Open Secret

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Nurseries displayed a variety of intriguing plants, and artists had created amazing stepping stones from broken china plates set in crazy mosaic patterns or cast from concrete to look like slabs of limestone with fossilized leaf patterns. Concrete cat sculptures, benches carved from driftwood, amazing, whimsical creatures made of rusting iron tools and old springs all made Carrie wish she had a garden to set them in. Someday, she promised herself.

  She kept seeing things her mother would have liked. She knew Mom had been looking for a new potting bench, and a nice older couple was selling ones they’d made themselves. She took their card for her mother. A rose nursery had some new hybrid teas that she wondered if her mother had seen, and the workers were touting a new fertilizer for roses that they thought beat everything else they’d ever tried.

  She bought a wonderful ceramic pot that had iron rings on each side and was filled with plants with foliage that shaded from lime-green to cream, some variegated. She’d always had potted geraniums on her small balcony, but this was more interesting.

  Along with several unusual perennials, Suzanne bought a steel obelisk to grow a clematis on and a copper birdbath that she planned to hang from the eaves of her house. She left Carrie to guard their stash while she went to get the car.

  “What a fun day,” she said, during the drive back to Edmonds. “I’m so glad you came.” She grinned. “I might have spent less money without you egging me on, but what the heck!”

  “Come on, admit it,” Carrie teased back. “You invited me just so I would egg you on and you could blame me for your extravagance.”

  Suzanne laughed. “You need a garden of your own.”

  “I’ve been thinking that.” She made a face. “But if anything, I may go the other way. I told you I was thinking of going back to school.”

  Suzanne glanced at her. “Right.”

  “Well, to afford that I may need to find a roommate or maybe see if I can rent a room from a friend. I hate to give up having my own place, but it won’t kill me for a year.”

  “No, but I can see that it would be hard when you’re used to living on your own.” Suzanne hesitated. “I don’t suppose you’d want to commute.”

  “Commute?” Carrie echoed in puzzlement.

  Suzanne hesitated before replying. “I was just thinking…” She began tentatively, then finished in a rush, “Well, that you might consider moving in with me.”

  “Really?” Carrie turned her whole body inside the seat belt. “You wouldn’t mind?”

  Suzanne flashed a brilliant smile. “I would be so thrilled to have you! I do have that extra bedroom, you know, and maybe we could make up for some of what we missed. Borrowing each other’s clothes and giggling about dates and grumbling about work.”

  Dazzled by the idea, Carrie said, “Wow. You mean it?”

  “Honestly…” Her sister stole a sheepish look at her before returning her attention to the freeway ahead. “I’ve been trying to think of a way to ask if you might like to come stay for a while. I knew you were job hunting, and I thought maybe you could find one farther north. So…are you kidding? Yes! Yes! I mean it.”

  Carrie was about to say, When can I move in? when Suzanne went on.

  “You don’t think your adoptive parents would be upset, do you?”

  There it was again, that tiny stress on “adoptive.” Carrie tried not to mind, but she did, and that made her response more cautious than it would have been a minute ago.

  “I don’t know. Suzanne, I want to think about it, okay? The idea of living with you sounds fantastic, but I’d be commuting at the worst time of day. Anyway, I think I’m too late to get into the program to start this fall. I don’t know if they take students winter or spring quarter. I’ll have to find out.”

  “Sure,” Suzanne said. “I just thought I’d get my bid in.”

  “It’s really nice of you.” Carrie smiled at her. “Thank you.”

  After leaving Suzanne’s, her pot on the passenger side floor where she kept glancing at it, Carrie thought about the garden art show again, about the enthusiastic conversations she’d heard around her, about Suzanne’s delight and, especially, about the hundred and one things Carrie wished she’d been able to point out to her mom. Despite her pleasure in the day and her excitement about Suzanne’s offer, Carrie was conscious of a hollow feeling inside her.

  She missed her parents. She missed them a lot.

  So much, she realized the time had come to give them a chance to explain why they’d made the choices they had. It was time to talk to them, to grow up and accept the idea that her parents weren’t perfect, but she could love them anyway.

  Maybe, it was time to forgive them.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  GRAVEL CRUNCHED under the tires of Carrie’s Miata. This time, she drove with care, creeping around the circle, easing to a stop so as not to disturb the pristine driveway.

  The garage doors were all closed, so she couldn’t tell if her father was home yet. Usually by seven-thirty he was, and if he was listening to Mom at all, he’d be shortening his hours at the hospital anyway. Carrie had decided to gamble that they’d both be here on this sunny June evening. Yesterday she’d called a couple of times, but gotten only the answering machine. They rarely went out on weeknights, so she’d decided to wait until tonight.

  She got out and stood for a minute looking at her mother’s rose garden and the sweeping view of Elliott Bay and Seattle beyond. The hybrid teas and floribundas were in full, glorious bloom. The rich scent drifted even this far. This year her mother had planted alyssum along the edges of the brick walkways, forming a foaming lavender and white hedge of sorts. Heaven forbid that Mom would have let them wander among the roses! Carrie thought with fond tolerance.

  She’d started toward the front door when it opened, surprising her. “Dad!” she exclaimed, when he stepped out and shut the door behind him.

  He had aged, Carrie thought with dismay, or else she was just noticing. He looked stern, more stooped than she remembered, his refined features honed in the way of an old man.

  Instead of coming down the couple of steps to her, he stayed at the top. Voice icy, he said, “How dare you! Do you know what you’ve done to your mother? And now you stop by as if you can swoop in anytime?”

  The expression on his face was so close to hate, it seared her lungs, robbed her of breath.

  “I…I didn’t mean…” she faltered, then gasped. “Mom! She’s not sick? Or…or…”

  “You’ve broken her heart.” Along with hatred, she saw contempt. “And after everything we’ve done for you.”

  The emptiness inside her ballooned, swelling with ghastly, frightening speed. The air seemed to shimmer, distorting her vision so that her own father looked alien.

  “Everything you’ve done for me?” Carrie whispered.

  Her whole life, everything she had counted on, came down to this: they had taken her in, and in return she was required to be the perfect, loving, unquestioning daughter. Until she found out she was adopted, the contract had been unspoken, but apparently she was supposed to have understood that it had always been in place.

  “The car is yours,” she heard herself say in a voice she didn’t recognize. She let the keys fall to the gravel. Without even looking to see whether anything of hers was in it, she turned and walked away, down the driveway, following the low boxwood hedge.

  Gravel crunched behind her. “Carrie…”

  Dumb with shock, she didn’t even look back.

  MARK CAME IN the door at home, weary. He’d spent a fruitless evening following a man whose wife suspected him of infidelity as the guy did the most mundane of errands. Mark had begun to wonder if he’d somehow tipped off his target and they were playing some elaborate game. Nobody spent that long looking at hardware without buying a goddamn thing.

  “Daddy!”

  He scooped Michael up, gave him a huge, restorative hug, and said to the woman who was right behind his son, “Heidi, thanks for staying. What wo
uld I do without you?”

  She laughed. “Find someone just as good? No, let me think. Nobody’s as brilliant and funny as me, right, Michael?”

  “Right!” the boy said on cue.

  “Or cooks as well as you do.” Mark had just taken an experimental sniff. “Please tell me some of that’s left.”

  “In the microwave, just waiting to be reheated. It’s still warm. Two minutes should do it.”

  “Was it good?” Mark whispered in his son’s ear, just loud enough for Heidi to overhear.

  “Yeah!” Michael stole a glance at Heidi, then whispered, “’Cept for the mushrooms. I didn’t eat them. They’re gross.”

  She rolled her eyes. “He didn’t think they were gross the last time I made stroganoff.”

  “Ryan says they grow out of things that rot.”

  “Well…”

  Hearing her hesitation, he said, “They do! Eew!”

  “If I remember right,” she said, “Ryan’s the one who won’t eat anything but peanut butter and Wonder bread.”

  “He likes pizza.”

  “Oh, there you go,” she teased. “Mother Nature’s most nutritious offering.”

  “Ryan says…”

  The doorbell rang, startling them all. Mark actually jumped, then set Michael down. Who the hell…?

  Dusk had fallen, purple and soft. Fortunately he’d left the porch light on. Mark peered into the peephole and saw Carrie through its distortion. She looked… He didn’t know, but he swore and threw open the door.

  She stood on the porch, face bleached of color, swaying as if she’d collapse any minute. She hugged herself, as if she was wounded someplace he couldn’t see.

  “Carrie!” He swore and reached for her. “What’s wrong?”

  Unresisting, she let him steer her across the doorstep. Heidi and Michael, side by side, stared at her.

  “Carrie?” Mark said again, urgently. “What is it? Talk to me, damn it!”

  “My parents…” She shuddered, as if for breath. “They don’t want me. My father…” Her slender body was racked by an earthquake of emotion. “He said…things…”

  Mark growled a word he shouldn’t have let slip in front of Michael and swept her into his arms. She stood against him, stiff, with fine shivers rippling through her.

  He murmured reassuring nonsense, rubbing her back to bring warmth to her chilled body.

  Beyond her, Heidi said, “Mark, why don’t I take Michael home with me for the night? He enjoys staying, and I don’t have any plans. I can get him to school in the morning…”

  Carrie wrenched back. “I’m so sorry! I thought this was Michael’s evening with your dad! I shouldn’t have come…”

  Mark snaked an arm around her and pulled her back against him. “Yeah, you should have. Dad had to cancel, but it’s okay.” Over her head, he said to Heidi, “Would you?” and then to Michael, “Do you mind, buddy?”

  Michael’s eyes were saucer-wide and scared. He shook his head hard and clutched Heidi’s hand.

  Quietly she said, “We’ll go pack a bag.”

  “Thank you,” Mark mouthed, and she gave a quick nod.

  He steered Carrie into the kitchen, planted her on a stool and took a second to put water on to boil. Sweetened tea did wonders for someone in shock, and she sure as hell was in shock.

  Going back to her, he took both her hands. Voice gentle, he asked, “Sweetheart, what happened?”

  Her face tried to crumple, but she schooled it. “I really shouldn’t have come. I couldn’t call… I left my cell phone and my jacket, and it took a long time to take buses. I had to transfer twice.”

  She’d left her cell phone. Where? Home? But why wouldn’t she have called him from there? And why buses?

  “Did you go see your parents? Is that what happened?”

  She sniffed and nodded.

  “Were they angry?”

  At last, her eyes filled with tears that spilled over and ran unheeded down her cheeks. “Daddy…my father. He came outside and said I’d broken my mother’s heart. And…and how dare I, after everything they’d done for me.”

  His own, rarely aroused temper flared into hot life. “Everything they’d done for you?” Mark echoed with incredulity.

  Through the tears, the hurt in her eyes dealt a blow to his heart. Very softly, she said, “He was so angry. It was as if they’d bought me. I got parents and nice things, and they got…I don’t know. An obedient, sweet, decorative daughter. The chance to play house.”

  Not a violent man, Mark wanted to punch some sense into the son of a bitch. He forced himself to speak calmly. “Carrie, you know he probably didn’t mean what he said. We say things when we’re hurt. Things that are meant to hurt the other person.”

  Almost blindly, she searched his face. “I felt…so cheap. As if I’d been using them.”

  “Carrie… They’re your parents. They gave out of love.”

  Her face was shiny with tears. Mucous ran down her upper lip. “Did they?”

  He moved his hands up and down her arms, feeling how cold she was. “You know they did. You know they love you.”

  She shook her head in denial.

  He grabbed a napkin from the counter, and while she mopped her cheeks and blew her nose, he went back to the stove. The teakettle had been whistling for a couple of minutes. He took a mug from the cupboard, spooned honey into it atop a tea bag and poured boiling water.

  As he set the kettle back down, Heidi and Michael appeared in the kitchen doorway, Michael’s eyes still wide and skittish. He stayed close to Heidi’s side.

  “We’re taking off,” she said.

  “Thank you.” Mark crossed the room to lift Michael up and give him a smack. “You have fun, okay? Don’t keep Heidi up all night.”

  His son rewarded him with a tiny giggle.

  Heidi surprised Mark by going to Carrie, giving her a swift hug and saying, “Carrie, right? You’ll be okay.”

  Then she came back to Mark and his son, took Michael’s hand and said, “We’re off.”

  A moment later, he heard the front door close.

  Carrie sagged. “I’m so sorry, Mark! I upset Michael. I didn’t think. It was stupid. I just…I didn’t know where to go.”

  He lifted her bodily, turned so that he was the one sitting on the stool, and held her sideways on his lap. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you came here.”

  “You…you don’t mind?”

  The uncertainty in her voice wrung out his heart.

  “I’d have minded if you hadn’t come.”

  “Oh.” In a simple gesture of trust, she laid her head on his shoulder and her whole body seemed to go slack.

  He cuddled her as she seemed to let the anguish go, becoming boneless. Then he reached a long arm over the counter for the tea, dumped the bag unceremoniously on the tile counter and handed her the mug.

  “Drink. You need to get something warm in you.”

  With a sound that might have been a sigh, Carrie sat up and sipped. As she drank, color leached back into her face. At last, he took the mug from her hand, set it on the counter, and tilted her face up.

  “You look better,” he decided.

  “I feel better. And even dumber, to make such a production out of this. My mother…” She stopped, closed her eyes, swallowed. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “She used to call me a drama queen. I thought I’d, um, outgrown it.”

  “I think you suffered a trauma. Some drama is called for.” When she made a movement, he let her slide off his lap. “Suppose we go in the living room, get comfortable and you tell me exactly what happened.”

  “Um…” Her cheeks went pink. “It’s finally occurred to me that, if Heidi was still here, you must have just gotten home. Have you had dinner?”

  “Dinner can wait.”

  “Why don’t you eat,” she suggested, “and I’ll tell you the whole sad story while I watch.”

  Understanding from her attempt at a light tone that she’d feel better if he quit
treating her like a hurt child, Mark said, “Sure you don’t mind?”

  “Positive.”

  He glanced in the microwave to find a plate of beef stroganoff on noodles, neatly covered in plastic wrap, and hit 2:00. While the microwave hummed, he grabbed a beer and silverware. Carrie poured herself a glass of milk, peeked in the ceramic cookie jar on the counter and took out a freshly baked oatmeal raisin cookie.

  “Wow. Why haven’t you married Heidi?”

  “She’s engaged to someone else,” he said dryly.

  “Oh. Right. Lucky guy.”

  “She’s a gem,” Mark agreed. The microwave beeped and he took his plate to the table.

  Carrie followed and sat across from him, the glass of milk in front of her. She nibbled at her cookie, but he sensed her interest in it wasn’t real.

  He ate hungrily until the edge was off his appetite, then said, “Okay. You dropped in on your parents?”

  She set down the cookie as if even the pretense was too much trouble. “Yes, I decided to take them by surprise.” Her tone became wry. “Another smart move on my part.”

  “But understandable. It’s hard to say much on the phone.”

  She gave him a grateful look. “I didn’t know what to say. I thought once I saw them that putting into words what we felt would come naturally.” She tried to smile and completely failed. “Maybe it did come naturally for my father. For my adoptive father, as Suzanne always makes a point of putting it.”

  “That bothers you?”

  “Oh, a little.” She waved a hand. “No biggie.”

  “No biggie” wasn’t an entirely honest answer, he guessed. But this wasn’t the moment to pursue what was a side issue.

  “So you drove over there…when?” How long had she been riding buses around Seattle, trying to figure out where to go?

  “Oh, seven, seven-thirty.” She bit her lip. “I got out of the car, admired Mom’s roses and was just turning toward the front door when Dad came out. I wondered when he shut the door behind him. He looked so angry…” Her voice faltered. She swallowed. “He said how dared I. Come to see them, I think is what he meant. After what I’d done to Mom, I still thought I could swoop in anytime I wanted. I asked if she was all right, and he said I’d broken her heart, and after everything they’d done for me.”