Mary Clark - The Shadow of Your Smile

And having quoted that, and fully sharing for his adoptive parents the sentiment of Alice Roosevelt’s love for the stepmother who raised her, Dad always wondered and longed to know more about his birth parents, Monica mused. In his last few years, he was pretty much obsessed by it.

Sally was terribly sick when she was brought into the emergency room but there wasn’t a hint of any kind of abuse and she was obviously well nourished. And certainly Renée Carter won’t be the first person who turns her child over to a babysitter or nanny to raise.

The prospect of testifying about the disappearance of Michael O’Keefe’s brain cancer was another reason for concern. I don’t believe in miracles, Monica thought vehemently, then admitted to herself that Michael had been terminally ill when she examined him.

As she lingered over demitasse and fresh-cut pineapple, she looked around, as always finding comfort in her surroundings.

Because of the chilly evening, she had turned on the gas fireplace. The small round dining table and the upholstered chair where she was sitting faced the fireplace. Now the flickering flames sent darts of light across the antique Aubusson carpet that had been her mother’s pride and joy.

The ringing of the phone was an unwelcome intrusion. She was bone-weary, but knowing it might mean a call from the hospital about one of her patients made her bolt from her chair and dart across the room. As she picked up the receiver she was saying “Dr. Farrell” even before she realized the call was coming through on her private line.

“And Dr. Farrell is well, I trust,” a teasing male voice asked.

“I’m very well, Scott,” Monica answered, her tone cool, even as she felt a sickening worry at the sound of Scott Alterman’s voice.

The teasing note disappeared. “Monica, Joy and I have called it quits. It was always wrong. We both realize it now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Monica said. “But I think you should understand that has absolutely nothing to do with me.”

“It has everything to do with you, Monica. I’ve been quietly seeing an executive search bureau. A top-drawer law firm on Wall Street has offered me a partnership. I’ve accepted.”

“If you have, I hope you realize that there are eight or nine million people in New York City. Make friends with any and all of them, but leave me alone.” Monica broke the connection, then, too upset to sit down again, cleared the table, and finished the demitasse standing at the sink.

When she left Monica outside the office on Monday evening, Nan Rhodes took the First Avenue bus to meet four of her sisters for their regular monthly dinner at Neary’s Pub on Fifty-seventh Street.

Widowed for six years, and with her only son and his family living in California, working for Monica had proven to be a godsend to Nan. She loved Monica and at the dinners she would often talk about her. One of eight children herself, she regularly lamented the fact that Monica had no siblings and that her mother and father, both only children, had been in their early forties when she was born and were now deceased.

Tonight, at their usual corner table at Neary’s, over a predinner cocktail, Nan got back on the subject. “While I was waiting for the bus I watched Dr. Monica walking up the block. She’d had such a long day, and I was thinking, poor thing, it’s not like she could get a phone call from her mother or dad to talk things over. It’s such a damn shame that when her father was born in Ireland only the names of his adoptive parents, Anne and Matthew Farrell, were given on the birth certificate. The real parents certainly made it their business to be sure he couldn’t trace them.”

The sisters bobbed their heads in agreement. “Dr. Monica is so classy-looking. Her grandmother probably came from a good family, maybe even an American one,” Nan’s youngest sister, Peggy, volunteered. “In those days if an unmarried girl got pregnant, she was taken on a trip until the baby was born and then it would be given up for adoption, with no one the wiser. Today when an unmarried girl gets pregnant she brags about it on Twitter or Facebook.”

“I know Dr. Monica has lots of friends,” Nan sighed as she picked up the menu. “She has a genius for making people like her, but it’s not the same, is it? No matter what you say, blood is thicker than water.”

Her sisters nodded in solemn unison, although Peggy pointed out that Monica Farrell was a beautiful young woman and it would probably be only a matter of time before she met someone.

That subject exhausted, Nan had a new tidbit to share. “Remember how I told you that that nun Sister Catherine is being considered for beatification because a little boy who was supposed to die of brain cancer was cured after a crusade of prayer to her?”

They all remembered. “He was Dr. Monica’s patient, wasn’t he?” Rosemary, the oldest sister, said.

“Yes. His name is Michael O’Keefe. I guess the Church feels it has enough evidence to prove that he really is a miracle child. And just this afternoon I was able to persuade Dr. Monica to at least give testimony that when she told the parents he was terminal, the mother never blinked an eye before she said her son wasn’t going to die, because she was beginning a crusade of prayer to Sister Catherine.”

“If the mother did say that, why wouldn’t Dr. Monica be willing to testify?” the middle sister, Ellen, asked.

“Because she’s a doctor and a scientist and because she’s still trying to find a way to prove that there was a good medical reason for Michael to be cancer free.”

Liz, their waitress, who had worked at Neary’s for thirty years, was at the table, menus in hand. “Ready to order, girls?” she asked cheerfully.

• • •

Nan enjoyed getting to work at seven A.M. She required little sleep, and lived only minutes away from Monica’s office, in the apartment complex where she had moved after her husband’s death. The early arrival gave her plenty of time to keep up with the mail and work on the endless medical insurance company forms.

Alma Donaldson, the nurse, came in at quarter of nine as Nan was opening the just-delivered mail. A handsome black woman in her late thirties, with a perceptive eye and warm smile, she had worked with Monica from the first day she had opened her practice four years earlier. Together they made an enviable medical team and had become fast friends.

As she took off her outer jacket, Alma was quick to spot the concerned expression on Nan’s face. Nan was sitting at her desk, an envelope in one hand, a photograph in the other. Alma skipped her usual hearty greeting. “What’s wrong, Nan?” she asked.

“Look at this,” Nan said.

Alma walked behind the desk and stood looking down over Nan’s shoulder. “Someone took a picture of the doctor with little Carlos Garcia,” Alma said. “I think it’s sweet.”

“It came in a blank envelope,” Nan said tersely. “I can’t believe his mother or father would have sent it without a note of some kind. And look at this.” She turned over the picture. “Someone printed the doctor’s home and office addresses. That seems awfully peculiar to me.”

“Maybe whoever sent it was trying to decide which address to use,” Alma suggested slowly. “Why don’t you call the Garcias and see if it came from them?”

“I bet the ranch it didn’t,” Nan muttered, as she picked up the phone.

Rosalie Garcia answered on the first ring. No, they hadn’t sent a picture and couldn’t imagine who might have done it. She was planning to frame the one they took of the doctor and Carlos and send it, but she hadn’t had time to buy a frame yet. No, she didn’t know the doctor’s home address.