Sins of Innocence

by Jean Stone

  “Seven-twenty-three,” Jess said to the cabdriver. “Here it is. Pull over.”

  “Want me to wait, lady?”

  “Please,” Jess said. She took a deep breath and got out of the cab.

  Jess crossed the narrow concrete sidewalk and went toward the house. She had no idea what she was going to say, no idea what she was going to do. She climbed the steps and rang the doorbell. A small brass plaque under the bell read DENUCCI. She noticed a tricycle by the front door, a well-worn Cabbage Patch doll lying beside it.

  The door opened. A woman who looked to be in her twenties stood in front of Jess, a baby hiked on one hip. She had the harried look of the mother of young children.

  “Yes?”

  “Hello,” Jess said. “My name is Jessica Randall. I’m trying to locate a family who lived her several years ago.”

  The woman shifted on one foot, looking a little impatient.

  “Who?”

  “Radnor.”

  The woman thought for a moment.

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Are you sure? It’s very important.”

  She shook her head.

  “We bought the house from a lady named Flint.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Three years.” She shifted the baby to her other hip.

  “Would you happen to know how long Mrs. Flint lived here?”

  “Sorry.” A child squealed somewhere within the house. “Look, I’ve got to go.”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you. Thank you for your time.”

  The woman closed the door. Jess stood staring at the etched-glass window. Susan, she knew, hadn’t been too responsive to the idea of the reunion, but Jess had felt, in time, she would change her mind. Jess turned and slowly walked down the steps. Now she couldn’t even find Susan’s son, let alone try to convince him to go. As she walked toward the cab, she felt a slow depression creep over her.

  “Excuse me, miss.”

  Jess automatically turned in the direction of the voice. An elderly man stood at the house next door, sweeping his walk.

  “Me?” she asked.

  “You looking for the Radnors?”

  “Yes. Yes. Do you know them?”

  “Sure thing. Me and the missus have lived here nearly forty years. Radnors used to live there, all right.” He pointed to 723. “Moved above fifteen, twenty years ago, I expect.”

  Jess walked briskly toward him, trying to control her excitement.

  “Do you know where they went?”

  “Let’s see. It was a long time ago.”

  “Please, sir. Try to remember. It’s important.”

  He took a few more strokes with the broom, studying the pavement.

  “My memory ain’t quite what it used to be. I recollect it was New Jersey though.”

  “New Jersey? Would you have any idea where?” Her mind was spinning. She knew there were such things as city directories. But where in New Jersey could she start? Time was running out. The reunion was only three weeks away.

  The man shook his head. “Was a funny name, as I remember.” He swept a few more feet, then shook his head again. “Sorry, just don’t know.”

  “That’s okay, thank you.” She tried not to sound disappointed. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Nice folks, the Radnors. Good neighbors.”

  Jess fumbled in her purse for a piece of paper and a pen. She quickly wrote down her name and phone number.

  “Please, sir. This is my name and where I can be reached. If you happen to think of anything else, please call me. Collect.”

  He took the paper and looked at it. “Will do. Maybe the missus will know. She ain’t here now. Gone shopping.” He rolled his eyes to indicate displeasure at his wife’s whereabouts. “Yep, it was a funny name for a town, as I recollect,” he repeated. He bent his head down and continued sweeping.

  “Thank you for your time,” Jess said, and started back toward the cab. She hadn’t accomplished what she’d wanted, but at least she’d made some progress. And there were still three weeks left to go. Three weeks. She opened the cab door. Three weeks until she might meet her daughter.

  “Wait. Miss?”

  It was the old man’s voice. Jess snapped around.

  “Ho-Ho-Kum. Something like that. No. Ho-Ho-Kus. That’s it. Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey.” He chuckled and took a long stroke with the broom. “Durn funny name for a town, I’d say.” He nodded again. “Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey.” He chuckled, and went back to his sweeping.

  Jess smiled. “Thank you,” she called back. “Ho-Ho-Kus. I’ve got it. Thank you so much.”

  As she got into the cab and closed the door behind her, a smile spread widely across her face. She instructed the cabbie to drive her back to the station, where she placed a call to Information, then boarded a commuter train bound for New Jersey.

  Ho-Ho-Kus was a small rural town. It didn’t take long to find the Samuel Radnor family.

  Monday, September 27

  One down. Three to go. It had been all Jess could do yesterday not to tell her kids what she was doing. She had seen Susan’s son. God, she had actually met him. She wanted to share her excitement but knew it was too soon. All day Sunday the kids had been underfoot. Had they been clinging a little bit to her since Charles had been gone? Maybe, Jess thought, maybe. Or maybe they were hanging around, hoping he would call. He didn’t. Chuck and Travis hadn’t openly questioned Jess about their father, but late in the afternoon she had walked into their room while they were whispering. As soon as they saw her, they’d stopped. Jess had remained calm, acting as though the fact that Charles was out of touch was nothing out of the ordinary.

  Now it was Monday morning, and the kids were safely off to school. She sat in the study, looking over Miss Taylor’s letter. P.J.’s son was next. Phillip Archambault. Parents: Donald and Jeanine. 27 Cross Fern Road, Fairfield. Jess thought for a moment about the best way to do this. Susan’s son had eventually been easy to locate.

  In fact, when the cab pulled up to the Radnors’ modest ranch home, David had been in the driveway, washing his Honda Civic. It had startled to Jess to see the tall, dark, nearly twenty-five-year-old, and a sad reminder that their babies were no longer babies, their children no longer children. The words she had hoped would come easily had not.

  She focused on the next address now, not wishing to get sidetracked by dwelling on her meeting with Susan’s son. What will be, will be, she said to herself, and turned again to Phillip Archambault’s name.

  There was a listing in the Fairfield phone book under Donald Archambault, and the address matched the one on Miss Taylor’s letter. It appeared that at least his parents still lived in the same house where they had brought P.J.’s baby. But it was Monday morning, and Jess knew that even if Phillip, too, still lived with them, he would probably not be home. She needed to think of a plausible way to uncover his whereabouts from his parents; chances were she’d not be as lucky as she had been in finding David.

  She looked across the study, and her eyes instantly fell on the bookcase and on Chuck’s senior class picture, taken only last month. Picture, she thought. Yearbook. Phillip was from Fairfield, so there was a good chance Jess would be able to find his picture in a Fairfield yearbook, maybe even gain some background information that would help her come up with the best way to approach his parents. And Fairfield was only a few minutes from Greenwich.

  Armed with Miss Taylor’s letter and a notebook, Jess set out for Fairfield.

  She drove north on Route 1 and, once across the city line, stopped at the first real estate office she found. Inside, a perky brunette greeted her. Jess was reminded that ten years ago, when she and Charles had been looking for the house in Greenwich, real estate people had been aloof and unaggressive. Today, however, when a woman pulled into a parking lot in a Jaguar, champagne and a brass band wouldn’t have been surprising.

  “Hi. I’m Melinda,” the brunette chirped. “How may I help you?”

 
Jess imagined she saw dollar signs ringing behind the girl’s eyes.

  “Actually I’m trying to locate the high school. Can you give me directions?”

  The brunette’s smile, and along with it the sight of her oversized capped teeth, vanished.

  “Oh. Well, sure. Which one?”

  Jess paused. “There’s more than one high school?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Fairfield has two. Plus the Catholic school.”

  “Oh.” Once again Jess hadn’t been prepared for another wrinkle. How the hell did private detectives manage to find out about people? she wondered.

  “How about the biggest?” Jess asked.

  The young woman pulled a street map from under the counter. She spread it out and pointed to an area.

  “Follow Route One. Take a left at the fork. Keep going. It’s on the left.”

  Jess studied the small blue lines.

  “Would you mind if I take the map with me?”

  Melinda shrugged.

  “Take it,” she said, and quickly folded it up.

  “Thank you,” Jess said, and took the map. The young woman looked at her blankly. “Have a nice day.” Jess smiled and walked out the door. Melinda didn’t respond.

  Finding the high school had been simple. As Jess strolled down the empty corridors, for the first time she felt she was an intruder, invading the privacy of someone else’s life, about to disrupt the peace of another human being—and his family. She hadn’t felt that way before finding Susan’s son—meeting him had happened so quickly. She stopped in front of a trophy case now, which was crammed with tarnishing statues brandishing basketballs, and lined with photos of past years’ teams. She looked at the young faces. P.J.’s son could be one of them. Her gaze moved to a photo of a group of cheerleaders, and Jess thought of her own daughter. Amy. Amy Hawthorne. No, Jess reasoned, this is right. They have a right to know us. And we have a right to know if they want to.

  She left the trophy case and followed the black etched signs toward the school library.

  A librarian was hunched behind a counter, examining a stack of books.

  “Excuse me,” Jess interrupted.

  The woman peered at her over half-glasses that were attached to her neck with a black nylon cord.

  “My name is Jessica Randall. I’m doing an article on high school alumni, and where they are today. I was wondering if I could look at your high school yearbooks from, say, 1985 to 1988.”

  “Newspaper article?”

  Jess thought quickly. “Yes.”

  “Which paper?”

  “Not, ah,” she hesitated only a moment, “not the local paper.” With her luck the librarian would know the editor of the local paper. “It’s a generic article for the Bridgeport paper about schools in the suburbs. Fairfield won’t be mentioned by name.”

  “You work for the paper?”

  “No. This is sort of a speculative article.”

  “You a free-lance writer?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want to see the Fairfield yearbooks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which high school?”

  Oh, no, Jess thought, not again. “This high school,” she said. “To start.”

  The woman scowled. “You can’t take them out. You’ll have to look at them here.”

  Jess sighed, grateful that at least she had passed the woman’s test. “That’s fine.”

  The woman shuffled off to a back room, her long skirt dragging unevenly across the tops of her penny loafers.

  Jess resisted drumming her fingers on the counter while she waited. She glanced around: A few students were scattered at desks throughout the brightly lit room. It was, Jess knew, too early in the school year for most kids to be worried about term papers. She watched one young girl who looked to be a sophomore, the same age as Maura. Jess shivered a little. Maura’s baby was to have been due at the end of April: When the young girl seated at the library table was getting ready for what would probably be her first prom, Maura should have been lying in a delivery room, about to be a part of the miracle of birth. But no. She had been spared that. There would be no baby, no threat of it being taken away.

  Jess let her mind drift back to Maura, who was struggling each day to put the miscarriage behind her. Jess knew that time, though it would not completely erase the trauma, the pain, and the wondering “what if,” would help to form the scar that would eventually heal the raw hurt. She knew there would at some point be one entire day that would pass without her daughter thinking of what had happened, and later there would be two days, then three. But never, ever, would the memory be completely gone.

  A stack of books slapped the counter and snapped Jess back to where she was.

  “Nineteen Eight-five to 1988,” the librarian said dryly. “Take them over there.” She pointed to an empty table against the wall.

  “Thank you,” Jess muttered, and took the books to the table, glad to be away from the questioning librarian.

  She thumbed through the pages of seniors from 1985: no Phillip Archambault. 1986: nothing. 1987: nothing. 1988: the same. Surely he wouldn’t have graduated after 1988: Phillip, like the other children, would have been twenty years old then.

  Jess looked across the room to the librarian, dreading asking her for the yearbooks of the other high school. Before she did that, she decided to double-check the ones in front of her. She opened the pages of 1985 again, slowly thumbing through each page. There was, however, no Phillip Archambault. She picked up the 1986 book again and began turning the pages, not expecting to find anything. Suddenly, there he was: On the first page of the section on seniors was Phillip Archambault, one of four pictures on the entire page. Jess quickly looked at the title: SENIOR CLASS OFFICERS LEAD THE WAY it read. Phillip Archambault had been the class President. She looked at his picture: He was a handsome boy, with a round, friendly face and a cheerful smile. Jess squinted, trying to decide if he looked at all like P.J. Maybe. Maybe around the eyes. Although the photo was in color, it was difficult to tell if Phillip had his mother’s emerald eyes.

  She read the description under his name: Varsity Football, Varsity Basketball, Varsity Track, Student Government, Debating Club, Art Club. Art Club. So, Phillip had something in common with his mother after all. Then Jess read his ambition: To go on to law school and become a first-rate criminal lawyer. He had not only inherited his mother’s interest in art; it appeared he had inherited her intelligence as well.

  Jess took a last look at the picture. “Phillip Archambault,” she whispered, “you are about to have the chance to meet your birth mother.”

  She closed the book and returned all of them to the librarian, who gave her a distant nod when Jess thanked her again. Then Jess went out into the corridor and immediately walked to the pay phone. She pulled Miss Taylor’s letter from her purse, slipped a dime into the phone slot, and dialed the number. When a woman answered, Jess had the perfect words:

  “Mrs. Archambault, my name is Jess Randall. I’m putting together a reunion of high school students, and to be honest, we’ve lost track of Phillip since he first went off to college.” She paused, and said a quick prayer that he had, indeed, gone to college. If his goal had been to become a lawyer, chances were he’d at least gotten as far as a freshman in college.

  “Yes?” the woman replied. “How can I help you?”

  “Could you give me his current address?” Jess held her breath.

  “Why, certainly He’s in law school, you know … in Boston.…”

  Jess smiled. Boston. Where P.J. had gone to school. Where Phillip had, in fact, been conceived. She clicked her pen, then took down the address Phillip’s adoptive mother was so willing to give.

  Wednesday, September 29

  Jess stretched out on one of the twin sofas in the living room after the kids had left for school. A quick trip to Boston and back yesterday, sandwiched in between school hours, had left her exhausted. But she felt it was still important not to let the children k
now what she was doing.

  She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. Today was the day to track down Ginny’s daughter, Lisa Andrews. She was the one with whom Jess would have to be the most careful. It was highly doubtful that Ginny would come to the reunion, so Jess decided she would simply explain to Lisa that she would have the opportunity to meet some of her birth mother’s friends, and perhaps learn a little something about her.

  Was that the right thing to do?

  What if the girl demanded to know more?

  What if the girl decided to track Ginny down herself?

  What if Ginny reacted to the girl the way she had to Jess?

  Was Jess opening a wound for the girl that was best left alone?

  Jess weighed each question carefully, then came to only one conclusion: She wanted to protect the girl because of the way Ginny was, and maybe protecting was exactly what she shouldn’t do. Maybe that’s when we all get into trouble. When we try too hard to protect others. Well, Jess thought, good or bad, Ginny is the girl’s mother. And maybe the girl has a right to know.

  The ruse of a “high school reunion” had worked with Phillip’s mother, so Jess had decided to try it again. She was glad for her small, childlike voice, and knew its sound made it believable that she was an old school chum of Lisa’s. She’d phoned the girl’s parents the night before: They told her Lisa was an actress, and that she was in a Broadway play, Madeline. They also told Jess that Lisa had no phone.

  If she’s an actress on Broadway, she must be a lot like her mother, Jess mused. Chances are, she can handle whatever she needs to.

  She swung her legs off the sofa and decided to jump in the shower. She’d have just enough time to catch the train into the city for the matinee performance of Madeline.

  It was a Pygmalion-type of play with a twist: A young hooker had been befriended by a man and his wife, who were eager to reform the girl. Ginny’s daughter played the hooker.

  Jess sat in the third row of a half-empty house and watched with interest. The girl looked nothing like Ginny: Her hair was light and long, her body tall and lithe, and she did not strut as though she owned the world. The only similarity Jess could detect was the deep, almost masculine voice with the built-in sexuality.