by Julia London
“Eric!” her mother said.
“Mom, I don’t know why we have to tiptoe around it,” Eric said with a shrug. “Janey was adopted. So what?” He pushed back from the table and looked at Jane. “I say get over it.”
Terri’s gaze flew to Jane. “Oh, honey—”
“No, it’s okay,” Jane said. “He’s right.”
All heads turned toward Jane.
Jane shrugged and stood up, picking up her plate. “He is right. We all know he is. I do need to get over it. It’s dominated my life for the last couple of years and honestly, it’s not worth another moment. I am so lucky to have one of the best families on the planet, aren’t I? You guys are the best.” She smiled at their surprised faces, their sighs of relief, and walked out of the dining room.
But I’m not blonde like you. I’m not tall like you. I can’t cook like you.
On the Thursday before Jane was due to start back to work in the classroom, her mom called her and told her to stop by the restaurant. “You have a letter here.”
“From who?”
“I don’t recognize the handwriting,” her mother said. “But I think you should come and get it.”
Curious, Jane drove down after the lunch rush. Her mother was in the office, a pencil stuck behind her ear, her reading glasses on the tip of her nose as she pored over the books. “There it is,” she said, pointing to her father’s desk across the room without looking up from her task.
Jane walked to her dad’s desk and spotted it almost immediately, because the envelope had been colored. “Oh, my goodness,” she murmured.
Inside the envelope was a crude drawing on orange paper of Levi and, Jane presumed, Riley, standing by a tree. Snow was falling all around them. Levi had carefully scrawled his name across the bottom of the picture.
There was more.
Levi wants you to know that he didn’t wet the bed last night and he has four new tomatoes on his plant and that Jorge built a fort so the coyotes can’t get them.
That was all Riley had written, but it was enough. Jane sank into a chair and read the letter again. And again.
“The suspense is killing me.”
She’d almost forgotten her mother was in the room. “It’s from Levi and Riley.” To Jane’s horror, tears suddenly sprang to her eyes. She held the picture up.
Her mother got up out of her chair and walked across the room to have a look. She smiled. “Snow in August sounds wonderful.” She pushed her glasses to the top of her head. “Are you going to tell me, sweetie?”
“Huh? Tell you what?” Jane asked as she wiped her eyes.
“Tell me what’s really bothering you.”
“Mom, honestly, nothing is bothering me. I’m fine.”
“Don’t tell me that. I know you like I know myself, Jane Aaron, and I know when something is bothering you.” She ran her hand over Jane’s dark head. “Was it him?”
“Jonathan?”
Her mother frowned. “No, not Jonathan. Mr. Price.”
Jane’s cheeks bloomed. “What makes you say that?”
Her mother chuckled and pulled up a chair. “Maybe because you blush every time I mention him. Or because of things you’ve said, like ‘Asher says this, and Asher says that.’ Or maybe it’s because once you broke up with Jonathan, you never looked back, and I know how hard that is to do once you’ve loved someone—unless you love someone else even more.”
“Wow,” Jane said. “I’m impressed.”
Her mother laughed. “It comes from fifty-three years of solid living. So are you going to tell me?”
Jane looked at Levi’s letter. “Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Every word,” her mother assured her.
So Jane told her mother about her extraordinary three months in Cedar Springs.
She told her how she hadn’t liked Asher at all at first, but how she’d begun to see a different side of him, and he of her. She told her about how hard it had been to befriend Riley, who had seemed so lost, and how Levi had been a little boy in desperate need of attention. She told her mother about Cedar Springs, and the cactus and the old trucks that drove up from the valley to sell farm produce on the side of the road, and a big Victorian house in the old part of town with the carvings on the little spires. She told her about Carla, and Laru, and Linda Gail, and Emma, and all the people she’d met during her search.
She also told her that Susanna had been everywhere, and how she’d slowly learned something had been wrong with Susanna, and what Asher had finally confessed to her about his late wife, and all that the family had been through. And how, in the end, everything had come full circle back to Susanna. Jane told her mother that as much as she loved Asher, she couldn’t live in Susanna’s shadow, especially if there was any hint that she might have been connected to Jane somehow.
Jane told her mother how deep she thought her love ran for Asher, and how it hurt her that there probably wasn’t a future with him.
Her mother listened, asked a few questions, and then stared at Jane thoughtfully. “What?” Jane said, smoothing her hair back self-consciously.
“What did Asher say about your leaving?”
“He wasn’t happy. But the kids weren’t ready for him to be in a relationship, and I had my thesis and my job . . . and, you know, I felt like I had to get my life back on track.”
“It seems to me your life is on track, Jane. You’ve almost finished your thesis. You can teach anywhere. And as disappointing as it is, you have a pretty good clue that your birth mother is gone. What other issues are there for you to resolve?”
“What about that tiny doubt about Susanna that stays in my head?” she asked, fluttering her fingers at her head. “I don’t see who else it could have been.”
Her mother smiled a little. “Look, I know it’s possible that a girl could get pregnant and have a baby by the time she was fifteen, but that is awfully young. Susanna came from good stock. I don’t think it was her, either.”
“Mom, Emma and I went through the traffic deaths on the highway for three years. I even went to the police station and looked at their records. Those I found were either too young, or the wrong sex, or died in a rollover and not a head-on crash. There were only two women who died in a head-on collision by Cedar Springs in that time frame, and that was Susanna and the older lady she hit.”
“How old?”
Jane shrugged. “Sixty something, mid-sixties. I don’t remember.”
“Why are you so convinced that your birth mother was young?”
Jane snorted. “Well she wasn’t old.”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Think about it, Janey. The woman in her midsixties would have been in her midthirties when you were born. Last I checked, those are some prime child-bearing years.”
“Yes, I know, Mom, I thought about that, too, but a woman in her thirties would not have to sneak around to give a child up for adoption. That makes no sense.”
“Really? I can think of any number of reasons,” her mother said. “Maybe she was unmarried and couldn’t give you a life. Maybe she was married and they had more mouths than she could feed. I think there are a million reasons a woman in her thirties might give up a child.”
Something suddenly sparked in Jane. She’d never truly considered it, had always dismissed it as highly improbable. She’d assumed her birth mother had been a young girl who had gotten into trouble. She stared at her mother as thoughts began to rumble through her head. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, my God.” She suddenly looked at her watch. “I have to call Emma. She’ll be there another hour.” Jane dug her cell phone from her purse, phoned the Cedar Springs Standard, and almost rejoiced when Emma answered the phone. “Emma! It’s Jane—Jane Aaron.”
“Jane! Hey, how are you? Are you back in Cedar Springs? I was so sorry I didn’t get to say good-bye before you left.”
“No, I’m in Houston. Hey, listen, could you do me a favor?” Jane asked anxiously.
“Yes, please give me
something to do,” Emma laughed. “I am so bored.”
Jane’s leg started to bounce. “Could you look up the traffic accident report for Susanna Price again?”
“Sure! Give me about fifteen minutes to pull it up. I’ll call you back.”
Those fifteen minutes stretched into the longest thirty minutes of Jane’s life. Her mother blithely went about her business as Jane paced. “Please don’t wear a hole in my carpet,” she said primly.
When her phone finally rang, Jane jumped a foot.
“Sorry that took so long,” Emma said when Jane answered. “Ed decided he’d come out and look at the files again, and of course he can’t do that without talking his way through it. Anyway, I’ve got it,” Emma said. “I can fax it—”
“Can you read it?” Jane asked, picking up a pencil.
“Okay.” Emma read the article to Jane, landing on the one item she needed: Sandra Fallon, 64, of Fredericksburg.
“Thank you, Emma,” Jane said. Her hand was shaking and her heart was beating so hard that she was beginning to feel a little dizzy. “Thank you.”
“You bet. So when are you coming back to Cedar Springs?”
“Ah . . . I’m not sure,” Jane said. “Maybe sooner than I thought.”
It was Eric’s idea to call the funeral home in Cedar Springs and see what records they had for Sandra Fallon. “They’ll have the name of whoever it was who made the funeral arrangements.”
The gentleman at Felix and Sons—Mr. Fernando Felix—was more than happy to help Jane. He got back to her within a couple of hours with the information. “I remember that one,” he said. “Very small service. Just a few people. Cremation.” He gave her a phone number and a name: Rhonda Robertson. “I think she was the sister or cousin,” Mr. Felix said.
Armed with a name and a phone number, Jane packed a bag for the second time that summer and headed for Cedar Springs.
Marilee, Jane’s principal, was very upset about her abrupt departure. “You are leaving me in an awful bind, Jane,” she said. “You won’t be able to get a job with the school district this late in the game.”
“Then substitute teach until you do,” Nicole advised when Jane told her about it. “You know as well as I do something will open up.” She hugged Jane and wished her good luck.
Her family gave her a big send-off one night at supper, and the mother of all surprises was a gift from Vicki. It was a silver picture frame for the picture of her birth mother Vicki was certain she would get. “You better scan it and send it when you get it,” she said.
“But I don’t even know if she is really the one,” Jane said.
“Well, if she is, we all want to see her. Just hurry up and go and get it over with, will you? I can’t be in the ping-pong of your life anymore without losing my mind,” Vicki said and hugged her tightly.
She was set. On a very hot and humid August day, Jane cranked up Green Day on her MP3 and headed west.
36
The week school started, a hurricane hit the central Texas coast and moved inland, spreading dark clouds and rain across central Texas. It was a gloomy, wet week, and Asher felt just as gloomy and dark as the skies above his head.
He hated Summer’s End now. Maybe Jane was right. Maybe he and the kids were living with Susanna’s ghost here . . . although since the exterminator had come and rid the house of the raccoons that had taken up residence, Levi had stopped talking about hearing his mother in the attic at night. He had a new ghost: this week, he’d claimed to have seen Jane driving around town.
Asher mentioned the possibility of moving to Levi first. “What would you say to a new house somewhere, buddy?” he asked.
Levi looked at him curiously. “Can we have a dog?”
“Yes, we can,” Asher said resolutely.
Riley, however, was horrified at the suggestion. “I’m not moving,” she said. “You and Levi can go if you want, but I won’t go. I’m not leaving my friends, Dad. They’re all I have left.”
Nevertheless, Asher put in a call to Wyatt Clark about selling Summer’s End and maybe finding some ranch land. Wyatt was a hard guy to get hold of these days. He was still recovering from the shock of losing Macy to her first husband, Asher figured, and he understood what that could do to a man better than he’d ever wanted to understand.
As Asher drove through the gates of his house on that gloomy afternoon, the place looked so monstrous and empty that he made a mental note to call Wyatt again.
How strange that this place had actually felt like home for a couple of months. How funny that things could change so drastically in the space of a heartbeat.
The rain was picking up; Asher dashed inside, hung up his raincoat, and dropped his briefcase. The new nanny, Yolanda, was standing in the foyer with her raincoat on. “Hola,” she said cheerfully. “The kids are fed and Riley and Tracy are supposed to be doing their homework.”
“Tracy is here again, huh?”
“Her mother said she’d be back in a couple of hours to pick her up.”
“Anybody give you any trouble today?” he asked absently.
“No, sir. Levi, he’s very excited about kindergarten. His teacher sent a letter home today about the supplies he needs by Monday.”
“Got it,” Asher said and opened the door. “Have a good weekend, Yolanda. Be careful out there.” Yolanda hurried out to her car.
After his experience with Jane, Asher had decided it wasn’t a good idea to have the nanny live at the house. Not only could he not walk into that guesthouse but he also couldn’t begin to imagine someone else at Jane’s place at the kitchen table, or wandering around the garden in the early evening with Levi.
Speaking of which, his son had grown some monster tomatoes. Levi had wanted Asher to send the pictures to Jane, and Asher . . . God help him, but he’d lied to his son and told him he didn’t have Jane’s address. He couldn’t stand knowing Jane was out there when he couldn’t touch her or talk to her. He couldn’t bear to address a letter to her.
“Carla has it, Daddy,” Levi had said. “She sent my picture.”
Asher had stared at his son. “What picture?”
“The one I drew of me and Riley in the snow. Jane likes snow.”
Levi dashed out of the kitchen as Asher shut the door behind Yolanda, almost colliding with Asher. “Daddy, can we get my supplies today?” he asked eagerly as Asher picked him up to give him a hug.
“You bet,” Asher said. Anything to get out of this house. “We’ll go in a minute. Let me go speak to Riley.”
“She and Tracy are talking to boys,” Levi said and jumped up on the stairs, then off.
Not what Asher wanted to hear.
When he knocked on Riley’s door, Tracy answered it. She smiled broadly. “Hi, Mr. P,” she said cheerfully.
“Hello, Tracy. I’m taking Levi to the store. I’ll give you a ride home so your mom doesn’t have to get out in this weather. Can you let her know?”
“Sure,” Tracy said and whipped out her cell phone.
He looked over Tracy’s head. Riley’s gaze was glued to her laptop. “Riley, you want to come with us? We can go get Italian food if you want.”
“No.”
He sighed. That was the way it was between them of late. “You have to eat.”
“I’ll find something,” she said.
Tracy’s smile looked like a bit of a smirk to Asher. “Can Riley spend the night tomorrow night?” she asked. “My dad is making barbeque.”
“I don’t know,” Asher said. “You two are practically living together these days. Don’t you need a break?”
“Told you,” Riley muttered.
He was in no mood for Riley’s attitude. “I’ll meet you downstairs, Tracy,” he said and walked out.
After he and Levi dropped Tracy off to a very appreciative Linda Gail, they drove across town to get Levi’s school supplies. The rain was coming down in sheets, and traffic was snarled. They were stopped at a light when Asher thought he saw a red Honda like Jane�
��s turn onto a street ahead. Fantastic. Now he thought he was seeing her drive around town.
“That was Jane,” Levi said from his booster seat behind him.
“I don’t think so, buddy. There are a lot of cars that look like hers.” Did that one have the little peace symbol on the right rear bumper? He tried to see it again in his mind’s eye, turning right. There had been something there. Yes, maybe, but no way was it Jane. She wouldn’t come back to Cedar Springs and not tell him . . . would she?
Jane was very grateful to Samantha Delaney for letting her crash on her couch for a few days, although she was curious about why Jane wasn’t at Summer’s End. “Well, I quit to go back home to teach,” she said carefully. “But I had to come back and finish up some last details on my research.” Don’t ask what, please don’t ask.
“I never see him anymore,” Sam said, thankfully uninterested in Jane’s research. “Since you left, he hasn’t been in. Kids either.”
Jane was sorry to hear that. She was dying to know how Levi was doing in kindergarten, and if Riley had found anyone to take her to the mall to buy the outfits she had meticulously planned from catalogues all summer. She wondered if Levi was eating gummies instead of supper and if Riley was letting her hair grow. Jane supposed she would find out herself eventually, but first, she was on a mission.
In spite of the horrible weather, she paid one last visit to Mr. Ken Wright, who said the name Sandra Fallon was familiar, but he couldn’t be certain.
Another visit to Debbie Carpenter—who was thrilled Jane had made some headway—finally gave Jane the answer she’d been seeking for so long. Debbie was kind enough to call the hospital and persuade Brenda to look in the records of the recorded births for April 25, 1980. Brenda hadn’t liked it, but she’d called Debbie back a day or two later and said, yes, Sandra Fallon had been admitted and had given birth on that day.
“Congratulations!” Debbie said.
“Thanks,” Jane said. She was stunned. She couldn’t believe that she had actually succeeded, that Sandra Fallon was truly her birth mother. A mysterious name, a mysterious death . . . and one woman who might hold the key to Jane’s past.
