Finding Me (21 page)

“Why don’t you bring her by for a cup of tea? She can see the music room, and if she wants to do anything more than that it will be her idea, not yours.”

There were all sorts of alarms clanging in Kelli’s mind right now. But along with that came the idea that she was about to see the inside of the home of the woman who was her mother. When else might she get the chance? “I would love to see your music room and have some tea.”

“It’s all settled, then.” Beth beamed with a combination of pregnancy glow and satisfaction that things had turned out like she’d apparently planned.

Kelli had to admit it. She liked the girl’s spunk. She hoped that before she left here, Beth and Alison might think the same thing about her. Only time would tell.

24

Y
ou wanna have a Popsicle with us?” An adorable little red-haired girl stood on the porch, extending a Fudgsicle toward Kelli, Miss Birdyshaw right behind her.

“A Popsicle? Well, that does sound delicious.” Except that Kelli was in the middle of looking through her research. She glanced back over her shoulder at the kitchen table, covered with the papers. “Let me just go clean us off a spot and you can come sit down.”

“Great.” The little girl shoved right past her and into the kitchen, turning a circle and looking around. “This is a nice place. Real nice. My name’s Lacey, by the way, and I’m new here, too.” She plopped down at the table as Kelli began to scoop up all her research.

“Nice to meet you, Lacey. Please, Miss Birdyshaw, have a seat and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back.” Kelli hurried down the hall, papers in hand. She slid everything under her bed, then rushed out to join the others, making a point to sound calm. “Sorry about that, I’m still sorting through some paperwork
about my move.” She took a deep breath and smiled toward Lacey. “What have you two ladies been up to this evening?”

“Just sharing some Popsicles.” Lacey bit off the top of hers. “What about you?”

“I guess I’m just sharing some Popsicles, too.”

“Was all them papers grown-up stuff?”

“Excuse me?”

“Them papers you put away. You hid ’em real quick when we came in. Mama is always extra sneaky when it’s grown-up stuff—like when she’s drinking that brown stuff or talking on the phone to one of her boyfriends.”

“Well, I . . . yes, I guess that it was grown-up stuff.”

“Know what I think?” Lacey took another bite.

“What do you think?” Kelli sat down and unwrapped her Fudgsicle.

“I think grown-ups only call it that when they’re doing something they’re not supposed to be doing. I’ll be glad when I’m old enough to say that. Some day Mama’ll come into my room when it’s real messy and I’ll tell her we can’t talk about it because it’s grown-up stuff.”

Miss Birdyshaw leaned forward. “Lacey, that’s enough of that kind of talk. Why don’t you tell Miss Kelli about the afghan you’re knitting?”

Lacey started jabbering about the “blanket that me and Miss Birdyshaw are making” and about the blue and orange thread that was “real special.” She took the last bite of her Fudgsicle. “I’m guessing we need to go work on it some more, right, Miss Birdyshaw? Now that we’re done with our ice cream and all. Glad to have met you, Miss Kelli.” And Lacey was up and out the door without a backward glance. She did stop on the porch and wait for Miss Birdyshaw to catch up. “We’ll see you next time we have a Popsicle to share.”

“Thanks a lot, both of you.”

“Don’t mention it. It was a pleasure,” Miss Birdyshaw said as she hurried to keep up. “I’m still looking for a picture of my friend that you look like. I’ll bring it over when I find it.”

“Great. I’d like to see it.”

It could be anyone, Kelli knew that, but somewhere deep inside she had a gut instinct that the picture involved a member of her birth family. If that were the case, though, why would Miss Birdyshaw recognize her and not Beth or Alison? No, she must just be paranoid.

Lacey stopped at the corner, turned, and waved. “Have fun looking at all your grown-up stuff.”

Kelli walked into the duplex and locked the door behind her. Keeping her secret in this town was going to be harder than she’d thought.

On Friday morning, after her first week of work at the store, Kelli was ready to start gleaning some useful information. She made a point of stocking the shelves close to the front so she could engage Kenmore in conversation. “So what did you do before you took over your parents’ store?”

He looked over his glasses at her. “I was a financial planner.”

“Oh, right. Did you work for a big investment company, like Smith Barney, or was it someplace smaller?”

“Considerably smaller. There were only two of us. My partner and me. My wife worked as our secretary until she got pregnant with Shane.” He shook his head and looked away.

“I’m sorry. I know you still miss her.”

“Yep.” He didn’t look up.

“Do you ever miss the job itself?”

“Not one bit. Ever.” That was a stronger response than Kenmore
gave about most anything. Kelli wondered about it but decided it might be time to back off for a few minutes until he’d relaxed his guard a bit.

“Sounds like you made the right choice, then.”

“Yep.” The subject was obviously closed, but Kelli had no intention of leaving it that way for long.

She went to the back and restocked various kinds of tape and car supplies. An hour later, when there were no customers in the store, she decided to try again. “I can’t imagine you working in investments. It seems sort of, I don’t know, uptight for you.”

He smiled at that. “Yeah, it kind of was. I enjoyed it, though. I enjoyed helping people. I especially enjoyed the young couples who had enough foresight to come in and want to make a plan to provide college for their as-yet-unborn children or even their own very distant retirement. Young people with that kind of common sense, the ones with enough willpower to put off a little extra spending fun now for future security—those are the kind of people I like to invest my time in helping.”

This was the longest nonstop string of conversation Kelli had ever heard from Kenmore. “Yeah, I could tell that by the way you hired some stranger you’d never met, who told you that she had just been fired from her job. You like the young people who are well disciplined, that much is for sure.” She folded her arms across her chest and looked at him with a dare in her eyes. Thankfully, he took the bait.

He guffawed. “I guess that doesn’t sound like it makes much sense, does it? But you volunteered that you had been fired, and if ever I want to hire someone it’s because they are too honest for their old boss.” He continued to smile at her. “And to be perfectly honest, there are a few other reasons I hired you.”

“Like what?”

“I guess some people would call it déjà vu. I look at you and
it’s like I remember something I used to know—something that made me happy once.”

Kelli’s heart skipped a couple of beats. She tried to affect a playful tone in spite of what she felt. “Sounds mysterious.”
And terrifying.

The bell above the door jangled, and a family of six walked into the store, effectively ending conversation. Kelli carried her empty boxes to the stock room and hoped she would get a chance to ask more questions later.

It was almost closing time before the flow of people slowed enough to try again. “So you told me the best part about being in investments, what was the worst part?”

He squinted his eyes and looked at her. “Why all these questions today? You’ve talked more today than you have in the past week.”

Kelli shrugged and attempted to look blasé. “Just curious.”

He rubbed the bottom of his chin and looked at her, as if trying to decide how much he was going to say and how honest he was going to be. Finally, he nodded his head. “The worst part of that job was finding out that someone I would have trusted with my life was not worthy of that honor. I guess that’s why your firing story appealed so much to me. Sometimes, looking back, I wish I could start all over again. I can think of so many things I would have done differently. So many times that I knew something was going on that wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t call him out on it.”

“Someone you worked with?” Kelli held her breath, waiting for the answer.

He nodded slowly. “Yes.” He reached up, lifted his glasses with his left hand, and rubbed between his eyes. When he finally looked back toward her, he had a firm set to his jaw. “He ended up leaving us unexpectedly, and the biggest blessing of that was that it
happened early enough to spare his family from finding out the truth.”

The words landed like a blow. Kelli leaned against the counter and took a deep breath.

Kenmore walked toward her. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I guess I’m just tired.”

“Why don’t you go on home for the evening. The last hour is always slow anyway—no reason for both of us to stand around with nothing to do.”

Kenmore never stood around doing nothing, and neither would Kelli. “No, I’m fine really, and I wanted to get that new snack food endcap done before I leave.” She walked away without giving him a chance to argue.

“He left us unexpectedly . . .”
Kenmore could have used that word combination just to avoid the unpleasantness of saying the word
died,
but somehow Kelli doubted it. He had used those specific words on purpose. He knew something. She needed to find out what and how much.

Kelli went home, ate a turkey sandwich, and began looking through her library research. At this point, she’d read through everything several times, but she was still compelled to keep digging. Finally, she made her way toward the box at the back of her closet—the place she both needed and dreaded.

Today’s letter was written from Santa Barbara, and Mimi was referring to her father as Don, not David, so this was obviously after the “accident.”

Mom,

I’m so upset. I don’t know what to do. You’re not going to believe this, because I sure can’t. I found out that Don has been keeping a P.O. box. Not only that, but it’s under a completely different name, and he was subscribing to the local Tennessee papers. You know he was doing that only so he could find out information about his family. He promised me that when we did this crazy thing that he would leave it all behind and never look back, and now this.

He has a safe at our house that he won’t let me anywhere near. I’m pretty sure it has pictures and articles about all of them. I let him bring Kelli along so he could leave without a bunch of regret, and now he pulls something like this. I can’t believe it.

You were right when you said that this was going to be harder than I thought. I’m so mad right now I can’t see straight. I think I’ll go out for the night and have some fun—let him know I am not going to just sit around at home when he acts like this.

I’ll call you tomorrow.

Suze

Kelli looked for the postmark on the envelope, desperately wanting to know when this had happened. Was it not long after they’d left, or was it years later that her father had started looking for information about his past family? But the envelope was ripped and faded and the date impossible to make out.