He’d spent a lifetime dealing with that kind of insane fury. These men were more callous and calculating.
So why were they here to kill him?
Because he’d discovered the secret?
But how could they know? He hadn’t told anyone yet. Only left a message on Mark’s answering machine, saying to call him, that he had the answer.
His mind downshifted again, losing the function of logic forever. Only memories swept through his neurons now, unlocked from one cell after another as they winked out.
The aroma of turkey greeted them when Mark opened the front door.
Lucy busied herself with the bird while he stoked the woodstove and opened a bottle of white wine he’d put in the refrigerator before they left.
“It’ll be another twenty minutes,” she announced, holding out a pair of beautifully tapered glasses she’d gotten out of the china cupboard.
He filled them, then raised his in a toast. “Here’s to the first Thanksgiving dinner I’ve had at home in years,” he said, determined not to let his state of mind ruin her efforts at providing a nice evening.
She smiled and curled up in the captain’s chair at the head of the table. She seemed to like that spot. After a few sips of her drink, she said, “Was it your plan to stir up a hornet’s nest tonight, or did those people really get under your skin?”
He didn’t want to talk about it. “Bit of both, I guess. Mostly I’m frustrated at how Braden has outfinessed every official attempt to get at Chaz since ‘seventy-four, mine included. And all that politeness as he pulls it off, I just couldn’t take it – wanted to throw it back in his face. At least now I’ve made the smooth-talking son of a bitch take his fight with me out in the open.”
“You did that all right.”
Not to mention he’d also assured any attempt by that same son of a bitch to drag Cam Roper’s name through the mud would now look like payback. “For what good it will get me,” he muttered.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re no further ahead in what we know.”
She watched him across the top of her glass. “But there’s more than that bugging you.”
Dammit, didn’t she realize he really didn’t want to have this conversation. “Look, Lucy, like I said, the place revived a lot of personal issues for me. Let’s just leave it at that, okay?” He’d sounded far testier than he intended. At least she’d get the point and back off.
To his surprise she laughed, reached across the table, and patted his hand. “Looks to me like it’s you who can’t just leave it at that, judging by the way the Braden bunch gets to you.”
She managed to make them sound like a cross between a popular TV family and a gang of outlaws. It was his turn to laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to take your head off.”
“Purely understandable.” She took another sip of her wine. “My brothers say I’m like a tank when it comes to butting into their private business. Though I am a good listener, and you could do worse than talking to me about that kind of stuff. Believe me, I’m an expert on how the past can come out of nowhere and bite you on the bum.”
She didn’t offer to elaborate, and he didn’t ask, welcoming the light mood she’d created. To his surprise she sustained it throughout the meal and the rest of the evening, engaging him in a relaxed easy exchange of anecdotes about medical school, residencies, and the slapstick side of life and death as it’s sometime seen from inside a white coat.
They moved into his combination living-waiting room, and he lit a fire. For a while they sat quietly side by side on the floor, watching the flames. He felt comfortable with the silence. So comfortable, he decided, it was time to clear up at least one of the many unknowns that worried at him. “Lucy, what were you on the verge of telling me last night, before you left to buy a dress?”
He felt her stiffen. After a few seconds she said, “I haven’t been entirely honest about why I took my elective here.”
He didn’t reply, wanting to hear more, but not about to extract it piecemeal.
“You see, I’ve got ghosts here, too, just as you do,” she continued, “but I’m trying to find mine, not run from them. So what I’m about to say might be upsetting to you.”
The same feeling he’d had two days ago while they were talking in her car, that she was about to cut very close to a vital organ, crept through him, and once more he grew still.
“Where I’ve worked the last seven years, all that sudden death, families ripped apart, and the life-and-death struggles so many thousands went through to reunite with their blood kin, it awakened a similar hunger in me. When I came back, Mom and Dad were great and gave me all the papers they had.
“I’d been adopted from an orphanage in Albany. But after I got my original birth certificate unsealed, the father was listed as unknown, and all attempts to locate the woman registered as my birth mother came to a dead end. The people I hired to find her told me she didn’t exist, that a false name must have been used. They suggested I contact the place where I was born, that the birth records would be more extensive and might give an indication who my mother really was. That led me to Hampton Junction and Braden’s home for unwed mothers. But all my attempts to get the original records from Braden Senior failed.”
She paused and took a sip of wine, keeping her eyes on the flames. “First I went through legal channels. Apparently the records room burned just prior to the place shutting down. Then I went to Braden himself. He apologized, but said essentially the same thing. He even had affidavits attesting to the fire, as others had been looking for records before me. When I asked him to refer me to people who had worked in the place on the off chance they could help me, he said he’d have his secretaries try to find some of his old staff, but in the end told me they hadn’t been able to locate anybody who’d worked there the year I was born. Now maybe I’ve been working around war criminals for too long, but when record rooms catch on fire, or nobody can find the people who worked in a place, that’s when I begin to get a little suspicious.”
Another pause, another sip.
Mark didn’t budge.
“So I moved on to Plan B. Since I was going to do a residency in family medicine anyway, I chose the teaching hospital that offered rural electives up here, intending to find out what I could from the local residents.”
He felt incredulous. He’d been dreading something sinister, yet here was an innocent story that he could hardly believe. “How could that help you?” he asked.
“One thing I did know. My records at Albany were in a red file. The other dossiers were mostly green. The administrator there said she thought the red folders designated a mother from the Hampton Junction area, the color signaling the need for special precautions regarding confidentiality so no one living nearby would learn who in town had been a patient…”
He immediately thought of Nell’s friend. There couldn’t be too many local women who went there. Not that she necessarily might be Lucy’s mother, though that was a possibility. But she might know who else from the area had been in the place. What if Nell were to ask her – no, he mustn’t let his imagination run wild. It was too great a long shot.
“… Now don’t get me wrong. I would have chosen you as my first pick for a rural rotation anyway. The residency program rates a stint with Mark Roper as their top elective, and being here with you and your patients – I adore it. But I also hoped working with you would give me a quick way into the community. I thought that maybe I could find something that would lead me to my biological mother. When I heard about the discovery of Kelly’s body, and that you were investigating her murder, I changed my schedule, bumping my rotation ahead. I figured there’d be no surer way of finding out what I wanted than by getting myself into the middle of what would probably be a major gossipfest, everyone talking about the Bradens and that era, then take advantage of it by steering conversations toward the subject of the home. So here I am. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think my own quest would make any difference to my doing a good job working with you. And I couldn’t be sure you would accept me if I told you my story outright. I hoped after a week or so, once you were satisfied with my performance, I’d be able to confide the rest, and it wouldn’t make a difference to you. And if in the process of trying to find my mother, I helped you dig up something on the Bradens that would help you, so much the better.”