Identity of the Heart (A Hidden Hearts Novel Book 1)

by Mary Crawford

  “Rosa, you’ve heard nothing from him in twenty-two years?”

  Rosa sadly shakes her head as she replies, “Nada.”

  “Have any of his family members?”

  “Nobody that I know of. But, most of them don’t talk to me anymore because they think I told him to leave. I did not, but they don’t believe me that we were not fighting.”

  “What about his coworkers?” I ask trying to narrow the list of possibilities.

  “Isaac said that he couldn’t tell me about his job. He said he had important things to do and people to meet. I always thought that was very strange considering that he worked for a moving company. I understand that people relied on him. But, I didn’t understand the need to keep it all secret. He had a side business repairing go carts and helping parents of Boy Scouts build go-cart engines, but that didn’t seem very personal either.”

  Thoughts are whirling around my brain at a million miles an hour. But, I don’t feel comfortable sharing them with Rosa at this point until I do more research. None of the scenarios I am thinking about are going to make her feel particularly comfortable. Quite frankly, none of them really explain why he couldn’t eventually be with his family either. So, any way you slice it and dice it, it’s a big mystery.

  “Rosa, you don’t by any chance have some old insurance paperwork that would have his driver’s license and his Social Security number on it, would you?”

  “Si, I keep that all in a file in the safe,” Rosa replies. “Would you like to see it?”

  “Yes ma’am,” I reply. “It would make my job much easier.”

  I’M NOT SURE I’D BE DEALING WITH all the random things being thrown in Ivy’s direction half as well as she is if, I were her. But, I can tell from her body language that it’s starting to catch up with her. She looks exhausted. That’s no surprise. We were up most of the night watching silly, goofy movies together. It’s been forever since I’ve been able to totally be myself in front of somebody. I thought I was the only person alive who knew pretty much every word to every Mel Brooks movie ever made. I was completely blown away when she could match me line for line.

  Mama Rosa already knows me from the times I’ve been here with Rogue, so she’s used to my antics. I actually think she likes me despite my rough appearance.

  I notice her struggling with some garbage cans full of corn husks. I take them from her and carry them to the curb. As we walk back to the house together, I comment, “Mama Rosa, I think Ivy’s had a long day. Do you mind if I steal her away from all the excitement and insist she get some rest?”

  Rosa gives me a long hard look. I try really hard not to squirm under her examination—I feel a little bit like I’ve been sent to the principal’s office. “You know, I always wondered why you did not marry my beautiful daughter. You clearly care for her a great deal. But, now it’s obvious. You were just saving space in your heart so that you could fall in love with my other beautiful daughter.”

  Sometimes, I curse my blond hair and fair complexion. This is one of those times. I’m sure that she can read every thought that crosses my mind as I try to formulate the right words. I’m not even sure what those would be. True to form, my mouth engages slightly before my brain.

  “Mama Rosa, you know that I have loved Rogue for a very long time. But, I’m not in love with her. I never have been. My feelings for Ivy are very different. We haven’t really put a label to them yet, but let’s just say that I could see us coming to visit you with some kids, a dog and the whole nine yards.”

  “That’s beautiful Marcus,” Mama Rosa says as she embraces me. “Have you told my bebita?”

  “I’ve made hints, but I don’t think I’ve said it as clearly as I’ve told you.”

  “Perhaps you should. A woman likes to hear that she’s loved and adored. It does a heart good.”

  “I’ll try to remember that, Mama Rosa. Have a good night.”

  Rosa had made us a makeshift bed in her office with an air mattress on the floor. So I’m propped up against the wall with Ivy situated between my legs. We’re sitting on the air mattress. Ivy is sorting through a pile of pictures that Tristan had made for her. Mostly, they are of her father. However, there are few of her parents together. Right now, she is holding one in her hand that depicts her dad standing behind her mom while her mom is several months pregnant. Isaac has his hand lovingly placed on Rosa’s abdomen. You can clearly see the pride and affection in his eyes.

  Ivy turns to me with tears streaming down her face. “Marcus, what happened to their love story? Why is this our last family portrait? I don’t understand. I don’t think I’ll ever understand.”

  I pull her against my chest and rest my chin on her head as I gently rock her. “I don’t know, Sugar. I just don’t know. I wish I did.”

  I shift positions so I can cradle her in my lap. It’s a little awkward because we’re sitting on the air mattress, but she doesn’t seem to care. I put some soft pop music on my iPhone and rub her back until she relaxes against my chest.

  At last, she gives a deep shuttering sigh and her eyes drift shut, her long lashes spiked with tears. I continue to gently stroke her back in her shoulders enjoying the feel of her soft skin under my fingers. She has the long, lean lines of an athlete. I wonder if she played basketball in high school. But, then I remember that she hurt her ankle playing soccer. She doesn’t look like the quintessential jock I remember from my days in high school; she looks far too fragile. But, I’m beginning to learn that there’s a lot more to Ivy Love Montclair than you can see on the surface.

  When she starts to delicately snore, I try to maneuver us into a prone position. However, I inadvertently knock over the stack of family pictures. I wonder if my mom has a similar hidden stash of pictures of the guy who sometimes pretends to be my dad.

  I carefully move the pictures to a nearby chair and scoot us down on the air mattress. I spin her against me and pull the sleeping bags up over us. I don’t know if it’s just me and the weird way my brain operates but the whole time I was struggling to zip the sleeping bags together so that we could use them as one big bag, I thought it was a pretty accurate metaphor for how our lives have become enmeshed and intertwined in such a complex and sometimes uncomfortable way. All the pieces are supposed to work together, but sometimes it’s not an exact match. As I was waxing philosophical about zipping up sleeping bags, I had to poke fun at myself for being so stupidly melodramatic. In the grand scheme of things, I wasn’t inventing world peace or anything, I was just making the bed.

  After we get comfortable in bed, the overhead heater turns on and blows a gust of hot air through the room. This causes one of the pictures to flutter off of the chair and fall a few inches from my face.

  Seeing Ivy so torn up over the absence of her dad makes me wonder what I’m missing in my relationship with my dad. I guess if I think about it hard enough, I can come up with a few positive memories. But, even then I’m not sure if those memories are of my dad or of Tomás.

  I vaguely remember going to some baseball games and eating peanuts and drinking Coke. I remember someone putting jalapeño peppers on my hotdog; making me eat it and laughing hysterically as I threw up until I cried. To this day I can barely stomach spicy food.

  I also have memories of my dad making a huge deal over holidays like Christmas and sometimes birthdays. I remember this being terribly confusing. He would be gone for months and sometimes years at a time and then suddenly swoop in with armloads of presents as if a new bike or computer would suddenly fix everything. I never knew what to do with those feelings. I always was super excited to get the new toy or game but I remember being incredibly angry that he would pop in and out of our lives that way.

  Tomás Senior would always promise to do better and call more often. He would complain about my mom all the time and tell me that he couldn’t stand to live with her because she was too needy and clingy. This baffled me because that is completely the opposite of the way I see Anna Lucille Brolen. In my eyes she
was always a pillar of strength despite seeing her world collapse around her.

  By the time my brother got involved with the gang and became addicted to drugs and alcohol ending up in jail, my dad was nowhere to be found. We had all sort of become used to it by then and expected that that’s just the way it was. When my dad announced about four years ago that he was going to divorce my mom so that he could marry a coworker, no one was particularly surprised or sorry about his decision. In fact, one of my mom’s coworkers threw her a “happy divorce party”.

  If I’m ever lucky enough to be a dad, I don’t want to be the kind of dad nobody misses.

  I decided to drive today because if I don’t do something with my nervous energy, I might go a little nuts. I think I might be even more on edge than Ivy and Rogue if that’s even possible. Since it’s not physically possible for me to pace while I’m in a moving vehicle, driving is the next best thing. The navigation equipment in the Escalade is pretty sweet. So, I’m not really worried about getting lost. In order to not lose focus on my driving, I’m about to turn up the music on my phone so that I can tune out the animated conversation coming from the back seat. But, it seems something exciting is happening.

  Everyone is hunched over Tristan’s laptop. Apparently, they’ve made some sort of discovery about Isaac, but Tristan is trying to temper their excitement until he can run some more paperwork through the official channels of his office to double check the authenticity of the match.

  “I know you can’t tell me officially, but you’ve been doing this a while, Tristan. What does your gut to tell you? Do you think this is our dad?”

  “Rogue, it’s hard to tell from a few Facebook pictures and a LinkedIn profile. He does look similar and the demographics look like a good match, but it could just be a weird coincidence. I don’t want you to get your hopes up. So please let me make some calls to the office when they come in. We’ll check the IP address and some other stuff and try to make a definitive match. This is too important not to get right.”

  “How far does he live from Rosa? Does he have other kids? Is he married?” Ivy asks, spewing questions like a fire hose.

  “Ivy it might be easier for him to answer your questions if you ask them one at a time,” I tease.

  Tristan scrubs his hand down his face as he admits, “I wish I had more answers, but I don’t know much more than you guys do at this point. Reading between the lines in this profile, I’d say he’s probably retired law enforcement of some sort. It looks like he teaches criminal justice at a community college out in Denver. But, beyond that I can’t tell much. He’s pretty careful about his social media. He’s been far more judicious than most people. His digital footprint is tiny. There is not much here for me to track down publicly. That would be pretty consistent with how Rosa described his personality, but we have no explanation as to why he ended up on the West Coast or why he would abandon his family.”

  “What do we do now?” Ivy asks, sounding sad and defeated.

  “I’m sure Super-Secret-Spy-Guy has more tricks up his sleeve, he just needs a little more time to make it happen. So, I guess we’ll just have to wait to see what he comes up with,” I say with a shrug. “In the meantime, I guess I get to meet your parents and see how much they hate my tattoos. I’ll even take out most of my body jewelry to make it easier. I try not to wear my ear gauges that glow-in-the-dark when I meet parents for the first time. I save those for when the parents have already fallen deeply in love with me. Ask Rogue. Her mom thinks my skull earrings are the funniest thing she’s ever seen because the eye sockets glow red.”

  “I’m sure that Tristan is fully capable. I just don’t want to wait. Now that we’ve started down this road. I just want the journey to be over. Intrigue sounds fun when you’re reading about someone else’s life, but when it’s in your own life, it is not so amusing. By the way, don’t feel like you need to change yourself for my parents. If they can’t accept you for who you are, that’s their problem not yours.”

  “Are you listening to yourself Manita?” Rogue asks Ivy quietly. “If they could accept Marcus with his tattoos and piercings, I’m sure that they could accept that you don’t want to be an accountant.”

  “I don’t know Rogue; my dad’s been planning for me to go into business with him for so long. I just don’t want to let him down. They’ve made so many sacrifices for me, it just doesn’t seem fair for me to want to go my own way.”

  “I think it’s not only fair, I think parents expect it,” Rogue responds.

  Ivy laughs softly. “That’s easy for you to say. Mama Rosa is laid-back and easy-going compared to my traditional suburban parents. You haven’t met Lenore and Roger yet, they might have a little bit of culture shock when they find out that I want to pursue something humanities-based rather than business.”

  “Speaking of meeting your parents, isn’t this your exit?” I ask as I hit the blinker.

  “Oh my gosh, it is! That drive went so quickly. I can’t believe it.” Ivy exclaims. “I still haven’t figured out exactly how I’m going to explain all of this.”

  Her reaction is so panicked I pull in to a gas station parking lot off of the freeway so we can all talk. I turn to Ivy with a teasing grin. “Well, it’s pretty simple—you and Rogue could stand next to each other and no words would be necessary,” I suggest, only partly kidding.

  “Marcus Taylor Brolen! We want to give her parents good news, not a heart attack,” Rogue chides. “Show some sensitivity here.”

  “Well, she was looking for a way that she didn’t have to explain it. I was just trying to be helpful.”

  “For what it’s worth, I got the impression from Rosa that perhaps one of your parents already know Rosa or Isaac. I could be wrong, but I don’t think that I am,” Tristan suggests, studying his notes. “Unfortunately, without more information I can’t figure out for certain which one. However I think it might be Rosa.”

  “It would make sense because both our moms worked in kindergarten classrooms in Vermont,” Ivy adds.

  “Wouldn’t it be bizarre if Mama Rosa was a classroom aide for your mom?” Rogue asks in a hushed voice. “I didn’t expect us to have grown up so close together. It’s weird we never ran into each other before.”

  “I just got goosebumps and I’m not sure that they’re the good kind,” Ivy answers. “Mama Rosa didn’t talk like she ever planned to give either one of us up for adoption. So, how did my mom end up with me? If they knew each other—”

  “—that raises the spooky quotient on our mystery to off the charts,” Rogue finishes Ivy’s sentence with a visceral shudder.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Tristan cautions. “This is all conjecture. We don’t know that any of this is true. The real story could be completely different and make a whole lot more sense. Let’s wait until we hear their side of the story before we jump to any wild conclusions, okay?”

  “Tristan, I understand where you’re coming from, I really do. But, Ivy and I can’t help but think about the options. It’s all that we’ve done since we’ve been introduced. It doesn’t matter how much I tell myself not to worry and obsess over it, it’s still constantly in the back of my mind. If it’s been in the back of my mind since you found me in August, I cannot imagine what it’s been like for Ivy to know that she’s been adopted her whole life. She’s probably been looking for her parents on some level ever since she knew what it was to be adopted.”

  Ivy nods. “It’s true. Although I love my parents fiercely, there has always been a connection missing. For as long as I can remember, I’ve searched in random places for anyone that looked like me.”

  “I’d say you found her,” I quip under my breath.

  Ivy snorts, choking on the drink of water she just swallowed. Rogue hits her on the back. “You are so bad! Don’t you take anything seriously?” Ivy asks when she can breathe again.

  “Not much. What would be the point of that? The serious stuff still sucks, but no one is having fun. I like my way be
tter.”

  Pulling his notepad out, Tristan clears his throat as he asks. “Did your parents tell you anything about your birth family?”

  “No, actually, it was weird. They made no secret of the fact that I was adopted, but any time I asked them about my family, they shut me down. The only story I know is about my funny birth certificate.”

  “Well, I guess you’ll probably find out a lot more today. Don’t worry. I’ll be right by your side.” I assure her, lightly squeezing her hand.

  “I don’t know Marc, given your current mood, Ivy may or may not find that a soothing thought,” she jokes.

  “Point taken, maybe you should pretend Super-Secret-Spy-Guy is your boyfriend,” I suggest.

  “No thank you!” Ivy responds at the same time as Rogue declares, “No, I don’t think so! Spy-Guy is mine.”

  It is difficult for me not to fidget like a five-year-old as we are standing on an immaculately clean front porch waiting for someone to answer the door. “Why don’t you use your key?” I ask curiously.

  Ivy shrugs as she answers, “It’s just easier this way because my dad likes to reset the security code and he sometimes forgets to include my identity in the exclusions. I’ve had the crap scared out of me a few too many times to fully trust it.”

  Abruptly, the front door flies open and an older gentleman with curly gray hair and twinkling blue eyes scoops Ivy up into a large bearhug.

  "Love Bug! I didn't know you were coming. You should've called me. Are you having boy problems?"

  Ivy giggles as she responds, "Daddy! No! As a matter of fact everything is going very well in that department, thank you very much. I did text Mom, by the way. Don't you two ever talk?"