The Other Daughter (3 page)

To judge by the mess, pretty hard. Melanie grimaced, then waded in fatalistically. Somewhere in there were a few decent dresses.

At the age of twenty-nine, Melanie Stokes was petite, capable, and a born diplomat. She'd been abandoned as a child at City General Hospital with no memory of where she came from, but that had been a long time ago and she didn't think of those days much. She had an adoptive father whom she respected, an adoptive mother whom she loved, an older brother whom she worshiped, and an indulgent godfather whom she adored. Until recently she had considered her family to be very close. They were not just another rich family, they were a tight-knit family. She kept telling herself they would be like that again soon.

Melanie had graduated from Wellesley six years earlier with her family serving as an enthusiastic cheering section. She'd returned home right afterward to help her mother through one of her “spells,” and somehow it had seemed easiest for everyone if she stayed. Now she was a professional event organizer. Mostly she did charity functions. Huge black-tie affairs that made the social elite feel social and elite while simultaneously milking them for significant sums of money. Lots of details, lots of planning, lots of work. Melanie always pulled them off. Seamless, social columnists liked to rave about the events, relaxed yet elegant. Not to mention profitable.

Then there were the nights like tonight. Tonight was the seventh annual Donate-A-Classic for Literacy reception, held right there in her parents' house, and, apparently, cursed.

The caterer hadn't been able to get enough ice. The parking valets had called in sick, the
Boston Globe
had printed the wrong time, and Senator Kennedy was home with a stomach virus, taking with him half the press corps. Thirty minutes ago Melanie had gotten so frustrated, tears had stung her eyes. Completely unlike her.

But then, she was agitated tonight for reasons that had nothing to do with the reception. She was agitated, and being Melanie, she was dealing with it by keeping busy.

Melanie was very good at keeping busy. Almost as good as her father.

Fifteen minutes and counting. Damn. Melanie found her favorite gold-fringed flapper's dress. Encouraged, she began digging for gold pumps.

During the first few months of Melanie's adoption, the Stokeses had been so excited about their new daughter, they'd lavished her with every gift they could imagine. The second floor master bedroom suite, complete with rose silk wall hangings and a gold-trimmed bathroom, where she needed a stool just to catch her reflection in the genuine Louis IV mirror, was hers. The closet was the size of a small apartment, and it had been filled with every dress, hat, and, yes, gloves ever made by Laura Ashley. All that in addition to two parents, one brother, and one godfather who were shadowing every move she made, handing her food before she could think to hunger, bringing her games before she could think to be bored, and offering her blankets before she could think to shiver.

It had been a little weird.

Melanie had gone along at first. She'd been eager to please, wanting to be happy as badly as they wanted to make her happy. It seemed to her that if people as golden and beautiful and rich as the Stokeses were willing to give her a home and have her as a daughter, she could darn well learn to be their daughter. So she'd dressed each morning in flounces of lace and patiently let her new mom cajole her straight hair into sausage curls. She'd listened gravely to her new father's dramatic stories of snatching cardiac patients from the clutches of death and her godfather's tales of faraway places where men wore skirts and women grew hair in their armpits. She spent long afternoons sitting quietly with her new brother, memorizing his tight features and troubled eyes while he swore to her again and again that he would be the perfect older brother for her, he would.

Everything was perfect. Too perfect. Melanie stopped being able to sleep at night. Instead, she would find herself tiptoeing downstairs at two A.M. to stand in front of a painting of another golden little girl. Four-year-old Meagan Stokes, who wore flounces of lace and sausage-curled hair. Four-year-old Meagan Stokes, who'd been the Stokeses' first daughter before some monster had kidnapped her and cut off her head. Four-year-old Meagan Stokes, the real daughter the Stokeses had loved and adored long before Melanie arrived.

Harper would come home from emergency surgeries and carry her back to bed. Brian grew adept at hearing the sound of her footsteps and would patiently lead her back to her bedroom. But still she'd come back down, obsessed by the painting of that gorgeous little girl whom even a nine-year-old girl could realize she was meant to replace.

Jamie O'Donnell finally intervened. Oh, for God's sake, he declared. Melanie was Melanie. A flesh-and-blood girl, not a porcelain doll to be used for dress-up games. Let her pick her own clothes and her own room and her own style before the therapy bills grew out of control.

That piece of advice probably saved them all. Melanie left the master bedroom suite for a sunny third-story bedroom across from Brian's room. Melanie liked the bay windows and low, slanted ceilings, and the fact that the room could never be mistaken for, say, a hospital room.

And she discovered, during a clothing drive at school, that she liked hand-me-downs best. They were so soft and comfortable, and if you did spill or rip something, no one would notice. She became Goodwill's best customer for years. Then came the trips to garage sales for furniture. She liked things banged up, scarred. Things that came with a past, she realized when she was older. Things that came with the history she didn't have.

Her godfather was amused by her taste, her father aghast, but her new family remained supportive. They kept loving her. They grew whole.

In the years since, Melanie liked to think they all learned from one another. Her well-bred southern mother taught her which fork to use for which courses. In turn Melanie introduced her depression-prone mother to the reggae song “Don't Worry, Be Happy.” Harper instilled in his daughter the need to work hard, to consciously and proactively build a life. Melanie taught him to stop and smell the roses every now and then, even if just for a change of pace. Her brother showed her how to survive in high society. And Melanie showed him unconditional love, that even on his bad days — and Brian, like Patricia, had many of those — he would always be a hero to her.

The doorbell rang just as she unearthed her shoes. Jesus, she was cutting it close tonight.

Hair and makeup, quick. At least her pale features and baby-fine blond hair didn't require more than the lightest touch of color and a simple stroke of the hair-brush. A little blush, a little gold eye shadow, and she was done.

Melanie took a deep breath and permitted herself one last assessment in the mirror. The event was coming together in that crazy way each one did. Her father had volunteered to greet the guests, a definite overture of peace, and her mother was appearing more composed than Melanie had expected. Things were working out.

“It's going to be a great evening,” Melanie assured her reflection. “We got rich patrons, we got a blood donor room. We got the best food money can buy and a stack of rare books to collect. Your family is doing better, and to hell with Senator Kennedy — it's gonna be a great night.”

She gave herself a smile. She pushed herself away from her bureau. Took a big step toward her door. And suddenly the world tilted and blurred in front of her eyes.

Black void, twisted shapes. Weird sense of déjà vu. A little girl's voice, pleading in the dark.

“I want to go home now. Please, let me go home….”

Melanie blinked. Her cluttered room snapped back into view, the fading spring sun streamed through the bay windows, the hundred-and-ten-year-old floor felt solid beneath her feet. She discovered her hands pressed against her stomach, sweat on her brow. She glanced around immediately, almost guiltily, hoping no one had noticed.

No one was upstairs. No one knew. No one had seen or suspected a thing.

Melanie quickly descended the stairs where the sounds of gathering people and clinking champagne glasses beckoned gaily.

Four spells in three weeks. Always the black void. Always the same little girl's voice.

Stress, she thought, and walked more briskly. Delusions. Neuroses.

Anything but memory. After all this time, what would be the point?

THE BOEING 747 TOUCHED down badly, bumping and skipping on the runway. Larry Digger was in a foul mood to begin with, and the botched landing did nothing to improve it.

Digger hated flying. He didn't trust planes, or pilots, or the computers that were installed to imitate pilots. Trust nothing, that was Larry Digger's favorite motto. People are stupid was his second favorite.

Gimme a drink was probably his third. But he wasn't about to say it then.

Time hadn't been kind to Larry Digger. His trim frame had turned soft at pretty much the same rate his promising investigative reporter's career had turned sour. Somewhere along the way his mouth adopted the perpetually dour look of a hound dog, while his cheeks developed jowls and his chin got too fleshy. He looked ten years older than his real age. He felt about another ten years older than that.

At least he had until the phone had rung three weeks earlier. Within days he'd hocked his stereo equipment for a first-rate tape recorder, then sold his car for a plane ticket and traveling cash.

This was it for Larry Digger. Twenty-five years after he'd started the search for the Holy Grail, he was in Boston, and it was boom or bust.

He hailed a cab. It had taken him a week to track down the address in his fist. Now he handed the piece of paper to the tired-looking driver who was paying more attention to the Red Sox game on the radio than to the other cars on the road.

Digger was traveling light, just clean underwear, a couple of white shirts, the tape recorder, and a copy of his own book, published fifteen years before. He'd started writing it soon after Russell Lee Holmes's execution when most nights he woke up with the scent of burning flesh polluting his nostrils. The other guys had gotten a break that night. Blowing an inmate apart had given the anti-death penalty liberals all the ammunition they'd needed. Texas had gotten to hastily re-retire Old Sparky, not entering the execution business again until 1982, when the state got lethal injection.

It hadn't helped Digger though. He'd thought Russell Lee would be the big story for him, finally break him out of Pisswater, USA, and move him to national news. They'd kept him in Huntsville, covering the retirement of Old Sparky, covering the debate. Then he got to cover the setup of the lethal injection, and way before he was ready, he was back to watching men die.

He had started needing a drink before going to bed. Then he started needing two or three. Most likely he was on his own slow road to dying, when lo and behold, the phone had rung.

Two A.M., May 3. Exactly three weeks ago. Larry Digger remembered it clearly. Fumbling for the ringing phone on the bedside table. Swearing at the thundering sound. Pressing the cold receiver against his ear. Hearing the disembodied voice in the dark.

“You shouldn't have given up. You were right about Russell Lee Holmes. He did have a wife and child. Do you want to know more?”

Of course he did. Even when he knew he should've given up, when he knew that his obsession with Russell Lee Holmes had cost him more than it had ever given him, he hadn't been able to say no. The caller had known that too. The caller had actually laughed, a weird, knowing sound that was distorted by some machine. Then he'd hung up.

Two days later the caller was more specific. This time he gave Digger a name. Idaho Johnson.

“It's an alias. Russell Lee Holmes's favorite alias. Track it down, you'll see.”

Digger had tracked the name to a marriage certificate. He'd then traced both husband's and wife's names to a birth certificate for a child listed as Baby Doe Johnson. No sex or hospital was listed, but there was a midwife's name. Digger found her through the Midwives Association, and there he'd struck gold.

Yes, she remembered Idaho Johnson. Yes, that picture looked like him. A slight hesitation. We-ell, yes, she understood that his real name was actually Russell Lee Holmes. Not that she'd known it then, she informed Digger crisply. But when the cops had arrested Russell Lee and the papers had carried his picture, she'd sure figured it out. Then the midwife thinned her lips. She wasn't willing to say another word. Baby Doe Johnson was Baby Doe Johnson and she didn't see any reason to infringe upon the privacy and rights of a child simply because of what the father had done.

Digger had tried tracking down the child and mother on his own, only to hit a wall. The woman's name on the marriage certificate also appeared to be an alias, having no social security number, driver's license, or tax history to back it up. Digger had combed through old records, old files. He'd hunted for photos, property deeds, any damn kind of paper trail. No sign of Angela Johnson or Baby Doe.

Digger had gone back to the midwife.

He'd begged. He'd pleaded and argued and brow-beat. Offered money he didn't have and glory he'd never known. The best he could get out of the woman was one last grudging story, a small incident that had happened to her after Russell Lee's arrest. Really, it had probably been nothing.

But to Larry Digger it had been everything. Within seconds of hearing the midwife's little tale, he thought he knew exactly what had happened to Baby Doe Johnson. And it was a bigger story than any dried-up, washed-up, half-drunk reporter had ever dared to dream.

But why dredge it up twenty years later?

He'd asked his three A.M. caller that question, actually. And he still recalled the weird, high-pitched answer.

“Because you get what you deserve, Larry. You always get what you deserve.”

The cab was slowing down and pulling over. Digger glanced around.

He was in downtown Boston. One block from the Ritz, one block from the landmark Cheers, limos everywhere. This was where the Stokeses now lived? The rich did get richer.