In other words, her parents had loved him. A resident at Children’s Orthopedic, he’d reminded her from the beginning of her father even though they didn’t look at all alike. He was kind, patient, brilliant, unfailingly dignified. She’d never seen him talk while he had a mouthful of food, or laugh so hard she’d seen his larynx, or get really mad. Even that last scene. He’d been disappointed. Hurt. Not furious.
He wasn’t passionate. How could she be expected to love someone passionately whose own emotions were so damned reasonable?
She bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Mom. I know you liked him…”
“Oh, sweetie! It’s not that.” Her mother reached for her hand and squeezed, hard. “I just want you to be happy. To be settled.”
Carrie was startled by a rebellious thought. Maybe I don’t want to settle.
Why was it that being settled—what an awful word—had to be the ultimate goal?
And why did the very idea stifle her so?
“I’m not unhappy, you know,” she told her mother, squeezing back. “I just don’t necessarily want the same things you think I should. At least not yet. I’m different from you.” She hated how sad she sounded when she said the last, but couldn’t seem to help herself.
“I know.” Her mother tried to smile, but her eyes were damp and her voice had a quaver. “I know, dear.”
MARK CALLED Suzanne Chauvin two days later to give her the bad news.
“I located the attorney’s files. He handled only a few adoptions, and your sister’s and brother’s were not among them.”
There was a long silence. “But…” He waited some more while she sputtered another, “But…” As he’d seen her do in the office, at length she gathered herself. “How did you find his records?”
She sounded a little peeved at his quick success where she’d failed, and he didn’t blame her.
“Connections. I asked around until I found the attorney who bought his practice. He’d actually merged his small practice with another one, but he’d kept Cavanagh’s original files.”
“Maybe some of them got lost in the shuffle.”
“It’s conceivable, of course,” he admitted. “But the guy seemed pretty confident. Unless Cavanagh kept the files on your sister and brother at home, they should have been with the others.”
“If my aunt and uncle were insistent that the adoption be kept confidential…”
“The others were all similar, private adoptions. Why would Lucien’s and Linette’s be any different?”
“I…don’t know.”
As gently as possible, he said, “My suspicion is that your aunt and uncle misled you. They did have legal dealings at one time with Henry Cavanagh. He handled a minor lawsuit filed against your uncle in his business. So they knew his name, knew he was retired, maybe had even heard he died.”
“And thought I’d consider him a dead end,” she said slowly, anger growing in her voice. “I can imagine them doing that.”
“I’d like to talk to them. It would help if you accompanied me.”
Often clients hesitated at a time like this. Adoptees were often terrified of straining the bonds that held them to their adoptive families. No matter how desperately they were driven by the need to know where they came from, they were equally afraid of losing what they already had.
Suzanne was the exception. “You bet,” she agreed. “When?”
They left it that she’d arrange a time, and they would drive up to Bellingham together, where her aunt and uncle lived and where she’d grown up.
“Evening is fine,” he said. “My hours are always irregular. I have a housekeeper to watch Michael.”
She called him back a couple hours later and said her aunt had reluctantly agreed to meet with him the following evening.
“Uncle Miles won’t like it,” Suzanne said. “But if he blocks me too obviously, it’ll look like he’s hiding something. And in his view, no decision he’s ever made is wrong, so what does he have to hide?”
“And he never admits he’s wrong?” Mark guessed.
“Not in my memory,” she said with a tartness that made him like her anew.
She lived in Edmonds, a pricey community north of Seattle that clung to a hillside dropping to the Sound. The ferry traffic dominated the main route from the freeway, backed up for miles on summer weekends when vacationers were escaping to Hood Canal or the Washington coast. Downtown Edmonds catered to visitors with small shops and restaurants, all within a couple of blocks of the ferry terminal and the beach.
Suzanne’s was a modest older home on a street of larger ones, Mark discovered the next evening. It had the look of a summer cabin, simple and boxy, painted gray with white trim, the attached garage appearing to be a later addition.
Her yard defied the norm in this neighborhood, whether by design or neglect, he couldn’t tell. Her lawn was ragged and studded with dandelions, which the next door neighbor with his velvet green sward probably didn’t appreciate. Old shrubs rambled without any apparent effort to prune them, one ancient lilac nearly blocking a window. The dark turned earth in a few beds showed that she’d made some effort there, while grass wandered into others.
She came out immediately, so he didn’t get a chance to see the interior. She looked as pretty as spring in a short, lacy cardigan over a tank top and a flowery skirt that swirled around her legs as she got in.
“All set?”
She nodded. “A little nervous. They do love me, in their own way. I hate to upset them.”
He didn’t back out. “Your call.”
“I’ve started this, and I’m determined to finish it. Besides, I’m mad that they lied to me.”
They chatted as he drove, at first about innocuous subjects like traffic, local politics and real estate prices, with him finally suggesting that she tell him about her aunt and uncle.
The uncle had a one-man plumbing business, while her aunt had worked at a dry cleaner for as long as Suzanne could remember. Her voice softened when she talked about her aunt Jeanne, who sounded like a nice woman who didn’t like to rock the boat.
Suzanne’s voice became considerably more reserved when she spoke of her uncle, who had clearly treated his own kids—both boys—with blatant favoritism.
“Honestly,” she said, gazing thoughtfully ahead through the windshield, “I think he didn’t quite know what to do with a girl. Maybe if I’d liked sports, but I was never interested. So he pretty much ignored me.”
Jackass, he thought.
“Maybe he’d have done better if they’d kept Lucien. I’ve wondered.”
He glanced at her. “Did you ever wish…”
“That they had?” She gave a soft laugh that sounded a little sad. “Sometimes. Isn’t that funny? Adopted kids imagine what their ‘real’ parents are like, and I used to dream instead about what kind of adoptive family I might have gotten. And what my life might have been like.”
“Were they rich?”
“Oh, of course!” She was smiling now, relaxing. “I was their little princess. I had a horse, and my own car when I turned sixteen—not the chance to borrow whichever heap of junk one of my cousins was driving at the time. I might have been adopted by some Hollywood producer or director who’d cast me, so I was already a star by the time I was eighteen.”
“Do you act?” he asked.
“Heck no! I