In the end, she didn’t call anybody. It felt disloyal to express doubts based on no evidence whatsoever. She wasn’t even entirely sure why she was taking this so seriously, why she was so upset about it. She should wait until she had some proof one way or the other.
Nothing on TV looked interesting. She changed channels, unable to care about fictional storylines or the absurd drama on reality shows. She switched the set off, cleaned her bathroom, picked up a People magazine and lost interest in it, too. She should have gone to the health club, but now if she worked out she wouldn’t be able to sleep.
The phone rang, and she jumped. She hesitated, then picked it up. Don’t be Mom or Dad, she prayed.
“Ms. St. John? This is Mark Kincaid again.”
“Oh!” she said, absurdly. “Did you get my message?”
“Yeah, I did. I sometimes check them from home. Is this too late for you?”
“No! No. I’m glad you called. I keep thinking about what you said, and…” She shrugged, even though he couldn’t see her. “I just wished I’d let you explain. That’s all.”
“I’d prefer to talk to you in person.”
Knowing she was crazy to suggest it, she still said, “You could come over. I won’t be going to bed for a while.”
He was nice enough to sound regretful. “I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve put my son to bed and it’s too late in the evening to get a sitter.”
“Oh.” Carrie was conscious of a funny mix of emotions. If he had a son, that probably meant he was married. She hadn’t consciously thought of him as someone who would interest her—that was hardly the point—but now she was just a little disappointed. At the same time, she was actually relieved, because the fact that he was a good husband and father meant he was safe.
“Can I meet you at lunchtime tomorrow?” he asked.
“I work in Bellevue…” She stopped, suddenly self-conscious. “I suppose you know everything about me, don’t you?”
“No, actually, I don’t,” he said. “I could have learned more, but once I had your address and phone number, I didn’t look for background. I was hoping you’d want to meet Suzanne…”
“Suzanne?” she interrupted. “Is that my… I mean, is she your client?”
“Yes. Suzanne Chauvin.”
“It sounds French.”
“You could be French,” he pointed out.
Her stomach knotted. She could be. It wasn’t just the fact that neither of her parents were brown-eyed that made her look different from them. It was the golden tone to her skin, the dark, crackling wavy mass of her hair, her quick movements, her petite stature. Breathing shallowly, she thought, I could be French. She didn’t look like a St. John, not like her father did, with his patrician features and natural reserve.
“Yes,” she said, past a lump in her throat. “I suppose I do.”
“In fact,” his voice was gentle, “you look extraordinarily like your sister.”
Her sister. Oh God. In full fledged panic, she said, “Can we talk about this tomorrow instead?”
They agreed on a restaurant and time. She hung up with the terrifying knowledge that she was taking an irretrievable step.
HE MADE A POINT of getting there before her; he invariably did the same at any appointment. Paranoia, no doubt. He liked to look over the surroundings, choose a seat with the best possible vantage point.
He saw her the minute she arrived. The hostess waylaid her, then led her toward his table.
Carrie St. John did bear a remarkable resemblance to her sister, no question. At the same time, she was distinctly her own person.
Neither were tall women, both under five foot four inches. Suzanne was more curvaceous, Carrie slimmer, probably able to go braless. Both had dark eyes and dark hair, but Suzanne’s was smooth and the younger sister’s unruly.
Mark was made uncomfortable to realize that, while Suzanne didn’t attract him, Carrie did. He didn’t even know why. He did know he couldn’t do a damn thing about it, certainly not while he was acting as go-between.
He stood when she approached. “Ms. St. John.”
“Make it Carrie, please.” She took the seat across the table from him and thanked the hostess.
He inclined his head. “Carrie it is.” He indicated her menu. “I see the waitress already on her way. You might want to look that over before we talk.”
She flipped it open, scanned and was able to order a moment later. Then she took a visible breath, lifted her chin and asked, “Why do you think I’m this Suzanne’s sister?”
He opened the folder that sat beside his place and took out a copy of the adoption decree, with her birth name and the names of the adoptive parents highlighted.
Her hand trembled slightly when she took it from him. Her face actually blanched when she looked at it, and he tensed, thinking she might faint. But she only drew a shuddery breath and kept staring at the highlighted names.
When she finally lifted her head, her eyes were dilated, unseeing. “If this is true… Why wouldn’t they have told me?” she whispered.
“Because they so desperately wanted you to be theirs. Maybe they intended to when you got older, then never found the right moment. It would have gotten more and more difficult, as time went by. Maybe they pretended so hard that you’d been born to them that they almost fooled themselves. Maybe they were just afraid.”
She clung pitifully to the one word. “Afraid? Of what?”
“Losing you,” he said simply. “Adoptive parents often feel insecure in a lot of ways. At the backs of their minds is the fear that birth parents might suddenly spring up and want their baby back. Beyond that is the fear that you, the child, won’t love them the same way you would if they were your ‘real’ parents. I’m sure you’ve heard the nature versus nurture argument. Adoptive parents convince themselves that nurture wins. Genes don’t matter nearly as much as experience. They believe they can make you their child in every way.”
“But…they weren’t completely successful.” She sounded heartbroken. “I know I frustrated them sometimes.”
“Yeah.” He watched her with compassion, wishing he hadn’t been the one to bring that terrible unhappiness to her face. “It’s healthier for everyone if the adoptive parents acknowledge that their children are a kind of amalgam. If they could laugh and say, ‘Oh, your birth mom must have been a procrastinator, too,’ or, ‘Maybe your birth father was artistic like you are, because we sure aren’t.’”
“You make my parents sound as if they’re selfish.” Before he could respond, she said with quick anger, “They were selfish.”
“Our food’s here,” he warned her, voice low.
Somehow she summoned a smile for the waitress, who set their plates before them and cheerily asked if she could bring them anything else.
“Thanks, this looks great,” he said.
When the waitress left, he took out a copy of Carrie’s original birth certificate. She accepted this from him, too, staring down at the name of the baby girl. Linette Marie Chauvin, born to father Charles and mother Marie.
“That’s my birthday.”
He didn’t respond. What was there to say? The agency had no reason to alter birthdates, only names.
“Linette Chauvin.” She tried the name out, the voice thin, anguished. “It’s a pretty name.”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
She looked back at the adoption decree. “I…this baby…was nine months old when she was adopted. Aren’t babies usually adopted at birth?”
“They might be if the birth mother plans while pregnant to surrender her child for adoption. That wasn’t the case with you.”
“And I have a sister who knew about me. She’s older?”
“Six years older.”
“And…and my brother?”
“He’s the middle sibling. There’s two years between you and him.”
Her breathing was shallow, her gaze fastened to him as if she physically could not look away. “Why?” she asked. “Why were w
e given up for adoption?”
For the first time, he hesitated. “Wouldn’t you like to hear all this from Suzanne? She’s eager to talk to you.”
“No!” Fear made her voice sharp. She took a ragged breath, then a second one. “No,” she said more quietly. “I’m not ready. I don’t know. Eventually, maybe. But not yet.”
He hid his disappointment. Her reaction wasn’t uncommon in adoptees who were found unexpectedly by someone from their birth family. Meeting a birth relative out of the blue was often difficult. The chances were good they’d see some part of themselves reflected back, as if for the first time in their life they’d had the chance to look in a mirror. There was the necessity of knowing what to say to this person, how to feel. Did the adoptee want a relationship with this stranger whose face was familiar, who was so eager? Or did he or she only want to consent to one meeting? The whole thing was upsetting and confusing, and sometimes the adoptee needed time to adjust.
“Okay,” he said. “She won’t push it. I’ll give you her phone number. When you feel ready, you can call.”
Alarm flared on her face. “Does she have my number?”
He shook his head. “But she does know your name. She could find you on her own now, if she wanted.”
She tensed, arms close to her body, as if trying to compress herself into as small and unobtrusive a space as possible. “Will she?”
“I’ll ask her not to. Suzanne is a nice woman. I think she’ll be patient.” He nodded at her plate. “Eat.”
Carrie looked down, as if she’d had no idea that the waitress had placed the vegetarian chili in a bread bowl she’d ordered in front of her. After a moment she nodded and picked up her spoon.
Starting on his own sandwich, Mark watched as she went through the motions of eating. Tasting, he suspected, not a thing.
After two or three bites, Carrie set down her spoon. “I don’t want to wait to hear about them. Will you tell me about…Charles and Marie?”
My parents. She couldn’t say the words yet.
“They were killed in a car accident. A drunk driver crossed the median on I-5 and hit them head-on.”
Her brow crinkled. “Were any of us in the car?”
“No. It was almost midnight. They had gone to a play at the Paramount. You, Suzanne and Lucien were home with a baby-sitter.”
“But…wasn’t there family?” Her expression beseeched him. Tell me, she was saying, how we could have been scattered as if we didn’t matter, as if we were unwanted household furnishings that could be sold at a garage sale?
Damn. This was the hard part. The heartbreaking part. He hadn’t wanted it to come from him.
“You do have an aunt and uncle and two cousins. Boys. They have a small house in Bellingham. They didn’t feel they could take on three more children. Suzanne, the oldest, stayed with your aunt and uncle. They believed you and Lucien were so young, you’d adapt quickly to new families and would be better off.”
He hoped, at least, that they’d cared about what was right for the children.
She drew a small, shocked breath. “They kept one of us?”
“That’s one of the reasons Suzanne wanted to find you. She was only six, and had no more choice than you did. But she’s always felt guilty nonetheless. She stayed with family, and you didn’t. All her life she longed to find you.”
“That’s why she’s a Chauvin,” Carrie realized.
“Right. She was never adopted, not even by her aunt and uncle.”
“Oh.” Carrie looked down, not because she was interested in her chili, but rather to hide her expression, he guessed. “They just…gave us away.”
He’d noticed a while back that she’d started talking in the first person. Linette Chauvin was no longer a baby girl she didn’t know. She was Linette. Whether she knew it or not, she’d accepted in her heart that this unknown past was hers.
“I doubt it was an easy decision,” he said gently.
“No.” She knotted the napkin in her hand. “No.”
After a moment, he said to the top of her head, “Do you want me to tell you a little about your sister?”
“Um…” She lifted her head, that unseeing look again in her eyes. “Maybe another time. If you don’t mind.” She seemed to be speaking with difficulty. “This is…a lot to take in.”
“I understand.” It was the truth. He’d seen the same reaction almost every time he’d given adoptees the news. He’d shaken her very foundation, her core faith in who she was. Suddenly she had another name, another identity, another heritage. And she would have to deal with the knowledge that her adoptive parents had lied to her for her entire life.
“I’m really not hungry.” She pushed her chair back. “If you don’t mind…”
He reached across the table and took her hand, small and tense. “Let me make a suggestion. Contact a support group. Other people have gone through what you’re facing. It’ll help to talk about it with people who’ve been there.”
She said nothing, neither argued nor agreed. She simply sat there, poised to flee, all of her energy, he suspected, given to holding herself together until she was alone.
He released her hand. “Call me if you want to talk. Anytime.”
She met his eyes, her own swimming with tears. “Thank you. May I take these?” She touched the copy of the adoption decree and her birth certificate.
“This whole file is for you.” He put all the papers back in it. “There are a few other things in here. Suzanne’s phone number. My card’s in here, too. It has my home phone number. If you just need to talk, call me anytime.”
Like a polite little girl, she said, “You’ve been very nice. Thank you.”
His voice roughened with self-disgust. “I haven’t been nice. I’ve forced you to hear things you didn’t want to hear.”
He rarely let himself indulge in reflection on the morality of what he did. A job was a job. He’d convinced himself that—as a general principal—open adoption was healthier, that reunions helped everyone move on.
But when he took on a job, he didn’t stop and think, Will these people be better off? Or am I going to hurt someone?
His gut feeling was that Carrie St. John had been a pretty happy person. Would Carrie Linette Chauvin St. John be equally happy? He didn’t know.
He should have resisted Carrie’s demands, back when he began to suspect that she didn’t know she was adopted. He should have gone back to his client and said, Maybe we should leave well enough alone. You could drive by someday when she’s leaving work, see her. You know she’s well, that she has a good life. Do you really need more than that?
But it hadn’t occurred to him. He’d blundered ahead, because he had a job to do and, by God, he was going to finish it. He didn’t like failing, and wouldn’t it have been a failure if he’d had to tell a client she couldn’t have what she wanted?
Carrie St. John tried to smile. “You aren’t the one who lied to me.” Her face briefly contorted. She regained control, rising. “Excuse me.” Taking the folder, she left.
He wondered if he’d ever hear from her again.
CHAPTER FIVE
CARRIE CALLED in sick that afternoon, and the next morning, too. Apart from that, she didn’t make any phone calls, didn’t answer the phone, didn’t leave the apartment. Like somebody recovering from a long bout of illness, she kept window blinds down so the light didn’t hurt her eyes.
The first day and a half, she didn’t eat at all. When hunger finally stirred, nearly forty-eight hours after she’d had a meal, she started just as she would have after the flu, with chicken noodle soup. Eventually ice cream tasted good. After the ice cream, she discovered she was starved and ransacked the pantry. She cooked an elaborate meal and ate until her stomach hurt, waited an hour, then had ice cream anyway.
She watched soap operas and sitcoms, old movies, teenage dramas. She became engrossed in each and every show as if its plot, absurd or otherwise, was all that mattered.
The third day,
she didn’t even bother to call in sick. She didn’t care what day of the week it was. She made pancakes for breakfast because she discovered a mix in the back of one of her cupboards, then ate in front of the TV. The phone rang half a dozen times that morning. She ignored it. She didn’t even let herself think about who was calling.
Finally, the fourth morning she got up, shuffled to the kitchen in her pajamas and slippers, and discovered she was out of milk. Pancakes didn’t sound very good. She inspected the refrigerator and found it nearly empty. Even the cupboards looked bare. Hadn’t she just grocery shopped? she thought in puzzlement.
She frowned and counted laboriously back. Actually it had been a week since she’d brought home groceries, and that had been only a couple of bags. It had been the day that Mark Kincaid had spoken to her for the first time, just as she’d started to unlock her apartment door.
Her mind shied away from the memory. She bit her lip so hard it hurt. What was today?
The calendar that hung by the phone had been a Christmas present from her parents. It had glorious photos of Spain. They knew she wanted to go back. The choice was just like them; they wouldn’t get her one with cute pictures of puppies, because that might encourage her to adopt one—not at all sensible. They didn’t enjoy the same kind of humor as she did. Neither found either Dilbert or Far Side at all amusing, for example. So those were out. The result was, every year they gave her a calendar with photos of foreign locales or art. Last year had been impressionist paintings. The year before that…London. Acceptable interests, she thought bitterly. Acceptable for a St. John.
Which apparently she wasn’t.
She sank onto a stool. Oh God. Was it really true?
It explained so much. Why she never felt a flicker of familiarity when she turned the pages in family photo albums. Why there had never been stories about her birth, about bringing her home from the hospital, about colic and her first smile and when she rolled over.
Open Secret Page 6
