Kindred Spirits (26 page)

Carol said, “Do you mean to tell me that during all your Facebook reconnecting, Lynne never asked you what happened to the baby you two conceived?”

He shook his head. “I never said that.”

“Then she did.”

“Yes.”

Carol was close to becoming exasperated. This was worse than some of her tougher cross-examinations. “And how did you respond?”

“That I couldn’t release the information for the same reasons I gave you.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose, unable to meet their gazes. “I had no idea she was this close to death. The last I heard from her was a week ago last Thursday when she said she was feeling a lot better and was planning to spend the day outside.”

“A week ago last Thursday,” Mary Kay said, “was the day Lynne killed herself.”

“I didn’t know that until I got a call from Dorfman saying that she’d died. I went online and looked up her obituary. . ..” He covered his face with his hands, his shoulders heaving. “I’d hoped he was mistaken.”

They let him cry. For a while, those were the only sounds in the office, Douglass Andersson catching his breath, the springs in his chair squeaking as his body convulsed in sobs.

After a long while, he looked up and asked them to tell him everything.

Carol related the story of Lynne’s suicide and tried to recall her letter to the Society word for word as best she could. “We have no interest in ruining your life or your marriage, Doug. All we want is a way to find Julia.”

He rested his elbows on his desk and closed his eyes as if he were praying. When he was done, he leaned over, unlocked a bottom drawer, and handed them a thin blue file. “Here. I checked its contents when Dorfman called, and it should have all the information you need.”

A zip of energy shot through Carol’s arm as she took the file from his outstretched hand. This was too good to be true. “You don’t want us to make copies?”

“I don’t ever want to see it again. Take it away from here. Burn it if you want.” Then he swiveled his chair away from them and went back to looking out the window, his shoulders drooped. “Anyway, that chapter is closed and behind me now. The future is all that matters.”

Carol took a last glance at his family photo, of his innocent children smiling under the protective gaze of their father, and decided that maybe he was right.

T
hey drove the five blocks back to the library since they had the feeling their Highlander was no longer welcome in the Andersson law office’s parking lot. Along the way, they filled in Beth about the details, how Doug Andersson had refused to release the file until the very end, relenting when they promised not to tell anyone.

“May I just say this is why public libraries kick ass,” Beth said. “Try finding online what I found in the high school yearbook. You couldn’t. This is why the local library must be saved.”

Mary Kay and Carol parked the car and while Beth went into the library to return the yearbook to Annie, they got some bad coffee across the street.

“I think this hangover’s finally going away,” Carol said, popping an Advil to make sure.

“Mine isn’t,” Mary Kay said. “Hear me now and believe me later, I am never drinking again.”

Carol laughed. “Famous last words.”

Unable to take the suspense any longer, they met Beth on the steps and opened the forbidden file.

The paper on top was the adoption decree:

Carol turned over the page to the petition attached. “And here’s Lynne’s signature forfeiting all rights.” She pointed to a scrawl.

Beth and Mary Kay each took a gander. “That’s her signature?” Beth asked.

“Keep in mind she’d just given birth,” Mary Kay said. “And she was drugged.”

“What we’ve got here is sealed forever, you know. Our possession of it is definitely illegal,” Carol said. “Beth, if you hadn’t come across that yearbook we would not be reading this now.”

Mary Kay checked the file and removed a yellowing memo. “This could be their address.”

It read: DONALD AND GRACE MILLER, 18 PINETREE LANE, POCONO LAKE, PENNSYLVANIA.

Carol scrolled through the White Pages listing for Millers on her phone. “That was thirty years ago. Chances are slim they’re still there.”

“Most people don’t keep their house more than seven,” said Beth.

“We can track them down, if not by ourselves, then I’ll hire one of Deloutte Watkins’s private investigators,” said Carol. “Do you know how many Donald Millers are in Pennsylvania? Hundreds.” Carol scrolled through page after page, discouraged. “Not a good sign when you run a name and the response comes up ‘Whoa! Over 100 Found.’”

“Any on Pinetree Lane, Pocono Lake, Pennsylvania?” Beth asked.

“Nope. Nor any in that area, as far as I can tell. I think we’re screwed, ladies. For all we know, Donald and Grace might have died or moved to Florida.”

“Usually, it’s the other way around.” Mary Kay jabbed Carol in the ribs. “Hey, didn’t Dorfman say something about checking out Crescent Hollow if we find their names?”

“Geesh. I must be more hungover than I thought. That completely slipped my mind.” She typed the Millers’ name and Crescent Hollow, Pennsylvania, into Google.

“Bingo!” Carol held up the phone to show them the address. “Dorfman came through.”

“We found them,” Beth exclaimed. “Julia’s parents. I never thought we would.”

“Me neither,” Mary Kay agreed.

But Carol couldn’t share their enthusiasm. How would the Millers react to three strange women showing up at their door with a letter from the dead mother of their beloved daughter?

“You know, we really haven’t thought this through enough,” she said. “We have to be very careful. It was hard enough for Eunice and Therese. Imagine what it’ll be like for Julia.”

“I’ve thought about that,” Beth said as they crossed the library lawn and headed toward the car. “I think Lynne did too. That’s why she wrote the letter.”

“While she was at it, she should have written Doug,” Mary Kay said, “instead of telling him the day she killed herself that she felt a whole lot better and was going to spend the day outside.”

Beth placed a hand on her arm. “What?”

“Doug told us he and Lynne were communicating through Facebook,” Mary Kay said. “Her last words were probably to him—right under Farmville.”

Lynne’s last words hadn’t been to her or Mary Kay or Carol or, probably, even Sean, Beth thought. They’d been to Douglass Andersson, a stranger from a life they’d had no idea she’d ever lived.

It was so strange to think that Lynne had never so much as hinted about her hidden past. In the course of fifteen or so years, even after the lubrication of fairly potent martinis, she never let it slip that she’d been forced to give up her baby. Or, more recently, that she’d reconnected with her first love online.

She’d said
nothing.

It was the kind of crazy circumstance Beth had found only in books. And not very good books, at that.

All of which left her somewhat miffed. Weren’t best friends supposed to share
everything
? “There was so much going on with her. I had no idea.”

“None of us did,” Mary Kay said as they piled into the car. “Makes me wonder how much of the real Lynne we knew.”

“What matters is that she’s sharing her life with us now,” Carol said. “Hey, not even Sean knows what we know, not her sons or her mother, not her doctor or colleagues at work. In the end, it was us she chose.
Us
.”

It was small, bittersweet comfort. But it was all Beth had.

The drive to Crescent Hollow would normally have taken a good four and a half hours. But Mary Kay floored it east, across I-80, weaving in and out of tractor trailers, sending Beth into fits, gripping the door handles and bracing her feet against the dashboard.

“Have a heart, MK. I’d like to live to see my grandchildren.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got it all under control.” Mary Kay scanned for lurking state troopers and, deeming it safe, depressed the accelerator to 85.

There was a particular urgency in her need to get this over with and get home. It wasn’t just that they’d been on the road since Saturday morning and the Highlander was getting rank after three days of crisscrossing this big block of real estate called Pennsylvania. It was that her last conversation with Drake had left her in a state of high anxiety. When he mentioned he’d found the birth-control pills, when he asked if he could start telling people the good news, she realized he was getting his hopes up and that’s when she started to panic.

“Who’s up for a new martini?” Carol asked.

Mary Kay blanched and gripped the wheel, her knuckles white.

Beth put down
Middlemarch,
her umpteenth attempt. “Now? We’re driving.”

“I don’t mean to drink, I mean to create. My memo’s in so I’ve got nothing to do. I’m bored stiff.”

Beth said, “There was one I came across the other day, a sherry martini.”

Carol scoffed. “No, that’s for church ladies. You know what I want to try that we haven’t? A Manhattan martini. Rye, vermouth, bitters, and a Maraschino cherry.”

“My father would have liked that,” Beth said. “He liked Manhattans, before the doctors put him on the wagon. Hey, you know what we need to do? Invent a martini to commemorate this trip.”

Carol clapped. “Now you’re talking. Let me start by saying it should be strong, like we are.”

“And light,” Beth added. “Maybe some champagne or fruit.”

“Not dry, though,” Carol said. “Because this weekend has been anything but dry.”

They decided it should also be slightly sweet and piquant, in honor of Lynne. Strong, sweet, fruity, and bubbly. If they could only have thrown in a touch of determination.

“What do you think, MK?” Beth asked. “You’re awfully quiet.”

“Just keeping an eye on the road ahead, hon, and where it’s gonna take us now.”

They didn’t talk much for the rest of the drive. Carol napped in the rear while Beth put aside
Middlemarch
and chatted with her mother and Madeleine and then her mother again, hashing and rehashing every minuscule detail of Chat’s tests. Finally, the three of them managed to arrange a conference call that took the good part of an hour.

The results showed blockage in two arteries, in addition to fluid within the lung walls indicating congestive heart failure. The cardiologist at Grace suggested stents to relieve Chat of chest pains, though they would not necessarily repair the damage done from years of indulging on thick juicy rib eyes at client lunches and Sundays spent vegetating in front of Patriots games on his fifty-inch widescreen TV.

The alternative was a bypass, a risky procedure in Chat’s case. Needless to say, Maddy was all for at least exploring the option in New York.

“Bill Clinton and David Letterman didn’t wait around to die,” Madeleine said. “They were whisked into Columbia-Presbyterian and treated immediately. Doesn’t Dad deserve the same? Why should he receive lesser care?”

Elsie didn’t know what to do. Her preference would have been to make no decision at all. “I wish I could turn back the clock,” she mused, “to when we didn’t have to worry about stents or bypasses. Your father used to be so strong. Do you remember when he used to pull the dinghy across Kindlewah Lake while swimming the backstroke? With you two girls in it?”