“Could just be a night she was fond of.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Could just be two pictures she forgot she had.”
The eyebrow stayed up.
“Fine,” she said. “Make your pitch.”
He pointed at the man closest to her mother, Velour Man with the feathered brown hair. “He has the same color eyes as you.”
Fair enough. Like Rachel, he did have green eyes, though his were a much brighter shade; hers were so light they were almost gray. And like Rachel, he did have brown hair. The shape of his head wasn’t far off from Rachel’s own; the size of the nose was about right. His chin was quite pointed, whereas Rachel’s was more squared off, but then her mother’s had been squared off too, so one could argue she’d simply gotten her mother’s chin but her father’s eyes and hair. He was a handsome man, porn ’stache notwithstanding, but there was something lightweight about him. And her mother did not have a known affinity for the lightweight. Jeremy and Giles might not have been the most overtly masculine men Rachel had ever come across but there was steel at the core of both of them and their intelligence was prodigious and immediately identifiable. Velour Man, on the other hand, looked like he was on his way to emcee a Junior Miss pageant.
“Does he seem like her type?” Rachel said.
“Did I?” Jeremy asked.
“You have gravitas,” Rachel said. “My mother dug gravitas.”
“Well, it’s not this guy.” Jeremy put his finger on the heavyset guy with the eyesore of a sport coat. “And it’s not this guy.” He put his finger on the black guy. “Maybe the cameraman?”
“Camerawoman.” Rachel showed him the reflection in the bar mirror of a woman with a mane of brown hair spilling from underneath a multicolored knit cap, the camera held in two hands.
“Ah.”
She looked at the other people who’d been inadvertently captured on film. Two old men and a middle-aged couple sat midway down the bar. The bartender made change at the cash register. And a youngish guy in a black leather jacket was frozen in midstride after coming through the front doors.
“What about him?” she asked.
Jeremy adjusted his glasses and hunched in close to the photo. “Can’t get a good enough look. Wait, wait, wait.” He got up and went to the canvas backpack he took everywhere on his research trips. He removed a magnifying glass paperweight and brought it to the table. He held it over the face of the guy in the leather jacket. The guy had the surprised look of a man who’d almost stepped into a photographer’s shot and ruined it. He was also darker skinned than he’d appeared from a remove. Latin American or Native American possibly. But not in line with Rachel’s own ethnic makeup, in either case.
Jeremy moved the magnifying glass back over to Velour Man. He definitely had the same color eyes as Rachel. What had her mother said? Look for yourself in his eyes. Rachel stared at Velour Man’s magnified eyes until they blurred. She looked away to readjust her vision and then back again.
“Are those my eyes?” she asked Jeremy.
“They’re your color,” he said. “Different shape, but you got your bone structure from Elizabeth anyway. Do you want me to make a couple calls?”
“To whom?”
He placed the paperweight down on the table. “Let’s take another leap and consider that these were her fellow students in the Ph.D. program at JHU that year. If that presumption is correct, everyone in this picture is probably identifiable. If it’s incorrect, I’m only out a few phone calls to friends who work there.”
“Okay.”
He took pictures of both photographs with his phone, checked the images to make sure they were captured correctly, and put the phone in his pocket.
At her door, he turned back and said, “Are you all right?”
“Fine. Why?”
“You seem kinda hollowed out suddenly.”
It took her a minute to find the words. “You’re not my father.”
“No.”
“But I wish you were. Then this would be over. And I’d have a cool guy like you for a dad.”
He adjusted his glasses, something she learned he did whenever he felt uncomfortable. “I’ve never in my life been called a cool guy.”
“That’s why you’re cool,” she said and kissed his cheek.
She received her first e-mail from Brian Delacroix in two years. It was brief—three lines—and complimented her on a series of stories she’d done two weeks before on allegations of kickbacks and patronage in the Massachusetts probation department. The head of the department, Douglas “Dougie” O’Halloran, had run the department like his personal fiefdom, but now, based on work done by Rachel and some of her old colleagues at the Globe, the DA was prepping indictments.
When Dougie saw you coming toward him, Brian wrote, he looked fit to shit a collie.
She caught herself beaming.
It’s good to know you’re out there, Miss Childs.
You too, she considered writing back.
But then she saw his PS:
Crossing back across the southern border. Returning to New England. Any ’hoods you’d recommend?
She immediately Googled him, something she’d consciously refrained from doing until now. There was only one picture of him in Google Images, slightly grainy, which had first appeared in the Toronto Sun coverage of a charity gala in 2000. But there he was, in an incongruous tux, head turned to the side, identified in the caption as “Lumber scion Brian Delacroix III.” In the accompanying article, he was described as “low-key” and “notoriously private,” a graduate of Brown with an MBA from Wharton. Who’d then taken those degrees and become . . .
A private investigator in Chicopee, Massachusetts, for a year?
She smiled to remember him in that shoebox office, a golden boy trying to reject the path his family had laid out for him but clearly conflicted about this choice he’d made. So earnest, so honest. If she’d walked through any other door, handed any other private investigator her case, he or she would have done exactly what Brian had warned her they would—bled her dry.
Brian, on the other hand, had refused to do so.
She stared at his photograph and imagined him living a neighborhood or two over. Or maybe a block or two over.
“I am with Sebastian,” she said aloud.
“I love Sebastian.”
She closed her laptop.
She told herself she’d respond to Brian’s e-mail tomorrow, but she never got around to it.
Two weeks later, Jeremy James called and asked if she was sitting down. She wasn’t but she leaned against a wall and told him she was.
“I’ve identified pretty much everyone. The black couple are still together and both work in private practice in St. Louis. The other woman died in 1990. The big guy was faculty; he passed too a few years back. And the guy in the velour pullover is Charles Osaris, a clinical psychologist who practices on Oahu.”
“Hawaii,” she said.
“If he turns out to be your dad,” Jeremy said, “you’ll have a great place to visit. I’ll expect an invitation.”
“But of course.”
It took her three days to call Charles Osaris. It wasn’t a case of nerves or trepidation of any kind. It was rooted instead in despair. She knew he wasn’t her father, knew it in the pit of her stomach and in every electromagnetic strand of her lizard brain.
Yet some part of her hoped for the opposite.
Charles Osaris confirmed that he had been in the Johns Hopkins Ph.D. program in clinical psychology with Elizabeth Childs. He could recall several nights when they went to a bar called Milo’s in East Baltimore, where, indeed, a Baltimore Colts pennant had hung on the wall to the right of the bar. He was sorry to hear Elizabeth had passed away; he’d found her an intriguing woman.
“I was told you two dated,” Rachel said.
“Who on earth would tell you something like that?” Charles Osaris let out a sound that was half bark, half laugh. “I’ve been out of t
he closet since the seventies, Miss Childs. I never had any illusions about my sexuality, either—confusion, yes, but illusions, no. Never dated a woman, never even kissed one.”
“Clearly I was misinformed,” Rachel said.
“Clearly. Why would you ask if I dated your mother?”
Rachel came clean, told him she was looking for her father.
“She never told you who he was?”
“No.”
“Why?”
And Rachel responded with the explanation that, with every passing year, seemed more ludicrous. “For some reason she thought she was protecting me. She confused keeping something secret with keeping me safe.”
“The Elizabeth I knew was never confused about anything in her life.”
“Why else keep something so big a secret?” Rachel asked.
When he responded, his voice was newly tinged with sadness. “I knew your mother for two years. I was the only man within a ten-mile radius who wasn’t trying to separate her from her clothing, so I probably knew her as well as anyone. She felt safe with me. And, Miss Childs, I didn’t know her at all. She didn’t let people in. She liked having a secret life because she liked secrets. Secrets were power. Secrets were better than sex. Secrets, I firmly believe, were your mother’s drug of choice.”
After her conversation with Charles Osaris, Rachel had three panic attacks in one week. She had one in the employee bathroom at Channel 6, another on a bench along the Charles River during what was supposed to be her morning jog, and the third in the shower one night after Sebastian fell asleep. She hid them all from Sebastian and her coworkers. As much as one could feel in control during a panic attack, she felt in control of herself; she was able to continually remind herself that she wasn’t having a heart attack, that her throat wasn’t permanently constricting, that she could in fact breathe.
Her desire to remain indoors intensified. For a few weeks, only conscious effort and internal howls of defiance pushed her out the door every morning. Weekends, she stayed in completely. For the first three weekends, Sebastian assumed it was part of the nesting instinct. By the fourth, he’d grown irritable. Back then, they were on the guest list to just about every party in the city—any gala, any charity function, any see-or-be-seen excuse to imbibe. They’d become a power couple, fixtures of gossip items in the Inside Track and Names & Faces. Rachel, try as she might, couldn’t deny how much she enjoyed the position. If she had no parents, she’d realize in retrospect, at least the city welcomed her into the tribal fold.
So she got back out there. She shook hands and kissed cheeks and drank in the attention of the mayor, the governor, judges, billionaires, comedians, writers, senators, bankers, Red Sox, Patriots, Bruins, and Celtics players and coaches, and college presidents. At Channel 6, she rocketed through the ranks, racing from freelance to the education beat to crime to general assignment in sixteen months flat. They put her face on a billboard with Shelby and Grant, the evening anchors, and prominently featured her in a commercial to introduce their revamped logo. When she and Sebastian decided to marry, it felt like they’d elected themselves homecoming king and queen, and the city applauded the decision and gave its full blessing.
It was a week after the invitations went out that she ran into Brian Delacroix. She’d just interviewed two reps at the statehouse over a projected budget shortfall. Her crew went to the van but she decided to walk back to the station. She’d just crossed to the other side of Beacon when Brian walked out of the Athenaeum accompanied by a shorter, older man with ginger hair and a matching beard. She experienced that electric bolt of confusion and recognition that usually only occurred when she passed someone famous in the street. It was a feeling of I know you. But I really don’t. Both men were ten or twelve feet from Rachel when Brian’s eyes found hers. A flash of recognition was followed immediately by a flash of something she couldn’t identify—was it annoyance? fear? neither?—and then that flash vanished and was replaced with what, in retrospect, she could only describe as manic joy.
“Rachel Childs!” He crossed the distance to her in one long stride. “What’s it been—nine years?”
His handshake was firmer than she expected, too firm.
“Eight,” she said. “When did you—?”
“This is Jack,” Brian said. He stepped aside so the smaller man could step into the space he’d made and now they were a threesome standing on the sidewalk at the peak of Beacon Hill as lunchtime crowds streamed around them.
“Jack Ahern.” The man shook her hand. His handshake was much lighter.
There was a strong whiff of Old World to Jack Ahern. His shirt had French cuffs with silver cuff links that peeked out from under the sleeves of his bespoke suit. He wore a bow tie and his beard was precisely trimmed. His hand was dry and uncallused. She imagined he owned a pipe and knew more than most about classical music and cognac.
He said, “Are you old friends with—?”
Brian cut in. “Friends would be a bit strong. We knew each other a decade ago, Jack. Rachel’s a reporter on Channel 6 here. She’s excellent.”
Jack gave her a polite nod approximating respect. “Do you like the work?”
“Most days,” she said. “What kind of work are you in?”
“Jack’s in antiquities,” Brian said in a rush. “He’s up here from Manhattan.”
Jack Ahern smiled. “By way of Geneva.”
“I’m not sure what that means,” Rachel said.
“Well, I live in Manhattan and Geneva, but I consider Geneva home.”
“Isn’t that something?” Brian said, even though it wasn’t. He glanced at his watch. “Gotta go, Jack. Reservations for twelve-fifteen. Rachel, a pleasure.” He leaned in and kissed the air to the side of her cheek. “I heard you’re getting married. Very happy for you.”
“Congratulations.” Jack Ahern took her hand again with a courtly bow. “I hope you and the groom will be very happy.”
“Take care of yourself, Rachel.” Brian was already moving away with a distant smile and too-bright eyes. “Great seeing you.”
They walked down to Park Street and took a left and passed from view.
She stood on the sidewalk and took stock of the encounter. Brian Delacroix had filled out some since 2001. It became him. The Brian she had met had been too skinny, his neck too slim for his head. His cheekbones and chin had been a little too soft. Now his features were clearly defined. He’d reached the age—thirty-five, she was guessing—where he’d probably begun to resemble his father and had stopped looking like someone’s son. He dressed far better and was easily twice as handsome as he’d been in 2001, and he’d been plenty handsome then. So in regards to personal appearance, all changes to the good.
But the energy that had come off him, cloaked in pleasantries though it may have been, struck her as mildly unhinged and anxious. It was the energy of someone trying to sell you a timeshare. She knew from her research that he ran International Sales and Acquisition for Delacroix Lumber, and it saddened her to think that nearly a decade in sales had turned him into a glad-handing, air-kissing showman.
She pictured Sebastian, working away at 6 right now, probably leaning back in a chair, chewing a pencil as he cut tape, Sebastian the king of the crisp edit. Actually, everything about Sebastian was crisp. Crisp and clean and squared away. She could no more picture him in sales than she could picture him tilling the land. Sebastian was attractive to her, she realized in that moment, because there was nothing desperate or needy in his DNA.
Brian Delacroix, she thought. Such a shame life turned you into just another salesman.
Jeremy walked her down the aisle at the Church of the Covenant, and his eyes were wet when he lifted her veil. Jeremy, Maureen, Theo, and Charlotte all came to the reception at the Four Seasons. She only saw them a couple of times, but it was as comfortable with Jeremy and as awkward with Maureen and the children as it had always been.
After their first meeting, when Maureen had seemed genuinely pleased Rachel h
ad found them, she grew more distant with each subsequent encounter, as if she’d only been welcoming of Rachel because she’d never expected her to hang around. She wasn’t rude by any means, or cold; she was simply not present in any substantive way. She smiled at Rachel and complimented her looks or clothing choice, asked about her job and Sebastian, and never failed to mention how happy Jeremy was to have her back in his life. But her eyes refused to lock onto Rachel’s and her voice carried a tone of strained brightness, like an actress trying so hard to remember her lines she forgot their meaning.
Theo and Charlotte, the almost half siblings she never had, treated Rachel with a mixture of deference and furtive panic. They hurried through all conversations, bobbing their heads at the floor, and never once asked her a question about herself, as if to do so would confer upon her the stature of the factual. Instead, it seemed imperative for them to continue to see her as something out of the mythic mist, inexorably moving toward their front door, but never actually arriving.
When Maureen, Theo, and Charlotte said their good-byes, about an hour into the reception, the relief at standing five steps from the exit door was so total it infused their limbs. Only Jeremy was shocked by the abruptness of their departure (both Maureen and Charlotte feared they were coming down with summer colds, and the drive back was long). Jeremy took Rachel’s hands in his and told her not to forget about the luminists or Colum Jasper Whitstone on her honeymoon; there’d be work to do when she returned.
“Of course I’ll forget,” she said, and he laughed.
The rest of the family drifted out to the valet stand to wait for the car.
Jeremy adjusted his glasses. He fiddled with his shirt where it bunched up around his belly, always self-conscious around her about his excess weight. He shot her his uncertain smile. “I know you would’ve wanted your real father to walk you down the aisle, but—”
She gripped his shoulders. “No, no. I was honored.”
“—but, but . . .” He shot his wavering smile at the wall behind her but then looked at her again. His voice grew deeper, stronger. “It meant the whole wide world to me to be able to do it.”
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