Run Away(72)

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.”

He scratched at his head, his eyes lowered. “In all due deference, the families don’t really have a say here. Both adoptees are of age, so it would be up to them to petition the court or this office. Mr. Gorse is recently deceased, as I understand it. Is that correct?”

“He was murdered, yes.”

“Oh God, that’s awful.”

“That’s why I’m here, by the way.”

“I’m sorry about this tragedy, but legally speaking, it probably means some other kind of legal form would need to be filled out. I don’t know of a case where an adoptee died—”

“Was murdered.”

“—and then one of his parents…his mother from the looks of this document…wanted information on the birth parents. I’m not sure she has any standing. As for Henry Thorpe, he’s alive, correct?”