Seventeen
SARAH WASN’T NEARLY as afraid the second time she stood on Janelle Warren’s porch as she’d been the first time. This time, her mom and Mike were standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her. The worst had already happened—she’d been rejected by her birth mother.
When the door opened, Janelle stared at them incredulously. Light from her living room flooded through the doorway. “I told you I don’t want to be bothered,” Janelle said. “Please go away.”
“We can’t do that,” Sarah heard her mom reply. “We must talk to you.”
“If you don’t go away, I’ll call the police,” Janelle insisted.
Sarah watched Janelle’s knuckles turn white as she gripped the door frame. “Ms. Warren,” Mike began to explain, “We’re not here to harm you or make trouble for you. I’m a private investigator, and these people want to talk to you … need to talk to you.”
“Your standing here is harming me,” Janelle replied.
“Ms. Warren,” Sarah’s mom said, “believe me, this is very difficult on all of us. I can assure you, we’ll be going just as soon as we talk to you. Sarah doesn’t really have a choice about this. Without your help, she may die.”
Janelle didn’t say anything. She gazed at Sarah, who felt insignificant by the inspection. “All right.” Janelle spoke in a suspicious voice. “Come in, but make it brief. I’m expecting company.” She opened the door wider.
“I’ll wait out in the car,” Mike told Sarah and her mom. “You don’t need me anymore.”
Sarah stayed close to her mom as Janelle led them inside the house. Sarah looked around. She noticed wall-to-wall white carpeting. Janelle led them into a beautifully decorated room, filled with expensive objects arranged on polished wood tables and sparkling glass shelves. She motioned for them to sit, and Sarah noted the lush, elegant cream-color sofa. Janelle took a chair opposite them. “What do you want?” she asked stiffly.
I want you to look at me, Sarah felt like saying. I want you to tell me who I am and where I came from. “This is as awkward for me as it is for you,” Carol McGreggor began. “I never dreamed I’d ever have to meet you, face you.”
“I believe not meeting me was a condition of the adoption,” Janelle said coolly.
“My parents never told me I was adopted,” Sarah said, somehow feeling defensive toward her mom and dad. “I just found out when I was told about my medical problem.”
“Then you understood that I didn’t want to be found? Yet, you came looking for me, anyway.”
“We told her your wishes, too,” Carol assured Janelle. “We understood them from the day we signed the papers, and we respected them until we had no choice.”
Janelle sat forward on the edge of the chair. “You had no right to come here.” She turned toward Sarah. “I had my reasons for giving you up. Very good reasons. It wasn’t easy, you know. But what’s done is done. There’s no turning back.”
Sarah didn’t believe what she was hearing. Janelle made it sound as if it had been easy and final. “What were your reasons? I deserve to know.”
Janelle looked startled. Abruptly, she stood. “I don’t have to defend my choices to anyone. Giving you up was my choice. Believe me, the Supreme Court had already legalized abortion, and I was certainly free to take that route. An abortion doesn’t show on a woman’s body the way a pregnancy does, you know.”
Sarah wondered if she was supposed to feel grateful because Janelle had elected to have her instead of getting an abortion. “I’m sorry I was such an inconvenience,” Sarah snapped. She couldn’t hide her anger. Maybe it was better for her to feel angry, so it hurt less.
“I have a very good life now,” Janelle told them.
“And you don’t need me complicating it,” Sarah finished.
“I don’t mean to sound cruel or heartless. I’m sure you’ve been curious about your background. I just don’t think I can help you. I have a high profile in this community. The man I’m seeing seriously is being considered for a judgeship. Even a hint of scandal could be ruinous to both of us, even in this day and age. Certainly, for him it would change things. I can’t do that to myself. I don’t want to.”
Sarah felt as if she’d been spat on. Janelle was worried about her reputation? If she didn’t feel so heartbroken, she might have laughed.
“We didn’t come here to ruin your reputation,” Carol insisted. “I told you we’re here for Sarah’s sake, and that’s the truth. Perhaps she looks healthy to you, but Sarah has leukemia.”
Janelle sat forward, her eyes wide, but she didn’t soften. She held her body rigid. “I am sorry.”
Carol waved her comment aside. “I’ll get to the point. Sarah has been in remission, but now she’s had a relapse. Her doctors have told us that her best hope is a bone marrow transplant, and the best donor would be a blood relative—preferably a brother or sister.”
“There are none.” Janelle’s voice was barely a whisper.
“That’s what Mike Lions, our detective, has told us. Therefore, the only candidate left is you.”
“Or my natural father,” Sarah added hopefully. “Maybe he has children.”
Janelle’s face looked bloodless, and for a moment, Sarah thought she might crumble. “He doesn’t,” she said tersely.
Sarah waited for some other word about the man who had fathered her, but none was forthcoming. Carol said, “Then that leaves you. The test to check for compatibility is a simple one. A lab draws blood—”
“I can’t help you,” Janelle interrupted.
“What?”
Janelle turned and walked to a large picture window and toyed with the drapery cord. The curtains were already shut, just like Janelle Warren’s heart, Sarah thought.
“I’m very sorry for you, but there’s nothing I can do,” Janelle said. “It’s quite impossible. Really.”
“I see,” Sarah’s mom said, and stood up.
Sarah didn’t “see” at all. All she knew was that the woman who’d opted to bear her fifteen years before was now refusing to have a blood test for bone marrow compatibility. Sarah felt sick to her stomach. How could Janelle hate Sarah so much that she didn’t want to know her or help her? Perhaps it would have been more merciful if she had had an abortion. Sarah’s sense of rejection was unbearable.
An awkward silence hung in the air, broken only by the ticking of a grandfather clock. “Well, we’ve taken enough of your time,” Carol said finally. “I know you’re expecting company.”
Janelle nervously glanced at the clock. “Yes. He should be here soon.”
“And we wouldn’t want to have to explain who we are, would we?” Carol’s tone was cutting.
Two bright spots of color appeared on Janelle’s cheeks, but she said nothing. Sarah rose beside her mom and watched as she opened her purse. She put a piece of paper atop the coffee table. “This is the hotel where we’re staying. I’ve also written down the name and phone number of Sarah’s doctor in Memphis. If you want to discuss anything with her, feel free to call.”
She snapped her purse closed and started to the door. Janelle didn’t move, and neither did Sarah. They gazed at each other across the beautifully furnished living room. Janelle’s eyes looked pained, but she made no move to stop Sarah and Carol from leaving. Sarah’s knees felt rubbery and weak, yet she crossed to the door, her head held high. From there, she followed her mom out into the night.
Sarah’s tears didn’t start until they got back to the hotel room. She climbed into the shower stall, turned on the water, and let them flow. Janelle honestly didn’t want her. She had cut Sarah out of her life and offered no hope for a future. When she came out of the bathroom, her mom rose from a chair and opened her arms. Without a second’s hesitation, Sarah rushed to them. Her mom held her, rocked her, and told her, “It’ll be all right, honey. I love you. Dad loves you. We’ve told you, we are your true family.”
Sarah needed the words, soaking them up like a sponge. Through her sobs, she said, “What now
, Mom? Without Janelle, I’ll die. Mom, please help me. I don’t want to die.”
Eighteen
THE NEXT MORNING, there was nothing left to do but pack to go home. Sarah felt weighted down, her legs so heavy that she could barely lift them to move around the room. Her mother kept trying to be cheerful, supportive, just as she’d been the night before. Her mom had insisted, “You’re not going to die, honey. You’re just disappointed about your birth mother. After a good night’s sleep, you’ll feel better. Things will look better in the morning.”
Sarah was so distraught, she didn’t know what to feel. Nothing could ever take away the sense of abandonment and rejection she felt. As her mom packed, she told Sarah, “Your father will meet our plane in Atlanta and drive us home. Tina and Richie are excited about seeing you. They’ve all missed you terribly, Sarah. I think Tina’s planning a party for you with some of your friends.”
“I really don’t want a party. I don’t want to explain things to people.”
“As far as everyone knows, Sarah, we took a trip to California for medical reasons. No one knows about your adoption.”
Now that things had turned out the way they had, Sarah was glad she’d decided to keep her adoption a secret. At the time, she’d thought she’d done it for Tina. As it turned out, she’d done it for herself.
There was a knock on the door. Her mother glanced at her watch. “Mike’s early. Sarah, tell him we’re not ready and to come back in about an hour.”
Sarah opened the door, but it wasn’t Mike standing in the hall. It was Janelle Warren. “Can I come in?” Janelle asked.
“What do you want?” Sarah’s mom swooped alongside of Sarah protectively.
“To talk.”
Reluctantly, Sarah backed away from the door so that Janelle could enter. “What do you want to talk about?” Sarah asked as Janelle walked to the large window and turned to face her.
“I was up most of the night thinking about our meeting. I feel that I owe you some kind of explanation,” Janelle said.
“We’re leaving pretty soon, so you don’t have to worry about me spoiling your life. I’m sorry I bothered you,” Sarah said sharply.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t more cordial to you. It was such a shock seeing you, knowing who you were.”
“Especially since you’d always thought I was out of your life forever.” Sarah’s tone was challenging.
Janelle carefully set her expensive-looking hand bag on the table. “You may have been out of my life, Sarah, but you were never forgotten.”
“It didn’t seem that way yesterday.”
“A woman doesn’t give birth to a baby and erase the experience from her mind—or her heart. It’s especially difficult every year on your birthday. I carried you for nine months. I was in labor with you for twelve hours. I held you for ten minutes before they took you away. I walked out of the hospital with empty arms, while other women took their newborns home. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.”
Sarah was skeptical. “But you did it.”
“I thought it best that you have a good home, with two parents. I couldn’t give you that.” Janelle glanced toward Carol. “You did go to a good home, Sarah. I’m sure of it.”
Carol moved closer to Sarah. “I love Sarah very much.”
Janelle studied the two of them. “It shows.”
“I have a good home,” Sarah confirmed. “Is that all you want to say?”
Janelle opened her purse and pulled out some photographs. “Since I know you’ve come a long way, and I understand your desire to know something of your heritage, I’ve brought some things to show you.” She laid the photos on the table.
Sarah edged closer and peered at the black-and-white photos. The first was of a run-down shack with old junk cars sitting on the barren ground of the yard. “This is where I grew up, in the heart of the Ozarks,” Janelle explained. “Mom and Pop had eight children. Two died from scarlet fever when they were babies—something that can be easily cured with penicillin, but my folks had no money for medicine, and the nearest doctor lived in the next county.”
Sarah was shocked at the condition of the house, unable to picture the elegant woman in front of her growing up in such poverty. Neither could she imagine not being able to afford medicine for a sick child. “You lived there?”
“Until I was sixteen. We didn’t even have indoor plumbing. We got along by farming a garden, and sometimes my dad got work as a hired hand. My parents were good people, Sarah, but ignorant and uneducated. I loved school from the first day I walked into a classroom. It didn’t take me long to figure out that if I didn’t want to end up like my parents, I had to get a good education. Fortunately, I was bright and really did well in the classroom.”
Janelle showed Sarah another picture. It was a blurred group shot of a man and a woman standing on the porch with a cluster of blond-headed kids around them. “My kinfolk,” Janelle continued. Her fine, cultured speech had taken on a hint of her Ozark roots.
“I was the only Warren up to that time to graduate from high school. All the others quit school as soon as they were old enough, so they could work. It was a proud moment for me. An even prouder moment when I learned I’d been awarded a full four-year academic scholarship to the University of Arkansas.
“I remember how the whole family came down to the bus depot and sent me off. I cried all the way to Little Rock, but I never looked back. I was doing the only thing I could to make something out of my life.”
“You were happy?” Sarah asked.
“I was happy. I did well in college. Earned top grades, special honors. I wanted to be an attorney, and after I graduated, I was accepted to law school on scholarship.”
“But you didn’t become a lawyer?”
“No. I wanted that scholarship in the worst way, but …” Janelle’s voice trailed off.
“But instead, you had me,” Sarah finished.
“I had you,” Janelle confirmed. She stared at another photo for a moment, then placed it on the table. It was of a handsome, brown-haired man with a cocky smile. “This is your father. His name was Trevor Benedict. He was training to be a navy pilot when I met him on a spring break trip to Pensacola, Florida. I’d never been in love before, and I’ll tell you now, I’ve never been in love like that since then.”
Carol had leaned over to peer at the picture. “Sarah looks like him through the eyes,” she commented. “And she has the same kind of cleft in her chin.”
Sarah was too mesmerized to see the resemblance herself. Merely being able to look on the face of the man who had fathered her was making her heart hammer wildly “Didn’t he want to marry you when you told him about me?” she asked. It was a bold question, but she wanted to know all she could about him.
“I never told him,” Janelle said. Sarah looked up quickly and saw that Janelle’s eyes were shimmering with tears. “He was killed in a flight training accident before I could tell him. His fighter jet hit the ground and exploded.”
Horrified, Sarah felt her own eyes well up with tears. She heard her mom gasp. Janelle pushed the photo aside. “I was devastated. If I hadn’t been pregnant, I might have killed myself. At the time, my options were very few. I couldn’t not have you—you were all that was left of him. I couldn’t go back home—my folks had such pride in me. They didn’t know I was pregnant, and I didn’t want them to know. In those days, there was a certain amount of shame in being an unwed mother. Women didn’t wear illegitimate pregnancies like badges of pride, as they do today. Adoption seemed like the best solution.”
“Yet, your instructions about anonymity were so explicit,” Sarah’s mom said. “I believed that you didn’t want anything to do with your baby.”
“I knew it had to be a clean break. I assumed that if I sounded threatening about it, she would never come searching for me.” Janelle’s voice took on a softness. “I see I was wrong. It didn’t deter you at all.”
Sarah felt sad and a bit overwhelmed by what sh
e’d heard. Perhaps her mom had been right: Using the One Last Wish money to search for her roots had upset the lives of many people—and it had all come to nothing.
“As you know, Sarah didn’t initiate this search frivolously,” Carol McGreggor said. “Her father and I wouldn’t have helped her if she hadn’t had a very pressing reason for finding you.”
Janelle nodded with understanding. “Yes … the bone marrow. I called and spoke with your doctor, Sarah. She explained more fully about the transplant.”
“Will you take the test for compatibility then?” Sarah felt a resurgence of hope.
“It won’t matter if I am compatible, Sarah. Dr. Hernandez can’t use my marrow. I’m not a suitable candidate.”
“Why not?” The hope seemed to be slipping through her fingers like sand.
“Several years ago, I had a lump removed from my breast. It was cancerous. I underwent chemo and radiation, and even though I’ve been cancer-free for the past three years, I can never be a bone marrow donor. Not for you, not for anyone.”
To Sarah, it seemed as if a giant iron door had closed and locked her in a cage. “Breast cancer?” she asked, thunderstruck.
Janelle gave Sarah a long, sad look. “My doctors told me the disease has a tendency to run in families—my mother, your grandmother, died from uterine cancer. I hoped the tendency would stop with me. I never dreamed it had been passed on to you. I’m so very, very sorry, Sarah.”
Sarah could think of nothing to say. As she stood in the room with her mother and her mom, she felt as if she’d come to the end of a long journey, a journey that had brought her to the edge of a future she couldn’t navigate.
“I’m sorry, too. For you and for Sarah,” Carol said, stepping to Sarah’s side. She put her arm protectively around Sarah’s shoulders. “Thank you for taking the time to come by and tell us all of this. It was kind of you, and I know it means a great deal to Sarah.”
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