As Time Goes By (3 page)

She was a dancer whose Broadway career had come to an abrupt end when she was seriously injured by a hit-and-run driver. Now her startlingly lovely face was showing the strain caused by the back pain following the accident and the financial worries that were part of her everyday existence.

Her ex-husband had no answer for her. In an angry defense, raising his voice, he spat out his reply. “Look, you know that once this trial is over, the money from my father's estate will be released. And I'll get plenty. There's no question Betsy's going to end up in prison, which also means that the half of his estate that he left to her will be mine. You've got some rich friends. Tell them to lend you money. Pay them interest.”

He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and tossed a credit card on the table. “This one is caught up. The job in Atlanta photographing those houses paid for it. Use this for food and I'll have the rent by the thirtieth.”

Without bothering to say good-bye to his children, he stalked out of the four-room apartment on West 89th Street in Manhattan, left the building and with swift strides began to walk downtown.

At thirty-five Alan closely resembled his dead father, a fact noted frequently by the media. Six feet tall, with reddish-brown hair and hazel eyes, he looked every inch the privileged Ivy League graduate who had been raised with a silver pacifier in his mouth.

It was all Betsy's fault, he thought. She and Alan were so close, but she was the one who had urged his father to no longer write him a check every time he had a problem but instead put him on a reasonable allowance. “Alan's an excellent photographer,” she had pointed out. “If he concentrated less on being the playboy of the western world and settled down, he could make a good living.”

That was when his father had stopped paying his bills and restricted him to a check for one hundred thousand dollars every Christmas. That did not go far enough to support him, an ex-wife with two children, and a ten-year-old son by a former girlfriend.

As he walked, Alan's anger began to fade. It was only a matter of time, he assured himself. There was no possibility that any jury would ever let Betsy off. It became worse for Betsy when it had come out that she had been quietly seeing some guy for two years before his father died. Dr. Peter Benson, the Chair of the Humanities Department at Franklin University in Philadelphia. Although he was weary, Alan decided that it would all come out all right. He'd get the money. Betsy wouldn't inherit a penny. He just had to be patient.

He hadn't wanted to take that job shooting spring fashions for the new designer clothing firm that joke celebrity had founded. But it was necessary.

As he cut over to Central Park West toward Columbus Circle, Alan smiled at the satisfying memory of how his father had attacked Betsy the evening they had gathered in a pointless effort to celebrate the demented man's birthday. Her anguished cry, “I can't take it anymore,” had been heard by everyone. And during that night his father had been murdered with Betsy alone in the house.

When she's found guilty, she can't inherit, he thought, so every dime Dad left will be mine.

Then he tried to banish the unwelcome thought that his father's skull had been fractured by a powerful blow to the back of his head.

B
efore having breakfast Dr. Scott Clifton picked up the morning papers on the steps of his home in Ridgewood, New Jersey. A large and athletic fifty-seven-year-old man with a sunburned face and thick head of graying blonde hair, he did not need to be reminded that the lurid headlines were beginning again as the day for the trial approached.

Over the course of twenty years he, Ted and Dr. Kent Adams had developed an extremely successful orthopedic practice. And then Ted had the onset of Alzheimer's more than eight years ago. Since then, he and Kent had severed the partnership and gone their separate ways. In Kent's absence, Scott's surgical practice had declined significantly.

Lisa didn't often get down to have breakfast with him before he left for work. Not that she was a late sleeper, but he was always out of the house by eight o'clock at the latest. He fixed his own cereal and coffee.

But today, unexpectedly, she came into the kitchen.

“What's on your mind?” he asked curtly.

She hesitated, then said, “You were tossing and turning again last night. You kept mentioning Ted's name. I know the trial is on your mind.”

“Of course it is. If I'm disturbing your sleep, I'm sorry.”

“I didn't mean to infer that you were disturbing me. I was just worried about you.” She blinked back tears. “No matter what I say, you're always snapping at me,” she observed quietly.

Scott did not answer. He knew his marriage three years ago was a mistake.

The ink was hardly dry on his divorce papers when he married her. Now he had three kids in college and an ex-wife who didn't hesitate to call him and say she was a little short, and would he help? Of course, he would. They both understood that.

Lisa, twenty years his junior, had been a drug company representative who made sales calls on his office. He usually didn't have time to speak to detailers, leaving that job to the nurse. But he had made time for Lisa. She was a former Big Ten cheerleader from the Midwest. A great smile and a body to match.

What he had not taken into account was that after the initial attraction had faded, he neither needed nor wanted her.

But the last thing he could handle was to try to get rid of her now. He couldn't let anyone get into an analysis of his finances.

He'd put up with her until the trial was over and things calmed down. He wondered if she suspected anything.

Lisa was holding a coffee cup in both hands. It was the one she had had made with his picture and the words “I love you, Scott” scrawled at every possible angle. It was enough to drive him crazy.

“Scott,” Lisa said his name hesitantly.

Now she was crying.

“Scott, we both know this marriage isn't working. Are you having an affair?”

He stared at her. “Of course not.”

“I'm not sure if I believe you, but I still think that we're better off going our separate ways. I plan to see a lawyer next week and begin divorce proceedings.”

I can't let that happen, Scott thought frantically.

“Lisa, listen to me. I know I've been curt and inattentive, but that doesn't mean I don't love you. I don't want to lose you. It's just that Ted's death and Betsy's indictment have put a terrible cloud on the practice. Please.”

Lisa Clifton did not meet her husband's eyes. She did not believe him. She was sure he was having an affair, but she was still hoping that maybe they could work it out. “Would you go to a marriage counselor with me?” she asked.

Good God, a marriage counselor, Scott thought, then tried to sound enthusiastic. He said, “Of course, dear, of course.”

D
elaney and Alvirah were never at a loss for words. They had become fast friends last year when they both covered the trial of a birth mother who had managed to find the couple who had adopted her baby and stole it back from them. While the judge had sympathy for her, he also reminded the birth mother that she was twenty-five years old when she gave up the baby, at the time had the financial resources to take care of the child and had caused great anguish in the two months that the baby was missing.

Because of the nature of that case, Delaney had confided to Alvirah the fact that she was adopted, a subject she seldom mentioned. She knew that Jennifer and James Wright were hurt the few times she ever brought it up. “Delaney, I held you in my arms twenty minutes after you were born,” Jennifer had told her tearfully. “I wanted you for years before that. I could visualize a little girl with three big brothers who would always be there for her if your father and I weren't around.”

And they had been. All of them. She had been blessed by being raised in a loving, tight-knit family, but now they were all scattered. Maybe that was why her feeling of urgency to find her birth mother had become so pronounced. Now that her adoptive parents were permanently living in Naples, Florida, it didn't seem so much of a betrayal to begin an active search for her.

When she and Alvirah and Willy were having dinner at Patsy's on West 56th Street, that subject came up again.

Delaney hesitated. Then she said, “Alvirah, I told you and Willy that I was adopted.”

They both nodded.

“I remember reading years ago about Bob Considine, the newsman, who wrote, ‘I have four children. Two are adopted. I forget which two.' My parents joked that I look so different because I'm the image of my father's grandmother. She was born in Italy.”

“She must have been a beautiful woman,” Willy observed as he took a bite of his salad.

Delaney smiled. “Willy, you're really sweet, but the need to know my roots, my birth family, is so strong that I almost cried when we did a piece on the news last night.”

“I was watching,” Alvirah said. “It was about the birth mother being reunited with her son.”

“Yes. When the son said that he needed to find his birth mother there was such a lump in my throat that I missed my cue. Don had to cover for me and pick up the next story.”

“How about Facebook?” Alvirah asked, then answered her own question. “But of course your family is bound to find out.”

“Of course they will,” Delaney confirmed. “My brother Jim's wife is on Facebook all the time. She posts a picture of her kids at least three times a week.”

Alvirah could see that Delaney's eyes were beginning to glisten. “Exactly how much do you know about the circumstances of your birth?” she asked.

“So little. A midwife delivered me in Philadelphia. Twenty minutes later I was given to the Wrights. They were in the next room from the birthing room with my biological grandparents.

“They were introduced to each other as the Smiths and the Joneses. My parents were told that my mother and father were seventeen-year-old kids who had been intimate the night of the senior prom, that both of them were honor students headed for college.”

Alvirah broke off a piece of crusty bread and dipped it in olive oil.

“I'm a good detective,” she said. “I'm going to look into this for you.”

As Delaney watched, Alvirah's hand went to the lapel of her jacket. She turned on the microphone in her sunburst pin.

“Oh, Alvirah, you don't have to be bothered recording this. It's sweet of you, but it's hopeless.”

“We'll see,” Alvirah said matter-of-factly. “Delaney, do you know where in Philadelphia you were born? What was the name of the midwife? What was her address? Who introduced your parents to the midwife? Did the midwife say where your birth mother lived?”

“My adoptive mother . . .” Delaney's voice trailed off. It was so hard to talk about Jennifer Wright, who had been so loving to her all these years, in those terms.

She began again. “Six years ago I wrung it out of her, that I was born in Philadelphia, which of course I knew because of my birth certificate. She said the midwife's name was Cora Banks. She gave me the address of her house. The woman who told her about Cora was a friend from her college days. That woman, Victoria Carney, died in a car accident when I was ten years old. I met her a number of times. She was very sweet. She never married and her niece discarded whatever files she had. Mom was so upset that day I asked about it that I told her she was the only mother I ever knew or wanted to know.”

“Alice Roosevelt Longworth's mother died shortly after she was born,” Alvirah observed. “Her father was President Theodore Roosevelt. He married again when Alice was two years old. When she asked about her birth mother, that was exactly what she said.”

Delaney's smile was wistful. “I remember reading that somewhere. Thank God it jumped into my head that day. But I wasn't being honest. I do want to find my real mother.”