by Lael Littke
“I don't know,” I said.
I had no idea, until I saw who it was Paula was bringing. I was looking out of the kitchen window when her car pulled up in front. The person who got out of the passenger side was slender, not young but very graceful. Her curly hair was gray, but as she turned to look at the house, I had a memory of the picture that lived in Grandpa's sock drawer. The picture of a pretty girl with curly blonde hair, dressed in a flowered sun-dress and smiling at the camera.
Running to the front door, I opened it before they had a chance to knock.
“Hello, Paula,” I said. Then I turned my eyes to the woman with the curly gray hair beside her. Up close, I was sure enough to say, “Hello, Selena Marie.”
Chapter 18
Selena Marie stared at me. “How did you know?”
Paula, beside her, regarded us both with bewilderment. “Selena Marie?” Her eyebrows went up as she looked at her companion. “You're Selena Marie? Selene's grandfather's lost girlfriend?” Since she'd been around our house so much, Paula knew about Grandpa's searches for his missing bride-to-be.
Selena Marie looked slightly bewildered herself. “Certainly I'm not lost, but yes, I was Alvin's girlfriend at one time, long ago.” To me she said, “Paula knows me only as Marie. Marie Renwick, my married name.”
Paula's mouth literally hung open. “All you ever said is that you used to live in Stone Creek. Why didn't you tell me you were Selena Marie?”
Selena Marie shrugged. “I didn't think it mattered. I haven't used the Selena part of my name for years. Besides, my days in Stone Creek are long past history. I saw no reason to go into it.” To me she said, “I've lived most of my married life here in this area. My husband is dead now, but I like it here.”
Glancing at Paula, she went on. “Paula and I are in the same ward, and when she introduced herself as being from Stone Creek, Idaho, I told her I'd lived there once. She's kept me up on the news from there ever since.”
But not the news about the note Bryan and I had found in the tree. Naomi probably hadn't had a chance to tell Paula about that yet.
Chelsea had come up beside me. Standing on tiptoe, she cupped a hand around her mouth and whispered in my ear, “Is that really Selena Marie?”
She and the other kids had been fascinated with the mystery of her disappearance when I'd told them the story. “Yes,” I said. “And you can say it out loud. It's okay. Isn't it, Selena Marie?” I was miffed at her for tossing off all that “past history” as if Grandpa's anguish through the years wasn't important. I didn't really care if she was upset at me for telling her story.
“Call me Marie,” she said. “And I guess it's okay. I'm not sure what you've told them, or why they'd be interested, or how you know who I am.”
We were still standing in the doorway. Behind me I knew that Mr. and Mrs. R, as well as my brother and other sisters, were watching as if a play were unfolding in front of them. I felt almost the same way myself, as if I were part of the cast playing out an old melodrama. I wasn't sure what my next line should be, so I said, “Grandpa has a picture of you from back when you were in Stone Creek. I guess I knew you because of your hair.” I paused. “Grandpa has searched for you for years. He thought you were dead.”
“He knew I wasn't dead,” Marie said. “Why would he think that?”
Chelsea reached out to touch her arm, wonder in her eyes. “I thought you were a fairytale. Like Cinderella.”
Everybody laughed then, breaking the tension that had been building. Mother came forward. “Come in, please,” she said cordially. “Let's all sit down, then we can talk in comfort. Dinner will be ready in half an hour. I hope you can stay.”
Marie shook her head, and Paula said, “Thank you, but we can't. We'll be here for just a few minutes.”
I wasn't finished talking about Grandpa and his endless search, but it didn't seem like the right moment to bring it up again.
I introduced everyone as we headed for the sofas and easy chairs in the living room, where we sat down in a cluster. I'd thought perhaps Chelsea and Kenyon and very likely Heather would fade away to their own rooms as soon as they checked out the visitors, but they sat down, their eyes on Marie. I'd known Brittany would stay. My eleven-year-old little sister had become my admirer, my advocate, my loyal companion in the past couple of days. She sat on the arm of the easy chair where I sat and leaned in close to me. “Your grandpa will be excited to know that Selena Marie is found,” she whispered. “When are you going to tell him?”
“I don't know,” I whispered back.
How would I go about telling him that Selena Marie was here, and that she didn't even realize how he'd been searching for her all these years? Wouldn't that hurt him even worse?
After everyone had acknowledged the introductions, I looked at Marie, wondering if I should ask why she wanted to see me—and, more puzzling, why she wanted to meet Mr. and Mrs. R. Certainly she hadn't come to tell me Grandpa had known she wasn't dead. Mother, the perfect, gracious hostess, was chatting with her. Marie was smiling, seeming perfectly at ease. She had to be somewhere in her late sixties, which was the age my grandma would have been if she'd lived. But slim, trim Marie was a lot different from Grandma, who'd been sturdy and plump. “Like a flour bag tied in the middle,” she used to say about herself. Her hair had been gray and flyaway. Marie's silvery hair was still naturally curly, like it had been in the old picture, but it was controlled now and cut much shorter.
Grandma had worn blue jeans and Grandpa's old shirts, with stout leather shoes a size too big, to ease her bunions. Marie wore a longish, earth-tone, broomstick skirt with an olive green mock turtleneck shirt and a beige jacket. And strappy, low-heeled sandals. She looked neat, but just a little raffish. We'd had that vocabulary word recently in my English class, and Marie seemed like the perfect visual aid to show what it meant.
I turned my eyes to Paula. Her brown hair, which had been super long when she'd lived in Stone Creek, was now short and smooth. She was dressed in a navy blue jacket with a just-above-the-knee beige skirt and a beige-and-blue striped blouse. On her feet were navy blue, medium-heeled pumps. “You look great,” I said.
She seemed a little distracted about what had been happening, but she grinned. “You mean my power suit? Quite a change from the wild farm girl I used to be, isn't it?”
“Is that what the big city does to a person?” I asked.
“If you want to climb the corporate ladder,” she said, “you have to look the part.”
I wasn't sure what she meant, but she looked capable of climbing anything.
Mr. R asked what ladder she was climbing, which led to a short discussion of practicing law in St. Paul.
A somewhat awkward silence fell when they finished that subject. Mother and Marie had run out of chitchat.
I couldn't wait any longer. Looking at Marie, I asked, “Why did you leave Stone Creek? Why didn't you tell Grandpa you were going? We found your note in the old tree just last week, but we couldn't read it.”
“My note?” Marie seemed genuinely puzzled. “We'll talk about this later. There's something else more important right now. Selene, I came to tell you and your parents that I have some information about your kidnapping.”
Something like electricity zinged through the room. Mother made a small sound, almost like a moan. Mr. R sat up straight in his chair. As for me, I tried to recite the books of the Bible in my mind, but it was totally blank.
“Mrs. Renwick,” Mr. R said, “how did you come by this information?” It was as if our little show had suddenly become a courtroom drama, with Marie on the witness stand and Mr. R in the role of prosecuting attorney.
“I'm a retired investigative reporter, Mr. Russo,” Marie said. “I've had close connections with law enforcement for many years. When Paula told me what had come to light about Selene and that she was coming here, I remembered bits of information I'd heard over the years and put it all together with something that came up recently. It concerns an illegal
adoption organization that was operating at the time Selene was kidnapped.”
My mother put a hand over her mouth. As for me, I felt nothing. This was all about me, yet I felt apart from it, merely an observer.
Mr. R stared at Selena Marie as if he'd forgotten his lines. “Mrs. Renwick,” he began. But his voice broke and he had to start again. “Mrs. Renwick, please tell us what you know.” His lawyer role was gone now and he was just a distraught father, pleading for information about his lost baby.
“I don't have much,” Marie said gently. “There will be more as the investigation goes on. But one of the…” She hesitated, probably to pick a word. “One of the participants in the operation was arrested on some other counts recently, and in return for leniency has been offering information that the police haven't had before.”
“Do you have access to that information?” Mr. R was back to being the lawyer.
Marie shook her head. “Not all of it. But more may be available soon. The adoption ring virtually took orders for what type of children people were hoping for, then went out to get them. It's pretty certain that Selene was one of the kids caught up in this.”
My mother's shoulders slumped and she began crying softly. Not the exuberant crying that we shared as a family trait, but sodden, grief-stricken weeping.
“Does that mean,” I said, my voice sounding hoarse, “that the first people who adopted me—my mom's sister and her husband—knew I was kidnapped? That they requested a child like me?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” Marie said swiftly. “No, no. The adoptive parents were told that the children were orphans. They had no idea what was happening.”
For a moment there was no sound except for my mother's sobs. It was as if she were reliving that terrible day when I vanished.
I was glad I had no real memory of how I felt that day. But I did, actually. There was the terror, and the voice saying, “Bad, bad, bad.”
“It was a woman who took me,” I told Marie. “Is the participant they've caught a woman?”
“No. But this other person may lead the police to her. You may eventually have to come back here to testify.”
My mother looked up. “Back here? Micaela, you can't leave now. Not now, when there's a chance of finding out who did this thing. You belong here.”
Maybe I did. My mother looked so ravaged that certainly I couldn't make it worse by disagreeing.
I went to her, dropping to my knees and putting my head in her lap. I was too numb to cry. I felt her hands smoothing my hair as Marie went on to tell us that the kidnapping ring gave adoptive parents a set of official-looking documents that made it seem as if the organization was a legitimate private agency. They charged big bucks for the children, but the new parents thought that was just the price of getting a child fast without having to go through regular channels. She assured me again that my first adoptive parents hadn't had any idea that I was a kidnappee, and certainly the second parents—Mom and Dad—hadn't known.
It was a relief to have that settled.
Marie and Paula didn't stay much longer. When they left, Marie asked me to come outside to talk alone for a few minutes. My mother didn't want to let go of me, but I told her I'd be right back. Brittany, Chelsea, and Kenyon wanted to follow me outside, but Mother called them back, granting Marie and me privacy.
Paula got into the car after all the good-byes were said. Marie and I stood on the sidewalk.
“I appreciate what you've done.” I wanted to get that out of the way. “It helps a little to know how all that bad stuff happened.
“It was something I could do for Alvin's family,” she said. “I was very fond of him when we were young. Now, tell me about the note you found.”
I told the story of the lost note and how the bottle it was in had fallen deep down into the hole in the tree. “Grandpa never read it,” I finished. “He didn't know where you'd gone.”
Marie's face was sad. “I'm so sorry. But he did know I was thinking of leaving. I told him the last time I saw him. He wouldn't accept it. He wanted things to go his way. He was so stubborn.”
“He was sure you were lost because he said you wouldn't just up and leave with the ring he gave you.”
Marie looked shocked. “The ring? But I left it in the bottle with the note. Didn't he get it when you found the bottle?”
“In the bottle?” I visualized the bottle with the gunk in the bottom and the musty brown note. “You left a diamond ring in the bottle?”
“It wasn't a diamond ring, Selene. Just glass. Not an official engagement ring, but it was pretty.” She twisted her hands together. “Oh my, it never occurred to me that he wouldn't find the note and ring. He must have thought terrible things about me over all these years.”
I was mentally searching the past to determine if Grandpa had ever said the ring was a diamond. He hadn't. I had just assumed that it was. “Mainly he just felt bad,” I said. “Why didn't you write to him later, or get in touch with him some how?”
Marie's eyes seemed to look into the past. “Funny how life-changing events sometimes hinge on small things. I told him in the note to meet me the next morning at our favorite spot, that big rock on the mountain, so we could talk things over. I said if he didn't turn up, I'd know that he'd prefer not to hear from me again.”
“Why didn't you phone?”
“This was fifty years ago, Selene. Not everybody in Stone Creek had phones.”
That was what Bryan had said when we found the note. Bryan, who'd sent me the postcard of Prentice, saying he wished I was there.
“Besides,” Marie went on, “I was kind of a romantic girl and liked the idea of meeting there at the big rock.” She looked down at her hands, turning them over as if they could tell her something. “He didn't come. I figured he'd made his choice. I was hurt. I told my relatives not to tell him where I was going, and I left.” Dropping her hands back to her sides she said, “Goes to show that you shouldn't make big judgments without knowing the whole story. I should have checked to see if he got the note and the ring.”
Big judgments. Like the one I'd made about my Minnesota family, before I met them.
“He never forgot you,” I said. “He thought maybe you'd gone to the mountains to pick huckleberries and met up with a bear or something. I went there a lot with him, searching for some clue of you.”
“We all search for something, Selene,” Marie said. “He was probably searching for clues of himself.”
That sounded a lot like what Grandma had said, that he looked for what might have been.
“He loved you,” I said.
She nodded. “But he never would have been happy with me. Nor I with him. We were on different tracks. Maggie was better for him.”
Maggie. Grandma. My memory flashed on her bright, fragrant kitchen. She was always baking, or canning, or cooking up a big pot of soup. A good farm wife. A really terrific grandma.
“What did Maggie think about his searching for me?” Marie's voice came softly through the dusk of early evening.
I remembered the way Grandma had banged pots and pans at the mention of Selena Marie's name. “She loved him enough to let him look. Are you going to get in touch with him now?”
“Do you think I should?”
“It would close things off.” Or would it just stir things up again?
I thought of how learning some of the secrets of myself was making me feel. It did stir things up. But knowing brought comfort, too.
“Call him,” I said. “He has a phone now.”
She smiled at that and wrote down the phone number I gave her. “You know, Selene,” she said, “there's an old adage that says when you make a decision or take an action, you are preparing a package to be opened in the future. I'm just finding out the truth of that adage.”
She turned and got into the car.
After I'd waved off Paula and Marie, I turned back to the house where my family waited. My Minnesota family. The family I was coming to love and feel a part of.
But then what about my Idaho family?
Mr. and Mrs. R and my siblings were waiting for me in the living room. They sat together on the sofas in front of the fireplace, with a space left for me. Like in the family picture they'd sent to me.
“Come join us, Micaela,” Mr. R said. “We want to talk about you coming back to live with us. For good.”
Chapter 19
Well, here it was. I'd known it would come sometime, despite the Russos’ promises. Hadn't I suspected right from the first that if I went there to visit, they would try to keep me? Would they even try to depro-gram me, as Heather had suggested?
To my surprise, I didn't go up in flames at the thought of staying. These were my parents. My sisters and brother. I had been brought to this house as a baby. I had lived here for three years. I had once been part of this family. Wasn't I still?
But what about all that had happened between then and now? There was no way to make it unhappen. Even if I stayed, there was no way I could be the girl I would have been if I hadn't been taken away. What might have been could never be.
It was like trying to be both Astrid and Zorina at the same time. Two separate people. Two separate lives.
But there was no script to bring this plot to a satisfactory conclusion.
Silently they all watched me, even Heather. I didn't think she wanted me to stay. Heather, who simmered with guilt and resentment.
Numb with confusion, I walked over and sat down beside my mother. Gently she put an arm around my shoulders and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“I guess we'd better talk about it,” I said.
Brittany came to squeeze in beside me. “Oh, stay, Micaela. Please stay. Please, please, please.”
Kenyon started a chant, with Chelsea and Brittany joining in. “Stay, Micaela. Stay, Micaela. Stay, Micaela.”
It was even seeming normal now to be called Micaela.
Mr. and Mrs. R joined in the chant, smiling as they coaxed, “Stay, Micaela.”
