Open Secret

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “No! I thought he looked…” Sexy. Dangerous.

  “Hot?” her sister suggested.

  “Well…yeah.”

  They both giggled.

  “Are you interested in him?” Carrie asked, her tone carefully casual.

  “No-o. I don’t know why, but… No.” Suzanne shook her head. “Are you?”

  “I might be,” Carrie admitted, “if I thought he was.”

  “I don’t think he came today because he was worried about me,” her sister said a little dryly, “and I’m the one who’s paying him.”

  “He’s been really, really nice, but…” But he hadn’t touched her beyond the courteous, hadn’t suggested they get together, hadn’t flirted.

  He had called, though, listened while she rambled, and agreed without hesitation to come with her today. Was it possible? she wondered with a spark of hope.

  Oh, for Pete’s sake! This wasn’t the time!

  She flapped both hands. “Forget Mark. It’s your turn! Tell me about you.”

  Suzanne skimmed lightly over her years with her aunt and uncle—their aunt and uncle—but Carrie got the impression that they hadn’t been all that happy.

  “You’ll want to meet your cousins,” Suzanne said. “Rodney—I’ve always called him Roddie—is a utility district lineman up in Skagit County. He’s thirty-three. Ray’s the oldest. He’s a contractor and seems to be doing really well.”

  “Are they married?”

  “Yep.” Suzanne mentioned names and ages, but they went right past Carrie. It sounded as if all the kids were little—Rodney’s wife was pregnant with their second child, and Ray’s oldest was in first grade, she remembered that much.

  “Are you close to them?”

  Suzanne looked uncomfortable. “Roddie and Ray? Not really. I mostly see them at Thanksgiving and Christmas. We’re all adults now, but… They had to share a bedroom because of me, which I think they resented, and they were pretty mean to me. Maybe it was just regular sibling stuff…”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  She shook her head.

  Carrie wanted to ask about the aunt and uncle, but at the same time she didn’t. They were the ones who had decided they couldn’t be bothered with her, who had chosen to give her away. Maybe in the end she’d been better off, but they couldn’t have known that for sure. Right now, all she knew was that she didn’t want to meet them. Maybe she never would.

  She was grateful that Suzanne didn’t talk much about them. Her tone lightened when she got to the point in her life where she’d left home.

  “I just went to Western,” which was the state university right there in Bellingham where she’d grown up, “but I lived in a dorm and I never went home for more than a few weeks again. That first summer, my roommate and I stayed in her grandfather’s big old house in Tacoma and I got a job filing in a law firm.”

  “What do you do now?”

  “I work at a title company. Really exciting, huh? But the pay is pretty good, and I like the people I work with.”

  “Are you ever tempted to…”

  “Just quit?” She made a face. “Every day. Like I said, I have this dream, but it’s not a very practical one.”

  “I’d made up my mind to quit my job,” Carrie confessed, “before I found out that I was adopted. I figure one big trauma in my life is enough at a time.”

  “What do you want to do?” her sister asked.

  “I have no idea! Isn’t that awful?” She told her the same thing she had Mark, that she had always assumed she would go into medicine in one way or another, because that’s what her family did. “It might have been different if I’d been rebellious, but I wasn’t. It was more like I was trying really, really hard to prove to someone—maybe just myself—that I took after my parents.”

  With soft sympathy, Suzanne said, “And now you know why you didn’t.”

  She tried to smile. “Now I know.”

  “Do you want to look at pictures? Then we can eat. I made a green salad and I’ve got croissants.”

  “That sounds nice.” The whole time they talked, Carrie had been aware of the photo album sitting on the coffee table. It both drew her and repelled her.

  She already felt herself changing, just from the knowledge that she was adopted. Now, after meeting her sister, who looked so much like her and shared so many character traits, she felt a further shift inside. It was uncomfortable, profound. She imagined land masses moving inside her, altering relations to each other, causing rifts and cracks as they shifted. What would it do to her to look into the face of her mother, the mother who had given birth to her, nursed her, taught her to smile?

  She took a breath and held it as Suzanne reached for the album and then scooted over to the cushion beside Carrie. Carrie’s gaze was riveted to the burgundy leather cover of the album that lay on her sister’s lap. Suzanne laid a hand on it, glanced at her, then opened it.

  On the first page was a wedding photo. Carrie knew without asking that these were her parents. She reached out involuntarily and touched the photo with her fingertips. Inside, she felt the shift she’d expected, wrenching and yet exhilarating, as if she’d inserted a piece of herself that had been missing.

  This couple, no older than she was now, smiled at each other rather than at the camera, glowing as newlyweds did. He wore a tux, she a simple white satin gown. A tiny bouquet of baby’s breath and a clip anchored the veil to her dark, wavy hair. Her daughters had gotten the shape of their faces from her, the curves of their mouths, their noses. But their eyes, Carrie saw, studying the two faces hungrily, had come from their father.

  She heard her breath shudder out, pulled back her hand.

  Suzanne glanced at her again, then turned the page. More wedding photos. Was that her grandmother, dark hair streaked with silver, but looking so much like her daughter, the bride? Carrie tried not to look at the other young woman, the matron of honor, who must be her aunt.

  Suzanne kept stealing looks at her, then turning pages. She said nothing, sensing perhaps that words weren’t needed—or wanted. Not yet.

  The young couple appeared in front of a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle, perhaps their first new car. Then a house, a tiny, white frame house on a minuscule lot. More photos as they remodeled—the house became creamy-yellow with white trim and window boxes, filled with geraniums. A white picket fence edged the sidewalk and the narrow strip of lawn.

  Their first baby was born, a red-faced infant with a fuzz of dark hair. The glow was now for her, their firstborn. She—Suzanne—blossomed in the next pages into a pretty baby, a laughing toddler, a little girl with huge dark eyes and pigtails. Another baby came, this one a boy, but bearing a strong resemblance to his big sister.

  He was a toddler when the family moved. Because, Carrie saw with a jolt, her mother was pregnant again. With her.

  In wonder, she touched this photo, too. She was in there, part of this family. How, a distant voice asked, had she never questioned why she had never seen a photograph of her adoptive mother pregnant with her? Didn’t every child like to marvel at the fact that she was in her mommy’s tummy in that picture?

  Her fingers curled and she withdrew her hand. Suzanne began turning pages again.

  This new house was larger but still old. The process of remodeling began anew. They’d become more daring, painting it a shade of blue tinged with aqua, the trim navy and cream and turquoise. They planted a front flower bed. As Marie Chauvin’s stomach swelled, a rose sent long, slender shoots up the porch railing, eventually producing creamy roses. Deep purple and sky-blue delphiniums rose from behind mounds of other perennials.

  How odd, she thought, that both sets of parents were ardent gardeners.

  Another turn of the page and there she was, newborn, face red and scrunched unhappily, dark hair plentiful.

  “I thought you were so beautiful,” Suzanne said softly.

  Carrie managed a laugh, thin though it was. “Only a big sister could be so generous.”
>
  But she got prettier in the weeks and months that followed. Dressed in a lace-trimmed red-velvet dress, a white velvet headband around her mass of dark curls, she lay on her tummy, head lifted, and beamed at the camera in a studio photo.

  With dread Carrie became aware of how few pages remained and of what that portended. It seemed to her that Suzanne turned those pages more and more slowly, as if she, too, was reluctant to reach the end.

  Carrie saw herself begin to crawl. In many photos, the three children were together, Suzanne clearly in charge, pointing to pictures in books, dangling toys in front of them, hefting her brother or holding her baby sister on the couch with their mother, likely, just out of sight.

  The last page had a pair of photos. In one, Carrie’s father sat in an easy chair and hoisted her above his head. He was grinning up at her, while she laughed down at him around her thumb firmly ensconced in her mouth.

  In the other, she sat in a high chair and her mother was swooping a spoonful of something that might have been oatmeal toward her mouth. She looked wary and mutinous, her mother gentle and amused.

  Carrie’s throat seemed to close. “How long…?” she whispered.

  “After that?” Her sister, too, looked at the photo. “Maybe a week or two. I know you’d barely begun eating solids when…” She stopped, head bent. Closed the album. After a moment, she lifted it and set it on Carrie’s lap. “This is for you to take home. I made copies so you could have your own.”

  Eyes blind with tears, Carrie reached out and gripped Suzanne’s hand. “Thank you.”

  Crying, too, Suzanne squeezed back. “What are sisters for?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “SHE’S AMAZING!” Carrie looked back one more time, as they drove away from her sister’s house. “Suzanne is amazing. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Mark glanced at her with amusement. “Didn’t I say you’d like her?”

  “Yes, but like!” She spoke the word with disdain, her hands flying as she sought to express herself. “That’s so tepid.” Her tone became accusatory. “And why didn’t you warn me how much we look alike?”

  “Uh…I did say…”

  As if he hadn’t spoken, she continued at high speed, “We stood in front of a full-length mirror in her bedroom. Why did you skip the tour, by the way? Had you already seen her house? Anyway, we just looked at ourselves and it was eerie! We’re so obviously sisters! What if we’d run into each other by accident somewhere? Think how weird that would have been!”

  He opened his mouth.

  “Of course, she’s taller. Mom,” her voice momentarily dimmed, “always called me petite, but honestly I’m just short. Oooh. I’d have been so jealous growing up if I didn’t get as tall as my sister! Maybe we’d have fought all the time,” she marveled. “I used to wish I had a sister or brother to squabble with. Now we’re too grown up and dignified to squabble. Isn’t that a fantastic word? Squabble.”

  Stopping at a red light, he turned his head and smiled at her. “And you are seriously wound up.”

  “I am, aren’t I? It’s just that… She’s so wonderful! My sister. Wow.” She shoved a hand into her hair. “That sounds bizarre. Wonderful, but bizarre.”

  “I take it the visit was a complete success.”

  “Yes.” For the first time, her voice softened, and she looked down at the photo album that lay on her lap. “She gave me this. With pictures of…” She stopped; her teeth closed momentarily on her lower lip. “Of my parents. And Suzanne and Lucien and me. There’s a picture of me just a few hours old.”

  He heard the tears behind the wobbly words and took her hand. She squeezed back.

  “You know,” he said, “the first time I did an adoption search, I wondered if I should. It was a woman who’d gotten pregnant when she was sixteen and, under pressure from her family, gave the baby up for adoption. After the reunion, I saw her face and thought, Yeah, I did the right thing. You have that same look right now.”

  “Astonishment? Giddiness? Completion?”

  “All of the above.” He pondered briefly. “I’m not sure about completion yet, though. You two have a ways to go.”

  She turned her huge brown eyes on him. “What do you mean?”

  He should tape record this little speech. These three little words. “Nobody is perfect.”

  Sounding mutinous, she argued, “But maybe sometimes they’re perfect for each other.”

  There you go, he thought: honeymoon.

  Of course, once upon a time, he’d believed the same. On his wedding day, he had gazed into his new bride’s eyes and thought with awe, She’s perfect.

  Emily would have been enough for him. Too bad he hadn’t been enough for her.

  Now he said, “Just take my word for it. One of these days, you’ll be irritated at Suzanne. You’ll wish she’d quit calling, back off. Or maybe you’ll be mad that she hasn’t returned your calls. You’ll wonder why she ever searched for you at all if she doesn’t want to be a real sister. Or maybe you’ll discover your values don’t line up. You love animals, she thinks it’s crazy to swerve to avoid hitting the bunny hopping across the road.”

  Carrie made a sound of protest.

  He grinned at her. “Okay, so she’d swerve, too. I did say she’s a nice woman. But you were raised differently by people with different priorities, different political beliefs, different outlooks. Sisters who grew up together have some basic stuff to fall back on that you two are missing.”

  “But instead we have the fun of discovery that those sisters miss out on,” she said stubbornly.

  He accelerated onto the freeway. “True.”

  “Why are you trying to rain on my parade?”

  “I’m not…”

  “You are! Listen to yourself!”

  Was she right? Why was he being so negative, trying to bring her down? Why not let her glory in this first infatuation?

  Christ, was he jealous?

  He made a guttural sound. No. Damn it, no! He wasn’t that petty. He was glad two women he liked had connected the way they had.

  Examining the hollow feeling in his chest, he faced the truth. No, what he was afraid was that Carrie wouldn’t need him anymore.

  “You’re right,” he said with regret. “I’m so busy trying to brace you for might happens, I’m not letting you enjoy what did happen.”

  She gave him a brilliant smile. “Thank you. Oh, Mark. I am so glad you found me and talked me into being brave enough to meet Suzanne. If not for you…”

  Voice harsh, he interrupted, “You’d have called her anyway. She paid me. I did my job. I brought you together with your sister. End of story.”

  Lips parted, Carrie stared at him. He refused to turn his head and meet her gaze.

  “Is it?”

  He unpried his jaw. “That’s the good part of the story. The bad part is, you’re not speaking to your parents anymore, are you?”

  She pressed her lips together.

  “I didn’t think so. So where you’re concerned, maybe I did the right thing, maybe I didn’t. You got a new sister, you’ve lost the people who have loved you all your life.” He swore under his breath. “Don’t credit me with a good deed.”

  Way to go, he congratulated himself. She’s glowing at him with a “you’re so wonderful” expression and he blasts it. What the hell was wrong with him?

  She had turned her head away and was looking out the passenger window. They’d reached Northgate; another few miles, he’d turn onto 520 to take the bridge to Bellevue.

  She won’t call again, he thought.

  The next exit came and went.

  Suddenly she looked at him. “All that time you spent with me. When you came over that night, and the hours we talked on the phone. Did you keep track and charge Suzanne?”

  It was like an upper cut to his jaw, slipped past his guard.

  “No.”

  “So why do you want me to think you’re not nice?”

  Nice. Talk about goddamn tepid words.
/>   “I want you to like me. But not for the wrong reasons.” There it was, in a nutshell.

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “You’re feeling grateful right now…”

  Her whole posture was indignant, her back not touching the seat. “So?”

  “You feel a glow. I’m part of what you feel good about.”

  Even more sharply, Carrie said again, “So?”

  He’d talked himself into a mess. “I don’t mix business and personal.”

  Incredulously she said, “It’s too personal if I think you’re smart and kind and someone I’d like as a friend?”

  “Friends, no.” He hesitated, concentrated on his driving for a minute as he took the exit to the floating bridge. Finally, into the silence, he said, “Under other circumstances, I’d ask you out.”

  She blinked a couple of times. “Under other circumstances…?”

  “If we’d met differently.” Even to his own ears, he sounded grim.

  Carrie laughed. “I didn’t hire you, Mark. Suzanne did.”

  His fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “I know that…”

  “And I’d love to go out with you.”

  Another jab to the solar plexus. “What?”

  “I don’t like to be out late on a weeknight, but we could have dinner. Oh, you wouldn’t want to leave Michael when you’ve been gone all day, too. Um, next weekend?”

  He gave his head a dazed shake. “Did you hear anything I said?”

  She smiled at him, her eyes sparkling. “You mean, that stuff about a glow?”

  “Yes, damn it!”

  “Shouldn’t a woman who wants to go out with you feel a glow? That seems kinda normal to me.”

  Shit. Time to be blunt. “I don’t want you to think you’re interested in me when what you really are is grateful.”

  She digested that, lashes fluttering again. “Mark, the first time I saw you, I thought…”

  His mouth quirked. “That I was going to mug you?”

  Her chuckle was a delightful crescendo. “Well, yeah. But I also thought you were sexy.”

  Really? He squared his shoulders and puffed out his chest, then realized he was reacting like some cartoon character. Me man, you woman.