What was she waiting for?

Days later, Carrie was still asking herself. Why did she feel this wave of anxiety every time she thought about the phone number she carried in her wallet? Was she afraid her sister would be cheap and loud and uncultured, so she’d be ashamed of her heritage? But Mark had said she was nice. Carrie trusted him.

So, okay, maybe that wasn’t the problem. Maybe she was worried about whether her sister would like her. That somehow she’d be a disappointment.

Or maybe…maybe what really scared her was the possibility that she wouldn’t feel any connection at all to this sister. Maybe she’d look at photographs of her birth parents and not see herself in them either. And then she’d realize that there was no niche anywhere that she was designed to fit. She’d be like a puzzle piece that ended up in the wrong box and was left over when the picture was complete.

Dear Reader,

Growing up, I had a good friend who had been adopted as a baby. Thinking back, I’m amazed at how completely lacking in curiosity I was. I never wondered whether she imagined someday finding her birth mother, whether she lived with any sense of “not belonging,” even what she knew about her birth parents. So she was adopted. Who cared?

In some ways, this was undoubtedly a healthy attitude. Imagine what fun sleepovers we could have had, with me grilling her! On the other hand—why didn’t her unusual (to me) beginning in life stir my imagination?

Of course, it did, many years after the last time I saw her. Because babies in the womb hear their mothers’ voices for nine months, they feel a bond with her from the moment they’re born. If a child’s adopted out too young to remember her birth parents, does she nonetheless know, somewhere deep inside, that she’s not where she belongs?

If you’ve read many of my books, you’ll know how interested I am in the long-term impact of trauma. I tend not to write about the traumatic event itself; that’s way less interesting than the ripples that spread out from it!

But I am, after all, a romance reader and writer, which means I have enormous faith in the healing power of love. Don’t we all need that faith?

Best,

Janice Kay Johnson

Open Secret
Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

HIRING A PRIVATE investigator took more courage than Suzanne Chauvin had known she possessed. The whole idea was utterly foreign to her. P.I.s snapped photos of half-naked husbands straying from their marriage vows in sleazy hotels, the kind with mirrors on the ceiling. They did stakeouts where they slumped low in their cars for hour upon hour. They wore trenchcoats and carried firearms.

She knew the images were silly and outdated, if ever accurate. Sam Spade. Still, consulting a P.I. felt…sleazy.

But the truth was, she’d tried everything she could do on her own. She would never find Lucien and Linette without help. She’d asked around, and this Kincaid Investigations was recommended over and over. They specialized in finding people, Suzanne had been told.

Even so, she hesitated. Bringing a stranger into her private life made her uncomfortable. And it was more than that! She’d be handing the whole task over to the investigator. Trusting him. She wasn’t very good at trusting people anymore.

She kept debating, putting off the decision. Maybe Lucien or Linette would come looking for her. She’d made sure that, if they did, she would be easy to find.

The only thing was, she’d been hunting for three years now. And they hadn’t come looking for her.

Another week went by, a month. Two months. Three.

It was a really lousy morning that provided the final push. Dumb little things added up. She’d taken a personal day from her job, with the intention of working around the house. She’d mow, put some bedding plants in, reorganize her kitchen cupboards. Positive stuff.

Instead she came out early to find garbage from the can she’d set out by the street last night strewn across her driveway by some wretched dog. Her bathroom trash, including some really, really personal items, was scattered over the next-door neighbor’s impeccably kept lawn. She pounced and managed to pick the embarrassing stuff up just before his garage door rose and he backed out in his gleaming, black pickup truck. There she stood in her oldest jeans, surrounded by garbage.

His window glided down. Tom Stefanec was already the bane of her existence. His lawn could have doubled for a putting green at Pebble Beach. His perennial bed was the envy of the neighborhood from spring through fall as wave after orchestrated wave of perfectly tended plants came into bloom. He jogged most mornings barely waiting for sunup. He kept his hair military short. Worst of all, this model of discipline and fitness had to have heard Suzanne’s awful, screaming fights with Josh, her now ex-husband.

She hadn’t been able to look her neighbor in the eye in years.

And, of course, his garbage can sat untouched, a bungee cord stretched over the lid to keep its contents safe. The dog knew better than to try to get at Tom Stefanec’s trash.

“You need a hand?”

Smiling weakly and probably unconvincingly, she said, “No, no, I’m fine. It’s my own fault for not making sure that miserable dog couldn’t get into my can.”

“If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure.”

With a whir, the window rolled up and the truck continued to back into the street. Once he was gone, she fetched gloves and picked up the rest of the litter, then wheeled her mower out. Pressed the button a couple of times to prime it and then yanked the cord. Nada. Again, and again. Prime. Pull. Prime. Pull.

Finally, exhausted, Suzanne had to concede that the piece of junk wasn’t going to start. Once again, she would have to remember how to fold the handle and then heave the monster into the trunk of her car. Being as this was the beginning of April, she would be told that they’d get to it when they got to it. In other words, several weeks would pass before she’d get the damn thing back.

Suzanne took a look at her patchy, scruffy, hummocky, dandelion-infested lawn and started to cry. She was completely, one hundred percent incompetent. A failure at everything that had ever mattered.

And getting the damn mower fixed and the lawn mowed wouldn’t help.

If she was ever going to turn her life around and regain a semblance of self-esteem, she had to succeed at something a heck of a lot more important than yardwork.

She had to keep the promise she’d made herself when she was a child.

Abandoning the mower on the lawn, she marched into the house, found the phone number she’d tucked away three months ago and called.

“I’d like to make an appointment.”

WHEN THE RECEPTIONIST informed him via intercom that his new client had arrived, Mark Kincaid closed the database of bankruptcies he’d been searching on his computer, glanced at his calendar to recall her name and rose to meet her.

Suzanne Chauvin. He had a quick picture of a petite, fiery Frenchwoman in a chic suit and heels, her sleek dark hair in a twist, her brown eyes magnificent, her lips painted scarlet.

He shook his head at his brief foray into fantasy. Of course, she’d be a dumpy dishwater blonde in snagged polyester pants.

Ms. Chauvin hadn’t been specific about why she needed an investigator, only that she was seeking a missing person. That could be anyone from a deadbeat ex-husband who was five years behind on his child support payments to a birth mother if she was adopted. He was doing a big business these days in adult adoptees looking for their birth parents as well as the reverse—parents, mostly mothers, looking for the kids they’d given up.

He went down the short hall to the waiting room. The nervous looking guy with a receding hairline and big patches of sweat under his arms had to be waiting for Mark’s partner. As far away from him as she could get and hidden behind a magazine was a woman.

“Ms. Chauvin?”

“Yes.” The magazine dropped and she sprang to her feet as if jerked upright by a puppeteer. “I…thank you.”

“I’m Mark Kincaid.” He held out his hand.

She shook, her hand dainty but callused in unusual places. “You’re the owner?”

“That’s right.” He gestured toward his office. “Come on back, and we’ll talk about why you’re here.”

She bit her lip, cast a longing glance at the door to the street, took a big breath and nodded. “Thank you.”

She walked ahead of him, giving him a chance to appraise her. No chic suit or scarlet-painted mouth, but otherwise she was intriguingly close to his fantasy. Suzanne Chauvin was a very pretty woman who looked as French as her name sounded. Her dark hair was indeed gathered at her nape, if not in a more elegant twist. She might be as old as thirty, if he was any judge, but still as delicate as fine porcelain. She wore a simple dress and sensible pumps and clutched a tote bag as if she thought a purse snatcher lurked in the doorway to the records room.

“Can I get you some tea or coffee?” he asked when she went to one of the two chairs facing his desk, hesitated, then sat, perched noncommittally on the edge.

She gave a tight shake of her head.

He settled into his own comfortable leather chair behind his desk. “What can I do for you, Ms. Chauvin?”

Her fingers worked the straps of the tote as if she were trying to knit them. “You were recommended to me as someone who specializes in finding missing persons.”

“That’s right.” He leaned back.

“I need to find my brother and sister. I…seem to have failed on my own.”

His interest waned. This sounded like a twenty minute job. Unless someone was trying real hard to stay hidden, they weren’t difficult to find in this day of internet databases. Borrow money, marry, divorce, have a child, vote, register a car or boat, pay taxes, join a hobby organization, all were like waving a red flag and saying, Here I am. Hell, stub your toe and you’d appear somewhere.

He nodded gravely and picked up a pen, poising it over a ruled yellow pad of paper. “How long ago did you lose touch?”

“Twenty-five years and four months ago.”

Surprised, he leaned back again. “But you can’t be more than…” He cleared his throat. “Late twenties?”

“I’m thirty-one years old, Mr. Kincaid.”

“So you were six.” Had her parents divorced and divvied up the kids? He knew it happened.

“Yes.” She hesitated. “This is…difficult for me. Finding them has been a personal quest. I don’t know if I’m comfortable handing it over to someone else.”

“Someone you don’t even know,” he diagnosed.

She nodded.

“That’s a decision only you can make. If I can help by answering questions, I will.”

“No, I…” Ms. Chauvin gave a small, twisted smile. “You do come highly recommended. And I’ve failed. Maybe that’s what I hate to admit.”

“Tell me the story,” he said. “And then what you’ve tried.”

“Our parents died in a car accident when I was six. I’m the oldest,” she explained. “Lucien, my brother, was three, Linette just a baby. Six months old. The only family left was an aunt and uncle who already had two kids of their own. They didn’t feel they could add three more children to their family. Or afford to feed them.”

He nodded.

“So they kept me, since I was the oldest and more aware of what was happening to us. They believed that Linette and Lucien would adjust more easily to new parents.”

God. He imagined the scene when a social worker arrived to take away the two younger children. Six-year-old Suzanne’s bewilderment and dawning understanding. He saw the car pulling away, the three-year-old’s tearstained face framed in the window. He could almost hear the girl’s hysterical cry, see her running after the car.

Suppressing a shudder, he said, “That must have been very difficult. For you, and for your aunt and uncle.”

“It was…heartbreaking.” She looked at him, but without seeing him. “I was the big sister. Mom always said, ‘Take care of your brother and sister.’ I was so proud that I was big enough to be trusted to take care of them.”

The things people did to their children with the best of intentions. He’d bet that mother would have given anything to take those words back, if she could have seen into the future. She’d doubtless never imagined herself and her husband both being snatched away, leaving a little girl who would have been in first grade believing that she should have been big and strong enough to hold on to her little brother and sister and somehow take care of them.

“Linette was asleep when they took her away. But Lucien kept asking why I wasn’t coming.” Her eyes swam with tears. “I was so scared, and so grateful I didn’t have to go away with strangers, too. And I felt horribly guilty because I was so relieved they’d chosen me.”

He swore.

She started, as if remembering he was there. “It was awful,” she said simply, wiping her eyes with her fingertips. “I swore that someday I’d find them. But then the years went by, and somehow I never did.”

“What made you decide the time had come?”

“I got a divorce three years ago. I’m not very close to my aunt and uncle, and I felt so alone.” She gave a small laugh. “That sounds pathetic. I’m sorry! It’s not as if I don’t have friends, but… I don’t know. I was left with this huge chasm inside. I felt empty.”

Uh-oh. Unrealistic expectations always scared him. Adoptees invariably believed that finding their birth mothers would somehow make them feel whole. It was common to imagine scenarios rather like those in a romance novel. The adoptee believed that the moment he saw this woman, his mother, he’d recognize her, on the most fundamental level. The connection would be magical. All the hurt would be erased, difficulties in trusting people, in finding intimacy, would be healed.

On the one hand, he did believe the seeking and finding were healthy steps for an adoptee or a birth parent. Even if the relationship ultimately went nowhere, disappointment could provide closure. If he didn’t believe that, he wouldn’t help.

But no stranger, blood relative or not, could fill the emptiness this woman felt inside herself. And it wasn’t fair of her to ask anyone else to do that, or to feel hurt and angry when they couldn’t or didn’t even want to try.

“Let me ask you a few things,” he said.

She started to open the tote. “I have notes…”

“Not that. Not yet. It’s you that concerns me.” When she looked at him, startled, he told her, “I’ve been doing this for some years now. First you need to know that sometimes I don’t find the person I’m looking for. The trail is just too cold. Most of the time I do. But what I find isn’t always what the seeker is hoping for.”

She opened her mouth, but he shook his head.

“No, let me finish. A couple of years ago, I was hired by a woman who’d given up her baby boy when she was sixteen. Her parents and everyone else convinced her he’d have a better life with a stable family. I was able to trace him. The adoptive father had abused him. He’d died in that adoptive home six months after she signed the adoption papers.”

Suzanne Chauvin stared at him, aghast.

“I’ve found birth mothers who refused any contact with their children. Mothers who were prostitutes. Turned out one had given up five babies for adoption over the course of eight years. I initiated contact to say that her daughter hoped to meet with her, and she said, ‘Which daughter?’”

The woman across from him asked, in a wounded voice, “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want you to go into this with clear eyes.” He leaned forward to emphasize his point. “What do you expect at the end of this search, Ms. Chauvin?”

“I…” she faltered. “To see them, of course. To talk to them.”

He waited.

“To know what’s happened to them. That they’re all right.” She bit her lip. “To say I’m sorry.”

“You were six years old.”

“I know that!” she cried. “I know there wasn’t anything I could have done! But that doesn’t stop me from feeling guilty.”

“So you want to ease your guilt.”

Her cheeks flushed. “You make that sound…reprehensible.”

“No. No, it’s not. I’m just trying to find out what’s most important to you. Do you expect these two strangers to become your sister and brother again? Best friends?”

Her mouth worked for a moment, making him feel like a brute, before she said with dignity, “I would love for them to be my brother and sister. Just that. We’re adults now. Even if we’d grown up together, we might be spread across the country and only see each other once a year. I don’t expect us to…to time-travel, to have a different childhood where we stayed together, if that’s what you’re asking. I’d just like to renew a bond that was very important to me. And…” Her voice went quiet, so quiet, he just heard her. “I’d like to be able to tell them about Mom and Dad. About how loved we were.”

After a moment, he nodded. “All right. I have just two cautions. One is that I want you to realize that, even if we find them, one or both may choose not to have any contact with you. They may feel bitter, or just indifferent. If the adoptions were successful, they may feel no need to explore their birth family.”

“But…wouldn’t they want to know a medical history, at least?”

“Your aunt and uncle may have provided that.”

“Yes…” Her forehead crinkled. “I suppose.”

“We’ll get back to that. First let me offer my second caution, which is simply not to expect too much from your sister and brother. With the best will in the world, they may not fill that emptiness.”

She flushed again. “I really don’t expect them to. I didn’t mean to suggest I did. Only that I was at a low point in my life when I decided to initiate the search. Whether you believe it or not, Mr. Kincaid, I’m a reasonably stable, well-adjusted human being. I have a good job, I own my own home, I have friends, I…” Something seemed to stick in her throat. A lie she couldn’t tell. Had she been going to say, I date?

She spoke with such offended dignity, he half expected her to rise and announce that she wouldn’t need him after all. He saw on her face that she wanted to do just that. He watched her struggle with the desire, then overcome her pride and hurt feelings.

Like the stable adult she’d said she was.

He relaxed slightly.

“If you feel prepared to go ahead, let’s get to the details. What do you know about them? What did you discover? Where do you think you failed?”

She explained what steps she’d taken in her search, guided by a book with which Mark was familiar. Unfortunately, despite her many phone calls and letters, she’d accomplished next to nothing. Her collection of notes was pitifully small. She’d struck out earlier in the quest than he’d hoped.

Her aunt and uncle had placed the children through an attorney in a private adoption—or adoptions.

“They claim not to know whether Lucien and Linette went together or to two different homes,” his client said.

“How do they feel about your determination to find your sister and brother?” he asked.

“They aren’t very happy about it,” she admitted. “Especially my uncle.”

“Which is the blood relation?” It didn’t always matter, but in this instance his gut feeling was that it did.

“My aunt. She’s my mother’s sister. I think she struggles with some guilt at not fulfilling her sister’s trust. She doesn’t say that. She’s always brusque, and insists they did the best they could and that’s that. They didn’t have a big enough house, they had no money, et cetera, et cetera. But I suspect…” She hesitated. “I suspect it was my uncle who put his foot down. I think maybe she had to plead to get him to agree to keep me. I always felt as if he resented me.”

Sounded like a hell of a childhood. Suzanne Chauvin might have been better off if they hadn’t kept her, Mark thought. Except then she would have had to live with the wrenching memory of not being wanted by her own relatives.

Looking again at the notes she’d spread on his desk, she said, “If I could have found out their adoptive names… The problem is, the attorney who handled the adoption is dead. He’s been dead for a long time. No one seems to know what happened to his files. I found his wife in a nursing home, but her memory is shaky and she says he never talked about work. She gave me the name of his secretary, but I couldn’t find her. Maybe the name was wrong. Maybe she died, too, or got married, or…” She trailed off, her discouragement plain in her voice.

“Did you add your name to the International Soundex Reunion Registry, in case one of them is looking for you?”

“Yes, right away. That is, three years ago.”

He frowned. “Surely your aunt and uncle were told something about the family or families that adopted your sister and brother.”

“They get…well, vague. ‘Just that they were nice people,’ my aunt said. She was sure that the adoptive father—maybe one of the adoptive fathers—was a doctor.” Ms. Chauvin gave another of those twisted smiles that did a poor job of hiding her hurt. “She offered me that tidbit like…like a bone to a dog. See? They had to be perfect if he was a doctor!”

He suggested gently, “It may be that she’s consoling herself, not you. As you say, she may have been dealing with guilt for twenty-five years. That one fact may be her touchstone. Her way of saying, ‘I did the right thing. He’s a doctor. Those children are better off with a father who’s a doctor than they would have been with us.’”

His client sat silent for a moment. Voice stricken, she said at last, “Yes. I didn’t think. You’re probably right.”

“I may need to talk to your aunt and uncle at some point. But first let me see how far I can get with what you already know.” He took an agency contract from the drawer and went over the provisions with her, making sure she understood his fees and watching her face carefully to be sure in his own mind that she wouldn’t be bankrupting herself to pay them.

She signed and pushed the contract across the desk to him. “May I ask how you got into this?” She waved her hand to encompass his office, his business, his life.

He gave her the severely edited answer. “I was a cop. A detective. But the hours were lousy for family life, and I realized that what I enjoyed was solving puzzles. So…”

“So you’re married and have children?” She seemed genuinely curious, mainly, he guessed, because she wanted to feel she knew him, that he was worthy of her trust.

“My wife died two and a half years ago. She had a bad heart.”

It was another short answer. He didn’t like to think about the choice Emily had made, and didn’t feel as if he had to bare himself to every client simply to make them feel better about having to reveal themselves to him.

More persistent than most, her voice gentle, Suzanne Chauvin nodded at the framed photo on his desk. “Is that your little boy?”

“Michael is five. He just started kindergarten.”

“He’s cute.” She seemed to tear her gaze from the photo with some reluctance.

Mark rose to signal that they were done. “Ms. Chauvin, I’ll keep you informed every step of the way. I promise. What you do with the information we uncover will be your choice.”

Standing, she asked, “You mean, I’ll be the one who contacts them when you find them?”

“If you prefer. If you decide the initial contact would be better made by a third party, I can do that for you. But let’s not worry about that until we get to it.”

“It might be a shock to have someone call you out of the blue and say, I’m your sister.”

Or, I’m your child’s real mother. His gaze strayed to his son’s smiling face.

Oh, yeah. That would be a real shock.

“I’ll be in touch, Ms. Chauvin.”

CHAPTER TWO

CARRIE ST. JOHN left her car parked in the circular driveway in front of her parents’ house. Although she’d grown up here at the crown of the hill in Magnolia, Seattle’s exclusive enclave, at twenty-six she had been away enough years now that she no longer thought of the elegant Georgian style brick house as home.

The front door opened even as she mounted the steps. Her mother, as beautiful and stylish as ever, came out smiling. “Sweetie, how nice to see you.”

Carrie bounced up the steps. “Hi, Mom!”

Her mother presented a cheek for a kiss.

“Your daffodils are gorgeous,” Carrie said.

“They are, aren’t they?” Her mother regarded the formal rose garden bounded by a perfectly trimmed boxwood hedge within the circle formed by the driveway. Brick paths bisected the beds filled with hybrid teas, not yet in bloom but cut often during the season to fill vases in the house. The paths and semicircle were perfectly aligned with the view over rooftops of the Puget Sound and downtown Seattle. Terra-cotta pots placed along the paths and at intersections brimmed with yellow and cream daffodils. They would be replaced, Carrie knew, with others when the tulips came in bloom.

Personally she would have underplanted the roses with perennials and runaway biannuals and annuals like violets and foxgloves and forget-me-nots, but her mother shuddered at the idea.

“The house is formal,” she always insisted. “The garden should be, too.”

Carrie suspected the real truth was that Mom hated the idea of plants romping free, popping up where they weren’t wanted, clambering onto paths. Mom liked order. Cottage gardens weren’t orderly.

To each her own, Carrie thought indulgently. Her mother undoubtedly missed her, but she must occasionally feel relief that she didn’t have to wonder in horror what mess lay behind her daughter’s closed bedroom door, or come down in the morning to a sink full of dirty dishes, or endure a dog shedding on the rugs and scratching the gleaming hardwood floors.

Carrie was more like her father. Although mostly orderly out of habit—and probably as a result of some nagging on Mom’s part—he tended to developed heaps of newspapers, books, notes and medical journals. Then he couldn’t find what he wanted and would mumble under his breath as he dug through various piles in search of whatever he sought. He had half a dozen pairs of reading glasses, too, because he could never find them, either. This way, he could usually locate a pair without too much trouble—sometimes by sitting on them, if he’d left them on a sofa cushion. Carrie had always imagined him living in a state of pleasant disorder, if Mom hadn’t been there to tidy up after him.

Carrie spared a thought for Dragon, the motley terrier mix she’d found, skinny, matted and starving, and insisted on keeping. She thought her father had actually grown to love Dragon, once the dog got over flopping onto his back and peeing every time anyone but Carrie walked up to him. Dragon had died the year before Carrie graduated from high school.

“I wish I could have a dog again,” she said, following her mother into the house.

“I understand that poodles don’t shed. If you ever do get one… Perhaps one of those darling small ones.”

Carrie wrinkled her nose. “You mean, the teacup poodles? The kind celebrities carry around in their handbags? Ugh. Those aren’t dogs. They’re… I don’t know. Hybrids, like your roses. A cross between a living, breathing animal and a Meissen figurine.”

“What would you prefer? A Great Dane?”

“A mutt, of course.” She laughed at her mother’s expression. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t subject a dog to apartment life. But someday.” She sniffed. “What are we having for lunch?”

“Just fruit salad and cold cuts. And yes, you do smell Ruth’s sourdough biscuits. I shouldn’t indulge, but I can never help myself.”

Carrie hugged her mother impulsively. “You worry entirely too much about staying a size eight. Honestly, Mom, would the world end if you became a teeny bit plump?”

“A teeny bit plump becomes just plain plump in no time, followed by much, much worse,” her mother said firmly. “Which I doubt you will ever have to worry about.”

They didn’t look much alike. Katrina St. John, blond and blue-eyed, was nearly four inches taller than her daughter’s petite five foot three. Carrie, in contrast, had wavy dark hair she now kept cropped short, dark eyes that dominated a pixie face, and a body that was so boyish, she’d shopped in the children’s department for clothes long past the time when her friends were wearing bras and junior styles. She supposed she looked like one of her dad’s ancestors. Although tall, he was finer boned than Mom, with the long, narrow hands of the surgeon he was. The almost-black hair had certainly come from his side of the family, although his eyes were gray, not brown like hers.

In personality, she was more like her mother. Her father was a quiet, reserved man who attended large parties only when hospital politics required it or his wife made him. His idea of a high time was a dinner with one other couple and perhaps tickets to the symphony or ballet. Mom had a bigger circle of friends, liked to travel and, Carrie suspected, would have entertained on a larger scale more often if her introverted husband wouldn’t have been so dismayed.

Somehow, they’d borne a daughter who possessed all the qualities most likely to horrify each. Carrie had thrown tantrums still legendary at her preschool, been a congenital slob and an extrovert who couldn’t concentrate without music blasting in her ears. She’d overrun the house with friends and with her clutter: fingerpainting at the kitchen bar, Barbies and their endless tiny paraphernalia spread around the den, mud from her boots during her horse phase tracked over antique carpets.

Honestly, she was surprised they’d ever had a child, and not at all surprised she hadn’t had a sister or brother. At the height of her teenage rebellion, she used to scream, “You wish I’d never been born!” Their exhausted, baffled expressions had confirmed her passionate belief that she was an embarrassment to them.

She laughed at the memory of her histrionics. “I was the world’s worst teenager, wasn’t I?”

Her mother, who had been removing the fruit salad from the refrigerator, looked at her in surprise. “What on earth brought that on?”

“Oh…” She reached into the bowl and popped a grape into her mouth. “The house is just so serene now that I’m not here. I was like a…a mini tornado.”

“A whirling dervish, I used to think.” Her mother smiled at her. “I have no idea what one actually is, but it sounds right.”

“It does.” She took the bowl from her mother’s hands. “Are we eating in here?”

“I thought on the patio.”

“Oh, good.”

They carried food out to the lacy iron table set under the arbor on the brick patio outside French doors. A clematis with long, deep green leaves and small white flowers screened one side; roses were tied to the other supports so that from May through October, their heavy blooms perfumed the air.

Over lunch, Carrie asked about her father’s work and his health. He’d recently had an angioplasty to open a blocked artery.

“Has he slowed down at all?”

“You know him,” her mother replied. “I’m working on him, though. It’s past time for him to start thinking about retirement.”

Floored, Carrie echoed, “Retirement?”

“He is seventy.” The reminder wasn’t as silly as it sounded; Carrie’s father didn’t look his age. He could easily have passed for being in his late fifties. “There’s so much we talked about doing that we’ve never managed, given the hours he works. A leisurely trip to Europe would be lovely, for example. And he used to say he wanted to take up a musical instrument again. He almost never even sits down at the piano anymore.”

Her mother still sang in the church choir, and her father had played the violin through school. The house actually had a music room, bare of all else but a grand piano, two comfortable chairs and a cabinet for sheet music. Unfortunately Carrie hadn’t inherited her parents’ musical ear; she’d taken eight torturous years of piano lessons, at the end of which she mechanically played concertos through which her parents smiled bravely.

“I used to love to listen to him,” Carrie said. “I’d sit and color and he’d play the most beautiful music.”

“While I embroidered,” her mother agreed. “I loved those evenings.” She sighed. “He’s got more energy than he did before the procedure, but still he tends to come home, eat dinner, read the newspaper and go to bed. Your father’s getting too old for twelve-hour workdays.”

“Do you want me to talk to him?”

“Would you?” Her mother sounded so hopeful, Carrie wondered if this was why she’d invited her to lunch today. Not that they didn’t see each other regularly, of course, but this invitation had sounded more formal than most.

“Of course I will, Mom! I was hoping he was more himself.”

“I think he is himself. Unfortunately that self is seventy years old, and he doesn’t like to admit it.”

Carrie smiled. “Any more than you want to admit you’re sixty-six. Surely you’re hiding more than a few gray hairs.”

“Certainly not,” her mother said with dignity, then chuckled. “Actually I shudder when I see my roots. I suppose one of these days I should concede to nature. I can’t possibly go to a nursing home and not be gray, can I?” She slathered raspberry jam on a biscuit. “You haven’t said a word recently about Craig. How is he?”

The moment had come. Carrie had had her own agenda for today’s visit. Mom’s invitation had been perfectly timed.

Carrie took another biscuit herself. “I’m not seeing him anymore.” She made sure her tone was nonchalant, as if she didn’t have a minor ache under her breastbone every time she thought of their last fight. “He wanted to get married. I’m just not ready.”

“Carrie!” Her mother gaped. “He asked you to marry him?”

“Oh, he’s been asking forever.” She flapped her hand. “But this time he was serious. He wanted me to commit or else. I chose ‘or else.’”

“But…don’t you love him?”

She didn’t know how to answer that question even to herself, but she tried. “I suppose not. If I did, I’d want to get married, wouldn’t I? I do miss him, but…”

“I don’t understand.” Her mother shook her head. “Your father and I both thought…”

“That you’d be planning a summer wedding? Just think of how much money I’m saving you.”

Her mother gave her a reproving look. “I can’t think of anything in the world I’d love more than to plan your wedding.”

Damn it, her eyes welled with tears. She sniffed. “Thank you, Mom. Someday you’ll have the chance. I promise. Just…not yet.”

“We’re not getting any younger, you know.”

Oh God. Guilt. But also, she realized with a yawning pit where her stomach should be, the truth. Her dad’s heart condition had really scared her, making her face for the first time that her folks were aging. Her friends had parents in their fifties, not their sixties and seventies. Carrie’s dad had been forty-four when she was born, her mother forty. A late surprise.

Think how horrible it would be if they weren’t still alive to help her plan her wedding, for Daddy to walk her down the aisle, for her mother to smile through her tears from the first pew in the church. But she couldn’t get married just to make them happy. Lord knows, she didn’t want them still alive to see her divorced.

She took her mother’s hand across the table. “Craig is just part of it,” she confessed. “I’ve felt so restless lately. I’m thinking of quitting my job.”

Her mother looked aghast. “But you haven’t been there that long!”

“A year. And it’s deadly.”

She was a technical writer for a company that manufactured medical instruments. Her prose would not win her a Pulitzer. She bored even herself.

“But it was so perfect!” Her mother was still protesting. “It combines your medical expertise and your wonderful writing skill.”

Carrie had earned a degree in nursing before she’d realized—let herself realize—that she didn’t want to be a nurse. She’d grown up saying she wanted to be a doctor—a doctor and a ballerina, she’d told her kindergarten class—but her grades and test scores had hinted that medical school was not in her future. Given that Mom had been a surgical nurse when she met Julian St. John, nursing was the obvious backup. In their household, dinner table conversations were often about new surgical procedures or methods of pain control.

But Carrie had discovered that she was squeamish. She still shuddered at the memory of having to clean and pack an obese nursing home patient’s cavernous bed sores. She’d fled to the bathroom and thrown up afterward. Nonetheless, she did work for a year on a pediatric ward at an area hospital, where she fought a daily battle with her dislike of feeling subservient. Taking temperatures, installing IVs, stepping deferentially back when the doctor arrived… Ugh.

She’d gone from pediatric nursing to working in the genetics lab at Children’s Hospital, but that got boring once she quit marveling at the fact that she was looking at strands of DNA. From there she’d accepted the job at Helvix Medical Instruments.

Now, to her mother, she said, “I don’t even know if it’s the job. I just need a change. You know me. Constancy isn’t my middle name.”

“But…why?” her mother asked in perplexity. “Did we let you flit between interests so much that you never learned to stick with anything once it lost its novelty?”

That stung, although she tried to be honest with herself. Did she leave jobs and even relationships once the first excitement wore off?

Maybe.

She hated to think she was that shallow. But she didn’t know how else to explain the way she chafed whenever she looked around and thought, This is it. This is my life. She kept thinking the next job would be different, that she’d find where she fit. For a long time, she’d thought she did fit with Craig. Or perhaps she’d wanted him to be a fit, because he was so perfect.

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 wouldn’t be caught dead in front of a camera!” Her laugh was a gurgle of good humor. “This was a fantasy, remember. The whole point is, I was someone else because a more glamorous set of parents had given me the right opportunities.”

The hesitation before she said “parents” was so small most people wouldn’t have noticed it. Mark was used to noticing everything.

His client, he suspected, never thought of her aunt and uncle as parents, even if they had raised her. He doubted she’d ever quite thought of the fictional couple who adopted her as parents, either. Because, of course, she had parents, and probably still mourned them.

Miles and Jeanne Fulton owned a 1970s era rambler with, Mark noted with interest, a razor-edged lawn, a row of junipers ruthlessly clipped into a low hedge and a driveway that was cleaner than most people’s kitchen floors.

Suzanne Chauvin’s house represented a little bit of a rebellion against her aunt and uncle’s standards, he diagnosed.

The aunt, a woman who looked much like an older version of Suzanne, met them fluttering at the door.

“I don’t know what else we can possibly tell you!” she said in agitation. “Your uncle hates to have all of that dredged up again.”

Mark said, in a calming voice, “We’re hoping you’ve had time to remember a little more since Ms. Chauvin first asked you about the adoption. Memories do tend to come back slowly, bits and pieces just popping up.”

“Well, yes, but…” Wringing her hands, she backed into the small kitchen. “Your uncle’s in the living room.” As if they couldn’t hear the television. “Go ahead. Can I bring anyone coffee?”

They both accepted, more to make her happy than because either of them wanted it.

The house was small, probably not over twelve hundred square feet was his guess. Suzanne had told him there were only three bedrooms and a bathroom down the hall, along with the living room and a kitchen with a large eating space that he could see. Admittedly not much space to raise even three kids, never mind five.

On the other hand, Mark had known people to rough-in a bedroom in a garage, throw up a small addition, or move when their family enlarged.

The uncle rose to greet them and briefly gripped Suzanne’s hand. Perhaps five feet eight inches, he was lean but strong looking, with a tattoo that appeared to be from Navy days on one bicep below the sleeve of his white undershirt. His hair was as ruthlessly trimmed as the lawn and the junipers, a graying brown buzz-cut. Deep furrows marked his forehead.

“So what’s this nonsense?” He jerked his head toward Mark. “A P.I.? You’re wasting hard-earned money to hire someone to find a couple of people who won’t even know who you are?”

Mark felt her stiffen beside him. “Whether they remember me or not, they’re my sister and brother.”

He snorted. “Goddamn foolishness, if you ask me.”

Nobody had. Both were too polite to say so.

He sat back down in a recliner that dominated the dark-paneled living room.

Suzanne gave Mark a glance in which he read apology, dismay and a question: Now what? He nudged her toward a love seat and they sat side by side, facing her uncle Miles.

His wife, appearing with a tray, said, “For goodness’ sakes, Miles! Turn off the TV.”

So she wasn’t completely cowed.

He scowled at her but complied.

She set down the tray on the coffee table and let them all take a cup and add sugar or cream. Mark sipped his. Instant. Not even the good strong stuff you found in rural cafés, and sure as hell not the espresso he made at home. He set his cup down.

He opened the briefcase he’d brought just to look official and took out a notepad that he rested on his knee. The click of his pen made the aunt jerk.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” he began. “Ms. Chauvin, your niece, has hired me to find her sister and brother. My agency specializes in finding adoptees or birth parents. This shouldn’t be a difficult quest.”

Dead silence. The aunt stared at him as if he were toying with the pin on a grenade. Uncle Miles simmered, shifting in the recliner, his fingers flexing on the armrests. Obviously neither was real happy to learn that Mark thought he could find their long-lost niece and nephew.

He cleared his throat. “However, it appears that Ms. Chauvin had some mistaken information. She believed that an attorney, Henry Cavanagh, had handled the adoption. I was able to locate his files and discovered that he was involved in very few adoptions. Your niece’s and nephew’s were not among them.”

The aunt gasped, “Oh dear! I thought… Didn’t we put it in his hands, Miles?”

“We never told you he did anything but give us advice. Some agency took those kids. And they were glad to have ’em! Said there were people pining for cute young kids. You were too old,” he said directly to Suzanne, “to be as appealing.”

Mark’s jaw tightened. Son of a bitch.

Suzanne’s aunt squeaked in protest.

Uncle Miles harrumphed. “Anyway, Jeanne always wanted a daughter. I guess they would have taken you, too, but it never came up.”

“What agency took them?” Mark asked as if the question wasn’t the grenade that had Aunt Jeanne twitching.

The Fultons looked at each other.

“Oh, I’m not sure…” Aunt Jeanne pressed a hand to her chest as if to still palpitations. “Miles…?”

He glowered at his niece and Mark. “What if we choose not to cooperate in this wild goose chase?”

“I’m very good at finding people. I will find Linette and Lucien.” Mark paused. “I know when I do they’ll want to meet you, their blood relatives. To make a connection, and to find out why you were unable to take them into your home. The fact that you did everything you could to help my client find them will make a big difference in how they view you initially.”

They got what he was saying. He saw Miles Fulton swallow, heard his wife’s stifled sob.

“Come,” he said. “Aren’t you curious? Won’t you be glad to find out what they’re like now?”

In a thick, frustrated voice, Uncle Miles said, “It was called Adoption and Family Services. Based in Everett.”

Mark had worked with the organization before and found the staff willing to cooperate within the limits of the law.

“Satisfied?” Miles Fulton snapped at his niece.

She met his furious gaze with a dignity that Mark admired. “I will be as soon as you sign a waiver so that they’ll open the records.”

Handy to have a client who’d educated herself. Without a word, Mark pulled out a waiver he’d already typed up and handed it, with a pen, to Miles Fulton. Suzanne’s uncle signed with an angry slash, handed it to his wife and stalked out of the living room.

CHAPTER THREE

MAKING THIS KIND of phone call was one of the easy thrills of his line of work. No complications or hurt yet, just simple joy.

Rotating his chair so that he gazed out his window at Lake Union and the Fremont Bridge, presently open to let a tall-masted sailboat through, Mark dialed. “I have news,” he said without preamble. “Ready to hear their names?”

“You have them?” Suzanne sounded awed. “Already?”

“Once we had the name of the agency and your aunt and uncle’s waiver, there wasn’t anything to it.”

“We’d never have had that if it weren’t for you.” She was quiet for a moment. “Were they adopted together?” When he told her they hadn’t been, she let out a soft, “Oh.” Then, “Please. Tell me the names?”

“Lucien was adopted by a family named Lindstrom. I haven’t found his first name yet. Your sister has grown up as Carrie St. John.” He let her take that in, then said gently, “Suzanne, she lived right here in Seattle. I looked up her adoptive parents. They have a place on Magnolia. Her adoptive father is a doctor. A cardiac surgeon.”

Magnolia was a hill that was virtually an island in the Sound connected to the city only by two bridges. It was also one of Seattle’s wealthiest neighborhoods, made up principally of gracious old brick homes with spectacular views of the Puget Sound, the Seattle waterfront and Vashon Island.

His client didn’t care about the wealthy part. All that mattered to her was her sister. “You…you found her?” she whispered.

“I don’t have an address or phone number for her yet. I can contact the adoptive parents, but I wanted your permission to do that.”

“She was that close?” Suzanne was openly crying. He could hear the tears thickening her voice. “If I’d known, I could have just driven to Seattle?”

“She’s been that close all along. Her parents still live at the same address they were at twenty-five years ago.”

“Oh, dear. Can I call you back?”

She did, fifteen minutes later, still sounding watery but more composed. “I had to take it all in. I’d begun to think I would never find her. Carrie. Is that what you said her name is?”

“Carrie St. John,” he repeated.

“And her adoptive father really is a doctor? That was true?”

He rocked back in his chair. “Yep. A surgeon. So she grew up with money.”

“What…what do we do now?”

“We need to plan our next step. I can try to track Carrie down without speaking to her adoptive parents. I can approach them. Or you can approach them.”

“You mean, just call them out of the blue? And say, ‘I’m Carrie’s real sister?’”

“Yep.”

“Wow.” She gave a shaky laugh. “Isn’t it funny? I wanted this so badly, and now I’m terrified!”

They talked about how she felt, with him reassuring her that it was natural. She’d dreamed all her life about finding her sister and brother, but dreams weren’t the same thing as being only a phone call or two from actually meeting her sibling.

“Will you do it?” she finally asked.

“Talk to the adoptive parents?”

“If you think that’s the best thing.”

“I do. They may not be pleased, but there’s always the chance they’ll think this is a good thing for her, and they’re certainly the best go-betweens. Besides, if we bypass them, they’re more likely to be hostile to your appearance in Carrie’s life.”

He heard her take a deep breath.

“Okay. Do it.”

MARK CALLED TWICE that afternoon, getting only voice mail and choosing not to leave a message. At five-thirty, he left for home.

Michael was in half day kindergarten this year. He attended the morning session and was home by twelve-thirty. Mark considered himself amazingly, miraculously lucky to have found and been able to keep a young woman who stayed for the afternoon with Michael, put dinner on and cleaned house besides. Heidi was often willing to watch Michael evenings, as well. She was working gradually on a degree from the University of Washington.

When he walked in the door of his house in the Wallingford neighborhood, only ten minutes from his office, his son and their dog both raced to meet him.

Daisy skidded to a stop, her tail whacking Mark’s legs, her butt swinging in delight.

“Dad! Dad!” Michael shouted, leaping into his father’s arms with the full trust that he’d be caught. “I can read! I read ‘cat’ today. And ‘bat’!”

“Hey, that’s fantastic.” Mark gave him a huge hug, kissed the top of his head and swung him back to his feet. He scratched the top of Daisy’s head and got slopped with her long, wet tongue in reward.

Daisy had joined their household two years ago, after Emily died. The house and Michael both had become painfully quiet. Grasping at straws, one day Mark had thought, a dog. Every boy needed a dog. And right now, some unconditional love and companionship would be invaluable.

So they’d gone to the shelter with the intention of picking out a puppy. Daisy, a middle-aged Spaniel and God knew what mix, had entranced Mark’s three-year-old son more than the heaps of fat, sleepy puppies. Instead of being scared when her tongue swiped his face, he’d giggled. The first giggle Mark had heard in months.

“We want her,” he’d told the attendant.

Some idiot had surrendered her because they were moving to a no-pet apartment. He couldn’t imagine how you could have a dog as loving, eager to please and well-behaved as Daisy and be willing to discard her like a couch that didn’t fit into a new living room.

Their loss, his and Michael’s gain. She was part of their family now.

So was Heidi, as far as he was concerned.

As usual, dinner was in the oven and smelled damned good. Sometimes she stayed to eat with them, but tonight she appeared right on Michael’s heels, her bookbag already swung over her shoulder.

“Um, Mark? Can I talk to you for a minute before I go?”

Surprised, he disentangled his son and gave him a gentle push. “Go find a book. You can read to me before dinner.”

“Okay!” the five-year-old declared, and raced for his bedroom.

“What’s up?”

Heidi was short and a little plump. She had mousy brown hair, wire-rimmed glasses and ears that stuck out, making him think of an elf. She also had a laugh as carefree as Michael’s and the willingness to play with him by the hour as if no demand on her time was great enough to keep her from wanting to built a Lego spacecraft.

“Well, you know Peter?” She held out a hand at him. “He asked me to marry him!”

Good Lord. A diamond winked on her finger. Mark looked up to see the glow on her face and, despite his own dismay, he grinned and hugged her. “Congratulations! When’s the big day?”

Not too soon. Please, not too soon.

“Peter wanted to get married in June. But I talked him into waiting until September. So Michael’s in first grade. I want to keep working for you, but…but maybe not as many hours. You know? Once he’s in school all day, maybe he could go to after-school care sometimes, when I’m busy.” Her voice faltered and her glow dimmed. “Unless, um, unless you want to find someone else to be full-time.”

“Someone else? We could never replace you. You’re a saint. If you can stay on days through the summer, we’ll figure it out from there. Tell Peter thank you for being patient.”

She chuckled and, looking pleased with herself, opened the door. “See you in the morning!”

He had one hell of a mixed bag of emotions after she left. He’d grown fond of Heidi and was genuinely happy for her, but she’d also scared him. He didn’t like realizing quite how dependent he and Michael were on her; it made him feel a little resentful.

He thought he’d buried most of his anger at Emily, but surprised himself now with a burst of stomach-clenching rage. She’d done this to them. Left them alone. Some inner need had been way more important to her than her husband and son were, and he couldn’t get past that.

Shoving the mess of emotions out of sight, as he’d had to do for Michael’s sake since the funeral, Mark went to the kitchen and peered in the oven to see what was cooking. Then he listened to Michael sound out not just “cat” and “bat” but also “fat” and “rat.”

Feeling like every other overanxious parent, he asked, “Is everyone in your class starting to learn to read?”

“Annie already reads,” his son said. “And Kayla, too. They think they’re better than everyone else.” He added grudgingly, “I guess they are better readers. But lots of the kids can’t remember letter sounds. I sounded out b-a-t all by myself. Miss Hooper got really excited.”

Embarrassed at himself, Mark relaxed. Okay, so his kid wasn’t the most advanced in the class. But apparently he was doing better than most. And didn’t researchers say that girls usually started to read sooner than boys? Michael would be kicking Kayla’s butt by the time they took their SATs.

Over dinner, they talked about Heidi getting married, which worried Michael a little bit. “Will she have her own kids?” he asked.

“She probably will, eventually. She’ll be a great mom, don’t you think?”

“Yeah.” The boy was silent, his head bent over his plate. Finally, in a small voice, he said, “Sometimes I wish she was my mom.”

Mark’s heart contracted. “Well, in a way she is, isn’t she? Except, it’s a little like we’re borrowing her,” he explained. “Like a library book. We know we can’t keep it forever but we can sure enjoy it while we have it.”

Forehead creased, Michael looked up. “You mean, she’ll go away sometime. Like Mommy did.”

“Hey. Come here.”

His son slid off his chair and came to Mark, who lifted him onto his lap.

“Heidi won’t go away like Mommy did. It’s just that she’ll get married, and someday she and Peter will have children of their own. By that time you’ll be such a big boy, you won’t need someone to take care of you after school. And you know what? I bet Heidi will always be a good friend.”

The worried face looked up at him. “She won’t die. Right?”

“I hope Heidi won’t die until she’s an old, old lady.”

The five-year-old pondered that. “Okay,” he finally agreed. “But…is it okay if I pretend sometimes that she’s my mom?”

Damn. Mark should have guessed that any kid Michael’s age would be thinking like this. Remarrying wasn’t something he’d given any thought to; hell, he’d hardly been on a date since Emily died. But clearly Michael would be delighted to have a new mother.

“Yeah,” Mark said softly. “It’s okay to pretend. And you know what? We’ll have to think of something really special to get her for a wedding present.”

“Yeah!” Michael squirmed to get down. “Can I have dessert?”

Mark let him watch a video while he ate his cookies. In the kitchen, the sound of the TV muted, he dialed Dr. Julian St. John’s phone number again. This time, a woman answered. “Hello?”

“Is this Mrs. St. John?”

Sounding wary, she said, “May I ask who is calling?”

“Mark Kincaid. I’m a private investigator, Mrs. St. John. I’m actually trying to find your daughter, Carrie. I know that she was adopted…”

“What business is that of yours?” she asked with unmistakable hostility. “Why are you looking for my daughter?”

“Her sister would like to meet her…”

“Carrie has no sister. Please don’t call again.” The line went dead.

O-kay.

He shook his head and hit End. Her daughter was twenty-six years old, not a small child. Why would she feel so threatened by the mere idea that a member of Carrie’s birth family wanted to contact her?

He understood all too well how adoptive parents felt when the child was younger. It was natural to be scared of losing your child, emotionally if not legally. Maybe blood did call to blood; maybe the child you’d raised would see immediately what a fraud you were, pretending to be a mother or father.

But the St. Johns had had Carrie for twenty-five years now. They’d comforted her when she was a baby, helped her with homework and science projects, met her first date, smiled through their tears when she appeared in her prom dress. Did they really fear they could still lose her?

Yeah, he thought with a sigh. They did. He’d run into this over and over. Adoptive parents rarely felt secure. They did often feel like frauds.

Face it, he often felt like a fraud.

It was as if the original failure—the infertility, the miscarriages, the lazy sperm—poked a sliver of doubt beneath the skin, where it couldn’t be seen or even felt most of the time, unless you turned your hand just so, putting pressure on it, and felt it stab your flesh.

Ironic, wasn’t it, that an adoptive father spent his life helping birth families reunite. Once in awhile, he gave himself nightmares.

Glancing at the clock, he called, “Bath time!”

Tomorrow, Mark decided, he’d call Dr. St. John at the hospital. He might feel differently from his wife. He might at least be willing to hear Suzanne Chauvin’s reasons for wanting to meet her sister.

“I DON’T KNOW who you are,” Dr. St. John said, “but we were promised a closed adoption. Carrie is our daughter. We’re her family. How much plainer can I be?”

“Carrie is an adult now. Surely she feels some curiosity about her birth parents. As you’re aware, they’re dead, but Carrie did have a sister and a brother…”

“She isn’t interested. She never has been. I won’t have you upsetting my wife and daughter this way. If I have to get a restraining order, I will.” His voice hardened. “Stay away from my family, Mr. Kincaid.”

More dead air. The St. Johns did like to hang up on people.

Mark called Suzanne to let her know he’d have to find Carrie another way. “They’re scared,” he said. “You should have heard the panic in the mom’s voice.”

“But I’m not Carrie’s birth mother! I’m no threat.”

“Yeah, you are. You’re a reminder that she had another family. A shadow life, if you will. One that could have been. Your very existence threatens their intense need for her to be their daughter, and their daughter alone. They made her. They hate to think about the other people that had a part in who Carrie is. They want to be like other parents.”

“You understand so well.”

Because she couldn’t see him, he let his mouth curl into an ironic smile. “I’ve talked to plenty of adoptive parents along the way.” He hesitated. “There’s another possibility to explain their panic.”

“What?”

“That your sister doesn’t know she was adopted.”

Silence. Finally, “But… I didn’t think people ever did that anymore!”

“Anymore? They adopted her twenty-five years ago. But yeah, you’re right. It was common in the fifties, say. Not so much by the eighties. No, you’re right. It’s not likely.” Particularly, he thought, since the St. Johns hadn’t moved around, the easiest way to hide gaps in your personal life—like, say, pregnancy. They’d brought home a little girl who was almost a year old. How could they have pretended to neighbors or family that she was theirs?

“Can you find her?” Suzanne asked.

“Now that we have her name, sure I can. I’ll be in touch,” he told her, turning his chair so that he could reach his keyboard.

Ten minutes later, he had an address and phone number.

MAD AT HERSELF because once again she’d failed to give notice, Carrie walked out to her little blue Mazda Miata, a twenty-fifth birthday gift from her parents. It replaced the sporty Nissan she’d driven since her sixteenth birthday.

Unlocking the car, her mood eased. She was so lucky to have them. They had never offered to support her financially one hundred percent, the way her friend Laura’s parents did, because they believed she should find something to do with her life that fulfilled her as a person. At the same time, they were incredibly generous. She’d never had to struggle. And they were amazingly patient with her restlessness, her seeming inability to find a meaningful life goal.

During the drive home, she reverted to her earlier preoccupation. She should have quit today, the way she’d vowed to do. But…she wished she knew what she wanted to try next. Maybe something completely outside the medical field. Probably that had been her mistake in the first place. Her parents had never dictated what she should do with her life or what she should major in, but she’d wanted to follow in their footsteps and never even seriously considered anything different. It would have been smarter to go her own way. Maybe then she wouldn’t be twenty-six and as ignorant as your average college freshman about what she wanted to be when she grew up.

She stopped for a few groceries at Larry’s Market before going home. Her apartment was in Bellevue, only a couple of miles from work. She liked Seattle better, though, where so many neighborhoods had such character. Once she gave notice, she’d look for a new apartment, too.

Thinking about where she’d like to live—maybe Greenwood, which felt like a small town yet still had the energy and diversity of the city—Carrie didn’t notice the man who followed her in until she had her key in her door.

“Ms. St. John?” he asked, from uncomfortably close behind her.

Startled, she swung to face him, then thought, I should have gotten the door open first. But she could scream; there must be neighbors home.

“Yes? Who are you?” How did he know her name?

Tall and strongly built, with straight brown hair that needed a cut, dark slacks and a brown leather bomber jacket, he didn’t look like a mugger or rapist. He didn’t look like the doctors and researchers she knew, either. Or one of the businessmen or attorneys she saw downtown. Heart pounding, she waited for his answer.

“My name is Mark Kincaid. I’m a private investigator.”

Oh, she thought. How funny. That’s exactly what he did look like. An investigator or undercover cop from one of the mystery novels she read voraciously. She should have recognized him right away.

The wash of relief was immediately supplanted by new wariness. What did he want with her?

“Are you investigating one of my friends?”

He had a nice smile that softened a face that had been too cynical. “I’m afraid you’re the person I’ve been looking for, Ms. St. John. May I explain?”

Her key was still clutched in her hand. Bags of groceries sat at her feet. “I don’t know you.”

“You shouldn’t ask me in.” He was firm. Warning her? “After you’ve put your groceries away, can we meet somewhere? Is there a coffee shop nearby?”

“How about the food court at the Crossroads Mall?”

“Smart.” He nodded. “Lots of people around.” He backed away. “I’ll look for you there in half an hour?”

“Half an hour,” she agreed.

He walked away without looking back. Hand shaking, she unlocked her door, scooted the grocery bags in with her foot, then closed and locked it behind her. She felt a little unnerved by the encounter, even though he hadn’t threatened her in any way. Well, how often did she have a stranger who knew her name approach her outside her own door? He must have been waiting outside for her to come home and then followed her in.

A private investigator. How strange.

She put away the groceries quickly, one eye on the clock. Maybe she should call her dad, just to be sure someone knew where she was going and who she was meeting.

But she wasn’t afraid of Mark Kincaid, investigator. The busy food court in a mall was probably the world’s safest place to talk to someone. And somehow…well, she wanted to know what this was about before she told her parents about him. Because it was odd, to have a real P.I. say he’d been looking for her, of all people.

She heard the Pakistani couple who lived next door coming home, and used the opportunity to leave her apartment while the hall wasn’t empty. Outside, she was relieved to see another resident just getting out of his car. She hurried to her Miata before the middle-aged man made it inside.

Okay, maybe she was just a little bit afraid.

But he wasn’t lurking in the parking lot, and she drove the half mile without incident. If someone was following her, she couldn’t tell.

Crossroads was a small mall that catered to a different crowd than the upscale Bellevue Square, where software millionaires shopped and BMWs were more common in the parking lot than Fords. Inside she heard as many foreign languages being spoken as she would have in the international lounge at the airport. There seemed to be lots of Indians and Pakistanis in the area, as well as Vietnamese and lately Russian immigrants. As a result, the food court had more varied ethnic cuisines than the average mall.

She spotted him right away, sitting at a small table on the periphery. He looked relaxed, his legs stretched out, one hand wrapped around a Starbucks cup, but something told her it was a pose. Most people who sat alone had their heads bent, their thoughts private; they might be reading a newspaper, or staring blankly into space. Guys watched pretty girls, people looked for friends, but they didn’t scan the crowd as if there might be a terrorist in it. Mark Kincaid’s gaze moved constantly, assessing and dismissing. No one neared him without being unobtrusively inspected.

The next moment, he saw her. Their eyes met, and she felt a peculiar flutter of…something. Alarm, but she didn’t know the cause. Then he smiled and nodded and she told herself she was being silly.

She bought a latte at Starbucks before wending her way to his table and sitting across from him.

“All right, Mr. Kincaid. Please tell me why you’ve been looking for me.”

“I was hired by your sister to find you.”

“Sister?” Silly to be disappointed, but she was. It had been a little bit exciting to be the person he was looking for. “I don’t have a sister.”

He frowned. “Your parents didn’t tell you? Surely they knew.”

Huh? Okay, she could buy that they might never have told her if she’d had an older sister who was stillborn. That might make sense, given the ages they’d been when they had her. But how could this guy say, Surely they knew? Of course they’d know if they had another child!

Anyway, she thought in confusion, if she’d had a stillborn sister she was by definition dead, not alive and hiring a P.I. to find Carrie.

The thoughts pinged around in her head so fast, it was a moment before she realized how illogical they were.

“I don’t understand.”

“You have a brother, too. I’m looking for him as well.”

“What? No.” She shook her head. “You have the wrong Carrie St. John, Mr. Kincaid. Really. I have no brother or sister. I’d remember if I did.”

His brows drew together. “You know, you may be right. There’s obviously some confusion here.”

She should have been glad that he was agreeing, but she didn’t like his hasty retreat. He was actually starting to push his chair back. He seemed so sure she was this other person, and then he’d given up so easily. Too easily.

“Wait!”

He hesitated in the act of rising, then sat back down.

“There’s something you don’t want to say to me, isn’t there? I still believe I’m not the Carrie St. John you’re looking for, but after I came here to talk to you, I think you owe me an explanation of why you thought I was.”

“Ms. St. John, I think you should talk to your parents about this.”

“What am I supposed to talk to them about?” she asked in exasperation. “You?”

“Tell them what I said. See what they say.”

“I know what they’ll say! That you’ve mixed me up with someone else. I don’t want to talk to them. I want you to tell me… I don’t know.” She waved a hand impatiently. “Whatever it is that you suspect.”

His expression suggested that he felt sorry for her. “I’m not sure I’m the appropriate person…”

“Tell me,” she demanded, her alarm making her more determined.

He let out a breath. “All right. Ms. St. John, you do realize you’re adopted?”

She stared at him, then began shaking her head hard. “No. No! You’re wrong. I’m not. I don’t know where you got the idea, but…”

“Your parents threatened to get a restraining order if I approached you. I should have realized they were too upset, under the circumstances. But I convinced myself… Never mind.” He looked at her with compassion. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

“No!” She shoved back her chair, scarcely noticing when she knocked over her latte. The lid fell off and the contents splattered over the table and ran onto the floor. He rose, too, but she backed away. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! No, you’re crazy! That’s why they wanted to get a restraining order.” With venom she added, “I just wish they’d told me to watch out for you!”

The compassion on his face had become pity. “They couldn’t tell you, because then they would have had to admit why I wanted to talk to you. You would have asked questions. They hoped it wouldn’t come to that.”

“They wouldn’t keep a secret like that. You don’t know them!” At this moment, she hated him. “Don’t come near me again, Mr. Kincaid. I’ll call the police.”

She fled, all but running from the mall, looking over her shoulder to be sure he wasn’t coming after her. In her Miata she looked down to see that some of the latte had spattered on her white shirt. She saw it as if from a distance. She was floating outside herself, looking down to see the young woman thrust the key in the ignition with a hand that shook, back out of the slot and accelerate with a squeal of rubber on pavement.

She could not inhabit that body, because then she might actually start thinking. She might remember the sorrow on her mother’s face, just yesterday.

I’m different from you, she’d said.

I know. Tears had stood out in her mother’s eyes. Her voice ached with regret. I know, dear.

She might remember all those times when she’d felt as if her life was a set of clothes that didn’t quite fit, however she squirmed and corseted and padded to make them.

No, she would stay outside herself until it was safe to think.

She parked in her slot and ran up the stairs, wishing frantically that he didn’t know where she lived. She would set a chair under the doorknob tonight, to make sure no one could get in. She’d keep the phone right next to her bed.

Carrie let herself in, turning the dead bolt the instant the door was shut, gasping with relief to have reached sanctuary. If only she’d called her dad before she went to meet this supposed private investigator, she’d have saved herself some grief. She couldn’t even remember why she hadn’t. She trusted her parents.

A sob escaped her. In the middle of the living room, she let her purse drop to the floor, her hands suddenly nerveless.

“They wouldn’t lie,” she said aloud, her voice cracking.

Why was she so upset? So scared? She trusted them. She did. He was crazy!

Across the room, she saw the red message light blinking on her answering machine. Heart pounding, Carrie went to it, touched the play button.

“Ms. St. John, this is Mark Kincaid. When you’re ready to talk, my phone number is…”

With a cry of rage and terror, she hit Delete.

CHAPTER FOUR

HOW COULD SHE barge into her parents’ house and demand, “Am I adopted? Did you lie to me?” It would be like asking the man you loved whether he was having an affair. There was no going back from the question.

Soften it. Laugh and say, “I know you’d have told me if I were adopted, so I feel silly even bringing the subject up, but… I am your daughter, right? Biologically as well as legally?”

No. She wouldn’t ask. She didn’t have to. Why on earth was she letting this guy she didn’t even know shake her confidence in who she was?

Carrie moaned and rolled over in bed, pulling a pillow over her head. At this speed, she was going to have to call in sick in the morning. It would be hard to function without any sleep at all.

Pillow pressed to her face, she thought, Okay. Be logical. Analyze.

This Mark Kincaid. Was he really a private investigator? Or was he some con artist pulling a scam, or even some guy using the story to approach her for some creepy reason?

She took the pillow from her face and stared at the dark ceiling. She didn’t like any of those choices. Being the target of a con artist was scary, and a creepy stalker even worse.

If he was legit, at least she wouldn’t have to keep wondering whether her dead bolt lock was really adequate. But in another way, that possibility was the most frightening of all.

With a sigh, she flicked on her bedside lamp and sat up, feeling with her feet for her slippers. She should have done some research before she went to bed, but since she wasn’t even close to sleepy, she might as well do it now, instead of spending all night stewing.

Leaving her computer booting, she heated water in the microwave for a cup of herbal tea. Chamomile was supposed to make you sleepy, right? Then, with the teabag steeping, she went online and typed, Mark Kincaid—Private Investigator.

Several dozen options popped up immediately and she thought, Oh God, he is legit. There were references to articles in the Seattle Times, the Post-Intelligencer, the Everett Herald. Apparently P.I.s belonged to associations, like everyone else. Who knew there was a Pacific Northwest Association of Investigators, a Washington Association and even a National Association of Investigative Specialists? There were Web sites that sounded like they belonged to adoption search organizations, referencing investigators who specialized in finding birth parents or adoptees. And Kincaid Investigations in Seattle had its own Web site.

She clicked on that one and found that Mark Kincaid and his partner, Gwendolyn Mayer, offered a full range of investigative services, including domestic/infidelity, surveillance, skip tracing, workman’s comp fraud and attorney services. Adoption searches was a specialty.

No photos of the partners, for good reason, she supposed; P.I.s hardly wanted to advertise their faces, considering that following people and doing stakeouts was their line of work.

Mark Kincaid, she read, had been a Seattle Police Department homicide detective while his partner, Gwendolyn Mayer, had a ten year career with the Baltimore Police Department before coming west to join Kincaid Investigations.

Carrie printed the page as well as the one about adoption searches.

She sat back in her chair, trying to think calmly. So, Mark Kincaid probably was who he said he was. Unless somebody was using his name… Unlikely, she decided, remembering the way he’d watched people at the mall. He’d scanned the crowd with the eyes of a cop.

All right, he was legit. But he was wrong. Even homicide detectives-slash-private investigators could be wrong, couldn’t they? She wondered how they got enough information to find out that Baby John Doe had become, say, Baby Ronald Smith. Weren’t records traditionally sealed? She realized she knew very little about the issue. She’d never even had a friend who was adopted.

She clicked on one of the Web sites about adoption searches and read several short articles, followed by a checklist for the search.

Locate your amended birth certificate, she read.

How would you know if your birth certificate was amended? She was reasonably sure she had hers somewhere; she’d needed it to get a passport to take a school trip to Spain when she was in high school and then to go to London for a week with her parents when her father spoke at a conference there.

Apply for medical records from the hospital where you were born.

She didn’t actually know what hospital she’d been born in. With a flutter of panic, she tried to remember whether her mother had ever talked about her birth, or about labor, or even pregnancy.

Formally petition the court to open your adoption records.

She wouldn’t have to do that. If she was the right Carrie St. John, somebody had done the searching for her.

A sister. And he’d said she had a brother, too.

Her heart lurched with anxiety. Ridiculous. He was wrong, that’s all. He had to be wrong. Maybe tomorrow she should call him, hear the story and explain where he’d made his mistake.

Carrie turned off the computer again, rinsed out the mug and put it in the dishwasher, switched off the lights and went back to bed.

She almost managed to put the whole thing out of her mind by focusing on her job search, on where she wanted to live, on trying to decide whether she missed Craig at all.

But at the edge of sleep, when her guard relaxed, she thought, It’s true that I don’t look like Mom or Dad. Not really.

And when she did sleep, her dreams were restless, filled with people who told her they were her mother and father and sister and brother, and even a man who said he was her husband. Faces kept changing, and in bewilderment she started tapping women on their shoulders and, when they turned, asking, “Are you my mom?”

When her alarm went off, she was so disoriented it took her a minute to realize why it had gone off, where she was, why she was supposed to get up.

As tired as she was, she still didn’t have the slightest desire to go back to sleep. She showered, dressed and went to work.

There, grateful for the privacy her cubicle offered, she tried to concentrate. Midmorning, her phone rang.

“Hi,” her mother said. “I was just thinking about you and thought I’d call.”

“Mom.” Her mother never called her at work. “Is something wrong?”

“What would be wrong?” She gave a tinkle of laughter that sounded artificial. “I just wondered if you’d given notice, and if you’ve seen Craig again, and, oh,” she seemed to hesitate, then said in a rush, “if you’re up to anything new.”

“No, I haven’t given notice yet.” And she didn’t intend to today, either, Carrie realized. Right now, this job felt safe, comfortable. Stepping into the unknown wasn’t very appealing at the moment.

“Craig and your dad had a talk yesterday. I thought perhaps he’d have called you.”

“Mom, I can’t imagine Craig ever begging. And I was pretty firm with him.”

“Are you sure you’re not…well, just panicking at the idea of commitment? That’s not an uncommon reaction, you know.”

Was that what this was about? Her mother’s disappointment that she was rejecting the perfect son-in-law? A doctor, even; he and Daddy would have so much in common.

“I worry about you living alone. You do have an unlisted phone number, don’t you? Not just unpublished?”

So that’s what this was about, Carrie thought in shock. Her mother was afraid somebody would be trying to call. Somebody like Mark Kincaid.

She heard herself say automatically, “I’m pretty sure it’s unlisted, Mom. You don’t have to worry.”

Am I your daughter? Her mouth formed the words, but she didn’t say them. Eyes squeezed shut, Carrie felt dampness seep from them. Mommy, tell me the truth!

“I’d…better go,” she lied instead, her voice thick. “Somebody’s waiting to talk to me.”

Somehow she finished the day at work. By the time she got home, it was after five. Maybe Kincaid Investigations stayed open until five-thirty or six. She could at least leave a message.

Assuming she wanted to talk to him at all. The phone in her hand, she closed her eyes, steadying herself. She wanted, oh so desperately, to reject out of hand everything he’d said and the doubt he’d stirred in her, but she couldn’t. Her mother had sounded so…odd. Maybe, most of all, Carrie was unsettled by the knowledge she’d always lived with—that she was quite different from her parents, in looks, temperament, tastes and abilities.

Of course, kids weren’t clones of their parents. The genetic mix that made up any human being was complex. She’d never worried about it before. But now…

She dialed the number she’d taken from the Web site, listened to the options, pressed 3 for “Leave a message for Mark Kincaid” and then said in a rush, “Mr. Kincaid, this is Carrie St. John. I’m sorry I ran out on you. I’m still pretty sure that I’m not the person you’re looking for, but I’m willing to hear what you have to say.” She left her phone numbers, work and home, and hung up.

She had trouble deciding on anything for dinner, trouble figuring out what she wanted to do for the evening. She felt restless, anxious, jumpy. She wanted to talk to somebody, but couldn’t decide who. Stacy, a friend from nursing school, who hardly knew Carrie’s parents? Ilene, her best friend from childhood, who did know them? So well, in fact, that Ilene had gone to Carrie’s mom for comfort when her own parents had split up.

In the end, she didn’t call anybody. It felt disloyal to express doubts based on no evidence whatsoever. She wasn’t even entirely sure why she was taking this so seriously, why she was so upset about it. She should wait until she had some proof one way or the other.

Nothing on TV looked interesting. She changed channels, unable to care about fictional storylines or the absurd drama on reality shows. She switched the set off, cleaned her bathroom, picked up a People magazine and lost interest in it, too. She should have gone to the health club, but now if she worked out she wouldn’t be able to sleep.

The phone rang, and she jumped. She hesitated, then picked it up. Don’t be Mom or Dad, she prayed.

“Ms. St. John? This is Mark Kincaid again.”

“Oh!” she said, absurdly. “Did you get my message?”

“Yeah, I did. I sometimes check them from home. Is this too late for you?”

“No! No. I’m glad you called. I keep thinking about what you said, and…” She shrugged, even though he couldn’t see her. “I just wished I’d let you explain. That’s all.”

“I’d prefer to talk to you in person.”

Knowing she was crazy to suggest it, she still said, “You could come over. I won’t be going to bed for a while.”

He was nice enough to sound regretful. “I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve put my son to bed and it’s too late in the evening to get a sitter.”

“Oh.” Carrie was conscious of a funny mix of emotions. If he had a son, that probably meant he was married. She hadn’t consciously thought of him as someone who would interest her—that was hardly the point—but now she was just a little disappointed. At the same time, she was actually relieved, because the fact that he was a good husband and father meant he was safe.

“Can I meet you at lunchtime tomorrow?” he asked.

“I work in Bellevue…” She stopped, suddenly self-conscious. “I suppose you know everything about me, don’t you?”

“No, actually, I don’t,” he said. “I could have learned more, but once I had your address and phone number, I didn’t look for background. I was hoping you’d want to meet Suzanne…”

“Suzanne?” she interrupted. “Is that my… I mean, is she your client?”

“Yes. Suzanne Chauvin.”

“It sounds French.”

“You could be French,” he pointed out.

Her stomach knotted. She could be. It wasn’t just the fact that neither of her parents were brown-eyed that made her look different from them. It was the golden tone to her skin, the dark, crackling wavy mass of her hair, her quick movements, her petite stature. Breathing shallowly, she thought, I could be French. She didn’t look like a St. John, not like her father did, with his patrician features and natural reserve.

“Yes,” she said, past a lump in her throat. “I suppose I do.”

“In fact,” his voice was gentle, “you look extraordinarily like your sister.”

Her sister. Oh God. In full fledged panic, she said, “Can we talk about this tomorrow instead?”

They agreed on a restaurant and time. She hung up with the terrifying knowledge that she was taking an irretrievable step.

HE MADE A POINT of getting there before her; he invariably did the same at any appointment. Paranoia, no doubt. He liked to look over the surroundings, choose a seat with the best possible vantage point.

He saw her the minute she arrived. The hostess waylaid her, then led her toward his table.

Carrie St. John did bear a remarkable resemblance to her sister, no question. At the same time, she was distinctly her own person.

Neither were tall women, both under five foot four inches. Suzanne was more curvaceous, Carrie slimmer, probably able to go braless. Both had dark eyes and dark hair, but Suzanne’s was smooth and the younger sister’s unruly.

Mark was made uncomfortable to realize that, while Suzanne didn’t attract him, Carrie did. He didn’t even know why. He did know he couldn’t do a damn thing about it, certainly not while he was acting as go-between.

He stood when she approached. “Ms. St. John.”

“Make it Carrie, please.” She took the seat across the table from him and thanked the hostess.

He inclined his head. “Carrie it is.” He indicated her menu. “I see the waitress already on her way. You might want to look that over before we talk.”

She flipped it open, scanned and was able to order a moment later. Then she took a visible breath, lifted her chin and asked, “Why do you think I’m this Suzanne’s sister?”

He opened the folder that sat beside his place and took out a copy of the adoption decree, with her birth name and the names of the adoptive parents highlighted.

Her hand trembled slightly when she took it from him. Her face actually blanched when she looked at it, and he tensed, thinking she might faint. But she only drew a shuddery breath and kept staring at the highlighted names.

When she finally lifted her head, her eyes were dilated, unseeing. “If this is true… Why wouldn’t they have told me?” she whispered.

“Because they so desperately wanted you to be theirs. Maybe they intended to when you got older, then never found the right moment. It would have gotten more and more difficult, as time went by. Maybe they pretended so hard that you’d been born to them that they almost fooled themselves. Maybe they were just afraid.”

She clung pitifully to the one word. “Afraid? Of what?”

“Losing you,” he said simply. “Adoptive parents often feel insecure in a lot of ways. At the backs of their minds is the fear that birth parents might suddenly spring up and want their baby back. Beyond that is the fear that you, the child, won’t love them the same way you would if they were your ‘real’ parents. I’m sure you’ve heard the nature versus nurture argument. Adoptive parents convince themselves that nurture wins. Genes don’t matter nearly as much as experience. They believe they can make you their child in every way.”

“But…they weren’t completely successful.” She sounded heartbroken. “I know I frustrated them sometimes.”

“Yeah.” He watched her with compassion, wishing he hadn’t been the one to bring that terrible unhappiness to her face. “It’s healthier for everyone if the adoptive parents acknowledge that their children are a kind of amalgam. If they could laugh and say, ‘Oh, your birth mom must have been a procrastinator, too,’ or, ‘Maybe your birth father was artistic like you are, because we sure aren’t.’”

“You make my parents sound as if they’re selfish.” Before he could respond, she said with quick anger, “They were selfish.”

“Our food’s here,” he warned her, voice low.

Somehow she summoned a smile for the waitress, who set their plates before them and cheerily asked if she could bring them anything else.

“Thanks, this looks great,” he said.

When the waitress left, he took out a copy of Carrie’s original birth certificate. She accepted this from him, too, staring down at the name of the baby girl. Linette Marie Chauvin, born to father Charles and mother Marie.

“That’s my birthday.”

He didn’t respond. What was there to say? The agency had no reason to alter birthdates, only names.

“Linette Chauvin.” She tried the name out, the voice thin, anguished. “It’s a pretty name.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

She looked back at the adoption decree. “I…this baby…was nine months old when she was adopted. Aren’t babies usually adopted at birth?”

“They might be if the birth mother plans while pregnant to surrender her child for adoption. That wasn’t the case with you.”

“And I have a sister who knew about me. She’s older?”

“Six years older.”

“And…and my brother?”

“He’s the middle sibling. There’s two years between you and him.”

Her breathing was shallow, her gaze fastened to him as if she physically could not look away. “Why?” she asked. “Why were we given up for adoption?”

For the first time, he hesitated. “Wouldn’t you like to hear all this from Suzanne? She’s eager to talk to you.”

“No!” Fear made her voice sharp. She took a ragged breath, then a second one. “No,” she said more quietly. “I’m not ready. I don’t know. Eventually, maybe. But not yet.”

He hid his disappointment. Her reaction wasn’t uncommon in adoptees who were found unexpectedly by someone from their birth family. Meeting a birth relative out of the blue was often difficult. The chances were good they’d see some part of themselves reflected back, as if for the first time in their life they’d had the chance to look in a mirror. There was the necessity of knowing what to say to this person, how to feel. Did the adoptee want a relationship with this stranger whose face was familiar, who was so eager? Or did he or she only want to consent to one meeting? The whole thing was upsetting and confusing, and sometimes the adoptee needed time to adjust.

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