Rebecca Winters: Their New-Found Family

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“My name is Alain. I’m looking for Rachel Marsden.”

“That’s my mom.”

“Oh. Is she there?”

“No. Are you sure you have the right number?”

“Did your mother once go to school in Geneva, Switzerland?”

Natalie blinked. “Yes.”

“Did she ever sail on the QE2?”

The mention of the ship gave Natalie butterflies on her insides. “Yes.”

“Then she’s the one.”

Her hand absently fingered the end of her long, dark brown ponytail. “How do you know about my mom?”

“By accident I found out she was on the same ship as my uncle.”

Natalie held her breath. “What was his name?”

“Tris Monbrisson.”

Natalie tried to stop the gasp that came out of her mouth, but she was too late. Her eyes suddenly stung with tears. She felt like she was going to suffocate from pain…and excitement.

Wiping the moisture from her cheeks she said, “If your uncle wants to talk to her, why doesn’t he call her himself?”

“I’m the one who wants to talk to her. He doesn’t know I’m phoning.”

Natalie’s breath caught. “Why do you want to speak to her?”

“I need to tell her the reason why she never heard from him after they reached Switzerland.”

Natalie’s heart pounded so hard, she felt sick. “That was a long time ago. I don’t think my mom would even remember him.”

“If she married your father, then I guess my uncle was right.”

“What do you mean?”

“He said she would have forgotten him the minute she got off the ship. I’ll hang up now.”

“No—wait!” she cried out. Dry mouthed she said, “What were you going to tell my mom? I want to hear.”

“At my uncle’s hockey camp, he got struck on the head by a hockey stick and went into a coma.”

“A coma—”

“You know. Where you sleep and never wake up?”

“I know what it means.” Fear shot through her. “I-is he okay now?”

“Yes. But when he woke up a month after his accident, he couldn’t remember anything.”

“You mean he had amnesia?”

“Yes. There are six weeks of his life wiped out of his mind. He never remembered playing hockey in Canada, or his trip back to Switzerland. Those memories are gone forever.”

“You’re kidding—”

“It’s the truth. You can call the Belle-Vue Hospital in Lausanne. That’s where bad head injury patients are taken. My uncle was there for a month!

“Ever since then he’s been troubled because he doesn’t remember anything about that time on the ship. Sometimes he worries so much, he gets bad headaches.

“I was thinking that if your mother called him to tell him about what happened while they were on board together, it would make him feel a lot better.”

“How did you learn she was on the ship with him?”

“I was looking in an old backpack in his closet and found a note she wrote him on the ship’s stationary. She put her address in Switzerland at the bottom. The school secretary said she came from New Hampshire. That’s how I got this phone number.”

“Oh my gosh— Listen Alain— Give me your number. I’ll tell my mom you want to talk to her.”

“Okay. Here are two numbers. Are you ready?”

“Yes.” She’d reached for the pad and pencil her grandmother kept on the kitchen counter.

He gave her the information. While Natalie wrote down the digits, she could hear her mom honking out in front.

“I’ll be at the second number for two weeks starting tomorrow. Then I’ll be back at this one.”

“Okay.”

“Tell her to call me at this exact same time.”

“I will. Now I have to go. Goodbye, Alain.”

“Goodbye.”

She hung up and called her grandma at Bleylock’s to tell her she was going home with her mom. Then she hurried out to the car where her mom was waiting.

“Hi, honey!”

“Hi, Mom.” Natalie leaned across the front seat to kiss her cheek.

“Before I left the office, Steve called,” her mother said, reversing to the street. “He’s taking us out to dinner tonight at the Brazilian Grill, so we’re going to have to hurry to be ready on time. Friday nights mean a long line. If we’re there early, there’ll be time for a movie after.”

“I don’t want to go.”

Her mother flashed her an anxious glance. “You look a little flushed. What’s wrong, honey? Don’t you feel well?”

“My stomach’s kind of upset.” It was the truth.

“Well I’m not leaving you if you’re coming down with flu. It’s going around.” She reached out to touch her forehead with the back of her hand. “You feel warm. That settles it. I’ll call Steve and cancel.”

“Don’t do that yet, Mom. I’m not sick the way you mean, but I do need to talk to you in private before we go anywhere.”

In a few minutes they’d reached the house. She hurried inside. Her mom followed with the duffel bag Natalie had forgotten.

The concern in her parent’s eyes had turned them a dark green, providing a contrast with her blond hair that made her more beautiful than any of her friends’ moms.

When Natalie first met Steve, she’d heard him tell her mom how gorgeous she was. Even Kendra’s dad had told Natalie, “Your mother’s a real knockout.”

Tris Monbrisson must have thought so, too. He’d asked her to marry him twelve years ago. But for that accident…

“WHAT’S wrong, honey?” Rachel Marsden put the bag on the floor.

“I have something to tell you. I think you’d better sit down.”

At her daughter’s tone of voice, a chill invaded Rachel’s body. “Why? Does this have anything to do with your grandmother?”

Rachel’s father had passed away two years ago. Her mother had taken it hard, but Rachel had thought she was doing a lot better these days. It would be unbearable to lose her mother, too. Rachel wanted her around for a long, long time.

“No—this doesn’t have anything to do with Nana.” After a slight hesitation she said, “Mom? While I was over there, someone called trying to find you.”

Her brows knit together. “Who?”

“Alain Monbrisson.”

Alain Monbrisson? Just hearing the name made Rachel feel faint. “That’s what Tris called his baby nephew.” She put a trembling hand to her throat. “I don’t understand.”

“Did you once write my father a letter on the ship’s stationary?”

A moan escaped Rachel’s lips. “Yes.”

“Well, Alain found it in his uncle’s old backpack. He tracked you down through your school in Geneva and then phoned Nana’s house. She was next door, so I answered it.”

“Oh, no—”

“Don’t worry, Mom. Alain doesn’t know his uncle is my father. He thinks you’re married and I’m another man’s daughter.”

“Honey—I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant,” Natalie broke in, sounding older than her eleven years. “The reason Alain was calling was to tell you about the terrible hockey accident that happened while my father was at hockey camp in Interlaken.”

An accident—

“Sit down, Mom—you look like you’re going to be sick.”

Rachel felt sick. She sank down on the end of the couch. “Tell me what he said.”

As she listened to her daughter, she started to tremble and couldn’t stop.

Tris had been in a coma?

“Alain thinks that if you phoned his uncle and filled him in about your time together on the ship, it would ease his mind concerning the period of time he doesn’t remember. Hopefully it will help cut down his headaches.”

Tris could have died and Rachel would never have known. She buried her face in her hands.

“I was afraid to tell you about this because it changes a lot of things, Mom. I always thought my father was a horrible man to have hurt you the way he did. But now I know he didn’t do it on purpose, I want him to know he has a daughter. Maybe he’ll want to meet me. What do you think?”