Searching for Cate

by Marie Ferrarella

  Cate doubted him now. Doubted everything they had ever told her, and yet she still desperately hoped that she was just being paranoid. That her imagination was running away with her.

  Years on the job did that to you, Cate thought. It heightened your senses and made you ready to take on anything. It also made you see things that weren’t really there. Full-blown figures where in reality only shadows existed.

  Please let there be only shadows.

  Cate took a deep breath and braced herself. It was time to test her bravery again. Time to cross another line in the sand. God knew she didn’t want to. But she had to.

  “Mom, what was Doc Ed talking about just now?” To her own ear, her voice trembled slightly. She fisted her hands harder, dug her nails into her palms more deeply. “Why is our blood type incompatible?”

  The smile on Julia’s lips was thin, weary, and yet somehow still just as warm now as it had been when Cate had been a little girl of eight. Back then, thunderstorms would frighten her, causing her to crawl into the shelter of her mother’s arms, begging to hear stories that would distract her. Her mother always obliged.

  She wasn’t eight anymore, Cate thought sadly.

  “You’re a smart girl, Catie.” Julia’s voice was thin, reedy. “You know why.”

  Yes, Cate thought, she knew in her soul. But until she heard the actual words, she would remain in denial. She needed that kick in the butt to make her stop playing games with herself.

  Cate pressed her lips together, hating this. “Tell me.”

  Julia sighed. Passing a hand over her eyes, she willed her tears back. A couple seeped out, anyway. Because she was tethered to an IV, her movement was restricted. With another bracing sigh, Julia dropped her hand to the bed. It fell as if it was too heavy to hold up.

  God, how she wished Teddy had listened to her. She’d told him that it was wrong to keep this from Catie. But he’d begged. It was one of the very few times he’d asked anything of her and she couldn’t deny him, even though she knew it was wrong. Teddy had been and always would remain her childhood sweetheart, the man with the key to her heart.

  With effort, Julia forced words past her lips, trying not to let the very act exhaust her. “Your father and I loved you from the moment we saw you.”

  “Tell me, Mama.”

  And so Julia said the words she’d promised her husband never to say. But he wasn’t here now, and if Teddy was looking down, she told herself he’d understand. “You were adopted, Catie.” She channeled every last bit of strength into her voice, determined to make Cate understand. And forgive. “You came into our lives when you were just a week old, but you were always part of us.”

  In her heart, she begged Cate not to be angry at the grave omission that had been made. Julia fisted one frail hand and placed it against her breast.

  “I didn’t get to carry you beneath my heart, the way your birth mother did. But I held you there when you cried because the other kids made fun of you, or when that boy you liked so much asked another girl out. I held you to my heart when your father died—and he was your father. Just as you are my daughter, Catie. In love, in spirit and in fact. In every way but the mechanics of birth.” Pushing a button on the hospital bed, Julia drew herself up as best she could, a pale shadow of the vivacious woman she’d once been. “No one could have loved you more than your father and I did. No one,” she underscored as fiercely as she could.

  “It’s okay, Mama, it’s okay.”

  On legs that were less than solid, Cate crossed to the lone bed in the room and took her mother’s hand. She didn’t want her to become agitated and waste what precious little strength she still had left.

  Even as Cate held her mother’s hand, she could feel everything around her cracking, breaking. Shattering and raining down around her like tiny shards of glass. Cate struggled to understand why her parents would keep this from her. Were they ashamed of her, of how she had come into their lives?

  Julia wrapped her fingers tightly around Cate’s, afraid to let go. Afraid that the young woman she’d loved for the past twenty-seven years would walk out the door and never come back.

  But that isn’t my Catie. Catie would never leave.

  “But why didn’t you ever tell me?” Cate asked.

  A ragged sigh escaped Julia’s lips. “That was your father’s decision. He was afraid to let you know. When I tried to argue him out of it, he made me promise that I would never tell you.” Julia tried to read her daughter’s expression, but Cate had on what she’d once teased was her special agent face, the one that gave nothing away. Julia proceeded cautiously, as if every step on the tightrope might be her last. “Your father loved you so much, he said it would kill him if someday you wanted to go away to find your real parents.”

  Digging her elbows into the mattress, Julia struggled to sit up. Shifting pillows, Cate propped her up. Julia offered her a weary smile of thanks. “We were your real parents, your father and I.”

  “I know.” Cate said the words because her mother expected them. Because up until a few minutes ago, they had been true. But they weren’t now. There was a hollowness opening up inside of her, a hollowness that threatened to swallow her whole. It took everything she had not to let it register on her face.

  Doggedly, Cate pressed as much as she dared. “But after Daddy died…?” She paused, searching for words. Trying desperately to absolve the woman she’d thought of as her mother. “Why didn’t you tell me then?”

  A helpless look entered the hazel eyes. “You were fifteen and I didn’t know how to tell you. I did try, though, several times. But every time an occasion opened up, I realized that, like your father, I was afraid, too. You have to understand, after he died, you were all I had. I didn’t want to lose you.”

  After her father died, she and her mother had grown closer. So close that when it came time for her to go away to college, she opted to go to the University of San Francisco instead of a school back east the way she’d originally planned. She didn’t want to be far from her mother in case she was needed.

  They’d taught her that family was everything.

  How could they have said that to her, knowing what they’d known?

  Cate battled back the bitter anger as she lightly squeezed her mother’s hand. Trying to remember only the good times. “You wouldn’t have lost me, Mama.”

  The look in Julia’s eyes said she knew better. “I’ve lost you now.”

  She couldn’t allow her to think like that. If Julia was going to get well, she needed only positive energy in her life. Cate was determined to provide it. She knew she owed it to the other woman.

  “Shh, don’t talk nonsense. I’m here and I’m always going to be here.” Cate took the once robust woman into her arms. Julia felt as if she weighed next to nothing and it broke her heart. “You just make sure that you do the same, understand?”

  “I’m trying, Catie,” Julia whispered hoarsely. “I’m trying.”

  “Yes, Mama, I know you are.”

  The problem was, Cate thought, she was afraid that it just wasn’t enough. A cold fear gripped her heart once again.

  Chapter 4

  When her mother fell asleep, Cate slipped out into the parking lot and drove the five miles over to Doc Ed’s office.

  Rhonda, the nurse who had been with him for the past ten years, looked somewhat surprised to see her and even more surprised when she asked to speak with the doctor. The nurse obligingly sandwiched her in between patients.

  Cate ignored the exasperated look the woman in the waiting room gave her as she walked by and went into the inner office.

  The doctor’s terrain was as familiar as the back of her own hand. Three exam rooms huddled together, with Doc Ed’s personal office at the end of the tiny hall. All three charts were in the slots that hung on the outside of the doors. It reminded her of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, except that she was in search of something far more important than porridge and comfortable sleeping accommodations.

&nbs
p; She knocked once on Doc Ed’s door and let herself in before he gave his permission. If he was surprised to see her, he hid it well.

  Cate struggled to hold in her hurt and anger. “You knew, didn’t you?”

  Doc Ed put down the file he was reviewing and indicated that she should take the chair that was before his scarred desk. Old-fashioned in his methods, he put the patient before the fee and there was no computer on his desk, challenging his mind and his time. He liked only what he could put his hands on, like the files that littered every flat surface within his office.

  “Yes,” he told her, scrutinizing her reaction, “I knew.”

  Somehow, that seemed like the ultimate betrayal to her. Had no one in her life been honest with her? “For how long?”

  “From the beginning. I was the one who put them in touch with the private agency.”

  Cate reminded herself that she was first and foremost a special agent with the FBI. That meant she had to conduct herself professionally. She was supposed to be able to gather information under the worst situations, and heaven knew, this one qualified. “What was the name of it?”

  Doc Ed shook his head. “Angels From Heaven,” he told her. “But it’s long gone.” He saw the protest rise to her lips, as if she thought he was lying. “From what I’d heard, the lawyer handling all the private adoptions was killed in a freak accident. Stepped off a curb and right in front of a bus. Died instantly.”

  That sounded like the punchline of a bad joke. “When?”

  Doc Ed thought for a moment, trying to pin down a year. He remembered reading the story in the paper and wondering what was going to happen to all the files of the babies who had changed hands. He’d even gone so far as to try to find out. But the address on the card the lawyer had given him turned out to belong to a dry cleaner’s now. All trace of the dead man’s small office was gone.

  “Twelve, fifteen years ago. Without him, there was no agency.”

  She watched the doctor’s eyes for signs of nervousness. Seeing none still didn’t convince her. He could just be a convincing liar. After all, he’d allowed her to believe a lie all these years. “You’re sure?”

  Doc Ed spread his hands wide. “I have no reason to lie to you, Catherine.”

  “You had no reason to keep my adoption from me, either,” she pointed out.

  “Not my call, Catherine.” He leaned back in his chair, an old leather chair that had long since assumed his shape. It creaked slightly as he studied her. She was a strong-willed girl, she always had been. She would get through this, but not easily. “For what it’s worth, I thought your father was wrong, keeping this from you.” He laughed softly to himself. “Big Ted was absolutely fearless, but you were his Achilles heel.”

  Her eyebrows drew together. That didn’t make any sense to her. Achilles heels signified a weakness. She’d never held Big Ted back. “I don’t understand.”

  “If you had wanted to call someone else ‘Dad,’ it would have killed Big Ted. You were the sun and the moon and stars to him.”

  How could her father have even thought that she’d turn her back on him and all their time together? Turn her back on the man who’d taught her how to ride a dirt bike, how to play baseball, how to fish. She’d been the best boy she could be for her father, and all the while the relationship she’d believed in didn’t even exist.

  “But he didn’t trust me.”

  The accusation surprised Doc Ed. “What?”

  “He didn’t trust me,” she repeated. “My father didn’t trust me not to leave him, not to think of him differently once I knew that I didn’t have his genes in my body.” She leaned forward, trying to make Doc Ed understand what she was still trying to grapple with herself. “Don’t you see, if my father had told me I was adopted, it would have been no big deal. I knew a couple of kids in school who were adopted and they were okay.

  “But he didn’t tell me. Neither of them did, and that made it a big deal. That they couldn’t tell me the truth. And the truth I knew was a lie.” Restless, she ran her hand through her hair. “Now I’m not really sure about anything anymore, least of all who I am.”

  Doc Ed reached for her hand and forced her to look at him. “You’re still Catherine Kowalski,” he told her firmly. “You can call yourself Watermelon, it makes no difference. You’re still Cate.”

  Despite herself, her mouth quirked in a half smile. “Watermelon, huh?”

  “Watermelon,” he repeated.

  Her smile faded and she shook her head. “It’s not the name that matters, Doc. It’s the truth that makes a difference. And the truth is that someone else gave birth to me, that there are genes inside of me that didn’t come from the people who, until a couple of hours ago, I’d thought of as Mom and Dad. The truth is, I thought there was no secret in my family and there is. And it’s a whopper.”

  Doc Ed folded his hands on the desk and looked at her over his glasses. “So what are you going to do? All the records that might have given you a clue are long gone.”

  Maybe not, she thought. Maybe someone had claimed them, stored them. Something. But she wasn’t going to deal with that now.

  “For the time being, I’m going to stay where I’ll do the most good, right here with my mother.” She noted how he smiled when she still referred to Julia as her mother. “I’m putting in for a leave of absence so I can be with her for as long as I can. After she gets well, we’ll see.”

  Unlike his colleagues, he believed in dispensing hope if there was even so much as a shred to be had. But even he couldn’t find it within his heart to allow her to deceive herself like this. “Cate, you know that she might not get well.”

  Cate squared her shoulders, the look in her eyes forbidding him to say anything more. “Please,” she whispered the word quietly, “I’m dealing with one truth at a time.”

  Two and a half weeks later, Cate found herself standing at her mother’s gravesite. It was raining, which seemed somehow fitting. She’d been angry at the sun for daring to shine the day of her father’s funeral so many years ago.

  She was only vaguely aware that her partner, James Wong, was holding an umbrella over her head, keeping her dry. Vaguely aware of the world in general. She felt as if she was walking along on the outside of a huge circle, looking in.

  She’d refused the Valium Doc Ed had offered her just before the ceremony. She didn’t want to be any more numb than she already was. Numb from the loss of a woman she’d loved with all her heart and had thought of as her mother to the very end, despite everything.

  Numb from the realization that she’d been lied to for the past twenty-seven years of her life.

  Numb because there were no foundations beneath her feet, no walls around her to protect her. She was bare and exposed. Completely and utterly adrift in dark waters. And for the first time in her life, she had no sense of identity. She had no idea who she was, or who she might have been meant to be.

  She wouldn’t know anything until she found the answers to the questions that had been battering her brain for the past two and a half weeks.

  Ever since that day in her mother’s hospital room.

  Just before the end, her mother had begged her to forgive her and of course she had. She bore no malice toward the people who had done everything in their power to make her feel loved and secure. But it didn’t negate her desire to discover her birth parents and, with them, her roots.

  Cate realized that the priest had stopped talking. The ceremony was almost over. Someone handed her a white rose. She went through the motions, kissing a petal and then throwing the flower onto the deep-mahogany casket that lay nestled in the freshly dug grave.

  As she looked down, she felt her heart tightening within her chest.

  Julia Kowalski had died three days ago. And now she and Big Ted were together again.

  And she was alone. Completely alone. With no family to fall back on.

  Neither one of her parents had had any siblings. Cate had always thought of herself as the only child
of only children. Now she no longer knew what to think, what to feel.

  Except for alone.

  Everyone gathered at her parents’ house after the funeral. Betsy Keller, her mother’s best and oldest friend, had taken over and handled all the arrangements. Had insisted on it.

  “You have enough to deal with, poor thing,” she’d clucked sympathetically several times during the past three days.

  The mother of six and grandmother of nine, Betsy took to traffic control easily. Rather than call in a caterer, she’d summoned the collective resources of all of Julia’s friends. The women had brought over casseroles, pies, cakes and enough food to feed two armies.

  “You’ve got to eat something,” Betsy insisted. She paused to deliver the same entreaty every time their paths crossed within the crammed house filled with people who had loved Julia and Ted.

  And each time, Cate would respond the same way. “Maybe later.”

  Betsy would peer at her through her red-rimmed glasses. “All right, but I’ll be watching you.”

  Cate forced a smile to her lips. She tried to cheer herself up with the fact that her mother had been well loved by a great many people. Both her parents had been. And she was going to miss them terribly, but it was going to take her some time to get over the fact that they had deceived her. That they hadn’t had enough faith in her to know that she wasn’t about to pick up and go searching for her birth parents the moment she knew of their existence.

  She wouldn’t have then. But, she had to now. Now that she had no roots. No family to call her own. Maybe it was a failing, she thought, but she needed to feel part of something. Something other than the bureau.

  She made eye contact with James, who was there with his wife and oldest son. Her partner started to come over, but she shook her head and James faded back, giving her space.

  As she stood, looking at people exchanging pleasantries, catching up on one another’s lives, she became aware that someone had come up to join her. She began to move away but felt something being slipped into her hand.