Open Secret
Page 20
She laughed, then glanced guiltily around and lowered her voice. “Fine. I’m going to tell them I’m dating you, though.”
He groaned. “You might want to wait on that, too.”
“No more secrets.”
“Have you ever heard of little white lies?”
Carrie laughed again. “You are a coward!”
“You’ve discovered my character flaw. That’s why I’m not a cop anymore, you know. Sheer cowardice.”
She shook her head. “Back to your invitation. How about later this week? Maybe Friday?”
They settled tentatively on Friday, although he said he’d have to talk to Heidi or find another baby-sitter. She promised to let him know how the evening with her parents went.
But after she hung up, it occurred to her that they hadn’t talked at all about them. Not once in their several conversations since had either of them said, The other night was great.
Maybe that was her fault. With everything that had been happening, there was so much she wanted to tell him about. And then, she actually felt a little shy, she realized with surprise. She didn’t want to say, Wow, that was fun, when really it meant a whole lot more than that to her. On the other hand, she didn’t want to assume by the fact that they’d made love that he, too, was falling in love. Maybe, after what his wife had done, he never intended to fall in love or get married again.
She hoped, if that was so, that he’d tell her soon. Preferably before she started believing in a future with him.
Carrie managed to drag her attention back to her computer monitor and continue work on editing a manual written by her predecessor to make it a little more user friendly. He was the kind of writer who used technical terms instead of the English language. He’d no doubt known what he was writing about, but clients probably wouldn’t. That afternoon alone, she had to get a step-by-step demonstration of the respirator twice when she couldn’t untangle sentences enough to understand what he was saying.
She drove to her parents’ straight from work, glad to be going against the rush-hour traffic that was stop-and-go heading eastbound on I-90. They must have been waiting by the front window, because the front door opened before her small car came to a stop.
Carrie parked, jumped out and flew up the steps. Her father, who’d never been physically demonstrative, caught her in a quick, hard hug before he passed her to her mother. Both women cried. Finally Dr. St. John herded them inside.
Her mom mopped her tears. “I planned dinner for a little later. I hope you’re not starving. I thought we should talk first.”
Carrie nodded. “I never gave you a chance to explain your side at all, did I?”
Her mother sat on the brocade sofa, Carrie’s dad beside her, their shoulders touching, their backs straight. Carrie chose a wing chair facing them.
“I wish I had a better explanation, but honestly, we wanted you to be ours so badly, we lied.” She glanced at her husband. “I lied. Julian never agreed that we should, but he deferred to me. I was the one who’d mourned so terribly when I realized I’d never have a baby.”
“Did you try in vitro fertilization, or drugs, or…?”
“Techniques were more primitive almost thirty years ago, but yes,” her father said. “We tried everything.”
“I was devastated.” Without looking at him, Carrie’s mother reached out a hand to her husband and he enclosed it in a comforting clasp. “Your father suggested adoption.”
He continued the tale. “We waited almost four years to get a baby. Twice we were called but the opportunity fell through. Once the mother changed her mind, once the father refused to relinquish his rights. Each time, we thought, ‘At last,’ and each time it was like…”
“A miscarriage,” Carrie’s mother said softly. “As if I’d gotten pregnant at last and miscarried. I grieved all over again.”
“Oh, Mom!”
“Finally the agency called us about you.” For a moment her smile was as luminous as it must have been that day, twenty-six years before. But then, abruptly, tears filled her eyes and her smile vanished. “We were taken to meet you. I held you, Carrie.” She searched her daughter’s face with heart-rending intensity. “You were so beautiful. You burrowed into me as if you belonged there, in my arms. I still remember the way you sighed, popped your thumb in your mouth and laid your head on my shoulder. And then…then—” Her voice broke.
Carrie’s dad glanced at her. “That was when they told us you had a brother. They hadn’t said a word until then.”
“Did you meet him?” Carrie asked.
Her father dipped his head. “He was in the midst of a raging temper tantrum. Which is probably quite normal for a child that age, but the foster parents said that he was very difficult. Very angry. When your mother tried to pick him up, he yanked away.”
Through her tears, her mother said, “It was as if you were mine, and he said, ‘Well, I’m not.’ I felt…rejected.” She tried to smile and failed. “I know how absurd that is. There I was, an adult, and he was barely three years old! But I need you to understand how fragile my confidence was. I’d spent thirteen years trying to have a baby, then another four trying to adopt. I felt like such a failure, Carrie! But you—you gave me confidence. You made me believe I could be a good mother. I was so terrified of failing with your brother.”
“We considered withdrawing our application for you,” her father said. “The idea of splitting the two of you up…! But we really did fall in love with you. And you certainly had no bond with your brother. Even the foster mother was comfortable with separating the two of you. If you’d been older, it would have been different. We were persuaded that he would be best adopted by more experienced parents.”
“Or,” her mother said, just audibly, “we persuaded ourselves.”
“Oh, Mom.” Carrie crossed the living room and fell to her knees in front of her mother, reaching for her hand. “I’m so sorry I said such awful things.”
“No, you were right to say them.” The regret on her mother’s face and the strain, were painful to see. “That’s what I’ve had to come to terms with. I don’t expect you to understand how afraid I was. On the surface, afraid that your aunt and uncle would change their minds and demand you back. But really, I think I was most afraid that I wouldn’t measure up. That I wouldn’t know how to be a mother. I asked myself if God had chosen not to give me a baby for a reason. Was I circumventing His will?”
“Oh, Mommy,” she whispered. “You were the perfect mother!”
“Except that all the time, it was a terrible lie. Eventually I almost forgot. You felt like mine! I loved you so fiercely. But I could never quite forget, of course. Once in awhile, you’d ask a question that I didn’t know the answer to. When you were four or five, you were fascinated by pregnant women. And then, of course, we had no photos of you younger than eight months old.”
“I was thinking about that myself the other day.” Carrie shook her head. “I remember you telling me a couple of rolls of film got lost in processing, and I didn’t even question it!”
“I think you did. Or you tried to. Sometimes, when you were getting too curious, I’d steer you away from coming right out and asking me anything I didn’t want to answer. Isn’t that terrible? It became this instinct, to head you off. I didn’t see then that it was like a poison. Little lies on top of other little lies.”
“Were you afraid that I’d want to find my other family?” Carrie asked.
“I think, as you got older, that I was mostly afraid of you knowing. I suppose, in some way, I felt like I was faking all along. The only way I’d succeeded was by convincing you that I was really your mother. If you discovered the truth, you’d find out I was missing some magical quality that a woman acquired in childbirth. You wouldn’t love me the same way.”
“How could you ever think that?” Carrie rose enough to hug her mother, then sank back to her heels. “It sounds like I knew what I was doing when I was a baby. I chose you to be my mommy.”
At those words, her mother cried openly. “I was so scared!” she sobbed. “I thought you wouldn’t forgive me.” Her husband patted her ineffectually and Carrie held onto her other hand and cried, too.
“I love you both so much. I was just confused and hurt,” she tried to explain. “Because I did always have doubts. I don’t look like you! When I told Ilene I was adopted, she wasn’t that surprised. And I felt like a failure, because I couldn’t measure up—especially to you, Daddy. And then, suddenly, I knew why.”
“Measure up? What are you talking about?”
“My report cards.”
“You were a fine student!” He looked startled. “It never occurred to me to be disappointed.”
“No, but I was.” She gave him a small, twisted smile. “I grew up believing I’d be a brilliant doctor like my daddy. Only, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t be.”
“I didn’t realize…”
“I hardly realized.” She squeezed his hand. “It’s only been since I found out that I’ve been coming to understand more of what I felt and why I always had this niggling sense of not-quite-belonging.”
That made her mother cry anew, and her to feel bad for saying it, but it was true.
“When that man called.” Her mother shuddered. “It was as if my worst fears had taken form. Only, it was so much worse now! For twenty-six years, we’d misled you, and all out of my pitiful need to believe you were truly mine.”
Carrie tensed at the loathing in her mother’s voice when she said “that man.”
“Your father—” her mom glanced at him “—thought again that we should tell you ourselves. But I fell apart, and he said he’d threaten legal action, scare him off.”
“Only Mark didn’t scare,” Carrie said.
“No.” Her father looked at his wife, not Carrie. “But perhaps it’s just as well. His contact brought this to a head. It’s been on my mind that we couldn’t in good conscience let you get married and have children without knowing your real medical background. You don’t even have the same blood type as either of us.”
Her mother turned her head sharply. “You never said you were thinking that way!”
“You know that I’m right. We would have had to tell her eventually. Now it’s done. Perhaps we should thank this investigator.”
Her mother suppressed a sob.
Oh Lord, Carrie thought. How do I tell them?
Maybe this wasn’t the moment.
No more secrets.
She took a deep breath. “This may not be welcome news, but I need to tell you that I’m dating him.”
“Him?” Her father raised a brow.
“Mark Kincaid. The investigator.”
His brow furrowed slightly in the way that indicated displeasure. “I thought perhaps you and Craig would work out your problems.”
“Dad… We didn’t have problems. I simply realized that I didn’t love him. And truthfully, that he didn’t love me. I told myself he just wasn’t a passionate man, but, honestly, I think he just wasn’t passionate about me. I was suitable and he found me attractive, he liked the fact that I understood his medical talk, thanks to Mom I knew how to entertain his colleagues… But the kind of love that means you’d lay down your life for another person?” She shook her head.
Looking perturbed, Dr. St. John said, “I didn’t realize you were dissatisfied. Are you certain he wasn’t just…restrained?”
“I’m certain.”
His wife said, “A woman does know, Julian.”
He sighed. “But a private investigator?”
He made the profession sound unsavory.
“Mark owns a successful business, Dad. He specializes in reuniting birth parents and their children.”
A spasm crossed her mother’s face.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Carrie squeezed her hand again. “But I think he’s right. I should have known. I’m so glad now that I’ve met my sister. I wish…” She stopped, not wanting to make her mother feel worse about Lucien than she did.
“You wish?” Her mother looked into her eyes. She always had had a way of reading her daughter’s mind. “You wish you could meet Lucien, too. Has this Mr.… Has Mark,” she corrected herself, “not been able to find him?”
“He did find him. Lucien—his name is Gary now—isn’t interested in having any contact with Suzanne or me.”
“Oh, dear.” Her mother’s fingers tightened painfully on Carrie’s hand. “He was adopted, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, by a couple named Lindstrom.” She hesitated. “It sounds as if his home life wasn’t altogether happy. Perhaps he really was troubled.”
Her mother’s grip tightened again, enough to make Carrie squeak, before she abruptly released her hand. She held herself straight, her face pale, her eyes filled with painful honesty.
“I can’t tell you how I’ve regretted my cowardice. I think about him often. I wonder…”
Carrie’s dad bent toward her, his face softer than she ever remembered seeing it. “I didn’t know.”
She closed her eyes and seemed to gather herself. When she opened them, she looked from her husband to her daughter with a face etched by love and regret. “No matter how much I wish it, I can’t go back and change a thing. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry, Mommy.” She smiled through new tears. “I love you. Both of you.”
Her mother lifted her hand and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “Your sister… Does she look like you?”
“You’d know at a glance that we’re related.”
“Oh, my.” She smiled, too, eyes equally bright, and said what Carrie had longed to hear. “When can we meet her?”
“Do you really want to?”
“Of course we do! Don’t we, Julian?”
“Naturally.” He frowned, as if Carrie had said something foolish. “If she’s your sister, she’s part of our family.”
“Oh, Daddy!” She laughed and cried and tumbled onto their laps as if she were still a little girl, hugging them, one with each arm. “I would love for you to meet Suzanne!”
“And I suppose,” her father said stiffly, “the young man as well.”
She kissed his cheek. “Mark, too. Now, I hate to admit it, but… I’m starved!”
THE SOUND of Carrie’s voice when Mark answered the phone that night was enough to make him ache to have her here. God, he wanted to kiss her again!
“Hey,” he said.
“Mark, this has been the best night! My parents and I talked and talked. They were really honest, and so was I. Everything you said was right. Mom did feel like a fake. She thought I wouldn’t love her as much if I knew she couldn’t have a baby herself, that she had to—oh, I don’t know, borrow one. Isn’t that sad?”
He agreed that it was, and she rushed on, telling him everything her mother had said and how her father had argued and what she’d felt.
Mark realized a couple of minutes into the call that he was just an ear, someone to listen as she spilled her excitement and relief.
He was serving exactly the same role he had at the beginning of their relationship. Counselor. Willing listener. Maybe friend.
But the love of her life, he clearly wasn’t.
Carrie was winding down, and said suddenly, “Oh, wow! it’s late! I’d better let you get to bed. I’ll see you Friday? Six-thirty? Say hi to Michael for me!”
And then she was gone, and he was left with the stomach-clenching knowledge that he’d been stupid enough to fall in love with a woman who didn’t return his feelings with any great depth.
How had he let it get this far? He’d suspected from the beginning. She needed him. She liked him. She apparently enjoyed kissing him, and had seemed enthusiastic about lovemaking.
Just not enthusiastic enough to give it a second thought all week.
Mark had begun to understand that Emily’s love for him had always been gentle, his for her protective, with neither of them needing each other the way he needed Carrie.
He saw the future with Carrie in stark relief. More dates, more lovemaking, more phone calls where she asked for his advice and told him he was wise. And then, as she got involved in school and student teaching, as her relationships with her parents and Suzanne stabilized, she’d need him less. The calls would be farther apart. She’d be busy when he asked her out. Because she didn’t love him. She just needed him.
And that wasn’t enough.
Maybe he was being an idiot, wanting a woman to gaze worshipfully at him 24/7. It could be that Emily’s decision had made him desperate for some kind of unrealistic love, the kind that would ensure he was all and everything to the woman he loved. But he didn’t think so. He thought that Carrie had turned to him because he’d been there and willing, not because she’d been blindsided from the moment they met the way he had been.
And, by God, maybe she was right and he was a coward, but he was bruised still from Emily’s death. He didn’t know if it was in him to risk getting more involved with Carrie—and let Michael start to believe she’d be around for good. Not when the only indication he had that she felt anything for him was the fact that she liked to keep him up-to-date on her family drama.
If he was going to lose her anyway, at least he could protect Michael by getting it over with.
CARRIE COULDN’T put her finger on what the difference was, but she knew there was one. Maybe Mark was just preoccupied. But she kept feeling as if she was having dinner with a stranger.
He’d taken her to a restaurant called Matt’s in the Market, a small, high-ceilinged place atop the Pike Place Market. The food was divine—she was having halibut with asparagus and roasted fingerling potatoes and Mark was eating a lovely ahi tuna with a black-eyed pea pilaf. They’d exchanged bites of their dinners and sighed in pleasure.