Open Secret. Janice Johnson Kay
hesitation before she said “parents” was so small most people wouldn’t have noticed it. Mark was used to noticing everything.
His client, he suspected, never thought of her aunt and uncle as parents, even if they had raised her. He doubted she’d ever quite thought of the fictional couple who adopted her as parents, either. Because, of course, she had parents, and probably still mourned them.
Miles and Jeanne Fulton owned a 1970s era rambler with, Mark noted with interest, a razor-edged lawn, a row of junipers ruthlessly clipped into a low hedge and a driveway that was cleaner than most people’s kitchen floors.
Suzanne Chauvin’s house represented a little bit of a rebellion against her aunt and uncle’s standards, he diagnosed.
The aunt, a woman who looked much like an older version of Suzanne, met them fluttering at the door.
“I don’t know what else we can possibly tell you!” she said in agitation. “Your uncle hates to have all of that dredged up again.”
Mark said, in a calming voice, “We’re hoping you’ve had time to remember a little more since Ms. Chauvin first asked you about the adoption. Memories do tend to come back slowly, bits and pieces just popping up.”
“Well, yes, but…” Wringing her hands, she backed into the small kitchen. “Your uncle’s in the living room.” As if they couldn’t hear the television. “Go ahead. Can I bring anyone coffee?”
They both accepted, more to make her happy than because either of them wanted it.
The house was small, probably not over twelve hundred square feet was his guess. Suzanne had told him there were only three bedrooms and a bathroom down the hall, along with the living room and a kitchen with a large eating space that he could see. Admittedly not much space to raise even three kids, never mind five.
On the other hand, Mark had known people to rough-in a bedroom in a garage, throw up a small addition, or move when their family enlarged.
The uncle rose to greet them and briefly gripped Suzanne’s hand. Perhaps five feet eight inches, he was lean but strong looking, with a tattoo that appeared to be from Navy days on one bicep below the sleeve of his white undershirt. His hair was as ruthlessly trimmed as the lawn and the junipers, a graying brown buzz-cut. Deep furrows marked his forehead.
“So what’s this nonsense?” He jerked his head toward Mark. “A P.I.? You’re wasting hard-earned money to hire someone to find a couple of people who won’t even know who you are?”
Mark felt her stiffen beside him. “Whether they remember me or not, they’re my sister and brother.”
He snorted. “Goddamn foolishness, if you ask me.”
Nobody had. Both were too polite to say so.
He sat back down in a recliner that dominated the dark-paneled living room.
Suzanne gave Mark a glance in which he read apology, dismay and a question: Now what? He nudged her toward a love seat and they sat side by side, facing her uncle Miles.
His wife, appearing with a tray, said, “For goodness’ sakes, Miles! Turn off the TV.”
So she wasn’t completely cowed.
He scowled at her but complied.
She set down the tray on the coffee table and let them all take a cup and add sugar or cream. Mark sipped his. Instant. Not even the good strong stuff you found in rural cafés, and sure as hell not the espresso he made at home. He set his cup down.
He opened the briefcase he’d brought just to look official and took out a notepad that he rested on his knee. The click of his pen made the aunt jerk.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” he began. “Ms. Chauvin, your niece, has hired me to find her sister and brother. My agency specializes in finding adoptees or birth parents. This shouldn’t be a difficult quest.”
Dead silence. The aunt stared at him as if he were toying with the pin on a grenade. Uncle Miles simmered, shifting in the recliner, his fingers flexing on the armrests. Obviously neither was real happy to learn that Mark thought he could find their long-lost niece and nephew.
He cleared his throat. “However, it appears that Ms. Chauvin had some mistaken information. She believed that an attorney, Henry Cavanagh, had handled the adoption. I was able to locate his files and discovered that he was involved in very few adoptions. Your niece’s and nephew’s were not among them.”
The aunt gasped, “Oh dear! I thought… Didn’t we put it in his hands, Miles?”
“We never told you he did anything but give us advice. Some agency took those kids. And they were glad to have ’em! Said there were people pining for cute young kids. You were too old,” he said directly to Suzanne, “to be as appealing.”
Mark’s jaw tightened. Son of a bitch.
Suzanne’s aunt squeaked in protest.
Uncle Miles harrumphed. “Anyway, Jeanne always wanted a daughter. I guess they would have taken you, too, but it never came up.”
“What agency took them?” Mark asked as if the question wasn’t the grenade that had Aunt Jeanne twitching.
The Fultons looked at each other.
“Oh, I’m not sure…” Aunt Jeanne pressed a hand to her chest as if to still palpitations. “Miles…?”
He glowered at his niece and Mark. “What if we choose not to cooperate in this wild goose chase?”
“I’m very good at finding people. I will find Linette and Lucien.” Mark paused. “I know when I do they’ll want to meet you, their blood relatives. To make a connection, and to find out why you were unable to take them into your home. The fact that you did everything you could to help my client find them will make a big difference in how they view you initially.”
They got what he was saying. He saw Miles Fulton swallow, heard his wife’s stifled sob.
“Come,” he said. “Aren’t you curious? Won’t you be glad to find out what they’re like now?”
In a thick, frustrated voice, Uncle Miles said, “It was called Adoption and Family Services. Based in Everett.”
Mark had worked with the organization before and found the staff willing to cooperate within the limits of the law.
“Satisfied?” Miles Fulton snapped at his niece.
She met his furious gaze with a dignity that Mark admired. “I will be as soon as you sign a waiver so that they’ll open the records.”
Handy to have a client who’d educated herself. Without a word, Mark pulled out a waiver he’d already typed up and handed it, with a pen, to Miles Fulton. Suzanne’s uncle signed with an angry slash, handed it to his wife and stalked out of the living room.
CHAPTER THREE
MAKING THIS KIND of phone call was one of the easy thrills of his line of work. No complications or hurt yet, just simple joy.
Rotating his chair so that he gazed out his window at Lake Union and the Fremont Bridge, presently open to let a tall-masted sailboat through, Mark dialed. “I have news,” he said without preamble. “Ready to hear their names?”
“You have them?” Suzanne sounded awed. “Already?”
“Once we had the name of the agency and your aunt and uncle’s waiver, there wasn’t anything to it.”
“We’d never have had that if it weren’t for you.” She was quiet for a moment. “Were they adopted together?” When he told her they hadn’t been, she let out a soft, “Oh.” Then, “Please. Tell me the names?”
“Lucien was adopted by a family named Lindstrom. I haven’t found his first name yet. Your sister