The Day Before Forever by Anna Caltabiano Page A

started, but Alanna stopped him, touching his shoulder.
    â€œThis one’s on us. You can get the next meal . . . Besides, someone sounds hungry.” She laughed, looking at me.
    â€œYou heard that?” I was already grabbing a handful of fries.
    â€œI never understood why fries are chips here and chips are crisps.” Henley was loading his fish with a massive amount of tartar sauce. “It’s so complicated.”
    â€œGot enough sauce there?” I teased.
    â€œIt looks like he has more sauce than fish.” Alanna wrinkled her nose. “Look, Peter does the same thing, except with vinegar.”
    Sure enough, Peter was busy drowning his fish in the little cup of vinegar.
    â€œI like it with a tang,” he said.
    â€œThat’s so gross.” Alanna was eating her fish plain.
    â€œEh.” Peter just shrugged.
    A phone audibly buzzed at the table, and Alanna and Peter simultaneously held their fish with one hand and patted their pocket for their phone with the other hand.
    â€œOh, it’s mine,” Alanna said, looking at her white iPhone. She turned to me. “My friend had the cutest baby! And they finally posted pics.”
    â€œJanice?” Peter said.
    â€œYeah, Janice. And the baby looks just like her . . . Give mea second and let me pull up the photo on Facebook.”
    Alanna handed me her phone. “Isn’t she just the cutest?”
    The baby was openmouthed, looking at the camera. You couldn’t really tell she was female. If Alanna hadn’t told me, the only way I could guess at the baby’s gender was the giant bow seemingly taped onto her bald head.
    When I grabbed the phone from Alanna’s hands, I accidentally tapped on a banner on the bottom of the screen. An advertisement of some sort?
    A news article filled my screen.
    Regency Chest Excavated in London Parking Lot
    But it was what was underneath the title that caught my eye.
    There was a letter next to a wooden chest. The letter looked ancient and the ink was faded in some parts, but the letter was magnified in a separate photo.
    Querida Emilia . . . it started.
    I scanned the letter. The entire thing was in Spanish, but two words made me stop.
    Juana Ruíz.
    That was the signature on the letter.
    I stopped, wondering if I had read that right. I skimmed the article. It mentioned that the letter was written in the 1500s while the chest was a Regency piece from the 1800s. The article also mentioned that Juana might have been the first European woman to set foot in the Americas.
    So it was her? The woman who had drunk from the Fountain of Youth with Ponce de León?
    The article said that the artifacts were found in what was now a parking lot in London. They had been doing constructionwhen they found the artifacts. I took note of the address of the parking lot. The article didn’t say much else after that.
    â€œStill looking at the baby?” Alanna said.
    I quickly clicked out of the page and handed Alanna her phone.
    â€œShe’s adorable,” I said.
    The conversation continued on around me, but I was barely listening. Juana. Why hadn’t it occurred to me before? If all the Miss Hatfields were dead and killed by someone immortal who had gone back in time to murder them one by one . . . maybe Juana was the killer. She had drunk from the Fountain of Youth with Ponce de León. So what if she had never died? She was the only one I could think of who could be a suspect. I had to talk to Henley about this, but I felt the letter could be a starting clue.
    And of course, there was that man . . . I knew that man who had just come up to us was more than a little “off” and might potentially be dangerous, but he was really our only option. We couldn’t just sit here forever.
    I glanced at Henley. Though he was sticking an entire piece of fish into his mouth, he had a worried crease between his brows.
    â€œWhat do you think, Rebecca?”
    I looked up into