‘My mom had money Mick didn’t know about? Why? And if Mick didn’t even know, why do you?’
‘She had to tell someone.’ He cleared his throat, and I realized this was painful for him, as well. ‘The money was for you, so that if the time ever came, you could use it to help locate Kendra Trafton.’
That name again. I managed to nod. ‘So you know about her too.’
‘Yes.’ Another sigh, heavier this time. ‘And now, the funds Elaine acquired will be yours. She was certain you’d want to locate Kendra and possibly assist her financially if the woman’s circumstances are as dire as we suspect.’
‘How long?’ I could barely get the words out. ‘How long have you known about Kendra Trafton?’
‘For some time.’ He glanced away, as if deciding how much to share with me.
Mick had known. Breckenridge had known. But I hadn’t known, because my mom hadn’t wanted me to. ‘Why did she keep this a secret?’ I asked.
‘She didn’t intend to for this long,’ he said. ‘And she did give you the means to locate your biological mother and to help her. Kit, do you realize what Elaine has made possible? You can find this woman. You might even be able to change her life.’
‘But she didn’t tell me I was adopted.’
‘She had every intention of doing just that. I know for a fact that she had already made inquiries. Most people don’t get a chance to do everything they think they will in a lifetime.’
It was a feeble excuse.
‘Well, I guess we’ll never know what she would have done,’ I told him.
‘You heard what I said.’ His tone turned cold. ‘I know you’re grieving, but I also know how much your mother loved you. I had hoped I might be of some comfort to you.’
At that moment, I felt pity for this sad-eyed man who was trying to be strong. To tell him that he was the last person who could comfort me would be cruel. Instead I nodded at the folder and said, ‘I’m really tired from my flight. Can we get started?’
My meeting with Breckenridge left me with an uncomfortable mixture of anger, gratitude, and more than a little fear. My mom had made arrangements for me to find Kendra, but she still hadn’t told me about her when she was alive. All I got from him was the assurance that my mom had accumulated more money from her gyms and investments than I had realized. I’d known she’d done well. Her lifestyle had attested to that. But she had sold off all but two health clubs, and I’d assumed her finances were shrinking. Instead, they had increased. And now they were mine. Mine, Mick’s and Kendra Trafton’s. That’s what I learned from Matthew Breckenridge. That, and the fact that he had been in love with my mother for a long time. Not that he told me that. He didn’t have to.
Except for the rain, the memorial service was the way my mom would have liked it. At least, that’s what I told myself. Photographs of her from childhood until only months before her death adorned the easels leading into the funeral home. Only Breckenridge, Doug, the young man who colored her hair, Mick, and I got to sit in the front row. I wondered at the significance of that and scanned the room, trying not to be obvious.
Mick leaned close to my ear and whispered, ‘He’s not here. We agreed it would be easier on you.’
How had he known I was looking for Richard?
With the groan of the organ, tears filled my eyes. Funerals did that to me, even when I didn’t know the person well. Maybe it had something to do with my faith, or lack of it. As much as I wished I could celebrate the release of the soul from its earthly bondage, I could feel only the loss, the sadness, the pain of the people left behind. Now I was one of those people. I’d been left behind with questions as well as grief.
As I sat there, listening to the minister praise the woman I’d been raised to believe was my mother, a thought struck me so hard that I could feel the tingle in my fingertips. What if my mother, Kendra Trafton, were dead, as well? What if I had no mother? What if I were as alone as I felt at that moment, with no one and no connection, genetic or otherwise, to anyone?
I relived my fear when, at age four or so, I’d spilled fingernail polish I wasn’t supposed to be playing with on Mom’s Italian tile while she and Mick were out. When they returned, and I denied it, she had crouched until we were eye level and said, ‘I love you very much, but whatever you do, don’t you ever lie to me.’ I burst into tears, and still in her dress-up clothes, she pulled me close to her, saying, ‘It’s all right. As long as you tell me the truth, it will always be all right.’
At that moment, and at that age, she smelled better than anyone in my small world and certainly on earth. Mystical, yet safe, and somehow all-encompassing, although I didn’t have words for any of that. I had only a sense of wonder and awe that this amazing, magical person was my mother. I’ll never forget the smell of her perfume.
I remembered her driving me to preschool. ‘You’re going to meet lots of different kids today. I just want you to know that God made each and every one of you, and you need to love them.’
She was not much of a churchgoer, so I’m not sure how she came up with that speech. It worked, though. The only problem was trying to find kids that much different. The best I could do was Jeani, who was Japanese and whose dad owned a supermarket chain. When my mom came to pick me up, she found me holding Jeani’s hand and announcing that I had invited her to lunch.
In the many times my mom repeated that story, I realized how proud she was that she’d conveyed, however awkwardly, one of her beliefs to me.
I wondered how she’d managed to pick me up from school every day while she was working as a trainer for the gym she eventually bought. Again, I ended up with the same question I always did. How could someone who’d been as good a mom as she had been deny me the one thing she could have given me while she was alive? How could the woman who taught me, from age four, the importance of honesty sustain such a big lie? I felt guilty thinking about these questions as I sat only a few feet from the urn that contained her ashes.
The soloist began ‘Amazing Grace’. I thought of the building across from the station and its painted hymn. An audible sob escaped my mouth. I couldn’t help it. I was a rotten daughter to be so confused about my feelings.
Mick squeezed my arm. ‘It’s OK, Kit.’ Tears filled his eyes as well.
We walked out together afterwards, arm-in-arm. I felt as if someone had beaten me. Every muscle ached. The rain had let up, and the sad faces and black umbrellas blurred together. People, many of them strangers to me, clustered around us. A woman in a hat hugged me. ‘Elaine was like a mother to me,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Fitness people, radio station people – some I’d met, others I hadn’t – clasped my hands and expressed their condolences, one after another until their words and their touches blended into one.
Something stopped me, and I felt as if someone were watching me. I turned, and there he was. Off to one side, part of him shadowed by a tree, Richard McCarthy stood, in a suit and dark glasses.
His presence hit me with a jolt. My husband. My husband who’d left me and was in the process of divorcing me, because I didn’t love him, he had said, because I didn’t love him enough. My soon-to-be ex-husband. Tall as ever, mahogany-colored hair combed back from his high forehead so that he looked intelligent, interesting, and distant, all of which he was.
I stopped talking and returned the stare. He removed his glasses. I could feel the heat of him, even on this windy, rainy day. For a period of time I couldn’t begin to estimate, we stood looking at each other.
Finally, Mick noticed and nudged me along. ‘Sorry, Kit. He said he wouldn’t show up.’
‘It’s all right,’ a ghost voice that used to be mine replied.
Richard caught up with us at the family car. ‘Kit,’ he said, and I stopped in spite of myself.
‘Richard.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Thank you.’ We traded word packages like near strangers.
‘She was a wonderful woman.’
‘Yes.’
Mick muttered something else, and we got into the back of the limousine.
‘Honest, Kit,’ Mick said. ‘He told me he wouldn’t be here.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
From the day they’d met, Richard had been like my father’s son, and I knew that Mick didn’t want to give up on his dream that Richard and I would have the marriage he and my mom had missed.
Mick leaned back in the seat and peered at me. ‘Can I ask you something?’ And before I could respond, he continued, ‘Did you know about Breckenridge?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Good.’
‘Why?’
He tried to mask his emotions behind his dark glasses, yet the harder he tried, the more of himself he revealed. ‘If he’d been important to her, she would have talked to you about him,’ he said. Then, as if he were back in his studio in the motorhome, recording a commercial, he said, ‘So, what do you think about the estate stuff?’
‘That Elaine was being controlling. Like, you lose money if you choose to have kids with Rachel?’
The cloud lifted, and for a moment, his hair sparkled in the sun, so glossy that if it weren’t for the silver at the sides, I would have guessed he had it colored. ‘You know that’s the last thing either Rachel or I want,’ he said. ‘And that was just Elaine’s way. You need to understand that.’
‘Maybe I would have, if I’d been given a little truth to factor in.’
‘I told you my feelings on that,’ he said.
‘That’s right. You did.’ Hurting him would only make me feel worse. It wasn’t his fault that I’d never known my biological parents, my biological mother. We both knew whose fault it was, but we didn’t dare discuss that now. How could we? I began to realize that death required an exercise in manners. Everyone was in pain. The last thing we wanted to do was inflict more.
He squeezed my hand. ‘You’ll understand better when you have kids of your own.’
Yeah, right. I didn’t dignify his statement with an answer.
‘I love you, Kit. I want such good things for you.’
Translated: I want Richard for you. But it was way too late for that.
‘Love you too,’ I said, ‘and I do understand.’ I hugged him and kissed his cheek. This was what children did to parents in situations like this. Hugged. Kissed. Said they understood, even when they didn’t, when they couldn’t possibly.
On the plane trip home, I did something I was rarely stupid enough to do. I drank. Short little drinks of straight Tanqueray, with a squirt of lime to kill the first sharp taste. They worked. I got home with little memory of plane fear or the music I’d forgotten to play because I hadn’t needed the distraction.
The fist beating my head from the inside out and my dry mouth the next morning reminded me why I seldom opted for alcohol as a painkiller. Yes, I’d gotten through the flight. Sure, I’d momentarily forgotten the conflicting emotions yanking me through an emotional tug of war at the memorial service. I had even swallowed, right along with the gin, the memory of how my body froze when Richard had looked at me like that – the same way he had when he’d told me he wanted a divorce. But as I opened my eyes and tried to avoid the reality of even my own breath, all of those memories, all of those ghosts, were all too happy to step into my morning and remind me, in living color, that I hadn’t missed anything, only postponed it.
Back in his boozing days, Mick used to say that drinking vinegar would prevent a hangover and even derail one already in progress. He and his buddies laughed about how he’d stumble in and grab the vinegar bottle, spilling most of the contents all over the sink.
Looking out over my safe little courtyard, while I felt a raging war in my head, I stood at the sink and tossed down a shot of Bragg’s Organic Apple Cider Vinegar the same way I’d tossed that gin on the plane.
I hated the taste, the sweet-harsh, throat-scalding swallow. But darned if it didn’t seem to work. The day shifted into focus. I took another shot. Same fiery taste. Same burn in the throat and the stomach. But I felt better still. A final shot, and, in spite of my watering eyes, I felt ready to face the shower.
I parked in the station lot about four thirty in the a.m. and escaped into the safety of the studio and its somehow welcome scent of scorched coffee left on the burner all night.
‘There you are. It’s about time.’ I jumped as Tamera stepped beside me, although it was way too early for her to be here. Her hair was hidden under a stylish straw hat too vivid and red for dawn. ‘I prayed for you,’ she said, and I believed her.
‘Thanks.’ I poured some of the coffee into my mug. ‘It was tough. I even drank on the plane coming back.’
‘Some drinker you are. What’d you have, a beer or two?’
‘Gin,’ I said. ‘Enough to give me a hangover. I had to drink vinegar to get rid of it; one of Mick’s old tricks from his bad-boy days.’
She made a face, as if she could taste it. ‘I’m so sorry, Kit.’
‘I’ll be fine. Everyone has to deal with loss.’ Something about the wary way Tamera was watching me made me feel uncomfortable. ‘What is it?’ I asked.
Then, I realized her eyes were different. Glassy and kind of scared, as if she was the one with the hangover. ‘This is a terrible time to tell you, right before you have to go on the air.’
My skin tingled. ‘Tell me what?’
‘Tamera, wait,’ Farley called from the control room. He strode toward us, frowning. ‘I told you to wait, damn it.’
‘And I told you I wasn’t going to.’
The tingle spread. Feelings of hope and fear buzzed in my brain. ‘What is it?’ I demanded, my gaze fixed on Farley.
Farley pushed sun-streaked hair off his forehead and smiled. ‘I wanted to be the one to tell you,’ he said.
‘It’s about your mother,’ Tamera whispered, her eyes soft and dark as shadows. ‘Oh, Kit, a woman phoned yesterday from Arizona. I took the call myself.’
‘A woman?’ Arizona. She’d said Arizona. ‘Kendra Trafton called here?’
‘No,’ Farley said. ‘Not Kendra Trafton, but someone who says she knows who Kendra is. The caller has been following the story on the air and on our website, and she just got back from visiting her son in Arizona. She claims her son knows Kendra. He recently just saw her and another woman in a market in Buckeye.’ Tamera’s fingers on my arm seared my frozen flesh. ‘It sounds like it could be the real deal, Kit.’
NINETEEN
Mick and Rachel were staying at a nearby Hyatt where they had left their motorhome. I had planned on meeting them for a late breakfast, but the time got away from me. At least that’s what I told myself. The memorial service had left me with too many mixed emotions to short out this soon.
As I left work that morning, Scott followed me to the parking lot. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of days, which was unusual for such a micromanager. Not that he was a bad program director. I hadn’t minded him until recently. Now I cringed at the sight of him.
‘Kit, do you have a moment?’ As if I could say no.
‘I know you’ve got a full plate right now,’ he began.
‘I’m doing the best I can.’
‘Now that the memorial service is over, I think it’s best if we drop references to your other situation as soon as possible,’ he said.
‘My search for Kendra?’
‘Kendra. Right.’ He smoothed a wrinkle out of his T-shirt. ‘You write an unsolved crimes blog, and I think we’re off course. As soon as Mother’s Day is over, we need to get back to crimes. Murder.’
‘That’s fine with me.’ I didn’t care, and I let him know it. ‘You’ll need to notify Farley. Send a memo, or whatever. Is that all?’
His cheeks turned red. ‘The real reason I wanted to talk to you was about some things you’ve been doing … which I’m sure are because of everything you’re going through.’
Now my cheeks were hot. ‘What kind of things?’
‘Joseph Brantingha
m,’ he said. ‘Carla is furious.’
‘I didn’t do anything to Joseph. His family sponsors my blog, and I had information that might help them find out what really happened to Alex.’ As I spoke, he nodded with a set smile, as if waiting for me to stop speaking, so I did.
‘In the future, do not speak with any member of the Brantingham family unless you run it by me first.’
I started to ask what would happen if I did, but we both knew the answer to that, and I was too weary to fight.
‘OK.’
He looked surprised. ‘We have an understanding then.’
‘Yes, we do. Anything else?’
‘Nope.’ He shook his head. ‘You have a good day, Kit. I know things will get better for you soon.’
As horrible as Carla was to me, I felt something close to sorry for her. Not because she was a nice person. Far from it; she wasn’t. Yet I knew that she had been raised with a lie as big or bigger than the one with which I’d been raised. Yes, she knew who her biological parents were. In my family, though, a gay brother would not have been a source of shame so great that anyone could even consider sending him away for a faux cure.
I sent Rachel a text and asked if she and Mick were still at the Hyatt.
We’ll wait, came the reply text.
They were waiting in the lobby on an oversized sectional. Mick looked apprehensive, and Rachel was just Rachel, so calm and supportive that if you didn’t know better, you’d miss her strength.
‘Glad you could join us,’ Mick said and patted the place beside him. I realized that he had done that as long as I could remember.
‘Mick, I …’
‘KWEL are screwing with you, aren’t they? Because you’re the only one willing to tell the truth. How many of those cowards will even try to do that?’
‘I got it from you.’
He shot me that stiff grin that meant he hadn’t heard me correctly.
‘Honesty,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know how you did it, or how I absorbed it, but you’re the one who taught me the importance of telling the truth. You used to say that people who lied all day would wake up one morning and decide to say the sky was green because they could no longer tell the difference.’
If Anything Should Happen Page 12
