“You ain’t from the government, or one of them political surveyors, are ya?” Hicks asked. He squinted at her with suspicion. “’Cause I don’t have a minute for the likes of that.”
“No, sir,” she replied. With a rush, she leaped into her story.
“Huh. Don’t that beat all.” Hicks looked intrigued. “Adopted, you say?”
“Yes, sir. And I’m trying—”
“My daddy, he was adopted. Put him in the Market Bulletin, they did. His, what you call ’em? Birth parents?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Birth parents, right?”
“Oh, yes! But I don’t think I understood about your father—”
“Right. They put him in the Market Bulletin. This was back in the Depression, where nobody had two dimes to rub together, but my grandpa didn’t cotton to seeing nobody writ up like hogs for sale. So he rode out and adopted him. You did that?”
“Well, yes, in a manner of— You mean, your father was advertised in the classifieds?” Kimberly didn’t even bother to hide her astonishment.
“Sure. Like you would a puppy. Free to a good home. He carried that advertisement with him for years in his wallet—still got it probably. He’s eighty-five now. Lives with me.”
“That’s...that’s amazing. Listen, you probably won’t even remember this, but the day my daughter was born—”
“That’d be your adopted daughter?”
“Yes, yes, my adopted daughter.” Funny how she always had to be reminded that she hadn’t given birth to Marissa—either by people or the blank spaces on seemingly endless forms requesting biological family medical history, where all she could enter was “unknown.”
Hicks leaned against the rusty corrugated siding on the shop building. “She was born around these here parts?”
“At the fire station in town.”
“That new chief, Daniel Monroe? You been to see him? He’s been out here, him and that brother of his, the fire marshal? Came to tell me my place is a fire hazard.” He let out a rheumy har-har-har, and spat in disgust in a stand of weeds. “Tell me something I don’t know. What did they think a junkyard was gonna look like?” Now he fixed her with a watery blue eye. “So? What did he say?”
“He—he didn’t have much information that he could give me,” she admitted.
“Figures. Them Monroes, they a clannish bunch. And they tend to have a lot of rigid ideas about couldas and shouldas. Like you said, he couldn’t give you no information.” He made air quotes around the couldn’t.
“Them Monroes, they’re sticklers. Bet he knows more’n he’s telling you.”
“I expect so,” Kimberly agreed. She swallowed back the anger that she’d pushed down earlier during her conversation with Tim. “But could you?”
“Lay it on me. I’ve got a pretty good memory.”
So she did.
Hicks scratched his whiskered face with grime-encrusted fingernails. “July Fourth? I remember that. Called me out there for no good reason, and I didn’t even get a red cent for my trouble. That Tim Clarke was the fellow—not a bad sort. Let a guy have a heads-up, pretty fair on making sure the call list was rotated out, you know? But back then, he was wet behind the ears, didn’t know enough to call the owner first. So I go, and then I have to wait and wait, ’cause the owner, he says he’s gonna show up, but he sure takes his sweet time.”
“Do you remember who the owner was?” Kimberly’s pulse quickened. This could be it, maybe the parents’ name or the birth father’s.
“Why, sure. It was Thornton Cross. He was stingier than I am, and that’s saying something. Car wasn’t worth towing, if you ask me. Heap of scrap metal.”
“Thornton Cross? Is he— Does he still live around here?”
“Died four, no, five years ago. Big stroke, but at least he didn’t linger.”
“Oh.” The anticipation whooshed out of Kimberly in a wave of disappointment.
“But if you were thinking he was something to that baby of yours, well, that wouldn’t be the case at all. Thornton’s a confirmed bachelor. No woman in her right mind would take on that cussed skinflint. Back then he had to be, hmm, sixty-five or seventy, and he’d never been married. No kids. Lived out near the Mennonites, retired military. Army, I think. Raised llamas, of all things. What on earth anybody’d want with a llama...” The man shook his head in befuddled wonderment.
“But he let the birth mother use his car? That doesn’t... With what you’ve told me about him...”
Hicks shrugged his bony shoulders. “If they offered him enough money, I expect he’d do just about anything. I am sorry I couldn’t be of more help. But you go on back to that fire station. Make that Monroe boy tell you the truth. They got all that in their files, I’ll bet. I just bet they do.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
KIMBERLY DID NOT, after all, go back to the fire station. For one thing, she couldn’t face it if Daniel once again refused to tell her anything more. Hicks was probably right; Daniel knew more than he was telling her.
But she needed some sort of leverage to pry the info out of Daniel, and if a mystery bleeding disorder wasn’t a big enough crowbar, then she would have to look harder for one that would work.
On a whim, she pulled into the hospital parking lot. The building looked modern, as though it had recently been plopped down in the open field where it stood. But there had to be records, right?
It took forever for Kimberly to finally be shuffled over to the medical records section, and another half of a forever to explain her dilemma.
The fresh-out-of-college young woman behind the computer frowned and handed back Kimberly’s paperwork without so much as a good glance at it. “I don’t know. You don’t—you don’t have a name. I mean, of the birth mother. And you’re not, um, related to her. So I can’t legally give you any information—even if I could find it.”
“But I am related to my daughter. I’m her mother—her guardian. And am I not entitled to any medical records you have regarding her?”
The girl played with one of her dangly dream-catcher-style earrings. “Well, I dunno. I still don’t have a name.”
Kimberly sucked in a deep breath. “Is there anyone else here who might be able to help?”
The clerk sighed. She picked up the phone as if it weighed two tons. “Pauline?” she chirped. “I’ve got a situation here. Can you come?”
For a few minutes, after the clerk shot down a couple of Kimberly’s attempts at small talk, the two of them stared at each other uneasily.
This Pauline person had to be the girl’s supervisor, and probably would prove to be equally unhelpful. Kimberly glanced at her watch and saw with a start that it was well past lunch. No wonder her stomach was rumbling.
The door opened and a petite older woman in a tight hot pink sleeveless sweater and floral skirt swept into the office.
“Well, hey, sugar, what’s doin’?” she asked the clerk with a wide grin.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Pauline, but—”
“Never you mind, my butt was gettin’ plumb numb from sittin’ in that office chair. What’s up?”
In halting terms, the clerk began relaying Kimberly’s request. Several times, Kimberly had to jump in and correct a few points, but Pauline remained patient.
The woman leaned against the Formica desk, one manicured hand with rings on every finger propping her up, her dark eyes bright and birdlike. “So let me get this straight. Your daughter was born here—well, not here, but at the fire station—and you want her medical records?”
“Yes. It sounds so simple when you put it like that.”
Pauline cocked her peroxide-blond bouffant hairdo to one side. “Honey, never make it harder’n you have to. Most things are simple when you boil ’em down to their basics. Now, you got a birth certificate?”
“Yes. And the original paperwork from the adoption—” Kimberly spread out the paperwork that the clerk had earlier rebuffed.
Pauline peered at the forms.
“Just so. Okay, then, now all we’ve got to do is figure out a way to find your daughter in this here system. It’s all on the cloud now. Makes it harder for an old dog like me to keep up, but I do. Kayla, you scooch over so I can use your computer.”
The clerk rose from her desk in the same slow way she’d picked up the phone. “Pauline, if it’s going to take you a while, I’m going for a coffee, all right?”
“Sure, sweet pea. We’ll be fine, won’t we?” Pauline winked at Kimberly, her fingers flying over the keyboard. The door closed without a reply from Kayla.
“Thank you. I felt as though I was banging my head against a wall,” Kimberly told Pauline.
“These girls. They just in it for a paycheck, you ask me. They don’t look at it for what it is—a little mystery to be solved, every single time. You make it fun, you don’t mind coming to work. But these girls, they’re all about their cell phones and their social media. Now, mind you, I’m into that, too, but when I’m at work, I’m at work.” Pauline frowned, bent closer to the screen and squinted. “Huh.”
Kimberly’s heart skipped a beat. “Did you find something?”
“Not quite yet. But I’m close! It won’t get away from ol’ Pauline!” The magenta-tipped fingers clacked over the keyboard at an even more furious pace. She frowned again. “Nope, no, you don’t hide from me.”
She tapped a few more keys.
This query must have yielded a more satisfactory response. Pauline sat back and grinned smugly. “There you are. Told you you couldn’t hide from ol’ Pauline. I know where all the bodies are buried, I do.” She took one long fingernail and tapped on the screen. “Okay, honey, here’s what I’ve found. We’ve got records of one baby Jane Doe born on July 4, 2003 and brought into the hospital. That’d be the one, right?”
“Yes! Yes, that has to be!”
“Uh-huh, it does, because the only other babies we had in the hospital that day were boys. And they all had proper names. But this little girl, we got her. She’s right here.” Pauline beamed again.
“Can I get a copy?”
“Sure. Only one problem. This here is in our archived records, and all we got in that stupid cloud is an abstract. I can print this much off for you, but I’m gonna have to request that they pull the actual file. It’s in a stack for scanning in, but it’s not been done yet.”
“Oh. Well...how long will that take?”
Pauline wrinkled her nose. “Usually we tell you to allow a week.”
“A week! I’m only in town for today, maybe tomorrow. I guess...I was hoping to get it in hand, not have to wait on the hospital to mail it. But...”
Pauline rubbed at her mouth, her lipstick staining her finger the exact shade as her nail polish. “They sure don’t like to get in a hurry with these older files. I’d do it myself, but it’s in a shed outside the building, and we have to ask the maintenance guys to go in and move the boxes and pull the right one. Then they bring us the box and we pull the file.”
Her bright eyes moved across the words on the computer screen. “Say, I remember this. My friend Gail was the charge nurse in the ER that day. I think it was that day. Back then, we didn’t get many babies delivered here—it’s only been in recent years that we started back with our OB department. Malpractice, you know. Hard to get an OB to stay in a small town like ours when they’ve got so much malpractice insurance to pay for. Yeah. The baby at the fire station. I do remember that, and it was Gail. You hold on.”
She pulled out an old-fashioned flip phone from her pocket and punched a number. “Gaily-o! What’s doin’?” Pauline listened for a few seconds, making a series of affirmative yeahs and well-I’ll-be responses. Then a break came in the conversation, and she said, “Look here, sugar, I got one from the old way-back-when file. You remember that baby that got left at the fire station? Yeah, on July Fourth, remember? And that Monroe boy was the one who delivered it? Yeah, yeah. That one. Well, her mama is here—no, no, not the birth mama, but the one who took that kid in. And she’s trying to find out...”
Kimberly bit the inside of her cheek as she listened to Pauline recount the story, making it sound as dramatic as a soap opera. It was all she could do not to leap across the desk and grab the phone. This woman—this Gail—had been there. She’d seen the birth mother. She could help Kimberly.
Pauline talked for another eon and then hung up the phone. “Well, now, sweet pea. She wants to talk to you, see that baby all grown-up!”
“Really? She remembers, then?”
“Why, shoot fire, I reckon she does! And now I don’t feel so bad about making you wait a few days for those medical records. You and Gail can get together and you can ask her every little thing that’s on your mind. She’s retired now. Off RV’ing with her hubby. They been gone to the Grand Canyon with all their grandkids, and she’s about stir-crazy, I’ll bet.”
“Oh. So she’s not in town?” Crushing disappointment ate at Kimberly.
“No, they’re on their way back. She’ll be in town the middle of next week, either Wednesday or Thursday. She said, if you could give her till Thursday afternoon, at least, so she’d have a day or so to catch her breath, and she can put body and soul back together. Those grandbabies, they are something else.”
Kimberly thought about her dwindling checking account. She had a weekend ahead of her, plus the majority of the week if she waited for Gail to return. Could she go home? Try doing this by phone or by email?
No. She’d tried that before—people tended to be more open when you were face-to-face with them.
It couldn’t be helped. She’d find the money somewhere to stay the extra two nights. This was a chance that couldn’t be wasted. This woman could tell her—could remember the day that Marissa was born.
“And hold on! That ain’t all that’s in my bag of tricks!” Pauline peremptorily lifted a finger. She picked up the office phone and buzzed a number. “Well, Gerald, as I live and breathe, I’m glad you were the one who answered.” She winked again at Kimberly as her voice bubbled over with flirtation. “I got this teensy, tiny little favor I need, and you are just the man to do it. This poor woman here, she needs her daughter’s medical records. Her baby girl is real sick, and we treated her when she was just a baby, just a day old.” Pauline listened for a few moments. “I know, that lumbago of yours, it’s something awful. But I know what’ll put it to rights, sugar. Oh, Gerald!” She tittered. “You’re truly wicked, you know? And me a happily married woman! But if Joe Bob ever does me wrong, you’re at the top of my list. No, no, sugar, what I was thinking was one of my famous upside-down pineapple cakes. Wouldn’t that lumbago of yours perk right up with a bite of my luscious, hot-from-the-oven upside-down pineapple cake? Why, sure! No, I don’t mind, not a bit. So you’ll do it? For me? And for this poor woman? You are a good man, even if you are wicked.”
She dropped the phone back into its cradle and dusted her hands. “That’s done. He’ll get it for me by Wednesday morning, how about that?”
“I am sorry you’re going to the trouble of baking a cake for him—”
Pauline waved her hand in dismissal. “Sugar, that’s a boxed cake mix and a can of sliced pineapple. I’ve got to make one for my young-at-heart group Wednesday evening, so I might as well make two while the oven’s hot. Nobody need know it’s an old boxed cake, now, do they?” She winked a third time. “Not when it’s my special recipe.”
Kimberly couldn’t help but burst out laughing. She’d bet that people would eat saltine crackers with gusto if Pauline handed them out with her particular flirtatious sass. “I don’t know how to thank you—”
“Thank me? Honey, this is my job. I am the Queen Bee of Information, and that’s information with a capital I. If I don’t know it, then I need to find out who does. It helps in this job to be a hopeless busybody with a nose for news. So all you need to do is tell me, when you can, the end of the story. That’s all.”
“I will. I will indeed. So Wednesday? And I ask for you?”
“Th
at’s right.” Pauline made an okay sign with her magenta-tipped thumb and forefinger. “Just ask for ol’ Pauline.”
* * *
MARISSA FELT THE water slide like silk across her back as she made another slow lap to the end of the pool. She and Taylor had been in the water for over an hour, and she was tired from all the racing they’d done earlier. Still, if she said she was tired, maybe they’d make her get out.
Coming to a rest against the lip of the pool, she shaded her eyes and stared at the covered back porch. Ma had been shelling peas earlier, but now she’d gone back inside. Wow. Marissa’s own mother would have never dreamed of leaving kids unattended in a pool, even though her friends’ parents did it all the time.
Yeah. More proof that her mom was weird.
Taylor glided up beside her. “I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“Uh-huh?” Marissa switched her focus to Taylor, noticing the serious expression on the girl’s face.
“About your birth mom. Well, your birth dad. Is it okay to talk about it? Because if it’s not, then that’s cool. Sometimes I just get so freaked out when people bug me about my food allergies. Ya know, I wanna be normal.”
“Don’t I know it,” Marissa agreed. “When my mom tells people I have a bleeding disorder, they’re certain I’m going to bleed to death from a paper cut. But at least your parents don’t hover. I mean, look, nobody’s out here watching us. And my mom would have a duck if she knew that.”
Taylor shrugged. “It’s because I’ve taken swim classes for forever. I got certified as a junior lifeguard last summer—all of us do when we turn ten or eleven. It’s expected of all the Monroe kids. And there’s two of us, so Ma doesn’t worry so much. I still can’t swim by myself, which is why I am so glad you came.”
Marissa paddled her legs and, in the most casual tone she could muster, said, “It’s okay. I mean, talking about my adoption. It’s no big. What were you thinking?”
Man of His Word Page 7
