The Passions of Chelsea Kane

by Barbara Delinsky

  “I don’t care about defects.”

  “I want to know who I am.”

  “But why can’t we think about it? We’re so close. I feel like we owe it to ourselves to see if we can be closer.”

  “Hey, you guys!” came a chiding call from the door along with Melissa Koo’s smooth entrance. “I thought we agreed there wouldn’t be hanky-panky in the office.”

  Grateful for the interruption, Chelsea chuckled. She wasn’t fast to remove her hand, though. She craved touching and closeness and found comfort in the familiarity of Carl. She had a history with him that she didn’t have with many other people. Even Melissa, whom she’d met at graduate school and adored on the spot for her artistic eccentricity, was an acquaintance of less than ten years. As close as they were, it wasn’t the same. Carl was like a brother. With him there were family, friends, and memories.

  Maybe he was right. Just because they hadn’t thought of a romantic involvement before didn’t mean it was no good. Maybe the timing had been wrong before. Maybe once she got used to the idea of marrying him, it would seem perfectly natural.

  For now, though, she simply gave him a pat. To Melissa she said, “What are you doing back here so late?”

  Melissa was model-slender to the point of being gaunt. She needed a smile to soften her face and a grin to light it up. The grin was what she gave Chelsea now, and it was dazzling. “I had drinks with Peter Shorr. We got the DataMile job.”

  Chelsea grinned back. DataMile, a private data bank that had just gone public, was building three separate centers, one each in Baltimore, Atlanta, and Denver. Melissa’s design was far more daring than data-processing centers usually went. Once completed, the structures would be eye-catching. “That’s great!”

  “Definitely prize material,” Carl predicted.

  “I hope so,” Melissa said, and her voice grew wry, “because we lost the Akron Arena.”

  Chelsea’s grin faded. “We did?”

  “Unofficially. But word is that Baker, Wills, and Crock are breaking out the champagne, which says they know something we don’t. My guess is we’ll get a call tomorrow.” She spotted the silver key in its tissue nest on the coffee table. “Whoa. What’s that?” She picked it up, turned it over and back, end on end.

  Chelsea gave her a brief background on the key. When she reached the part about Norwich Notch, Melissa frowned at Carl.

  “Why does that sound familiar?”

  Chelsea looked from one face to the other. “When it sounded familiar to me, I put it down to my imagination. When it sounded familiar to you, Carl, I put it down to coincidence. But if it sounds familiar to you, too, Melissa, there has to be something to it. So where have we heard the name?”

  “Skiing,” Carl insisted.

  Chelsea shook her head. “Melissa doesn’t ski. Try New Hampshire. What have we done in New Hampshire?”

  “Cluster housing in Portsmouth, a sports center in Sunapee, and ice sculptures at Dartmouth’s Winter Festival,” Melissa said, “but Hanover isn’t Norwich Notch. Maybe we’re thinking of Peyton Place. That’s in New Hampshire, isn’t it?”

  “Sorry, sweetheart, Peyton Place is fictitious,” Carl said.

  “So’s Knots Landing, but that could be what’s making Norwich Notch sound familiar.” She joined them at the drafting table. “Norwich Notch. Norwich Notch.” She picked at a crumb of the pizza. “Do we know someone from Norwich Notch?”

  “Eerie question,” Chelsea breathed, “since my blood relations may all live there. Mother, father, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins—the list could be endless. It boggles the mind.”

  “Norwich Notch,” Melissa murmured, and raised her head. “Give me time. It’ll come.”

  GIVEN THAT THE ONE THING CARL, CHELSEA, AND MELISSA had in common was architecture, Chelsea reasoned that if all of them had heard of Norwich Notch before, it had to have been in the context of work. For that reason she spent the next morning poring over her files for even the briefest reference to the town. When she found none, she called a friend with whom she had worked in the days before Harper, Kane, Koo. When she struck out there, too, she called a professor at Princeton with whom she’d kept in touch, but to no avail.

  She was determined to solve the mystery. She and her two partners had all heard of Norwich Notch, and she wanted to know how. Fired up, she boldly took her appointment book from her purse, turned to the page on which she had jotted the Norwich Notch numbers, and, without allowing time for doubt, called the town clerk.

  Within minutes she had her answer. She was hanging up the phone when Melissa strode through the door waving a file folder.

  “It was the Wentworth Art Center. Not in New Hampshire. In Maine.”

  She broke off when, coming from his own end of the hall, Carl walked through the door and said, “I remember now. Harper, Kane, Koo hadn’t been going for more than six months. We were bidding for that art center on the coast of Maine—“

  “Wentworth,” Melissa supplied.

  “That’s it,” he said with satisfaction, and looked at Chelsea. “We needed the job, so we bid low, but it was tough. They wanted stone.”

  “Granite,” Chelsea specified, sitting back in her chair with her heart beating fast. “It’s six times as hard as marble and wears like iron. They wanted it for its ability to withstand the salt air, and we agreed that it would, but we also wanted a gray-green shade that would blend with the shoreline. We contacted dozens of quarries for estimates. Imported stone was too pricey, and besides, we thought local stone would be more appropriate.” She took an expectant breath. “One of the quarries we contacted, and rejected, was in Norwich Notch, New Hampshire.”

  Three

  In early February Chelsea received a phone call from Michael Mahler. The tougher of the brothers, though ever courtly, he asked if Chelsea had given further thought to the ruby ring.

  Indeed she had, in the context of holding something dear that Abby had held dear. Of the three pieces, the ring was the one Abby had worn most. That meant a lot to Chelsea, which was why she said, “It was my mother’s. It was her wish that I have it.”

  “Then you won’t give it up?”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Come now, Chelsea,” Michael chided in his superior way, “she was quite ill at the end of her life. Do you honestly suppose she was thinking clearly when she decided to break up a set that has been together for generations?”

  Chelsea didn’t have a doubt in the world about that. “She was thinking clearly. At no time, not even at the very end, was she anything but lucid, and I know, Michael, far more so than you. You came in time for the funeral. Dad and I were with her through the difficult weeks before.”

  “Unduly influencing her decisions, no doubt.”

  “Taking care of her. Making her last days as comfortable as possible. She was lucid. A dozen people will attest to that.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense,” he whined. “Think about it. Think about it. Three matching pieces of jewelry. They’re a set.”

  Chelsea was feeling as calm as she sounded. It occurred to her that with Abby’s death, the Mahlers had become less threatening. Her emotional connection with them, always tentative at best, was broken. Once upon a time she would have dreaded that. Having roots was all-important to her, and it still was, but her frame of reference had shifted. As she saw it now, her root system included Abby and Kevin and whoever existed, past and present, in Norwich Notch. The Mahlers didn’t matter.

  Like a balloon released in the breeze, she had been set free.

  “Mother never wore the rubies as a set,” she said buoyantly. “She was too classy for that. How Elizabeth or Anne can think of doing so is beyond me.”

  Michael’s voice chilled. “What they do once they have the jewels is their business, but we all want the set to remain in the family.”

  “I agree. That’s why I’m keeping the ring. I want to give it to my own daughter someday.”

  “But your daughter won
’t be a Mahler any more than you are.”

  “Legally she will, just as I am,” Chelsea said. “I have court papers to that effect, Michael. No judge will deny them. If you’d like, you can try it and see. Graham will very happily represent me, but believe me when I say that you haven’t got a case.”

  Graham confirmed that. He guessed that the Mahlers’ next step would be to offer Chelsea money for the ring.

  “Nowhere near what it’s worth, mind you,” he cautioned, “but they seem to feel it’s the principle of the thing.”

  It was the principle of the thing for Chelsea, too.

  “They could offer me ten times its value, and I wouldn’t sell,” she vowed, “and I can be as stubborn as a Mahler any day.”

  Graham folded his hands over his middle. “There we have prima facie evidence that some traits are learned rather than inherited.”

  “Or is stubbornness something that was inborn in one or both of my birth parents and then passed along to me?”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “Neither do I, which is the other reason I’m here.” Had the issue of the will’s legality been the only thing on her mind, she might have simply called on the phone. “What do you know about my adoption? My father won’t tell me a thing, but I’m an adult. It’s my right to know.”

  “Why is it suddenly so important to you?”

  “Because my mother is dead. Because she wanted me to have a clue to my past. Because her family keeps telling me I’m not one of them, and I want to know who I am one of.”

  Graham pondered that for a minute before finally saying, “There’s not much to tell. The adoption was privately arranged. The files were closed and sealed.”

  One of the things Chelsea had learned was that closed files could be opened and sealed ones unsealed. She could ask Graham to look into it for her, but that would put him in an uncomfortable position vis-à-vis Kevin—and Kevin would know what she was doing, which would create a stir at a time when Abby’s death was too fresh. She could wait. There was more to be learned from less threatening sources.

  “Why didn’t my parents work through an agency?” she asked.

  He frowned at his hands. “My guess—operative word, guess—is that your mother’s illness made her a less than ideal candidate for adopting a child. It’s possible that your parents went to an agency and were turned down.”

  Yes, it was possible, Chelsea realized—stupid, given what a wonderful mother Abby had been, but possible. It was also possible that they had taken the private route for another reason. Kevin was a private man. He drew distinct lines between personal friends and acquaintances and colleagues. Chelsea had seen him in action. She knew for a fact that he could invite guests to the club for dinner who didn’t know, until they met her there, that Abby was crippled. Likewise, he never broadcast the fact that Chelsea was adopted. When Abby talked of it, he clammed up. Indeed, the engraved announcement sent out soon after Chelsea’s birth hadn’t mentioned the word once. She imagined that he had wanted the process over and done with as neatly and quickly as possible. The private route would have accomplished that.

  “So they went to your father,” she said. “How did he arrange it? Did he go looking, or did he coincidentally bump into a baby?”

  “A little of both, from what I gather. He made some discreet inquiries, one of which was to a lawyer who had been contacted not long before that by a lawyer from Norwich Notch.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know if he’s still in Norwich Notch?”

  “No. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

  “Do you have your father’s old files?”

  “Some. Not the one you want, though. I cataloged the files after he died. It wasn’t there.”

  “Maybe it was under a false heading.”

  Graham shook his head. “What I cataloged, I opened and read. There’s no file on you, Chelsea.”

  She assumed there had been one once. All lawyers kept files. Kevin would have been uncomfortable with its existence and had it destroyed, but she refused to be discouraged. There were other ways to get the same information.

  “Then you know nothing about my birth parents. How about Norwich Notch? Did you know that it’s a granite town?” When he shook his head, she said, “We actually got a bid from the granite company there—Plum Granite—on a job we were doing several years back. The bid wasn’t particularly competitive. The quality of the granite was above average, but there was no on-site preparation. Everything had to be cut and polished elsewhere, which added to the cost.”

  “That doesn’t sound very efficient to me. I’m surprised they’re still in business.”

  “Oh, they are,” Chelsea said. “Plum Granite is the town’s major employer.” And she was an architect with a recurring need for granite. It was the perfect excuse. She could go to Norwich Notch, New Hampshire, to inspect the stone. Architects did that all the time simply to have resources at the tips of their fingers.

  Graham was eyeing her knowingly.

  “I’m not going there,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  She slipped her purse strap to her shoulder and stood. “For the same reason that I haven’t hired a private investigator.”

  “I’ve been wondering about that. You can afford it.”

  “In terms of money, yes. Not emotions. Not yet.”

  Graham’s look recalled what Kevin had said about her being the kind of person to run with the ball. “You’ll go up there at some point.”

  “Maybe.” She frowned, then shrugged. “Probably. But not now.” She moved toward the door. “I’m feeling confused. There are times when things happen—like getting Michael’s phone call—that make me desperate to know who I am. At those times I’m so hungry for information that the fear recedes. I show the key to a jeweler or call the Norwich Notch Town Clerk or bombard you with questions. Then that satisfies me for a while and I back off.” She was feeling nowhere near the urgency she had felt when she’d first arrived at Graham’s office. “I wondered what information you had. Now I know.”

  KEVIN WAS LATE, WHICH WASN’T LIKE HIM AT ALL. HE WAS USUally as punctual as he was orderly. If he was scheduled for surgery at seven in the morning, he was scrubbed and ready to go precisely then. If he said he’d be home at eight, that was just when he walked through the door.

  Chelsea was her father’s daughter. If she had an appointment to meet with a developer at ten, she presented herself and her portfolio at his office at ten. If she was invited to a cocktail party that started at six, she appeared at her host’s door at six. Her friends teased her about it. They warned that she wouldn’t last long in society unless she learned to be late. But Chelsea wasn’t concerned about her position in society. She was already as much a part of it as she cared to be. Social climbing wasn’t on her must-do list.

  Pleasing Kevin Kane was. She hadn’t lived in the large suburban house with him since graduating from architectural school eight years before, and it had been even longer than that, thanks to the Mahler trust, since she’d been financially dependent on him. Still, she craved his approval. It was tied in with her need for love, acceptance, and family connections.

  That approval had come in fits and starts in the weeks since Abby’s death, not because Chelsea had done anything wrong but because Kevin had been so down. He put in a full day of work, more so than Chelsea felt a sixty-eight-year-old man should, then he came home and buried himself in his journals. When she phoned him, she felt she was dragging him from a greater distance than ever. That was why she’d started to meet him for dinner. Face to face, she stood a better chance of getting through.

  She glanced at her watch. He was ten minutes late. She was sure he had agreed to meet her on Thursday evening at seven in the sitting room of the country club. She had even arrived early.

  “Would you like a drink while you wait for Dr. Kane?”

  Her eyes flew to the uniformed waiter who had
come up on the side. “Uh . . . yes, that’d be nice. My usual, Norman. And bring my father his. He should be here any minute.”

  Saying it aloud made her feel better in ways that a glance out the window didn’t. It was a rainy February night, very dark, very thick and enveloping. She had visions of him skidding on a slick patch of road, or swerving to avoid another car and hitting a tree, or misjudging a turn.

  He wasn’t young, and he was all she had left. The thought of anything happening to him terrified her.

  At times like these, when she feared for Kevin’s well-being, she thought of Norwich Notch and whom else she might have.

  Then he appeared at the door, and, relieved, she rose from the sofa with a broad smile. “I was worried.” She put an arm around him and kissed his cheek.

  “Sorry, sweetheart.” He returned her kiss. “I tried to reach you at the office to warn you I’d be late, but you’d already left.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “I got a late call on a consult.” He gestured her onto the sofa and settled nearby. “Is Carl in the men’s room?”

  “No. He’s playing squash.”

  Kevin’s face dropped. “I thought he was joining us.”

  “He always plays squash on Thursday nights,” Chelsea explained, but she felt bad. Since Abby had died, so few things gave Kevin pleasure that she hated denying him one. Carl was one, apparently more so than she’d thought. “He’s in a league. They count on him being there.”

  “I was counting on him being here.”

  “You didn’t mention it.”

  “I didn’t think I had to. I thought you two went everywhere together.” He looked up to take his Scotch and water from Norman. With a hefty swallow, he settled back in the sofa.

  Chelsea held her wineglass in both hands, trying to decide whether it was anger or fatigue that was making him cross. After a minute she said, “Does that bother you?”

  “That you spend so much time with Carl? Of course not! Carl is like a son to me. I’d be thrilled if you married him. So would Tom and Sissy. In fact, Tom was talking about it just the other day. He was trying to find out if I knew more than he did. I told him you were a big girl and that it was none of my business.” More tentatively he said, “Maybe I was wrong. I’m your father.” He looked suddenly awkward. “You’re not a little girl anymore. But I care about you. What’s going on with Carl?”