Open Secret

Days later, Carrie was still asking herself. Why did she feel this wave of anxiety every time she thought about the phone number she carried in her wallet? Was she afraid her sister would be cheap and loud and uncultured, so she’d be ashamed of her heritage? But Mark had said she was nice. Carrie trusted him.

So, okay, maybe that wasn’t the problem. Maybe she was worried about whether her sister would like her. That somehow she’d be a disappointment.

Or maybe…maybe what really scared her was the possibility that she wouldn’t feel any connection at all to this sister. Maybe she’d look at photographs of her birth parents and not see herself in them either. And then she’d realize that there was no niche anywhere that she was designed to fit. She’d be like a puzzle piece that ended up in the wrong box and was left over when the picture was complete.

Dear Reader,

Growing up, I had a good friend who had been adopted as a baby. Thinking back, I’m amazed at how completely lacking in curiosity I was. I never wondered whether she imagined someday finding her birth mother, whether she lived with any sense of “not belonging,” even what she knew about her birth parents. So she was adopted. Who cared?

In some ways, this was undoubtedly a healthy attitude. Imagine what fun sleepovers we could have had, with me grilling her! On the other hand—why didn’t her unusual (to me) beginning in life stir my imagination?

Of course, it did, many years after the last time I saw her. Because babies in the womb hear their mothers’ voices for nine months, they feel a bond with her from the moment they’re born. If a child’s adopted out too young to remember her birth parents, does she nonetheless know, somewhere deep inside, that she’s not where she belongs?

If you’ve read many of my books, you’ll know how interested I am in the long-term impact of trauma. I tend not to write about the traumatic event itself; that’s way less interesting than the ripples that spread out from it!

But I am, after all, a romance reader and writer, which means I have enormous faith in the healing power of love. Don’t we all need that faith?

Best,

Janice Kay Johnson

Open Secret

Janice Kay Johnson

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

HIRING A PRIVATE investigator took more courage than Suzanne Chauvin had known she possessed. The whole idea was utterly foreign to her. P.I.s snapped photos of half-naked husbands straying from their marriage vows in sleazy hotels, the kind with mirrors on the ceiling. They did stakeouts where they slumped low in their cars for hour upon hour. They wore trenchcoats and carried firearms.

She knew the images were silly and outdated, if ever accurate. Sam Spade. Still, consulting a P.I. felt…sleazy.

But the truth was, she’d tried everything she could do on her own. She would never find Lucien and Linette without help. She’d asked around, and this Kincaid Investigations was recommended over and over. They specialized in finding people, Suzanne had been told.

Even so, she hesitated. Bringing a stranger into her private life made her uncomfortable. And it was more than that! She’d be handing the whole task over to the investigator. Trusting him. She wasn’t very good at trusting people anymore.

She kept debating, putting off the decision. Maybe Lucien or Linette would come looking for her. She’d made sure that, if they did, she would be easy to find.

The only thing was, she’d been hunting for three years now. And they hadn’t come looking for her.

Another week went by, a month. Two months. Three.

It was a really lousy morning that provided the final push. Dumb little things added up. She’d taken a personal day from her job, with the intention of working around the house. She’d mow, put some bedding plants in, reorganize her kitchen cupboards. Positive stuff.

Instead she came out early to find garbage from the can she’d set out by the street last night strewn across her driveway by some wretched dog. Her bathroom trash, including some really, really personal items, was scattered over the next-door neighbor’s impeccably kept lawn. She pounced and managed to pick the embarrassing stuff up just before his garage door rose and he backed out in his gleaming, black pickup truck. There she stood in her oldest jeans, surrounded by garbage.

His window glided down. Tom Stefanec was already the bane of her existence. His lawn could have doubled for a putting green at Pebble Beach. His perennial bed was the envy of the neighborhood from spring through fall as wave after orchestrated wave of perfectly tended plants came into bloom. He jogged most mornings barely waiting for sunup. He kept his hair military short. Worst of all, this model of discipline and fitness had to have heard Suzanne’s awful, screaming fights with Josh, her now ex-husband.

She hadn’t been able to look her neighbor in the eye in years.

And, of course, his garbage can sat untouched, a bungee cord stretched over the lid to keep its contents safe. The dog knew better than to try to get at Tom Stefanec’s trash.

“You need a hand?”

Smiling weakly and probably unconvincingly, she said, “No, no, I’m fine. It’s my own fault for not making sure that miserable dog couldn’t get into my can.”

“If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure.”

With a whir, the window rolled up and the truck continued to back into the street. Once he was gone, she fetched gloves and picked up the rest of the litter, then wheeled her mower out. Pressed the button a couple of times to prime it and then yanked the cord. Nada. Again, and again. Prime. Pull. Prime. Pull.

Finally, exhausted, Suzanne had to concede that the piece of junk wasn’t going to start. Once again, she would have to remember how to fold the handle and then heave the monster into the trunk of her car. Being as this was the beginning of April, she would be told that they’d get to it when they got to it. In other words, several weeks would pass before she’d get the damn thing back.

Suzanne took a look at her patchy, scruffy, hummocky, dandelion-infested lawn and started to cry. She was completely, one hundred percent incompetent. A failure at everything that had ever mattered.

And getting the damn mower fixed and the lawn mowed wouldn’t help.

If she was ever going to turn her life around and regain a semblance of self-esteem, she had to succeed at something a heck of a lot more important than yardwork.

She had to keep the promise she’d made herself when she was a child.

Abandoning the mower on the lawn, she marched into the house, found the phone number she’d tucked away three months ago and called.

“I’d like to make an appointment.”

WHEN THE RECEPTIONIST informed him via intercom that his new client had arrived, Mark Kincaid closed the database of bankruptcies he’d been searching on his computer, glanced at his calendar to recall her name and rose to meet her.

Suzanne Chauvin. He had a quick picture of a petite, fiery Frenchwoman in a chic suit and heels, her sleek dark hair in a twist, her brown eyes magnificent, her lips painted scarlet.

He shook his head at his brief foray into fantasy. Of course, she’d be a dumpy dishwater blonde in snagged polyester pants.

Ms. Chauvin hadn’t been specific about why she needed an investigator, only that she was seeking a missing person. That could be anyone from a deadbeat ex-husband who was five years behind on his child support payments to a birth mother if she was adopted. He was doing a big business these days in adult adoptees looking for their birth parents as well as the reverse—parents, mostly mothers, looking for the kids they’d given up.

He went down the short hall to the waiting room. The nervous looking guy with a receding hairline and big patches of sweat under his arms had to be waiting for Mark’s partner. As far away from him as she could get and hidden behind a magazine was a woman.

“Ms. Chauvin?”

“Yes.” The magazine dropped and she sprang to her feet as if jerked upright by a puppeteer. “I…thank you.”

“I’m Mark Kincaid.” He held out his hand.

She shook, her hand dainty but callused in unusual places. “You’re the owner?”

“That’s right.” He gestured toward his office. “Come on back, and we’ll talk about why you’re here.”

She bit her lip, cast a longing glance at the door to the street, took a big breath and nodded. “Thank you.”

She walked ahead of him, giving him a chance to appraise her. No chic suit or scarlet-painted mouth, but otherwise she was intriguingly close to his fantasy. Suzanne Chauvin was a very pretty woman who looked as French as her name sounded. Her dark hair was indeed gathered at her nape, if not in a more elegant twist. She might be as old as thirty, if he was any judge, but still as delicate as fine porcelain. She wore a simple dress and sensible pumps and clutched a tote bag as if she thought a purse snatcher lurked in the doorway to the records room.

“Can I get you some tea or coffee?” he asked when she went to one of the two chairs facing his desk, hesitated, then sat, perched noncommittally on the edge.

She gave a tight shake of her head.

He settled into his own comfortable leather chair behind his desk. “What can I do for you, Ms. Chauvin?”

Her fingers worked the straps of the tote as if she were trying to knit them. “You were recommended to me as someone who specializes in finding missing persons.”

“That’s right.” He leaned back.

“I need to find my brother and sister. I…seem to have failed on my own.”

His interest waned. This sounded like a twenty minute job. Unless someone was trying real hard to stay hidden, they weren’t difficult to find in this day of internet databases. Borrow money, marry, divorce, have a child, vote, register a car or boat, pay taxes, join a hobby organization, all were like waving a red flag and saying, Here I am. Hell, stub your toe and you’d appear somewhere.

He nodded gravely and picked up a pen, poising it over a ruled yellow pad of paper. “How long ago did you lose touch?”

“Twenty-five years and four months ago.”

Surprised, he leaned back again. “But you can’t be more than…” He cleared his throat. “Late twenties?”

“I’m thirty-one years old, Mr. Kincaid.”

“So you were six.” Had her parents divorced and divvied up the kids? He knew it happened.

“Yes.” She hesitated. “This is…difficult for me. Finding them has been a personal quest. I don’t know if I’m comfortable handing it over to someone else.”

“Someone you don’t even know,” he diagnosed.

She nodded.

“That’s a decision only you can make. If I can help by answering questions, I will.”

“No, I…” Ms. Chauvin gave a small, twisted smile. “You do come highly recommended. And I’ve failed. Maybe that’s what I hate to admit.”

“Tell me the story,” he said. “And then what you’ve tried.”

“Our parents died in a car accident when I was six. I’m the oldest,” she explained. “Lucien, my brother, was three, Linette just a baby. Six months old. The only family left was an aunt and uncle who already had two kids of their own. They didn’t feel they could add three more children to their family. Or afford to feed them.”

He nodded.

“So they kept me, since I was the oldest and more aware of what was happening to us. They believed that Linette and Lucien would adjust more easily to new parents.”

God. He imagined the scene when a social worker arrived to take away the two younger children. Six-year-old Suzanne’s bewilderment and dawning understanding. He saw the car pulling away, the three-year-old’s tearstained face framed in the window. He could almost hear the girl’s hysterical cry, see her running after the car.

Suppressing a shudder, he said, “That must have been very difficult. For you, and for your aunt and uncle.”

“It was…heartbreaking.” She looked at him, but without seeing him. “I was the big sister. Mom always said, ‘Take care of your brother and sister.’ I was so proud that I was big enough to be trusted to take care of them.”

The things people did to their children with the best of intentions. He’d bet that mother would have given anything to take those words back, if she could have seen into the future. She’d doubtless never imagined herself and her husband both being snatched away, leaving a little girl who would have been in first grade believing that she should have been big and strong enough to hold on to her little brother and sister and somehow take care of them.

“Linette was asleep when they took her away. But Lucien kept asking why I wasn’t coming.” Her eyes swam with tears. “I was so scared, and so grateful I didn’t have to go away with strangers, too. And I felt horribly guilty because I was so relieved they’d chosen me.”

He swore.

She started, as if remembering he was there. “It was awful,” she said simply, wiping her eyes with her fingertips. “I swore that someday I’d find them. But then the years went by, and somehow I never did.”

“What made you decide the time had come?”

“I got a divorce three years ago. I’m not very close to my aunt and uncle, and I felt so alone.” She gave a small laugh. “That sounds pathetic. I’m sorry! It’s not as if I don’t have friends, but… I don’t know. I was left with this huge chasm inside. I felt empty.”

Uh-oh. Unrealistic expectations always scared him. Adoptees invariably believed that finding their birth mothers would somehow make them feel whole. It was common to imagine scenarios rather like those in a romance novel. The adoptee believed that the moment he saw this woman, his mother, he’d recognize her, on the most fundamental level. The connection would be magical. All the hurt would be erased, difficulties in trusting people, in finding intimacy, would be healed.

On the one hand, he did believe the seeking and finding were healthy steps for an adoptee or a birth parent. Even if the relationship ultimately went nowhere, disappointment could provide closure. If he didn’t believe that, he wouldn’t help.

But no stranger, blood relative or not, could fill the emptiness this woman felt inside herself. And it wasn’t fair of her to ask anyone else to do that, or to feel hurt and angry when they couldn’t or didn’t even want to try.

“Let me ask you a few things,” he said.

She started to open the tote. “I have notes…”

“Not that. Not yet. It’s you that concerns me.” When she looked at him, startled, he told her, “I’ve been doing this for some years now. First you need to know that sometimes I don’t find the person I’m looking for. The trail is just too cold. Most of the time I do. But what I find isn’t always what the seeker is hoping for.”

She opened her mouth, but he shook his head.

“No, let me finish. A couple of years ago, I was hired by a woman who’d given up her baby boy when she was sixteen. Her parents and everyone else convinced her he’d have a better life with a stable family. I was able to trace him. The adoptive father had abused him. He’d died in that adoptive home six months after she signed the adoption papers.”

Suzanne Chauvin stared at him, aghast.

“I’ve found birth mothers who refused any contact with their children. Mothers who were prostitutes. Turned out one had given up five babies for adoption over the course of eight years. I initiated contact to say that her daughter hoped to meet with her, and she said, ‘Which daughter?’”

The woman across from him asked, in a wounded voice, “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want you to go into this with clear eyes.” He leaned forward to emphasize his point. “What do you expect at the end of this search, Ms. Chauvin?”

“I…” she faltered. “To see them, of course. To talk to them.”

He waited.

“To know what’s happened to them. That they’re all right.” She bit her lip. “To say I’m sorry.”

“You were six years old.”

“I know that!” she cried. “I know there wasn’t anything I could have done! But that doesn’t stop me from feeling guilty.”

“So you want to ease your guilt.”

Her cheeks flushed. “You make that sound…reprehensible.”

“No. No, it’s not. I’m just trying to find out what’s most important to you. Do you expect these two strangers to become your sister and brother again? Best friends?”

Her mouth worked for a moment, making him feel like a brute, before she said with dignity, “I would love for them to be my brother and sister. Just that. We’re adults now. Even if we’d grown up together, we might be spread across the country and only see each other once a year. I don’t expect us to…to time-travel, to have a different childhood where we stayed together, if that’s what you’re asking. I’d just like to renew a bond that was very important to me. And…” Her voice went quiet, so quiet, he just heard her. “I’d like to be able to tell them about Mom and Dad. About how loved we were.”

After a moment, he nodded. “All right. I have just two cautions. One is that I want you to realize that, even if we find them, one or both may choose not to have any contact with you. They may feel bitter, or just indifferent. If the adoptions were successful, they may feel no need to explore their birth family.”

“But…wouldn’t they want to know a medical history, at least?”

“Your aunt and uncle may have provided that.”

“Yes…” Her forehead crinkled. “I suppose.”

“We’ll get back to that. First let me offer my second caution, which is simply not to expect too much from your sister and brother. With the best will in the world, they may not fill that emptiness.”

She flushed again. “I really don’t expect them to. I didn’t mean to suggest I did. Only that I was at a low point in my life when I decided to initiate the search. Whether you believe it or not, Mr. Kincaid, I’m a reasonably stable, well-adjusted human being. I have a good job, I own my own home, I have friends, I…” Something seemed to stick in her throat. A lie she couldn’t tell. Had she been going to say, I date?

She spoke with such offended dignity, he half expected her to rise and announce that she wouldn’t need him after all. He saw on her face that she wanted to do just that. He watched her struggle with the desire, then overcome her pride and hurt feelings.

Like the stable adult she’d said she was.

He relaxed slightly.

“If you feel prepared to go ahead, let’s get to the details. What do you know about them? What did you discover? Where do you think you failed?”

She explained what steps she’d taken in her search, guided by a book with which Mark was familiar. Unfortunately, despite her many phone calls and letters, she’d accomplished next to nothing. Her collection of notes was pitifully small. She’d struck out earlier in the quest than he’d hoped.

Her aunt and uncle had placed the children through an attorney in a private adoption—or adoptions.

“They claim not to know whether Lucien and Linette went together or to two different homes,” his client said.

“How do they feel about your determination to find your sister and brother?” he asked.

“They aren’t very happy about it,” she admitted. “Especially my uncle.”

“Which is the blood relation?” It didn’t always matter, but in this instance his gut feeling was that it did.

“My aunt. She’s my mother’s sister. I think she struggles with some guilt at not fulfilling her sister’s trust. She doesn’t say that. She’s always brusque, and insists they did the best they could and that’s that. They didn’t have a big enough house, they had no money, et cetera, et cetera. But I suspect…” She hesitated. “I suspect it was my uncle who put his foot down. I think maybe she had to plead to get him to agree to keep me. I always felt as if he resented me.”

Sounded like a hell of a childhood. Suzanne Chauvin might have been better off if they hadn’t kept her, Mark thought. Except then she would have had to live with the wrenching memory of not being wanted by her own relatives.

Looking again at the notes she’d spread on his desk, she said, “If I could have found out their adoptive names… The problem is, the attorney who handled the adoption is dead. He’s been dead for a long time. No one seems to know what happened to his files. I found his wife in a nursing home, but her memory is shaky and she says he never talked about work. She gave me the name of his secretary, but I couldn’t find her. Maybe the name was wrong. Maybe she died, too, or got married, or…” She trailed off, her discouragement plain in her voice.

“Did you add your name to the International Soundex Reunion Registry, in case one of them is looking for you?”

“Yes, right away. That is, three years ago.”

He frowned. “Surely your aunt and uncle were told something about the family or families that adopted your sister and brother.”

“They get…well, vague. ‘Just that they were nice people,’ my aunt said. She was sure that the adoptive father—maybe one of the adoptive fathers—was a doctor.” Ms. Chauvin gave another of those twisted smiles that did a poor job of hiding her hurt. “She offered me that tidbit like…like a bone to a dog. See? They had to be perfect if he was a doctor!”

He suggested gently, “It may be that she’s consoling herself, not you. As you say, she may have been dealing with guilt for twenty-five years. That one fact may be her touchstone. Her way of saying, ‘I did the right thing. He’s a doctor. Those children are better off with a father who’s a doctor than they would have been with us.’”

His client sat silent for a moment. Voice stricken, she said at last, “Yes. I didn’t think. You’re probably right.”

“I may need to talk to your aunt and uncle at some point. But first let me see how far I can get with what you already know.” He took an agency contract from the drawer and went over the provisions with her, making sure she understood his fees and watching her face carefully to be sure in his own mind that she wouldn’t be bankrupting herself to pay them.

She signed and pushed the contract across the desk to him. “May I ask how you got into this?” She waved her hand to encompass his office, his business, his life.

He gave her the severely edited answer. “I was a cop. A detective. But the hours were lousy for family life, and I realized that what I enjoyed was solving puzzles. So…”

“So you’re married and have children?” She seemed genuinely curious, mainly, he guessed, because she wanted to feel she knew him, that he was worthy of her trust.

“My wife died two and a half years ago. She had a bad heart.”

It was another short answer. He didn’t like to think about the choice Emily had made, and didn’t feel as if he had to bare himself to every client simply to make them feel better about having to reveal themselves to him.

More persistent than most, her voice gentle, Suzanne Chauvin nodded at the framed photo on his desk. “Is that your little boy?”

“Michael is five. He just started kindergarten.”

“He’s cute.” She seemed to tear her gaze from the photo with some reluctance.

Mark rose to signal that they were done. “Ms. Chauvin, I’ll keep you informed every step of the way. I promise. What you do with the information we uncover will be your choice.”