Kindred Spirits (21 page)

They didn’t have far to travel to get to their hotel, twenty miles at most. A pittance compared to the four hundred miles or so they’d clocked so far. But they were tired and it was dinnertime, so the last thing they wanted to do was get back on the road.

“There’s a Douglass Andersson & Sons law office in downtown Calais,” Beth said, checking Carol’s iPhone.

“That’s got to be them,” Mary Kay said. “We’ll stop by tomorrow.”

“We should go bright and early in case Dorfman gets the swift idea of giving Andersson a heads-up,” Carol said. After the doctor’s pat lecture about what was right and wrong for women, she didn’t put it past him to call the lawyer who’d orchestrated the adoption.

“And then, if we get some info, we can start searching for Julia,” Mary Kay said excitedly. “That would be a welcome change after two days of playing the grim reaper.”

Beth said nothing.

“What do you think, Beth?” Mary Kay asked.

“I don’t know, MK. I’m tired.”

“We’re almost at our hotel.”

“Not that kind of tired. I’m tired of these confrontations.” She didn’t mean to complain, but she wasn’t like Mary Kay and Carol, who were used to dealing with strangers in sticky situations day in, day out. She preferred to keep to herself and read. You couldn’t make a book cry or make it angry. Books didn’t have hearts that could be broken. Books were friends and she missed their silent company. “Besides, my father’s getting his test results back tomorrow morning. I really need to be available.”

“I hear you,” Mary Kay said. “Why don’t you take the morning off?”

“Besides, this is a job for a couple of professional bitches,” Carol said. “Not an amateur like you.”

Mary Kay said, “Seriously.”

“OK.” Beth breathed a great big sigh of relief. Already she felt better.

A Radisson loomed ahead on a knoll off the highway, lit up green like the Empire State Building on St. Patrick’s Day. The parking lot was packed with cars end to end. “Yowza!” Mary Kay exclaimed, turning into the driveway. “What gives?”

“Guess this is the place to be on Sunday in Calais, PA,” Beth said, noticing the KARAOKE TONITE! Sign with grave disappointment. So much for going to bed early. “Maybe we should stay someplace else.”

“My credit card’s already been charged,” Carol said. “It’s not like this area is brimming with options—unless your idea of an upgrade is a Motel 6 down the interstate.”

“We’ll leave the karaoke on for ya.” Mary Kay parked and headed inside, where another sign exclaimed WELCOME PENN. SOCIETY OK CHEMICAL ENGINEERS.

“Nothing says party hearty,” she said as they wheeled their bags to check in, “like mathematicians on a bender.”

The lobby reverberated with a booming bass beat, and every once in a while the bar door would open and a chemical engineer would emerge, making a beeline for the bathroom across the hall.

“And when do the festivities end?” Carol asked as she signed her slip. “It’s been a long day and we’re knackered.” Not to mention that Jeff was supposed to call at six sharp to discuss the house. She hardly needed Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” to add to her stress.

“Normally, around two. But since it’s a convention and most of the guests are in-house, in all reality, three.” The clerk handed them their plastic keys.

Mary Kay, who’d checked out the karaoke scene, returned with a report. “After eight, ladies get in free. Whaddya say, girls? Can’t beat ’em, join ’em?” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Carol said, “There’s not enough alcohol on the planet.”

Had there not been a virtual frat party rumbling below, their rooms would have been perfectly adequate, large, with outdoor balconies. Tonight, Beth and Mary Kay shared a room with two queen beds while Carol got the adjoining king so she could finish a law memo due Monday.

“Work, work, work for me,” Carol singsonged as she dragged her cases down the hall. “I’m afraid that means no martinis, either.”

“Come over for dinner, at least,” Beth said. “Mary Kay heard there’s a sushi bar not far from here. We’ll do takeout.”

It was hard to resist sushi. Clean, fresh food. (Though Carol had to wonder what grade of tuna made its way to this neck of the woods.) She paused at her room, tempted, though she really needed to be alone when Jeff called.

“Maybe I better order in from room service so I don’t get distracted. A crappy chicken Caesar salad and Diet Coke should be fine.” Discipline had always been her ally.

Beth shrugged. “Suit yourself. We’ll order a little extra, just in case you change your mind.”

“You don’t have to go to all that trouble, but thank you,” Carol said sweetly. “Well, good night.”

“Good night.”

Beth went into her room next door and found Mary Kay sitting on the edge of the white Jacuzzi. “Is this skeevy, or what?” She played with a button by her foot. “I keep thinking of all the drunken chemical engineers over the years who scrumped in this thing.”

“E w w w .” Beth laid her suitcase on the counter and began her search for a telephone book. “Carol’s not joining us for dinner. Is it me, or do you get the feeling she wants to be by herself?”

“Definitely got that vibe.” Mary Kay opened the Igloo cooler, surveying the contents to make ginger martinis. They needed pear nectar, which she did not have, darn it. Maybe she could find some in the lounge. “Don’t take it personally. Lynne’s fight with her mother is hitting Carol close to home. You heard what she said about having a glimpse into being a parent estranged from her child, about being able to sense if Amanda were dead. This has got to be killing her.”

“I didn’t see the point of disagreeing when she said that. But sensing your child’s death seems to me something we’d like to believe, even if, scientifically, it doesn’t hold water.”

“In the words of the immortal John Lennon, whatever gets you through the night.” Mary Kay pulled out the vodka. “On top of that, she’s talking to Jeff tonight about selling the house. You know how that’s bumming her out.”

Beth had the phone to her ear, on hold waiting to place their sushi order. “Doesn’t she have to get the OK from Amanda first?”

“She did. That’s partially what got Carol so upset this morning.” Mary Kay dug out her pretty glasses. “Amanda was really hard on her, laying the guilt thicker than marmalade.”

“She said no way.”

“Worse. She said yes.”

“Amanda wants them to sell the house?” Beth was incredulous. “After her tantrum last year about them giving up her childhood home?”

“That’s when it was a home, when Amanda thought of her parents as being together. But her parents aren’t together anymore.” Mary Kay grabbed a key card in her search for some pear nectar downstairs. “So, it’s not a home anymore. It’s just a plain old house. And those are a dime a dozen.”

Carol pushed her bags against the wall and flopped onto the bed, staring at the blank white ceiling.

She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Amanda since they’d left Eunice. She pulled out her phone and searched for Amanda’s name. Her cell number popped up, she pressed Send, and, like clockwork, Amanda’s voice mail came on.

“Hi,” Carol said, deciding to let the words come instead of carefully scripting them as she usually did. “I know you don’t want to talk to me, but we have to. We have to talk about Lynne. There’s something you need to know. Call me, please.”

Tossing the phone aside, she took a shower, slipping into her pink cotton pj’s and white terrycloth robe. Then she called up the memo she’d been working on and flipped to a new white page on her legal tablet to take notes and doodle, which for mysterious reasons helped her brain function when she got stuck. Like she was now.

It was gratifying to immerse herself in work, to focus on something besides family breakdowns and death. Work had always been her salvation, the one consistency that she could count on when things got scary.

OK, think, Carol
. The memo pertained to her lawsuit on behalf of a college student suing a sperm bank so it would release the identity of her biological father. The girl had a deep desire to know who she was and where she came from and there was nothing wrong with that. After all, what’s more basic than understanding our origins? Carol asked herself, doodling.

Despite her concentration on what was a fairly interesting case, Carol’s thoughts drifted from the girl to Lynne’s daughter. Here they were, expending so much effort trying to find Julia and never once did they think about tracking down the father. It didn’t make sense that Lynne didn’t want them to even try.

The clock on her computer got closer to six. She carefully placed her cell on the desk and folded her hands, waiting. Somewhere across Pennsylvania, across New York, and in Marshfield, Connecticut, Jeff was probably doing the same. Except he’d be in his study, the most recent medical journal open to something distressingly technical.

At 5:50 the phone rang and her heart skipped a beat. He was early, which meant he was probably as eager to talk to her as she was to him. “Jeff?” she said hopefully.

There was a pause. “Actually, it’s Scott.”

Oh. Shit. Carol knew it was wrong to feel disappointed, but she couldn’t help it. “I’m waiting for a call from Jeff about the house. Sorry.”

She checked her phone. She had five minutes.

“I’ve been waiting for your call, but I didn’t want to bother you in case you were in something deep. I couldn’t take the suspense. How’s it going?”

“Pretty well,” she lied, writing her name in perfect cursive, a holdover from when she was bored in law school. “I mean, if your definition of well is telling a mother that the child she hasn’t spoken to since 1981 is dead and she’ll never have a chance to hold her or see her again.”

“Wow. That’s a tall order. I know Lynne and you were close, but to obligate you to break the news to her mom seems above and beyond the call of friendship, I have to say.”

Carol bristled slightly at the implication. “She didn’t
obligate
us to do anything, Scott. We’re her friends. This is what friends do.”

“But clearly you’re upset about it, and that has me worried. You know, social workers and chaplains who have to inform families their loved ones have died often go through a formal counseling process. CISM it’s called. Critical Incident Stress Management. I had a case once, where. . .”

Scott often slipped into technical jargon, a trait that hadn’t really bothered her until now.

“That’s not all that’s got me down.” She wished Scott knew Lynne and knew Amanda so he could relate. “It’s also Amanda. The way she’s not talking to me and refusing to take my calls reminds me of how Lynne stopped talking to Eunice.”

“The aunt, you mean.”

“No, Eunice is Lynne’s mother,” she said, slightly exasperated. “Therese is the aunt.”

“The names are so similar it’s hard to keep them straight. Go on.”

“Well, Lynne and her mother stopped speaking when Lynne was slightly younger than Amanda. What if that’s what happens to Amanda and me? What if I end up alone in a nursing home and three friends of Amanda’s come to tell me she’s dead? I can’t imagine anything worse.”

“Those are two entirely different situations, Carol. See, this is what I mean about post-traumatic stress and you not being your usual logical self. If you were in your normal state of mind, you’d recognize that Amanda’s simply going through some sort of obnoxious phase.”

Carol quit doodling. “My daughter is not obnoxious.”

“Let me rephrase. Adolescent is what I meant.”

“Beth says we clash because Amanda and I are so much alike.”

“That’s what they always say when parents and kids don’t get along, isn’t it? They used to say it about my father and me when the bottom line was the old man was just an S.O.B.” Scott laughed slightly. “I’m sure that as a nurse Beth fashions herself to be an observer of human nature, but the fact of the matter is that Amanda was a teenager when you left Jeff and this is what teenagers do when their parents get divorced. They act out.”