Janice Johnson - Lost Cause

“I think they truly believed you would both be adopted quickly,” she continued. “You were so young. I hoped all those years that you’d been able to stay together. I was upset when I found out you were adopted separately. And that you didn’t get a home for over a year after our parents died.”

“So that part was true?” His voice came out rough, as if it needed oiling. He didn’t like thinking about any of this.

“Your adoptive parents told you that much?”

He nodded. “They said my mom and dad were killed in a car accident.”

“It was so sudden. They’d gone to a play, and we were home with a babysitter. I remember a police officer coming to the door.” She seemed to look right through him. “The doorbell woke me and I thought, Why would Mommy and Daddy ring instead of coming in? So I got out of bed and went to the window. I can still see the police car in the driveway, lights flashing. Red and blue and white, hurting my eyes. I think maybe I knew.” She fell silent.

Questions crowded his tongue, but he found he was hesitant to ask any of them. He didn’t like being the supplicant, and that was a little what he felt like right now. Please, please, please, tell me about my mommy and daddy. The questions tangled together, too, until he didn’t know how to lay them out singly. How did you ask what kind of people those parents were? Whether they loved their children? Whether he’d be a different man if they’d lived?

“I have pictures,” Suzanne said, as if reading his thoughts. “But first… What changed your mind? Why now? Why not then?”

“I never wondered much about my real parents.” Not true—once he hit ten or twelve, he quit wondering. Gary shrugged. “If I didn’t remember them or you, what would meeting you mean?” Seeing her expression, he elaborated, “I grew up the way I grew up. Nothing will change that.”

He could tell from her face that he hadn’t improved on his first bald statement.

“We’re family,” she said, as if the fact was so obvious he was a simpleton for not having seen it from the first. “We share blood. Genes. Not to mention early experiences and memories.”

“You have more of both of those than I do.”

“I know,” she agreed. “And I hope you’ll let me share what I do remember with you.”

Fair enough. That’s why he’d come, wasn’t it? It was like, say, getting the provenance on something you were buying. Nice to know where it had been and how it had been treated.

“Where are you staying?” she asked.

“Came straight here.” He shrugged. “There must be a hotel here in town.”

“Would you like to stay with me?” She bit her lip. “You don’t have to. I don’t want to put pressure on you if you’d like some space, but… I’d love to have you.”

Yeah, he wanted space, but he found himself strangely reluctant to hurt her by refusing. What the hell? he told himself. A few days, a week. Why not?

“You sure it wouldn’t put you out?” Gary asked.

Pleasure brightened her face. “I have a guest room. Oh, this is wonderful! I can hardly wait to call Carrie! Shall I?” She half rose. “Or would you rather I wait?”

“Can we take this a little slow?” he asked.

“Oh.” She sank back to her chair. “Of course.”

She sounded so damned disappointed, he felt like a crud.

Even so… Two of them, both weeping and wanting to clutch at him. Both gazing at him with a look so needy, he shifted in his chair at the very idea.

“So why did you change your mind?” this sister asked suddenly. “You never said.”

“You know your…uh, Carrie called me.”

She nodded.

“I kept thinking about her voice….” Her scorn. “Her talking about how much it would mean to you to meet me.”

Her face softened. “She said that?”

“She said it would be a kindness if I were to call.”

Once again, he’d apparently stumbled, because her expression became warier. “So that’s what you’re doing? A kindness?”

He was almost embarrassed to realize he rarely cared enough about what other people thought or felt to do a kindness.

“No,” he admitted. “I suppose…I was curious.”

“Oh.” She relaxed.

“Also, I had an accident.” While she exclaimed in horror, he told her the facts without mentioning the pull the abyss had exerted on him. “Just got the cast off my leg two weeks ago.”

She was shocked that he’d been able to ride cross-country so soon and fluttered some more. Once again, Gary was mildly surprised at his tolerance. He didn’t go out of his way to hurt people’s feelings, but he didn’t usually put himself out a great deal to prevent doing so. Maybe there was something to this blood and genes thing.

Or maybe a near-death experience softened a man up.

“Are you married?” she asked finally. “Do you have kids?”

“Divorced. No kids.”

“A girlfriend?”

“Not lately.”

“What do you do? I mean, for a living.”

He hesitated. Would it affect in some way how she felt about him? How worthy she found him?

“I’ve been working in coffee.”

Instead of reacting to the modesty of his job description, she laughed. “You mean, our Northwest mania for fancy coffee has spread to the Southwest?”

“Big time.” Coffee was damn profitable in New Mexico these days. Hot or iced, flavored or dark and bitter.

Her smile became kind. “Well, I’m sure if you’d like to get a job locally, you won’t have any trouble.”

“I won’t be staying that long.”

“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “I’m sorry. I hoped…”

“I own the coffee shop,” he explained. “And the roasters.”

“I don’t know what made me think you’d come to stay anyway. Of course you have a life! I’m just so glad you’re visiting. New Mexico isn’t that far away.”

Not that far away? he thought in mild alarm. Was she imagining holidays with the whole family gathered around the table, holding hands and saying grace? The image made him queasy.

“What about you?” he asked. “Are you married?”

Echoing him, she said succinctly, “Divorced. No kids.”

“Job?”

Pride filled her voice. “I just opened my own business, too. We must be an entrepreneurial family. I opened a yarn shop three months ago, right here in town. Knit One, Drop In.”

“Yarn shop?”

“Knitting. I sell supplies, give classes. Business is taking off really well.”

Knitting. He hadn’t known that anyone younger than eighty did it.

“I sell my own work, too,” she continued. “And I’ve had a bunch of patterns published. I’m hoping for a book of patterns one of these days.”

“Do they sell well?”

“Hugely,” she assured him. “The thing is, they don’t go out of print the way the average novel does. They sell and sell and sell. For years. I’ve made thousands just on a single pattern.”

Who’d have thought?

“You have employees?” he asked.

She wrinkled her nose. “Not really. I’m working long hours. I open, eat lunch and run to the bathroom during lulls, close, then do the books.”

He remembered those days. You didn’t make it with a small business if you weren’t prepared to put in twelve-hour-plus days and maybe go months on end without taking a day off.

“A couple of my customers are experienced knitters who live locally and enjoy working a few hours here and there, so I have women to call if I’m sick or need time to get to the bank. Today, one of them is filling in because of my appointment.”

“With Ms. Wilson?” He put the faintest of emphasis on Ms.

“Yes. I’m trying to adopt a child. Today was my home visit.”

He’d been rocking back in the chair. Now all four feet clunked down. “She’s a social worker?” Lawyers and politicians were commonly despised. He saved his loathing for the group of managing, high-minded people who were determined to tell everyone how to live. “Home visit?” His mouth curled. “You mean, she was here to decide whether you were good enough to be a parent?”