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. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

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. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

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. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

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. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

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. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

Justin forwards Fran's message. Unlike Patrick, Edie takes Fran at her word. She'd been investigating her maternal DNA matches for weeks. Many of them are Eastern European, while Fran's ancestors mostly have French names. Ironically, Edie is the only one dispassionate enough to not be disappointed by Fran's answer.

John later offers another maternal candidate—the "East German" woman, whose name he can't recall. Edie feels obligated to answer all the questions her sudden introduction creates for John and his chronologically problematic memory. While he can remember precise details of past events, his timeline is irreparably shattered.

When Justin asks Edie if she'd be OK with their father joining them during her and Jeremy's upcoming stay in Renton, she enthusiastically agrees. All the while, Edie and Rachel learn more about each other and the families they grew up with. In closing, Jeremy explains how Fran's Facebook page indicates they likely dodged a bullet.

Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

Edie writes to John about the suddenly shifting priorities in her and Jeremy's life. That same evening, Edie's newfound sister replies, "I am an open person." Despite Rachel's invitation to quiz her about anything, neither Edie nor Jeremy ask about her noncommunicative status with their father.

By early March 2018, Edie and Justin have a phone call to themselves, become Facebook friends, and begin exchanging messages about Edie and Jeremy flying up there around Memorial Day. After a week of silence from Fran, Justin sends letters to two addresses Beth found. That same evening, Edie books airline tickets for an eight-day stay with the Harts in Renton, Washington, at the end of May. The chapter closes forty-eight hours ahead of a scheduled Sunday debriefing with the local O'Neals; that's when Fran responds.

Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

Edie makes Justin cry with her composition "If You Were My Mom"—words on her heart she composed years earlier—because it reminds him of things he told his mother when she was dying. John informs Edie that she and Jeremy gave him joy on the phone, and that he's proud of her. Jeremy corroborates some of John's more unbelievable stories from his time in Baton Rouge, including one involving David Duke and a bloody knife at LSU's Free Speech Alley.

We also learn that Hadley's name honors the family of Justin's stepdad, who steered an angry young Justin toward healing. February 2018 closes with Justin sending Fran an Edie-approved Facebook message, one day after Edie sends her inaugural message to her baby sister, Rachel.

Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

Saturday, February 24, 2018, starts with Edie discovering John's latest overnight, four-digit-word-count email, which Jeremy uses to further decode the beautiful, damaged soul. Ahead of Edie's first phone call with her new family, Jeremy explains how she eschewed Justin's offer to serve as their father's translator, opting instead to navigate the sometimes disturbing jungle of John's words. She chooses to take on the responsibility of getting to know her father firsthand, and Jeremy takes the listener along for the insane trip.

We spend the first few minutes of the midday call getting to know Justin and his young daughter, Hadley, before they hand the phone to John. He does at least ninety percent of the talking for the remainder of the five-hour conversation. Jeremy compares the experience to the Three-eyed Raven in Game of Thrones imparting "the entire knowledge of the world at once" unto Brandon Stark. Edie has more trust in John's memory regarding Fran after their phone call, given his ability to recall copious details from decades ago. In closing, she informs John and Justin, "You are beautiful people and I love that you are in my life!"

Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

On the morning of Friday, February 23, 2018, we learn John confirmed that Edie and Beth indeed found his Fran. Justin offers to contact the woman, per Edie's approval. The two siblings schedule a phone call for the next day, and Edie reveals her concerns about attempting to contact someone who isn't on AncestryDNA. Jeremy deconstructs a 4,721-word email John sent overnight, and Edie begins comparing Fran's lineage—as revealed by the copious family details on her social media—to her own maternal matches on AncestryDNA.

Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team