Open Secret

“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.”