by Traci DePree
“Hey, nice hair,” Livvy said. “Betty didn’t talk you into a perm?”
“Not this time.” Kate pulled up a chair alongside Livvy’s. “So, what have you found out?”
Livvy cleared her throat, then said, “I went to Ask.com. Most people believe, as we do, that two blue-eyed parents can’t have a brown-eyed child. Yet, while it’s rare, it is possible. So, Ray and Patricia could have had Marissa, biologically speaking. But the odds are against it. It’s not likely that Marissa is both Patricia and Ray’s daughter.”
“Not exactly hard-and-fast evidence, is it?” Kate said. “Maybe I’m just spinning my wheels. But I keep getting this gut feeling, you know?”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to accuse Patricia of lying, and yet there’s just, well, more. I can’t get past her saying that she could stop Marissa’s suffering. And the way she hid that photo album...She’s hiding something, and I don’t know if I can help her fully unless I know what it is.”
Livvy nodded her understanding.
Kate paused in thought, then said more to herself than to Livvy, “Marissa told me that one time a friend of her mom’s brought her a brochure on adoption, and Patricia got very upset...”
“And...?”
“Why would she get so bent out of shape over adoption unless it was a sore spot in her own experience?”
“Perhaps Patricia herself was adopted. Maybe she found out her birth parents were in Chattanooga, and when she was in college, she contacted them.”
Kate considered that possibility. “One of them could be a potential marrow donor, so they might be able to help Marissa...That would account for Patricia’s statement. That’s something we could look into.”
“Or maybe Marissa isn’t her biological daughter. Maybe she was Ray’s daughter from a previous relationship, and Patricia adopted her?”
“Not likely,” Kate pointed out, “since Sam said the reason they weren’t able to have more kids was because of Ray’s infertility.”
They were silent for a few moments before Kate said, “Perhaps Ray adopted Marissa during a previous marriage. He was quite a bit older than Patricia was. That scenario would explain why Patricia herself isn’t a match. Of course, biological parents aren’t usually a match for such donations anyway. How long did you say Patricia lived in Chattanooga?”
Livvy thought for a moment before answering, “I remember she left town just after graduation my freshman year. Then when she came back, it was...” She paused again. “Two summers later?”
“How old was Marissa at that time?”
“I don’t remember,” Livvy said. “But she wasn’t a newborn.”
“Not much time for a courtship and pregnancy.”
SINCE IT WAS NEARING NOON, Livvy and Kate decided to head to the Country Diner for a bite to eat. Like every weekday at lunch, the place was jam-packed.
Kate and Livvy took a booth that looked out on the Town Green, though it was a patchwork of green and white at this time of year. All that remained of the snow cover were tall piles of white left from all the snowplows dumping their loads.
“So much for walking during my lunch break,” Livvy said, drawing her attention back to her menu.
“I guess it is warm enough, isn’t it?” Kate gazed at the menu. “But it doesn’t hurt to take a break every now and then. Besides, you wouldn’t want us to waste away.” She smiled at her own comment.
“There’s a high likelihood of that!” Livvy closed her menu.
“Decided what you’re going to order?” Kate glanced up. She smiled when she saw J. B. Packer in the kitchen. J.B. had been suspected of setting the fire at Faith Briar Church, but once he was proven innocent, he took a job as a part-time fry cook at the diner, filling in for owner and head chef Loretta sometimes.
“Catfish, I think. With stack cakes.”
“That sounds good. I’m leaning toward the chowder and a Reuben with Thousand Island dressing myself.”
Just then LuAnne Matthews appeared, her horn-rimmed glasses dangling from the jeweled chain that hung around her neck. Her green eyes sparkled at them. “Hey, Livvy, Kate. Y’all interested in today’s special? Meatball sandwiches with Cowboy Surprise?” the redhead said with a wink.
“What’s Cowboy Surprise?” Livvy asked.
“It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you!” She laughed at her own joke, then said, “It’s a soup, kind of. More of a stew with baked beans and bacon.”
“I think I’ll pass,” Kate said with a smirk.
“Your loss,” LuAnne said. “I had it this mornin’, and it wasn’t so bad.”
They gave LuAnne their orders, then she hurried to greet new patrons at the front door.
Kate reached for her glass of ice water and took a sip.
“So, I think we’ve established that Ray wasn’t Marissa’s biological dad,” Livvy said.
“I’ve never heard anyone say a thing about Patricia being an unwed mother though. Wouldn’t word of that have got-ten out? You went to youth group with her. Was that ever mentioned?”
“Maybe gossiped about, but I was a junior in high school, so I didn’t exactly pay attention.”
“Then the option that Marissa was adopted is still valid—either after Patricia and Ray were married or...” Kate said.
“No twenty-year-old would be allowed to adopt,” Livvy said. “There are minimum age requirements and length of marriage rules that come into play. I can’t see that as a viable alternative. And most girls that age wouldn’t choose adoption as their first option. That’s usually taken up after failing to conceive biologically.”
“Unless they had ideals about the social responsibility of adoption.”
“Still, it wouldn’t be allowed.”
“Did I hear you two talking about Marissa Harris?” Renee Lambert suddenly appeared at their table, her dog Kisses markedly absent from her purse, where he liked to reside. Kate hadn’t even heard her approach, so she was startled by her comment.
“Uh...” Kate said, then cleared her throat. “Would you like to have a seat, Renee?”
Livvy scooted over on her side of the booth, and Renee slid in.
“I overheard you both talking, and I just had to come over,” Renee said, leaning across the table and talking in a whisper.
Kate and Livvy exchanged glances.
“Where’s your dog?” Livvy asked, changing the subject.
“Oh, Kisses had a hair appointment. I’ll pick him up in an hour or so, after his massage.”
At seeing Livvy’s raised eyebrow, it was all Kate could do to not burst out laughing.
“I know for a fact,” Renee went on, “that Patricia Harris is the biological mother of Marissa.” She leaned in and spoke in a low voice. “I saw a very pregnant Patricia once when I was in Chattanooga, though I wasn’t totally sure it was her at the time. I’d gone to town to do some sightseeing and visit my Aunt Ruth. She has long since died, but she was a dear woman. She liked to collect ironstone—you’d appreciate her collection, Kate. Well, we were walking along, and I glanced across the street, and who do you think I saw?”
“Patricia?” Kate and Livvy said in unison.
Renee nodded. “She was pregnant all right. I’d never seen anyone so large. She’d gained a lot of weight. I mean, she looked like she had a basketball under her dress, and that was in early August. I was across the street that day in Chattanooga, but I was fairly certain it was her.”
She raised a hand for LuAnne to come to the table. When the waitress arrived, Renee asked for a glass of lemon water and placed an order for the blackened chicken salad.
As if to say, “Making yourself at home, are we?” LuAnne lifted an eyebrow, which almost made Kate laugh again. Then she shook her head at her friend, who went back to waitressing.
“Well,” Renee went on once LuAnne left, “I was going to say hello to her, but before I could cross the street, a bus passed between us. When it had passed, she’d disappeared. I thought she went into a lar
ge gray and white Victorian house on Germantown Road, but it had a security system, and I couldn’t get in.”
“Hmm,” Kate said. “Let me ask you this, then. Could Patricia have been adopted herself when she was a child? Did you know her parents?”
“The Longs?” Renee scrunched up her face. “That’s an odd question.”
“Do you think she could have been?” Kate pressed.
“No. I don’t think so. Patricia looked a lot like her mother. They were too much alike for that.” Renee touched the side of her perfectly styled hair as if checking to make sure it was still in place. “I didn’t tell anyone anything about seeing her back then,” she continued, returning to her earlier train of thought. “She wasn’t married yet, at least not that I’d heard. But then she came back to Copper Mill even though she had no family here. That seemed odd to me, very odd. What’s the point of living in a small town if you don’t have family nearby?”
AFTER LIVVY RETURNED TO WORK and Renee excused herself to pick up Kisses from his spa treatment, Kate sat alone at the table. The story she’d come up with seemed simple enough. Patricia had gotten pregnant in high school. Who the father was, Kate had no idea. She wondered if Patricia’s high-school boyfriend had brown eyes. What was his name? Mack...Mark? No, Matt. Matt Reilly. Upon learning of her illegitimate pregnancy, Patricia moved to Chattanooga under the guise of attending college when she was in fact entering a home for unwed mothers. There she met Ray. They fell in love, got married, and moved back to Copper Mill. It was simple, and none of Kate’s business. Plenty of people had babies out of wedlock—it was hardly a big mystery.
Yet several thoughts still niggled at her. First, Marissa had never been told that Ray was anything other than the loving father she’d known him to be. Kate wondered if the bright girl had ever put two and two together on her own. She was, after all, studying for the medical field. Surely she’d learned basic genetic theory. Then again, what child would want to believe such things about her mother? Kate knew plenty of people who chose to believe improbabilities because of the hurt the truth would no doubt bring.
While she didn’t think keeping that secret from Marissa was necessarily the best course for Patricia to take, she could understand how such a thing could happen.
Second, there was still the question of what Patricia meant when she’d said she could end Marissa’s suffering. Was she thinking she could find Marissa’s biological father to see if he could be a bone-marrow donor? That was entirely possible. Yet why keep it all a secret now, when finding help for Marissa was so urgent?
And finally, what secret could that photo album hold—the album Patricia so obviously wanted to hide from her? If she discovered the answer to that question, Kate reasoned, she’d know the answer to all the others.
“YOU’RE DEEP IN THOUGHT.” LuAnne interrupted Kate’s musing as she refilled Kate’s water glass.
“I’m sorry.” Kate glanced up at the freckle-faced waitress, whose expression held concern. “I’m fine. Just thinking about the Harrises.”
LuAnne set the water pitcher on the blue Formica tabletop and plopped down on the seat opposite Kate in the booth. She glanced around the now-quiet restaurant as if to make sure she wasn’t leaving any patrons unattended, then she said, “You’ve been spendin’ a lot of time with Patricia Harris lately, haven’t you?”
Kate nodded, then took a sip of her ice water.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” LuAnne began.
“Oh?”
“I heard you talkin’ to Renee and Livvy...” She dabbed her brow with the hem of her white polyester apron. “You see, Patricia dated my nephew Matt in high school.”
Kate raised her head. “Matt was your nephew?”
“He was a great kid. Amazing baseball player, was MVP in the conference for three years running. I have his picture in my purse somewhere.” She scooted out of the booth and waddled to the counter, then returned with a voluminous, flowered cloth bag, which she opened and began to dig through. Finally she pulled out an aged graduation picture of the boy. He wore a baseball jersey with the number fifty-four on it. He was good looking, with dark hair and deep brown eyes. It was like looking at a male version of Marissa.
“Wow,” Kate mouthed.
“You see it too, don’t you?” LuAnne’s eyes were fixed on the picture. “When Patricia came home with that dark-eyed baby, I knew right away who she was. We all thought Patricia and Matt would get married after high school. It was such a surprise when they broke up. Then Patricia turned up married to someone else two years later, and with a baby no less. Matt was heartbroken. I think he was sure the two of them would get back together someday.”
“Where is he living now?” Kate asked, her thoughts on the very real possibility that if this was indeed Marissa’s biological father, he could be the key to her survival.
LuAnne’s eyes clouded at the question, and she reached for a napkin from the stainless-steel napkin dispenser at the far end of the table. “Matt...” she began. “He died about four years after that picture was taken. He had so much hope, yet he...” She couldn’t say another word. She held up a hand and took a deep breath. “His college roommate found him in his bed—he’d had a heart attack at twenty-two.”
NOW KATE UNDERSTOOD why Patricia Harris had closed herself into her own safe cocoon. People did that when tragedy surrounded them. It felt safe there, as if nothing could touch them. But something had touched her, hadn’t it?
Kate found Livvy at the library after her talk with LuAnne.
Livvy tucked a strand of her auburn hair behind her ear and said, “So Matt Reilly was Marissa’s dad. I guess that makes sense. It was so sad when he died. Shocking would be the word.” She took a deep breath. “So, there’s nothing left for us to figure out. You should talk to Patricia—”
“That’s not entirely true,” Kate said. “There are some questions I still have, like why keep all of this a secret from Marissa?”
“A lot of adoptive parents do the same,” Livvy said. “If Ray adopted Marissa, even if it wasn’t a legal transaction, I could see the reason for not telling her.”
“But in these dire circumstances, wouldn’t you want the truth to be known?”
“I might not if I were Patricia, especially since she knows Matt died.”
“Which leads me to the thing I can’t get past,” Kate went on. “If Matt’s gone, then what did Patricia mean by saying she could save Marissa? And what was in that photo album?”
“There could have been pictures of Matt...Maybe he came to see Marissa when she was born.”
“But you still haven’t answered my first question,” Kate probed.
Livvy threw up her hands. “I’m not coming up with a logical answer!”
Kate smiled at her friend and said, “We looked up birth records for Copper Mill, but we never tried the Chattanooga ones. Do you have those here at the library as well? It would make sense, since that was where she was living at the time.”
“Of course!” They walked back to the microfilm files, and Livvy pulled up the pages from the Chattanooga paper and quickly scanned through, looking for any birth announcements that would match Marissa’s birth date. Kate watched over her shoulder, scanning along with her. Then they looked at each other and gasped.
Chapter Eleven
Finally, there it was...the birth announcement they’d been seeking. It read: Born to Patricia Long on August 16, 1985, twin girls Marissa Lauren, 5 lbs. 12 oz. 18 inches long, and Kara Raine, 5 lbs. 1 oz. 17.5 inches long, at Memorial Hospital.
Kate sat back in shock. She placed a hand over her mouth. “That wasn’t what I was expecting,” she confessed.
“That’s for certain,” Livvy agreed. “But it explains a lot, doesn’t it? At least why Patricia said what she did.”
“Not everything, though.”
“The only thing to do is to talk to Patricia. She knows the truth—and it’s eating her up.”
Kate nodded. “Even if it means sh
e’ll shut me out completely, I need to talk to her.”
PATRICIA WAS ON A LADDER in the backyard filling her birdfeeders when Kate arrived. Kate had seen Patricia’s Mercedes in the drive, so she knew she had to be home. When no one answered the front door after she knocked, she walked around back.
“I thought I might find you here,” she said.
Patricia turned toward her with a smile. “Kate. I didn’t hear your car. Have you been knocking?”
“It’s all right,” Kate said.
Patricia lifted a bag of mixed birdseed and poured the remaining contents into a wood-and-glass birdfeeder with a copper roof. When it was full, she closed the lid and climbed back down the ladder.
“Marissa’s gone for the afternoon,” she informed Kate as she rolled up the paper seed bag and walked with Kate toward the house. She looked good. Refreshed. It was the first time Kate had seen her with makeup on, and she was struck by what a pretty woman she was, with those vivid blue eyes and short platinum hair.
“She’s feeling better?” Kate asked.
“Much.”
They entered the dark interior of the attached garage, and it took a moment for Kate’s eyes to adjust. Patricia went to a metal trash can and tossed the bag in, then stepped up the two steps to the house.
“Her treatments about killed her, but now that she’s done, she’s coming around. She’s spending the afternoon with some old friends from high school. Would you like some tea?”
“I never turn down a cup of tea.”
They passed through the mudroom and into the bright open kitchen. Kate took a barstool at the counter while Patricia filled the teakettle from the tap.
“I never thought something as simple as Marissa spending an afternoon with friends would seem so...” Patricia paused.
“Normal?” Kate filled in the word for her.
