by Lisa Jackson
For some reason, that still seemed like home.
And she suspected that perhaps this never would.
If it was this challenging to get into Lindsay’s office suite, it was going to be even more challenging to get into her apartment.
Challenging…but not impossible. And she had always liked a challenge.
She knew that New Yorkers couldn’t be counted on to hide keys outside their doors. They were much too savvy for that.
But I have a good plan. Not foolproof, but so far it’s working, she congratulated herself now, nearing the end of phase one.
Lindsay’s assistant was easily distracted by a muscular bike messenger who kept her flirtatiously occupied at the front desk. He had his price, of course—everyone did—and it was a steep one. But he didn’t ask questions.
That was the great thing about New York City, as opposed to Portland. People here might not hide their keys in plain sight, but they definitely paid less attention to others. They tended to mind their own business. Yes, they were wary about the usual urban threats—muggers, speeding cabs—but they never really looked strangers in the eye. That went with the territory.
Busy with the messenger, Kara never even noticed the intruder slipping past the front desk, making her way down the short corridor beyond.
There were three offices in the suite. In one, a young man tapped away at a computer keyboard, oblivious to anyone passing by. The next was empty. There was a light on in the third and largest office, and Lindsay’s name was on the door.
There was an office machine alcove across from it. The overhead light wasn’t on and the machines were off, as if they were rarely used.
Perfect. She ducked behind a copier and waited for Lindsay to leave her desk.
Twenty minutes later, her patience paid off.
Lindsay didn’t have her purse in hand when she walked quickly down the hall toward the ladies’ room.
Turned out she left it on a hook behind the door of her office.
I was counting on that.
She was also counting on Lindsay’s keys being inside. She reached in and felt around for them…
Bingo.
It took her less than ten minutes to slip back out of the suite, have copies made at the hardware store down the avenue, and return.
By then, the messenger was gone.
Kara looked up from the desk when she appeared.
“Hi—I just found this by the elevator on this floor,” she said, handing over the silver Tiffany key ring, which was, fortuitously, engraved. “Someone must have dropped these. The initials are LF. Are they yours?”
“No, but they’re my boss’s. Those must be hers. Thanks so much. I’ll give them to her.”
That was it. Easy-breezy.
From there, she headed over to Lindsay’s East Fifty-Fourth Street high-rise building, where she was hoping the doorman would be willing to look the other way, for a price.
Of course, he would have to be used to it. She had done her homework and was aware that the building happened to be home to J. T. Maguire, the former lead singer of a boy band, now hugely famous as a solo artist.
Groupies and paparazzi frequently staked out the place, hoping for a glimpse.
She approached the doorman, a bored-looking young man with a thin black mustache.
When she furtively told him what she wanted, he didn’t even seem suspicious that a thirtysomething woman was interested in J. T. Maguire.
Why would he be? She’d read that white-haired old ladies dropped off their panties for the twenty-year-old heartthrob.
The doorman pocketed her wad of bills and motioned her to go ahead into the deserted lobby.
“Thanks,” she called belatedly over her shoulder.
“No problem.”
Not for you, she thought gleefully. And not for J. T. Maguire, either.
But Lindsay Farrell? She was about to have a big, big problem on her hands…
Returning from a twenty-minute conference in her assistant Ray’s office next door, Lindsay stopped short in the doorway of her office.
That was strange—there were her keys, sitting right in the open on her desk.
How had they gotten there? She could have sworn she had put them back into her purse, same as always, when she unlocked her office door earlier…
But then, she’d been a little bleary-eyed this morning, thanks to yet another wee-hour phone call last night. It was the same high-pitched childlike voice that didn’t belong to a child. It kept calling her Mommy, asking her why she’d given him away.
She’d finally slammed down the phone in tears, and she hadn’t slept another wink.
“Lindsay?”
“Yes?”
She looked up to see Kara, her recent hire, standing in the doorway of her office.
Slender and attractive, she had so far proven herself to be less interested in her entry-level administrative duties than she was in taking long lunch breaks and flirting with the newlywed Ray, with the computer-repair technician, and even, just this morning, with a bike messenger.
Oh, well. It was May. A whole new crop of college grads would be sending out resumes. It shouldn’t be hard to find another entry-level assistant when Kara inevitably was fired or quit.
“The mail just came.”
“Thanks, Kara.” Lindsay accepted the stack and flipped through it briefly: several bills on top in white legal envelopes, a couple of trade publications and promo catalogs tucked beneath them, and a large manila envelope on the bottom. “Did you remember to book the Gramercy Room at the Peninsula for the banquet in October?”
Kara slapped a hand against her red-lipsticked mouth. “I knew I forgot something. I’ll do it right away. It was for the ninth, right?”
“The twelfth.”
“Oh, right. The twelfth. Gotcha.”
Lindsay sank into her chair and sighed as her assistant scurried from the office. She swiveled away from the desk, the stack of mail in her lap.
The plate-glass window was spattered with raindrops, and the sky beyond it, above a monochromatic skyline, was a milky shade of gray. This kind of weather never failed to remind her of home.
Home being the Pacific Northwest, where rainy, overcast days were as prevalent as honking yellow taxicabs were here. Not just in midspring, but much of the year.
I have to stop dwelling on Portland today, she scolded herself. It only reminded her of things she should be trying to forget.
Seeking a distraction, she flipped through the mail again, coming to rest on the large manila envelope on the bottom.
So much for a distraction.
The return address was in Portland, and the name above it was a familiar one.
Kristen Delmonico.
Formerly known as Kristen Daniels.
Formerly known as Lindsay’s BFF, as they used to call each other, along with Rachel Alsace.
Best Friends Forever.
Other than Christmas cards that arrived every December with all the regularity—and scintillating detail—of her exterminator’s yearly retainer bill, Lindsay never heard from Kristen.
So why now?
With slightly trembling fingers, Lindsay reached for a letter opener and slit the envelope open.
Inside was a thick packet of folded papers.
Oh.
The class reunion.
Twenty years.
Aurora had already contacted her about it, leaving a message asking if she wanted to be involved in the planning. Of course, she’d said no—via a return message, glad she didn’t actually get Aurora on the phone, knowing how persuasive she always could be.
Lindsay verbally blamed her lack of involvement on the fact that she was a continent away. But truly, she simply wasn’t interested in revisiting the past. There were too many painful things about it.
Now, however, scanning the invitation and the accompanying forms, including a chatty letter from Kristen, Lindsay found herself smiling.
All right, so there were
a few good memories, too.
Hmm.
She was almost feeling tempted to consider making a reservation…despite serious doubts. It might be nice, after all, to see all those girls again. To catch up, to say good-bye to the old school building, to lay the past to rest at last.
Yes, maybe she should go.
She scanned the reservation form and the update questionnaire. There was also a brochure from a new Marriott Residence Inn that had gone up not far from their alma mater, apparently on the site of the strip mall where she and her friends used to shop before getting pizza at Ricardo’s nearby.
So the old neighborhood was changing. She wondered if the old pizzeria was still there, with its red plastic booths where they had all hung out. Maybe it was gone, like the strip mall, and some new hotel or chain restaurant had been built in its place.
Who knew what would stand, a few years from now, on the site of St. Elizabeth’s school?
This is your last chance to go back, she told herself.
Maybe she really would…
Then she flipped back to the invitation and saw that the reunion wasn’t just for St. Elizabeth’s alumnae. The Western Catholic grads would be there, too.
Jake had gone to Western Catholic. If he were alive, he’d be at the reunion.
She ran down a mental list of his friends, wondering if they’d show. Dean McMichaels, Nick Monticello, Craig Taylor, Chad Belmont…
It would be a kick to see those guys again…some of them, anyway.
Maybe you should go, then.
People would expect her to be there.
Once upon a time, she’d had a hand in everything that went on at St. Elizabeth’s. Once upon a time, she’d been voted the girl most likely to succeed. It was a narrow contest, between her and Kristen.
Lindsay won that one.
Kristen, however, was valedictorian. And that was more important than any silly senior superlative contest.
Lindsay found herself wondering what her old friend was doing these days. She’d heard sketchy details over the years—Kristen was working as a reporter at the Portland Clarion, had married her college sweetheart, had a child. She always signed her Christmas cards—generic, store-bought ones—Love, Kristen, Ross, and Lissa. She never even bothered to write a note.
Lindsay always tried to do that, at least. And it was a time-consuming process. She ordered her elegant holiday greetings by the hundreds, imprinted with her name, and sent them to all her family, clients, and old friends.
Yet other than once a year, she had been lousy at keeping in touch with Kristen and the others, despite their tearful promises made at graduation.
Maybe it’s time to go back, Lindsay told herself, flipping through the papers again, looking for contact information for someone on the reunion committee.
Then she saw it.
The photograph was a familiar one.
A copy of it still sat, in an eight-by-ten frame, on the bookshelf in her parents’ Nevada condo.
This version was smaller, and glossy instead of an elegant matte finish, but there she was: carefree seventeen-year-old Lindsay Farrell, beaming at the camera, blissfully unaware that just months after the photographer snapped his shot, her life would turn upside down.
But this reproduction of her senior portrait now seemed to bear chillingly symbolic testimony to troubles yet to come: her face was marked, from her right temple to the dimple on her lower left cheek, with an angry red slash.
Chapter 16
“How do you think you did?”
“Hmm?” Leo Cellamino looked up to see an attractive green-eyed redhead smiling at him. Her name was Sarah Ann, or Sarah Rose—something like that. She’d been sitting in front of him in biology lab all semester, smiling shyly in his direction every once in a while.
Now she’d fallen into step with him on the way out of the lecture hall where they’d just completed their final exam.
Ordinarily, Leo would welcome the attention from a pretty girl, but today, his mind was far away from this Queens college campus. All he wanted to do was get back home to his computer and take another look at that e-mail he’d received late last night.
What if it was no longer saved in his in-box? What if it had somehow evaporated into cyberspace overnight?
I should have printed it out, he thought, frustrated. But at the time, shaken by what he had just read—and seen—he didn’t dare.
He was afraid his kid brother, Mario, would somehow get his hands on it. Most of Leo’s stuff wound up in his brother’s clutches at some point. That was what you got when you shared a room with a nosy twelve-year-old.
But Leo couldn’t afford to move out of their mother’s house. Not if he wanted to complete his college education and make a decent life for himself someday. Anyway, Ma needed him around; he was the man of the house now that Pop had taken off for good.
“Leo…? It’s Leo, isn’t it?”
Startled, he looked up and realized that the girl—Sarah Rose, that’s it—was still walking along beside him.
“Oh…right, it’s Leo.” He flashed her a brief smile, ever the gentleman, as his mother had taught him.
“How’d you do on the exam?” she asked again.
“All right, I guess. How about you?”
“I don’t know…I’m not very good at science. And all that genetics stuff was confusing, don’t you think? Dominant genes, recessive genes…” She shook her head.
Confusing? Ha.
Leo could tell her a thing or two about confusing genetics, if he wanted to.
But he didn’t.
It was none of her business that he had grown up the dark-haired, dark-eyed son of blue-eyed, sandy-haired parents of Sicilian decent. That they let him believe he was their biological child until he encountered his first Punnett square in high-school science.
It wasn’t until then that he stumbled across a startling scientific fact: two blue-eyed people couldn’t possibly have a dark-eyed child.
When he confronted his parents with his puzzling find, he half expected them to say that Mr. Davidson, his biology teacher, was wrong. Heck, he expected them to confirm that Gregor Mendel, the father of human genetics, was wrong.
Instead, they told him that he, Leonardo Anthony Cellamino of Queens Boulevard, wasn’t who he thought he was.
He had been adopted as an infant, his mother—not really his mother—told him tearfully, rosary beads tightly clenched in her hand for strength to get through the conversation.
“The doctors had told us we couldn’t have children,” she sobbed. “We were heartbroken.”
“What about Mario, then? How’d you have him?” Leo knew his brother wasn’t adopted; he remembered his mother’s pregnancy, remembered comforting her through her labor pains while his aunt Nita tried to track down his father, who was MIA as usual.
“We never expected Mario to come along. It was some kind of fluke.”
“Fluke?” Leo’s father—not really his father—bellowed. “You call our son a fluke?”
Our son.
In that moment, Leo realized it wasn’t just his imagination that his father always favored his kid brother. That was because Mario was his biological son. Leo was not.
“He was a miracle,” Betty Cellamino amended. “Not a fluke. We thought God sent us another baby to save our marriage.”
That was pretty funny, in retrospect.
His parents—not really his parents—were divorced not long after Leo graduated from high school. He turned eighteen just in time to become the man of the house, and his father took off for Miami or Fort Lauderdale—somewhere down on Florida’s southern Atlantic coast. Leo didn’t know exactly where Anthony Cellamino was now and he didn’t care; he had no intention of ever seeing him again.
But Ma still cried and prayed every night for his return.
And Mario still called him on the sly—mostly asking for money, Leo supposed. Sometimes Pop sent some cash in an envelope addressed to Mario alone.
Leo tr
ied not to let that bother him. Just like he had tried, for the past few years, not to let the truth about his birth bother him.
But it often nagged at him, like an itchy, aging scab that was still firmly rooted on one edge, and that if touched, would rip open and bleed all over again.
So Leo tried to leave it alone.
That had worked, for the most part…until last night.
The e-mail, with the provocative subject line birth parents, came from an AOL screen name he didn’t recognize: cupid 21486.
Leo opened it after a moment’s hesitation, thinking it was probably spam and wondering why he was bothering.
I have information about your birth parents. If you’re interested in finding them, please reply to this e-mail.
He’d still have thought it was some kind of hoax, except for one thing: a jpeg file was attached. He worried just briefly that it might contain a virus. Then temptation outweighed common sense and he opened it anyway.
He found himself looking at a photograph.
It was a professionally snapped portrait of a beautiful dark-haired girl who appeared to be about Leo’s age now, maybe a little younger. He could tell by her dated clothing and hairstyle that the photo had been taken years ago.
With her coloring, her delicate bone structure, and that distinct dimple in her lower left cheek, she bore such a striking resemblance to Leo himself that she could only be a blood relative.
My mother?
He had replied to the e-mail, of course.
Thank you for sending the picture. I’m very interested in finding my biological mother and father and I would appreciate any information you might have.
That was late last night.
As of this morning before he left for campus, there had been no reply. But he quickened his pace instinctively now, eager to get back home to his computer.
Sarah Rose kept up with him. “Are you done for the day?”
“With exams, you mean? Yeah.”
“Do you want to grab a cup of coffee or something, then?”
“I can’t.”
He said it hastily, harshly, almost—and instantly regretted it when he saw the hurt expression on her face.
“I have to be somewhere,” he explained, softening his tone. “Maybe some other time.”