Great Big Beautiful Life(24)

“Of course,” I say, as cheerfully as I can muster. “But—”

“Jodi will see you out,” she says, cutting me short with a winning smile. I jam my mouth shut and nod acceptance: I’ve been excused.

Margaret turns and sweeps from the room.



* * *



? ? ?

Later, I lie on the sofa at the little overgrown bungalow I’m renting, ignoring my still-unpacked bags in favor of doing research. If this was an interview for a Scratch piece, I could’ve simply sent a list of questions to one of the fact-checkers to follow up on. In fact, if I get this job, it might be worth hiring someone freelance to do my legwork so I can focus on the writing and interviews themselves, but until I have someone, it’s up to me.

I look back on my list of things to check out, and start with Dillon Springs, Pennsylvania.

All of this was so long ago that birth and death records weren’t even being filed yet. There’s no way to confirm most of what Margaret told me, since it’s anecdotal, but as we move forward in history, I’m going to need to be able to verify everything.

I text a couple of freelance fact-checkers to get their availability in the coming months, then go back to reading about Dillon Springs, a tiny town that does, in fact, consider itself “the birthplace of modern American journalism,” a fairly lofty claim, especially considering that Lawrence Ives never once went back to Dillon Springs and it was his San Francisco–born son who became the true media magnate of the family.

Lawrence had owned three newspapers by the time he died, but he had no involvement in how they were run day to day. His son, Gerald, Margaret’s grandfather, was the one to push into the business of news.

As far as I can tell, there are no prominent Iveses still in Dillon Springs, though I’m guessing if Margaret did a DNA test, we’d be able to find a slew of cousins, given how large a family her great-grandfather was born into.

Next I search for Thomas Dougherty, but if any more of his story is out there, the first five pages of search results don’t yield it. I try his name along with Dillon Springs, but still have no luck.

From there, I move on to reading about the first big mine lode, and the forty-two tons of silver, a number confirmed by multiple sources, codified into history by now, because—while, honestly, Ives made his fortune across multiple industries—this particular mine and its treasure offered the punchiest, most impressive headline.

Headline. It jump-starts something in my brain.

I open a new browser and run a search for Ives’s first newspaper acquisition, rather than scouring my preinterview notes. There it is: the San Francisco Daily Dispatch. If Lawrence bought it out, then I’m guessing the story about Thomas Dougherty’s betrayal at Lawrence’s hands never ran, but I send an email to their archives department to see if they have any copies of issues from that far back that haven’t crumbled into dust, just in case.

Then I start looking for information about the inn Lawrence bought, and something strange happens.

The Ebner Hotel comes up right away, exactly where I’m expecting it, in the Nevada town where the Ives fortune began.

The issue is, while the hotel is a historic landmark built during the gold rush, it wasn’t called the Ebner until after the family sold it, in the 1970s. When Lawrence acquired it, it had been called the Arledge, and then in 1917, it had been renamed the Nicollet, for the duration of the Iveses’ ownership of it.

So why didn’t Margaret call it that? It wouldn’t have been called the Ebner until…fortyish years after her one visit. Why would her first reaction be to call it by its current name?

It’s a small, probably meaningless discrepancy, but the way her voice stuck when she said the name keeps wriggling in the back of my mind.

Maybe she has been back there since her family sold it off. But why wouldn’t she want me to know that?

Or am I just overthinking a meaningless mistake?

I fire off a text to the group chat, and when I don’t get a quick reply, I message Theo too: Can I run something by you?

Luckily, he replies quickly. What kind of thing?

Work thing, I say.

My phone starts ringing immediately.

If there’s one thing Theo Bouras can’t resist, it’s a good mystery. Probably why he’s never been quite ready to make things official with me. Mystery is not my strong suit.

“Hi,” I say brightly, answering the call.

“Alicccce,” he says, drawing my name out in a teasing way that makes me shiver.

“Theo,” I say.

“What have you got for me this time?” he asks.

“Are you sure you’re not too busy?”

“Nah,” he says. “I’ve got you on speaker while I’m developing.”

For work, his photos are all digital, but his real passion is film, so on his off days, he’s usually in his home darkroom, or out shooting.

“I’m trying to figure out why a source might lie about something trivial,” I say.

“And by source, do you mean Margaret Ives?” he teases.

“I just mean generally,” I say.

“How trivial are we talking?” he asks, clearly intrigued.

“Like saying they’ve only been somewhere once, but maybe they’ve been there more than that,” I say. “Maybe more recently than they said.”