The Color of Heaven Series [02] The Color of Destiny

by Julianne MacLean

  Carefully, I pushed the buttons to dial my father’s number, and sat down at the table as soon as I heard ringing on the other end.

  Click. “Hello?”

  My stomach dropped. I hadn’t spoken to him in over a year.

  “Hi, Dad. It’s Kate.”

  Silence.

  “Are you there?” I asked.

  “Yes, I’m here.” His voice was low and gruff – the same as always. There was a time that voice intimidated me into obedience, but those days were long gone. The anger and disconnect I felt toward him smothered any childish trepidation.

  “I’m surprised to hear from you,” he said. “It’s been awhile.”

  “Yes, it has,” I replied, “but I’m doing okay.” Not that he had asked. “How are you?”

  Despite everything, I would at least remember how to be gracious. For the moment.

  “I’m doing just fine,” he said. “Where are you, Kate? Still up in Canada?”

  “Yes. I think the last time we spoke I was working at the nursing home, but I left there to work with a family dealing with Alzheimer’s.”

  “I see... Well that sounds like a noble pursuit.”

  Noble... Did he even know the meaning of that word? How about empathy or compassion? Loyalty? Trust?

  “I think I know why you’re calling,” he said, and my stomach turned over.

  “You do?”

  “Yes. You want to know about Jack Wilbur. You must have heard the news.”

  Jack Wilbur was the drug dealer who had come after me a few days after I found my husband dead on my sofa.

  “No, I didn’t hear anything,” I said. “Did something happen?”

  There was a pause. “You didn’t hear? He was arrested ten months ago... along with most of the people who were running his shady outfit. He was sentenced to thirty years for all kinds of crimes besides dealing drugs. But who knows when he’ll get out on parole.”

  I blinked a few times, and absorbed this news. “Why didn’t you call me?” I asked.

  “I did. I left a message on your answering machine.”

  “I never got it. Why didn’t you try my cell?”

  “Look. I made the call. Don’t blame me if you lost the message.”

  He hadn’t bothered to make sure I knew about Jack Wilbur’s arrest, and that it was finally safe to come home. Swallowing hard over the urge to shout at him through the phone, I struggled to focus on the reason I had called him.

  “I need to ask you something,” I said, “and I want you to tell me the truth.”

  “Sure,” he replied.

  I could picture him leaning back in his leather recliner, frowning with curiosity.

  I wasn’t certain how to begin. “Do you remember my blue teddy bear? We called him Bubba?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was with me in the ambulance when Mia was killed. Whatever happened to him?”

  Dad paused. “I don’t know, Kate. I suppose he was lost in the wreckage.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “No,” he replied, “because I have no idea what happened to your things. Why are you asking me this?”

  My heart was racing. I took a deep breath. “What happened to my baby, Dad?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  I stood up and paced around the kitchen. “You said she didn’t survive the accident, but I never saw her remains, and I’ve always felt she wasn’t really gone. I need to know... Did you take her from me?”

  There was a long pause on the other end. “Take her from you? What are you insinuating?”

  “That she didn’t die,” I said. “I can’t help but wonder if, while I was in a coma, you gave her up for adoption. We both know you wanted to get rid of her from the beginning.”

  “Kate!” he scolded, but I didn’t let him finish.

  “Black market adoptions happen all the time,” I said. “There are plenty of couples willing to pay anything for a child. Is that how you were able to pay off the mortgage after the accident? Why you were able to pay for my courses when I wanted to become a paramedic? Was that guilt money?”

  “Good God!” he shouted into the phone. “Are you doing drugs too?”

  I covered my eyes with a hand. “No, Dad. And that was a low blow. You know I don’t even drink.”

  “Then explain to me where this nonsense is coming from. You actually believe that I would steal your baby, tell you she died, and sell her on the black market? I think you need help, Kate. That’s all I can say to you.”

  “Wait a second,” I said desperately. “Do you know a woman named Gladys Smith? Or Abigail Smith?”

  “No. Good-bye.” Click.

  Just like that, he hung up on me.

  I slammed the phone down onto the charger, then buried my face in my hands. “This is insane!” I cried. “What am I doing?”

  The phone in my apartment rang at about 9:00 that evening. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Kate. It’s Ryan.”

  I sat down. “Hi. It’s good to hear your voice. How’s Gladys doing?”

  “She’s the same,” he replied. “Marissa and I spent the day with her, but I have to be honest, I’m not hopeful. I think Marissa is beginning to realize that this is the beginning of the end, and it’s only a matter of time.”

  “I’m so sorry. How’s Marissa holding up?”

  “As well as can be expected. She’s a trooper, that one.”

  “Yes. She’s strong. You and Abigail did a great job with her.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “How are you holding up, Kate? I’m sure you have a lot on your mind.”

  All the tension and anger I felt earlier when I spoke to my father evaporated like mist in the sun. I crawled onto my bed and lay my head on the soft pillow.

  “I’m sorry for springing this on you and Marissa now, when we should all be thinking of Gladys. I wish I could reverse that conversation we had this morning, and put it off until later.”

  “Sometimes things are meant to happen a certain way,” he said. “And you have nothing to apologize for. Frankly, I’m still reeling from that little red heart inside of Bubba. I can’t believe Marissa has had that bear most of her life, and the whole time, your heart was inside him. It’s incredible.”

  Tears filled my eyes. I fought to keep my voice steady as I spoke. “It is kind of freaky, isn’t it?”

  I rolled to my side and pressed the phone up against my cheek.

  “You know,” he said, “even with everything that’s been going on, I still feel blessed for the life we’ve had. Marissa does too. We were talking about that on the way home from the hospital tonight. How we wanted to remember and celebrate the wonderful life Gladys lived, and how lucky we were to have her for as long as we did.”

  “You’re so right,” I said. “She’s an amazing woman.”

  He fell silent. “Will you still feel that way, even if it turns out that she was responsible for adopting Marissa? Won’t you feel some resentment toward this family if they took part in an illegal adoption?”

  “We don’t know if that’s true yet,” I said. “I spoke to my father tonight. I came right out and asked if he lied to me and gave my baby away for adoption.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Well, first he told me that the drug dealer who came after me was arrested ten months ago and sentenced to thirty years in prison. So it turns out I could have returned home. My dad said he left a message, but he probably left it at my old number. He didn’t follow up. What kind of parent does that?”

  “I’m sorry, Kate. About your dad, I mean. But I’m not sorry to hear that the drug dealer’s in jail. That’s good news, at least.”

  “Yeah, for sure.”

  I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of Ryan’s breathing through the phone. It comforted me.

  “What about the other situation?” Ryan asked. “The reason you called him? What did he say about your baby?”

  I sighed. “He denied it of course – which could mean he’
s hiding it, or it could mean I’m nutty as a fruitcake and it never happened.”

  “You’re not nuts,” Ryan said. “It’s a reasonable question, considering the fact that Marissa has Bubba, and she’s exactly twenty years old.”

  “But her birthday is a whole month off.”

  “That could have been doctored on the paperwork if it was an illegal adoption. They would have wanted to wipe out the trail and hide any trace of who she really is.”

  I rolled onto my back and blinked up at the ceiling. “What do you think?” I asked. “Could it be true?”

  He sighed. “I honestly don’t know, but I have to admit, I’ve been staring at Marissa sometimes, trying to figure out if she looks like you. Abigail was very blonde, and Marissa has dark features. I never really thought they looked that much alike, but I never knew her father. I only saw pictures of him.” Ryan paused for a moment. “The DNA test will tell us for sure. I made a few calls and was able to expedite the process. You and Marissa will have to come in to the clinic in the morning. We’ll take a swab from each of you and send the samples straight back to the lab. We should have an answer in a few days.”

  I took a deep breath. “Wow. The miracles of modern medicine.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Listen, are you going to be okay tonight? I could come over, or you could come here.”

  I considered it. “I’m not sure how Marissa would feel about that. She can’t be happy about all this. I basically pulled the rug out from under her whole life, suggested that the mother she worshipped might have kept this secret from her since the day she was born.”

  “Don’t worry about Marissa,” Ryan said. “She has a good head on her shoulders.” He paused. “But I need to tell you, Kate... She doesn’t believe it’s true. She told me she was only taking the test to ease your mind, because she understands that you need to know.”

  “What do you believe?” I asked.

  He hesitated. “After seeing that little felt heart we removed from Bubba this morning? I believe anything’s possible.”

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  I MET RYAN and Marissa at the clinic the following morning. We finished the test in fifteen minutes. It all seemed so fast and straightforward. At one point, I wanted to say, “Stop. Slow down. This is important.” But before I could say a word, it was done, and the samples were sealed and waiting to be picked up by the courier.

  “Want to come to the hospital to visit Gram?” Marissa asked me on the way out. It took me a moment to collect my thoughts. “Ryan has patients to see here, but he said I could take the Jeep.”

  “Let’s take my car,” I suggested, focusing on the opportunity to be alone with Marissa and talk to her about the situation.

  “Ryan says you’re handling everything really well,” I said as we pulled out of the clinic parking lot.

  “He said the same thing to me about you,” Marissa replied, but this time, I detected a hint of animosity in her tone.

  I flicked the blinker and turned left onto the number three highway.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” I said. “I know it’s the worst possible time to have something like this come up. I hate that it happened this way.”

  I felt her eyes boring into my profile as I drove along the winding road.

  “Are you angry with me?” I asked.

  “No,” she replied. “I’m just looking at your face and comparing it to my mom’s. You both have full lips and similar noses. I’m trying to figure out if I look more like you or her.”

  This fascinated me. “And...?”

  I lightly touched the brakes and glanced briefly at Marissa. She faced forward.

  “I think I look more like her.”

  Later, when we were sitting in Gladys’s room, Marissa looked at me from across the bed. “I’m sorry about what I said in the car earlier. That was insensitive.”

  “No need to apologize,” I replied.

  She studied my expression. “But this must be hard for you, to learn that your baby might have been taken from you, that you were deprived of the chance to raise her.”

  I wasn’t sure I could describe how those events from twenty years ago had affected my life. Sometimes I wondered how I ended up childless, married to a drug addict, and estranged from my parents. An only child, when I’d once had a sister.

  Then somehow I found the words.

  “I lost a piece of my soul that day,” I said, “and everything seemed like damage control after that. My parents blamed me for my sister’s death, as if it were all my fault that she decided to visit me in Boston. Glenn, my boyfriend, was the only one who truly understood how devastated I was, and I suppose he blamed himself for my unhappiness. When he married me, he just wanted to fix everything and rescue me, be my knight in shining armor, and I can’t deny that I needed one. We were only eighteen when we got married. He promised we would have more children and live the life we always dreamed about, but we just couldn’t get pregnant again.”

  “Did you try fertility treatments?” Marissa asked.

  “Yeah, we tried everything. I had three miscarriages and then... I guess we both started to believe we were cursed, and weren’t even meant to be together.”

  “You were so young,” Marissa said.

  I nodded. “After he overdosed, I was a woman adrift – until I met you, Gladys, and Ryan.”

  A nurse came in to check Gladys’s vitals. I waited until she was gone before I continued.

  “If it turns out that you’re my daughter,” I said, “and I could change what happened to me that night, I’m not sure I would want to, because look at you now. You are exactly what I dreamed my daughter would become. You had a wonderful mother and father and the kind of life I knew I could never provide. Now, I just need to feel grateful for how my life has turned out, because no matter what happens, I feel blessed to have met you.”

  Marissa reached across the bed and squeezed my hand. “I feel blessed, too.”

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  The Results

  I WAS HOME alone in my apartment finishing breakfast when my cell phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Kate. It’s Ryan. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “No, I was just making some coffee.”

  Nervous butterflies invaded my belly, for I had been waiting five days for the test results. I had elected to have them sent to Ryan’s office, since he was Marissa’s legal guardian, and I suppose I wanted him to be the one to deliver the news. To both of us.

  “I’m sure you know why I’m calling,” he said.

  “I can guess.”

  The coffee pot gurgled and hissed. I felt almost dizzy with anticipation, and moved slowly to a chair to sit down.

  “Do you want me to open it now,” he asked, “and give you the news over the phone? Or do you want me to call Marissa first, and you can come in together?”

  I stood up again and paced back and forth in my kitchen while I considered both options. “Open it now,” I said. “If it’s something Marissa needs to know, I think you should be the one to tell her. But I can’t wait any longer.”

  I heard the sound of the tape ripping across the courier envelope, then paper unfolding, followed by silence. Only a few seconds went by, but it felt like many minutes.

  “Are you reading it?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  My heart pounded against my ribcage. I was sure it was going to beat right out of my chest. “What does it say?”

  He paused. “Maybe I should have asked you to come in.”

  “Why?”

  My knees went weak. I sank back down onto one of the kitchen chairs while I waited for him to tell me the result, yet somehow I knew the answer. I could hear it in his voice.

  “There was a negative result, Kate,” he told me. “Marissa’s not your daughter. I’m sorry.”

  The finality of his words held me immobile. I experienced a sudden, acute sense of loss. It was so painfully familiar. A repeat of many years ago, like d�
�jà vu.

  Sitting very still, I waited for my emotions to settle.

  “Are you okay?” Ryan asked.

  “Yes.” I took a moment to steady my voice. “Are you surprised? Or is this what you expected?”

  “I told you before,” he said, “I believed anything was possible.”

  Disappointment sat like a ball of lead in my stomach, and I had to steel myself against the urge to cry. “You don’t think I’m a nutcase? I mean, it was such a long shot. Way out there.”

  “Yes, but you’re way out there, too, Kate. Remember how Gladys used to say you were like a guardian angel sent to us? I’ve felt the same way, and it made me believe in... I don’t know what... magic, or fate, or destiny. Something beyond pure dumb luck. Marissa may not be your biological daughter, but I can promise that she loves you.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes. “I love her, too.”

  As I sat there comprehending the fact that Marissa was not the living child I thought I’d lost, I tried not to fall apart, but I felt completely broken. This meant I was not a mother. I was no one’s mother.

  My baby was truly dead. She was not coming back.

  I went for a walk alone that afternoon, down onto the small rocky beach near the yacht club. Clearly I was a nutcase, for I was the only person crazy enough to venture out into sub-zero temperatures with a wind chill that gusted off the white-capped Bay and took a sharp stinging bite out of my cheeks.

  As I stood looking out at the rough gray water and sniffed in the cold, I wondered what the hell I was doing here so far away from my real life. I had become an imposter, running from my past.

  Certainly, one could argue that I was running from a drug dealer who wanted me to pay my dead husband’s debts, but I knew that wasn’t the whole story. I had come here to the farthest corner of a country that was not my own, searching for something.

  What, exactly? A way to exist in a state of denial about how my life had unfolded? To start again with a fresh, clean slate? Was that even possible? Because no one could ever truly erase the past.

  Maybe there was something wrong with me. Surely a normal woman would find it difficult to allow every shred of her identity to be stripped away – her name, her profession, her community, and family. Yet here I stood, eager to remain a ghost, still hiding in so many ways from the very people who had opened their hearts to me, given me everything, trusted me with everything.