Double Identity (12 page)

Sophie found the excitement and friendliness emanating from Cain’s mother contagious and took an immediate liking to her. She nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“And your mother? Is she with you?” Martha pulled the door back farther and peered outside.

“Mom.” Cain gently grasped his mother’s arm and pulled her back. “Let’s go into the living room. We need to talk.”

Martha glanced back and forth between them. “Of course, how rude of me. Come in. Make yourself at home.” She led the way through the foyer and into a huge, well-lit living room.

Floral arrangements drew Sophie’s eyes to the table in front of the bay window and across the room to the mantel above the stone fireplace. Their light scent provided a clean outdoor ambiance to the room. One thing Sophie did recognize was quality woodwork. The plush, cushioned furniture and expensive tables in the room made a statement of quality as well as comfort.

“Can I get anyone a cold drink? Iced tea? Lemonade?”

After they had selected a beverage and were comfortably seated, Martha said, “I’m sorry for my rudeness earlier. But I’m sure I’m not the only one who points out that the resemblance between you and your mother is striking.”

Heat seared Sophie’s cheeks and she knew she must be lit up like a flashing red beacon. Why was it always so difficult for her to simply socialize like normal people? Why did she always have to feel so awkward and uncomfortable? She hated having these feelings but up to now had lacked the confidence to try and change it. “Thank you, ma’am,” she muttered.

“How is your mother? Is she in town with you? I would love to see her.”

Cain saved Sophie from answering. “Mom, Elizabeth Weatherly died shortly after Sophie’s birth.” He smiled at his mother. “That’s why we’re here. We’re hoping you can tell us about her.”

“Elizabeth’s dead?” Martha’s eyes widened. She bowed her head and took a moment to absorb the information. When she spoke again, she addressed Sophie. “Forgive me, my dear. I’m sure my reaction when I first saw you was upsetting.”

“Mom, how long has it been since you’ve been in contact with Elizabeth?” Cain asked.

“Thirty years,” his mother answered without hesitation. She smiled warmly at Sophie. “She sent me a brief note announcing your birth. She was so proud of you.” Martha sipped her lemonade. “I wanted to write her back. Wanted to send a gift for the baby…um, I mean a gift for you. Unfortunately, Elizabeth didn’t include a return address.”

“Did you ever hear from her again?” Sophie asked.

“No, child. I’m sorry.”

“Thirty years is a long time, Mom,” Cain said. “I know you think there’s a strong resemblance between Sophie and your friend. But how do you know for sure that Sophie is Elizabeth’s daughter?”

Martha’s gaze locked with her son’s. “Because Elizabeth and I were more than best friends. We grew up together. We were inseparable. I loved her like she was my own sister. Right up to the day she disappeared.” She stood up. “Wait right here.”

An awkward silence stretched between them when Martha left the room. Trying to find something to break the silence, Sophie said, “Your mother seems very nice.”

Cain clasped her hand. “She’s okay as far as mothers go.”

She chuckled. Cain might be an expert at many things but hiding his tender feelings for his mom wasn’t one of them. Sophie sighed. How would her life have been different if her mother hadn’t died? Would they still have traveled constantly or would her mother have insisted on settling down? Would she have been able to attend school, meet other children, make friends?

Immediately immersed in guilt, Sophie tried to stop her errant thoughts. She was being selfish. Her father had done the best he could. He was a single parent…of a girl, no less…and he didn’t always get it right. He hadn’t known the first thing about makeup or party dresses. He hadn’t given a second thought to his daughter wanting to attend school dances or to date.

He had never realized how many hundreds of times Sophie needed the advice, comfort or leadership of another female. A bittersweet smile tugged the corner of her mouth when she remembered the many nights she’d cried herself to sleep, missing the mother she didn’t remember.

Martha Garrison carried a shoe box into the room, deposited it on the cocktail table and gingerly removed the lid as if she was opening a secret treasure. She lifted out old greeting cards, letters, scraps of paper, a few pictures and then she smiled. “Here it is.” She withdrew a card yellowed with age and handed it to Sophie.

“It’s the last correspondence I ever had with your mother. I’ve kept it all these years…right in here with all my other life treasures….” She patted the box on the table. “Just in case. I never gave up hope I’d hear from her again.”

Martha picked up the box and cradled it on her lap. “And now her daughter is sitting in front of me and I…” The older woman’s eyes misted. “I feel like someone rolled back the clock and your mother is here again exactly as I remember her.”

Sophie squirmed and lowered her gaze to the card. She didn’t have a clue what she should say or how she should act under the circumstances. Her fingers trembled as she gently ran them over the outside of the birth announcement. Her birth announcement. Written in her mother’s hand. How surreal this all was—the last two weeks felt like a dream and no matter how hard she tried she just couldn’t wake up.

Cain gently took the card from her fingers. His eyes held empathy and understanding. “Let’s look at it together, okay?”

He opened the card. It was a typical birth announcement. Name. Date. Weight. Significantly missing were the parents’ names or any other identifying items such as hospital or home address. At the bottom of the card was a note in handwritten script.

I couldn’t let the happiest day of my life pass and not share it with my dearest friend, the sister of my heart. I miss you so much. I hope you are happy (and that you and ‘the one’ are still together. That way there’ll be a happy-ever-after for both of us). I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. And I’m sorry I can’t let you know where I am. Maybe someday I can. But know that I think of you every day of my life and I miss you.

Elizabeth

Silence engulfed the room. Cain broke it when he looked up at his mother. “The one?”

Martha grinned, “Your father, of course. Elizabeth and I had a code name for him so we could talk about him in his presence without him knowing it.” His mother laughed. “One of Elizabeth’s ideas. It worked pretty well, too. Your father would squint his eyes and glare at me suspiciously, but he never knew for sure we were talking about him so he wouldn’t say anything.”

Sophie took the card back from Cain and addressed his mother. “Why couldn’t she tell you where she was? What happened between the two of you?”

“A man. That’s what happened.” Martha’s mouth pulled into a grimace.

“Maybe your daddy was somebody else. I certainly hope so.”

Sophie inhaled sharply.

“Mom!”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sure the man who caused your mother to leave after her high school graduation isn’t your father. This announcement came six years after she left. I’m certain she came to her senses and married somebody else. I’m doubly sure because she sounds so happy in this note.”

“What happened, Mom? Who was the guy and why did Elizabeth leave Promise?”

“She left because her grandfather had demanded she stop seeing him. And she wasn’t about to stop. She was in love. Foolish. Stupid. But in love.”

“Why did her grandfather oppose the match? Was he a teenager from the wrong side of the tracks?”

“He was no teenager. Elizabeth was the teenager. She was only seventeen and just finished her senior year. He was in his late twenties. Maybe early thirties. He’s lucky her grandfather didn’t have him arrested. Probably would have if he had found out soon enough. But the night after he laid down the law, Elizabeth ran off.”

Sophie mentally calculated the age difference between her mother and father and knew the man was most likely her father.

“But the age wasn’t the thing that had everyone all upset. After all, Elizabeth was going to be eighteen in a couple of weeks, making her an adult. Her grandfather wouldn’t have had a legal leg to stand on,” Mrs. Garrison continued. “It was the other thing everyone worried about.”

“What other thing?” Cain asked.

“Federal agents were looking for him. He was a criminal.”

TEN

S
ophie hitched a breath. “That’s not true. My father never committed a criminal act in his life. He’s a good man. Kind. Compassionate. He begins every morning of his life reading the Bible and praying.”

Cain reached over and clasped her hand. “Sophie, calm down. I know this is hard for you to hear….”

She pulled her hand away and jumped to her feet. “It’s not hard to hear if you want to waste your time listening to lies. I’m telling you it’s not true.”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Garrison said. “I should have chosen my words with more discretion. Besides, dear, I’m sure we’re not talking about the same man anyway. I didn’t hear from your mother for six years after she left town. If your father was the decent, Christian man you describe, I’m sure your mother met someone else…not the man this town knew.”

Sophie glared at Cain’s mother. Pain and anger consumed her. “You
are
talking about my father, Mrs. Garrison. And I don’t appreciate the gossip you’re spreading about him. My dad never broke the law. He never even had a parking ticket.”

Cain wrapped his arm around Sophie’s shoulders, settled her back down on her chair and crouched down until he was at eye level with her. “Sophie.” He clasped her hand and locked his gaze with hers. “Try to be patient. Let my mother tell us what she knows.” He waved a hand to halt her immediate protest. “Or what she thinks she knows.”

Sophie pulled her hand away, withdrew a square of clay from her pants pocket and folded her hands in her lap, her fingers furiously squeezing and releasing the clay. “She’s wrong, Cain. My dad wouldn’t break the law.”

“Sophie…” The deep tenor of his voice raced along her nerve endings and lowered to a soothing rumble. “I need you to think for a minute. Think about the contents of your father’s tool box.”

The blood drained from her face. Her fingers froze. The fake IDs. Lies. Deception. What did she really know about her father? And in that instant she released the breath she’d been holding. Her shoulders slumped in defeat. Did she want to know the truth? Was she strong enough to learn it? She looked into Cain’s eyes. His empathy and compassion was almost her undoing. She nodded and turned her attention back to Mrs. Garrison.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” The woman chewed the bottom of her lip exactly the way Cain did when he was upset or concentrating and Sophie smiled in spite of herself. Cain sat back down and took control of the conversation.

“Mom, you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just that this news is a bit shocking for Sophie. Her father disappeared without a trace a little more than two weeks ago. She’s asked me to help her find him. Anything you know, anything at all, will be a help.”

Mrs. Garrison put her fingers to her face. “But what if Sophie’s right? What if my information is wrong, nothing more than town gossip? After all, I never met the man. Elizabeth kept her relationship a secret almost to the very end…even from me, her best friend.”

Sophie saw a light sheen in Martha Garrison’s eyes. She’d been hurt when her mother had left town, and it was evident some of those feelings were still alive and well.

“Even bad information can be helpful, Mom,” Cain assured her. “At least it will help close another door.” Cain settled back in his chair and crossed an ankle over his knee. “Start at the beginning. Tell us everything you know.”

Martha glanced at Sophie, offered a timid smile and then turned her attention to her son. “I can’t be sure but I think Elizabeth met him during summer break from school. I started to notice a change in her. We used to hang out together all the time and suddenly she wasn’t available. She kept making one excuse after another about why she couldn’t meet me for a swim or take in a movie or just hang out.”

Martha sipped her iced tea. A frown creased her forehead. “In the beginning I accepted her lame excuses that her grandfather needed her to run an errand or do an extra chore. I even believed her when she said she’d taken a part-time job, even though she never did tell me where.” Her weak laugh held no humor. “She saw me just enough to keep me from asking too many questions, but I knew something had changed.

“Elizabeth was always outgoing, optimistic, but suddenly things seemed different, more intense. She was happy, really happy. Her eyes sparkled. She smiled all the time. And I’d catch her sitting by herself gazing into the distance like she was enjoying a secret only she knew. In retrospect, she acted like someone in love.

“So one day down by the pond…matter of fact, I’m pretty sure it was the same day I took that picture…we were picnicking by the water. The other two girls were in the water and Elizabeth and I were lying in the sun. I asked her point-blank if she was seeing anyone. She swore me to secrecy and spilled the beans.”

“What did she say?” Sophie asked.

Martha stared at her for several seconds and then said, “She told me that she’d met the love of her life. That he was a wonderful man and she’d never been happier.”

Martha dropped her gaze and took another sip of her tea. “I was a teenager myself back then. I hate to admit it, but I was jealous. Someone was taking my place with my best friend and I wasn’t happy about it.” Martha smiled. “But when I saw how happy this guy made her, I was ready to try to accept him.”

Cain leaned forward, the tenseness in his body claiming Sophie’s attention. “What was his name, Mom?”

“I don’t remember.”

“What?” Sophie couldn’t hide her disappointment. “How could you forget his name? And why did you think he was a criminal?”

Martha folded her hands in her lap and looked directly at Sophie. “Honey, I was seventeen years old. I don’t have to tell you that was several decades ago. Elizabeth and I only talked about him that one time. She left town the next day and I never saw her again. I’m sorry. I really am.”