I took a sip of coffee and a deep breath. “So you remember, Norm, that our means of putting together a family was complicated, right?” I began.
“I certainly do,” he answered wryly. His family also had both adopted and biological children. We’d become friends in our early twenties, long before children, and so we’d intersected through more relationships, events, and personal challenges than most other people I knew. We didn’t dwell in our pasts, but we were important memory keepers for each other. I didn’t have a lot of preparation to do with him.
“When my infertility was diagnosed, we eventually considered surrogacy,” I said. Norman’s brow lifted very slightly, but he said nothing. “Steven wanted a biological child. His only brother chose a life path unlikely to lead to children, and his father survived the Holocaust but lost many family members. So Steven wanted to carry on his family heritage.” I paused. Am I being disloyal to Steven to reveal this here? No. I need help. And Norman will abide by attorney-client privilege.
“My infertility shocked us,” I continued. “We met so late. We were under a lot of pressure, and felt we had to proceed with adoption, do in vitro fertilization, and consider every other way to have a family, because we both really wanted children—many children.” Norman’s look of studied interest revealed nothing more than his attentive listening, so I proceeded. “After the first in vitro attempts failed, Steven researched and wanted to try surrogacy. The whole concept was in its infancy, and since I was willing to adopt and truly wanted to have Steven’s child, I thought, Why not try this?”
I stared at Norman, but still his face remained impassive. He waited for me to get to my point. Why couldn’t I?
“I need another coffee,” I said, standing abruptly. “Do you want anything else?”
“I’m fine,” Norman answered.
I walked to the coffee bar. Why go through this whole history? Why not just talk about Julia Reiss and her claim, and summarize in one sentence why I need to hire Martin Pappas? The answer wafted over me with the aroma of freshly ground coffee. I needed to own what happened to me during that time—the damage, and my own failures. Any plan going forward had to account for all of it.
In two minutes I returned to Norman and sipped my coffee in silence. I found his eyes and forced out the confession that had all these years been sealed in the lockbox of my own anguish.
“I agreed to attempt the surrogacy arrangement. We made one attempt, but it didn’t work.” I battled rising tears. “When it didn’t work, I told Steven I couldn’t handle another try.” My voice rose in urgency. “To me, surrogacy didn’t turn out to feel at all like the adoptions we had pursued. Purposely producing Steven’s child with another woman’s egg and womb and then knowingly taking the child away from that woman—and paying her for her trouble—just didn’t work for me. It felt too much like a business deal.”
I searched my cup of cappuccino for a route out of the baseness I felt. “I know now that sounds hopelessly idealistic and self-serving, and it hurt Steven deeply, but I could only think of how hard it would be for me to explain it all to a child. How could I describe another woman’s willingness to produce and then relinquish a baby—purposely, and for money? By then we had adopted Alex, so I understood something about bonding to a baby. The whole thing just didn’t sit well with me.”
I paused and Norman sipped his coffee, his eyes not leaving mine. My voice thickened. “We had a really rough time. Steven felt frustrated and betrayed. He felt if I really loved him, I would be supportive of his need for a biological child. Even after the in vitro worked with Seth, in some ways I feel like he never quite forgave me. But we both moved on, and loved and raised our three boys with everything we had. I sometimes wonder if I’d feel differently now, after all we’ve been through, and with how much the world of infertility and making families has changed.” The memory of those years, the shredding of trust and intimacy caused by treatments and adoption procedures and considering all the alternatives, came rushing in with a familiar sucker punch to my chest.
Straightening, I took a breath and forcibly exhaled. “Then, a month ago, this twenty-five-year-old girl showed up in Northport, wondering if perhaps she isn’t Steven’s daughter—her mother applied to be a surrogate and this girl found paperwork listing Steven as a potential father. She never had reason to believe her parents weren’t her biological parents, but that same paperwork makes it clear that her father is infertile. She has an adopted brother. The timing makes sense. And I’m the only one she’s told about this.” I leaned across the table and looked straight into Norman’s eyes. “I want to get a lot more information about everything and everyone in this situation before I blow my whole complicated family apart. That’s why I want to hire a private investigator, and anything you can help me think about to pursue this would be really welcome.”
Norman watched me for a minute—waiting to make sure I was done, I guessed. When it was clear that I had no more to say, his eyes left mine for the first time since I’d begun talking, and he looked into his coffee cup. I let him think. While he did, I pulled out a legal pad and a pen.
“All right, Abbie Rose,” he said, “it sounds like your immediate need is to figure out what you’re going to ask Marty Pappas to do three days from now, but I’ve got some other questions for you before you go down this road.”
“Okay, shoot.” I had asked for Norman’s thoughts, and now I would hear them.
“I’m sure you’ve already thought a lot about this, but I want to present two possibilities to you before you go any further.”
“I’m listening.”
“Suppose this girl is either scamming you or is just barking up the wrong tree with this claim, and what you want to do is basic damage control.”
“Exactly,” I broke in.
Norman held up his hand. He wasn’t finished. “So you send Marty in to what? Find a birth certificate? Her birth certificate will list the man she’s known all her life as her father, I’ll bet anything. Find evidence of a legal contract? If the girl’s mother told Steven the pregnancy didn’t happen, there would likely be no further correspondence, though we don’t know that for sure. And this girl says all she found were letters from surrogate prospects, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, now suppose—and this is hard, Abbie”—Norman leaned toward me—“suppose she is right, and in the best of all worlds, Steven really didn’t know. Are you prepared for all the possibilities of what that will mean? The legal ramifications? The impact this will have on your boys, and on Steven?” Norman’s look of tender concern unnerved me even more than my own fears already had.
“No, I’m not prepared,” I choked out in a whisper. “I don’t want anything to do with any of this—but what choice do I have? I’d rather face what I’m going to have to deal with than not know.”
Norman straightened up in his seat. “Okay,” he said quietly. “If you’re sure, let’s figure out how to accomplish that.” He began to scribble notes on the paper in front of him, and I began to breathe more easily than I had in days. An hour later, I left the coffee shop and walked into a cold morning with a sheaf of papers and the outline of a plan.
Bless Norman.
Chapter 19
Turtle Creek, Ohio, probably looked like any other central Ohio town in January—wide, well-paved roads, bare trees, tidy homes, small businesses, and absent much outdoor activity because of the cold. In Michigan, on a day with leaden skies like this one, there would be a tension of waiting for snow, or recovering from it, and a deep bite to the cold—but here, two hundred miles to the south, it was simply a mild winter day.
At noon, I would meet with Martin Pappas in Dayton to discuss his part of my investigation. For now, though, I had a bit of my own sleuthing to do. I’d told Steven I would attend a knitting workshop in Ohio today, but the “workshop” was of my own making.
The Flex fit right into the fleet of trucks and SUVs in the ample parking lot of a small strip mall. Empty
concrete flower boxes lined the sidewalk outside storefronts, and American flags fluttered in the cold wind. I parked in front of Fine Fibers Knit Shop and grabbed my knitting bag. A belt of bells at the door alerted a pleasant-looking woman who appeared to be in her midfifties as I walked in, and she immediately greeted me.
Though unremarkable from the outside, the well-stocked shop measured up to my favorite fiber art haunts. Bins and shelves with an ample assortment of yarns, arranged by variety and color, shared the space with well-crafted knitted samples. My workbag dangled from my arm as I took it all in, and the saleswoman gave me time to do so.
“Is there something I can help you with?” she finally asked.
“I do have a question, and I always look for knit shops when I travel, so I thought I’d stop in.”
“Sure. Let me know when you’re ready.” With that, she turned to unpacking new yarn into a nearby display.
I moved off toward the sales counter, stopping as I went to finger some lovely hand-dyed cashmere wool in heather green. I had plenty of knitting projects to work on at home, but I could rarely resist the pull of beautiful yarn.
Fine Fibers’s website had revealed interesting information when I’d checked it out the evening before. I’d found a robust blog, schedule of classes, and full array of yarns for sale, signaling a savvy online component to this business. A mother/daughter class to make a knitted cowl caught my eye and rewarded my decision to research this shop. The cowl had been designed for the instructor’s granddaughter and they both appeared in a photo, each modeling beautiful, lace-patterned cowls, in a deep blue to match the granddaughter’s arresting eyes. The instructor was Margaret Phelan, and the granddaughter was, unmistakably, Julia Reiss.
I worked my way around the store and back to the proprietress, who by now sat knitting in an easy chair next to the sales counter. She put aside her work and rose as I approached.
I started tentatively. “I checked out your website and downloaded the pattern for the lace cowl. I started it with some yarn I had at home, but I’ve gotten stuck on one of the directions and wondered if I could get some help, and now I’m afraid I’m also stuck on that beautiful green yarn. Do you by chance have any more of it?”
“Oh, I’m so glad you liked it. That is a wonderful pattern. Margaret, the designer, isn’t here this morning, but I’d be happy to help you, and yes, we do have that yarn. Come on over to the work table and let’s see what you have there, and I’ll grab some of that yarn for you. I’m Esther, by the way.”
“Abbie,” I responded. So Midwest, so classic, this friendliness and casual familiarity among women who love to work with their hands. I wasn’t sure whether I was more disappointed that Margaret Phelan wasn’t there, or relieved that I wouldn’t have to figure out what to say to her.
“You sit down here, Abbie, and I’ll be right back.” Esther pulled out a classic teacher’s chair at a beautiful wooden table occupying most of the length of the shop’s side wall.
She returned in a moment with two balls of the green cashmere yarn, which she handed to me. Its soft beauty filled me with pleasure. Overcoming my discomfort at this knit store subterfuge, I pulled my work and the pattern from my bag and commented, “This is such a beautiful pattern, and I couldn’t help but notice how the yarn in the cowls matched the girl in the picture’s eyes.” How lame did that sound?
Esther seemed not to notice my reaching for information. “Oh yes, Margaret’s been knitting around those eyes all of Julia’s life. Julia’s her granddaughter, and her eyes are just as gorgeous as that yarn.”
“Lucky Julia,” I said. “She must have a bundle of pretty clothes.”
“She does. And she makes many of them herself. And when her mom gets into the act, it’s quite something. Three generations of great knitters there.”
I then asked Esther my question. It wasn’t a real question—I’d followed the pattern easily—but I’d chosen something to ask about the European abbreviation that Margaret Phelan had used in her pattern. Esther quickly explained and I continued to work the pattern, hoping to draw her into more conversation.
“This is a gorgeous table. Not your usual knit shop utility version.”
“Isn’t it nice? Margaret’s son-in-law made that for us, back when we were in our old shop downtown. We didn’t want to part with it when we moved out here. It kind of reminds us of where we came from too.”
“Wow . . . pretty talented family.”
“Oh they are, and a good family too. Good people.” Of course they are. Esther reached for a binder at the other end of the table and flipped through it, then showed me a photo. “This is from our shop’s event this year for the fiber festival. There are Margaret and Fiona and Julia, all wearing their own designs. Three generations of talented designers and knitters. And here’s Aaron, Fiona’s husband, showing off his table and some of the lamps he’s carved that he brought in.”
There they all were—the three Phelan women and Aaron Reiss. Fiona and her mother were of medium height and had classic Irish features, though not at all like Julia’s. Margaret’s red hair was pulled back into a careless, loose bun, while Fiona’s was short, straight, and spiky. Both women had fair freckled skin and green eyes, and their knitted sweaters and scarves were muted shades of green and amber brown that set off their coloring beautifully. Julia stood an easy head taller, with her tumble of dark curly hair—Steven’s hair, I thought, and this time I couldn’t whisk the idea away. She was tall and slender—like Seth.
Stop it, Abbie Rose!
Aaron Reiss appeared to be stocky and only a little taller than his wife. He had a broad, open, pleasant face and a shaggy mop of straight brown hair and brown eyes. I forced my gaze away from the binder. I wanted that photo.
“Where are you from?” Esther asked as I turned back to my knitting.
Suddenly uncertain how to answer, I hesitated. “Ann Arbor,” I said finally. This woman knew Julia Reiss, knew her family, and probably knew that she’d moved to northern Michigan. Or perhaps none of them knew, but I didn’t want to risk making that connection.
“Interesting town,” said Esther.
“Yep, it is that.” I set my work down. I reached for the green yarn and stood. “Can I settle up with you for these?” While Esther made her way across the store, I repacked my workbag, and quickly snapped a photo of the picture in the binder with my cell phone. What more could I think of to ask Esther? My brain went blank and I moved to the sales counter to complete my purchase. Then it came to me.
“If I wanted to talk to Margaret Phelan about designing a project, is there a way I could contact her? I didn’t see her information online.” I braced myself for Esther to recommend that I contact the store again, even as I worked to suppress distaste for my disingenuous questioning of this nice woman. Instead, luck and Margaret Phelan’s business savvy were with me. Esther handed me a business card from a stack on the counter with an attractive logo and Margaret Phelan’s email address and phone number printed on a background graphic of an Irish knit shawl.
With nearly an hour left before my meeting with Martin Pappas, I skipped the highway and made my way more slowly toward downtown Dayton, by turns giddy about and distressed by what I’d learned at the knit shop. I’d gained a preliminary sense of the real people who stood behind Julia Reiss. They were no longer faceless antagonists. Doubt crept into my resolve to find the truth about Julia’s biological father as quickly as possible. I was doing all of this behind her back. The upheaval that would be visited on her family, as well as my own, began to weigh more heavily. Perhaps I should try to persuade Julia to let this matter rest. Perhaps she would respond to my desire to avoid the anguish her pursuit would doubtless bring to all involved.
She needs to know. I would need to know. I DO need to know. My conviction that learning the truth and managing how that information emerged would help minimize its negative impact on my family returned forcefully, and I wove through the streets of downtown Dayton toward Martin Pappas’s o
ffice.
He turned out to be nothing like my preconceived notion of a private investigator, neither ruggedly handsome nor disheveled and quiet. I’d watched too many TV shows. Tall, blond, and middle-aged, Martin Pappas was clean-cut and dressed with casual elegance. Soon after he ushered me into his spacious, tidy office, we were seated in comfortable leather chairs facing each other across a glass coffee table.
I nervously summarized what we’d already emailed and spoken about, adding what I’d just learned at the knit shop. Pappas then shared his preliminary work. As Norman had predicted, Julia Reiss’s birth certificate named Aaron Reiss as her father. Pappas had found hospital records listing Fiona Phelan as unmarried at Julia’s birth. Due to potential Rh factor incompatibility, another form listed Julia’s blood type as A-negative. No adoption proceedings regarding Aaron or Julia Reiss appeared in Ohio courts. Pappas had traced the years of Fiona’s employment at the university and Aaron’s workshops, residencies, and courses in art centers, galleries, and colleges. The families’ criminal and driving histories were unremarkable. Pappas had bulleted on a results sheet all that he’d found to date, and had efficiently laid out my options for continued pursuit of the information I wanted. He could keep digging (it would become more expensive), but he believed the clear course was to secure DNA samples from Julia and Steven, in order to determine whether Steven was Julia’s biological father. Any other route to secure that information surreptitiously and quickly seemed to him fraught with problems of legality and reliability, not to mention time and cost. He went on to describe how easily samples could be collected from cups, straws, cigarette butts, etc.
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