The scene was so bizarre, Rebecca didn’t quite know what to do. Leave and politely deny the application? Wait to hear an explanation? She was fairly new at this, but she’d never had an applicant so completely lose interest in her arrival for a home study. Anyone who wanted to adopt knew that this visit was make-or-break.
Finally, sniffling, Suzanne stepped back. She and the man spoke for a moment, the words indistinguishable to Rebecca. Then she gasped and turned toward Rebecca. She said something else to him, and finally they both came up the driveway to where Rebecca waited on the porch.
Tendrils of dark hair had pulled from the knot on Suzanne’s head, and her face was blotchy and wet. “I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed. “You must think I’m crazy!”
The thought had crossed Rebecca’s mind, but she murmured, “No, no.”
“I said in my application that my parents died when I was young and my siblings and I got split up. Lucien…” She glanced quickly at the man next to her. “Gary was adopted out. I haven’t seen him since he was three years old.”
“No wonder you didn’t recognize each other! How on earth did you find her?” Rebecca asked him.
His mouth tilted in what might have been a smile. “She found me.”
“Months ago,” his sister filled in. “But he said he wasn’t interested in a reunion, so I tried to resign myself to never seeing him again. And then…and then…”
“He showed up out of the blue.” Rebecca’s eyes met his, completely unrevealing. Why had he changed his mind? Why decide to just drop out of the sky like this?
“Yes.” Suzanne dashed at her tears. “Oh, gracious! I so wanted to impress you, and then I fall apart like this!”
“Getting a little emotional is certainly understandable, under the circumstances.” So why wasn’t he getting emotional? she wondered. “Suzanne, meeting your brother for the first time in…”
“Twenty-six years.” New tears filled her eyes.
“…twenty-six years should take precedence,” Rebecca said. “Why don’t you and I reschedule?”
“Oh, I can’t inconvenience you like that!” Suzanne Chauvin was trying to hide her alarm, but failing.
Rebecca understood that convenience wasn’t what they were talking about. Suzanne feared she’d just blown her big opportunity.
Rebecca smiled. “No, I really mean it. You’ll be torn two ways if you and I try to sit down to talk. I can easily come back next week. Maybe even later this week. Let me check my schedule. We can talk tomorrow. Okay?”
Suzanne smiled shakily and then gave her what appeared to be an impulsive hug. “Bless you. This is…” her gaze strayed to the impassive man standing beside her, “so amazing.”
“Well.” Rebecca smiled at him, too. What the heck. “Nice to meet you, Mr….?”
“Lindstrom.” He held out a large hand. “Ms….?”
“Wilson,” she replied, as she clasped his hand.
They shook. “Pleasure,” he murmured.
“I’ll call,” Rebecca promised, and left without ever going in the house.
As she drove away, she reflected on what the odds were that her appointment would coincide with the arrival of a long-lost brother.
She briefly wondered if the scene could have been staged, but remembered the shock and blaze of joy on Suzanne Chauvin’s face and dismissed the possibility. Besides, what would have been the point?
No, it was just one of those things.
A minor irritant, like the red light flashing at a railroad crossing when she was in a hurry.
Rebecca smiled. Hey, an optimist would say it was serendipity!
THE REDHEAD REMINDED Gary unpleasantly of his ex-wife. She was prettier than Holly Lynn, and also—judging from her freckles—a genuine redhead, which Holly Lynn wasn’t, as he’d discovered the first time he undressed her. No, it wasn’t the hair that brought back thoughts of his little-lamented ex, but rather the judgmental, holier-than-thou air both wore as if it were Chanel No. 5.
He wondered why she was interviewing Suzanne. Was she a pollster? Loan officer? Journalist? He leaned toward the loan officer explanation, because Suzanne had seemed damned anxious not to offend her.
Ah, well. What difference did it make what the redhead did for a living? Although… He turned and watched her circle her car. She did have spectacular legs, he decided with appreciation.
The woman beside him—his sister—said, “Come in, Lucien. Gary. Oh, I can’t believe you’re here!”
She’d taken him aback with that sobbing embrace. He didn’t think any woman had ever cried on his shoulder before. Certainly not Holly Lynn, who’d departed hissing and spitting but dry-eyed.
He nodded and stepped into the small living room ahead of her. “I hope this wasn’t a bad time.”
“Not if she meant it about rescheduling. And I think she did. Don’t you?”
What the hell did he know about it?
“Sure,” he said with a shrug.
She shut the door and they stood there for a minute, appraising each other.
He saw a dark-haired, dark-eyed, attractive woman whose face gave him a weird, uncomfortable sense of familiarity. It wasn’t that he was seeing his own face. No, while they did bear a superficial resemblance, their coloring similar, he didn’t think it was that.
That wisp of memory, the dark-haired, laughing woman, slipped in and out of his consciousness and he felt a jolt. There it was. She was that woman. Except of course she couldn’t be.
“Do you look like our mother?” he asked abruptly.
Tears brimmed in her eyes again and she nodded. “And you could be Daddy. It’s…extraordinary. Seeing you like this. You have his nose, the shape of his face, his eyes….”
The observation felt like a rough-hewed shim wedged in somewhere, the potential for slivers both making him wary and irritating him. Last he knew, his nose and eyes were his, not someone else’s.
But he knew his discomfort was irrational. Why was he here if not to figure out where he came from and whether he wanted to have any ties at all to these two women who were close blood relatives? So, okay, now he knew he looked like his father.
Check.
“I’m being a terrible hostess,” she exclaimed. “Can I get you something to drink? Why don’t you come back to the kitchen? We can talk there.”
What he’d have preferred was a beer, but he accepted a glass of lemonade and followed her to the kitchen table, sitting and looking at her some more.
“Your sister…our sister,” he corrected himself. “Does she look like you?”
“Yes, amazingly so. Except Carrie is obviously younger. She was the baby, you know.”
He shook his head. “Actually, I don’t remember much. There was a woman. Uh, and a skinny dark-haired girl.”
“Me.”
Wow. Yeah, he guessed it had been her.
“And the baby.”
“Carrie.”
“She and I went to a foster home together. Right?”
“Right.