Lost Cause

Rebecca smiled. “No, I really mean it. You’ll be torn two ways if you and I try to sit down to talk. I can easily come back next week. Maybe even later this week. Let me check my schedule. We can talk tomorrow. Okay?”

Suzanne smiled shakily and then gave her what appeared to be an impulsive hug. “Bless you. This is…” her gaze strayed to the impassive man standing beside her, “so amazing.”

“Well.” Rebecca smiled at him, too. What the heck. “Nice to meet you, Mr….?”

“Lindstrom.” He held out a large hand. “Ms….?”

“Wilson,” she replied, as she clasped his hand.

They shook. “Pleasure,” he murmured.

“I’ll call,” Rebecca promised, and left without ever going in the house.

As she drove away, she reflected on what the odds were that her appointment would coincide with the arrival of a long-lost brother.

She briefly wondered if the scene could have been staged, but remembered the shock and blaze of joy on Suzanne Chauvin’s face and dismissed the possibility. Besides, what would have been the point?

No, it was just one of those things.

A minor irritant, like the red light flashing at a railroad crossing when she was in a hurry.

Rebecca smiled. Hey, an optimist would say it was serendipity!

THE REDHEAD REMINDED Gary unpleasantly of his ex-wife. She was prettier than Holly Lynn, and also—judging from her freckles—a genuine redhead, which Holly Lynn wasn’t, as he’d discovered the first time he undressed her. No, it wasn’t the hair that brought back thoughts of his little-lamented ex, but rather the judgmental, holier-than-thou air both wore as if it were Chanel No. 5.

He wondered why she was interviewing Suzanne. Was she a pollster? Loan officer? Journalist? He leaned toward the loan officer explanation, because Suzanne had seemed damned anxious not to offend her.

Ah, well. What difference did it make what the redhead did for a living? Although… He turned and watched her circle her car. She did have spectacular legs, he decided with appreciation.

The woman beside him—his sister—said, “Come in, Lucien. Gary. Oh, I can’t believe you’re here!”

She’d taken him aback with that sobbing embrace. He didn’t think any woman had ever cried on his shoulder before. Certainly not Holly Lynn, who’d departed hissing and spitting but dry-eyed.

He nodded and stepped into the small living room ahead of her. “I hope this wasn’t a bad time.”

“Not if she meant it about rescheduling. And I think she did. Don’t you?”

What the hell did he know about it?

“Sure,” he said with a shrug.

She shut the door and they stood there for a minute, appraising each other.

He saw a dark-haired, dark-eyed, attractive woman whose face gave him a weird, uncomfortable sense of familiarity. It wasn’t that he was seeing his own face. No, while they did bear a superficial resemblance, their coloring similar, he didn’t think it was that.

That wisp of memory, the dark-haired, laughing woman, slipped in and out of his consciousness and he felt a jolt. There it was. She was that woman. Except of course she couldn’t be.

“Do you look like our mother?” he asked abruptly.

Tears brimmed in her eyes again and she nodded. “And you could be Daddy. It’s…extraordinary. Seeing you like this. You have his nose, the shape of his face, his eyes….”

The observation felt like a rough-hewed shim wedged in somewhere, the potential for slivers both making him wary and irritating him. Last he knew, his nose and eyes were his, not someone else’s.

But he knew his discomfort was irrational. Why was he here if not to figure out where he came from and whether he wanted to have any ties at all to these two women who were close blood relatives? So, okay, now he knew he looked like his father.

Check.

“I’m being a terrible hostess,” she exclaimed. “Can I get you something to drink? Why don’t you come back to the kitchen? We can talk there.”

What he’d have preferred was a beer, but he accepted a glass of lemonade and followed her to the kitchen table, sitting and looking at her some more.

“Your sister…our sister,” he corrected himself. “Does she look like you?”

“Yes, amazingly so. Except Carrie is obviously younger. She was the baby, you know.”

He shook his head. “Actually, I don’t remember much. There was a woman. Uh, and a skinny dark-haired girl.”

“Me.”

Wow. Yeah, he guessed it had been her.

“And the baby.”

“Carrie.”

“She and I went to a foster home together. Right?”

“Right. It was awful.” Remembered grief filled her eyes. “You were sobbing, your face pressed to the car window….”

God. No wonder he’d never been all that eager to recall his oldest memories. That one…well, a twisting in his gut told him it was filed somewhere in his head. Just like her face, he recognized her description of that scene.

“So, you were the lucky one, huh?” he said with what he knew to be insolence.

Her expression shadowed again, but he wasn’t so sure it was his tone that caused it. “I suppose so. Uncle Miles and Aunt Marie… Mom’s sister and her husband,” she explained. “They already had two kids, and didn’t see how they could take in three more. Since I was six and had the best sense of what was happening, they felt…obligated.”

The tiny pause was telling, and Gary had his first hint that maybe she hadn’t been so lucky after all. Or maybe she just had a sob story prepared so he couldn’t cry her a river.

“I think they truly believed you would both be adopted quickly,” she continued. “You were so young. I hoped all those years that you’d been able to stay together. I was upset when I found out you were adopted separately. And that you didn’t get a home for over a year after our parents died.”

“So that part was true?” His voice came out rough, as if it needed oiling. He didn’t like thinking about any of this.

“Your adoptive parents told you that much?”

He nodded. “They said my mom and dad were killed in a car accident.”

“It was so sudden. They’d gone to a play, and we were home with a babysitter. I remember a police officer coming to the door.” She seemed to look right through him. “The doorbell woke me and I thought, Why would Mommy and Daddy ring instead of coming in? So I got out of bed and went to the window. I can still see the police car in the driveway, lights flashing. Red and blue and white, hurting my eyes. I think maybe I knew.” She fell silent.

Questions crowded his tongue, but he found he was hesitant to ask any of them. He didn’t like being the supplicant, and that was a little what he felt like right now. Please, please, please, tell me about my mommy and daddy. The questions tangled together, too, until he didn’t know how to lay them out singly. How did you ask what kind of people those parents were? Whether they loved their children? Whether he’d be a different man if they’d lived?