First Sight

by Danielle Steel

  Jean-Charles was immensely relieved when he finally reached her early the next morning. He hadn’t spoken to her in four days. She told him about the camping trip with the children, and then in a troubled voice she told him what Father Patrick had told her about her parents. Even all these years later, it was shocking for her. All her life, she had believed that she wound up in the orphanage because her parents died. It changed everything to know that they had left her there when they were alive. Knowing that made the abandonment so much worse.

  “They just left me and went home, and never came back again.” It was easy for him to figure out that their desertion had been the root of all her problems and terrors for an entire lifetime ever since. It even contributed now to her terrors about him, which he also understood. He could hear in her voice how upset she was.

  “They must have been very frightened and very young,” he said gently. “It’s not so easy to be responsible for a child with no one to help you. They probably had no money, and didn’t know what else to do.”

  “They could have taken me home with them. I wasn’t a newborn they could dump on the church steps or in a trash can. I was five years old,” she said with a sense of outrage that he could hear in her voice. But there was nothing she could do about it now. It had been forty-three years before, and they were long gone. The only thing she had left to remind her of them were the scars she had had on her soul ever since. They had no way of knowing what had happened to her once they signed the adoption papers, and apparently didn’t care. It had been the ultimate abandonment, followed by so many others since.

  “Timmie, you have to put it behind you now. There’s nothing else you can do.” He tried to distract her then by reminding her of their meeting at the Eiffel Tower. He said that everything was going well. His wife was feeling a little better, his children were calmer, and he was sure that in three weeks he’d be able to go. He said he could hardly wait. Timmie barely dared to hope. In three weeks, their life would begin. He said he was getting organized to leave, and planned to tell them in the next two weeks. “I’ll be there,” he said. It sounded silly and romantic. They would finally be together after five months of waiting for him.

  “I have something to tell you when I see you,” she said, smiling, and he was curious about what it was. They had so much to say and do and share. They had a whole life waiting for them, as soon as he got out. And Timmie was waiting for him with more love than she could tell him, and open arms. Life was going to begin for them in earnest on September 1. She had finally dared to hope again, and think that maybe Sister Anne was right.

  She left for the office shortly after his phone call, and stewed about it all day. Not about what Jean-Charles had said to her, which was so encouraging and hopeful, but about what Father Patrick had shared with her the day before, and Jean-Charles’s comments about it. She didn’t agree with him. There was nothing she could do to change it now, but at least she had a right to discover everything there was to know about them. Not that seeing her file from the orphanage would explain to her why they’d left her. But it might tell her something.

  She called St. Clare’s herself at four-thirty, and asked them to send her all her records. She faxed them a release so they could do so, and she felt like the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof while she waited three days for them to arrive, and was disappointed when they did. There was not much there. Her parents’ real names. Joseph and Mary O’Neill. Her mother had been twenty-two, her father twenty-three. Both were Irish, and said they were indigent, unemployed, and returning to Ireland, to live with their families. There was a copy of their marriage license, so she had been legitimate, not that it really mattered. It was very simple really, they just didn’t want her, couldn’t keep her, couldn’t afford her. They had come to America in their teens, gotten married, had a baby, and when things didn’t work out for them, they had dumped her and gone home. It had been their request to tell her that they had died, so she didn’t feel too badly. There was a faded photograph of both of them. They looked about fourteen. She had her mother’s features and her father’s red hair. As Timmie sat and stared at the photograph of the people who had abandoned her forty-three years before, her hand shook, and tears poured down her cheeks. She wanted to hate them, but couldn’t. All she wanted now was an explanation from them about why they did it, and if they had missed her after they left her. She wanted to know if they had loved her at all, and if they’d cared about giving her up for adoption. Had they been relieved or heartbroken? She wasn’t sure why, but it mattered a great deal to her. Maybe all she really wanted to know, she realized, was if they’d ever loved her.

  She sat there alone with the file for an hour, and then called Jade on the intercom.

  “I want to find someone in Ireland,” she said tersely. “Joseph and Mary O’Neill. In Dublin, I think. How do we do that? Do we call information or a PI?”

  “I can do an Internet search for you if you want, and call Dublin information. It’s a pretty common name, so I may come up with a few. If you give me more info, I can weed through them before I give it to you, so we know we’ve got the right ones. Relations of yours, I assume?” Jade asked. It didn’t sound like a difficult request to her.

  “Just give me whatever you find. I’ll call them myself.”

  As it turned out, it was embarrassingly easy. There were three Joseph and Mary O’Neills in Dublin, at addresses that meant nothing to her. At first, she wasn’t sure what to do next. Did she just call them and ask if they’d ever had a daughter named Timmie, and then say “Hi, how are you, I’m your daughter”? It seemed a little blunt. In the end, she decided to call them and pretend she was from St. Clare’s. She got lucky, if you could call it that, on the second one. She said that they were closing out files from years ago, and wondered if they would like the records sent to them. Her mother had answered the phone.

  “No, that’s all right,” the woman said in a thick brogue. “We still have ours. And it doesn’t matter really. My husband died last year.” Timmie wasn’t sure what difference that made, but she doggedly pursued the conversation just so she could keep her on the phone. She tried to jog her memory to see if she remembered the voice, but she didn’t. The woman sounded old. “I don’t want you to send the records,” the woman said firmly, which Timmie felt as yet another blow of rejection. They didn’t even want the records of her brief existence in their lives.

  “Why not?” she asked in a trembling voice, wanting to ask if they had ever loved her, and why they had walked away so long ago.

  “I don’t want our other children to see that, if anything ever happens to me. They never knew about her, and still don’t.”

  It told Timmie that she had brothers and sisters that they had kept, but they hadn’t loved her enough to keep her. She wanted to ask why. And how many of them were there? Why had they had other children, when they didn’t keep their first one? None of it made sense. And how could they abandon her at five? They were the final and most important mysteries of Timmie’s life. And then finally, the woman on the phone said something that touched Timmie’s heart. “Is she all right? Is there anything about her in the file?” the woman asked in a sad voice. She sounded older than she was. According to Timmie’s calculations, she was only sixty-five, but sounded much older, and as though she had had a hard life.

  “We don’t have recent records, of course,” Timmie said, pursuing the masquerade she had begun to find out if this was her mother. “But as far as we know, she’s fine.”

  “I’m glad,” the woman said with a sigh of relief. “I always wondered who had adopted her, and if they were good people. We thought she’d be better off to leave her for other people. We were very young at the time.” And heartless, and cowardly, and mean, Timmie thought to herself, as tears burned her eyes. She was suddenly angrier than she had ever been in her entire life. She was overwhelmed with sadness and anger. Unwittingly perhaps, these people had altered the course of her entire life, and caused her scars that ha
d never healed and never would. All because they left her.

  “Actually, no one adopted her,” Timmie said cruelly. “She was a little too old when you left her. People want babies, you know. Five-year-olds are a lot harder to place. We placed her with a number of families, nine or ten I believe, but it never worked. And then we tried her in foster care for a number of years, but by then she was considerably older, and they always sent her back. She was a very nice child, but it’s just one of those things that happen. She grew up at St. Clare’s.” There was an endless silence at the other end, as Timmie could hear the woman crying, and then felt guilty for what she’d done.

  “Oh my God … we always thought she’d be adopted by rich people who would be good to her. If I’d known …” Yes, what? If you’d known, would you have kept me? Would you have taken me back to Dublin with you? Why the hell didn’t you? Timmie wanted to scream, but couldn’t as a sob caught in her throat, and she had to fight for composure so the woman at the other end didn’t realize who she was. “You wouldn’t have an address for her, would you? Maybe I can write her a letter, and try to explain things. Her father never forgave me for talking him into leaving her. I thought it would be best for her. We were so poor and so young.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” Timmie said vaguely, still reeling from all she’d heard. “I’ll call you back and let you know.”

  “Thank you,” she said, sounding shaken. “Thank you … and if you call … please don’t talk to my children … just ask for me.”

  “I will. Thank you,” Timmie said in a choked voice, and sat staring out her office window for a long time. And then, with her face pale, she picked up the phone, and made reservations on a flight to Dublin in the morning. She wanted to see her for herself. A phone call hadn’t been enough. Maybe nothing would ever be enough. Maybe it truly was too late. But on the chance that it wasn’t, that there was something she still needed from her, Timmie decided to see for herself. She had just hung up from the airlines when Jade walked into her office. “Cancel my appointments. I’m going away tomorrow, on family business,” Timmie said brusquely.

  “The O’Neills you had me look up in Dublin?” Timmie nodded. “Anything else I can do?” Timmie shook her head. “How long will you be gone?”

  “Just a day or two, I think.” She still had another three weeks before her date with Jean-Charles at the Eiffel Tower, and he obviously wasn’t ready to do it any earlier than planned. She was not going to tell him she was in Europe. And she would not tell anyone why she went. She didn’t know what would happen when she went there, or what she would find. But she knew with all her heart and soul that, whatever happened, this was a pilgrimage she had to make, not just to meet her mother, but to find herself and the piece of her that had been missing all her life.

  Chapter 20

  The flight from L.A. to London took eleven hours, and Timmie slept most of the way. She lay in her seat, and looked out the window, thinking of the woman who was her mother, and wondered what it would be like to meet her, and how upsetting it would be. Maybe she’d faint or have a heart attack, or throw her arms around Timmie. She had a lot of fantasies about it, and it was hard to guess which of them would be closest to the truth. Or maybe none at all. Maybe it would be boring and unemotional, although it hadn’t sounded that way on the phone on the day before. At least the woman had had the grace to cry when Timmie told her she had never been adopted and grew up at St. Clare’s.

  They must have had all the childish illusions of poor people from Ireland, who imagined that there were diamonds in the pavement on the streets, and rich people on every corner, waiting to adopt freckle-faced little girls. The reality of Timmie’s childhood had been light-years from that. And it was too late to change it now. Timmie just wanted to see her, and try to understand what had happened, and why it had gone so wrong for them, and then for her. Having had a child of her own, whom she had loved so much, she couldn’t begin to imagine how they could have walked away. But they had had no money, no future, no family to help them. Maybe it had been different for them.

  Even now, with this baby inside her, nothing on earth would have convinced her to give it up, or abandon it, no matter how poor or terrified she was, and she was alone. This was her flesh and blood and Jean-Charles’s, she would have died to keep it, killed to protect it, and knew she would love it for the rest of her days. She just hoped that Jean-Charles would be there with her. That still remained to be seen. But first she had to see her own mother, to try to understand who she had been. It made a difference to her, and to her sense of history about herself. And maybe even to how she felt herself from now on. Maybe their abandoning her all those years ago had been about them, and not about her. She knew that, but somehow it had always felt like it was something wrong with her that she wound up an orphan. She needed to see it for herself now.

  She had a two-hour layover in London, and then took the short flight to Dublin. She held the phone number in a shaking hand, and called her from the airport. She had a reservation at the Shelbourne Hotel, but she wanted to visit Mary O’Neill first. She wanted to get it over with, and see her now. As she had the day before, Timmie’s mother answered the phone, and for a moment, this time, Timmie couldn’t speak. This was much harder than she had expected. But she didn’t feel it was right to surprise her, and ring her bell. There was always the possibility that her mother would refuse to see her at all.

  “Hello?” The same tired voice answered as the day before.

  “Mrs. O’Neill?” Timmie felt slightly breathless.

  “Yes?”

  “Mary O’Neill?” Timmie wanted to be sure before she went on, but Mary O’Neill had already recognized the American voice at the other end as the one she had spoken to the day before.

  “Yes. Are you calling from St. Clare’s again?”

  “Actually,” Timmie said, trying to control the shaking in her voice as she stood in the pay phone at the airport with her carry-on beside her on the ground, “I’m calling from the airport. Not St. Clare’s. The Dublin airport,” she explained.

  “Why are you doing that?” The woman sounded frightened, as though she thought they might come to punish her, or expose her, for abandoning her child.

  “I’d like to see you,” Timmie said gently, as the fury suddenly went out of her. This woman sounded so pathetic, so simple, and so old. “This is Timmie. I’m in Dublin. I came to see you. Would you see me for a few minutes?” She held her breath as her mother fell silent, and then Timmie could hear her crying again. This was hard for both of them.

  “Do you hate me?” she asked bluntly, crying openly now.

  “No,” Timmie said sadly, “I don’t hate you. I just don’t understand. Maybe it would be nice to talk to each other. You don’t ever have to see me again after this.” She didn’t want to invade her life. She just wanted to meet her once, and then go away in peace. Her mother owed her that at least. Maybe it was a gift they could give each other, in exchange for the love she hadn’t had.

  “We were so poor. We were starving. Your father went to jail for stealing us a sandwich and an apple. You cried all the time because you were hungry, and we could never find work. We had no education, no training, they couldn’t understand us. Sometimes we slept in the park, and you were always catching cold or getting sick, and we couldn’t afford to take you to a doctor. I thought you would die if we kept you. You could have been killed that night in the car, when we had the accident. We borrowed the car. Your father was driving drunk. He was just a boy. I knew then, you needed better parents than us. So I sent you to St. Clare’s. The police offered to take you there.” It had been as simple as that. For them. Not for her. A policeman’s suggestion to a couple of kids driving drunk, and she was gone. Listening to her, a chill ran down Timmie’s spine. What they had done had nearly destroyed her life.

  Mary sobbed, remembering just how grim it had been for them nearly half a century before. To Timmie, it seemed hard to believe they were so unable
to care for her, but maybe it was true. There was no reason for the woman to lie now. The damage was done, and had been long since. And in most ways, Timmie had recovered from it, and made herself a good life. Thanks to no one else, and surely not her parents.

  “Why didn’t you take me home to Dublin with you?” Timmie asked sadly.

  “We couldn’t afford to. Our parents didn’t have the money for the tickets. We could only pay for two tickets home, and we couldn’t have afforded to keep you here either. We didn’t have children for ten years after we got home, and then we had two. Your father got TB then, and I worked as a charwoman for some fancy people. We’ve never had money, and I’ve always dreamed about you as our lucky little girl, living in fancy houses, with rich people, getting an education, and living like a swell.” Her dream hadn’t been far wrong, but thanks to no one but Timmie herself.

  “I’m fine now,” Timmie said sadly, brushing the tears off her cheeks. “I’ve been fine for a long time,” she reassured her. “I’ve done well. But it wasn’t easy back then.” She had been miserable at St. Clare’s, and for all of her childhood and youth.

  “I’m sorry,” her mother said, crying, and then softly, “Would you like to come round for tea, since you came all this way?” Mary wouldn’t have chosen to see her, and wasn’t sure she wanted to, in case Timmie was angry or hostile, but she sounded decent on the phone, so she decided to overcome her fears and meet her. She felt as though she at least owed her that.

  “I’d like that very much.” Timmie wrote down the address, and was there half an hour later. They lived in a dingy suburb of Dublin, in a battered-looking cottage that looked like it had been in disrepair for years, and had no hope of being salvaged anytime soon.

  Timmie rang the doorbell. There was a long pause, and then a woman appeared. Timmie could see her through a window, and slowly she opened the door and stared at Timmie. She was as tall as her daughter and they had the same build, and similar features. She was wearing a housedress and slippers, and her hair was pulled back in a tight bun. She had defeated eyes, and hands crippled by arthritis. Her face was lined, and she looked like she’d had a hard life. She looked about eighty years old, not the sixty-five she was.