by Maggie James
One sentiment prevails. For the first time in weeks, hope rises within Dana.
She’s often wondered if such a letter would ever arrive. Whether she herself would find the courage to write a similar one. She’s considered it many times, but she’s always told herself to leave well alone. It’s for the best, after all. A mantra she’s done her utmost to believe. Now, with this letter in her hand, she questions her judgement. Which concerns Dana, because never has she needed a cool head more.
Before her lies a huge decision. Its ramifications are life-changing, both for herself and for Lori. A part of her knows, however, what she’ll end up doing. It’s as inevitable as thunder after lightning, day after night, and the nugget of hope within her swells, until she feels her heart will burst.
Yes, is her answer to the question posed within the letter.
She’s been wrong. Another reason to live, besides Lori, does exist.
She picks up the letter again, her eyes focusing on the contact details. Then she retrieves her mobile, and stabs in the telephone number that’s listed. Her heart pounds in her chest, her throat is dry, but when she speaks her voice is steady, clear.
Chapter 16
REVELATION
Since Aiden’s visit for Sunday lunch, Lori’s been mulling over her misgivings concerning him. She’s not mentioned her doubts to Ryan, mainly because she’s not known how to phrase them without it sounding like she’s jealous. When she runs through everything in her head, the unease she feels around Aiden seems petty, unworthy of her. Almost as though she is jealous. Lori shakes her head. More like confused, she decides. Her gut’s telling her Aiden hasn’t been straight with her. That he’s playing a hidden hand.
She’s had a few missed calls from him this Wednesday morning, along with several texts asking if they can get together. All of which she’s ignored. The latest text, though, the one that arrived a few minutes ago, bothers her with its sense of urgency. Almost as though he won’t take no for an answer. While she’s trying to work it out, her mobile rings. Aiden’s name appears on the screen. Something inside Lori snaps. Time to find out what’s going on here.
‘Hi,’ she says, aware her tone’s more than a little curt. ‘What do you want?’
‘I need to see you.’ Aiden’s voice sounds tense. ‘Something’s happened, and I can’t go into it on the phone. Can we meet? Please?’ He seems nervous, which confuses Lori further. This guy isn’t the same man who ate roast lamb here last Sunday. Lack of confidence isn’t a trait she associates with Aiden, yet here he is, apparently suffering a bad case of the jitters.
She remembers her resolve to get to the bottom of this, whatever this is. ‘OK,’ she says. ‘Meet me in St George Park, by the steps leading down to the lake. I’ll see you in half an hour.’ Whatever this is about, she prefers to meet him on neutral territory, and somewhere close by.
He’s waiting when she arrives. ‘Hi,’ he says, and it’s as though she’s seeing a new Aiden. As if he’s peeled off the layers of charm, stripped himself to the core, showing her the real man for the first time. He appears vulnerable, she realises, and for him it’s not a good look.
‘Can we sit down?’ He gestures towards a bench set along the path overlooking the lake. Once they’re seated, however, he makes no effort to speak. Instead, he chews his lower lip, his fingers twisting the toggle on his jacket. The anxiety pouring off him is so thick Lori thinks she could bottle it.
‘What’s this about?’ She realises she sounds irritated. Which she is. She should be home taking care of Dana, not sitting beside someone whose friendship she’s now questioning.
He doesn’t reply at first. When at last he turns to face her, his eyes are anxious. Despite herself, Lori feels herself softening towards him. Whatever he needs to tell her, he’s clearly finding it tough.
‘I’ve not been honest with you,’ he says.
‘About what?’
He chews his lip again. ‘Remember the first time we met? The Inferno gig at the Bierkeller? It wasn’t an accident, bumping into you like that.’
Lori’s stunned. Her mind flicks back to Aiden’s elbow jostling hers, his swift apology. His offer to buy her a fresh drink to replace the one he’s spilled. At the time she didn’t think anything of it. Aiden was clearly a fan of Inferno, Lori’s favourite band, so they got chatting, their meeting leading to friendship. She’d liked his easy laugh, the smile in his blue eyes. It hadn’t seemed odd at the time. Now, though, unease prickles in her stomach.
‘What do you mean?’ she asks. Is he some kind of weird stalker? If so, what’s his agenda, because he’s never come on to her, not even once?
Aiden draws in a breath, shifting uneasily. ‘Before we met, I found you on Facebook,’ he says. ‘Checked out your profile, found out we have similar tastes in music, what with both being Inferno fans. In one of your posts you mentioned you’d be at their next gig at the Bierkeller, along with Celine.’
Lori’s unease grows, hammering insistently inside her head. She’s thankful she suggested a public place to meet, because were she anywhere private with this man she’d be making a run for it. As it is, she has the option of getting up, walking away, severing all contact between them. She doesn’t, though. First she needs to find out what he’s talking about.
‘I wanted to meet you,’ Aiden continues.
So he is a stalker. A weirdo who chanced on her profile, decided she was easy prey. Lori’s angry, partly with herself. Why the hell didn’t she make her Facebook settings private? Instead, he’s used her posts to pry into her life for his own warped ends. She shudders. The question remains: why has he pursued her this way? What lies behind his persistence following Jessie’s death, his wangling an invite to Sunday lunch, his strange interest in her mother?
‘For what reason?’ she asks, her voice icy. Yet edgy too. Lori’s afraid of what she’ll hear.
He doesn’t respond.
‘Tell me,’ she urges.
Aiden lifts his eyes to hers. ‘I’m not who you think I am,’ he says. ‘I’ve misled you about my family, my childhood, even my name.’
Lori holds his gaze. ‘Then tell me. Who are you?’
He draws in another deep breath. ‘I’m your brother,’ he says.
Lori’s stomach drops, as though she’s falling from a great height. Which, in a way, she is. Impossible to comprehend what he’s saying, because it makes no sense. When she tries to speak, her mouth’s so dry she can hardly force the words out. The syllables stick to her teeth; her throat’s closing over with shock.
‘You’re insane,’ she whispers. ‘You’re not my brother.’
He bites his lip. ‘Half-brother, actually.’
‘No. You can’t be.’
‘It’s true. Listen to me,’ he says, as Lori makes to get up, walk away. ‘Please, Lori. I don’t know much myself. I only found Dana a few months ago. At first, I wasn’t sure what to do. Whether I even wanted to contact her.’
‘But you have parents. You’re close to them, I know. Are you saying’ – Lori sits back down – ‘that they’re your adoptive parents?’
‘No. It’s more complicated than that. All I know is, Dana Golden is my biological mother as well as yours. I don’t know why she had me adopted, although I can speculate. She’s forty-two, right? I’m twenty-seven. Meaning she gave birth to me while still a teenager. Not hard to guess why she didn’t keep me.’
Lori tries to picture herself with a baby, aged just fifteen, with the dour John Reynolds her father. She doubts her grandfather displayed much empathy towards his pregnant daughter. Deep in her gut she gets why Dana had her son adopted. Why she’s hidden her secret all these years. Assuming all this is true. Could he be misleading her again?
‘Why didn’t you tell me before? About being my brother?’ she asks. As good a place to start as any, she guesses.
‘You have to understand, Lori. When I tracked your – our – mother down, I was confused, my head a mess. I thought I hated her. For having me adopted.’
His voice is calm, but his hands betray his nervousness, his fingers picking restlessly at his nails. Concern continues to pool in Lori’s stomach. Whatever she’s about to hear, she senses it won’t be good.
‘But why?’ she asks. ‘From what you’ve told me, your mum and dad love you to bits. It’s not as though you got adopted by abusers.’
Dark emotion flares in his eyes. ‘You’re right. Chris and Amy Scott love me. As I do them.’ He smiles fondly. ‘But they’re my long-term foster parents. I didn’t go to live with them until I was ten. They took care of me until I was eighteen.’
Lori stares at him. He’s not making sense, but then the words tumble from Aiden’s mouth, a trickle at first, then a flood. How Rick and Tanya McNally, desperate for a child, unable to afford surrogacy or IVF, applied to adopt one. Young themselves, they were deemed suitable to take on a baby. Their delight when three-month-old Michael Reynolds became available.
‘You’re Michael McNally,’ Lori says, something clicking into place in her head.
Aiden nods. ‘Used to be, yes.’
‘I saw the name in a kid’s book. At the boot sale I did with Damon.’
‘A few of those books were mine. I tossed them in with Damon’s. Forgot they had my old name in them.’
Aiden resumes his story. How Tanya’s the best mother in the world, Rick a wonderful father. How until the age of ten he’s a normal boy, happy and carefree.
‘What happened?’ Lori asks. ‘How come you went to live with foster parents?’
The bleakness in his expression is painful to witness. His gaze sinks to his lap. Lori senses intense emotions rising within him, ones barely kept in check.
‘There was a fire,’ he says eventually.
She waits. When he doesn’t continue, she prompts him, her voice soft. ‘Aiden?’
He starts on hearing his name, clearly lost in thought. ‘I was at a sleepover with a friend when it happened. Mum was doing the night nursing shift at the hospital where she worked. Dad was at home.’ His fingers persist in their restless picking. ‘He was a smoker. Fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. At least, that’s what the fire crew said must have happened.’ Aiden’s stumbling over his words, his demeanour increasingly agitated. ‘He ended up setting the whole house alight. We had old furniture, hand-me-downs from Mum’s parents, pre-dating safety regulations. He was burned alive, Lori. The worst fucking death I can ever imagine.’ He glances at Lori then, and she sees his eyes are wet with tears.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, aware of how inadequate the words sound.
Aiden gulps in air. ‘Mum – she came home early from her shift. Wasn’t feeling well. Walked into the house right as the force of the fire blew out the living-room door. The blast caught her full-on.’ He wipes away a tear. ‘She fell, hit her head on the marble telephone table in the hall. Suffered a bad bleed inside her skull on the way to hospital. She survived, but it’s not what you’d call living. Permanent brain damage, burns over most of her body, unable to look after herself. Needs twenty-four-hour attention in a care home.’
Lori’s silent, digesting what he’s told her.
‘I blamed Dana for having me adopted. In my head, I reasoned if she’d kept me, none of it – the fire, Dad’s death, Mum getting burned – would have happened. Despite that, I had a driving need to find her. So I could discover why she gave me up. God, it’s all so messed up in my head. When I tracked her down, I only wanted her address in case I decided to get in touch. But I couldn’t. The anger got in the way.’
‘How did you do it? Track her down, I mean?’
‘Did some checking online. Filled out a BIBA form.’ On seeing Lori’s puzzled expression, he explains. ‘That stands for Birth Information Before Adoption. Got a copy of my birth certificate, then I used an intermediary agency to find her. You’d be surprised how easy it is. I didn’t do anything with the information, though, not then. I held the agency’s report in my hands, picturing her, this Dana Elizabeth Golden, and the emotions were overwhelming. However much I love my adoptive mother, my foster parents, the genetic link doesn’t exist with them.’
‘Then you found me on Facebook,’ Lori says.
‘Yes. Not just you, either. Jessie too. And I was desperate to discover more about my birth mother. Spent hours checking through her profile, her photos, her posts. Came as a shock to discover I had two sisters. I know it sounds like I used you, and I guess I did. At first, anyway. Later, it was different.’
So that’s how he knew Jessie wrote poetry. Lori feels used all right, causing fierce resentment to bubble inside her. Their so-called friendship has been a lie. Was any of it real? Has he ever really liked her, or has she merely been a pawn in his game?
‘I thought about contacting Jessie as well,’ Aiden continues, oblivious to the anger simmering inside Lori. ‘Wasn’t sure how, what with her still being only sixteen. Didn’t want to come across as some weird pervert. That’s why I focused on you. Then she died.’ He shakes his head. ‘God, that was hard. My own sister, raped and murdered, and I couldn’t say anything about it. I daren’t even go to her funeral, because of your – our – mother being there.’
No wonder he acted so strangely on hearing the news. Now, though, Lori’s glad he wasn’t at Jessie’s cremation. No doubt he’d have commandeered the occasion for his own ends, the way he did at Gourmet Delight, as well as over the roast dinner. He may be her half-brother, but right now she doesn’t like him much.
Lori remembers her suspicions that he engineered their meeting at the arboretum. If she digs deeper, what might she find? Play it cool, she tells herself. She’ll pretend she’s OK with all this, while seeing how he responds.
‘That day you met Mum and me at Oldbury Court must have been weird for you,’ she remarks.
Aiden shakes his head. ‘No. It was good. Better than good. For so long I’d seen her as a heartless bitch, a woman who had treated her baby as disposable. And there she was, just an ordinary person. So warm and caring, despite her illness. All the hatred melted away.’
‘She is. Warm and caring, I mean.’
‘I had to reconnect with her. Meeting her that day – it spurred me into action. I needed her to know I was her son. I couldn’t just blurt out I was the baby she had adopted twenty-seven years ago, though. Not when she’d been so unwell, when she was grieving over Jessie. So I took this week off work, and on Monday I visited the intermediary agency I mentioned. I got them to write to her, ask if she’d be willing to meet. Without revealing my identity in the letter, of course.’
So he’s already contacted Dana as her son, albeit anonymously. Lori’s unease ratchets up a notch.
‘I’ve been wondering about that,’ she says. ‘How come you have your foster parents’ name? And when did you become an Aiden?’
‘Once it became clear I’d be with them long-term, I decided to change my surname to theirs. However much I loved Tanya McNally, I needed to leave the past behind. The deed poll application was part of that. My foster father warned me to wait, that it was a big step. I was sure, though. Two weeks after my eighteenth birthday, I became Aiden Scott. New name, new beginnings.’
Makes sense, Lori supposes, although she’s unsure why he’d also change his first name. ‘I take it Mum’s responded to the agency’s letter, agreeing to meet you?’ she says. ‘That’s why you needed to tell me, right?’
‘Yes. I got a phone call from them today. Saying she’s been in contact, that she wants us to meet. I knew it was only a matter of time before you found out.’
From the sky, the first few drops of rain fall from the dark clouds massing above their heads. Lori stands up. She needs time alone to regroup, consider how she feels at discovering she has a brother, or half of one, not long after she lost a beloved sister. ‘I should go,’ she says.
Aiden stands as well, his expression anxious. ‘Will you tell her?’
Lori shakes her head. Play it cool, she reminds herself. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I should wait, see if she sa
ys anything. She must be planning to tell me at some stage, if she answered the agency’s letter.’
‘What she doesn’t know is that I’m her son. Right now, she thinks I’m her daughter’s friend, nothing more. I’ll leave it up to you, though. I won’t ask you to keep it a secret unless you decide that’s best.’
Lori nods. Right now, she has no idea what she’ll do.
‘I don’t know if I’ll tell her or not,’ she tells Aiden. ‘Either way, I’ll call you. Soon.’
Back home, Lori retreats to her bedroom to think through Aiden’s revelation. As well as her sense of betrayal. Her hands seek Oreo’s soft fur, starting up his rhythmic purr. Sounds reach her through the bedroom floor: Dana pottering in the kitchen, the chatter of Radio 4, the ring of her mother’s mobile. She lies on her bed, staring at the ceiling for what seems like forever, trying to decide the best course of action. In the end, she opts for honesty. No way can she face Dana over lunch with something so weighty on her mind. When she can’t procrastinate any longer, she goes downstairs, walking into the kitchen. Dana scrutinises her, her expression concerned.
‘Sweetheart,’ she says. ‘Are you OK? You didn’t seem up to talking when you got home.’
‘I’m fine,’ Lori replies. ‘But there’s something we need to discuss.’
Concern leaps into Dana’s expression. ‘Of course. Come and sit down, darling.’ She leads Lori into the living room, settling them both on the sofa. ‘What is it, my love?’
Lori bites her lip, fishing in her head for the right words.