the time the Brands lived there?
Finding the answer to that question took some more digging. Eventually, she found a piece of evidence that confirmed her house had once had a different address. After that, she was able to establish who the Wards had bought the house from, which was the daughter of the builder. Margaret Gier had sold them the house, and her father, Alistair Gier, had built it--in 1924. She was even able to find a picture of the Giers standing in front of the house--Alistair, his wife Betty, and their three children, Margaret, Helen, and Wallace. Sadly, she found a newspaper clipping that stated Wallace had drowned outside the family home when he was only four.
That sent a chill down Ella’s spine, but she kept on with her research. She wasn’t looking for ghost stories. “Besides,” she reminded herself, “I’m already dead.”
A little more searching turned up Harrison Ward’s death certificate. He’d died in 2008, two years before the Brands had bought the house. So… what had happened to Fae? There seemed to be no death certificate for her. If she were still alive, she’d be 95 years old. Had she lived in the house alone for a few years before she sold the house to the Brands?
The Wards had a son, Kenneth, but Ella wasn’t able to find much information on him in any of the ancestry sites. Deciding that was because he might not be old enough for that data to be uploaded there, she searched the white pages and found nothing. Then, she decided to turn to social media as a last resort.
She doubted a man of Kenneth’s age was too active on any of the sites she normally used, but she was able to locate three potential matches on a network older people tended to navigate toward. Sure enough, Kenneth Ward, who lived in Fresno, California, matched the age she was looking for. It turned out Kenneth liked to look at pictures of his grandkids. He only had a few friends, but most of them shared his last name.
Ella studied the pictures, trying to determine what to do next. Chances were, if she sent him a message, he wouldn’t even see it. If he did, she felt he was unlikely to respond. Instead, Ella decided to send a message to a woman she thought might be his daughter, Miranda Ward Bowles, who looked like she was in her mid-thirties, had two kids, and lived in Nebraska where she worked as an interior designer.
Ella’s new social media account wasn’t that old, and she only had a few friends, none of them people she even knew in real life since friending the people she actually knew would be too risky, so there was a good chance Miranda might ignore her message, too, thinking she was a Russian bot or hacker. It took her a few minutes to decide what to say. Rather than getting into it too deeply, she wrote, “Hi. You don’t know me, but I think I might be living in the house your grandparents used to live in. Is Fae Ward your grandmother? If so, I found some of her artwork in the attic and thought she might like to have it back.”
She left it at that, hoping Ms. Bowles would bother to answer Cindy Grimm, and closed her laptop. Ella rubbed the bridge of her nose and stretched, deciding the ocean was calling her name. Maybe she could convince Rome to come outside with her for a bit. Or maybe not. Either way, she was going out to the beach to calm her spirit and look for some direction. Cindy Grimm needed a job, and sleuthing around about former residents of her beach house did not count.
Setting her laptop aside, she went downstairs to the bedroom. Rome was pacing back and forth, his manuscript in his hand, as he read his lines aloud. She watched him for a few moments, a smile on her face. He was so talented. Even without someone replying to him, she could feel the passion of the scene unfolding around her.
He didn’t notice she was there until he was done with the page he was on. Looking up, he spotted her, and a sheepish grin came across his face, as if he was embarrassed to have been caught rehearsing that way. Ella smiled. “You’re amazing,” she said. “This movie is going to be so great.”
“Thanks.” His smile morphed into one of pure joy. “What are you up to, beautiful?”
“I’ve decided to head to the beach for a bit. Would you like to come?” She stepped forward, into his open arms.
“I wish I could,” Rome said, tossing his script on the bed and wrapping his arms around her waist. “But I have to finish learning my lines for tomorrow’s scene.”
Ella tried not to let her disappointment change her expression. “Okay. Well, I’m going to go stick my feet in the surf and see if it helps me decide what I want to be when I grow up.”
He snickered at her. “I thought you wanted to be a graphic designer.”
“I do, but I am currently unemployed and not sure how to go about getting a job when Ella Verona is dead, and Cindy Grimm has no experience, no actual degree, and no references.”
He nodded, finally understanding her dilemma. “Perhaps… you can start your own company?”
A chuckle escaped her lips. “What clients would hire me?”
“Uh… I would,” Rome said, his smile a mix between sympathetic and teasing.
“Well, thanks, babe. But I’m pretty sure you don’t have a media marketing company.”
“True,” Rome said, looking off in the distance in deep thought. “But I could.”
“Don’t you have enough on your plate?” Ella turned and nodded beside her at the script that was sitting on the bed.
Rome’s eyes went there as well. “Yes. I do have a lot on my plate, but if you want me to start a company--”
Before he could finish, Ella reached up on her tiptoes and found his lips, cutting him off. She kissed him deeply, thinking about how amazing he was for even offering. Rome pulled her closer, but remembering that the ocean was calling her, and he had work to do, Ella fought the urge to tumble with him onto the bed and managed to work her way free. “Thank you for offering, Rome. I can’t ask you to do that right now, though. You’re too busy. I’m going to go see what the sea has to say.” She found a smile, even though her frustration was mounting with every moment of unanswered contemplation. “I’ll see you later.”
“All right, baby. I love you,” Rome said, knowing how important it was to get back to his script.
Ella leaned up and gave him one more quick kiss and then hurried out of the room before she was tempted to get lost in his eyes again. She had a lot to figure out, but she wasn’t going to find any answers watching Rome memorize his lines, so she headed out to the beach to find a different sort of inspiration.