“It’s funny, but when you’re a kid there’s so much you don’t question. It just is. We had no actual family in the Chicago area. I called your brother, ‘Uncle Owen,’ but I knew he wasn’t a relative. Gail and her brothers were like cousins so I really never felt any lack of family.”
“Your mother must have had friends you could talk to.”
“Not really. My mother didn’t socialize much. She went to PTA meetings and knew people at church and work, but there was no one you would consider a close friend. At the time it didn’t seem strange. It’s only now when I look back I begin to see how isolated she was.”
“Marriage license?”
“I didn’t find one. Since my father was dead, their anniversary was never celebrated so I really had no idea when or where she was married.”
“When did your father die?”
“Mother said he died in a train accident when I was three. No details, just said he was dead.” Clare could feel her mouth tighten at the words. “It wasn’t that she made it seem like a secret. If she had, I might have been more curious. It was just a fact. Mother never talked about the past. When I asked her about her childhood, she said it was boring and changed the subject.”
“Didn’t that seem unusual?” Ruth asked.
“No. Mother wasn’t very talkative.”
“I know people like that,” Ruth said, “and I’ve watched how my niece and her brothers interacted with their parents. A child gets a sense that a subject is off limits. It’s one of those nonverbal signals that always intrigues me. I never had children so my knowledge comes solely from my observations.”
“Gail said you were very perceptive.”
“That’s because I spoiled her. That’s the joy of being an aunt. None of the annoyances of raising children. When they misbehave, you just pack up their bags and send them home. And if they grow up to be bright, articulate adults it’s an added bonus in your life.”
Ruth paused and stared across at Clare.
“Did it occur to you that you might be Rose’s illegitimate daughter and she just told the doctor you were adopted to cover her shame?”
Clare nodded. “Actually that was my original thought. It would have explained why she changed her name and said my father was dead. I asked the doctor about that possibility and she went through my mother’s medical files. She had had a miscarriage, but had never had a live birth.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Ruth asked, “So why have you come to Grand Rapids?”
“I think my adoptive mother might have lived here.” Clare opened her purse and took out a picture in a small wooden frame. “This is a picture of my mother. I only have a few. She didn’t like having her picture taken.”
She set it on the table in front of Ruth.
“Gail said you were born and raised here in Grand Rapids. Does she look familiar at all?”
“I only lived here in Grand Rapids until my parents divorced. Then I moved to Duluth with my mother. My brother stayed here with my father. Except for occasional visits, I didn’t come back here until after my husband died ten years ago.”
Ruth picked up the frame and concentrated on the face of the woman in the picture. She pursed her lips, then sighed and shook her head.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen her before. You think she was from Grand Rapids?”
“She might have gone to school here.” Clare reached into the pocket of her denim skirt and brought out a plastic bag. “When I went through her jewelry box, I found this.”
She opened the bag, placing a ring on the table in front of Ruth.
“It’s a class ring from Grand Rapids Senior High School. At first I thought of Michigan, but when I did some research I found it was Grand Rapids, Minnesota.”
Ruth picked up the gold ring with the gold Indian in profile, turning it from side to side to examine it.
“Nineteen sixty-two. My brother went to Grand Rapids, but he graduated five years earlier,” she said.
“Gail’s father? The judge?”
“Yes,” Ruth said. “And in nineteen sixty-two, I was thirty, married for six years, and living in Duluth. Lordy where does the time go? So you think this was your mother’s ring?”
Clare shook her head. “According to my mother’s birth certificate, she would have been fifty-nine this year. She would have graduated in nineteen sixty-five or nineteen sixtysix. If the ring is hers, then she might be four years older. To me she always seemed old. To look at Rose you wouldn’t be able to guess her age.”
“So it could be hers.” Ruth placed the ring on her finger. It was too large. “But at a guess I’d say it was a man’s ring.”
“Mother had large hands,” Clare said, her voice defensive.
Ruth looked inside the band of the ring. “There are no initials or serial numbers to give a clue as to ownership. Without one or the other, we couldn’t trace it through the manufacturer.”
Clare sat down at the table again, staring in dismay at the ring in the palm of Ruth’s hand. “It’s the only clue I have.”
Ruth placed the ring back in the plastic bag and handed it to Clare. She patted her hand.
“And a very good clue, it is. What if your father gave it to her? Do you have any information about him?”
Clare tightened her fingers around the ring. “No. His name, John Prentice, was on my birth certificate, but none of the information checked out.” She sighed. “I spent endless hours on the Internet going through adoption Web sites. Finally one of the people I’d been corresponding with said that I might have been a black-market baby, and that was why none of the information was valid.”
“What about your mother’s maiden name? It would have been on your birth certificate.”
“The name listed as my mother’s maiden name was the same as her married name. Prentice.”
“Did you try the hospital birth records in Grand Rapids?”
Clare nodded. “Yes. No records for either Rose Prentice or Clare Prentice. As far as the world is concerned, we never existed.”
Silence filled the room. Clare could see that Ruth was as mystified as she had been for so many months. She rubbed the back of her neck as she felt a headache form. Ever since she’d discovered she was adopted she’d been searching for answers and she was exhausted, both mentally and physically.
“There’s another clue to the fact your mother might have come from this area,” Ruth said. “Did she give you that necklace?”
Clare automatically put her hand up to cup the pendant around her neck. Her fingers stroked the polished surface of the stone heart. “Yes. She gave me the necklace for my sixteenth birthday. How did you guess?”
“I’m almost positive that the stone is Binghamite. It’s a form of quartz found only up here in the Iron Ranges. It’s pretty rare to find any now that the mines are closed. Your stone is particularly lovely since it has so many detailed markings in gold and brown. There’s even some green.”
“It’s my favorite piece of jewelry.” Clare closed her fingers around it. “Rose said it belonged to her sister who had died.”
“Well, it sounds like it’s another piece of the puzzle. This will take some work to resolve.” Ruth sat forward in her chair. “I’m glad you’ve come here. Libraries are the perfect places to do research.”
“What do you have in mind?” Clare felt a glimmer of hope at the sparkle in the soft blue eyes of the older woman.
“Let’s start with the class ring. It was either Rose’s or was given to her by a graduate. We have the yearbooks for Grand Rapids and we’ll start with nineteen sixty-two and see if we can find someone who looks like Rose. I realize it’s a slim hope, but it’s at least worth a try.”
“And it’s someplace new to start.” Clare sighed. “I’m ready.”
Ruth looked surprised. “We don’t have to begin this minute. You’ve had a long drive up from Chicago. Don’t you want to get settled in first?”
“No. I stopped last night in Wisconsin so that
I could get here early. I’ve had lunch and I’d just as soon get started.”
Ruth stood. “All right then. Come out to the study area and I’ll get the yearbooks.”
Clare followed the older woman out of the room. She liked theopenness of the main floor of the library and smiled up at the mobiles swinging above the desk area.
“The high school art class studied and made mobiles this year and we offered to display them. It’s been such a success that we’re hoping to do it every year.” Ruth tilted her head back. “There’s something so enjoyable about watching the movement and trying to figure out how they created the balance.”
Ruth pointed her to an alcove by the far wall, and then disappeared between the stacks of books. The rounded windows looked out on the park and some of the shops along the street where people walked in the late afternoon sunlight. Clare settled herself in one of the cushioned armchairs and stared outside. For the first time in many months, tension wasn’t constricting every muscle in her body. Perhaps it was sharing with Ruth some of the feelings she had suppressed since learning about her adoption. She had talked frequently with Gail over the last few months, but there was something steadying about talking with the older woman that made her feel as if she finally might be able to get some answers.
It was totally disconcerting to wake up one morning to discover the life she had been living was a sham. It had shaken her badly not to know who she was and where she had come from. And made her angry.
The anger brought guilt. No matter the circumstances behind her adoption, she should have felt grateful to Rose for raising her. Although they weren’t wealthy, Rose had sent her to excellent schools, and fed and clothed her. Perhaps she was not the most demonstrative of mothers, but she sat stolidly beside Clare’s bed when she was sick, played games with her, celebrated all the holidays, and attended all the school functions. Although Rose wasn’t social, she encouraged Clare to make friends. Rose had had many positive influences on her life, but Clare still blamed her for keeping such an important secret.
“Well, my dear,” Ruth’s voice broke into her reverie. “This ought to keep you busy.”
Clare leaped up to take the stack of yearbooks from Ruth’s armsand set them on the table.
“I’ve brought yearbooks from nineteen sixty-two to nineteen sixty-eight. Since we’re not positive fifty-nine would be Rose’s real age now, I figured we should at least start with the year of the class ring.” She reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a magnifying glass, handing it to Clare. “This might help. Just take your time and don’t get discouraged if you don’t find any one who resembles her. People change. Different hairstyles, different clothes.”
“What if I don’t find anyone who looks like her, even a little?” Clare bit her lip, staring down at the books.
“There are other schools around Grand Rapids. She could have been living in Coleraine or Cass Lake, and dated a boy from Grand Rapids. All sorts of possibilities. Don’t despair. It’s two thirty now. I’ll check on you shortly.” With a bracing pat on Clare’s shoulder, Ruth walked back to the front of the library.
Clare sat down in the chair. Her heart thudded noisily in her ears and she tightened her fingers around the black bone handle of the magnifying glass. For three months she had been searching and now when she had a real possibility of success, she was afraid that she would only find disappointment. Maybe some secrets weren’t meant to be discovered. Tears clouded her vision and she blinked them away. Setting the magnifying glass on the table, she made a decision. She didn’t have to do this. She had the right to change her mind. She didn’t want to know; she wanted to go home.
As she reached for the strap of her purse, the white skin on her ring finger caught her eye. She had run away from her engagement and if she ran away again, where would she go? Where was home? Without knowing who she was, could she ever find her place in this world?
Her hand touched the topmost yearbook. Her fingers stroked the suede-like cover, slightly gritty with dust. The title of the yearbook wasThe Tomahawk. She picked it up; surprised that it wasn’t particularly heavy. She flipped to the back and checked the page count. One hundred sixty. She couldn’t remember how large her own high school yearbook was.
Nineteen sixty-two. She thought back to her history classes and tried to remember anything she knew about that year. She’d just seen a biography about John Glenn whose birthday was in July. Forty-five years ago he’d orbited the Earth. The only other thing she could think of was that ’62 was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. She was a big Kevin Costner fan, and had seen the movieThirteen Daysat least three times. She couldn’t come up with any other events.
Clare opened the cover and began to flip through the pages, passing the pictures of the teachers and other sections until she came to the pictures of the students. Each of the seniors had his or her own fairly large picture, two to a page. There was a certain sameness to all of the students. The boys had short, slicked down hair, short sideburns, and faces turned either to the right or the left. They all looked neat and clean and, except for a few, uncomfortable. The girls looked fresh-faced with similar hairstyles and little makeup. Hair curled and usually parted on the side. There was an innocence to these girls from long ago that spoke of a different moral climate than Clare had grown up in.
After she’d made a brief survey of the pictures, taking in what she could of the group in general, she turned back to study each one. She skipped the boys entirely, focusing on the girls. She studied each face, checking eyebrows, teeth, and noses. When she had gone through each of the seniors without success, she picked up the magnifying glass and started on the smaller pictures.
It took forty-five minutes to get through the first yearbook.
Carefully, she placed it next to the original pile. She rubbed her eyes, trying not to think. Standing up, she walked across to the far wall where there was a water fountain. Her legs moved awkwardly, stiff from sitting almost motionless for so long. Her whole body ached. She would have to try to relax before she started on the next book. The water was refreshing and she returned to her chair, stretching several times before she sat down and reached for the next book on the stack.
Nineteen sixty-three. Fifteen years before she was born. She knew that was the year Pope John XXIII died and John F. Kennedy was assassinated, because Rose had worshipped both men and told Clare of the two events. She had always been convinced that there was some conspiracy that the two had died in the same year. Civil rights were being fought for in the South. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Beyond that she didn’t know much about the year.
A half hour later she closed the cover with a sigh. Her eyes burned and her head throbbed. The faces had begun to blur after a while. Sometimes she thought she saw a resemblance in the smaller pictures of the underclassmen, but even with the magnifying glass she couldn’t really be sure. Those she marked with a piece of paper so that she could find them again if necessary. She placed the book gently on top of the first one and quickly reached for the next yearbook before she could think better of it. An hour later she looked up as Ruth approached.
“By the look on your face, I can see it’s not going so well,” Ruth said as she sat down across from Clare. “You didn’t think this would be easy, did you?”
The comment made Clare smile. “As a matter of fact, I did at one point, but that’s long gone after . . .” She looked at her watch. “Almost three hours.”
“I suspected you wouldn’t get through the whole stack today. It’s getting close to five. Why don’t you start fresh tomorrow? I’m only staying another hour. When Gail told me you were coming today, I had already committed to a supper at one of the churches in town. It’s always a lovely affair. Not knowing about your mission of discovery and the emotional toll it might have taken, I also made a reservation for you. Do you feel up to it? It would give you achance to get some feel for life in Grand Rapids
.”
“I’d like that very much,” Clare said. “And I don’t mind waiting until you’re ready to leave. I can do one more book before I lose my vision completely.”
Ruth chuckled. “Gail said you were stubborn. I’ll leave you to it. Come to the front when you’re done.”
She heaved herself to her feet and Clare reached for the next yearbook.
Nineteen sixtysix. Twelve years before she was born. She couldn’t think of anything she knew about that year. She thought the Vietnam War was still going on, but she wasn’t sure. This search, if it proved nothing else, proved that she should have paid more attention in her U.S. history classes.
Once more she opened the cover and began flipping through the pages. She was a third of the way through the senior class when she stopped, riveted by one of the pictures. Beneath dark hair and heavy dark eyebrows a young girl stared up from the page. The moment Clare saw the photograph she knew.
It was Rose, her adoptive mother.
S
Chapter Two
Rose Gundersen. That was her adoptive mother’s name. Gundersen not Prentice. Clare stared down at the picture, searching the face, trying to get used to the name. Gundersen. Gundersen. She repeated the name under her breath, rolling the syllables around in her mouth. Her heart beat strongly and her ears buzzed as if she were listening to an electric current. She didn’t recognize the name, but was there any doubt that she had found Rose Prentice?
It was the eyebrows that had given her the first clue. She remembered, when she was a child, being fascinated by Rose’s bushy eyebrows. Then as she got older, she wondered why her mother didn’t have them trimmed. The girl in the picture was the norm for that age and time. Neither beautiful nor unattractive. She looked like most of the girls in the yearbook. The only difference that Clare could see was in the tilt of the head and the halfshuttered eyes that hinted at a sensuality that was surprising.
ToClare’s eyes, Rose had seemed asexual. She had never done anything to enhance her looks. Clare had always thought that with a little makeup and her hair professionally cut, instead of braided and wound into a bun at the nape of her neck, Rose might have been a goodlooking woman. Whenever Clare had suggested a new hairstyle or bought her a less-than-matronly dress, her mother would reject any attempt to “fancy” her up. It was as if she wanted to remain plain.
Conspiracy of Silence Page 2