Open Secret

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Hugging herself, suddenly cold, she thought, I might already have been walking when they brought me home. Crawling, at least. They weren’t there for any of those earlier milestones. My real parents were.

  She felt oddly uncurious about those parents, about Charles and Marie Chauvin. She supposed she’d wonder about them eventually. Right now all they represented was the otherness that was inside her, had always been inside her. It was their fault that she couldn’t carry a tune, that she hadn’t been smart enough to go to medical school, that she was emotional and…and flighty. Everything that was wrong about her was their fault. They’d had her and then died and left her, doomed to feel like a pretender. A substitute for the daughter her parents should have had.

  She knew she wasn’t being fair—that they might not have shared any of those characteristics—but right this minute she didn’t care. They personified the fact that she wasn’t who she should be.

  She cried, quietly at first, then noisily, because all of her secret suspicions about herself had turned out to be true. Because she had to have disappointed her parents, who’d surely wanted a child who was like them. No matter how hard she tried, she hadn’t been able to be that daughter.

  Not until she ran out of tears did Carrie look at the calendar again, counting days. This had to be Saturday. She’d missed three and a half days of work, the last one without explanation. They’d probably just assumed she was still sick.

  Daddy’s workday was likely to be shorter today. Unless her parents had one of their rare social engagements, they’d be home this evening. She could call to be sure, but then her mother would invite her to dinner and want to chat. She just couldn’t.

  Carrie showered and got dressed for the first time in days, then went grocery shopping. After restocking her cupboards and refrigerator, she sat down to pay bills and finally listened to her voice mail.

  Her mother had called twice, more often than in a normal week, her voice sounding strained beneath her cheerful, “Give me a call, Carrie.”

  The sun was sinking low when she arrived at her parents’ home that evening, silhouetting the Olympic Mountains across the water. She didn’t spare the view a glance.

  The doorbell rang melodiously deep inside the house. For what must have been a full minute, only silence answered. Perhaps they had gone out tonight. But finally, just before she was going to turn away, Carrie heard footsteps.

  Her father opened the door, his reading glasses slipping down his nose. “Carrie! I didn’t know you were coming by.”

  But he wasn’t altogether surprised, she saw; he was searching her face, assuming she’d be easy to read, that he could tell whether he’d succeeded in scaring off the investigator who’d dared to search for her.

  Looking stonily back, she said, “I’d like to talk to you and Mom.”

  Did he flinch? With his composed, dignified demeanor, it was hard to tell.

  “Well, of course.” He took off the glasses, folded the earpieces and slipped them in his shirt pocket. “We’ve been worried about you. Your mother has left messages all week.”

  “Yes. I heard them.”

  He closed the front door behind her. “Is this about that man who was looking for you?”

  She faced him, chin up. “Why do you ask? So you can file a restraining order?”

  His shoulders sagged. “He did find you. Carrie, think about what you’re doing. Your mother has been so frightened. Please don’t hurt her.”

  Voice sharp as glass, she said, “Are you suggesting I live a lie? Oh, but we’re already doing that, aren’t we?”

  “Carrie, please.” The words seemed torn from him, this tall, silver-haired man she had always called Daddy.

  Her sense of betrayal was so great, she didn’t soften. “It’s time you told me the truth. Both of you. And explain to me why the truth is going to hurt Mom.”

  “We love you.”

  Her mother’s voice came from the direction of the sitting room at the back of the house. “Julian?”

  “Coming,” he called back, then put a hand on his daughter’s arm. With the sternness he’d used when he had to discipline her as a child, he said, “Carrie, I forbid you…”

  Anger a burning acid in her stomach, she wrenched free. “Don’t you dare!” She whirled and headed toward the back of the house.

  At the sight of her, her mother rose from her favorite wing chair, hand pressed to her chest. “Carrie?” she whispered.

  “I know,” she said flatly. “I saw my adoption decree. I have a copy of my real birth certificate.”

  Her mother gasped. Carrie’s father went to his wife and stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Carrie asked.

  “You’re our daughter in every way that counts!” her mother cried.

  “Not every way.” A towering wave of grief threatened to crush her anger. “I could never understand why I wasn’t more like you and Daddy. There was a part of me that knew something was wrong. That wondered why I didn’t have your eyes or your hands or…” Her voice cracked. “Or your extra long second toe.” Her gaze shifted to her father. “Or Daddy’s brains.”

  “You’re smart,” he began.

  “Sure. Normal smart. Not brilliant smart. But it isn’t just that. Everything about me is different! I laugh when you’d just smile, sob when you stiffen your shoulders and pretend you aren’t feeling anything. I don’t fit here. I’ve never fit here!”

  “You’re our daughter! Of course you do,” he snapped.

  Beside him, Carrie’s adoptive mother stared at her with stricken eyes, tears running down her cheeks. Carrie had never seen her mother cry, and now she had to harden her heart.

  “Do you know how much easier life would have been, if only I’d known why I was different?”

  “That’s nonsense,” he said. “We adopted you to be our child. We didn’t want you to grow up confused, wondering about other relatives, about why you were given up, about whether we really felt like your mother and father.”

  “Did you?”

  A rare frown drew his brows together. “Did we what?”

  “Feel like my real mother and father?”

  “Yes.” Her mother startled both of them by speaking strongly. “From the minute they handed you to me, I felt like a mother. I wanted you so much.”

  Tears burned in Carrie’s eyes, but she held them back by sheer force of will. “So you decided to lie to me. To save me from being confused.”

  They stared at her, identical expressions of dumb shock and hurt on their faces.

  “How much confusion would I really have felt when you explained that my mommy and daddy died in a car accident and there wasn’t anybody to take care of me? That you were my mommy and daddy now?” She was begging, desperately wanting them truly to have lied because they thought it would be better for her.

  Not because they needed to pretend to themselves and the world that they were able to have a child, like everyone else.

  “We love you,” her mother whispered.

  The heart-wrenching part was that she knew they did. She’d always, always, felt secure in their love. But now that love felt…not quite honest. As if they’d really loved the little girl they’d pretended she was—the one born to them who shared their genes—not the substitute little girl she’d been.

  “You knew I had a brother and sister somewhere, didn’t you?”

  Still they stared at her with those wounded eyes.

  “Why didn’t you adopt my brother, too?” For the first time, with a stab of pain, she realized that she’d undoubtedly been adopted first, a cute, healthy baby versus a sad, frightened three-year-old. Her parents could have taken both, kept some small part of that family together.

  But they hadn’t.

  “We didn’t know if we could deal with two children,” her father explained, voice tight. “They explained to us that the little boy was difficult. He was refusing to bond with anybody. He’d taken to biting so hard
he drew blood when someone tried to pick him up. I suppose…I suppose we were afraid that we wouldn’t be able to break through with him.”

  Her incredulity was like a chunk of ice lodged in her chest, spreading a chill. “A scared little boy, and you took away the only thing that was familiar to him and left him behind?”

  Her mother stifled a sob.

  “But of course everybody would know he wasn’t really your baby, wouldn’t they? He might even remember his real family. That wouldn’t work, since you intended to lie.”

  Voice rigid with anger, her father said, “That’s cruel.”

  “But is it true?”

  They didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.

  Numb from the chill that had now spread to her fingertips and toes, she said, “That’s all I wanted to know,” turned and left.

  Hearing—and not hearing—the keening sound of anguish behind her.

  HIS NIKON on the seat beside him, Mark studied the rambler across the street. He’d spent a good part of two days here. Drapes had remained drawn and the garage door down except for the one time his subject had left the house with his wife driving. They had gone to a physical therapy clinic, outside of which the wife had solicitously helped her husband into a wheelchair, then pushed him into the clinic, reversing the whole business to return home. No slip-ups there; in fact, the whole thing looked staged, although Mark had stayed well back and doubted they had actually spotted him.

  A six-foot-tall cedar fence surrounded the backyard. He’d noted no chinks. In any case, he would have had to trespass to get close enough to press his eye to a crack.

  When he’d walked by once, he’d the sound of a drill being operated and a cheerful whistling coming from the backyard. The informant claimed the son of a bitch, living on Labor and Industries and suing his employer for disability, was building a gazebo since he had so much spare time. A goddamn gazebo.

  Mark had been hired to get a few good photos of the guy out of his wheelchair, preferably lifting something heavy or swinging a golf club. Unfortunately the subject had so far been discreet enough to stay away from the links. Whatever he was doing in the backyard, though, he seemed to be having a real good time.

  Sometimes people forgot that neighbors had windows that looked down into their backyard. Mark had once rented an apartment for the express purpose of photographing another malingerer chasing his Labrador retriever around his yard. The best photo had showed him joyfully tackling the dog. He’d had one hell of a bad back.

  Houses in this neighborhood were all one-story ramblers, though. No convenient hill rose behind the backyard. One kids’ treehouse two yards away might have a peekaboo view, but Mark had nixed that idea. A homeowner was legally entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy, according to the courts. A P.I. teetering out on a tree limb to snap pictures of you in your fenced sanctum violated that expectation.

  What he had to do was lure the guy out. Humming under his breath, he studied the house with narrowed eyes. There were some ruses that often worked, like having a young woman knock on the door and breathlessly ask for help finding her engagement ring that had just slipped off her finger.

  “He just gave it to me last night!” she’d gasp. “I was going to get it sized, and I haven’t done it yet, and…” A wail. “I can’t tell him I lost it!”

  The subject, in his wheelchair, would apologize because he couldn’t help her look but give her permission to search. Eventually, teary, she’d knock again to say she couldn’t find it, but please, please, would he call if he did?

  The not-so-bright subject would wait half an hour, then pop right out to poke around under his shrubbery in search of the pretty diamond. The photographer would be snapping contentedly with his zoom lens.

  Mark’s thinking was that this guy was too smart for that one. Plus, he had a wife who could search. No, Mark had to think of something the guy’d want to do himself, or think his wife wasn’t up to. Motivation, motivation, he mused.

  He started his car and drove back to the office. His secretary, who came in only for the morning on Saturday, had left the mail on his desk. Immediately he pulled out a manila envelope with the return address of Adoption and Family Services in Everett. Hah! They had obligingly produced Carrie’s file earlier, but had been embarrassed to admit they couldn’t find Lucien Chauvin’s. Mark still had only the last name, from a note in Carrie’s file.

  Sure enough, enclosed was a copy of the adoption decree. Harold and Judith Lindstrom of Bakersfield, California, had adopted Suzanne’s brother. The final decree for Gary Lindstrom aka Lucien Chauvin was dated—he scanned down—almost two years after the death of the children’s parents. Mark swore under his breath. That poor kid had spent a year and a half in foster care. Not quite what the aunt and uncle had had in mind.

  Or had they given a damn?

  He felt uncharitable for having the thought. Jeanne Fulton had seemed to be a nice enough woman. Mark guessed she hadn’t wanted to give up the children at all. But she clearly didn’t make the decisions in that house.

  Tomorrow, he’d make a trip to Everett to order a copy of Gary Lindstrom’s amended birth certificate. In the meantime…

  Mark turned to his computer.

  Harold Lindstrom was still listed in Bakersfield, at the same address as on the decree. This was almost too easy; how many people stayed put for twenty-five years? This was his lucky week.

  Interestingly Judith didn’t appear anywhere. She might be dead; they might be divorced. But if Mark could find Harold, he could find Gary.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the central California number, getting lucky yet again: a gruff male voice answered.

  “Hi, I’m trying to track down Gary,” he began. “We were friends back in…”

  “Haven’t seen him in damn near twelve years. You’re barkin’ up the wrong tree.”

  “Excuse me? Is this Harold Lindstrom? Aren’t you his father?”

  “Not such good friends, were you?” The man gave an unpleasant laugh. “Kid hated my guts. Ran away, and I didn’t bother looking for him. Best of luck.”

  The guy actually had a phone he could slam down. Way more satisfying than clicking a button to end an unwelcome call.

  Twelve years. Mark frowned, mentally counting back. That would have made Gary Lindstrom only…sixteen. Maybe seventeen, when the kid hit the road and his adoptive father just let him go.

  Question: Where was Judith in all this?

  Mark ran a search for divorces and finally found it. Gary would have been twelve when his adoptive parents split. A tough age no matter what. Had he blamed his father for the breakup? And why hadn’t Mom taken him? Why leave him with Dad, since the relationship had been so crummy?

  Mark rubbed his jaw, feeling late afternoon bristle. Okay, he was going to have to earn his fee. Gary Lindstrom could be anywhere. He might have joined the Air Force, he might be a sheepherder in Montana, he might be a bike courier in Manhattan or a Hollywood cinematographer. Mark hoped the guy was at least still in the United States. All he had to work with was a name and a birthdate.

  He’d faced bigger challenges before.

  Tomorrow, he decided. It was almost five, he had nothing pressing, and he had Saturday night off. His dad had picked up Michael first thing this morning. They had planned to go to the boat show at Qwest Field, then after Michael’s nap, head out for pizza and see the latest Disney movie.

  Young as Michael was, he seemed to share his grandfather’s passion for boats. Michael’s favorite possession in the whole world was the ship in a bottle his grandpa had given him for Christmas. The thing was a beauty—an incredibly detailed four-masted man of war in a three-foot-long bottle. It must have cost hundreds of dollars. Mark had protested. Michael had been four years old! What if he knocked it off his dresser? But his son’s face had been stricken, and Mark’s father had said, “He’ll be careful.”

  He was. Mark would sometimes pause in his son’s bedroom doorway and watch Michael standing in front o
f the dresser, eye level with the ship, gazing at it as if the bottle were a crystal ball shimmering with possibilities.

  Driving home, Mark thought that it was pretty sad that he had no big plans. Pressed into it by friends, he’d been on a couple of dates this past year, but found the whole business uncomfortable and uninteresting. Maybe he just wasn’t ready.

  He made a sound of irritation when Carrie St. John’s face obligingly appeared in his head. Oh, sure, didn’t it figure; the one woman who apparently did interest him was one who was off-limits. One, moreover, who had enough on her plate right now without the P.I. who’d screwed up her life asking her out.

  Damn it, he thought, trying to shake her image, he should have called a friend, maybe gone to see the Mariners play instead of planning to watch the game on TV.

  Mark broiled a steak and baked a russet potato, then ate in front of the TV. He’d played ball himself in high school, and was looking forward to Michael starting T-ball. Maybe he’d even coach, he was thinking, when the phone rang.

  He muted the TV and answered, “Hello?”

  “Mr. Kincaid? Um, Mark?” The voice was timid, watery. “I hope this isn’t an awful time. You said I could call if I needed to talk. I mean, if you’re busy, it’s okay…”

  “Carrie?” he interrupted.

  She sniffed. “Yes.”

  “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

  “I talked to my parents tonight. My adoptive parents,” she added bitterly.

  The St. Johns were probably ready to lynch him.

  “I’m sorry,” Mark said. “That must have been upsetting.”

  “You’re probably doing something with your wife or your little boy. Oh, gosh. I shouldn’t have called on a Saturday night.”

  “No wife,” he said, “and my son is spending the night with my dad.”

  “You’re divorced?”

  “She died two years ago. She had a bad heart.”

  “Oh, no! I’m so sorry!”

  “It’s okay.” He watched Ichiro hit a fly ball without really seeing the play unfold. It wasn’t okay; he never liked talking about Emily’s death. Too many emotions roiled. This was hardly the time, anyway. Carrie St. John had called so that he could offer her comfort, not the other way around. “Time does soften grief, you know.”