Frederica Virginia Heinicke

Frederica Virginia Heinicke, known as Ricky, is the missing child at the center of Dan Davis’s search and the person for whom he turns a promise across decades into a reunion. First recorded under the name Frederica Virginia Gentry, she disappears from the trail Dan can follow; later, her own account clarifies that Heinicke is her birth name, shared with her grandmother and biological father. Her return culminates in a precisely arranged awakening, a joyful recognition of Dan and Pete, and marriage to Dan in Yuma.

Identity and Background

Ricky is Miles Gentry’s little girl, whom Dan remembers as Frederica. When Dan searches for her after waking from cold sleep, a school record in Mojave provides a rare trace: a pupil named Frederica Virginia Gentry withdrew in 1971. The record establishes that she attended school there, but says nothing about where she went afterward. A withdrawal transcript could have led to any of thousands of public schools, leaving Dan with proof that she had existed but no practical route to find her.

The names in Ricky’s history reflect different parts of her identity. She tells Dan that she has been Ricky Gentry for as long as she can remember, though Miles had never adopted her. Her full name, she explains, is Frederica Virginia Heinicke—the same as her grandmother’s and her biological father’s. Nobody ordinarily calls her Heinicke. The distinction matters to Dan’s search: the name he knows from the past and the name attached to the later record are not initially the same.

The Lost Trail

Dan’s effort to locate Ricky begins with the possibility that she might have inherited Hired Girl stock. He checks whether the Bank of America has ever held a trust for her, explaining that he is a Sleeper and that she is his only surviving relative. The bank nevertheless refuses to disclose information about trust beneficiaries, even in his exceptional circumstances, but it does provide a negative answer: it has never held a trust in favor of Frederica Virginia Gentry. Dan concludes that Ricky never received the stock he had assigned to her and that they have both been robbed.

The Mojave school record offers a different kind of evidence, but not a lead that can readily be pursued. Ricky’s withdrawal in 1971 points only toward an unknown next school. Dan considers the scale of the task—writing to school districts across the United States, with no assurance their records could answer his question—and recognizes how easily one child can vanish among a quarter of a billion people. His search is therefore not simply a matter of affection; the broken transfer and the missing record leave him unable to determine what became of the girl he meant to protect.

A Name Rediscovered

Years later, a newspaper item supplies the clue that the school record could not. While reading the vital-statistics listings, Dan finds a Riverside Sanctuary withdrawal under the initials F. V. Heinicke, printed in the Los Angeles Times on May 2, 2001. He recognizes Heinicke as Ricky’s grandmother’s name, though he cannot at first explain how he knows it. The printed name brings a buried piece of information back to him: perhaps he heard it from Ricky or Miles, or perhaps he met her grandmother at Sandia. The source of the memory remains uncertain, but the recognition gives Dan a specific identity and a place to pursue.

At the sanctuary, a staff member checks a card and begins to read the name, correcting an initial misreading of “Frances” to “Frederica.” Dan nearly faints with relief. The scene reverses the earlier search: where the school withdrawal left only a common name and an untraceable destination, the initials in the newspaper lead to a record that confirms Ricky’s full first and middle names. The discovery is both documentary and personal, as a forgotten family name becomes the key to finding her.

The Promise of Reunion

Before his second Long Sleep, Dan speaks to Ricky about his plan and admits that he has been wrong. He tells her he will be gone for thirty years, but offers her a choice for the future: live with her grandmother, go to school, and let the money accumulate; at twenty-one, if she still wants to see him, she can take the Long Sleep herself. He promises that he and Pete will be waiting when she wakes. The arrangement makes the separation bearable by giving it a date and a course of action, rather than leaving reunion to chance.

Dan specifies the terms carefully. Ricky is to arrange her Sleep through Cosmopolitan Insurance Company at the Riverside Sanctuary in Riverside, with orders to wake on May 1, 2001. If she wants Dan beside her when she opens her eyes, she must leave instructions, because sanctuary rules would otherwise keep him in the waiting room. He has already prepared an envelope setting out what to do; she need not remember every detail immediately, but can decide on her twenty-first birthday. The exact date, institution, and wake-up instructions turn Dan’s promise into a practical plan that can survive the years between them.

Awakening and Ending

When Ricky finally wakes, she opens her eyes, sees Dan and Pete, and smiles sleepily. She raises her arms toward them; on her left thumb she wears Dan’s Tech class ring. Pete leaps onto the bed and greets her with exuberant shoulder dives. The recognition is immediate, and the ring makes the reunion tangible: Ricky has carried an object from Dan’s earlier life into the moment he promised they would share.

Ricky refuses the doctor’s suggestion that she stay overnight. Dan takes her by cab to Brawley, where her grandmother has been dead since 1980 and her remaining social ties have faded. The grandmother’s books are still in storage, and Dan arranges for them to be sent to Aladdin, care of John Sutton. Ricky is dazzled by the changes in her old hometown and keeps hold of Dan’s arm, but she does not fall into the severe homesickness that can accompany the Sleep; she wants to leave Brawley quickly.

They continue to Yuma, where Dan signs the county clerk’s book with his full name, Daniel Boone Davis, and marries Ricky. Pete serves as best man, and the witnesses are found at the courthouse. The couple leaves Yuma at once for a guest ranch near Tucson, where they stay in a cabin equipped with an Eager Beaver. Pete’s battle with the ranch’s resident tomcat is the one practical complication Dan recalls; Ricky, by contrast, takes to married life as if she had invented it. Her ending answers the book’s long interval of absence not by restoring the world she left unchanged, but by bringing her back to Dan in the future he promised to share.