I read aloud, “‘Dear Jenna, I hope this package finds its way to you. My grandfather, Mitchell Harrison, recently traveled through the Missoula airport on his way here to California for my daughter’s wedding.’ It’s the old man,” I said, shocked. “It’s him—did I tell you? He was an amazing old man. Ninety-seven he told me. He had this calming effect on people. He made me feel like he knew me before, like he could look into my heart.”
Bobbie gave me the look that said, “You are my friend, but, yes, I do think you are crazy.”
I continued with the letter. “‘My grandfather met you at the airport and he said you were very helpful to him. Unfortunately, he passed away recently.’ Oh, no,” I said, my hand flying to my mouth. “Oh, that’s sad.”
Ninety-seven? Bobbie mouthed, apparently amazed that people really lived that long.
“‘Grandfather was a numismatist, a collector of all kinds of coins, some common and some rare. He was in the habit of carrying a few of these pure silver coins with him. He said it reminded him of the old days when money was ‘real.’”
A sudden realization struck me. The little girl in the airport who was frightened by the flashing lights. He had given her something. It must have been one of these coins.
I continued reading. “‘Before he died, he asked me to send this coin to you. He said to tell you to look closely at the woman on the front, Lady Liberty. He wanted me to explain that she has a lesson for us all. And he said to say, he knew you could do it. To never give up. I hope that makes sense to you. I am sorry it has taken me so long to get this to you, but with all the estate arrangements, I’m sure you’ll understand. Thank you for making my grandfather’s last trip pleasant.’”
I stared at the coin, dumbfounded. Bobbie placed it on my palm and we both considered it.
“Lady Liberty?” Bobbie asked. “I know that this particular picture is on a lot of my dad’s silver, but what has that got to do with you? What did he mean?”
On the coin, the woman’s gown flowed freely, gracefully, as she raised her hand toward the rising sun, a symbol of hope, light, and truth. She held a leafy branch in the crook of her left arm. A cloak studded with tiny stars billowed behind her.
“We talked about how he had been married for seventy years. When I asked him how they could stay married so long, he said …” I furrowed my brow, trying to remember what he had said exactly, “it was something they built day by day. He said I should not give up on looking for love like that.”
“Wow. All that came from a coin?” Bobbie said in wonder. She examined it more closely. “This looks like the pre … no, ‘proof’ ones. They are in better shape and more valuable than the uncirculated ones. They are shinier.”
On the right side of the figure the words “In God We Trust” were printed in tiny letters, calling on me, I felt, to place my trust in a power beyond my own.
“I think he wanted me to have this to remind me that it is possible for me to have a love that’s genuine, something that would last,” I said quietly, then frowned. “I’ve spent years running from the very idea of that. It seems like it’s only for other people, you know?” I looked at Bobbie and she nodded sympathetically.
“But why not me?” I gripped the coin in my hand until my knuckles were white. I probed into the fear that lurked in the pit of my stomach. I shook my head. “I’m sick of being afraid.”
“Who says there’s not someone just perfect for you?” Bobbie said, her expression earnest.
Who did say that? A grim shadow emerged from the watery depths of my memory, then faded away.
I set my jaw. “I’m not giving up.” I swallowed hard and lifted my chin. “It’s what I want.”
Bobbie nodded and we fell silent for a moment. I opened my hand and the coin glinted in the light. Bobbie peered closely at the woman’s image, a miniature sculpture in relief.
“I like her shoes,” she said blandly.
I stared at her until we burst out laughing.
Chapter 20
dc
I scuffed around the house in my slippers and favorite sweats the next morning, sipping a green smoothie. When my cell phone rang, I hesitated to answer. It was a number I didn’t recognize, but I chanced it.
“Hello, Jenna?” said a warm, deep voice I instantly recognized.
I nearly choked on my smoothie. “Yes?”
“This is Michael Callahan.”
“Yes, hi,” I squeaked.
“Uh, how are you?”
“Fine. How are you?” OK, so I am not a brilliant conversationalist at that time of the day.
“Good.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, I was wondering if you have anything going on for lunch tomorrow. Do you like Staggering Ox?”
“Oh, yes … no, I mean. Sure, I really like Staggering Ox,” A picture of the cylindrical-shaped bread stuffed with crab and artichokes made my mouth water. “It’s just that I probably can’t get away from work.” I alternately kicked myself and congratulated myself. Nice stall, I thought. Now you don’t have to be alone with this perfectly gorgeous person. Heaven forbid you should risk getting involved with the one guy you know who is deeper than a birdbath.
Still, after my crash landing with Derek, I was cautious.
“Well, dinner perhaps?” he asked.
“Sure. That would be great,” I hesitated, then plunged on. “I have to be downtown at the courthouse anyway. I could meet you at the restaurant if you’d like. I have to do some research about my father. I have a lead on some real estate he may have owned—or inherited.”
“So how is that going? Have you found anything else about your dad?”
“Not yet. I’ve been on the computer but haven’t turned up anything helpful yet.”
“Good luck at the courthouse. That can be a real maze. I’ve spent hours there wading through red tape for properties we have needed to design for.”
“Thanks.”
There was a pause during which I ransacked my brain for something clever to say.
“Well, I’ll meet you at the restaurant then,” he said. “Six thirty?”
I hung up feeling a surge of energy I did not think came from the blueberries in my smoothie.
A
Work on Monday was a madhouse. Two of my team members, Jennifer and Devon, had the flu. Halfway through the day, I began to wonder if they were having the flu together. They had been spending quite a bit of time “helping” one another with their work. There was a lot of hair flipping and giggling, swaggering and blushing going on. At any rate, we all were putting our tennis shoes to the test, dashing upstairs and down, getting people booked, boarded, and in the air.
All the while, in the back of my mind, I kept turning over the same questions about my parents. What had happened between them, and what did it have to do with the land owned by Skip’s father, the land my mother mentioned in the letters Ricky gave me? It seemed to be part of an argument between them and that she was hiding something from Skip.
I planned to go to the courthouse that afternoon to look up information on the land. If I could find a deed or transfer of deed, maybe I could find my father’s full name or his father’s name or just anything about their family. I had the address of the property that was on one of the letters and I hoped that would help me locate the deed.
I had reread the letters my mother had saved and even called Ricky to see if I could get more of the story about the land and what it had to do with my mother’s break up with Skip. It was becoming evident to me that she somehow had her name on the title and that something had happened when the land was lost that my mother agonized over.
If the property belonged to Skip’s father, how did my mother manage to get her name on it at such a young age? She must have been only eighteen or nineteen at the time. Shouldn’t it have been in Skip’s name? Had she married my father? When I was in Vegas, Ricky said he suspected she had. More important, who was this man and where did he go? Did he know my mother was pregnant with me?
There was a tiny, glowing cinder of hope alive in me that perhaps my father never knew about me, that if he had he surely would have come looking for me. But there was also a cold streak of fear that he had known and hadn’t cared. To look for him now could be setting myself up for disappointment. It had been twenty-eight years since he had given me life. A lot could change in that amount of time. Who was he now? Despite my anxiety, I had to know.
If my mother married the man in the photograph Ricky gave me, then there might be a marriage certificate on file at the courthouse. I wanted to check for that too.
At three o’clock, I grabbed my purse and jacket and punched the time clock.
“Where you headed in such a hurry?” Mark asked as I struggled to find my sleeve on the way out the door.
“I have a thing to do,” I said as I checked my watch, “and I gotta get there before the courthouse closes.”
“Sounds pretty serious,” Mark said, raising his eyebrows.
“And no, I didn’t get a ticket,” I said.
Normally I would have valued his opinion about what I was working on, but this was too tender, too scary. If I shared what I was doing, I was afraid my resolve would take flight like the white umbrellas of dandelion seeds launched in a breeze.
I pulled onto Broadway and headed downtown. There was a feeling of excitement in the pit of my stomach that had little to do with dodging the late afternoon traffic. I hoped that I would find at least the full name of my father. If there was anything that would help me find him—and hopefully he was still alive—I was more than willing to dig through dusty archives to find at least a clue that would lead me to him. I imagined meeting him, wondered what he would look like, and worried that he might be angry or indifferent about being found. But anything would be better than living the rest of my life feeling like a boat cut loose from its moorings.
I had to drive around the Missoula County Courthouse twice before I found a parking spot in front of the building. Pumping coins into the meter, I gazed up at the massive stone columns buttressing the turn-of-the-century building. With its ornate dome, it was a proud relic of an era when craftsmen and artisans laid their treasure at the feet of the public’s common good. Cut glass in the windows glittered in the late autumn sun and a few birds chirped softly in the stone gazebo that sat on the lawn. I passed a homeless man—a gray shapeless form sleeping on the grass with a ragged hat partially covering his ragged hair.
Inside the door, I paused for a moment, my hand nervously running along the polished oak top of the handrail at the base of the white marble stairs. I shook off the temptation to turn back and leave my life the way I had always known it. At the same time, I knew it was too late. I was already on a path that would change for better or worse who I was or thought I was. Above me hung massive paintings of Native Americans and white explorers. I felt an odd kinship. I was on a path of discovery myself.
I was soon lost in multiple levels and numerous staircases that linked the antique building to a newer, but still old, addition. Finally, I found myself at the door marked County Clerk. I stepped into a beehive of activity, clerks chatting or squinting into computer screens, some carrying weighty volumes with battered covers back and forth. A pleasant, plump blonde greeted me. “What can we do for you?”
I was suddenly stumped. My mouth went dry. I wanted to say lamely, “Help me find out who I am.” Instead, I asked her to check to see if there was a marriage on record for Kathryn Pearson about the time I was born. She checked but found that there was not. I assumed if they married they went out of state—who knows where?
I uncrumpled the paper I had crammed in my pocket with the address from one of the letters that Ricky had given me scribbled on it. “Also, I—uh—I would like to find out about the sale of a property.”
“Was the sale made within the last eight years?” she asked with crisp efficiency.
“Twenty-eight years ago … I think.”
She asked for the legal description of the property, but all I had was an address.
She led me to a wide-screen computer, and as she zipped through the screens, she explained that property deeds created over eight years ago would be researched on the computer to obtain book and page numbers, then a search would be made in the index books across the hall. Noting my confusion, she led me across the hall to a small room filled with huge books, weathered covers sandwiching yellowed papers. It reminded me of a scene out of the Harry Potter books.
“Fourteen, fourteen …” she muttered, scanning the spines.
She tugged on a thick book and it thudded onto the desk below. Fanning through the pages filled with cramped writing, we came across the entry we needed. With a start, I spotted my mother’s name. More numbers and back to the first room. A bright red metal chest of drawers housed hundreds of rolls of microfilm. Pulling out the number we needed, my guide explained how to use the microfilm reader, pointing out buttons and knobs and then she left. I sat staring at the machine for a moment, feeling a little like I’d been left alone in the cockpit of a Cessna. Slowly, I maneuvered my way through the screens, and tweaked the focus until I could see the shadowy documents more clearly.
I was surprised to find my hand trembling slightly as I flipped the dial into reverse and then forward, flicking through the files. What did I think was going to change? Finding my father would not alter the way I felt about my uncle and his family. I owed them my life. As much trouble as I had given them, I certainly owed them my loyalty. Their influence had impacted my personality, my habits and much of my belief system. Would finding my genetic father alter the way I viewed the world?
As I familiarized myself with the machine’s operation, my search accelerated; the machine zipped and clicked noisily. Pausing to check document numbers, I lit by chance on a property listed in the Seeley Lake area. For a moment, my attention was arrested. I could feel the dampness of the lake, smell it in the air. I saw Michael’s face, a dark curl loose on his forehead, the moonlight reflecting in his eyes. I felt again his warm hand on my neck, heard the sound of his voice like the whisper of wind in the trees.
I was abruptly shaken from my thoughts by a shoe kicking my chair as someone squeezed through the narrow aisle behind me.
“’Scuse me,” a thin balding man mumbled.
I continued scrolling through screens until finally I was looking at the warranty deed for the plot of land I was searching for. Book fourteen, page 175. “To have and to hold the said premises, with their appurtenances unto …” etc. etc. An official seal, dates, stamps, fees.
And there it was. My mother’s signature. Kathryn Elizabeth Pearson. I stared. Suddenly I saw her, a scared eighteen-year-old girl, pregnant, no money, alone. She was likely ashamed to confront her family and ask for help and became lost in a legal system of lawyers, notaries and clerks. A jag in the K betrayed a trembling hand. The screen suddenly blurred, but I knew it was not the focus on the machine. I wiped away a tear with the heel of my hand. She had no money. In a short space of time, her entire life had changed, had wobbled beyond her control. It had become a thing she was ill prepared for, something she could only determine to struggle through, one desperate day after the other.
But where was my father’s name? It had to be on here somewhere. Nothing. The buyers’ names were listed: Bart and Sylvia Cromwell. Where was his name?
I fumbled for the print button. The image disappeared, and with a grind and flash, the copy of the deed spit out below the screen. I glanced at the bold numbers on the wall clock. Ten minutes to five. Frantically, I returned to the original computer to search for a transfer deed showing my father’s name. I opened the screen and entered search words for the book and page, names, whatever I could think of to get the document reference numbers. Just as I found them, I became aware of a thin, gray-haired clerk at my shoulder watching my work, a pair of blue, half-rimmed glasses dangling from a beaded string around her neck. I looked up into her face, unexpectedly grim, hard lines forming around her mouth. Her veined hand
s were clasped tightly in front of the crisp linen suit she wore. She stared at the screen a moment, saying nothing.
“I …” I began, wondering if I had done something wrong.
She gave me a piercing look, cleared her throat, and spoke with strained civility. “I see you are researching the old Morrison place. Are you a relative?”
“Yes,” I stammered. “I mean, I think so.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” she said with a lift of her angular chin, “time is up for today. You’ll have to go.”
The terseness in her statement left no doubt as to the answer I would get to a request for a few more minute’s research. I would have to come back tomorrow.
I quickly groped in my backpack and laid down my two-quarters payment for the copy, unsettled by the gray-haired woman’s cold gaze from across the room.
I joined the exodus of lawyers, clerks, and the general public as they streamed slowly out of the building. At the door, a woman sat on a bench switching her spiky heels for Nikes, preparing for the walk home. Two young men shouldered past me, one declaring arrogantly to the other, “I knew I could talk my way out of that ticket.”
Crossing the thick grass, I puzzled over the copy of the deed in my hand. I had hoped to find out my father’s real first name to help me search online. What now? Discouragement gnawed at me. It was a cold trail to follow.
Chapter 21
dc
I got into my car and turned my thoughts to dinner with Michael. As I chewed on my nail, I began to realize that what I was feeling was more akin to butterflies in my stomach than hunger pains.
I turned the key in the ignition. There was an uncooperative groan from the engine and then silence. I tried again to no avail. I pounded the steering wheel in frustration and tried the key again. Nothing. I gave up and started walking the few blocks to the restaurant. I called Jack’s house on the way, hoping he could jump-start my car, but when there was no answer, I remembered he and his family were not back from a trip to Coeur d’Alene until tomorrow.
Heartbeat of the Bitterroot Page 14
