by G M Barlean
“Yes. I did raise you.”
She knew what her statement really meant. “I love you, Mom. I will always love you.”
Uncomfortable silence took over like it always did when Gloria talked about finding her birth mother.
“I’ll always be here for you. No matter what.”
“I know, Mom. But I need to know why she wasn’t.”
Chapter 3
Gloria said good-bye to her mother, then dropped her head on the desk with a thump. It was as though she watched the world from the bottom of a lake. Glimmers of life were happening up there, but she lolled underwater, holding her breath. And it had begun to feel like her air was running out.
Was she really ready to find out who her birth mother was?
Her thoughts trailed back to the story of the Thorns of Rosewood. Even if this search for her biological mother proved fruitless, she still wanted—no, needed—to put fingers to the keyboard and get some kind of start on writing, and not any story, it had to be this story. This was the one exciting thing to ever occur in this small town. And Debbie Coleman and her friends were, in so many ways, exactly the characters she was looking for. Betty Striker, Tanya Gunderson, Josie Townsend. Their story was the book Gloria wanted to write. This was the direction she needed to go. She knew it. She could feel it pulsing like a rhythm in her brain.
“You okay, Gloria?”
She jolted and sat up straight. The ad manager of the paper paused at her door.
“Great.” Gloria offered a false smile with wide eyes.
They had a conversation she barely heard or participated in—something about the weekend. Nothing important.
Ideas for the book consumed her thoughts, and she’d already made a mental list of questions she wanted to ask these women once she found them.
It was time.
She was going to investigate the story about the Thorns of Rosewood. She was going to write a book. Be an author. Make a name for herself. And if she could, she would learn some truths about her own life. Maybe even find her birth mother and ask the most important question: “Why?” But she was adamant for the story to come first—and on that count she was kidding herself.
Internet research helped Gloria find that the women were still alive and all resided at the same assisted-living facility. In Lincoln, Nebraska, no less. One hour away. Seemed like it was meant to be. Some kind of weird twist of fate.
Phone in hand, she dialed the number to Meadowbrook Assisted Living and asked to speak with Debbie Coleman.
She held her shaking breath and tapped her fingers on her desk as she stared at the wall’s old brown paneling. She glanced back at her door and hoped no one would barge in.
“This is Debbie.” A voice scratchy from years of smoking rasped on the other end of the line.
Giddy excitement fluttered in Gloria’s stomach. “Debbie, my name is Gloria Larson and I’m the editor of the Rosewood Press.”
Silence.
“I wondered if I could come talk with you about the incident in ’74?”
The pause seemed endless.
“Uh… who?” the old voice asked.
“Gloria Larson. Rosewood Press,” she repeated.
“Oh dear. No comment.”
Click… dial tone. Conversation over. Same thing Debbie had said again and again back in ’74.
So much for life falling into place.
But Gloria really never had been one to take no for an answer. She’d call the next woman on the list.
When her call was answered, she asked for Josie Townsend. Another old voice picked up moments later, but this one had a bit of a chirp to it.
“Yes?” The shaky voice quaked.
“Josie Townsend?” Gloria asked.
“Yes. This is Josie.” The old woman sounded excited. “Who is this?”
A reasonable question. “Ma’am, this is Gloria Larson. I’m from Rosewood. Actually, I’m the editor of the Rosewood Press. I was wondering if I could visit with you about the incident in ’74.” Come on, old woman. Give me a chance. Gloria held her breath.
“Oh. Gloria? Well. I don’t think I should talk about that. I’m sorry.”
Gloria couldn’t let her slip through her fingers. “Ms. Townsend, please. I really just want to learn your side of things.”
“My side? Oh dear. Well. No. I couldn’t. Now, I can’t talk to you anymore. I’m sorry.”
“Wait…” Gloria didn’t get a chance to go on. The click of the phone sounded apologetic, or frightened, somehow.
This was strange. And even more intriguing. Gloria sat and thought about the two voices she’d heard. Josie’s and Debbie’s. Did either of their voices sound familiar to her? Maybe like her own? Would she even be able to tell? Probably not.
Gloria did know one thing. She wasn’t about to give up. She had two more women to talk to. She probably needed to see them in person. Being hung up on twice was enough to prove the point.
The next day Gloria drove down to Meadowbrook. It was a pretty drive, and she tried to keep her nerves at bay. She wanted this story but was also anxious to meet these women. She would be looking for resemblances but couldn’t be too obvious about it. One of these women had to be her birth mother, and she was determined to find out which one. Oh, and to get the story, too, of course.
She barely noticed her surroundings when she walked in. Her nerves were on fire, and she blazed up to the nurse’s station to ask where to find Tanya Gunderson. The nurse raised an eyebrow and waited. She apparently needed more. Gloria pulled out her card. “I’m with the Rosewood Press. I need to visit with her about a story the Press did several years ago.”
“Does she know you’re coming?” the nurse asked with a side-eyed stare.
“I called.” Not a lie. She had called here. She wasn’t going to get the story by being a pansy. Hard-nosed newswoman. This would be her role today.
After a moment, the nurse said, “I think Tanya is in the solarium.” She pointed down the hallway, but her gaze remained suspicious.
Gloria nodded and headed in the direction the nurse had pointed. Sunlight at the end of the hall came through panes of glass. Green plants. Tile floor. Looked like a solarium to her.
She turned the corner and found two women sitting in the sunshine, one drinking a glass of iced tea and the other a cup of coffee. They looked up from their newspapers and over their reading glasses. Gloria stared at them. Gray hair. So many wrinkles. How could she possibly see herself in these aged faces?
“Can we help you?” the woman with the coffee asked.
“I’m looking for Tanya Gunderson.” Gloria smiled, but her heart was pounding in her ears so hard she suspected it showed—a rhythmic pulse on the side of her head.
“I’m Tanya,” the old woman who’d been drinking coffee responded as she put down her cup.
No time to pause. “I’m Gloria Larson, editor of the Rosewood Press. I wanted to talk to you about the story from ’74—the Thorns of Rosewood.” Gloria strode forward, her hand out to greet Tanya.
Tanya’s mouth dropped open and she crunched the newspaper in her gnarled fingers.
The other woman stood up, rising to her full height, which for an elderly woman was still very straight and tall. “She will not visit with you about any such thing,” she said. “How did you find us?”
“And who are you?” Gloria asked the tall woman.
“Betty Striker, not that it’s any of your…”
“Oh good. You were next on my list!” Gloria exclaimed.
“I don’t appreciate being on anyone’s list,” Betty said, making air quotes.
“Well, you were, along with Mrs. Gunderson, Mrs. Coleman, and Ms. Townsend. You were all the Thorns of Rosewood, were you not?” Gloria launched into her questions and pulled a notebook out of her pocket, pen already in hand.
“Young woman. I’ll have you know, we do not appreciate you coming in here like gangbusters, as if we owe you any kind of information. We are law-abiding citizens and mind
ing our own business. For crying out loud. We’re just a couple of little old ladies in an assisted-living facility. How dare you charge in and assault us like this!”
Gloria stepped back. Did she sound that aggressive? She hadn’t meant to. But in the midst of Betty’s tirade, Gloria noticed how the eyebrow above the woman’s left eye rose higher than the one above her right. Gloria’s eyebrow did that, too. Then she glanced at Tanya. There was something about her ears. Unattached lobes. Gloria reached up and touched her own.
“Did you hear us?” Tanya was standing now, leaning on her walker. “We are going to get someone to help us if you don’t leave right away.” Tanya shooed Gloria, her old hands moving like she was fanning away a bad smell.
Gloria backed up. “I… I…”
“And I’ll tell you another thing, missy. You’ll catch a lot more flies with honey instead of vinegar!” Tanya was rolling her walker toward her now, one-handed, shaking her finger and with a look of determination on her face.
Gloria backed up. This had been a bad idea. She hadn’t been ready to do this, after all. She turned to leave and almost mowed over two more old women. Stepping back, she stared at them.
Betty hollered out to them, “Josie, Debbie. Don’t you two say a word to that woman. She’s nosing around for a story about ’74. She’s a reporter!”
Tanya and Betty were now storming—well, inching—in Gloria’s direction.
Gloria quickly scanned the faces of the new women she now stared at. Round cheeks and a small mouth on Josie. Sharp, hard features on Debbie. Her mind spun. Which one had given birth to her? She wanted to turn and scream the question at them all. Instead, she scooted sideways around them with ease and fled, not that she needed to run, down the long hallway.
She definitely hadn’t been ready to do this. She didn’t have her motives in the right place at all. This had been a terrible idea.
After Gloria returned to the paper, she decided to ruminate on things for a couple of weeks. She must have been delusional. Writing a book hadn’t been her main objective at all. She was just trying to hunt down her birth mother, and in a very unprofessional way, too. It wasn’t even fair to them, pouncing on them in crazed-reporter style, especially under the lie of wanting a story.
And they were awfully aggressive.
Or had she been the aggressive one?
Yes. It had been her.
Shame on her. Gloria owed every one of them an apology. She had a lot of thinking to do. Did, or did she not, want to write a book? If she did, then she needed to put the notion of finding her birth mother away. The story had to be the main focus or she wouldn’t do the women, or herself, any justice. No wonder they were leery of her. She had shown them nothing but greed and self-serving intentions. She had to approach things with some kind of tact. Professionalism. Detachment.
The audacity of just calling Debbie and Josie and asking them to talk. Going down and confronting Betty and Tanya. Then running out like a scared rabbit.
They must think her a fool.
But a few weeks later, Gloria had her head on straight. She did want the story. Finding her birth mother was important, too, but the story had invaded her brain. It kept her up at night and it’s where her mind wanted to wander. She decided to try again. This time, she knew she had to not only be more grown-up about the whole thing, but that she would also have to find some way to make up for her previous behavior. She wanted this story. And she wanted to know which woman was her birth mother. And she could have both of those things if she used her brain. Poured some honey on it, like Tanya suggested.
This time she phoned Linda Weldon, the administrator of Meadowbrook.
Gloria explained who she was and what she wanted to do. The administrator listened in silence. The dead air on the phone proved painful. At the end of the call, though, Ms. Weldon agreed to visit with the women on Gloria’s behalf.
A week later, Ms. Weldon phoned to invite Gloria to come for a visit.
Gloria almost choked on her tuna-salad sandwich.
Chapter 4
Gloria drove down the narrow stretch of highway on her way to meet the Thorns of Rosewood again. To say she was nervous would have been like saying water is sort of wet. She had a lot of face-saving to do—groveling. Her stomach gurgled at the thought. What had motivated these women to grant her an audience after the stunt she had pulled the last time they met?
As blue-green soybean fields and tasseled cornrows flew past her car window, Gloria thought about Debbie Coleman in particular.
Looking at the pictures of Debbie in the old newspapers had been like staring into the eyes of unbridled rage. Bone thin, a hard line to her face, and threatening eyes. Her dark hair framed a face with a darker attitude. She was a peculiar combination of frightening and absolutely intriguing.
The other women in the newspaper had appeared less intimidating. Sure, they scared her enough to make her run away when she’d gone to see them, but they’d only been defending themselves. She couldn’t really blame them.
In the ’74 newspaper, Tanya Gunderson’s visage held a look of worry. She seemed like an average small-town wife and mother. Josie Townsend, from what Gloria read, had been single, a teacher. Not at all the type one would have thought capable of hurting someone. And Betty Striker—tall and aloof with intelligent eyes—seemed far too poised and in control for what she had been accused of. Except for Debbie, Gloria couldn’t imagine the women doing anything more nefarious than cheating at bingo.
But could she see herself in any of their faces? Similarity in one particular set of eyes? She would find out.
The facility came into view. Tall oak trees and manicured green grass surrounded the building. Red brick and ivy, white-trimmed windows and black shutters—Gloria half expected people to be playing croquet on the front lawn.
She parked her car in a visitor spot, popped a breath mint into her mouth, and finger-combed her hair. Time to meet some shady ladies involved in a crime, or victims of a setup, whichever the case might be. One way or the other, in the back of her mind the main theme remained—it was time to meet her birth mother.
She gathered up the folder of information, a tape recorder, and her laptop from her back seat. Arms full, she shut the car door with her foot, then began to trudge up the long sidewalk to the front door of Meadowbrook Assisted Living.
Gloria hoped the women would be more talkative than they were in ’74. Certainly more receptive than when she’d visited before. They had to be. They had invited her to come.
The more Gloria thought about it, the more energized she became. She was finally going to write a book. All her life she’d scribbled stories in notebooks, hoping someday to develop one into a full story. It was oddly frightening, to stretch your wings and see if you can do such a thing… whatever that thing may be—to try and possibly fail, or possibly succeed. She’d worked hard, paid the bills, and now it was time to allow herself to realize her potential, follow her dream, and find out if she had what it takes to be an author.
The smell of ammonia and musty old people was what Gloria expected when she opened the door to the assisted-living facility. Honestly, she hadn’t paid any attention to the surroundings when she’d been here last. She had been busy bulldozing her way into the lives of the four women.
A big yellow lab with a happy tail approached. Had this animal even been in the front room the previous time she visited? Then a fluffy orange cat began to saunter in Gloria’s direction. This unlikely couple seemed to be the greeting committee, and they had their ritual down pat. The dog sat down at her feet, looking up, waiting for her to acknowledge him. The cat brushed against her leg. How did she miss all this before?
The smell of warm cookies met Gloria’s nose. A short woman with a big smile and happy crinkles at the corners of her eyes rolled up with a serving cart holding a big plate piled high with the delicious cookies filled with chocolate chips.
“Hello,” the small woman chirped. “Can I help you find someone?” Chu
bby little thing. Coiffed hair. One of those women who had a standing appointment at the beauty parlor, Gloria suspected.
Reaching down to pet the dog, then scratching the cat’s ear, Gloria pulled her business card out of her pocket.
“I’m Gloria Larson. I have an appointment with Linda Weldon, the administrator.” Her eyes wandered to the cookies. Offer me a cookie, woman.
“I can take you to Linda’s office. Follow me.” She turned and headed around a corner, the wheels of her cart squeaking as she went.
Gloria followed. Her eyes darted around as she looked for the women. It was like she expected them to jump out from behind every corner.
Blue parakeets chirped in a birdcage by a tall ficus tree. Several women in a room off the entry played cards and laughed. In another room, an elderly woman was having her nails done. This was nothing like the care facility she remembered visiting her grandmother in so many years ago.
Busy gawking at the accommodations, Gloria almost ran into cookie-cart-woman when she stopped beside an office door.
“Here we are. Now, how ’bout a cookie?”
“I thought you’d never ask. They smell wonderful.” Gloria almost sighed in relief. She accepted the warm treat on a little pink napkin.
A voice came from within the office. “Come on in, and have a seat.” The administrator of Meadowbrook sat behind an unassuming desk stacked high with piles of documents and files. She had a kind smile but controlled eyes. Linda Weldon stood and held out her hand. A firm handshake, as one would expect.
“So you’re Gloria Larson?” Linda asked. “Editor of the Rosewood Press.”
“Guilty.” She nodded, then took a bite of her cookie.
“Have a seat and let’s talk about the story you want to write.” Linda pointed to a chair, then sat back down at her desk. She cleared away enough papers to see through the piles, then leaned forward attentively. “And about your previous visit.”