A Secret Identity (30 page)

“She’s a senile old lady,” he said in a brutally dismissive tone. “She undoubtedly told you the strange story of my grandmother’s baby. I bet she even showed you a picture, didn’t she? Ah, I can see by your face that she did. And you thought you’d found the perfect way into her affections by claiming the baby in the picture was your grandfather.”

I didn’t tell him I had seen that picture almost every day of my life and that Ward and Marnie currently had the blanket and had brought Johnny home from the hospital in it.

I stared at Amos for a minute, wondering what it was like to be so nasty and to speak of your own mother with such cruelty. The affection in our family had been so genuine that people like Amos were hard for me to comprehend.

“Excuse me. I have business in the courthouse.” I tried to reach around him for the door, but he shifted just enough to block me.

“You think I’m kidding when I tell you to leave my mother alone, do you? Ever heard of a restraining order?”

I looked at him in stunned disbelief. A restraining order? He saw me as that dangerous? That greedy? That threatening?

I heard a group of people walking up behind me. I waited until they were almost to me. Then I said very loudly, “Excuse me, sir. You’re blocking our way.”

Since five new people pressed up behind us, Amos had no choice but to move. I walked into the courthouse with a calm I didn’t feel and turned left. I was walking blind, going anywhere to get away from Amos. When I felt a hand on my arm, I spun around, furious.

“Don’t touch me!” I hissed.

“Okay,” Todd said, slightly taken aback. “If you feel that strongly about it.”

“Todd!” I grabbed his arm to hold myself up. Now that he was beside me, I was shaking like the proverbial leaf. “I thought you were Amos.”

He studied my face for a brief moment, and then slipped his hand under my elbow. “Come on.” He led me to a cafeteria where he found a table in a corner. He seated me facing the wall.

“All right. Give. What happened?”

Willing my chin not to tremble, I reached into my purse and pulled out the letter. Silently Todd read it. When he looked up, his eyes were hard and angry.

“What’s this about chickens?”

“Two had their throats slit this morning. Elam found them on the front porch.”

He looked at the letter again. “You don’t think Amos had anything to do with this, do you?” He ran his hand through his curls, but they were so naturally combed now that they barely showed the strain. “A man in his position surely wouldn’t stoop so low. It’d be professional suicide if it ever got out.”

“I’m more inclined to think it’s Mick.”

“Makes more sense than Amos, who would be more subtle.”

I shivered. “He wasn’t very subtle a few minutes ago. He threatened me with a restraining order to prevent me from visiting Aunt Lizzie again.”

Todd nodded, not surprised. “That’s more what I would expect from him. Use the law, not petty crime.” He patted my hand. “Don’t let the threat bother you. I’ll take care of it.”

I smiled my thanks. “But he still gives me the willies,” I added.

Todd glanced at his watch. “I have to be back in court in five minutes. I’ll stop at the farm as soon as I’m finished, okay?” He pushed back his chair and grabbed his briefcase. “Will you be all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Now.” I smiled my best smile.

The smile must have worked because he suddenly leaned down and kissed my cheek, looked surprised at himself, and left.

I bought myself a bottle of iced tea and a bagel and cream cheese. I munched as I thought. When I was finished, I had no more answers than I’d had when I began eating, but I was ready to visit the Prothonotary’s office.

Back in the lobby I found a directory that sent me to the second floor right, almost to the end of the hall. I passed Orphan’s Court and the Register of Deeds and came to the Prothonotary. I entered and waited my turn for assistance before a long counter.

“How can I help you?” a pleasant woman in wire-framed glasses asked.

“I’d like to look at papers from 1918,” I said.

The woman blinked. “Did you say 1918?”

I nodded.

“You’ll have to go to Archives for them,” she said. Though why I should want papers that old was clearly beyond her.

“Okay. Where is Archives?”

She sent me down the hall and down some stairs, down another hall, and down some more stairs.

“At the bottom of the stairs you can go right or left,” the woman said. “I don’t know which way will give you the material you want, but there will be people there to help you.”

I thanked her and followed her directions, going from the new part of the courthouse to the old in the process. I eventually found Archives and came to a T, just as the woman had said. I looked right and left and saw no one. I turned right.

I entered a large room full of bookshelves rising rank upon rank from floor to ceiling, from one end to the other. The shelves were full of books of bound legal documents. 1887 Orphans Court. 1916 Orphans Court. 1901–1905 Marriages. 1926 Marriages.

Marriages, I thought. I searched the shelves for 1923. I found the heavy book I wanted and slid it from its resting place over rollers that allowed easy access to the ungainly records. I carried the book to a counter and started leafing through it.

The legal record of long ago love was fascinating to me. Widowed farmers, young clerks, thirty-year-old spinsters, divorced seamstresses—their personal stories were reduced to the equivalent of name, rank, and serial number. Every so often in the margins were the signatures of parents giving permission for underage children to marry. Apparently underage meant through twenty.

Some of the questions asked on the various documents raised more questions in my mind.

Is the applicant an imbecile, epileptic, of unsound mind, or under guardianship as a person of unsound mind or under the influence of intoxicating liquor or narcotic drugs
?

If you were any of these things, would you admit it?

What is the relationship of parties making this application, if any, either by blood or marriage
?

If the wrong answer meant you couldn’t get a marriage license, would you answer truthfully?

I flipped page after page until suddenly, there it was:

Statement of Male
:

Full name: Enos Adam Lehman

Statement of Female
:

Full name: Madeleine Elizabeth Biemsderfer

I traced Madeleine’s name with my forefinger. Five years after Pop’s birth, she and her Enos had finally married. It was overwhelming to try to imagine the heartache of those five years, pain beyond measure for Madeleine and Enos as well as for her parents, Joshua and Lottie. I thought for the first time of Enos’s parents. Did they ever know about Pop?

I closed the marriage license book and rolled it back into place. On a high shelf I found the 1918 Orphan’s Court book. I felt compelled to look at it even though everyone told me Orphan’s Court meant estates. I found a stool and stepped up to slide the book from its place. The cover was torn and dusty. I lugged the heavy volume to the counter and started leafing through.

With no great surprise, I saw that the book did indeed contain records of estates where the legatee was a minor and the estate was placed under the financial guardianship of an adult. At least the Orphan’s was a complete misnomer.

I sighed, but I was glad I’d doublechecked. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Todd and all the other people I’d talked to at the courthouse. It was just that I liked to see things for myself.

After I climbed back on the stepstool and slid the bound journal back into place, I decided there was nothing more for me in this room. I went back to the foot of the stairs and turned left. A lady saw me coming and met me in the doorway.

“May I help you?” she asked. Her nametag read Annabelle.

“I’m looking for the adoption record of my grandfather,” I said.

Immediately Annabelle looked distressed. “I’m sorry,” she said, and I could tell she really was sorry. “All adoption records are sealed. It’s impossible to gain access to them without a judge’s order, and such an order is difficult to obtain without mutual consent. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“I know all about the sealed records,” I said. “But I’m looking for records from 1918. I was told that adoption records going back that far may not be sealed.”

Annabelle looked at me with interest. Her eyes narrowed as she considered my comment.

“You may be right,” she said. “I think records were purged under judge’s orders of all adoption documentation going back to 1924. But adoption papers before that may still be in the public records.”

I tried to still the flutter of anticipation in my stomach. I couldn’t let myself get excited yet. Still, in spite of my stern self lecture, I found myself holding my breath expectantly.

“If there is anything still available, it would be in the Trust Books,” Annabelle said.

“What are they?” I asked.

“They’re the bound prothonotary records. And they would be locked in a storeroom down the hall.”

She turned back to her desk and got a handful of keys. She searched through them with quick fingers, selecting a silver colored one. She walked up the last flight of stairs I’d come down, and I followed. Halfway down a hall, she stopped before a door and inserted the key. She turned it and the door swung inward. She reached around the corner and touched a light switch. A weak light shone over multiple file cabinets and more shelves full of books of bound documents.

“Have you worked in Archives long?” I asked.

“Ten years,” Annabelle said. “I find it fascinating.”

I was very grateful for her longevity on the job. A new person mightn’t have known about these records, or if she did, she wouldn’t have been able to walk unerringly to the right shelf. In no time I had a volume in my hands that included papers from 1914 to 1920.

“Bring it out to my room where you’ll have better light,” Annabelle said.

“Really? I can just sit and read it as long as I want?”

“Sure.” She led the way back to the hall. She shut off the light and relocked the door. I trailed her down the steps, the heavy book under my arm.

Soon I was settled on a stool under a strong light, flipping pages. Everything in the book was written in old fashioned longhand by a pen with a thin nub and a person with a neat hand. Once in a while I saw an inkblot, but whoever had recorded these papers was very particular and precise, a good civil servant.

As I read, Annabelle and the world receded, and decisions and petitions made almost a century ago took center stage. I was fascinated by the declarations of dementia and insanity that gave the care of property and money into the hands of another. I read Bills of Divorcement. And I found adoption records.

There was no careful wording of things, no protecting of the participants. All the pertinent facts were spelled out clearly for anyone and everyone to read.

In re Adoption of Jonathan David Brewer.

In re Adoption of Eliza Tansy Duncan

In re Adoption of Lehman Biemsderfer.

I sat stone-still for a minute, one hand on my heart and the other on the page before me. Even though I knew already where Pop had come from, was totally convinced I had met his family for both good and ill, seeing the actual legal document moved me. I blinked the tears away lest any splash onto the page and blur the spiky handwriting.

June 15, 1918. Petition of John Seward Bentley and Mabel Brooks Bentley his wife of Lancaster City, PA setting forth that they are desirous of adopting as one of their heirs Lehman Biemsderfer, the minor child of Madeleine Biemsderfer of Lancaster City. He was born on November 1, 1918. That the child is now in their home and has been there since February 4, 1919 and was placed there by The Children’s Home Society of the City of Lancaster. That they will perform all the duties of parents toward said minor, and that the mother of the said Lehman Biemsderfer has consented to said adoption. Affadavits of said consent attached to the petition
.

And now August 20, 1919, upon consideration of the foregoing petition and statement and it appearing to the said court that the welfare of the said minor will be promoted by the said adoption and the Society in whose hands the child was originally placed consents thereto, the prayer of the petitioners is granted and it is ordered and decreed that the said Lehman Biemsderfer shall assume the name of John Seward Bentley, Jr. and herefore shall have all the rights of a child and heir of the said John Seward Bentley and Mabel Brooks Bentley respectively, and he shall be subject to the duties of such a child
.

Attest Herman F. Walton, Prothy
.

Such cold legalese. Such far reaching ramifications. Such changed lives.

Pop
, I thought,
it’s all here. Here’s your birth mother’s name and your adoptive parents’ names and both of your given names. All the ties, all the people who made you what you were, all except Enos. Do you know that I’ve met several of the family living today? Do you care? You wouldn’t like your nephew Amos—you never had much time for unkind people or people full of their own importance. But you’d love your sister, Lizzie. She and Mom would have enjoyed each other so much. And your niece Alma. Very nice too
.

But just as Ward and I never knew Trey and Caroline, you didn’t know Madeleine and Lizzie and the others. Life’s like that, isn’t it? Full of absolutes that we can’t change
.

I became conscious of Annabelle standing beside me.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked.

I nodded. “My grandfather. He raised me.”

She leaned over and scanned the page. “Amazing. Right there for all to see. I’m glad you found it.”

“Me too.” Massive understatement. “Can you make me some copies?”