The Boy Who Appeared from the Rain
Page 78
Craig wanted to head straight home and start searching for information on Rhonda Lerwick, but Kara insisted that they first drop Zach off at Lia's and go to work like they were supposed to. Craig began to protest, but Kara cut him off. "The Internet will still be there when you get home, Craig. And Derek's counting on you to help him today."
Reluctantly, he admitted that she was right. He could be patient for a few hours.
Besides, he had a smartphone with him. He used it while waiting in line at the hardware store, searching online for a Rhonda Lerwick. The search results displayed something about a Lerwick, England; a Gary Lerwick who played music somewhere in New Orleans; a web page suggesting a theory on the etymology of Lerwick as a surname... But he found nothing pertaining to a Rhonda Lerwick. Later, at another opportune moment, he slipped the phone from his pocket and searched for a Rhonda Lerwick on every social media site he could think of, but to no avail. That made sense, when he thought about it—she had been dead five years.
Kara and Zach arrived home just before he did that afternoon. Kara began dinner preparations while Craig changed his clothes and washed up. He returned to the den and called Zach just before the youngster stepped out the side door. "Hey, pal, would you help me with this?"
"With what?" Zach asked.
Craig sat down at the computer and pulled up the web browser. "Searching for the woman who raised you," he said.
"Can we do it later, Dad?" Zach requested politely. "I want to go play with Paws first."
"No, come on. I want to get started right away," Craig returned. "We've been waiting three months. Let's find out where you came from."
Zach sighed, but gave in and pulled one of the dining chairs over beside Craig.
"Okay," Craig said, "I tried a few things already."
Kara shot him a suspicious glance from the kitchen.
"While I was in line at the store," he explained with a guilty smile.
Kara narrowed her eyes disapprovingly.
"Nothing came up, though. So let's try…" He pursed his lips, brainstorming options.
"Try the things where the newspaper says who died," Zach suggested. "Mom and I couldn't find her because we didn't know her name. But now we do."
"Right, the obituaries!" He tried searching for "Rhonda Lerwick" and "obituary" together. As when he had searched during work, a wide assortment of results appeared. This time, though—
"Hey, that one has potential," he commented, pointing to one item in the list of results. He clicked on it and a new page appeared—not an obituary, nor anything that looked very official, but it listed her name and gave a date: October 18, five years ago. And it named a city—Mount Vernon, Washington. "Good call, Zach," he congratulated the youngster. "Grab some paper and write that down."
Zach fetched paper and a pen as Craig perused the web page. "Where's Mount Vernon?" the youngster asked as he copied the information from the screen.
"About halfway between here and Canada," Craig answered. "Maybe that's where she moved to. Hmm… This page is just a record of a record. The real information is somewhere else. Let's go look…" He considered for a moment. "Let's look at the newspaper's obituaries." He logged into the Seattle Library's web site and located its newspaper archives. Would the Seattle Times include obituaries from as far away as Mount Vernon?
Apparently it did not, except for particularly notable people. He did some more searching. Zach looked on with waning interest. The youngster kept peeking out the window at Paws, who eyed Zach impatiently.
Mount Vernon, Craig found, had its own newspaper. He pulled up its web page and clicked on the "Obituaries" link. When he typed in Rhonda Lerwick's name, a new screen with exactly one result appeared.
"Got it!" he cried.
Zach leaned forward, his interest renewed. Kara quickly left her cooking and joined them, wiping her hands as she looked over Craig's shoulder.
He had found an official death notice. He read it aloud:
Rhonda Emily (Verone) Lerwick, of Mount Vernon, died October 18 from injuries suffered in a single-car accident earlier that day. Ms. Lerwick, age fifty, had recently relocated to the community from Seattle to take a job with a local law firm. Authorities have been unable to locate Ms. Lerwick's family and request that anyone with information about their names and whereabouts please contact the Mount Vernon Police Department.
Craig checked the date preceding the death notice—it gave the correct year. Zach would have been five. She was from Seattle. This was the woman they were seeking. He turned excitedly to Kara. "We found her!"
"For what it's worth," she grimaced. "There's nothing here about her past, no names of relatives… This hardly gets us any closer to finding out where Zach came from." She shared a glance with the youngster.
Craig drummed his fingers on the desk. "She died in a car accident. But we already knew that… Maybe the paper reported the accident separately."
He searched the site for articles published October 19, the day after the accident. Sure enough, that day's articles included a short, promising news report, which Craig again read aloud:
DRIVER KILLED IN SINGLE-CAR CRASH
Mount Vernon police were called to the scene of a single-vehicle accident along State Route 20 east of Bradshaw Road late last evening. A lone driver traveling westbound lost control of her 2006 Chrysler Pacifica, veered off the roadway, and struck a tree. The driver, whose identity is being withheld until relatives are notified, was transported by ambulance to Skagit Valley Hospital with critical injuries. She was pronounced dead shortly before midnight.
Police report that skid marks left by the Pacifica's tires match what a witness described as erratic swerving and braking on the highway, followed by a sudden turn that resulted in the collision. Police suspect that alcohol may have been involved. An autopsy will be conducted.
Zach stared sadly at the words on the screen. Kara reached over to muss his hair. "Did you know how she died?"
The youngster blinked. "Not until Rita told us about the car crash. Do you think she was drinking wine?"
"Sounds like she was drinking something, kiddo," Kara answered gently. "It's too bad." She continued to monitor Zach's reaction. "Did you like her?" she asked him.
He blinked as he thought back. "I think so. I remember she drank too much wine sometimes, but she was nice to me all the other times. She taught me lots of things. She used to read books to me. Sometimes she played with me outside in the back yard, even though Grandfather didn't like it. And she told me about you and Dad. She always said I would get to go home to my parents someday. I guess she was right, huh?" He looked at Kara and Craig in turn, then shrugged. "I don't remember much else about her."
Craig scratched his nose with his thumb, thinking, then realized Zach was doing the same thing. Funny, he thought, the youngster looks and acts so much like me, but the way he deals with things is so much like Kara. Or maybe that was like Craig, too, but Kara just knew how to respond to it, the way she knew how to respond to Craig. In any case, she had known to give Zach a moment to process what had happened to the woman he had long considered his grandmother.
Turning back to the computer screen, Craig ran a hand through his hair. He directed the browser back to Ms. Lerwick's death notice. "Too bad there isn't a picture here," he commented.
Kara, still standing behind him, patted his shoulder with one hand, then noticed Zach staring out the window at Paws. "You want to go play with him, kiddo?"
He looked up at her hopefully.
"Go ahead. We'll call you if we need you. Twenty minutes until dinner, okay?"
"Okay," he replied, darting away and out the side door before she could change her mind.
"I was hoping he would stay and help me," Craig told Kara. "I thought it might be good for him to feel involved."
Kara sighed. "It has to be hard for him, Craig, hearing how she died. She was the only mother he had before he came here. Rit
a was, too, I suppose, in a lot of ways. Thank God for her…"
She watched out the window as Zach rounded the house and chased with Paws. "He needs to go run a while. Besides, Craig," she said, turning back to him and kissing him once on the head, "this is our search, not his. His search was coming to find us and then convincing us that he belonged here. He's happy. We're the ones who need…an explanation."
Craig leaned back in his chair, setting his head back to gaze up at Kara. "I have to know where he came from, Kara. Not the house—we know that. And not just this Rhonda Lerwick's name. I need to understand why. Why was he adopted out? Why did she tell him about us? Why did he come to us now and not before?"
"And for goodness' sake, how did he get that name?" Kara added, shaking her head.
"Right—that name." Craig drummed his fingers on the desk again. "And I have to know that nobody's out there looking to send the police to take him away from us. I have to know that. I can't…go through that again."
Kara rubbed his head tenderly, just the way she had rubbed Zach's. "See what else you can find," she said. "I'll go finish dinner."
Craig watched her return to the kitchen, then turned his attention back to this mysterious Rhonda Lerwick. Was there any useful information here? A name, a date, a city… Over and over in his mind, he worked the problem.