Eve's Daughters (29 page)

“No. I don’t see any resemblance at all,” Grace said. “But look how different you and I are.” She quickly replaced the photo on the desk, peering nervously over her shoulder. Suzanne snatched up the other photo—one of Paul Bauer’s brightly rouged daughters in a cap and gown.

“She would be my half cousin, wouldn’t she?”

Grace massaged her temples. “Do you have any aspirin? I’m getting a monstrous headache.” She heard voices in the outer office and swivelled around in time to see the beaming secretary pointing Principal Bauer toward his office. He wore the same expression as in the photo, clearly displeased to discover uninvited guests waiting for him. He was so stern and unsmiling, in fact, that Grace felt a wave of empathy for any student who had ever been dragged in here to face him.

Sue casually replaced the photo and rose to her feet, confident and poised. “Hello, I’m Suzanne Pulaski and this is my mother, Grace Bradford.”

“They’re tracing their ancestry,” the secretary added, “and they think they might be related to you!”

“Oh? How so?” His tone reflected suspicion, not curiosity.

Grace cringed at the thought of springing unwelcome news on this unhappy man, especially in front of his motherly secretary. But before she could think of a way to handle the situation, her capable daughter took over once again.

“It’s rather complicated, Mr. Bauer. Could we possibly have a few minutes of your time, or should we make an appointment for another day?”

He took a long time to reply—a practiced move, Grace guessed, to force anyone in the hot seat to squirm a little longer. She was beginning to believe she had been better off without a younger brother when he finally looked at his watch. “As long as it isn’t much more than that.”

“Would anyone like coffee?” his secretary asked, plainly looking for an excuse to linger and hear more.

Grace was dying for a cup, the stronger the better. Before she could reply, Suzanne said, “Not for either of us, thank you.”

“No. And close the door.” Paul Bauer waved the woman away, then sank into the chair behind his desk. An uncomfortable silence fell after the door clicked shut. Paul Bauer wasn’t going to make this any easier. Thank God for Suzanne, who possessed the courage to plunge right in.

“As your secretary mentioned, we’re tracing our family roots and they’ve led us here to Bremenville. Specifically, we’re looking for information about Karl Dietrich Bauer. I understand that he was your father?”

“Yes.”

“And that he owned his own drugstore here in Bremenville?”

“It was a pharmacy.”

“Excuse me—
pharmacy
. He was born in Germany in 1894?”

“Yes.”

“And he died about ten years ago?”

“Almost eleven.”

Sue gave a noisy sigh. “Look, I’d rather not have to play Twenty Questions, Mr. Bauer. We would really be very interested to learn anything you could tell us about him.”

“Why?”

Grace decided she’d better enter the skirmish. “This is very awkward, but were you aware that your father was married briefly and then divorced before he married your mother?”

Another long pause. Grace marvelled at his control. She couldn’t guess what his answer would be from his stoic expression.

“Yes,” he finally said. “I was aware of that fact.”

Grace’s stomach flipped over, as if she’d crested a hill at high speed and was about to race down the other side. She spoke the next words quietly to disguise the tremor in her voice. “My mother—Emma Schroder Bauer—was his first wife. Karl Bauer was
my
father too.”

Dead silence. The deeply annoyed expression never left his face.

Grace tried
to
smile. “I guess that makes me your half sister.”

Paul Bauer leaned forward, resting his forearms on his desk, his hands clasped together. This man had mastered the body language of intimidation and power. “You are mistaken,” he said. “My father had no children by his first wife.”

“What an absurd thing to say!” Suzanne cried. “She’s sitting right here in front of you!”

“I can show you my birth certificate if you don’t believe me.” Shaken, Grace fumbled in her purse, then laid the photocopy on the desk in front of him, angry that her hand trembled as she smoothed it out. “See? Father: Karl Dietrich Bauer. That is your father’s name, isn’t it?”

“We’ve already established that fact. But he isn’t your father, Mrs. Bradford.”

His arrogance astounded Grace. “Listen, I’m well aware that my father wanted nothing to do with me—”

“Mrs. Bradford—”

“I came to Bremenville to learn whatever I could about my family—the Schroders as well as the Bauers. I assure you, I don’t want anything from either side. I simply came to satisfy my curiosity and maybe answer some of the questions that my mother could never answer.”

“I understand, Mrs. Bradford.” His icy control made her angrier.

“No, I don’t think you do understand, or you wouldn’t be sitting there telling me that I don’t exist and that we’re not related.”

“Technically speaking, Mrs. Bradford, we are
not
blood relatives. Karl and Frieda Bauer adopted me when I was five days old.”

“I see.” Grace felt all her anger collapse like a half-baked cake. She might have felt a loss at learning that she didn’t have a brother, after all, if it had been anyone other than this ungracious man. Before she could recover, he suddenly went on the offensive, leaning even farther forward, his gray eyes commanding her to hold his gaze.

“And now you will listen to me,” he said. There was no heat in his anger, only piercing shards of ice.

She suddenly remembered how amused her mother had always been by Grace’s fiery temper. When Grace had asked if it came from Karl, she’d replied, “Karl’s anger was ice, not fire—and far more deadly. You can extinguish a fire as quickly as it flares, but how do you survive a chill that freezes your very soul?”

Paul Bauer had learned this behavior from Karl. For the first time in her life, Grace was grateful that she hadn’t grown up with her father. Nor could she imagine Emma married to a man like this.

“I said that I understood your disappointment,” Bauer continued. “When my secretary informed me that you were tracing your ancestry I thought you might be from my birth parents.”

“What about your brother?” Suzanne asked calmly. “The one who lives in Harrisburg? Is he Karl Bauer’s natural son?”

“Leo is adopted as well. There really is no delicate way to say this, but you can’t possibly be Karl Bauer’s daughter. My father contracted mumps as an adult. He was sterile.”

Suzanne shrugged. “Well, obviously, he must have had the mumps after my mother was conceived.”

“He was eighteen.”

Grace picked up her birth certificate and waved it at him. “But it says right here that my father is Karl Bauer.”

“Mrs. Bradford. My birth certificate says the same thing. But he isn’t my real father any more than he is yours.”

Grace felt limp, paralyzed. It required an enormous effort to speak. “You must be misinformed . . . about when he had the mumps, I mean. My mother . . .”

Suzanne stood, shouldering her purse. She tugged Grace’s sleeve. “Come on, Mom. I think we’ve used up our allotted time. Thank you for
all
your help, Mr. Bauer. And good luck finding
your
family.” She yanked open the door and added, “You might check out Iceland!”

Grace extended her hand to shake Paul Bauer’s, aware that the closest she might ever come to touching her father was shaking hands with his adopted son. “It was nice meeting you,” she said. He merely nodded.

Once she was back in the car, Grace replayed all the questions she had longed to ask . . . what was Karl Bauer like, what kind of a father was he, what kind of a man. Did he laugh easily, joyously? Did he lavish love on his children, read stories to his grandchildren? She would never know, but Paul Bauer had certainly given her a few clues.

Suzanne slid behind the wheel but didn’t start the engine. “Are you all right, Mom?”

“I’m fine. And quite relieved to know I’m not related to that horrible man.”

“No kidding. I wouldn’t even put Amy and Melissa in his school, let alone call him Uncle Paul!”

“Can you imagine what a bitter, vindictive woman his mother must have been? Just because she couldn’t have children, she convinced her son that my mother never had any, either.”

“Um, actually . . . she wasn’t the one who was sterile. She had a son by her first husband, remember? The boy who drowned?”

“Oh, let’s just forget it, all right? I need a gallon of coffee and a fistful of aspirins.”

Suzanne made no move to start the car. “Mom . . . you always assumed Karl Bauer wanted to abort you because he didn’t want any children, didn’t like children . . . right?”

“Yes . . . so . . .?” Suzanne was leading her down a path she didn’t want to explore.

“He couldn’t have
hated
children. He adopted
three
of them.”

“People change, I suppose. Maybe he felt guilty for the way he treated my mother and me.”

“But think about it, Mom . . . what would motivate a man to pressure his wife to have an abortion, especially in an era when back-alley abortions were so dangerous, not to mention illegal? The obvious answer . . . the only answer that makes any sense . . . is that Karl didn’t think you were his.”

“What a terrible accusation to make against your grandmother!”

“
I’m
not making it.
Karl Bauer
did. You read the divorce papers; he claimed marital unfaithfulness as the reason. Maybe he really did have mumps when he was eighteen and he assumed he was sterile.”

“And so when my mother got pregnant, he refused to believe her! Good heavens, it all makes sense now. But what a horrible ordeal for Mother! No wonder she wanted nothing to do with him. Nowadays a blood test could prove her innocence, but back then it must have been like a witch hunt. And that would also explain her estrangement from her own family. Karl Bauer must have convinced them that she was guilty too.”

Suzanne didn’t answer. She started the car and slowly drove past the school’s athletic field, past the tiny lawns and shuttered bungalows, turning onto the main square by the firehouse and village library. As they parked in front of the diner, Grace was still venting her outrage.

“I heard about a situation like this at another crisis pregnancy center. The husband had a vasectomy and claimed the baby couldn’t possibly be his. It was horrible for that poor woman to be falsely accused. Both families turned against her, too, until the counselor told her that a simple blood test could prove he was the father. I can’t imagine my poor mother going through such an awful ordeal all alone!”

Suzanne was very quiet. Something was wrong. “What are you thinking, Suzanne?”

“Suppose you really aren’t Karl Bauer’s daughter?”

“Suzanne!”

“But it would explain so much—why Karl wanted to abort you, why Grandma’s parents wouldn’t help her, why she left and never came back. If she were innocent, don’t you think she’d try to defend her reputation?”

“I refuse to believe that my mother would lie to me all these years, much less have an affair! If she had a mystery lover, why not marry him once the divorce was final?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? He must have been married to someone else.”

“I can’t believe you’d accuse your grandmother of . . . of . . .”

“Adultery? That’s what the divorce papers said. And remember how restless and unhappy Grandma said she was?”

“Impossible! I don’t believe it! We’ve seen enough of Karl Bauer’s son to get a glimmer of what Karl must have been like. My mother was falsely accused. Besides, why saddle me with his name if he wasn’t my father?”

“Mom, it was 1925. Single motherhood was hardly in vogue back then. And Grandma was still legally married to him when you were born. The divorce wasn’t finalized until 1926, remember?”

Grace rubbed her throbbing temples. “I’m tired of this whole mess. If my mother says Karl Bauer is my father, then he is.”

“But what about Grandma’s strange words? They’re what started all this in the first place. She said, ‘
Your father loved you more than life itself
.’ Does that sound like Karl Bauer to you? And I heard Aunt Vera say that you looked like your father, but I don’t see any resemblance between you and Karl Bauer—do you?”

“Suzanne, please. Let’s call the whole thing off and go home.”

“It sounds like Grandma was describing a father who knew you and loved you. Maybe he was the mystery person who filled your coal box.”

“I do not want to pursue this one step further, and I want you to stop pursuing it as well.”

“But there is a way we could find out the truth. . . .”

“How?”

“We could ask Grandma.”

“Absolutely not! You can’t confront an eighty-year-old woman and ask her if she’s been lying all these years.”

“Mom—”

“No, Suzanne. I forbid it. Make up your mind that we’ll never know the truth.”

Grace spent a restless night trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable on the lumpy motel bed. As sunlight edged past the curtains, she rose and retrieved her Bible from her suitcase to read her daily devotions. But the selected passage from Isaiah 28 made her feel even more unsettled, especially verse twenty which accurately described her own state of unrest: “The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you.”

Digging and probing into the past had disrupted Grace’s comfortable life. Disquieting truths poked through like bedsprings, and a wash of doubt had shrunk her blanket of certainty until she could no longer wrap herself up in it. Cold reality seeped in around the edges—the divorce records accused her mother of adultery; her father had not believed that she was his child. As she stood in the shower beneath a feeble spray of water, Grace found herself weeping.

“Where do you want to begin today’s explorations?” Suzanne asked later as they ate a greasy breakfast of bacon and eggs in the Bremenville Diner.

“To tell you the truth, I’d like to go home.”

Suzanne’s lips pursed in annoyance as she scraped jam across her toast. “Just like that? You’re giving up and running home?”