Autumn's Child

by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

There it was. Today was still only Monday, but there it was—the lab report for an “avuncular test,” which matched aunt/uncle and nephew/niece pairs. The email message itself said nothing about the results. She had to click on the attachment. There were dense blocks of numbers, columns for the child—that was her—and columns for the possible uncle—that was Jonathan Forbes. It was impossible to make sense of the numbers on her phone. She scrolled down to the end of the report. The “combined first order index” was over 17,000. The statistical probability of the “untested person”—that was Gideon—being her parent, child, or sibling was 99.4 percent.

  Gideon Forbes was her “bio dad.” She was the Lost Princess, she was Ariel.

  It felt anticlimactic. Ever since she had seen the pictures of Gideon’s mother and sisters, she had been sure.

  And truly, truly, in this moment—whatever might happen in the next few weeks—it changed nothing. She was still herself, Colleen Ridge, a good teacher, a generous friend, a reasonably faithful Catholic, etc., etc., and a woman in love with a man she couldn’t share her life with because he was too much of an emotionally stunted, pigheaded, gorgeous jackass.

  The landline was ringing when Colleen got into the house. She rushed to answer it.

  “Hello, may I please speak to Miss Colleen Ridge?”

  It was a woman’s voice, and not just any woman, but one whose vowels glided and lingered with Carolina grace. “Mrs. Forbes?”

  “Oh, you dear girl, you darling child, I have so much to say that I don’t know where to start. We didn’t know about you. We would have never abandoned a child.”

  “Please don’t feel bad, please don’t. I grew up in the right family. Truly. My mother always said that my brothers and I were gifts from God, that God had put us in the only place we belonged.”

  “I hope that that is true. We have no business criticizing Autumn when Gideon took such advantage of her, but I can’t help wishing she had come to us. We could have helped.”

  “She said that she wouldn’t even tell her parents who the father was.” Colleen struggled to reassure Mrs. Forbes. What guilt and sadness she must be feeling. “And there’s no reason to dwell on any of that. It’s all in the past.”

  “I know,” Mrs. Forbes sighed. “But I can’t help wanting to make up for lost time. The boys just told me. I wanted to throw myself on a plane and come to you wherever you are, but they said that they didn’t know.”

  The “boys” were a distinguished linguistics professor and an Academy Award–winning sound editor. That was how families talked about each other.

  “I’m in Virginia near the West Virginia line.”

  “Virginia? That’s so close. I hope you will let us come see you very soon.”

  “Of course,” Colleen answered, “or I can come to you. I’m not teaching this fall.”

  “Zachary said that you teach French, just like my Mary. That’s amazing. You seem like family already, but first, tell me about your family, your people. I want to know everything about you.”

  Mrs. Forbes had not said “your adoptive family” or “the family you grew up with,” but “your family.” That meant a lot. Colleen told her about growing up in Chicago, about her mother dying. “But my father married a woman who is very good for him, and while I’m not supposed to know this yet, I’m sure that my sister-in-law is pregnant.”

  “That’s wonderful. We love babies, don’t you? But what about you? Do you have someone significant in your life?”

  “It’s complicated.” That was the best Colleen could come up with.

  “I understand…I mean, obviously I don’t, but I raised two girls. I tried not to push even when I was dying to know.”

  She told Colleen about her family. All four of her surviving children were married with children of their own. “There are twenty-one of us at Christmas and you should know that they are all going to want to meet you.”

  “I’m not afraid of crowds. My mother came from a family of eight kids, and so I have a million cousins on that side.”

  “Are you—and I know I shouldn’t assume this—but with all those brothers and sisters, your mother, was she Catholic?”

  “She was, and I am.”

  “Oh, my.” Donna Forbes’s voice shimmered with a low thrill. “That shouldn’t make a difference to me, should it? That you’re happy and healthy, that’s all I should care about.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with caring about this too.”

  Mrs. Forbes understood how concerned Colleen was about public attention. “One Christmas when Gideon was home, one of his fans actually climbed on our roof and leaned over the gutters, trying to see in the windows. He got stuck and couldn’t come down. If my husband had had anything to say about it, we would have left the boy there.”

  They went on talking for at least another hour. Ben returned to the house around six because Colleen had said that she would make dinner. When he saw that she was on the kitchen phone, he quietly brought a chair over to the kitchen counter so that she sit down. Colleen, used to talking on cell phones, could feel her ear throbbing from the pressure of the telephone’s handset.

  When the call was finally over, she found Ben on the patio on the lake side of the house.

  “I take it you were talking to Gideon’s mother. The DNA match came back?”

  She nodded.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “Like I already knew, but she is wonderful. She feels terrible about them not knowing about me. But I kept telling her it was all for the best.”

  “So what happens next?”

  “I’m going to go down and visit them. The real estate appraisers come tomorrow so I’ll go on Wednesday.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Ben asked. “Help with the driving and all?”

  “It’s an easy trip. I don’t need any help.”

  “I won’t be in the way. I’ll go hang out with Seth. He’s not that far away.”

  “No, Ben. I don’t need your help.”

  And she didn’t. While the Forbeses were not as noisy as the O’Connells, they were still a big Catholic family, and Colleen felt at ease…although she did wish that Donna Forbes would stop apologizing for not knowing about her.

  Jonathan came in from Durham, and even with this very short notice, a PR representative flew down from New York to plan the “rollout” of her identity. There would be a lot of interest in her. The PR person said that the best way for her to end up with a relatively normal life was to be widely available for a few weeks and be so pleasantly boring that people would lose interest.

  “Pleasantly boring? I can do that,” she assured them. All the years of being a nice girl would be good training for that.

  She would first appear on one of the morning network shows a few days after Labor Day when viewers would have settled back into their normal habits. She would also sit for several print interviews.

  She was to come to New York City a few days before the first interview. She would meet with a stylist who would help her with her wardrobe and get her to the right hairdresser. Gideon’s estate would pay for all that.

  “Actually,” Colleen said, “I think my father would want to do it.” Although Colleen supported herself, never asking her father for money, she knew that at this moment he would like to be the daddy who was buying his little girl a new party dress.

  She could only stay in North Carolina for two nights. The silver appraisers were coming over the weekend. She left North Carolina with hugs, kisses, and a list of questions she was to practice answering.

  How had it felt growing up adopted? That one was easy.

  Why hadn’t she come forward earlier? That was harder because she didn’t want to be seen as criticizing Autumn.

  What would you say to women who relinquished children? Do birth fathers have…What does it feel like…Why did you…Woul
d you…

  She had no idea that people did so much work before an interview.

  * * * *

  It was exhausting having the silver appraisers in the house. Their voices were loud; they were in and out of the kitchen all day, getting more coffee, asking Colleen if they could have a piece of fruit from the fruit bowl or a cookie from the cookie jar. It took her a while to note that Ben was using the fax machine more than he ever had before.

  Next time he was in the library, she took him the last of the cookies.

  “What’s going on?” She nodded toward the fax machine.

  He took another cookie. “Are you ready for a huge ‘I told you so’?”

  “Oh, crap.” She sat the plate down so that she could make a quick getaway if she needed to. “What do you think I have done this time?”

  “Oh, no. No.” He had just taken a bite of the cookie; he had to swallow hurriedly. “It’s the other way around. You were right, and I was wrong.”

  She liked the sound of that.

  Apparently Nate and Seth had been gone back to “blabbing” throughout the entire free world about him giving private lessons. Chloe in his agent’s office had had a more focused approach. She spread the word among East Coast families who didn’t yet care about the politics of the winter sports establishment. Their kids weren’t advanced enough yet to have sponsors. What the parents knew about Ben was that he cared more about their kids’ health than their short-term success. An added benefit was that his sessions, priced to bring little kids at a small resort, were a whole lot cheaper than anything with the established coaches.

  His entire week was already blocked with some pretty talented youths.

  “And yes,” he said, looking straight at her with his Irish green eyes, “I am happy about it, very happy. I figure if I bust my chops until December, I can finish my degree. Then I told the resort to set up as much time as they wanted. Nate says the Almost Heaven people are maybe interested now, but I owe something to this place for giving me a chance.”

  Colleen was not going to gloat. “I’m glad it’s working for you.”

  “It’s a long way from working with the top competitors, but the right couple of kids with the right coaching…who knows?”

  I know. Colleen was as boundlessly optimistic as always. And when you start your own program, Amanda and I are going to run the scholastic component.

  * * * *

  Negotiations had begun for Colleen’s appearance on the network show. Her name and identity were being kept secret, but Autumn’s team heard that such an appearance was in the works. They contacted Colleen’s representatives, demanding to know Colleen’s name and insisting that Autumn be included in Colleen’s appearances. Autumn’s show in July had been on a cable channel on a holiday weekend; Colleen was appearing on a network in a much more desirable time slot.

  “It’s your call,” the PR rep told Colleen. “But if we include her, we will have to rethink the pleasantly boring strategy.”

  “Then no. No, thank you.”

  Autumn’s website was back online. The opening letter acknowledged how offensive people must have found the site when it was hacked. Even though she, too, had been a victim, she wanted to apologize. Anyone purchasing one of her purses through the website in the next month would receive a free clutch. There was no mention of Ariel.

  Ben reported sales of Autumn’s products continued to sag.

  The weather turned bad again. August in the mid-Atlantic could be unpleasant even this near the mountains. The sky was stormy, the atmosphere close and humid. Colleen had been staying on the third floor ever since her grandmother’s stroke. Those rooms were now too hot and stuffy. She moved down to the second floor. She paused at the door to the spacious room over the kitchen, the one her grandparents used to stay in. She could see why they had liked it. It had a private feel, being separated from the other four bedrooms by the back stairs. It had windows on three sides and its own bathroom. But there were still crated artworks leaning against the wall and a maze of rolled carpets on the floor.

  A week before Colleen was to go to New York, the rain came, bringing some relief from the heat. It was still raining in the evening, and the light disappeared early because the clouds were low and dense. The darkness wrapped around the house like a blanket, holding in the quiet. Suddenly the doorbell rang, echoing through the unused rooms in the front of the house.

  Colleen and Ben looked at each other. No one ever turned up here unexpectedly.

  Ben stood up. “Let me get that.” He turned off his reading light and gestured to Colleen to flick off the wall switches. She followed him as he turned on the hall lights. He glanced through the sidelight window along the edge of the big wooden door, then instantly jerked back out of view. “It’s Autumn.”

  “Autumn? How did she find us?”

  “How would I know? But I’m not letting her in.”

  “That’s not your decision to make, and you know it isn’t.”

  He did know. “Okay, but will you stay back for a bit?”

  Colleen was willing to do that. She stepped back into the shadows of the arched opening that led to the sitting room.

  The bell rang again as Ben was flipping on the front lights and opening the door. There, her chestnut hair lit by the exterior sconces, the rain at her back, the light from the hall falling on her face, was Autumn.

  She threw up her arms, the sleeves of her shimmering sapphire raincoat fluttering from her wrists. “Look, I am alone. All alone. Just me. They told me I had to come to the door alone. You’re Gary, aren’t you? Gary Vogel? Where is Ariel? Where is my Ariel?”

  “How did you find this place?”

  She flipped her hand. That didn’t matter. “Is she here? They told me—” She broke off. “Oh, my, you are a very handsome man. Do you know that? Oh, you must. People always know that about themselves.”

  Colleen could see the back of Ben’s shoulders draw together. He must be surprised. He wouldn’t know what to say.

  “But we can talk about that later,” Autumn said, her voice as lovely as her face. “I’m here to see Ariel, my darling Ariel. She is here, isn’t she? I’ve come all this way. You have to let me see her.”

  Colleen stepped through the arch into the light of the hall.

  Autumn gasped and moved toward her. “Oh, is it you? Is it really you? Are you Ariel?”

  “I’m Colleen.”

  “Come into the light,” Autumn took her by the shoulders. She was only a little taller than Colleen. Her touch was light. Her scent was floral and powdery without being sweet. “Let me look at you. Oh, how pretty you are. And if you highlight your hair…oh, listen to me, already telling you how to wear your hair.”

  “I do need a haircut. I know it.” Colleen felt Autumn’s charisma like a natural force, even more essential to the earth than electricity or chemistry. It was as if Autumn carried within her a little piece of the magnetic North Pole, drawing everything to her.

  Or was it more? We were together for nine months. I was a burden, a tragedy, but we shared your body.

  “Can I take your coat?” It was Ben.

  “Oh, yes, thank you. Oh, my, what a nice watch that is,” she exclaimed. Ben was in a T-shirt; his forearms were bare, and Judge Rutherford’s elegant watch encircled his tanned wrist. “And what good posture you have. Have you ever modeled? I could get you to the right people.”

  Ben was still standing there, his hands out. “Your coat, ma’am.”

  “Oh, goodness, don’t you go ‘ma’am’-ing me. I’m not that old.” But she turned and let him lift the coat off her shoulders. It was a beautiful coat. The fabric was lustrous and a glowing shade of blue. The buttons were silvery and black braid scrolled in a military design.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” Colleen didn’t know what else to say.

  “Oh, yes. That would be lov
ely. Herbal please. With lemon. Stevia if you have it. Otherwise the tiniest bit of honey.”

  Colleen went into the kitchen and filled the teakettle. She had put too much water in. It would take forever to boil. She dumped half of the water out. The tea bags were in the far cabinet. She didn’t think that they had any lemon. And Stevia? It was an organic natural sweetener. Leilah might have left some, but Colleen wasn’t sure where to look.

  A moment later Autumn was in the kitchen. “I’m terribly sorry, asking you to wait on me. I didn’t mean to sound so demanding. Anything will do. Is this your home? It’s charming.”

  “It belonged to my grandmother.”

  “Your grandmother?” Autumn looked puzzled. “Gideon’s mother?”

  “No, I mean my grandmother.” It felt good to say that. “My father’s mother.” This is my family’s home. This is where I come from. These are my roots.

  And suddenly Colleen knew exactly what she wanted from Grannor’s estate: this house and enough money to maintain it…and maybe enough silver and china to set a pretty table. It could be her weekend and summer home as long as she was teaching in Charlottesville. Or maybe she could get a closer job and live here year-round. This would be her legacy, what she would pass on to her children. Let Kim pry the diamonds out of the fox head brooches, wear the pearls without restringing them, watch the silver tarnish. She was going to have this house. She would take over the big bedroom. She would be the owner, the hostess, the chatelaine.

  “The house has been my family’s summer home since before I was born,” she continued. She felt strong and confident, very certain of who Colleen Ridge was and what she stood for. “I never met the Forbeses until this month.”

  “Oh, of course. I’m sorry.” Autumn apologized. “I wasn’t thinking. It’s hard enough not to think of you as a baby, much less as having been brought up by strangers. After you were born, they told me I would never see you again so I could only think of you as a baby. I want to know everything about you. Tell me everything. But, first, you need to understand that I never meant for things to get so out of hand. I just wanted to find you, no differently than any first mother wants to find her child. People were using me. I mean, I should have expected it. People try to use me all the time. They’ve been doing it since I was eight, but I’m always so surprised when it happens.”