The Little Girl Book Podcast

CHAPTER 18: Five Hippies in a Ford Pinto

Back home, in an attempt to piece together John’s fractured timeline, Edie makes indirect contact with a woman who knew John during his Baton Rouge days. She shares a tale starting in San Francisco and ending with five hippies getting pulled over at 2 a.m. in Texas, where John truthfully tells the cop that he’s hurrying back to the mental hospital. "They came REALLY close to finding the acid," the woman says of John’s substantial business inventory. "I was SO pissed at John that I didn’t want to see him any more after that."   Edie soon books a weekend trip to meet Rachel and her small family in Austin. She spends several days focusing on her new sister, which serves as a needed reset following four months of chasing John’s dead leads in an attempt to solve a frustrating DNA puzzle.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com [https://thelittlegirlatthebottomofthepicture.com/get-your-copy/]. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast [https://thelittlegirlatthebottomofthepicture.com/the-little-girl-book-podcast/] on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-little-girl-book-podcast/id1714275811], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0B6rgVucq6TcSHySuowWCe], or Google Podcasts [https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzQ5MTEzMi9yc3M=].   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

CHAPTER 17: Bothell

We meet John and experience the challenges of someone soft-spoken like Edie attempting to converse with him in person. Jeremy awakens Sunday morning to Edie's sobbing, prompted by the terror of John’s nightmares, as shared in dozens of his emails. One day before bringing him to meet her adopted aunt (Doc O'Neal's widowed sister) and cousins in the Seattle area, Edie freaks out, worried her father might ensnare someone into a conversation and take them down to one of his many dark places. After initially agreeing with Justin that perhaps John should stay behind Monday, a wave of guilt immediately results in Edie’s about-face.   The Memorial Day gathering with Edie’s namesake and her area family goes beautifully; John even gives the elder Edris Ann an impromptu massage for her eighty-seventh birthday. Two days later, Justin drives the two of us to the airport for a reluctant departure early Wednesday morning. After taking a break from the yet-unsolved maternal puzzle, though, Edie’s ready to chase down John’s latest leads.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com [https://thelittlegirlatthebottomofthepicture.com/get-your-copy/]. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast [https://thelittlegirlatthebottomofthepicture.com/the-little-girl-book-podcast/] on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-little-girl-book-podcast/id1714275811], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0B6rgVucq6TcSHySuowWCe], or Google Podcasts [https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzQ5MTEzMi9yc3M=].   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

CHAPTER 16: You Can’t Fake That

Justin treats Edie and Jeremy to lunch and wine in Woodinville on Friday. Back in Renton, Justin and Edie have their first three-way communication with their baby sister, Rachel, in Austin via Skype. Edie and Jeremy cap off Friday night drinking wine with Justin and Cherish in Hadley’s custom-built Japanese tea house.   Following a trip to the Seattle Museum of Flight with Hadley, Jeremy informs his new BFF’s parents how—in the age of catfishing and online scams—the "ebullient little delight" (John’s term) they raised had obliterated any stubborn, infinitesimal trace of doubt about them and their intentions. Justin and Edie close the chapter Saturday night by leaving to pick up John at the airport.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com [https://thelittlegirlatthebottomofthepicture.com/get-your-copy/]. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast [https://thelittlegirlatthebottomofthepicture.com/the-little-girl-book-podcast/] on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-little-girl-book-podcast/id1714275811], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0B6rgVucq6TcSHySuowWCe], or Google Podcasts [https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzQ5MTEzMi9yc3M=].   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

CHAPTER 15: Touchdown Seattle

After landing on a gorgeous Tuesday in the Pacific Northwest, Jeremy describes the video of Edie practically pulling him through SEA-TAC's entire D terminal before finally hugging her newfound baby brother. With the three of them in Justin’s kitchen, silences are displaced by the back and forth between a brother and sister finally bridging thousands of miles and decades of separation. Justin then shares a Christmas card John once created and mailed out. It features a photo of a mound of cocaine with a 1979 street value of around $250,000. We briefly meet Justin’s wife, Cherish, shortly before bed after she flies in from Dallas.   Amid blooming cottonwoods creating a snow-globe effect, Justin takes his two guests hiking and sightseeing on a picture-perfect Wednesday in late May. Back in Renton, we meet Hadley, and Cherish’s parents. On Thursday, Justin leads Edie and Jeremy around downtown Seattle, where they enjoy the Museum of Pop Culture’s "Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds” exhibit.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com [https://thelittlegirlatthebottomofthepicture.com/get-your-copy/]. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast [https://thelittlegirlatthebottomofthepicture.com/the-little-girl-book-podcast/] on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-little-girl-book-podcast/id1714275811], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0B6rgVucq6TcSHySuowWCe], or Google Podcasts [https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzQ5MTEzMi9yc3M=].   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

CHAPTER 14: Grandma Mary Was a Sklarczyk

Two weeks before the Whites' trip to the Pacific Northwest, Edie receives a message from a close maternal match (estimated first or second cousin) named John Lukas, in Northwest Indiana. Edie knows they are related through his paternal grandmother, Mary, and that most of her numerous descendants remained in the Hoosier State. An exchange of several daily messages yields no clue how one of them made it down to Louisiana by 1970.   As the departure date for Washington State draws closer, so do Edie, Justin, and Rachel. Two days before her flight to SEA-TAC, John Hart emails Edie, "There is a high probability that Debbie/Deborah Abrams is your birth mother." Justin replies that he’s never heard their father mention that name before.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com [https://thelittlegirlatthebottomofthepicture.com/get-your-copy/]. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast [https://thelittlegirlatthebottomofthepicture.com/the-little-girl-book-podcast/] on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-little-girl-book-podcast/id1714275811], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0B6rgVucq6TcSHySuowWCe], or Google Podcasts [https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzQ5MTEzMi9yc3M=].   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team