“Well, if you have to come back to Port George,” Kathy said, “I hope we can get together again. I’ll cook. I make a mean mac ’n’ cheese with bacon.”
Laura had thanked her with tears in her eyes.
Now, Laura was fast approaching her destination, and with each mile she covered her nerves grew more strained. Finally, there it was up ahead, a sign announcing that she was entering Eliot’s Corner, founded in 1782. It didn’t take long for Laura to see that the pretty little town was not all that different from Port George, past and present living side by side, mostly in harmony. Eighteenth-and nineteenth-century homes, some humble, others grand, sat next to low-ceilinged houses built in the 1940s and ’50s. The tallest brick building seemed to be no more than four stories high. There was a town square. The sidewalks were virtually empty of people at this time of the morning. Laura wondered if they were ever really busy, even in high summer.
It hadn’t been difficult to find Arden Bell’s home address, and that was where Laura was headed. Arden Bell might not be at home. She might be almost anywhere. At the bookshop, at the dentist, taking a walk with her dog. If she had a dog. On vacation up north with her partner. If she had a partner.
GPS led Laura to Juniper Road and then, to number 10. A painted wooden sign announced that this was JUNIPER END COTTAGE; under these words was the date 1923. It looked very much as one imagined cottages in fairy tales to look, Laura noted, without the thatched roof. A chimney announced the presence of a fireplace. A small front garden was alive with pink, yellow, and purple flowers.
Laura brought her car to a stop. This was it. The moment she had been pursuing since she had decided weeks ago to seek out the woman who had given her life. Now, that moment having arrived, Laura felt reluctant to seize it. Juniper End Cottage. This was a quiet, almost-magical-seeming spot. It felt somehow wrong to be disturbing the peace of the place and, more important, the peace of the inhabitant. Even if she, Laura Huntington, was indeed Arden Bell’s biological daughter, she was still an outsider here, an interloper, an intruder.
Maybe, Laura thought, tightening her hands on the steering wheel, it would be better, kinder, to send Arden Bell a letter, explaining who she was and whom she thought she had been born, to give this woman a chance to absorb the monumental suggestion that her biological child—if Laura was indeed her biological child—might have found her.
But Laura wanted what she felt that she deserved. She was seeking a simple answer. Yes or no. She needed to look this woman in the eye and find out for sure whether Arden Bell was Victoria Aldridge—and maybe also Laura’s birth mother. She was not at Juniper End to reproach or to blame or to punish. She was there to . . .
Laura’s throat tightened. She was there to be welcomed into her mother’s life.
Still, her hand shook when she opened her car door, and again when she lifted the old-fashioned knocker on the door of the cottage. A moment later she heard footsteps approaching the door, even, unhurried footsteps. Laura’s heart began to race as the door began to open.
A tall, attractive woman with blond hair pulled into a loose ponytail stood before her.
Before Laura could say a word, the woman fell heavily against the door.
“It’s you,” she gasped. “You’ve come at last.”
Chapter 25
“I’m all right now, really.”
Arden wasn’t really all right, but the younger woman leaning over her was clearly distressed and needed to be put at ease.
“If you’re sure I shouldn’t call a doctor or—”
Arden managed a trembling smile. “I’m sure.”
She was seated in the armchair in the living room; she wasn’t sure how she had gotten there. A glass of water was on the small table by the side of the chair. The younger woman must have fetched it for her.
Now, this woman, a stranger who was no stranger, sat on the couch across from Arden and placed her hands on her knees. Her expression was hesitant, almost wary. “I’m sorry. I should have called first, not just shown up. I didn’t know the right thing to do. I mean, no one tells you how you’re supposed to . . . And I wasn’t even sure you were my mother until you . . .”
“It’s okay.” Arden’s smile was wobbly. “My daughter. My child. You said your name was—”
“Laura. Laura Huntington.”
Arden nodded. “Huntington. Was that your—” She couldn’t finish the question.
“Yes. My parents’ name. Their first names were Marty and Cynthia.” Laura attempted a smile. “I never expected you to know me like that, in an instant.”
“I always knew that I would recognize you the moment I saw you. If that day ever came. And it has.” Arden shook her head. “The dreams. Recently, I’ve been having dreams.... Now I know what they meant.”
“What sort of dreams?”
“Dreams that made me wonder.” Arden leaned forward a bit. “I was on a stretch of sand and I saw a figure, I couldn’t tell if it was male or female or even human, coming toward me, but at the same time making no progress. It’s hard to explain. The first time I had the dream everything was gray and murky, sand and sky and ocean, except for a sick yellowish color that flared up. The second dream wasn’t quite so frightening, though it still left me puzzled. I thought that maybe . . . Now I know for certain that I must have known my child was coming for me.”
“I hope I’m not frightening to you,” Laura said earnestly. “I don’t want to be.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that you’re one to fear. It’s more—what happened back then.” Arden managed a less wobbly smile. “No one from my past has ever come looking for me before. At least, no one has ever found me. Until now. How did you find me?”
“It’s a bit of a long story, but it started when my mother passed away—my adoptive mother. Among her effects, I found a sealed envelope addressed to me. On the outside of the envelope was a short note instructing me to open the envelope when and if I ever needed to find my birth mother. For a long time after that, I didn’t need to know. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but it’s the truth. Though I’d been curious at times in my life about my birth parents, the need to know who exactly they were had never been strong.”
Oddly, at that moment Arden was more fascinated that there had been a stray clue as to her identity all along, than hurt by her daughter’s admission of disinterest. “Go on, please.”
“It was only when my marriage was falling apart—I’m recently divorced—and I realized just how alone in the world I was, with both Mom and Dad gone and my husband having proved completely unreliable, that I began to feel a real need to look for my roots. I had no expectations of success, but I had to know, or at least I had to try to find out who had brought me into this world.”
“So,” Arden said, attempting to conceal how eager she was to learn more, “you opened the letter.”
Laura nodded. “Yes. In it my mother had left me the only clue in her possession, that my birth mother had been a resident of Port George, Maine. She had overheard this bit of information while in the lawyer’s office when all the paperwork was signed, and she’d kept it a closely guarded secret. She said she’d never even told my father. I’m not sure why. Anyway, I took that one little clue, and a few weeks later, here I am.”
“She wanted you to find me one day,” Arden said with conviction. “That’s why she held on to that clue so tightly.”
“I think,” Laura said after a moment, “that my mother might have felt some guilt about the adoption. Not regret, I don’t mean that. See, she knew that my birth mother was young and unmarried. She had to have supposed there was a good chance the girl had mixed feelings about giving up her baby. That she was vulnerable, maybe even that she had been coerced. I think that’s why she left me the clue, so that I might find you one day, and that the young, vulnerable girl who gave birth to me would finally know that her child was all right.”
Arden sighed deeply. “I’m so grateful to her. And your biological father?” s
he asked hesitantly. “Have you found him, as well?”
“I think I have,” Laura said gently. “Was he—is he—Rob Smith?”
Hearing his name spoken aloud after all the years of silence sent a shock through Arden’s body that caused her to jump in her seat.
Laura quickly got up and came across to Arden. “Please, do you want to lie down?”
“No,” Arden said firmly. “I’m all right. Yes, your father is Rob Smith. Do you know—” But she couldn’t go on.
“About his disappearance?” Laura asked, sitting once again. “As much as there is to know, at least, all that was in the papers at the time.”
Arden put her hand over her heart; it was racing madly. “How did you make the leap from Victoria Aldridge of Port George to Arden Bell of Eliot’s Corner?”
Laura smiled. “By playing amateur sleuth. Figuring out that Arden Bell was Victoria Aldridge took some real creativity though. And luck.”
“I chose the name Arden from my favorite Shakespeare play.”
“Of course. Arden Forest. Miss Thompson remembered that As You Like It was a favorite of yours.”
“Miss Thompson? You saw her?”
“I did. She thinks of you with fondness even now.”
A wave of shame overcame Arden, making it difficult to speak. “Miss Thompson was so good to me,” she said after a long moment. “I’ve always felt bad about not keeping up with her, but how could I have? Like everyone else in Port George she thought I was away enjoying my first year of college, not . . . If I wrote to her, I’d have had to lie, and it was too much.... When I came back to Port George briefly after you were born, I could have visited Miss Thompson, but . . .”
“I think I understand. And what about Bell? Where did that come from?”
“Currer Bell. It was the pseudonym chosen by Charlotte Brontë, one of my favorite writers.”
“I should have guessed that. Arden Bell has a nice ring to it, pardon the pun.”
Arden smiled briefly. “What do you want from me?” Her tone was not combative.
“Please believe that I’m not here to make you feel bad for having given me up,” Laura replied earnestly. “But I would like to know what happened to you and to my father back in the summer of 1984.”
Arden nodded. “All right. I’ll tell you everything, but not right now, not today. What else do you want from this . . .” She didn’t know how to define this strange moment.
“I’d like us to get to know one another. If that’s possible.”
Arden swallowed hard. “Yes. That’s possible.”
“I’m glad. By the way, I also spoke to Ted Coldwell during my search.”
Arden started. “Ted? You spoke to Ted?”
“Yes, I did. He didn’t or couldn’t tell me much, but I got the impression that he feels bad that he didn’t try to learn what happened when you left Port George for good in June of 1985.”
Arden put her hand to her head. She felt slightly dizzy. Events she had willed herself not to think about, people she hadn’t consciously thought about for so long, it was all coming back, and but for those two recent dreams, harbingers of a crisis, she had had no preparation.
“I’m sorry,” Laura said. “I didn’t mean to upset you, but of course it can’t be otherwise.”
Suddenly, there was a thundering sound and the cats came charging into the living room, where they stopped directly at Laura’s feet.
“Oh!” Laura cried. “What an entrance!”
Arden laughed. “Let me introduce, from right to left, Prospero, Ophelia, and Falstaff.”
Laura smiled. “You named them well. Prospero looks wise. Ophelia has the air of tragic heroine about her. A drama queen? And Falstaff, well, he’s a big boy, isn’t he?”
As if to prove Laura’s observation, Falstaff plopped to the floor and showed his impressive belly.
“You’ll stay here with me, won’t you?” Arden said suddenly.
“I’d planned on finding a bed-and-breakfast locally. Or a motel would be fine, if there’s one not too far away. I really don’t want to put you out.”
“Please. I don’t have a guest bedroom but there’s the loft. There’s plenty of room. And . . . I’d like it very much if you’d stay with me. If you would feel comfortable.”
Laura nodded. “Thanks. I will stay with you. To be honest, my budget is pretty strained at the moment.”
“That’s settled. I’ll make up your bed right away.”
“I can do it if you point me in the direction of the sheets.”
“Let me,” Arden said almost pleadingly. “It would be my pleasure.” To make up a bed for her child. A simple task she had never had the chance to perform.
“All right. Is it okay if I pet the cats?”
Arden smiled. “Only if you agree never to stop.”
Chapter 26
Laura had shared a meal with her mother, the first of what might be many to come. It had felt surprisingly comfortable sitting across the table from the woman who had given her life, passing the salt and pepper, toasting to the future with a glass of wine. That Arden Bell was an excellent cook made the experience all that much more pleasurable.
Over dinner, Laura had explained the ruse under which she had elicited information from the residents of Port George, assuring Arden that no one had learned her real identity.
“I guess I didn’t know my real identity, either,” she said with a laugh. “Not until earlier today.”
Arden had told Laura a bit about how she had come to be the owner of Arden Forest, and about the woman who had been her mentor and friend. “Finding Eliot’s Corner, and then Margery Hopkins, was a great bit of luck. For the last fifteen years, my life here has been pretty peaceful.”
Laura had hoped that her mother wasn’t beginning to regret her daughter’s sudden appearance. But clearly, regret was not what Arden was feeling. She had reached across the table, palm open, and waited for Laura to put her hand in hers. “Today is a miracle,” she said, tears shining in her eyes.
Both women had decided upon an early bedtime. It had been an exhausting day, wonderful, startling, unreal. Barely had the dishes been cleared away when Laura found her eyelids closing.
Now, tucked into her makeshift bed in the loft, she spoke silently to her adoptive mother, thanking her for having preserved the clue that had led Laura to Arden Bell—and to Victoria Aldridge. It had been an act of true generosity on the part of Cynthia Huntington.
But that was no surprise. Marty and Cynthia Huntington had been wonderful parents. Interestingly, Laura didn’t remember a time she hadn’t known she had been adopted, but she would always remember the moment when her situation had become something to question.
“My mommy says you’re not natural.”
Those words had been spoken by a classmate of Laura’s one day at recess.
Laura, who didn’t know what the other seven-year-old had meant by that remark, had immediately retorted, “I am, too, natural.” Contradiction came easily to a child.
“No, you’re not,” Polly had insisted. “You didn’t come out of your mommy’s belly.”
Laura knew that. Sort of. Maybe not really. She knew she was adopted. But what did that mean? The understanding of human biology had not yet taken hold in Laura’s seven-year-old brain.
When she got home from school that day, Laura told her mother what Polly had said. Laura had been confused and upset. Her mother had been reassuring and comforting. Within days the issue had become a nonissue.
Laura pricked up her ears. She thought she heard a sound from below. It might have been the cats, but it might also have been her mother. Arden had been so greatly affected by Laura’s arrival. For all Laura knew, her mother wasn’t in good health. Maybe she had a heart condition that made a shock of the sort she had encountered earlier potentially harmful. Suddenly, Laura felt a bit anxious. There was just so much she didn’t know about the woman in whose home she had agreed to stay.
But before she could debate t
he wisdom of her decision, she was asleep.
Chapter 27
Arden stared at the ceiling over her bed. She was happy. She was frightened. The past that she had buried so carefully but never for one moment forgotten had been resurrected and was here in the shape of a fresh young woman with a straightforward manner and a hearty appetite—just like her father.
Laura and Rob had other traits in common, too. They had the same coloring, darker than Arden’s, though not quite olive in tone. Laura’s eyes were shaped like Rob’s, large and long. And their daughter shared her father’s strongly made medium height and build. Arden supposed she saw herself in her daughter, as well, though it was more difficult to identify those physical similarities. As for similarities of personality and character, they would show or not in time. So much about whom a person became had to do with nurture, and Laura had been nurtured by people who were strangers to Arden. Strangers to Victoria and Rob.
Arden sighed. She was desperate to tiptoe up to the loft and watch Laura as she slept, as a mother would most naturally do when her child returned from a journey. To resist the temptation took every ounce of Arden’s formidable self-control. What if Laura woke to find a woman she hardly knew, a virtual stranger, hovering over her? The last thing Arden wanted was to scare off her child, not after all the long years of their separation.
Together. It was finally how it should have been, or could have been if Arden had been strong enough to defy her parents’ order that she give up the child. But what sort of life would she and the baby have had, cut off financially, alone in the world? Countless women had faced just such a grim future, but Arden hadn’t been strong enough to take the risk—especially with Rob gone missing. Maybe, if she had known for sure that he was alive and well, that while he had abandoned her, he hadn’t been hurt or killed . . . But all that was speculation. Things were the way they were.
And all because she had gotten pregnant at the age of eighteen. Arden’s—Victoria’s—initial response had been panic, followed immediately by denial. She couldn’t be pregnant. She and Rob had taken precautions—but perhaps not as completely as they should have. A second test revealed the same result, and by that time Victoria didn’t need a medical professional to tell her that she was carrying Rob’s child. Their child.
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