Open Secret

“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…”