Open Secret

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “I don’t understand.” Her mother shook her head. “Your father and I both thought…”

  “That you’d be planning a summer wedding? Just think of how much money I’m saving you.”

  Her mother gave her a reproving look. “I can’t think of anything in the world I’d love more than to plan your wedding.”

  Damn it, her eyes welled with tears. She sniffed. “Thank you, Mom. Someday you’ll have the chance. I promise. Just…not yet.”

  “We’re not getting any younger, you know.”

  Oh God. Guilt. But also, she realized with a yawning pit where her stomach should be, the truth. Her dad’s heart condition had really scared her, making her face for the first time that her folks were aging. Her friends had parents in their fifties, not their sixties and seventies. Carrie’s dad had been forty-four when she was born, her mother forty. A late surprise.

  Think how horrible it would be if they weren’t still alive to help her plan her wedding, for Daddy to walk her down the aisle, for her mother to smile through her tears from the first pew in the church. But she couldn’t get married just to make them happy. Lord knows, she didn’t want them still alive to see her divorced.

  She took her mother’s hand across the table. “Craig is just part of it,” she confessed. “I’ve felt so restless lately. I’m thinking of quitting my job.”

  Her mother looked aghast. “But you haven’t been there that long!”

  “A year. And it’s deadly.”

  She was a technical writer for a company that manufactured medical instruments. Her prose would not win her a Pulitzer. She bored even herself.

  “But it was so perfect!” Her mother was still protesting. “It combines your medical expertise and your wonderful writing skill.”

  Carrie had earned a degree in nursing before she’d realized—let herself realize—that she didn’t want to be a nurse. She’d grown up saying she wanted to be a doctor—a doctor and a ballerina, she’d told her kindergarten class—but her grades and test scores had hinted that medical school was not in her future. Given that Mom had been a surgical nurse when she met Julian St. John, nursing was the obvious backup. In their household, dinner table conversations were often about new surgical procedures or methods of pain control.

  But Carrie had discovered that she was squeamish. She still shuddered at the memory of having to clean and pack an obese nursing home patient’s cavernous bed sores. She’d fled to the bathroom and thrown up afterward. Nonetheless, she did work for a year on a pediatric ward at an area hospital, where she fought a daily battle with her dislike of feeling subservient. Taking temperatures, installing IVs, stepping deferentially back when the doctor arrived… Ugh.

  She’d gone from pediatric nursing to working in the genetics lab at Children’s Hospital, but that got boring once she quit marveling at the fact that she was looking at strands of DNA. From there she’d accepted the job at Helvix Medical Instruments.

  Now, to her mother, she said, “I don’t even know if it’s the job. I just need a change. You know me. Constancy isn’t my middle name.”

  “But…why?” her mother asked in perplexity. “Did we let you flit between interests so much that you never learned to stick with anything once it lost its novelty?”

  That stung, although she tried to be honest with herself. Did she leave jobs and even relationships once the first excitement wore off?

  Maybe.

  She hated to think she was that shallow. But she didn’t know how else to explain the way she chafed whenever she looked around and thought, This is it. This is my life. She kept thinking the next job would be different, that she’d find where she fit. For a long time, she’d thought she did fit with Craig. Or perhaps she’d wanted him to be a fit, because he was so perfect.

  In other words, her parents had loved him. A resident at Children’s Orthopedic, he’d reminded her from the beginning of her father even though they didn’t look at all alike. He was kind, patient, brilliant, unfailingly dignified. She’d never seen him talk while he had a mouthful of food, or laugh so hard she’d seen his larynx, or get really mad. Even that last scene. He’d been disappointed. Hurt. Not furious.

  He wasn’t passionate. How could she be expected to love someone passionately whose own emotions were so damned reasonable?

  She bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Mom. I know you liked him…”

  “Oh, sweetie! It’s not that.” Her mother reached for her hand and squeezed, hard. “I just want you to be happy. To be settled.”

  Carrie was startled by a rebellious thought. Maybe I don’t want to settle.

  Why was it that being settled—what an awful word—had to be the ultimate goal?

  And why did the very idea stifle her so?

  “I’m not unhappy, you know,” she told her mother, squeezing back. “I just don’t necessarily want the same things you think I should. At least not yet. I’m different from you.” She hated how sad she sounded when she said the last, but couldn’t seem to help herself.

  “I know.” Her mother tried to smile, but her eyes were damp and her voice had a quaver. “I know, dear.”

  MARK CALLED Suzanne Chauvin two days later to give her the bad news.

  “I located the attorney’s files. He handled only a few adoptions, and your sister’s and brother’s were not among them.”

  There was a long silence. “But…” He waited some more while she sputtered another, “But…” As he’d seen her do in the office, at length she gathered herself. “How did you find his records?”

  She sounded a little peeved at his quick success where she’d failed, and he didn’t blame her.

  “Connections. I asked around until I found the attorney who bought his practice. He’d actually merged his small practice with another one, but he’d kept Cavanagh’s original files.”

  “Maybe some of them got lost in the shuffle.”

  “It’s conceivable, of course,” he admitted. “But the guy seemed pretty confident. Unless Cavanagh kept the files on your sister and brother at home, they should have been with the others.”

  “If my aunt and uncle were insistent that the adoption be kept confidential…”

  “The others were all similar, private adoptions. Why would Lucien’s and Linette’s be any different?”

  “I…don’t know.”

  As gently as possible, he said, “My suspicion is that your aunt and uncle misled you. They did have legal dealings at one time with Henry Cavanagh. He handled a minor lawsuit filed against your uncle in his business. So they knew his name, knew he was retired, maybe had even heard he died.”

  “And thought I’d consider him a dead end,” she said slowly, anger growing in her voice. “I can imagine them doing that.”

  “I’d like to talk to them. It would help if you accompanied me.”

  Often clients hesitated at a time like this. Adoptees were often terrified of straining the bonds that held them to their adoptive families. No matter how desperately they were driven by the need to know where they came from, they were equally afraid of losing what they already had.

  Suzanne was the exception. “You bet,” she agreed. “When?”

  They left it that she’d arrange a time, and they would drive up to Bellingham together, where her aunt and uncle lived and where she’d grown up.

  “Evening is fine,” he said. “My hours are always irregular. I have a housekeeper to watch Michael.”

  She called him back a couple hours later and said her aunt had reluctantly agreed to meet with him the following evening.

  “Uncle Miles won’t like it,” Suzanne said. “But if he blocks me too obviously, it’ll look like he’s hiding something. And in his view, no decision he’s ever made is wrong, so what does he have to hide?”

  “And he never admits he’s wrong?” Mark guessed.

  “Not in my memory,” she said with a tartness that made him like her anew.

  She lived in Edmonds, a pricey community north of Seattle that clung to a hill
side dropping to the Sound. The ferry traffic dominated the main route from the freeway, backed up for miles on summer weekends when vacationers were escaping to Hood Canal or the Washington coast. Downtown Edmonds catered to visitors with small shops and restaurants, all within a couple of blocks of the ferry terminal and the beach.

  Suzanne’s was a modest older home on a street of larger ones, Mark discovered the next evening. It had the look of a summer cabin, simple and boxy, painted gray with white trim, the attached garage appearing to be a later addition.

  Her yard defied the norm in this neighborhood, whether by design or neglect, he couldn’t tell. Her lawn was ragged and studded with dandelions, which the next door neighbor with his velvet green sward probably didn’t appreciate. Old shrubs rambled without any apparent effort to prune them, one ancient lilac nearly blocking a window. The dark turned earth in a few beds showed that she’d made some effort there, while grass wandered into others.

  She came out immediately, so he didn’t get a chance to see the interior. She looked as pretty as spring in a short, lacy cardigan over a tank top and a flowery skirt that swirled around her legs as she got in.

  “All set?”

  She nodded. “A little nervous. They do love me, in their own way. I hate to upset them.”

  He didn’t back out. “Your call.”

  “I’ve started this, and I’m determined to finish it. Besides, I’m mad that they lied to me.”

  They chatted as he drove, at first about innocuous subjects like traffic, local politics and real estate prices, with him finally suggesting that she tell him about her aunt and uncle.

  The uncle had a one-man plumbing business, while her aunt had worked at a dry cleaner for as long as Suzanne could remember. Her voice softened when she talked about her aunt Jeanne, who sounded like a nice woman who didn’t like to rock the boat.

  Suzanne’s voice became considerably more reserved when she spoke of her uncle, who had clearly treated his own kids—both boys—with blatant favoritism.

  “Honestly,” she said, gazing thoughtfully ahead through the windshield, “I think he didn’t quite know what to do with a girl. Maybe if I’d liked sports, but I was never interested. So he pretty much ignored me.”

  Jackass, he thought.

  “Maybe he’d have done better if they’d kept Lucien. I’ve wondered.”

  He glanced at her. “Did you ever wish…”

  “That they had?” She gave a soft laugh that sounded a little sad. “Sometimes. Isn’t that funny? Adopted kids imagine what their ‘real’ parents are like, and I used to dream instead about what kind of adoptive family I might have gotten. And what my life might have been like.”

  “Were they rich?”

  “Oh, of course!” She was smiling now, relaxing. “I was their little princess. I had a horse, and my own car when I turned sixteen—not the chance to borrow whichever heap of junk one of my cousins was driving at the time. I might have been adopted by some Hollywood producer or director who’d cast me, so I was already a star by the time I was eighteen.”

  “Do you act?” he asked.

  “Heck no! I wouldn’t be caught dead in front of a camera!” Her laugh was a gurgle of good humor. “This was a fantasy, remember. The whole point is, I was someone else because a more glamorous set of parents had given me the right opportunities.”

  The hesitation before she said “parents” was so small most people wouldn’t have noticed it. Mark was used to noticing everything.

  His client, he suspected, never thought of her aunt and uncle as parents, even if they had raised her. He doubted she’d ever quite thought of the fictional couple who adopted her as parents, either. Because, of course, she had parents, and probably still mourned them.

  Miles and Jeanne Fulton owned a 1970s era rambler with, Mark noted with interest, a razor-edged lawn, a row of junipers ruthlessly clipped into a low hedge and a driveway that was cleaner than most people’s kitchen floors.

  Suzanne Chauvin’s house represented a little bit of a rebellion against her aunt and uncle’s standards, he diagnosed.

  The aunt, a woman who looked much like an older version of Suzanne, met them fluttering at the door.

  “I don’t know what else we can possibly tell you!” she said in agitation. “Your uncle hates to have all of that dredged up again.”

  Mark said, in a calming voice, “We’re hoping you’ve had time to remember a little more since Ms. Chauvin first asked you about the adoption. Memories do tend to come back slowly, bits and pieces just popping up.”

  “Well, yes, but…” Wringing her hands, she backed into the small kitchen. “Your uncle’s in the living room.” As if they couldn’t hear the television. “Go ahead. Can I bring anyone coffee?”

  They both accepted, more to make her happy than because either of them wanted it.

  The house was small, probably not over twelve hundred square feet was his guess. Suzanne had told him there were only three bedrooms and a bathroom down the hall, along with the living room and a kitchen with a large eating space that he could see. Admittedly not much space to raise even three kids, never mind five.

  On the other hand, Mark had known people to rough-in a bedroom in a garage, throw up a small addition, or move when their family enlarged.

  The uncle rose to greet them and briefly gripped Suzanne’s hand. Perhaps five feet eight inches, he was lean but strong looking, with a tattoo that appeared to be from Navy days on one bicep below the sleeve of his white undershirt. His hair was as ruthlessly trimmed as the lawn and the junipers, a graying brown buzz-cut. Deep furrows marked his forehead.

  “So what’s this nonsense?” He jerked his head toward Mark. “A P.I.? You’re wasting hard-earned money to hire someone to find a couple of people who won’t even know who you are?”

  Mark felt her stiffen beside him. “Whether they remember me or not, they’re my sister and brother.”

  He snorted. “Goddamn foolishness, if you ask me.”

  Nobody had. Both were too polite to say so.

  He sat back down in a recliner that dominated the dark-paneled living room.

  Suzanne gave Mark a glance in which he read apology, dismay and a question: Now what? He nudged her toward a love seat and they sat side by side, facing her uncle Miles.

  His wife, appearing with a tray, said, “For goodness’ sakes, Miles! Turn off the TV.”

  So she wasn’t completely cowed.

  He scowled at her but complied.

  She set down the tray on the coffee table and let them all take a cup and add sugar or cream. Mark sipped his. Instant. Not even the good strong stuff you found in rural cafés, and sure as hell not the espresso he made at home. He set his cup down.

  He opened the briefcase he’d brought just to look official and took out a notepad that he rested on his knee. The click of his pen made the aunt jerk.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me,” he began. “Ms. Chauvin, your niece, has hired me to find her sister and brother. My agency specializes in finding adoptees or birth parents. This shouldn’t be a difficult quest.”

  Dead silence. The aunt stared at him as if he were toying with the pin on a grenade. Uncle Miles simmered, shifting in the recliner, his fingers flexing on the armrests. Obviously neither was real happy to learn that Mark thought he could find their long-lost niece and nephew.

  He cleared his throat. “However, it appears that Ms. Chauvin had some mistaken information. She believed that an attorney, Henry Cavanagh, had handled the adoption. I was able to locate his files and discovered that he was involved in very few adoptions. Your niece’s and nephew’s were not among them.”

  The aunt gasped, “Oh dear! I thought… Didn’t we put it in his hands, Miles?”

  “We never told you he did anything but give us advice. Some agency took those kids. And they were glad to have ’em! Said there were people pining for cute young kids. You were too old,” he said directly to Suzanne, “to be as appealing.”

  Mark’s
jaw tightened. Son of a bitch.

  Suzanne’s aunt squeaked in protest.

  Uncle Miles harrumphed. “Anyway, Jeanne always wanted a daughter. I guess they would have taken you, too, but it never came up.”

  “What agency took them?” Mark asked as if the question wasn’t the grenade that had Aunt Jeanne twitching.

  The Fultons looked at each other.

  “Oh, I’m not sure…” Aunt Jeanne pressed a hand to her chest as if to still palpitations. “Miles…?”

  He glowered at his niece and Mark. “What if we choose not to cooperate in this wild goose chase?”

  “I’m very good at finding people. I will find Linette and Lucien.” Mark paused. “I know when I do they’ll want to meet you, their blood relatives. To make a connection, and to find out why you were unable to take them into your home. The fact that you did everything you could to help my client find them will make a big difference in how they view you initially.”

  They got what he was saying. He saw Miles Fulton swallow, heard his wife’s stifled sob.

  “Come,” he said. “Aren’t you curious? Won’t you be glad to find out what they’re like now?”

  In a thick, frustrated voice, Uncle Miles said, “It was called Adoption and Family Services. Based in Everett.”

  Mark had worked with the organization before and found the staff willing to cooperate within the limits of the law.

  “Satisfied?” Miles Fulton snapped at his niece.

  She met his furious gaze with a dignity that Mark admired. “I will be as soon as you sign a waiver so that they’ll open the records.”

  Handy to have a client who’d educated herself. Without a word, Mark pulled out a waiver he’d already typed up and handed it, with a pen, to Miles Fulton. Suzanne’s uncle signed with an angry slash, handed it to his wife and stalked out of the living room.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MAKING THIS KIND of phone call was one of the easy thrills of his line of work. No complications or hurt yet, just simple joy.