The Color of Heaven Series [02] The Color of Destiny

by Julianne MacLean

  Surely I was crazy to have believed that Marissa was my long lost baby girl, returned from the dead and reunited with me by some miracle of destiny.

  She wasn’t my daughter, but oh, how I’d wanted her to be. When my gaze had fallen on the teddy bear from my childhood, something woke up inside of me. I felt a sense of hope I had never let myself reach for. Suddenly I believed there could be magic in the universe, and this was how it was all meant to be – that the baby I couldn’t care for when I was sixteen had found a wonderful family, and she had been raised in a loving family with everything I wanted for her.

  But Marissa was not the baby I had lost in the ambulance accident. That baby was gone, and whatever longing I felt for her over the past twenty years was not the real pull of a mother toward her lost daughter. It was grief and regret, plain and simple.

  I wondered if it was ever possible for a mother to let go of a lost child, of any age.

  My cell phone vibrated in my coat pocket and I jumped.

  I pulled my mitten off with my teeth and fumbled to reach for it. The call display said Dr. Ryan Hamilton. I swiped my fingertip across the answer button.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hi Kate,” he replied. His voice was quiet and low.

  A gust of icy wind blew into my face. I immediately turned my back on it. “Is everything okay?”

  “Not exactly. I’m sorry to tell you this now when it’s already been a rough day, but Gladys isn’t doing so well. She won’t likely make it through the night.”

  I started walking back toward the road. “I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Could you come to the hospital and sit with us? Gladys would want you to be there.”

  I stopped for a moment. “What about Marissa?”

  “She wants you there, too. She’s the one who asked me to call you.”

  I began walking up the steep hill toward my car. “Ryan... I have to ask. Does Marissa know the results of the DNA test yet?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I told her.”

  A dog barked at me viciously from someone’s front window as I walked past their house. “She was probably relieved.”

  “I won’t lie to you, Kate. She was, because she loved her mom a lot, but it doesn’t change how she feels about you. Will you come?”

  By now, I was walking at a brisk pace toward my car. “I’m already on my way.”

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  I AM NO stranger to death. My experience with it began when I lost my sister, aunt, and my unborn child in an ambulance accident, and continued when I lost my husband, who had chosen to give up on life.

  In addition, I had entered a profession that put me inside death’s intimate circle on a daily basis, though thankfully, I saved far more lives than I lost.

  There was nothing I could do to help Gladys, however, that night in the hospital. All I could do was sit quietly at her bedside with Ryan and Marissa, knowing it was time for her to go.

  I only wished it was not so difficult for those of us left behind.

  We lost Gladys shortly after midnight. Her heart just stopped beating and the nurse said, “She’s gone.” I glanced about the room, searching for something – some evidence of Gladys’s spirit departing for another destination. Did heaven even exist? Was there a higher power?

  But there was no rising mist, no shudder within me, no ghostly whispers of good-bye – only a profound and devastating silence that followed the sound of her last breath.

  Destiny

  Chapter Seventy

  Marissa

  DO YOU BELIEVE in happy endings? I do. I’ve learned that even when life drags you down into the deepest pit of despair, that’s the most important time to keep believing, because you never know when you’re going to sling-shot upwards, straight out of there.

  Three months after Gram passed, Ryan proposed to Kate. They were married that summer in a quiet ceremony in our backyard overlooking the water. We arranged Gram’s colorful painted stones into an aisle for Kate to walk down, and rented white chairs and a tent for the afternoon.

  I was Kate’s maid of honor, and Ryan asked a close friend of his from medical school to be best man. His name was Jacob and he drove six hours from his practice in the Cape Breton Highlands to be there.

  Sean wasn’t able to attend because he had a summer job in British Columbia, and he couldn’t get the time off. I hated being away from him, and though I wasn’t absolutely sure, I thought Sean might be the one. Only time would tell.

  When August came, I held down the fort at home while Ryan and Kate flew to Italy for their honeymoon. It was lonely without Gram, and without them. The house seemed eerily quiet, and I couldn’t bring myself to open the door to Gram’s apartment and look down the stairs.

  Maybe that’s why I tried so hard to keep busy with work, taking on extra shifts at the yacht club as it prepared for Chester Race Week.

  Or maybe it was another reason entirely. Maybe it was destiny that made me a crew member on the Gemini, as a fill in for someone during a practice run, three days before the race.

  I was asked to replace Adam Moore, the eldest adult son in a family of five. He had come down with a bad sinus infection upon his arrival in Nova Scotia and needed to rest up before the competition.

  Mr. and Mrs. Moore had two daughters, Diana and Rebecca, ages twenty-three and twenty-one. The commodore of the club called me into his office to explain that the Moores were very important guests. Gerald Moore was a member of the US Senate and had been coming to Race Week with his family for the past fifteen years. They were two-time winners of the trophy. Now their children were grown and spread out across the country, but they were determined to continue the family tradition. They came together each summer, and sailed up the coast to try and win the race one more time.

  When I stepped onto their clean white boat deck, I shook hands with Senator Moore and his wife, Sandra, then turned to meet his two daughters. The older one, Diana, was in law school at UCLA, and the younger one, Rebecca, had just finished a degree in classics at Princeton. In the fall she would attend Oxford University in England to do her masters. She told me to call her Becky.

  After the initial introductions, the senator led me to the companionway that took me down to the cabin where I could store my backpack.

  It was a luxurious boat with a well-appointed galley and shiny brass fittings everywhere. I stowed my backpack into a lower cupboard and returned to the deck where Becky and Diana were already preparing for the morning sail.

  I, too, set to work with Mrs. Moore, putting the batons in the mainsail and jib. Before long, we were pulling on the sheets to hoist the sails, and moving out onto the Bay.

  “Too bad Adam couldn’t be here!” Senator Moore called out from the helm. “It’s such a great morning!”

  Becky hopped down from the foredeck to join him. She passed under the boom, then slid her arm around her father’s waist and laid her head on his shoulder.

  The wind was fresh and cool on my cheeks, gulls circled above, and I felt a warm glow inside myself as I watched the senator kiss his daughter on the top of her head.

  Glancing up at the mainsail, I wondered how Ryan and Kate had enjoyed their honeymoon. I couldn’t wait to see them. They’d been gone for two weeks, but were due back the following day. I was to pick them up at the airport shortly before noon.

  Though I was the newest member of the crew, I fell into an easy rhythm with the others, following our captain’s orders to adjust the lines and trim the sails when we tacked.

  After the third tack, the boat heeled to starboard and we all relaxed for a while.

  Becky, who was seated at the windward shrouds, her red hair blowing wildly in all directions, smiled at me. “So you go to Dal?”

  “Yeah!” I shouted over the sound of the waves rushing past the hull. “I just finished a science degree.”

  “Have you decided what you’re going to do next?”

  I pushed my bangs
away from my face. “I’m starting my masters this fall. I might apply to medical school after that.”

  “Wow,” she said. “That’s ambitious. Good for you. I was never very good at science.”

  “But you must be good with the classics,” I said. “Oxford... That’s ambitious, too.”

  She shrugged as if it wasn’t that important, and I admired her humility. I’d met more than a few Ivy Leaguers at the yacht club over the years, and some of them were downright snobby.

  “Does your family live in Washington?” I asked.

  “My dad has an apartment there, and he and Mom live there most of the time, but our real home is in Bar Harbor, Maine. That’s where I grew up.”

  My eyebrows flew up. “Oh! I know someone from Bar Harbor.”

  “Yeah? Who?”

  “My stepmom. Her name is Kate Worthington. She grew up in Maine, and her father was principal of their elementary school, I think. She became a paramedic and worked in New Hampshire for a while, but now she lives here.”

  “Cool.” Becky’s face lifted, and she squinted up at the top of the mast.

  I found myself staring, absorbedly, at her profile. She had a tiny upturned nose and a freckled complexion, and long, thick, wavy red hair tied back in a ponytail.

  I glanced at her sister, Diana, who had olive skin, brown eyes and jet-black hair.

  Then I turned my gaze to their mother, Sandra, who was standing at the stern looking ahead with a hand raised to shade her eyes from the sun. She was blonde and just as gorgeous as her daughters. She reminded me of Michelle Pfeiffer.

  The senator, at the helm, was an attractive, athletic-looking gentleman with warm, smiling eyes, a strong jaw, and salt and pepper hair.

  Maybe I should have put two and two together, but the number four didn’t even occur to me until we returned a few hours later to the marina. We had just finished tying the lines, and had secured the boat.

  The senator stepped onto the dock and waved at someone up on the lawn of the club. The man came jogging down to meet us.

  “You feeling better?” the senator asked when the man arrived at the boat.

  By that time, I was slinging my backpack over my shoulder and joining the senator on the dock.

  “Marissa,” he said, “I’d like you to meet my son. This is Adam.”

  Slightly surprised, I reached out to shake Adam’s hand. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

  I was surprised because Adam Moore was African-American.

  That night, I pulled the Jeep into the driveway, went straight inside, and Googled Senator Moore and his children. It took me awhile, because there were dozens of articles and pictures of the family at political and social events all over the country.

  Then wham. I found it. The in-depth article I was searching for.

  I leaned forward in my chair to read about the famous Moore family from Bar Harbor. Theirs was a rags-to-riches story. Senator Moore had grown up in poverty with a single, but loving and devoted mother.

  On the day he and Mrs. Moore were married, she wore a wedding gown she’d purchased at a second hand store, and they went camping for their honeymoon.

  They spent the first few years of their marriage building schools in third-world countries, which was how they ended up with their first son, Adam. As soon as they returned to America, Mr. Moore dove into a career in public service, and rose quickly in political circles.

  As for his family life... It was just as I suspected. For reasons that were not disclosed in the article, the Moores were not able to have a family of their own.

  All the senator’s children were adopted.

  Chapter Seventy-one

  I DROVE TO the airport the following day to meet Ryan and Kate, who had taken the red eye from Rome to Toronto, which meant they didn’t have to go through customs when they arrived in Halifax. For that reason, they reached the baggage carousel not long after touching down.

  I hugged them both and asked about their trip. They described the food and the culture and the mind-blowing ancient ruins, and told me I had to travel to Europe as soon as I could manage it.

  We collected their suitcases and walked to the parking garage, and were soon heading back to Chester in the Jeep.

  I could see how tired they both were after the long transatlantic flight, so I decided to keep quiet about my experience on the water the day before, and my breakfast meeting that morning with Mrs. Moore.

  Kate often told me she’d felt like a crazy person last Christmas when she believed I could be her long lost daughter.

  Today, I felt a little crazy myself.

  I waited until we finished dinner that evening to bring up the subject that had been weighing heavily on my mind since the previous day.

  Kate stood up to start clearing away the dishes, but I stopped her with my hand. “Wait. Can you stay for a minute?”

  “I’ll take care of this,” Ryan said, obviously sensing that I wanted to talk to Kate about something important. He rose to his feet as well.

  “No, please stay. I want you to hear this, too.”

  He regarded me with curiosity.

  I leaned back in my chair and turned to Kate. “This is going to sound completely insane, and I hate to do this to you when you just got home from your honeymoon, but I met someone yesterday, and I had a weird feeling about it.”

  Kate’s eyebrows pulled together. “What kind of feeling?”

  I didn’t know how, or where, to begin, so I took a deep breath and did my best to explain. “A crew member on one of the boats entered in the race this week got sick, so I was asked to help out on a practice run.”

  I paused, and Kate sat forward, resting her elbows on the table.

  “Strangely enough,” I continued, “it was a family from your neck of the woods. Bar Harbor. The captain of the boat is a senator. You probably know of him. Gerald Moore?”

  Kate’s face lit up. “Yes! They’re like royalty in Maine. The senator has a reputation for being tough but fair, and he and his wife support every worthy cause out there. They adopted a child from Somalia a number of years ago, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up president one day.” Kate smiled at me and touched my hand. “You sailed with the Moores yesterday? That’s incredible.”

  I felt almost dizzy, because what I was about to suggest was going to come as a great shock to Kate, and all at once, I was tempted to backpedal. Maybe I should just let it be. Let bygones be bygones.

  But the senator would only be in Chester for another week at most, and I couldn’t keep something like this secret from Kate. If it was true, she needed to know.

  And I knew, in my heart, that Kate was strong. She had survived the deaths of her sister, her husband, and her unborn child. She could handle this, too, and anything else that came her way.

  “I’m not sure how to tell you this,” I said, “but it’s about the senator’s children. Yesterday I met Adam, the boy they adopted from Somalia. He’s twenty-seven now. And I met his two sisters, Becky and Diana. They’re both amazing. Diana is the older one. She’s in law school at UCLA, and Becky is the youngest. She’s brilliant, and she was just accepted to Oxford. She says she wants to be a classics professor. She’s starting her masters in September and plans to do a PhD after that.”

  “That’s great,” Kate said, still leaning forward over the table.

  A lump formed in my throat, and I couldn’t seem to find the right words to suggest what I thought might be true. “Kate...” I said, “Becky is really beautiful. She’s exactly my age. She has red hair, just like yours, and she’s adopted.”

  Kate stared at me intently for a long moment, then she leaned back in her chair and frowned. “What are you saying?”

  I covered her hand with my own. “This morning, I got up early and had breakfast with Mrs. Moore. She’s a wonderful person. I hope you won’t be angry with me, but I asked her about her daughters. I told her I knew they were adopted – it was on the Internet – and I was curious about where they came from
. She was very honest with me, and said that Becky’s real mother was only sixteen when she had her, and that she intended to give her baby up for adoption. She was involved in a car accident, however, and went into a long-term coma. Becky was taken to a private adoption agency in Boston.”

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Kate’s as all the color drained from her face. “The Moore’s were on a waiting list to adopt a third child,” I continued, “so they were called in.”

  Kate wet her lips and spoke in a shaky voice. “Do they know the name... of the mother?”

  I shook my head. “The files were sealed. She didn’t even know if the mother ever woke up from the coma. But she did tell me the name of the agency.”

  Kate laid a hand on her chest and stood up. Then she bent forward, as if she were going to be sick.

  In a flash of movement, Ryan was at her side. “Are you okay? Can I get you anything?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I just need to sit down.”

  He went with her to the sofa, and I took a seat in the upholstered chair across from them.

  “What can I do?” I said. “Was I right to tell you? I wasn’t sure.”

  “Yes, you did the right thing,” she replied, resting her forehead on the heels of her hands, “but I don’t know what to do. I’ve been through this before. I fought hard to put it behind me and be happy in the present.”

  “That will never change,” I said, “but I think you need to get to the bottom of this, Kate. Is there any way you can unseal the files?”

  She looked up at me with animosity in her eyes. “I’m not sure,” she said, “because I wasn’t the one who sealed them.”