Open Secret

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Would he mind terribly if she called again?

  No! All she’d do was say the same things all over again. I’m not ready, she’d whine. Well, she wasn’t ready. But she could quit being so self-centered and call Suzanne Chauvin anyway. What must she feel, finding her long-lost sister only to have that sister not bother to get in touch with her? She had to be baffled and hurt.

  All these people—her parents, her sister—desperately waiting for Carrie to call, and all she wanted was to phone the one person who didn’t care if he heard from her. Great.

  Taking a deep breath, she took her wallet out of her purse and pulled out Mark Kincaid’s business card with her sister’s name and phone number written on the back. Before her resolve could falter, she grabbed the phone and dialed.

  One ring. Two. Three. Four. Relief began to edge out apprehension. Suzanne wasn’t there. Carrie could leave a message. Or maybe not. Maybe she should just try again…

  “Hello?” a breathless woman said.

  Shock robbed Carrie of words for a moment. The voice sounded like hers, when she heard it on her answering machine!

  “Suzanne?” she asked tentatively. “Suzanne Chauvin?”

  She heard a soft exhalation. “Carrie. It’s Carrie, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” She tried to laugh. “I, uh, I’ve been kind of a coward about calling you. I’m sorry.”

  “No. No! It’s okay. Mark said you didn’t know you were adopted.”

  “When he told me… It was a jolt. I’ve been dealing with some of that. Talking to my parents. My adoptive parents,” she corrected herself. “I guess I had to come to terms with the fact that they really aren’t my parents before I was ready to talk to you and find out about my original family.”

  “I put together a photo album, just for you. I could mail it, if you’d like. So you could see what I look like before we meet. And look at pictures of our parents without having to think of the right thing to say.”

  Mark was right; she was nice.

  “No,” Carrie said, “I think I’d like to meet you. Mark says we look a lot alike.”

  “He told me that, too.”

  They were both quiet for a moment. Carrie wondered how much they looked alike. What if they’d passed each other on the street? Would one of them have turned her head and thought, How strange?

  “Do you want to make it neutral territory? We could meet somewhere for lunch. Or would you like to come to my house?”

  “I think I’d like to come to your house.” She gave an embarrassed laugh. “In case I cry.”

  “I know I will.” Suzanne sounded as if she already was. “I’ve imagined this moment since I was six years old.”

  And she, Carrie, hadn’t even known she had a sister, that she was missing anything.

  “I couldn’t have had much personality. I was just a baby.”

  “Yeah, you did. You had this amazing giggle. And you’d light up every time you saw me. Even when you were a few weeks old. You’d flap your arms and legs and grin.” She fell silent for a moment. “I was your big sister.”

  Carrie felt a need to retreat. This woman she didn’t know felt so much for her. She understood, but it made her uneasy.

  “Mark says he hasn’t found…” Our brother sounded so strange to say. “Lucien.”

  “No. Did he tell you the name he grew up with? Gary. Gary Lindstrom. And that he talked to Gary’s adoptive father? I feel awful about it.”

  “Awful? About what?”

  “The adoptive father said Gary always hated him, and that he ran away from home when he was sixteen. He said he’s never heard from him again.”

  “Oh, no!” Another stranger, and yet… What if they never did find him? Never knew whether he’d survived and built a new life, or whether something terrible had happened to him?

  “I’m trying not to think about it,” Suzanne said. “Right now, it’s enough that Mark found you. I started hunting on my own, you know. Three years ago, and I didn’t get anywhere. So this seems like miracle enough.”

  “And to think we were so close all this time. What if we’d happened to run into each other? Mark says you live in Edmonds. I’ve been to the Edmonds Arts Festival four or five times. We could have passed in one of the aisles!”

  “We probably did. Wow.” After another little silence, she said, “I know you work. Could you come up Saturday?”

  “Sure. Saturday sounds great.”

  Carrie wrote down directions and they agreed to eleven o’clock, then said goodbye as if they’d known each other forever.

  The minute she hung up, Carrie started hyperventilating. She’d done it. She’d called. She was going to meet her sister two days from now.

  And she was scared to death.

  PHONE BOOK OPEN on the desk in front of him, Mark rocked back in his office chair.

  “Hey, I ordered some lumber,” he said into the phone, “and I wanted to change… Perry Smith.” He reeled off the address.

  The man on the other end made small talk while he searched and finally said, “Could the order be under another name?”

  “Jeez,” Mark said. “I swear my wife told me… Damn it! I’ll call you back.”

  He checked off another lumberyard.

  His intercom buzzed. “Suzanne Chauvin for you on line one.”

  “I’ll take it.” He hit “1.” “Hey, Mark here.”

  “She called! She’s coming up Saturday! I just wanted to say thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  His first reaction was pride. So, she’d done it. He knew it had taken courage. But weirdly, on the heels of pride was a sting of disappointment, maybe even hurt, that Carrie hadn’t called herself to tell him that she’d taken the big step.

  “That’s great,” he said, in a hearty voice. “It’s quick, considering how much she’s had to come to terms with.”

  He wasn’t even sure Suzanne heard him.

  “She sounded just like I expected,” she marveled. “Isn’t that amazing? You were right. I am going to like her! I could tell she practically read my mind.”

  Her giddy enthusiasm rang a warning bell. “Suzanne…”

  “She’s worried about Lucien, too, I could tell. It was as if, even on the phone, we had this bond…”

  “Suzanne,” he interrupted, a little sharply, “I’m glad you liked her, but don’t expect too much of this first meeting. She may chicken out. She may panic when she sees how much you look alike. She may be okay with meeting, but then back off.”

  She sounded mutinous. “You told me all that already.”

  “But you’re thinking everything is going to be peachy now, aren’t you?”

  She was quiet for a moment, then gave a little laugh. “Got me. But Mark, talking to her felt so right!”

  The honeymoon, this was often called, when both parties in a reunion wanted to love each other, wanted the other one to be perfect, the mother/sister/daughter she’d dreamed about all her life. But nobody was perfect; nobody ever entirely met another person’s expectation. Hell, that was impossible.

  Regular family relationships—marriage, parent/child, siblings—invariably hit rocky patches. Every parent he’d ever met admitted to a low moment, when he or she had almost lost it. Didn’t every married couple go to bed with their backs turned to each other once in awhile?

  But in this kind of case, a dose of reality could be especially hurtful because the dream was so potent, so all-consuming. Massive amounts of time, money, energy had gone into finding this person. Rejection was always a possibility. A fear. What no one was ever prepared to find at the end of the search was an ordinary man or woman with ordinary faults.

  Mark liked both Suzanne and Carrie, and thought they’d like each other. But in different ways, they were too damn needy right now. He didn’t want to see their relationship go sour because they asked too much of each other.

  “Just…remind yourself that her feelings about all this are still pretty mixed up. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she promise
d. “Any progress on Lucien?”

  “To be honest, I’ve been working on an insurance fraud case and looking for a runaway fourteen-year-old. I’ll get back to Gary as soon as I can.”

  Once more, he wondered if she heard him. “Wow. Saturday. I can’t believe it!”

  Shaking his head, he went back to calling lumberyards. It was a long shot that the subject still had lumber for the gazebo on order, but it was the best idea he’d come up with yet. The structure hadn’t actually risen yet. Chances were, ol’ Perry had started with a foundation. He couldn’t exactly trot out and pick up his own supplies now, could he?

  The ninth lumberyard, Mark hit pay dirt.

  “Perry Smith? Got you down for Thursday. Need to add something?”

  “Wondering how early you can bring the load?”

  Long silence. “You specified eleven. Don’t worry about the lawn. Back up to the gate.”

  “The thing is,” Mark said ingratiatingly, “I’ve got some friends coming to help me. We’d like to get an early start.”

  “We open at 7:00 a.m.” The guy was undoubtedly shrugging. Customers. What can you do? “If we load ahead of time, we can be there by 7:15.”

  “Great! Oh, just unload it in the driveway. Now that I’ve got help, we can haul it in, no problem. Save the lawn.”

  “Driveway it is.”

  Mark thanked him profusely and hung up, satisfied. Now, if only Perry didn’t call to confirm his specific instructions. Think what a surprise he was going to have Thursday! And what man would make his wife haul lumber into the backyard?

  Mark spent the rest of the afternoon talking to the runaway girl’s friends, cutting through their evasions and professed ignorance of her plans.

  One of the girls, under the steely gaze of her own mother, crumpled quickly.

  “See, her mom lives in Minnesota. Like, near St. Paul? She really wants Lindsey to live with her. Her dad is just such a jerk. He won’t let her ’cuz he wants to get back at her mom. That’s what she says, anyway. So she’s just going.”

  “Do you know how she plans to get there?” Mark asked.

  “She took some money from her dad. It wasn’t stealing! I mean, he’s always wanting to buy her stuff. So he bought her a bus ticket. Okay?”

  Even though he was relieved she wasn’t hitchhiking, the idea of a fourteen-year-old girl riding Greyhound across the country was enough to send a chill through Mark. She’d be safe on the bus, but drivers would stop for meal breaks. Bus stations attracted sleaze. Travelers were easy prey.

  He pressed harder, found out that Lindsey’s boyfriend had taken her to the station, put her on a bus. The subdued friend said, “He’ll know when she left.”

  When threatened with legal repercussions, the boyfriend gave her up. “She said she’d call when she gets there,” he said.

  “Did her mother know she was coming?”

  He shook his head. “Lindsey wanted to surprise her.”

  With the mother and Greyhound alerted, Mark called it a day.

  At home, Heidi rushed out the door, calling over her shoulder, “I want Michael to be a ringbearer at my wedding. Will that be okay?”

  Six-year-old boys weren’t real good at staying solemn and tidy in miniature tuxes, Mark guessed, but Heidi wasn’t the kind to feel her big day would be ruined if his son dropped the ring or pretended he was a fighter plane in the middle of the ceremony.

  “Sure,” he said.

  She flashed him a big grin. “Great! See ya tomorrow!”

  Dinner still had a half hour to go in the oven, so he and Michael walked to the nearby elementary school and kicked a soccer ball around. Going and coming, Michael tripped twice on uneven spots in the sidewalk.

  Boosting him up the second time, Mark said, “Hey, buddy! You okay?”

  “Yeah, I just wasn’t looking at my feet. I forget.”

  Looking at his feet? What kid had to pay attention to where he placed each step?

  “Been clumsy lately?”

  Walking with his head bent, Michael shrugged. With exaggerated care, he steered around the root of a maple that had pushed up through the old sidewalk.

  After dinner, Michael wanted to watch TV. Taking a book into the family room a minute later, Mark saw his son sprawled on the floor with his face not four feet from the screen. They had a long-running battle over this; Mark didn’t really know if TVs gave off damaging rays or if being too close was bad for the eyes, but his mother hadn’t let him sit so close, so he figured there was a good reason.

  Bad reason for a rule. Nonetheless, he said, “Kiddo, scoot back.”

  “But Dad…!”

  Lightbulb.

  “Hey, come here.” He patted the couch next to him. “Just for a minute.”

  Michael came.

  “So, what’s that in the frog’s mouth?”

  “I don’t know!” His son scowled at him. “That’s why I like to sit in front of the TV.”

  “Blurry from here, huh?”

  Michael nodded.

  “Okay. Lie anywhere you want.”

  Damn it, why hadn’t the teacher noticed? Okay, it was kindergarten, and she probably wasn’t writing on the blackboard much, since the kids couldn’t read what she wrote. The couple times he’d stopped by to help, the students had all been sitting on the carpeted floor in a semi-circle around her. Maybe from there, Michael could see.

  He felt stupid not to have noticed himself. He didn’t wear glasses, and neither had Emily. He guessed that’s why he hadn’t been looking for that kind of problem. One of the pitfalls of adoptive parenting. You often got minimal background information. Did early heart disease run in the family? Cancer? Schizophrenia? But the little things, the ones that you bumped into day to day, those you weren’t told. Maybe Michael’s mother had worn glasses or contacts. Maybe both his birth parents had, and he’d been programmed to need them himself by this age. Mark didn’t know, and he didn’t like not knowing. It was moments like these that gave him insight into the confusion people like the St. Johns and Carrie felt.

  The phone rang while he was watching his son staring at the animated video. Michael didn’t even turn his head when his father left the room.

  “Mark? Um, this is Carrie again.”

  His heart lightened. “Hey.”

  “You must groan when you hear my voice.” Her laugh didn’t disguise her underlying anxiety.

  “No.” Taking a seat at the kitchen table, he thought about admitting that he’d just been thinking about her, but decided not to. “I’m glad to hear from you. Suzanne says you called her.”

  “I did! I kept thinking, I’m not ready, but then I thought about how rejected she must be feeling. And…it really wasn’t that hard. You’re right. She’s nice.”

  “She is. And thrilled to have heard from you.”

  “Did she tell you we’re meeting on Saturday? I’m a little nervous about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Dumb, huh? I guess I just…”

  “Quit doing that.”

  It came out sharper than he’d intended, and there was momentary silence.

  “Doing what?” Carrie asked.

  “Putting yourself down. Implying that you’re inept, a bother, silly to feel the things you do.”

  “I didn’t realize I was doing that,” she said with dignity. “It’s just that…I know I’m using you as a crutch, so I guess I do feel apologetic when I keep calling.”

  A crutch. Well, now he knew where he stood, he thought with wry humor. No more hoping that she was using the adoption thing as an excuse to call because she wanted to get to know him.

  Of course, he’d noticed she never asked about him, which should have been his first clue.

  Telling himself he had no reason to be disappointed, he kept his voice light. “I’ve been called worse things.” More seriously, he added, “I told you I didn’t mind, and I don’t. If I’m busy when you call, I’ll tell you. Otherwise, assume I’m happy to talk to you.”

  “Re
ally?”

  “Really.”

  “Oh.” She was quiet for a moment, as if girding herself. “Okay, then. Will you come with me Saturday?”

  He should have anticipated this. From her point of view, things were moving fast. Another person might deflect some of the intensity of Suzanne’s interest in her.

  “Did you suggest having a third party present to Suzanne?”

  “A third party? Is that how you see yourself?” She sounded puzzled. “Mark, I don’t want just anybody. I want you.”

  Not quite how he’d like to hear her say those magic words. But, fool that he was, he felt a warm glow in his chest nonetheless.

  “Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll let Suzanne know I’m coming, too. Do you want to drive separately, or shall I pick you up?”

  “Would you?”

  The note of hope made him wish he could hug her. “Yeah. Say, ten-thirty?”

  Her relief obvious, she exclaimed, “Oh, thank you, thank you! I feel so much better!”

  He did, too. God help him, he was flattered that she’d begged him to come.

  “No problem. Ten-thirty it is.”

  Hanging the phone back up, he muttered, “Idiot!”

  She hadn’t given him the slightest reason to think she saw him as a man. Hell, no; she’d admitted that, in her eyes, he was a crutch.

  And however awkward his presence might be, on Saturday a crutch was exactly what he’d be.

  Trouble was, a crutch wasn’t going to protect her heart.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THURSDAY MORNING, bright, early and hopeful, Mark sat waiting down the street from Perry Smith’s house. Just to be on the safe side, he’d gotten here at six-thirty, under the theory the lumberyard manager might get ambitious and decide to load the night before and deliver before they opened instead of after. Mark sipped his coffee and read the morning Times, keeping a casual eye out over the top of the paper. He was feeling optimistic in part because Greyhound officials had nabbed the runaway girl yesterday in Montana and put her on a Southwest flight home to Seattle. As far as Mark was concerned, this was shaping up to be a good week. When you got the breaks, you got the breaks.

  At 7:00 a.m., he started paying a little more attention. But 7:15 came and went and his optimism slipped. Damn it, so much for Plan A. Ol’ Perry had probably called to confirm delivery of his lumber and discovered the “mistake.” So much for getting the breaks.