Before We Were Yours(58)
It’s when I’m working to spread the blanket over the branches that the wind catches the leaves and they shudder apart long enough for me to see something. Underneath the gaslight by the street, there are people standing and watching the house. In the dawn dark, I can’t make out faces or clothes, just the outline of a crooked old man and a tall, thin boy.
They look like Zede and Silas.
Just as quick as they were there, the leaves fall back, and they’re gone.
CHAPTER 15
Avery
The envelope is surprisingly ordinary. Just the plain manila kind that would be used in an office. The contents feel thin—maybe a few sheets of paper, folded in triplicate. It’s sealed shut, and my grandmother’s name is written on the back in a shaky scrawl that bleeds across to the margin and drops over the edge.
“Granddad’s Parkinson’s gave him quite a bit of trouble toward the end,” Trent explains. He rubs his forehead, frowning at the envelope as if he’s wondering again whether he should have broken the oath by giving it to me.
I know I’d be wise to open it before he changes his mind, but guilt stings. Trent looks as if he’s failed at something. I’m the cause of that.
I understand loyalty to family all too well. It’s the very thing that has driven me here in the middle of the night.
“Thank you,” I say, as if that will help.
He kneads an eyebrow with his fingertips and nods reluctantly. “Just so you know, it may make things worse, not better. There was a reason my granddad spent so much of his time helping to find people. After he and my gran married and took over the family business in Charleston, he went to law school so he could handle his own real estate contracts…but he also did it for another reason. When he was eighteen, he’d found out he was adopted. Nobody had ever told him. His adoptive father was a sergeant in the Memphis Police Department, and I don’t know that they were ever very close, but when Granddad learned he’d been lied to all his life, that was the last straw. He joined the army the next day and never talked to his adoptive parents again. He looked for his birth family for years but never found them. My gran always felt like it might’ve been better if he hadn’t run across his records in the first place. To tell you the truth, she wished his adoptive parents had destroyed them.”
“Secrets have a way of coming out.” That’s a bit of wisdom my father has shared with me many times. Secrets also make you vulnerable to your enemies, political or otherwise.
Whatever’s inside this envelope, I’m better off knowing it.
Still, my fingers tremble as I slip them beneath the flap. “I can see why your grandfather would’ve been passionate about helping other people find information and lost family members.” But how is my grandmother involved?
The adhesive loosens bit by bit as I pull. I work it slowly, like my mother opening a birthday present, taking care not to tear the paper. “Guess there’s no time like the present to find out,” I say. Gingerly, I remove a smaller envelope that has been opened at some time in the past. The papers inside are folded together like a brochure or an electric bill, but I can tell they’re official documents of some kind.
Across the table, Trent looks down at his hands as I lay out the contents.
“I really…” There’s no point in thanking him again. It won’t save him from wrestling with his conscience. “I want you to know you can count on me to do whatever’s best with this. I won’t let it cause some kind of family issue. I respect your grandfather’s concern, given the kind of research he was doing for people.”
“He knew firsthand what could happen.”
A noise in the house causes both of us to turn as I’m flattening the documents on the table. I recognize the sound of little bedtime feet on a sandy floor. I halfway expect to see one of my nieces or nephews standing in the corridor, but instead there’s a three-or four-year-old towheaded boy with sleepy blue eyes and the most adorable cleft in his chin. I know where he got that.
Trent Turner has a son. Is there a Mrs. Turner sleeping back there? The strangest hint of disappointment tinges the thought a faint shade of green. I catch myself checking for a wedding ring before looking back at the little boy and thinking, Stop that. Avery Stafford, what is wrong with you?
It’s times like this that I wonder what really is wrong with me. Why don’t I feel like a woman who has bonded with her soulmate, forever and ever, end of story? Both of my sisters fell head over heels for their husbands and seemingly never had any second thoughts. So did my mother. So did my grandmother.
The little boy eyeballs me as he circles the table, yawning and scratching his forehead with the back of one arm. He’s dramatic about it. He looks like a silent movie actress practicing an exaggerated swoon.
“Are you supposed to be in bed, Jonah?” his dad asks.
“Ya-huh.”
“And you’re up because…” Trent may be trying to sound tough, but his face has pushover written on it. Jonah braces both hands on his daddy’s knee, lifts a leg, and begins to climb him like a jungle gym.
Trent hoists the boy up, and Jonah stretches closer to whisper, “Is a peterdactyl in my clod-et.”
“A pterodactyl?”
“Ya-huh.”
“Jonah, there’s nothing in your closet. That’s just the movie the big kids let you watch over at Aunt Lou’s, remember? You’ve had another bad dream about it. A dinosaur wouldn’t even fit in your closet. There’re no dinosaurs in there.”