Open Secret

He snorted. “Goddamn foolishness, if you ask me.”

Nobody had. Both were too polite to say so.

He sat back down in a recliner that dominated the dark-paneled living room.

Suzanne gave Mark a glance in which he read apology, dismay and a question: Now what? He nudged her toward a love seat and they sat side by side, facing her uncle Miles.

His wife, appearing with a tray, said, “For goodness’ sakes, Miles! Turn off the TV.”

So she wasn’t completely cowed.

He scowled at her but complied.

She set down the tray on the coffee table and let them all take a cup and add sugar or cream. Mark sipped his. Instant. Not even the good strong stuff you found in rural cafés, and sure as hell not the espresso he made at home. He set his cup down.

He opened the briefcase he’d brought just to look official and took out a notepad that he rested on his knee. The click of his pen made the aunt jerk.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” he began. “Ms. Chauvin, your niece, has hired me to find her sister and brother. My agency specializes in finding adoptees or birth parents. This shouldn’t be a difficult quest.”

Dead silence. The aunt stared at him as if he were toying with the pin on a grenade. Uncle Miles simmered, shifting in the recliner, his fingers flexing on the armrests. Obviously neither was real happy to learn that Mark thought he could find their long-lost niece and nephew.

He cleared his throat. “However, it appears that Ms. Chauvin had some mistaken information. She believed that an attorney, Henry Cavanagh, had handled the adoption. I was able to locate his files and discovered that he was involved in very few adoptions. Your niece’s and nephew’s were not among them.”

The aunt gasped, “Oh dear! I thought… Didn’t we put it in his hands, Miles?”

“We never told you he did anything but give us advice. Some agency took those kids. And they were glad to have ’em! Said there were people pining for cute young kids. You were too old,” he said directly to Suzanne, “to be as appealing.”

Mark’s jaw tightened. Son of a bitch.

Suzanne’s aunt squeaked in protest.

Uncle Miles harrumphed. “Anyway, Jeanne always wanted a daughter. I guess they would have taken you, too, but it never came up.”

“What agency took them?” Mark asked as if the question wasn’t the grenade that had Aunt Jeanne twitching.

The Fultons looked at each other.

“Oh, I’m not sure…” Aunt Jeanne pressed a hand to her chest as if to still palpitations. “Miles…?”

He glowered at his niece and Mark. “What if we choose not to cooperate in this wild goose chase?”

“I’m very good at finding people. I will find Linette and Lucien.” Mark paused. “I know when I do they’ll want to meet you, their blood relatives. To make a connection, and to find out why you were unable to take them into your home. The fact that you did everything you could to help my client find them will make a big difference in how they view you initially.”

They got what he was saying. He saw Miles Fulton swallow, heard his wife’s stifled sob.

“Come,” he said. “Aren’t you curious? Won’t you be glad to find out what they’re like now?”

In a thick, frustrated voice, Uncle Miles said, “It was called Adoption and Family Services. Based in Everett.”

Mark had worked with the organization before and found the staff willing to cooperate within the limits of the law.

“Satisfied?” Miles Fulton snapped at his niece.

She met his furious gaze with a dignity that Mark admired. “I will be as soon as you sign a waiver so that they’ll open the records.”

Handy to have a client who’d educated herself. Without a word, Mark pulled out a waiver he’d already typed up and handed it, with a pen, to Miles Fulton. Suzanne’s uncle signed with an angry slash, handed it to his wife and stalked out of the living room.

CHAPTER THREE

MAKING THIS KIND of phone call was one of the easy thrills of his line of work. No complications or hurt yet, just simple joy.

Rotating his chair so that he gazed out his window at Lake Union and the Fremont Bridge, presently open to let a tall-masted sailboat through, Mark dialed. “I have news,” he said without preamble. “Ready to hear their names?”

“You have them?” Suzanne sounded awed. “Already?”

“Once we had the name of the agency and your aunt and uncle’s waiver, there wasn’t anything to it.”

“We’d never have had that if it weren’t for you.” She was quiet for a moment. “Were they adopted together?” When he told her they hadn’t been, she let out a soft, “Oh.” Then, “Please. Tell me the names?”

“Lucien was adopted by a family named Lindstrom. I haven’t found his first name yet. Your sister has grown up as Carrie St. John.” He let her take that in, then said gently, “Suzanne, she lived right here in Seattle. I looked up her adoptive parents. They have a place on Magnolia. Her adoptive father is a doctor. A cardiac surgeon.”

Magnolia was a hill that was virtually an island in the Sound connected to the city only by two bridges. It was also one of Seattle’s wealthiest neighborhoods, made up principally of gracious old brick homes with spectacular views of the Puget Sound, the Seattle waterfront and Vashon Island.

His client didn’t care about the wealthy part. All that mattered to her was her sister. “You…you found her?” she whispered.

“I don’t have an address or phone number for her yet. I can contact the adoptive parents, but I wanted your permission to do that.”

“She was that close?” Suzanne was openly crying. He could hear the tears thickening her voice. “If I’d known, I could have just driven to Seattle?”

“She’s been that close all along. Her parents still live at the same address they were at twenty-five years ago.”

“Oh, dear. Can I call you back?”

She did, fifteen minutes later, still sounding watery but more composed. “I had to take it all in. I’d begun to think I would never find her. Carrie. Is that what you said her name is?”

“Carrie St. John,” he repeated.

“And her adoptive father really is a doctor? That was true?”

He rocked back in his chair. “Yep. A surgeon. So she grew up with money.”

“What…what do we do now?”

“We need to plan our next step. I can try to track Carrie down without speaking to her adoptive parents. I can approach them. Or you can approach them.”

“You mean, just call them out of the blue? And say, ‘I’m Carrie’s real sister?’”

“Yep.”