Destiny's Daughters

by Gwynne Forster

  Augusta and Johnny searched the three identical faces. “How can we ever decide?”

  “Then take all three. Buy two and I’ll throw the third one in for free.” The old woman smiled, showing her rotting, uneven teeth.

  Augusta’s heart ached because she wanted to rescue all of the babies from this wretched place. She clutched her purse to her side. She feared the old woman could see into her soul, or at least into her wallet, seeing that she didn’t even have the seven-hundred-and-fifty-dollar bounty for one child. She and Johnny had scraped and borrowed every penny they could to come up with the four hundred and thirty-eight dollars that lay neatly tied in the bottom of her purse.

  She had packed food for the round trip and filled their bottles with water at each stop along the route from Los Angeles to Atlanta. After they had ridden for more than three days, they’d hired someone to drive them for another three hours into a place that still bore the marks of slavery with its dilapidated shacks and outhouses.

  When Augusta and Johnny had approached the rickety old house, there was nothing that could have prepared them for such poverty. If these had been the living conditions that the mother of the babies had endured, it was no surprise that she hadn’t survived.

  “MaDear?”

  Augusta shook her head slightly and tried to bring Jamilla into focus. “Yes, dear?”

  “You stopped in the middle of a sentence.” Jamilla pulled herself to the edge of the sofa cushion. “You were going to tell me why the other babies were the same age as me.”

  Augusta nervously continued to toy with the edge of her apron. She took one final glance at Johnny before she continued. “They were the same age as you because they were your sisters.” There—she’d said it. It could never be taken back.

  “I have sisters?” Jamilla was on her feet.

  Johnny took over. “You had two other sisters born at the same time. Your mother had triplets.”

  “What happened to my real mother?”

  Augusta cringed at the thought that her precious baby girl thought of anyone else as her mother. “Your birth mother was very young, and the trauma of giving birth to three babies was more than her body could handle.”

  Jamilla looked puzzled at the explanation.

  “What your mother is trying to say is that she passed away the day you were born.”

  The words weighed so heavily on Jamilla, she was forced to take a seat. “She died?”

  “Yes,” Augusta answered weakly.

  Jamilla’s parents sat silently as they waited for the reality to catch up with the shock. Augusta wanted to hug her, but she thought she should leave her alone, at least for the time being.

  Johnny rubbed his ample belly, needing a beer. He wanted to run from this room and out the door to his favorite watering hole. In that haven there would be no eyes pleading for answers to unasked questions.

  “Baby girl?”

  Jamilla turned to her father with sad, accusing eyes. Her lips remained sealed.

  “Are you going to say anything?” Johnny asked pensively.

  Jamilla’s thoughts of her short life scurried through her head. She’d always wanted a baby sister or brother. She wanted to be the big sister who could help them learn to color between the lines. She wanted to have tea parties with a real person instead of the sister she’d make up in her imagination. Confusion balled up in her chest as she wondered what it would’ve been like to have grown up with a sibling or even two.

  “Where are my sisters?”

  Chapter 2

  Sweat drenched the Egyptian cotton sheets as Jamilla bolted upright from a deep sleep. The dream was the same as always. But then, why would tonight be any different? Throwing the covers back, she slipped the baby-doll pajama top over her head, tossing it onto the animal-print bench at the foot of the four-poster maple bed. As she padded off to the bathroom, she wondered for the zillionth time how and when this nightmare would stop.

  Refusing to flip the switch, the night-light distorted her image slightly as she stared at her reflection, searching for answers. The thought of the two crying babies with her face reaching up from the swamp, calling her name, had haunted her for twenty years while she slumbered, but now she was beginning to see them during her waking hours.

  “How ridiculous is this?” Jamilla faked a smile just as she turned on the water faucet to splash her face with cold water. The tiny clock on the shelf to the left of the beveled medicine cabinet showed 3:12. She knew trying to return to sleep was futile, and she decided, as she dried her face with the sunshine-yellow, extra-thick towel, she’d best try her hand at the outline that was due for her next mystery project.

  Jamilla Holmes Dixon began writing mysteries when she was thirteen as a way to deal with the overwhelming sense of foreboding that always loomed around her. The present she’d received from her parents on her twelfth birthday was more of a burden than a gift. Reading the confusion on their only child’s face, they explained as best they could. Though they had tried to help her understand that they’d chosen her special, she couldn’t help but wonder why her beloved MaDear and PopPop hadn’t thought at least one of her other sisters special too.

  The knowledge that she had been born with two other baby girls haunted her almost constantly until she turned her energies to writing. Her parents gave her a typewriter for her fourteenth birthday when they realized she was serious about developing her craft.

  Johnny had served the University of Southern California as a mechanical engineer, while Augusta was a clerk at the post office, not far from their Crenshaw District home. He wanted nothing more than for his babygirl to become a judge; her mother, on the other hand, only wanted her to be happy. Both parents had insisted she take full advantage of the free education that her father’s many years of service had earned.

  Despite her heartfelt desire to major in Literature, Jamilla graduated with honors as she received a Criminal Justice degree. She happily headed off to law school. From the very start she knew she would never make it in the profession. Though she wanted her beloved father to realize his dream, the problem with being a judge is one had to be a lawyer first. From everything she’d learned in her Criminal Justice classes, she knew that the practice of molding the truth for one’s own purpose was not for her.

  Not wanting to break her daddy’s heart, she went through the motions, but her first love was writing. The same classes that had caused others hair-graying, ulcer-manifesting stress, she had breezed through. When she received her Jurist Doctorate, she knew without a doubt that she would never practice law. By the end of her third and final year of law school, she had managed to crank out a five-hundred-and-twenty-five-page manuscript. And the dashingly handsome doctor-by-day, super-sleuth-by-night Wilton Portofino was born.

  Each summer she’d interned proved what she’d believed since her first year in law school—practicing law had nothing to do with justice. Armed with the prestigious degrees but no certification for the California Bar Association, she’d sought employment within the criminal justice system. Jamilla was always amazed at the lengths parolees would go to, thinking they were deceiving her. Though she was one of the youngest in her unit, her supervisor often said she had the potential to be one of the best officers he’d seen come through the doors in a number of years.

  Before the end of her first year as a parole officer, where her idealism made her believe she could effect change, she had been lied to, cursed at, hit on, spit on, stalked, mocked, and threatened. But it was the being shot at that made her turn in her resignation. There were still days, however, when she missed the challenge.

  Jamilla rode the elevator to the fifth floor of the trendy office building in Los Angeles’ high-rent district’s Century City. As she stepped up to the reception desk in the suite of offices, the woman looked up and offered a warm and seemingly genuine smile. “Good afternoon—how may I help you?”

  Jamilla returned the smile. “Jamilla Holmes Dixon to see Mr. Brewington.”

&nbs
p; “You may have a seat right over there, and I’ll let him know that you’re here,” the pleasant redhead with expressive green eyes and the slightest hint of freckles said.

  Jamilla obediently sat in the comfortable black leather side chair with a yellow lumbar pillow. She nervously crossed and uncrossed her legs. Her dreams had brought her to this office. She had searched for answers to the mysteries of her life since her parents had shared the news that she wasn’t born alone. Frederick Brewington had come highly recommended by a friend of a friend, and Jamilla hoped he could help her fill the empty space in her soul.

  “Ms. Dixon?” The stocky man in the Sears off-the-rack suit in need of pressing reminded Jamilla of an Afrocentric Columbo.

  Jamilla stood, extending her hand. “Mr. Brewington?”

  “Right this way.”

  Jamilla followed the man, who walked with a slight limp. Her James Bond façade had been shattered as she wondered how this man was an effective private investigator. They walked down a long, ultramodern hallway past several wood doors with art deco windows. Mr. Brewington stopped in front of the door with the numbers 554 affixed to plastic with press-on numbers. “Please come in.”

  “Thank you.” Jamilla stepped inside the very neat office with state-of-the-art computer equipment, still and video cameras, as well as other equipment she didn’t quite recognize.

  Mr. Brewington pointed to one of the two chairs in front of the moderate-sized desk. “Please have a seat.” He took a seat with his back to the window with a view of the mall. He moved a file from the center of the desk and folded his hands before saying, “Ms. Dixon, how can I help you?”

  Suddenly Jamilla started to second-guess her decision. What information did she have to give him? Why couldn’t she just leave well enough alone? She didn’t know how long she’d sat staring at nothing when Mr. Brewington cleared his throat. She blinked quickly, as though trying to focus. “I’m sorry, Mr. Brewington, I guess I’m a little nervous.”

  He smiled reassuringly. “It’s quite all right. Take your time.”

  “I need you to help me find my sisters,” Jamilla blurted before she lost her nerve.

  “You’ve come to the right place, Ms. Dixon.” He sat back, placing his elbows on the arms of the chair, and pressed his fingertips together. “If I must say so myself, I have a very impressive track record.”

  Jamilla began to relax. Her parents had literally no information about her sisters, not even their names. She only knew when and where they were born. She prayed that these challenges wouldn’t lessen his confidence. “Please call me Jamilla, Mr. Brewington.”

  “Only if you call me Fred.”

  “Well, Fred, my sisters and I were separated at birth, and there’s a part of me that’s so empty despite the wonderful life I’ve had.”

  Fred pulled a yellow pad from his top left desk drawer and a Mont Blanc from his jacket pocket. “So tell me, Jamilla, how many sisters are we talking about?”

  “Two.”

  “Where’s the last place you know that your sisters lived?”

  “A little town outside of Dale, Georgia.”

  He wrote. “And when was that?”

  She squirmed. “Nineteen seventy-three.”

  He looked up momentarily. “And how old were your sisters when you were separated?”

  “A few weeks old.”

  Again hesitation. “Both of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “So they are twins?”

  “Actually, no.”

  Fred looked up from his pad questioningly. “How’s that?”

  “We’re triplets.”

  Fred sat back, tossing his glasses onto the desk. “I see.” He gathered his thoughts for a moment before he continued. “Under what circumstances were you separated?”

  “According to my parents, my birth mother died while giving birth and her aunt couldn’t take care of us. Because my parents couldn’t have children, a friend told them about us and they went to Georgia to pick me up. My sisters were still there when my parents left, so we don’t really know if they were adopted or what.”

  “Have you tried to make contact with your great aunt?”

  “According to the woman who gave me to my parents, Essie Mae Holmes died shortly after we were born.”

  “What about other relatives?”

  If I were able to find other relatives to give me answers, would I be sitting here in front of you today? Jamilla thought but said, “There’s none to speak of.”

  “What are your sisters’ names?”

  Jamilla toyed with her fingers, wondering if she sounded as pathetic to Fred as she did to herself. “I don’t know.” She answered so softly, Fred wasn’t sure what she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t know.” This time Jamilla almost yelled, then repeated in a defeated tone, “I don’t even know my sisters’ names.”

  Fred Brewington had been at this game for a long time, and it never ceased to amaze him how people thought he was a miracle worker, yet his heart always went out to those like Jamilla. Those who only wanted to find a long lost, or never even known, loved one. “Do you know if your births were recorded by the county clerk?”

  Jamilla thought for a moment before she responded. “I believe so.” She went to her purse, removed an envelope, and passed it to Fred.

  Fred quickly opened the envelope and looked up at Jamilla and smiled. “This is a good start.”

  “My birth certificate, of course, has my adoptive parents’ names on it, but it does have the county where I was born, which I think means the county clerk must have entered our births into the record.”

  Fred smiled broadly. “Indeed it does.”

  “My parents told me that they kept my birth surname.”

  “So Holmes is the name you believe appeared on your original birth certificate?” Fred’s confidence was building.

  “Yes.”

  Fred relaxed and smiled. “Now we’re getting somewhere. There couldn’t have been too many sets of triplets born on October 17.”

  Relief washed over Jamilla as a tiny flicker of hope was ignited. Would it be possible to find her sisters with such limited information? Would Fred have to travel to Dale, Georgia? How much would all of this cost? And did it really matter? She’d set aside half of her advance for the delivery and acceptance of her next book to be used solely to find her sisters. “So you think you can find them?”

  “I’d be foolish to guarantee you that I would, but I’ve been in this business for almost twenty years and you don’t have that kind of staying power from a poor success rate.”

  “How long do you think it will take?”

  “I could get lucky and find them in a matter of days or it could take years.”

  “Years?”

  “Years. There are those that don’t want to be found, you know. I’m sure that’s not the case with your sisters. But, God forbid, they could even be dead.”

  Jamilla blinked rapidly and grabbed the arms of the chair to keep from flying out of her seat and slapping Fred for even suggesting such a thing. “Please don’t say that, Mr. Brewington!”

  Fred hadn’t meant for it to come out the way that it had, but he also wanted her to know and understand the challenges before them. “I just want you to be prepared for whatever news I bring you.”

  Jamilla stared at him long and hard before she continued. “How much do you think this will cost me?”

  “Again, there is no way for me to know—let’s say you give me a retainer of twenty and I’ll keep you informed each week of how much you have remaining to see if you want me to continue.”

  “Twenty what?” Jamilla surely didn’t think he meant dollars.

  “Thousand.”

  This time Jamilla shot out of her seat before she could stop herself. “Dollars?” she exclaimed.

  “I thought you were aware of what something like this would cost.” This will require me traveling to Georgia, talking to a lot of people. All of that t
akes time.” Fred stood also. “And as an intelligent woman like yourself knows, time is money.”

  Jamilla sat heavily back into the chair. “I just had no idea it would be that much money.” She sighed and picked up her purse. “I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

  As she began to leave, Fred spoke up. “Let’s not be too hasty.”

  “What’s the point in continuing?”

  “What can you afford?”

  Jamilla eyed him suspiciously. “Not twenty thousand dollars.”

  “We’ve established that.” Fred motioned for her to take a seat again. “I want to work with you. I’m intrigued by the challenge.”

  Taking a seat warily, Jamilla remembered what her daddy had told her about buying a car. If the salesperson comes after you when you walk away you’ve got him with his pants down. “I need to see your fee schedule.”

  Fred opened a drawer behind him, removed a piece of paper, and slid it across the desk. Jamilla picked it up and studied it, glancing up at the investigator occasionally. Fred began to squirm.

  “Understand, these are our published rates. I’m in a position to discount them.”

  Jamilla placed the piece of paper in front of her on the desk, crossed her legs, then said, “I’m listening.”

  “I’m thinking perhaps I can go as high as twenty-five percent and reduce the retainer to ten.”

  Jamilla waited a beat before saying, “I like the way you think.” She looked him in his eyes for the first time. “You’re hired.”

  Chapter 3

  The drive from Century City to Rancho Cucamonga was laborious, yet hope and fantasy seemed to lighten the very air in the blue Honda Accord. As Jamilla inched along I-10, her mind wandered back to her college years. Her haunting dreams had become more pronounced and filled with images of babies that pulled at her, begging to be rescued.

  In an attempt to block out the images of the babies, Jamilla let her mind roam to the days gone by. She’d wondered why she didn’t have any girlfriends. Over the years she made attempts at relationships, but soon after, the excuses would start. Something would come up and they’d cancel lunch, then movies or dinner, until they’d stop returning her calls.