Open Secret

“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?”