Finders Keepers

by Catherine Palmer

  Starting at the top, he began to read the names of his ancestors. There was Zachary Chalmers, the founder of Ambleside. Other names followed. Wives and children. Dates of birth and dates of death. Marriages. He located his father’s name, and his mother’s, and he noted the listing of children beneath, written almost too small to read. Then his eye fell on the name of his aunt, Grace Mariana Chalmers. She had never married, but—oddly—beneath her name in tiny letters was printed another name: Zachary Daniel.

  Zachary lifted his head and focused on the yellow porch light. Moths flitted around it, drawn to the pale glow. Zachary Daniel was his name. Why had his aunt written his name beneath her own? Looking down at the chart again, he peered at the list of children beneath his father’s name. There was no Zachary Daniel among them.

  “I ate three hot dogs,” Nick said, bounding onto the porch. His mother was right behind him. “Magunnery’s daddy said it was OK. I didn’t beg for the hot dogs, I promise, Mommy. They were right there on the plate, and Magunnery’s daddy asked me if I wanted another one and then another one and then …”

  “Nick, three is too many,” Elizabeth said. “You should know that.”

  “Hey, it’s Zachary!” The boy’s face lit up. “Did you come to see us? I ate three hot dogs at Magunnery’s house, but I didn’t beg. We played in her tepee. She has a tepee in her bedroom, and you can get inside it. It’s dark, but we weren’t scared because we lit a fire.”

  “A fire!” Elizabeth gasped and dropped to one knee. “Nick, you’re never supposed to—”

  “A pretend fire, Mommy. We made it out of Magunnery’s red sweater.”

  Zachary stood, feeling as though every ounce of energy had been sapped from his body. “I need to go home,” he said.

  “I didn’t mean to!” Nick cried. “I didn’t want to scare you and my mommy about the fire. I won’t ever do it again. Please stay here with us!”

  “It’s not the fire, Nick.” Zachary walked toward the steps. “It’s, uh, it’s the old Bible. I need to … need to …” He focused on Elizabeth. “You knew, didn’t you? You’d read it. How long have you known?”

  “Known what?” She rose. “Zachary, what’s the matter?”

  “Come on, Elizabeth. You must have looked through that Bible hundreds of times. You were reading the Psalms.”

  “Yes, but …” Taking her son’s shoulders, she propelled the boy toward the front door. “Nick, go inside and brush your teeth. When you have your jammies on, I’ll come up and tuck you into bed.”

  “What did Grace’s Bible do to Zachary?” Nick asked. “What did that Bible say?”

  “Go upstairs, Nick,” Elizabeth ordered. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

  “That stupid Bible is always making people mad,” he retorted, and then he turned on his heel and stomped into the house.

  Elizabeth let the screen door fall shut with a bang. “Zachary, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about this.” He picked up the old book and shoved it toward her. “I’m talking about dear old Grace Chalmers and her life of lies.”

  “Lies?” She took the Bible.

  “Right here.” He jammed a finger on his name. “I’m not Grace’s nephew. I’m her son.”

  Elizabeth stared in silence at the crinkled page. “Her son?”

  “That’s my name. Can you read the chart any other way?”

  “Maybe she didn’t have room under her brother’s name to write—”

  “I was their first child,” he said. “I’m the oldest, remember? My name should have been at the top of this list. There was plenty of room for Grace to write it—unless it didn’t belong there. She put me over here with her. She wrote the right name, the right birth date, everything. Just the wrong mother. And no father.”

  Elizabeth lifted her head. “Zachary, I had no idea. Grace never said a word about having a son.”

  “Of course not. Why should she? She wasn’t married, and I was a part of her dark past. She’d managed to foist me off on her brother, so why should she ever think of me again?”

  “But she did think of you. She came to visit you in her red coat. She brought you the little toy chicken. And Grace left you the family’s mansion.”

  “Family.” He took the Bible and slammed it onto the porch swing. “She kept her mansion until the day she died. Kept her old books. Kept all her china and knickknacks. Even kept her old red coat. She kept everything she ever had. Everything except me.”

  Feeling as though he might explode, Zachary stormed down the steps. No wonder his parents had held themselves distant from him all those years. No wonder they had found it so easy to place him in state custody and walk away when things got too rough. He wasn’t their child.

  He was the son of Grace Chalmers, a woman who had abandoned him in order to preserve her reputation. Picking up a stone, he hurled it at the old mansion. The tinkle of breaking glass echoed through the dark summer night.

  Elizabeth said good-bye to one of her most loyal customers, and then she stepped outside the open door of her shop to get a breath of fresh air. It had been a profitable Saturday, with a steady stream of customers who had purchased an unusual number of high-ticket items. Her Jefferson City contract was almost complete, which meant yet another influx of cash. Elizabeth glanced across the expanse of lawn at the old Chalmers House. An idea she had toyed with more than once presented itself again. Maybe she could convince Zachary to let her put a down payment on the building. It wouldn’t be much, but it might make a difference in the old mansion’s fate.

  She sighed and leaned against the wall of Finders Keepers. The past few days had been awful. Alone, she had stewed for hours, unable to sleep at night. If she called Zachary, he might think she was intruding on his privacy. After all, the last real conversation they’d had—before the shocking discovery in Graces’s Bible—had been a definite severing of any relationship between them.

  But at the meeting, he had said he wanted to talk to her—and not about the mansion. What had he been planning to tell her?

  Now, because he’d stumbled upon the truth of his background, she might never know. How could she have looked through that Bible so many times and never noticed Zachary’s name listed beneath Grace’s? And why hadn’t Grace told Elizabeth about her son? Who was Zachary’s father? Why had Grace given the baby away? Had she known that her brother abandoned Zachary to the fostercare system?

  Elizabeth had turned the thoughts over and over in her mind without finding any answers. After reading and rereading the inscriptions so carefully penned in Grace’s hand, she had left the Bible on the old porch swing. For some strange reason, she felt as though she, too, had been betrayed by her dear friend.

  “Mommy, we’re worried,” Nick announced, emerging onto the front stoop. He and Montgomery had come through the shop to find her. “Herod is being a pill again.”

  “What did she do this time?” Elizabeth shook her head in frustration at the annoying little Heather, who seemed to delight in making Nick’s life miserable.

  “We’re supposed to do the play of the practical son in Sunday school tomorrow,” Nick explained. “And Herod is supposed to be the father of the practical son, but she says she’s going to her grandma’s house, and we better just find someone else, so there.”

  “The practical son?” Elizabeth tried to concentrate.

  “You know, Mommy. The practical son takes his daddy’s money and goes to a far country and spends it on righteous living.”

  “Riotous living,” Montgomery corrected. “Riotous living is where you act naughty and go see bad movies and say lots of swear words. You can spend all your money on riotous living. That’s what happened to the prodigal son.”

  “Ah, the prodigal son.” Elizabeth stifled the urge to laugh out loud.

  “I am the practical son in our play,” Nick continued, “and Magunnery is my brother. The brother gets angry because the father gives the practical son a fat cow, even though he
wasted all that money on righteous living.”

  “Riotous living,” Montgomery corrected him loudly. “Riotous, riotous, riotous!”

  “Don’t be so picky, Magunnery,” Nick replied. “It’s just a word.”

  “You have to talk right, or Heather will keep being mean to you.”

  Nick weighed this for a moment. “I don’t like Herod. We should have given her the part of the fat cow. Then I could say, ‘My father has killed the fat cow—’”

  “Nick,” Elizabeth interrupted, “that isn’t nice at all.”

  “But if Herod won’t be our father,” Nick went on, “what are we going to do in Sunday school tomorrow?”

  “Maybe one of the other children can play the part of the father,” Elizabeth said. “We can call someone on the phone, if you want to, Nick. But first of all, I’ve decided that I’m going to close the store early. I have some concerns that I need to take care of, too.”

  “Zachary.” Nick gave Montgomery a knowing nod. “Like I told you.”

  “Yes, I am worried about Zachary,” Elizabeth acknowledged.

  “He was mad because of that Bible.”

  “Well, he had read something in there that upset him. I feel like I ought to go talk to him, and I want you to come with me, Nick.”

  The boy’s mouth fell open, but no words of protest emerged. Montgomery looked crestfallen. “OK, I’ll go home,” she said softly. “Daddy’s there.”

  “Is your father feeling all right today, Montgomery?”

  “He never feels all right. On Saturdays he used to work in his shop and build things for my mommy. Now he mostly just sits and stares out the window.”

  “Why don’t you ask if he’ll read you a book?”

  Nodding glumly, the little redhead plodded off down the sidewalk. Elizabeth turned and locked up her store. In minutes, she and Nick were driving down the road toward the apartment complex where Zachary lived.

  A part of her felt sure she was completely nuts. Leave the man alone, she told herself. He’s not worth the hours of confusion and turmoil he’s caused you already.

  But another part of her ached to take Zachary in her arms and smooth away the lines of pain that had creased his forehead. At least she had known who her parents were. A small box of treasures from their life together lay hidden under her bed—a ribbon with which her mother had tied Elizabeth’s hair, a tube of bright lipstick her mother had worn, her father’s old brown cardigan sweater, and photographs of their years together as a family. After their deaths, Elizabeth had been taken in by her grandmother and given a life of love and compassion. She could hardly imagine how it would feel to find suddenly that her whole childhood had been a lie.

  “Well, here we are,” Nick announced for the fifth time as they eased up to a stop sign. “I remember this red sign, Mom. This is the right place, I’m sure of it. I think we must be near Zachary’s house.”

  “Nick, those red signs tell the cars to stop. They’re on all the street corners.” Elizabeth dreaded the day when her son attempted to learn to drive.

  “No, Mommy. Sometimes the corners have lights.”

  Elizabeth pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex and lifted a quick prayer for patience with Nick and for understanding with Zachary.

  “See!” Nick said proudly, as they climbed out and began to ascend the stairs to the apartment. “I told you this was the right place.”

  “You sure did, sweetheart.” She knocked and waited. Maybe Zachary had gone out. Maybe he had moved away. Maybe—

  The door opened. “Hey, Elizabeth,” Zachary said. He had on an old navy T-shirt and a pair of jeans. His hair looked as though it hadn’t been combed. “I didn’t expect company today.”

  “I’m here too,” Nick spoke up. “We came to see if you were OK, because you got so mad at the Bible the other night.”

  Zachary studied the child for a moment. Then a grin lifted the corner of his mouth. “You guys want to come inside? I’m afraid I don’t have a porch swing.”

  “Oh, yes, we will come in,” Nick said, shouldering his way past the man. “I am not going to ask about any food, Zachary, but I’m just going to tell you that Magunnery says you have a big box of mint chocolate chip ice cream in your freezer.”

  “Nick!” Elizabeth cried.

  “I didn’t beg, Mommy.”

  Zachary laughed. “As a matter of fact, I was just getting ready to throw a burger on the grill. How about if I make supper for all of us, and then we’ll eat a bowl of that ice cream?”

  “That would be a very good plan.” Nick seated himself on the sofa, looking for all the world like a king surveying his realm.

  Elizabeth sighed. “Zachary, you don’t need to make us supper. I just wanted to drop by and check on you. The other night was so confusing.”

  His smile faded. “Yeah. I’ve tried to call my parents … my ‘whatever they are.’ Apparently they moved the whole family out of state. We hadn’t spoken for years, but now I don’t even know where to start looking.”

  “Zachary, I’ve thought a lot about Grace, and—”

  “Me, too. And I don’t want to think about her anymore.” He gestured to the balcony. “You and Nick want to sit outside while I grill?”

  Nick made a beeline for the balcony, but Elizabeth refused to be deterred from her mission. “Zachary, there’s a lot of this I don’t understand, but I do know one thing. Grace cared deeply about you.”

  Without responding, he moved to the kitchen and began forming two more patties. “Lucky thing they don’t sell ground beef in bachelor-sized packets.”

  Elizabeth followed him. “You know, Nick’s birth mother had a tough choice to make, too. Half the time, when I think about her, I get furious. How could she put that precious newborn baby into a cold, gray institution? Didn’t she care about him? Didn’t she love him at all? She was just thinking of herself, her own needs. She was the lowest form of human being.”

  “Barbecue sauce?” Zachary asked.

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “The other half of the time, I have to admit that I don’t know this woman at all. I don’t know how she became pregnant—was it an act of desperation in exchange for money, was she raped, was it a failed love? All I know is that she chose the best thing she could think of for that little baby. She had to trust that Nick would have food to eat and clothes to wear in the orphanage. He might not have the best life, but at least he would live.”

  “Onions?” Zachary said.

  “In her own way,” Elizabeth went on, ignoring his attempts to divert the conversation, “she cared about her son. She didn’t abort him before birth, and she didn’t throw him into a trash heap afterward. She did what she could.”

  “Tomatoes?”

  “That woman’s blood runs through Nick’s veins. She’s part of who he is and who he’ll become someday. The shape of his fingers, the color of his hair, his love of art and music come from her. Sometimes I’m furious with her, and sometimes I even hate her for the pain she caused that precious child. Because of what she did, Nick may never be able to realize his potential. But I am learning not to hate his birth mother, because I know she tried. She tried, Zachary. She gave him life, and her genes, and something of a home. It was the best she could do, and for that I love her.”

  Picking up the plate of sliced vegetables, Zachary moved past Elizabeth and walked out to the balcony. She stood alone for a moment in the galley kitchen, staring at the bloodied board on which he had formed the patties. Those words had been wrenched from her very soul, and Zachary had ignored them. All the years of anguish she had spent dealing with her feelings about Nick’s birth parents had come rolling out in this small room. And now they lay in the cold, empty silence.

  Zachary didn’t want to hear. And Nick probably wouldn’t want to hear, either. When Elizabeth’s son was old enough to wonder about the circumstances of his Romanian heritage, she would try to explain. But she had a feeling that the same sense of loss, anger, and betrayal would threate
n to overwhelm Nick.

  “Aren’t you coming outside, Mommy?” the child asked, appearing in the kitchen. “Zachary is cooking the burgers. Smoke is coming out of the top of them. It smells good!”

  She tried to smile. “I love you, Nick,” she said softly, reaching out to her son.

  “I love you, too, Mom, and Zachary’s going to let me put on the barbecue sauce. Do you think I’ll like how it tastes? Zachary says it tastes like the sauce on ribs. That sauce is my favorite thing in all the world.”

  She shook her head as he took her hand and began pulling her toward the balcony. “Your favorite thing?”

  He paused. “Oh, bother. I think I like bean burritos better than ribs.”

  Laughing, Elizabeth followed Nick out onto the balcony. Zachary turned. At the sight of them, the grim line of his mouth softened. “Is Nick trying to change my menu?”

  “It’s just that I love bean burritos,” Nick said.

  “Wait’ll you taste my burgers,” he said, taking a spatula and flipping a patty. “One bite, and you’ll forget all about bean burritos.”

  “Really?” Nick looked at his mother. “But I don’t want to forget about burritos. I love them. I was thinking we could eat them tomorrow for lunch right after church. I could have my usual—two bean burritos and water. And that would taste yummy.”

  “We’re not going to plan tomorrow’s menu tonight,” Elizabeth said.

  “But Zachary could come with us to eat at Taco Bell. Because after church, we’re going to be very hungry.”

  He stopped speaking for a moment, and Elizabeth could almost read the direction of his thoughts. Before she could stop him, however, Nick blurted out his latest idea.

  “Zachary, you could be the father of the practical son!” The boy leapt from his chair and grabbed Zachary’s arm, sending a splatter of barbecue sauce across the wall. “Herod says she won’t be the father, so Magunnery and I didn’t know who could give me the fat cow, but now it can be you!”

  Holding his dripping brush, Zachary gave Elizabeth a quizzical look. “The prodigal son,” she explained, “needs a father.”