A Love for All Seasons

by Bettye Griffin

  “Now, excuse me,” he said. “I have to tell Alicia something.”

  Chapter 28

  Photograph

  Alicia couldn’t get to her room fast enough, but once there she didn’t fall apart the way she feared she might. Instead she merely felt numb.

  Adopted? How could that be? Why hadn’t her parents—no, that was no longer the correct phrase—why hadn’t Fletcher and Caroline Timberlake told her? She had a right to know. How could they allow Daphne to know and to spring it on her in such a cruel way?

  No, that wasn’t how it had been. Her mother made at least two attempts to tell her the truth. There was that time back in October when she started to say something but was interrupted by Martha bringing them breakfast. After that Daphne joined them and stayed with them the rest of the day.

  It remained that way almost until Caroline’s death.

  She frowned as she tried to remember exactly when Daphne started sticking so close to Caroline. The room was still and quiet as she concentrated.

  She recoiled when someone knocked on the door. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, and she didn’t think she could stand to even look at Daphne.

  The knock sounded again. “Alicia, can I talk to you for a minute? It’s Todd.”

  She hesitated only a moment. “All right. Come in.”

  He opened the door and stepped inside. “I won’t stay long. Alicia, I’m so sorry for Daphne’s behavior. I’m ashamed of her.”

  “I appreciate that, Todd.”

  “But I especially wanted you to not worry about her contesting Miss Caroline’s will. I’ll see to it that she doesn’t.”

  “Thanks, Todd.”

  He nodded as he stepped backward. “Good night.”

  After a night of little sleep, Alicia was waiting in the reception area of Sam McDaniel’s office in Stamford when he arrived a few minutes after nine the next morning. He took one look at her anguished expression and said, “I think I know why you’re here. Come on, let’s go to my office.” To his secretary he said, “Hold all my calls. I don’t want to be disturbed.”

  He flipped the switch and allowed her to enter, closing the door behind him. Alicia sat facing his desk, and he surprised her by sitting not behind his desk but in another chair just a foot or so away. “You must have found out about the secret your parents kept from you all these years.”

  “And obviously you knew all about it.”

  “Of course I knew. I’ve been your parents’ attorney and legal advisor for nearly forty years.”

  She laughed, a bitter sound. “I guess you got a good chuckle out of my sitting in the library saying I could hardly believe Daphne and I were sisters.”

  “Alicia, you’re not being fair. Caroline told me months ago that she intended to tell you the truth. You weren’t old enough to be told at the time of your adoption. Fletcher and Caroline always planned to tell you, but somehow the ideal moment never came up. When I was informed of Caroline’s death I kept waiting for you to contact me for more information about your birth parents. When you said nothing I had no recourse but to think that for whatever reason Caroline changed her mind. It wasn’t up to me to open a proverbial can of worms she wanted to stay shut. She’s my client, and I can’t breach confidentiality, even after her death.”

  “But Mom told Daphne.”

  “I hadn’t counted on that,” he admitted. “I got that impression yesterday. It sounded like she was about to say something derogatory about your birth father. Your mother must have told her, unless one of your uncles did.”

  “I don’t think so. My mother’s brothers loved her, and they’d never do anything to cause her or anyone in her family grief.”

  Sam leaned back in his chair. “I know for a fact that Daphne didn’t know about your being adopted at the time of your father’s death. I can’t understand why she would tell Daphne and not you. But I’m sure Caroline never believed that Daphne would use it against you, even if you girls weren’t close. And I’m sure if she told Daphne she intended to tell you.” He paused. “Alicia, don’t be angry at your parents. They thought they were doing the right thing. They wanted to protect you.”

  “I understand that,” she said quietly. “But it hurts to have it thrown in my face by a vindictive witch.”

  “I know Daphne wasn’t happy with the restrictions Caroline put on her in her will. But it wasn’t right for her to tell you like that.” Sam leaned forward earnestly. “Alicia,” Sam said. “Surely you don’t believe Caroline would share your history with Daphne if she didn’t fully intend to tell you.”

  “Sam, I know Mom planned to tell me. She tried to tell me just before she died. Daphne was so desperate to prevent me from knowing—at least being told by Mom—that she started a stink that literally killed Mom.” At the quizzical rise of his eyebrows she explained the events of Christmas night. “The blame for Mom’s death lies at her feet, Sam. I don’t care if Mom only had another fifteen minutes to live. Daphne shortened her life by those fifteen minutes, and she had no right to do that.”

  “I can’t disagree with you on that.” Sam pushed his chair back as he eased his bulk out of it. He went behind his desk and retrieved a yellow manila envelope and handed it to her. “I’ve been saving these for you,” he said. “It’s all here for you. Newspaper articles, trial transcripts. Go over them, and we’ll talk some more.”

  She took the envelope with a shaking hand but didn’t open it. She would do that after she arrived home. This remarkably fresh-looking envelope held the key to her past, and she wanted to inspect it in private. “I understand that she and my father planned to tell me, but I still can’t figure why they waited so long. I’m thirty-five years old, Sam, and my…my parents were practically middle-aged when they adopted me. Time was never on their side. Hell, Pop’s been dead for two years already.” A memory suddenly came flooding to the surface. “When my father had his stroke and was rushed to the hospital, I sat at his bedside just hours before he died. He told me that he loved me and that he was proud of me. Why didn’t he tell me then that they adopted me? He was weak and couldn’t speak too clearly, but I could still understand him.”

  “Alicia, you witnessed a brutal, cold-blooded crime, or at least its aftermath. The child psychologist who handled your case insisted that while you showed no signs of having been touched by your father’s murder, you would one day suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder. He said you would be a perfectly functioning, happy adult, and then some obscure sighting will trigger the suppressed memories when you were ready to remember. The last time I talked to Caroline about it, she said she knew she didn’t have much time left and would tell you at the right moment. When you didn’t come to me before or after she passed, I presumed the right moment never came.” Sam shrugged. “It wasn’t my place to tell you, Alicia. All I could do was hand over the paperwork to my partner when I retire.”

  She closed her eyes momentarily. “Daphne did everything she could to prevent me from being alone with Mom those last weeks. Mom must have told her during that time.”

  Sam gestured toward the envelope lying across her lap. “I can leave you alone for a few minutes if you’d like, to let you absorb all of this in private.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ll look at it when I get home. What I want from you now is for you to tell me everything you know about my parents.”

  “I didn’t know them, of course, but I read the trial transcripts thoroughly. Your parents were both young. Your mother liked to have fun and felt a little stifled by marriage, motherhood, and housework. She married right out of high school. She began having an affair with a flashy type, a petty criminal in the neighborhood, who’d taken a fancy to her. Your father came home unexpectedly and caught them together. Neighbors heard sounds of a physical disturbance, and the conclusion was that during a fistfight, your mother’s boyfriend pulled out a knife and stabbed your father in the abdomen. Neighbors also heard your mother scream. One of them called the police. When they arrived they fo
und your father dead on the floor with you hovering nearby. Your mother and her boyfriend had fled. Three days later your mother’s body was found stabbed to death in an alley. She’d been killed somewhere else and her body dumped. Eventually they caught the man who did it. The prosecutor got him to admit on the stand that he killed her when she kept objecting to his killing her husband and making her leave her baby there with his dead body.

  “I might as well tell you this now, Alicia. When the killer was asked how he managed to get your mother to leave you with your father’s body, he said he told her if she didn’t leave with him right away he’d kill you, too.”

  She bowed her head, stressing her facial muscles to keep her eyes tightly shut to hold in the tears.

  Sam covered the back of her hand with his palm. “Alicia, you’ve been subjected to a tremendous shock. No one could expect you to bounce back into business as usual after learning about your early life. It’s as much a trauma to your system as getting hit by a car.”

  “I’m coping, Sam.”

  “I don’t think you are. You can’t do this by yourself, dear. I hope you’ll consider counseling.”

  “Counseling? As in a psychiatrist?”

  “You don’t have to say it like it’s a dirty word. It isn’t, you know. This is no different than schools bringing in counselors after a school shooting to help students deal with the trauma.”

  “I’m no student, Sam.”

  “You’ve been traumatized nonetheless. Posttraumatic stress disorder is a very real condition, one you can’t expect to conquer alone. Because I anticipated your learning about your adoption, I’ve taken the liberty of contacting the firm your parents consulted shortly after your adoption. You won’t remember this, of course, but they brought you in a couple of times to see their child specialist. At the time it was determined that you had no recollection of your father’s murder, but they warned that it might be buried somewhere deep within your memory and it might not surface until years later, if ever. They still have your file, and they have practitioners on staff who treat adults as well. Do yourself a favor, Alicia. Go and see them. They’re right here in Stamford. I can give you their name and number.”

  She shook her head. “Maybe. But I’m not ready to call them now. I’ll wait and see how I feel.”

  Alicia got into her Solara and headed for the city, a decision she’d made before leaving Green’s Farms. It would be a real pain in the butt to find a parking space and cope with alternate-side-of-the-street parking rules to accommodate the street sweepers, but she’d have to take her chances. Leaving her car at the house she now co-owned meant certain contact with Daphne, the last person she wanted to see. Even if she had to purchase a monthly parking pass in a garage—something that would likely cost nearly as much as the rent on her apartment, it would be worth it.

  Taking possession of her car only represented a third of her Connecticut-related concerns. As she drove she made a mental note to make some employment inquiries on Martha’s behalf, and to call Martha and ask her to take Lucky out to the guest house before Daphne could get rid of him, at least for the time being.

  She knew that in the near future she’d have to make some decisions about her own living arrangements, like considering buying a place large enough where Lucky wouldn’t be cramped, but at the moment one issue took priority.

  The envelope that lay on the passenger seat.

  Settled on her sofa with the blinds drawn, Alicia carefully undid the metal clasp of the envelope and slid out the contents. She started with the newspaper articles, unfolding them gingerly. Lurid headlines screamed out at her. “Man stabs girlfriend’s husband in jealous rage.” “Woman found stabbed to death near downtown.” Black and white photographs showed Clifton Matthews, the man who’d killed both her parents, being taken into custody, a jacket covering his face. A photo of her parents in happier times, a curly-haired infant in their laps. She looked at the picture more closely. Good Lord, that was her!

  Her mind, rushing out in a dozen different directions, focused on one thing. Only one baby picture of her existed, a studio portrait with her wearing a pretty flowered dress with a lace trim, sitting up and laughing with her mouth wide open. She was toothless at the time, probably only a few months old. The photo was on display in her parents’ bedroom. Her parents, on the other hand, possessed dozens of photos of Daphne to document her babyhood, as well as photos of herself at later stages of her life. Alicia remembered asking them why there were no more baby pictures than the one, and Caroline told her that they didn’t have a lot of money in those days to pay photographers. By the time Daphne came along, she said, their fortunes had improved.

  Alicia accepted the explanation readily, but now she knew that wasn’t the reason at all. This was probably the only photo taken of her alone as an infant. Caroline and Fletcher couldn’t very well display photographs of her with her birth parents, unless they were prepared to tell her about her adoption.

  She focused on the article. Her mother’s name had been Norma Jean Clements. She was surprisingly petite, perhaps five feet two. All her life Alicia believed she resembled Fletcher Timberlake, with her only inheritance from Caroline slightly prominent cheekbones, but now she knew that was mere coincidence. Alicia’s real mother, Norma Jean, had been blessed with high cheekbones, and that was the source of her own bone structure. She looked sweet and fun-loving. What had induced her to seek fulfillment in the arms of another man, a man so cruel he could make her choose to leave her toddler alone with the body of the man he’d just killed or he’d kill the child as well? Had her father been some kind of brute?

  Benjamin Clements had been a tall man, well over six feet. In the photo his large hand covered her shoulder and upper arm to keep her from falling over. She smiled at the protective gesture. Her father loved her; that much was clear. Then her eyes moved to his face, and she gasped in shock.

  Her father looked just like Jack Devlin.

  Chapter 29

  Whatever Gets You through The Night

  She stared open-mouthed at the reproduction. Benjamin Clements had a close-cropped haircut in an era where many men wore three-inch or longer Afros. Like Jack, he wore no moustache, no beard. He was tall, perhaps even taller than Jack, with broad shoulders. But what struck her immediately was his piercing dark brown eyes. No wonder she felt from the beginning that she had seen Jack before, that they had a prior history together. Jack’s appearance stirred up memories of her birth father.

  A memory came to the forefront of her mind, so strongly that her shoulders jerked. She remembered being carried about on broad shoulders in the years before Daphne’s birth, remembered feeling like she was high enough to touch the sky. All this time she believed those shoulders belonged to Fletcher Timberlake, but in that one instant she saw it clearly.

  Her birth father, Benjamin Clements, had been the one to carry her that way.

  She closed her eyes tightly. Surely there had to be more memories that she’d buried in her subconscious.

  Alicia sat quietly for a full five minutes, but nothing came to her. She realized that memories worked like inspiration…they couldn’t be forced.

  She leaned forward and cradled her forehead in her hands. Not only was she not the daughter of the only parents she clearly remembered, but her birth father bore a remarkable resemblance to the man she was dating. Either one of those by itself would be difficult to cope with. This reminded her of what political pundits coined, “an October surprise,” revelations about candidates that came to light in the weeks just prior to the November election that contained enough substance to affect the outcome. It might be December, but these were her October surprises. Her whole life had been changed because of the new information she now possessed.

  What a way to wind up the year, especially when considering the event that triggered it all. The death of her mother—no, she couldn’t even accurately refer to Caroline Timberlake that way anymore—had come as a blow, but it hadn’t been unexpected.
r />   Alicia recalled that day in October, right after she met Jack and waited impatiently for him to call. She’d gone to her mother’s room Sunday morning—doggone it, she couldn’t just up and stop thinking of her that way, not after nearly thirty-five years—and Caroline had started to tell her something, but stopped when Martha came in with a breakfast tray. At the time Alicia thought her mother intended to say nothing more than continued concerns about possible effects on her because of her father’s preference for Daphne. But what was that she’d prefaced with? Something about how lost she felt before Alicia “came along,” and how much she meant to her? No, she planned then to tell her about the adoption. Martha came in with breakfast, the three of them talked a bit while they ate, and then Martha took the tray down to the kitchen, promising to return to help Caroline dress, and Alicia went to get ready herself. There hadn’t been another chance for them to talk privately the rest of the day.

  Of all times for Martha to join them. If only she’d taken a few more minutes to prepare that food….

  Alicia knew she couldn’t fault Martha for her timing. She had no way of knowing.

  But she couldn’t help wondering how different things might have turned out for her if Caroline told her the truth about her past, rather than Daphne.

  Jack frowned. Alicia’s greeting sounded barely intelligible, completely unlike her usual crisp diction. “Alicia, it’s Jack. Are you okay? You sound funny.”

  “No, Jack, ahm not okay. In fact, I’m not even sure ahm even A-lee-see-a.” She mimicked his pronunciation of her name.

  He took a moment to absorb what he heard. He immediately recognized the signs of excessive drinking in her slurred words, but he struggled to come up with a reason why she would express uncertainty about her identity. He could think of nothing except something must be terribly wrong. That, of course, meant she shouldn’t be alone.