by Nancy Adams
“What’s all this about, Sam?” she asked tentatively.
“I have another child,” he immediately answered. “A son. The affair I had with Claire produced a child who she kept secret and gave up for adoption.”
“My word,” the old woman let out as she entered the room. “What do you plan to do?”
“Well, first I intend to tell Jess. I’ve kept enough secrets from her. Even though she’s only ten, she’s extremely mature for her age.”
“Yes, she is,” Maud asserted with an element of pride in her voice.
“Do you think I should tell her?”
“I think you should. But what do you know of this child so far?”
“Not much. Just that he’s a boy, where he was born, on what day, and the name of his adoption agency. I’m expecting a call from John Ryan any moment.”
“But surely isn’t the boy with his adoptive parents now?”
“I just want to know if he’s safe, Maud. Ever since I found out that I have a son out there somewhere, all I can think of is if he’s safe, or happy, or loved. I need to know for sure.”
Suddenly Jess walked in and inquired, “I have a brother?”
It was clear that she had been standing in the corridor outside the room listening in the whole time. Maud instantly turned to her and scolded her lightly for having eavesdropped.
“I was just about to tell you,” Sam said to her.
“When did you know?”
“Only last night.”
“Is that why we’re out here?”
“Yes. In a way. It came as a shock.”
“Is he from Claire?”
“Yes. From before.”
“And did I hear correctly; she gave him away?”
“It wasn’t that easy, I’m sure.”
“Did she tell you?”
“No. It was someone else that told me.”
Maud decided to enter things for a moment and rebuked Jess for asking so many questions. But Sam waved her away and stated that the girl had every right to ask what she wanted. After that, Sam ushered Jess over to the couch, sat her down and told her everything he knew. That is: that Claire had given birth almost six years ago to a baby boy that she hadn’t told Sam about, and that the child had been adopted. Here he took up Claire’s defense and told Jess that the girl was only nineteen and a student at college. The child would have been the end of her life as she knew it. He told his daughter that he fully understood the wisdom of giving the child away, and that Jess was too young to come to any judgment herself.
Jess took it all in and understood it all with a marked maturity that belied her years. At the end she gave her father a hug and said no more on the subject until she suddenly asked where Claire was.
“I’m not sure,” was Sam’s answer.
“Haven’t you spoken with her?” Jess wanted to know.
“A little bit. And Karl told me that she’d been to the mansion in L.A.”
“Why haven’t you spoken with her more?”
“Because I’m real angry with her. She should have told me all those years back. I could have helped.”
“But you said she was only young. Young people make mistakes. That’s how we evolve as people. Maybe she was just evolving as a person.”
Sam looked his little girl in the eyes and grinned widely. Such wisdom in someone so young, he thought. Like her mother. I never could believe that Marya was my same age. She always made me think that she was so much older than me, even though I was two months her senior.
“That could very well be true, Jess.”
As he said this, Sam’s phone went off in his pocket and he reached in and grabbed it. When he finally had the screen facing him, he saw that it was John Ryan.
“Ryan, what’s happening?”
“I got the boy’s address. But it’s not good. The whole thing was a bit of a mess. We hacked into the adoption offices but it took a while to find him after that. He was originally adopted by Margot and Claude Dugarry. The female is part of the Buchanan dynasty, quite wealthy.”
So he’s looked after then—economically at least, Sam thought to himself.
“However,” Ryan went on, “they died only six months after the adoption in a car accident.”
“Did they have any care set up for him?”
“Yes. He was placed into the care of Jules and Juliette Lee. They’re quite old; both in their mid-sixties.”
“But I take it Margot left the boy money. I seem to remember her brothers at several parties thrown by Bormann, as well as some other parties thrown by the Californian elite.”
“That’s where it all gets a bit sadder.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, the brothers appear to have used their cunning—as well as their sister’s naivety—in securing all of her money to the family name rather than her own. Little did she know it, but Margot owned nothing and the money she received was legally an allowance. It also appears that she was a little slow in looking into it all for the child’s sake and never knew of her brothers’ deception.”
“What did they name him?” Sam suddenly asked, as though ignoring this last part.
“David.”
“David,” Sam repeated to himself, feeling the name of his son on his tongue for the first time. He liked the name and repeated it silently several times more while John Ryan continued.
“Anyway, the old couple were left with nothing but the boy and took him on.”
“Where do they live?”
“That’s not good, Sam. They live at Miller’s Trailer Park near south L.A.”
“They work or anything?”
“From what I got, the male, Jules Lee, has a small listed business, a home improvement firm. Not much. The female, Juliette, has been recently listed as an invalid. Dementia. My guy from LAPD hasn’t gotten back to me yet, so that’s all I got so far.”
“Where are you now?”
“I’m on my way to the trailer park. I’m gonna check it out first. My advice to you is for you to meet me here in L.A. at the mansion and we’ll plan the next step.”
“I’m not even sure what my next step is, John.”
“Well, we’ll take this as far as you want it to go, Sam.”
“Okay, I’ll make my way out to you now. Keep me updated.”
Sam put the phone down and with a trembling hand he placed it back into his pocket. Jess was looking worriedly at him from where she sat beside him on the couch. Throughout the conversation her father’s face had darkened, especially around the point when Ryan had informed him that David was living with an elderly couple on some trailer park in south L.A. She was still watching him attentively now as he stood up without a word and rushed from the room, making his way out of the house and into the woodland that surrounded it. It was the same woodland that he had disappeared into all those years ago when he’d been told of Marya’s death.
Like then, his head raged with a torrent of mixed thoughts and emotions. His son was somewhere out there living among the poor; and Sam knew the poor. He grew up among the poor. He grew up hearing how angry the poor could get. Sure they could be jolly—a mighty skill in their situation, Sam acknowledged—and put all their worries to one side from time to time, but generally their lives slipped too easily into recriminations and anger. Now he had just found out that his own child was in this type of impoverished place, memories of which still scarred Sam even today, and, in his angered state, he instantly imagined that the Lees were of the most wretched character. He saw them shouting at each other as the dirt-ridden face of David watched from the kitchen doorway. He heard them turn their recriminations onto the boy and blame him for their poverty, for another mouth to feed. Then he imagined the woman’s dementia and the extra burden that this would place on the household, and in all his fantasies, he saw the same anger that he had witnessed himself from his own parents when he too was a smart boy of five.
Of course Sam couldn’t have been further from the truth. Sure David’s li
fe hadn’t been as straightforward as it should have been, and turmoil had struck it more than most at his tender age. But David was never shouted at, nor was shouting ever a part of his own home. Around them, for sure. And Charlie Mathieson hadn’t been the only problem neighbor at Miller’s Trailer park. In fact, the Lees’ trailer stood on one of the safest streets in the park. In other areas, the place was a refuge for drug dealers and criminals of most types. But most of this the Lees had successfully kept from David’s eyes and ears with the best of skill. From time to time he witnessed something, as in the run-ins with Charlie, but mostly he was kept oblivious to the harsher sides of the park.
However, Sam knew nothing about the Lees’ love for David, or the joy he found in their presence. All he saw was paranoid daydreams of problem households and crack-dens. And in that moment he was so angry at Claire for letting their son go that all his earlier softening toward her cause was dashed away like ash in the wind. He had just begun to forgive her and come around to the idea of calling her up. But now he felt a renewed anger for her seething inside of him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Beth was washing dishes, gazing out of the kitchen window, when she saw Claire's cab pull up outside. She immediately dropped the dish back into the sink, quickly dried her hands and ran outside to meet her friend. They hugged intimately for quite some time, the driver waiting impatiently for his fare as they did, and then went inside. The moment they were in Beth’s hallway, they hugged again.
“So you’re finally gonna tell your mom everything then?” Beth whispered into her friend’s ear.
“Yep.”
They’d spoken on the phone the night before while Claire had been pacing the threadbare carpet of her cheap L.A. motel room, and so Beth knew everything, including her friend’s resolution that she would tell her mother about the child the next day. She’d even talked to Beth about her father’s running for mayor and how her mother had almost begged her to avoid any scandal. “Yeah, it was announced this afternoon,” Beth had said over the phone after Claire had mentioned it. “It’s all official now. You’re gonna be a politician’s brat!”
Beth showed Claire to her room. It was only the second time that Claire had visited the house and Will and Beth had only been there for six months. Because of the success of their coffeehouses, they’d been able to afford a three-bedroom house in a nice, leafy suburb of Colorado Springs.
“You only got this one bag?” Beth asked as Claire began unpacking her backpack.
“Just the essentials, I guess. I didn’t know how long I was gonna be.”
“You look like you plan on leaving the moment you tell her.”
“I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing when I set out. I wanted to find Sam, but that didn’t happen, and the next step is to tell Mom everything. She deserves that.”
Claire sat down on the bed and Beth joined her. As they sat there, Beth placed her head gently on Claire’s shoulder and the Claire rested her own head upon her friend’s.
“I got some news too,” Beth whispered as they sat there in comfort.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“I’m pregnant.”
Claire jumped up and looked her friend dead in the face, observing immediately the smile that lit up there.
“Oh, Beth! I’m so happy,” she exclaimed with genuine glee.
She rushed forward and took ahold of Beth with both arms, pulling her friend into her with obvious ecstasy.
“How far are you gone?” Claire asked when they were separated.
“Only a month, so you can’t really see it yet. We only found out two days ago. You’re the first person to know after mine and Will’s parents. I was going to tell you over the phone the other day, but when you said you were heading over to Colorado, I thought I’d leave it, so that I could say in person. I guess I’m just sentimental like that.”
Claire smiled at her friend and hugged her even tighter. As she did, though, her phone went off in her bag and she let go of Beth to fetch it. The number came up as unknown and her heart fluttered as she imagined who it was.
“Is it him?” Beth asked, nodding her head in the direction of the phone.
“Could be.”
“I’ll leave you to it then.”
Beth got up and left the room, closing the door behind her. The moment she did, Claire answered her phone.
Sam spoke immediately, and with much anger in his voice.
“Do you know that our son is being raised by an elderly couple in an L.A. trailer park?”
“NO! Sam…don’t! You shouldn’t have looked for him straight away,” she let out, half in shock that he’d instantly sought out the child. “Please! Can’t we just talk this through? Why have you got to go searching for him now? Please! I was going to tell you the other day at the Hamptons just before you got the call about Jess being missing…I promise.”
“A trailer park in south L.A.,” Sam repeated spitefully, ignoring the pleading in her voice. “My daughter went missing around that area for half a day and I shit a brick. And you have our son being raised there!? What the fuck, Claire!?”
“I don’t know what you’re saying. They told me he’d go to a good home. Professionals.”
“Well, he ended up pretty quickly in a fucking trailer park. When I last left my parents’ home out in Oregon, I promised myself that no child of mine would ever be raised in that kind of environment. ‘No kid of mine will ever feel fear toward their own home,’ I said to myself. And now I find out my boy is being raised by an old couple, one of which is apparently an invalid, in some pit of civilization.”
“I never knew, Sam, please. I was supposed to tell you before, I had it all ready. I swear.”
“Why didn’t you tell me back in Denver six years ago?”
The sudden question struck her heart like a stone and she paused while she caught her breath back.
“I was young and scared,” she began in a quiet voice after a second or two. “I simply expected that summer to do some volunteering at the hospital, the odd movie and visit to the shopping center with my friends, and then back to college. I didn’t expect to be holding the baby of recently widowed billionaire Sam Burgess. Everything was so sudden and so harsh on me that I had no time to think.”
“You should have told me. We didn’t have to tell the world about it. You didn’t have to even have anything to do with me. Paul said you kept it from your parents too. I would have been willing to keep it a secret, for your sake. You should have let me take care of the boy when you had him—”
“Can’t you see,” she screamed despairingly down the phone, “that I didn’t want him—I couldn’t want him. He reminded me of you—even without laying my eyes on him, I sensed you the whole time I was pregnant, and even at the hospital, before Paul took me to see him, I sensed you there, the aura of you. Everything about him and that time reminded me of you and how hurt I was over our parting. How could I raise a child if he reminded me of so much hurt every time I looked at him? What sort of mother would I have been feeling such feelings around my own son? Would I have come to despise him with bitterness for the feelings his image conjured inside of me?”
“You’re too harsh on yourself—you would have made it as a mother. I am sure of that.”
“I was going to be a doctor, Sam, not a mother.”
“Then you could have given me the choice to take him.”
“If you had taken him, I would have seen his picture everywhere, just like I can’t help spotting your picture all over the news stands, often with Jess when you’re all photographed on holiday together or visiting some awards ceremony. Everywhere, I would have found his image. And don’t you think I wouldn’t have looked for it? Do you not think that I haven’t thought about him every day since I walked away from that window in the hospital? If he had been with you, I would have had instant access to him, and I would have looked upon him every day with such wretched sadness eating away at my heart. At that moment—all those years ago—I wanted away f
rom you and he would have been a painful reminder of all of it.”
“You could have at least allowed me to help you through your pregnancy.”
“I couldn’t bear the thought of you being there either, Sam. Tending to me, tending to the pregnancy, having the best physicians look at me. You being around me.”
“I told you earlier that I would have left you alone; helped from afar.”
“Yes, but you still would have been there in spirit, it still would have been you there that whole time, represented by the doctors and care I received, them giving you daily updates. I would have been a prisoner, emotionally chained to you. It would have tortured me to have you so close, even if you weren’t there in person. I wanted away from you, not drawn closer. The child was a mistake, and granted I wasn’t going to terminate him, but I still couldn’t look after him and I still wanted away from you and our affair. I did what I had to in that moment.”
Sam let out a long breath of air and didn’t say anything for some time. Eventually he replied, “A fucking trailer park, Claire,” before putting the phone down on her.
She instantly burst into tears.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The view across the bay to the islands on the other side was simply beautiful, and Juliette’s old eyes scanned it with relish. The thin strip of beach, which the family sat on, was mostly shingle with occasional patches of the white sand that one might usually associate with the Mexican coastline. The stony nature of the beach was due to all the dredging that had taken place when the large harbor at the other end of the town was built. The floor of the huge river delta had been scraped out over the course of many years and much of what had been dredged from the riverbed had made its way onto the sandy beach, diminishing it with shingle.
However, it wasn’t the stony beach that most caught the eye of anyone visiting the place but the beautiful scenery across the wide river, a strip of great rolling hills of emerald green jungle that stood out of the water in a large stretch of land which occasionally sank back beneath the sea like the scaly, green back of some giant dinosaur swimming in the ocean, making up a row of mountainous islands.