“Thinking is overrated, as is dating,” Ben said in a dry tone as he followed Eli down the stairs and out the back, where Eli set the box of scraps in the bed of Ben’s truck. Ben dropped his toolbox on it, as well, then turned, leaning back against the open tailgate. “You haven’t spent time with any women for a while. What’s with this one?”
Eli swiped at the dust on his pants. He didn’t feel like talking about Rachel, but he also knew Ben wasn’t going to quit. “I’m not sure.”
“You like her?”
Eli waggled his hand in an unsure motion that he knew was insincere. If he didn’t like her, why was she taking up so much of his thinking time?
“I know it’s not a guy thing,” Ben continued, “but you want to talk about it?”
Ben was his brother, but talking about Rachel would suddenly make everything a little more real, and, by extension, a little more unsure. So he did what any man would do when he didn’t want to talk about something too close to his heart—he changed the subject.
“I heard something about Tiny Blessings at the picnic. Kelly mentioned your name. What do you know about those duplicate records she found?”
Ben scratched his head, the dust from his hand powdering his dark brown hair. “She just told me that she found inconsistencies between the official records and the ones she found behind a false wall we took down.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this? You know I’ve been trying to find out more about my own parents.”
Ben pressed his lips together. “And you know how I’ve felt about that. Mom and Dad gave you everything, Eli. I don’t care about my birth mother. She gave me up and that is that. I wish you would do the same, especially because your parents are gone.”
“Your mother also signed a ‘no contact’ agreement,” Eli said, his frustration with his adopted brother growing.
“She didn’t want any connection with you. But I have memories of my parents. I know what they looked like even though Mom and Dad would never talk about them.”
“You know they did that because it always made you upset.”
Eli said nothing to that. He and Ben had discussed this before and they always ended up going in circles, with Ben vigorously defending Peggy and Tyrone and Eli feeling as if he was on the outside of the Cavanaugh family once again. It had taken him a number of years after he was adopted before he felt like he was truly a part of the family, and even then his memories of his own parents and their tragic death often interfered, tied in with the guilt of being the only member of his family left.
“Jared at the Gazette seems to know more,” Eli said finally. “He asked Kelly about it, but she asked us all to keep quiet.”
Ben sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the records. I didn’t think it was necessary. I thought you were over all that.”
“I don’t know if you ever are,” Eli said quietly. An image drifted into his mind. Rachel leading him down a gallery that held pictures of her family going back generations on either side. She was rooted. Grounded. She could tell people where she came from. Eli wasn’t a snob, but somehow, having the biological portion of his ancestry wiped out made him feel as if he had less than other people.
He loved Peggy and Tyrone. He loved that they had taken him in and put up with his rebellion as a youth. He knew it pained them that he didn’t go to church anymore.
But at the same time he couldn’t wipe out his memories. Didn’t want to.
“All I can tell you, Eli, is that if you need to know more, I would suggest you go talk to Kelly yourself.”
“I think I’ll do that,” Eli said.
Five o’clock the next day found him in the offices of Tiny Blessings just before it closed. He had phoned during his lunch break to schedule an appointment and had managed to do some juggling to get time off from work. He was getting good at this, he thought, as he followed Kelly into her office. Maybe, with practice, work might not take over his life as fully as it did now.
A picture of Rachel flitted through his mind and with it came a gentle ache. He should call her, figure out what she meant that afternoon at her parents’ place. He just wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“What can I do for you, Dr. Cavanaugh?” Kelly asked after he declined coffee and sat down in a chair opposite her desk.
“I understand you have or had a file on my biological parents,” he said, pulling himself into the here and now.
Kelly shook her head. “There’s not much, but we have a little. It is the same thing we gave your parents, the Cavanaughs.”
“Was it one of the files that was tampered with?”
“Not that we can see. It appears to be on the level.”
Eli felt a momentary letdown. Since getting the pictures from the Cavanaughs, he had hoped there might be more that had been held back from him. Like any child with other parents, he felt as if part of his life had been taken away when they died. Getting whatever he could would make them more real to him.
“Can I take it home?”
“Though your file was not sealed, we don’t like them to leave the office. I can give you photocopies, though.”
Kelly excused herself, and while she was gone, Eli got up and paced around her office. She had pictures of babies and young children all over the walls. Some of them were faded, obviously from the time before she took over. He wondered if there had ever been a picture of him and Ben on this wall.
Five minutes later she was back with the file and a manila envelope. “I put all the information in there. We can compare it to the original file contents if you want to double-check to make sure I’ve got everything.”
“I’d prefer to look at it at home,” Eli said as he took the envelope. It felt too light to be holding information on six years of his life. “Thanks for this, Kelly.”
She stood at her desk, her fingertips resting on her blotter. “You’re welcome. I’m glad I could help you so easily.” She drummed her fingers lightly. “I probably don’t need to remind you, but I will anyway. What you overheard at the picnic, please keep it to yourself. It will come out eventually, but for now I need some time to figure out how to proceed.”
“I’ve no reason to spread it around,” Eli said, suddenly impatient to be gone.
As he left the office, he tucked the envelope in his leather jacket, hopped on his motorcycle and took off for home.
Once there, he put on a pot of coffee, threw a frozen pizza in the oven, settled at his desk and started reading. The first part of the file was straightforward. His parents’ names. Blanks for their address. No known relatives. No next-of-kin to notify. He double-checked the papers from Tiny Blessings, but as Kelly had assured him, things looked straightforward there.
He turned the paper over and found a newspaper clipping he had never seen before. He felt his stomach flip as he saw the picture of the vehicle his parents had been in. The accident that he barely escaped from. In spite of the passage of time and his acceptance of his parents’ deaths, he felt anew the helpless anger he had experienced with God for taking them away.
He reread the article and the police report. Nothing new here.
He skimmed over the information about the car’s registration and insurance. A phone number that had been disconnected and an address of an apartment that had only been rented for a couple of months and nothing beyond that. No one knew his parents’ destination. The police had not been able to find next-of-kin in spite of notices put in papers both here and where his parents had come from.
He glanced over the newspaper article again. The paper surmised that they had been in Virginia vacationing, judging from the tent, sleeping bags and cooler of food packed in the car.
Eli looked at the date of the paper and frowned. Vacationing? In October? He had been six years old. Shouldn’t he have been in school?
He jotted down the date, then turned to the last piece of paper in the file. It was a photocopy of a photocopy of a scrap of paper he had never seen. He held it up, squinting to read
what looked like a scribbled note, a list of names and places, some of which were referenced in the report.
Then a name stopped him. Lisa, Brad and Eli G. He read it again as a vague memory teased his mind and it solidified. G was for Giroux. He instinctively knew that. But why?
He flipped back through the police reports. Nothing on Giroux there. Then he sat back in his chair with a sense of unease.
The name made him uncomfortable. Almost afraid. As he mulled the name over in his head, a picture came to his mind. He was five years old. His mother and father were kneeling down in front of him. Frowning. Saying the name. Eli Giroux.
He got up and paced around his desk, came back to the file. He read the papers again. And again.
Then, on a whim, he turned his computer on, hooked onto the Net and did a search on the name. He got a number of hits, but nothing that jumped out at him. Of course, the accident had happened almost 27 years ago. No newspaper would have archives that far back.
He scrolled through the lists anyhow, checked out anything that seemed to make a connection. He did another search and added in the date of the accident, minus one year. The year he was five.
He spent the next hour refining his search, digging. He couldn’t let it go, because all the while he worked, the name and the fear that accompanied it would not loosen its grip.
Finally he found something. The name Eli Giroux on a personal blog. It was posted by a man also named Eli musing about old neighborhoods. He talked of where he lived and a neighbor who had come and gone so mysteriously. They had a little boy, Eli Giroux. The man remembered it because his parents had taken a picture of the two Elis. Then, suddenly, the family had gone without telling anyone. It was the first mystery in his life. The posting meandered a bit, moving on to other things.
Eli sat back, his heart a block of ice in his chest as a memory pushed up into his consciousness. A sunny day. Someone’s backyard. His mom taking a picture of him and another boy because they had the same name.
Murky pictures formed and disappeared. A house. A swing set. Eating a Popsicle and chasing another boy. Eli.
Swallowing, he hit the man’s e-mail address and sent him a quick note asking for more information.
Suddenly restless, he got up, snagged his jacket and went out the door. He had to get away. He jumped on his motorcycle and headed out, letting the wind push away the uncertainties.
When he came back, an hour later, there was a mail message for him. He hesitated to open it, unsure of what he would discover. He looked at the subject line. It could be nothing. It could be everything. He clicked it and started reading.
When he was done, he realized he had started something he couldn’t stop until it was finished.
“But I have to see Dr. Cavanaugh,” Rachel said, laying a damp face cloth on Gracie’s face. Since the picnic two days ago, Gracie had been alternately cranky and listless. Rachel suspected she might have caught something from one of Meg and Jared’s twins. Meg had called Rachel yesterday, saying that Chance had a runny nose and a fever. She was concerned for Gracie, and now, it seemed, her concerns were justified.
“I realize that,” his secretary said. “I am in the process of rescheduling all his appointments for the next few days. I’m sorry, but he was called away on a family emergency.”
Rachel thanked the woman, then hung up, wondering what family emergency Eli had been called away to, and wondering what she should do about Gracie.
“Wanna drink,” Gracie said, rubbing her eyes with her hands.
Rachel poured her a glass of juice, then sat down with her on a kitchen chair and cuddled her while she drank it down.
Rachel set the cup on the table and gently rocked the child, singing softly to her. She didn’t know what else to do. Gracie had been fussing all morning, and though her temperature wasn’t very high, Rachel couldn’t help feeling concerned.
Rachel pressed a gentle kiss to her sister’s head. “I wonder where Eli is,” she whispered, wishing he would make one of those unscheduled stops that had annoyed her at one time.
Funny how quickly things changed. Not so funny how much she wanted to talk to him. To explain what she had felt that day of the picnic. Again and again she had replayed the scene in her mind, wishing she could have said what she really wanted to say. She wanted to explain her caution, but to do that would be to show how vulnerable she felt around him. A no-win situation.
She brought Gracie back up to bed and laid her down for an afternoon nap. Gracie didn’t protest, which showed Rachel just how ill the girl was. Usually Gracie fought her naps with a quiet tenacity that could make Rachel frustrated.
Now Rachel wished Gracie would display a little more vigor.
A few minutes later sleep finally claimed Gracie, and Rachel quietly left the room and made her way downstairs to her office. She read through a report from the financial department of the Foundation, jotted a few notes for Reuben to follow up on and made a few phone calls.
She tried to phone Eli at home, then on his cell phone, but both times she only got his answering machine.
Meg was busy. Anne had only a few minutes to talk. Pilar was out and not answering her cell phone. Rachel’s father was away from the hospital room.
Rachel felt alone.
On her way down to the study, she met Aleeda.
“You look tired, Rachel,” she said. “Why don’t you go out for a bit? Let me watch Gracie for you.”
Rachel glanced back over her shoulder as if to make sure that Gracie was still sleeping. It sounded so tempting.
“Take your cell phone along with you. You need to get out a bit,” Aleeda urged. “Gracie’s just sleeping. She’ll be okay.”
Rachel knew she was right. Since the picnic, she hadn’t been able to forget about Eli. Instead she had plunged herself into work and taking care of Gracie. They went on walks and picnics on the grounds. She worked in her office until her eyes burned, doing busy work that didn’t have a deadline, but that she had taken on just to keep herself from thinking. Still, being in the room where Eli had kissed her had brought the memories up again and again.
She did need to get out. To put other thoughts in her mind.
“Okay. I’ll be back in an hour,” Rachel said, then left.
Rachel slowed down as she came near the street where Eli lived. She hadn’t been planning to come this way; in fact the whole reason for the trip was to try to forget about Eli. Yet she had found her way toward this part of town. His secretary had said he was gone anyway.
But Eli’s motorcycle was parked in front of his house in the shade of a sweeping elm tree.
Rachel spun the wheel before any second thoughts claimed her attention. She had been mooning long enough. She needed to get this straightened out once and for all.
She cared for Eli, knew he cared for her. In her heart, she knew she simply needed to tell him what held her back. Why she was hesitant and, yes, fearful to step into another relationship. He would understand when she explained to him. She should have much sooner, but she had held her resentment, her sorrow so close to her for so long, it felt unnatural to let it go.
But she knew this was what she needed to do.
They were both adults. This should be simple.
She parked beside the motorcycle and got out, looking up at the two-story Colonial. The brick house had freshly painted buttery yellow shutters and trim. The house’s welcoming look made her curious to see the inside. As she walked up the winding brick walk, she noticed that while the exterior of the house had been finished recently, the yard was in need of work.
A large cardboard box sat to one side of the front door, half full of scraps of wood, drywall, pieces of plastic, nails and other building refuse. It looked as though Eli had been working on the interior of the house, as well.
The grass was trampled-looking, and a few marigolds nodded in the front flower bed alongside a pink rosebush that had gone wild. The house would look even more homey with some landscaping. As she was imaging
what plants she would put in the brick-edged flower bed, the door opened.
Eli stood in front of her, unshaven, his shirt open, carrying a box and looking so much like he had the first time she saw him in the park, that she felt a moment of déjà vu.
“Hey, Rachel, what brings you here?” He paused in the doorway, looking at her, his face holding no expression.
“I was just out for a drive and thought I would stop by. I saw your motorcycle, so…” Rachel put the brakes on her runaway words before she started babbling. Though this was a spur-of-the-moment decision, she didn’t need to sound like an idiot.
Eli nodded, his expression serious. He shifted the box in his hands and, as he did, a piece of paper fluttered onto the sidewalk.
A photo, Rachel realized as she bent over to pick it up.
Eli held out his hand to her. “I’ll take that,” he said, his voice rough. “It’s garbage.”
Rachel caught a tone in his voice that made her glance once again at the photo in her hand. A young boy of about five flanked by a woman and a man. The man had the same lean features Eli did now.
“Are these your parents?” she asked. “Your biological parents?”
Eli caught the photo out of her hand and flipped it into the box. “They were,” he said, and dropped the shoe box into the garbage bin.
“Why are you throwing them away?”
Eli didn’t answer. Instead he turned his back on her and walked up to the house. At the door he paused and looked back over his shoulder. “Are you coming in?”
His terse invitation was hardly inviting. This Eli was a stranger to her, and she didn’t know if she wanted to spend time with him. She knew she had been vague with him and had let an opportunity to fully open up to him slip by—but surely her mistake wasn’t unforgivable?
Brought Together by Baby Page 16