Харлан Кобен - Run Away

“That we know.”

“They were both adopted from the same agency.”

Boom.

“The agency is called Hope Faith.”

“Where’s it located?”

“Maine. A small town called Windham.”

“I don’t get it. Your client lives in Chicago. Damien Gorse lived in New Jersey. Yet they were both adopted out of Maine?”

“Yes.”

Simon shook his head in amazement. “So what do we do next?”

“You stay here with your wife,” she said. “I’m flying up to Maine.”

The last time Elena had landed at the Portland International Jetport in Maine, she’d been traveling with Joel. Joel’s niece/goddaughter was having a weekend “theme wedding” at a rustic kids’ sleepaway camp with a native American name — Camp Manu-something, Elena couldn’t remember now — and Elena had not been looking forward to it.

For one thing, Joel’s ex-wife Marlene, a gorgeous, lithe beauty, would be there, so Elena would have to deal with the odd looks from a family who could never understand what six-two, handsome, and charismatic Joel saw in the maybe-five-foot, squat-built, and seemingly charmless Elena.

Elena didn’t quite get it either.

“It’ll be fun,” Joel had assured her.

“It’ll suck.”

“We have our own private cabin by the water.”

“We do?”

“Okay, it’s not private,” he admitted. “Or by the water. And we are in bunk beds.”

“Wow, sounds great.”

Even under the best of circumstances, the trip sounded like a nightmare. Elena didn’t like camping or nature or insects or archery or kayaking or any of the activities listed on “Jack and Nancy’s Wedding Itinerary.” It was early June. Summer camps in Maine rent themselves out for retreats and events to make a little extra cash before school is out and the children descend upon them for the summer.

But to her surprise, the weekend had been fun, after all. Elena’s side had won something called Color Wars, and her law enforcement background came in handy for her team during the day-long Capture the Flag battle. At night — and this was the memory that still haunted her, would always haunt her — Joel would procure a bottle of wine and two glasses from whatever festivities were on the agenda. He would wrap the glasses and bottle in one extra-large sleeping bag. When lights went out — again, like a real camp, someone actually blew retreat on a trumpet — Joel would slip down from the top bunk, take Elena by the hand to the soccer field, and make love to her under a crisp-blue, star-filled Maine sky.

Why was sex so good with Joel?

Why was he able to reach a place deep within her body and soul no other man had ever come close to finding? She had tried to analyze it a thousand times, and realized that sex, great sex, is about trust and vulnerability. She trusted Joel completely. She let herself open up and be completely vulnerable with him. There was never any judgment, any hesitation, any doubt. She wanted to please him, and he wanted to please her, and she wanted to be selfish and he wanted to be selfish. There was never any agenda other than that.

You don’t get that often in life. Maybe once or twice. Most likely, never.

Elena knew, despite what well-meaning friends told her, she would never get it again. There was no reason to try. She didn’t date — not that she got a lot of offers anyway — and she had no interest in another relationship. She wasn’t being a martyr or self-pitying or any of that. She just knew that when Joel died, that part of her died too. There was no one else out there who could give her that trust and vulnerability. That was a fact, a sad one perhaps, but as she kept hearing in this pathetic political climate, facts don’t care about your feelings. She’d had that wonderful connection, it had been awesome, now it was gone.

Her room at the nearby Howard Johnson’s had a view of not one but two gas stations plus a 7-Eleven. She had chosen HoJo’s over the relatively swankier — she should maybe put that word in air quotes — Embassy Suites and Comfort Inn, based purely on nostalgia. When she was a little girl in Texas, the big family night out was dinner and ice cream at a Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge, one with that distinct orange roof and cupola topped with a weather vane. Elena and her father always ordered the fried clam strips, always, and right now, with her mind wandering more than usual, a bite of nostalgia sounded and would taste awfully good.

When she asked at the front desk about the restaurant, the receptionist looked at her as though she was speaking Swahili. “We don’t have a restaurant.”

“You’re a Howard Johnson’s without a restaurant?”

“That’s right. The Portland Pie Company isn’t far. And Dock’s Seafood is about a mile and a half down the road.”

Elena stepped back and, right there in the generic lobby, did some quick Googling. How had she missed that Howard Johnson’s restaurants had been slowly going out of business for years? By 2005, there were only eight left and now there was only one, in Lake George, New York. She actually checked out how long the ride to Lake George would be — nearly five hours.

Too far. And the reviews were less than stellar.

She headed instead to one of those brewery-style bars, watched the game, drank too much. She thought about the two most important men in her life, her father and Joel, and how both had been taken from her far too soon. A ride share drove her back to the Howard Johnson’s — the lack of an orange roof or even a weather vane should have tipped her off that times had changed — and she fell asleep.

In the morning, she put on a blue blazer and jeans and checked the app ride to Hope Faith in Windham. Half hour, no traffic. Elena’s home office had already arranged to get her powers of attorney to speak on behalf of the families of both Henry Thorpe as well as recent murder victim Damien Gorse.

This was all a tremendous long shot.

The Hope Faith Adoption Agency was located in a small office complex behind an Applebee’s on Roosevelt Trail. The owner, a man covered in untamed gray hair and named Maish Isaacson, greeted her with a nervous smile and a dead-fish handshake. He wore stylish tortoise-frame glasses and an unruly beard.

“I don’t see how I can help,” Isaacson said for the third time.

Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead. She handed him the powers of attorney as they sat down. Isaacson read them carefully and then asked, “How long ago were these adoptions?”

“Henry Thorpe would have been twenty-four years ago. Damien Gorse closer to thirty.”

“So again I say: I don’t see how I can help.”

“I’d like to see anything you have on the adoptions.”

“From all these years ago?”

“Yes.”

Isaacson folded his hands. “Ms. Ramirez, you’re aware, are you not, that these were closed adoptions?”

“I am.”

“So even if I had this information, you know that legally I cannot unseal an adoption record.”

He licked a manicured finger, plucked out a sheet of paper from the credenza, and slid it across the desk so Elena could follow along. “While the laws are somewhat looser now than they’ve ever been — adoptees’ rights and all that — you still have to follow a certain protocol.”

Elena looked down at the paper.

“So step one is to go to the county clerk — I can give you directions — and fill out a petition with the county court. Once that is done, they’ll set up a date to meet with a judge—”

“I don’t have time for that.”

“My hands are tied here, Ms. Ramirez.”

“The families filed here. In this office. They used your services and they want me to see all paperwork.”