The Dream Daughter: A Novel

by Diane Chamberlain

  I took the computer from her and turned on my heel to leave the room. I had no idea what Safari was but I was too upset with her to ask. I’d figure it out myself.

  I carried the laptop into the guest room and propped myself up against the headboard. The internet was a different animal than it had been in 2001 and I stumbled around in confusion, clicking on icons, finally finding something familiar: Google. I clicked on it. Biting my lip as I stared at the empty search box, I typed in “Joanna Sears.”

  It was clearly not an uncommon name. Many websites popped up and I scrolled through them all, but every Joanna Sears was an adult. If my Joanna were still in foster care, I doubted she’d have access to a computer at age twelve, and if she’d been adopted, she’d have a different name. And if she’d died?

  I shuddered.

  Then I typed in “Joanna Elizabeth Sears” and “obituary.” All that came up were websites that wanted me to pay for information, which I would have done if I could have figured out how to pay without a credit card.

  I stared at the Google screen for a long time. I could type in my name. I could type in Patti’s. The thought of what I might find, of seeing our future laid out in front of me, was so mind-altering that a wave of nausea washed over me. I closed the computer, lay down on the bed, and shut my eyes. I had to figure out what to do, but for now, all I could imagine doing was sleep.

  When I opened my eyes, Myra stood in the open doorway of the room, arms folded across her chest, and I realized she’d been calling my name. I raised myself to my elbows.

  “I’ve done some thinking,” she said, her voice softer than it had been earlier. “I tried to imagine my life without Hunter in it when he was a child. I could have survived without him as long as I knew he was okay. That’s the real issue, isn’t it?” she asked. “You need to know your daughter is safe?”

  I nodded, although that was only half of the issue. I needed her safe with me.

  “I’m going to pull some strings to find out what happened to her,” she said, and I sat up fully now, my eyes wide.

  “How will you do that?” I asked.

  “I know people,” she said cryptically. “People in high places who owe me favors.” She shrugged. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try. Then hopefully you can return to 1970 with an easy mind. All right?”

  “Yes.” My voice was husky. “Thank you.”

  39

  Two days passed. Two days during which I pestered Myra relentlessly to see if she’d learned anything about Joanna.

  “I’ll tell you if and when I do,” she said. “Someone’s looking into it for me, but it’s taking some time, plus it’s the weekend. Be patient.”

  In five days, I was supposed to use the portal from the bridge to go back to 1970. I couldn’t imagine returning to my old life with empty arms. In the meantime, I had new energy knowing Myra was working on tracking down my daughter. I spent my time walking through Old Town Alexandria until I knew every street by heart. In the little shops, I saw crocheted baby clothes that made my heart ache. And I saw trinkets I wished I could buy for a twelve-year-old Joanna. A bracelet. A little statue of a dog. Did she like dogs? Cats? Was she horse-crazy the way I had been at her age? I saw tasteful little earrings and wondered if her ears were pierced. It seemed as though every girl about Joanna’s age had pierced ears in 2013.

  And every girl I saw who was about Joanna’s age became my daughter in my eyes.

  When I opened the door to the guest room on Monday morning, I heard Myra talking on the phone downstairs. I stood very still in the hallway, leaning closer to the head of the stairs, trying to listen.

  “That’s right,” Myra said. “I don’t know what her middle name was, but I’m sure that’s it. Thanks, Terri. I owe you.”

  I raced to the stairs and nearly slid down them to the kitchen. Myra looked up at me from her seat at the table. She tore a sheet of paper from the small notepad on the table and crumpled it in her hands as she smiled one of her rare smiles at me.

  “I have some news for you,” she said.

  I sat down across from her. “Joanna?” I asked.

  She nodded. “She did go into foster care for a time, but then she was adopted by a family in New Jersey when she was ten months old.”

  My tears were instantaneous. I pressed my fists to my mouth. I hadn’t anticipated the extraordinary sense of loss that came over me. Joanna wasn’t mine. She’d only been mine for two months. Those precious two months were all I would ever have of her.

  Myra watched me with concern.

  “Is there any more?” I asked, blotting my eyes with my fingertips. “Do you know if she has siblings? Or what her parents are like? Or if she’s … healthy?”

  Myra got to her feet. “That’s all we get,” she said. I watched as she tossed the crumpled paper into the trash can beneath the sink. “And it’s a miracle we were able to get that much information, so you’ll have to be satisfied with knowing she was wanted by someone and is, in all likelihood, being raised in a good family. That’s all you really needed to know, right?”

  I nodded, although she was wrong. That wasn’t all I needed to know. And when Myra left for her office an hour later, I slid the trash can from beneath the sink and pulled out the crumpled piece of paper. I spread it flat on the counter and saw what Myra had scribbled: adptd 10 mths. Van Dyke. Summit, NJ.

  Van Dyke. Was that the name of the people who adopted her? Were they good people? Was she well? Was she happy? Did she know her biological mother would miss her every moment of every day for the rest of her life?

  I studied the piece of paper again. There was only one way to learn the answers to those questions. How far was it to Summit, New Jersey?

  40

  Myra had taken her laptop to the office with her, so I spent the afternoon on the huge computer on her desktop, happy to discover I didn’t need a password. Would she know I’d been on it? At first, that worried me and I tried to think of ways to mask what I was doing, but after a few minutes I gave up. I didn’t care. What I was doing was too important.

  Summit, New Jersey. It sounded like it should be a small town on a mountaintop, but I didn’t get that feeling from the photographs that popped up when I Googled it. It had a pretty downtown and lots of trees. Were the website pictures carefully selected to make the town look classy and clean when in reality it had rough schools and a dangerous underbelly? What conditions had Joanna been living in all these years?

  I typed “Joanna Van Dyke” into Google’s search box and was greeted by a few adult Joannas, as I had been when I typed “Joanna Sears” a couple of days earlier. Clearly none of these Joannas was my daughter. What was the likelihood her name was still “Joanna”?

  Then I hunted for addresses. There was only one Van Dyke in Summit. Brandon and Michelle Van Dyke. Were they Joanna’s adoptive parents? I stared at their names, my chest tightening with envy and anger. She’s mine, damn it! Tearing a sheet of paper from Myra’s small yellow notepad, I jotted down the address: 477 Rosewood Court, Summit, New Jersey.

  I checked the train schedule, clicking through screen after screen until I found the information I needed. I’d have to take the 9:05 train tomorrow morning from Alexandria back to Penn Station in New York, but from there it was less than an hour to Summit. I’d arrive a few minutes to three tomorrow afternoon. Staring at the screen, I twisted my hands together with nerves and excitement. Could I really do this? And why would I do it? What did I hope to gain?

  “I need to know she’s okay,” I said softly to myself, my gaze still on the computer screen, the train schedule blurring in my vision. “That’s all.” But even as the words left my mouth, I wasn’t sure I believed them. All I knew was that I couldn’t stay here in Alexandria when my daughter was only a few hundred miles away.

  I searched for hotels in Summit and found only one anywhere near the train station. It looked beautiful but was shockingly pricey to my 1970 mind. Between the hundred-and-twenty-two-dollar train ticket and
the hotel room, I’d be wiped out in days. I couldn’t ask Myra for money now when she expected me to return to 1970 at the end of the week. Money didn’t matter, anyway. I would sleep on the street if I had to.

  I looked up the Van Dyke address on the computer map and hit that “satellite” button. The neighborhood was a blanket of trees, the houses barely visible among them. But a red dot appeared above one house and I could see a roof, quite large and multileveled, and what was probably a grassy green yard behind it, surrounded by those thick trees. Was this Joanna’s house? Joanna’s yard? I needed to know.

  I studied the route from the Summit train station to the Van Dykes’ Rosewood Court address and saw that it was less than a mile. Less than a mile! I felt Joanna growing closer. I struggled unsuccessfully to figure out how to print the map from the computer, so I found a sheet of paper and drew a map from the train station to the address. I folded it up. Slipped it in my jeans pocket.

  How I would get through the evening with Myra, I had no idea. In the morning, I would leave her a note. I’d thank her for all she’d done for me but tell her I wasn’t ready to return to 1970. I hoped she wouldn’t try to find me. I replaced the crumpled piece of paper in the kitchen trash can. She’d have no reason to think I’d learned where Joanna lived. She’d be angry, but at that moment, I didn’t care. I was going to find my daughter.

  41

  I left the house at seven the next morning, grateful that Myra was not yet up. The train station was a little over a mile away and I had plenty of time to catch that 9:05 train. I stopped at the bakery for two muffins and tea, devouring all of it as I walked, my backpack slung over my shoulder. My appetite was suddenly insatiable. I was nervous, yes, but energized as well.

  The train station was crowded with men and women dressed for work. I bought my ticket, then found a free seat on a bench where I took stock of my plan. I had my phone. I still had nearly four hundred dollars. I had my hand-drawn map. First thing I’d do when I arrived in Summit, I told myself, would be to go to that expensive hotel and see if I could talk the price down for tonight. Who was I trying to kid? First thing I’d do would be to walk directly to 477 Rosewood Court.

  The hours on the train to New York slipped by, the Van Dyke address a mantra in my brain. I was coming up with “my story” as we passed through town after town—the story I would tell anyone I met who asked me what someone like me was doing in New Jersey. My husband died, I would say, and I wanted to get away from the reminders and start over. I’d heard about a wonderful rehab center in New Jersey and wanted to work there. That was partially the truth. I had heard about the Kessler Institute and knew it was one of the best in the nation—at least it had been back in 1970. Did it still exist? It had been someplace in New Jersey, though I had no idea if that someplace was anywhere near Summit. I should have thought of my story earlier and Googled Kessler. Of course I could never get a job there. I had no current credentials to show. No current license. But I hoped the story would be good enough to get me by for now.

  I had a sense of déjà vu in Penn Station, as if I were back in 2001 and could grab a taxi to Lincoln Hospital where I would find my sweet baby waiting for me in the nursery. My eyes stung by the time I climbed aboard the commuter train to Summit. I felt dispirited, as though I was leaving my baby behind in New York again. That’s over, I told myself. She’s not there. She’s not a baby any longer. I was going to have to accept it.

  While waiting for the train, I ate a pastrami sandwich that reminded me of Ira and his deli, and I wondered how he was doing. Was he even alive? The thought jarred me. He’d been pretty old in 2001. When I got back to 1970, I would never again take time for granted. I would never again try to rush it.

  I bought a couple of apples, bottled water, a candy bar, and some packages of cheese crackers, shoving them all in my backpack. I didn’t know when I’d next have a chance to buy food. Then I joined the line of people, most of them clearly commuters, waiting for the train.

  As the train pulled into Summit, I knew at once the online pictures of the town were accurate. It bustled with shops and restaurants and well-dressed people. I was going to look sloppy and out of place here, carting my grimy mustard-colored backpack around like a homeless person, which, I guessed, I was.

  Once off the train, I stood on the platform to study my hand-drawn map, trying to get my bearings. I figured out the direction I needed to go, aiming for Rosewood Court, and began walking. Summit was not neatly laid out and I turned one corner after another after another, following the pencil lines of my map. All around me were beautiful, impeccably maintained older houses, surrounded by manicured lawns and voluminous trees, and the closer I got to Rosewood Court, the bigger the houses, the more sprawling the yards. It comforted me, thinking of Joanna growing up in the safety of a neighborhood like this, growing up with this beauty around her.

  Finally, I reached Rosewood Court. I studied the house numbers. Number 477 would be across the street, probably a block away, and I continued walking. I was drawn to the gray colonial with the red front door even before I saw the house number. The house was huge. Stately looking, it was set back from the street by a long expanse of vivid green lawn. A driveway ran down the right side of the building and I guessed the garage must be in the back of the house. I could see more of the emerald lawn back there, surrounded by a virtual forest of trees. Except for the Unpainted Aristocracy, I knew little about architecture, but I knew beauty when I saw it, and this house and its setting quite literally took my breath away. I stood there both gawking and gasping. I bit my lip, wishing a twelve-year-old girl would run out that front door and into my arms.

  And now what? This wasn’t the sort of neighborhood where a young woman could stand idly in front of a house unnoticed. Nor could I walk back and forth, back and forth, waiting for … waiting for what? I wished I had a car. I could park on the side street with a view to the house and watch and wait. I looked at my chronometer. Nearly four thirty. I needed to find that hotel that would cost me an arm and a leg, get a room for the night, and then figure out my next step.

  I checked my map again and saw I had another mile or so to walk to the hotel. I set out in that direction, suddenly very tired. I’d found her—at least I hoped I had—and yet I hadn’t found her at all. And I needed to.

  I was only a few blocks from the hotel when I spotted an old Victorian house across the street from where I was walking. A sign on the front lawn read SLEEPING DOG INN. Was this one of those bed-and-breakfast places? I crossed the street and walked up the sidewalk. Close up, I could see that the house needed work, but its old bones were stunning. Climbing the slightly lopsided steps to a narrow porch, I saw a handwritten COME IN sign next to the doorbell. I pulled open one of the double doors, which stuck slightly and needed a bit of forcing. I stepped into a dimly lit foyer. A long, highly polished wooden counter stood a few steps in front of me, its surface littered with papers. To my right was a living room or parlor, where a young man sat on a sofa working on a laptop computer, a German shepherd asleep at his feet. Neither the man nor the dog looked up when I walked in.

  I tapped the bell on the counter and was greeted by yapping from behind a curtained glass door at the rear of the foyer. In a moment, a woman walked through the door, a young golden retriever on a leash at her side. The golden retriever did what young golden retrievers do, tugging excitedly at the leash, yapping and yipping, paws up on the counter in an attempt to greet me. The woman, with her gray-streaked dark hair and amused-looking eyes, held up a finger to keep me from speaking.

  “Sit, Poppy,” she told the dog. “Hush.”

  It took a few seconds for Poppy to give in, but she finally sat down and I lost eye contact with her behind the counter.

  “She’s a good girl,” I said with a smile.

  The woman rolled her eyes. “I hope someday I’ll be able to say that about her,” she said. “She’s only six months old and it takes goldens forever and a day to grow up. I don’t know what my niec
e was thinking.”

  “She’s your niece’s?” I asked politely.

  The woman laughed. “I wish! No, my niece gave her to me. My husband died a year ago, not long after our last dog died, and my niece thought I needed a companion.” She looked down at the dog I could no longer see, then she smiled. “Maybe I do,” she said. “But the work! I’d forgotten the work.”

  I returned her smile. “I had a golden when I was a child,” I said. “I remember.” And I’m a widow, too, I thought, but I said nothing about that.

  “So how can I help you?” the woman asked, but before I could answer, she held up a hand. “If you’re looking for a room, I’m sorry but all five rooms are full,” she said. “I need to get my NO VACANCY sign out there.”

  “Oh,” I said, my hopes dashed. “I was hoping to find a room. I checked online and only saw that one hotel, the Grand Summit, so I guess I’ll head over there. I didn’t see your inn on the computer.”

  “Well, if you look up ‘pet-friendly inns,’ you’ll find us,” she said. “We don’t advertise much. We’re not that big and most of our guests are repeats, since they know they can bring their pets here.” She gave me a curious look. “What brings you to Summit?” she asked. “You’re from one of the Carolinas, right? I know that accent.”

  “You have a good ear,” I said, but I was unprepared for the question and tried to remember the story I’d come up with on the train. “I needed a change of scenery,” I said. “I have a physical therapy degree and thought I’d get licensed up here and hopefully get a job.”

  Her curious look only intensified, and I couldn’t blame her. I needed a change of scenery? It sounded suspicious even to my own ears. “Do you have friends up here?” she asked.

  “No.” I smiled as though acknowledging the craziness of my plan. “But there’s a really good rehabilitation center—the Kessler Institute—and I’d love to land a job there eventually.” I watched her face for a reaction, hoping she wouldn’t tell me Kessler had shut down twenty years ago.