The Keeper of Happy Endings(97)

Rory scanned the document warily. The paper was heavy and yellow with age, neatly typed, and stamped at the top with the word COPY in red ink. It was dated January 17, 1945, had the words CERTIFICATE OF DECREE OF ADOPTION at the top, and was signed at the bottom by the clerk of the Circuit Court. But at that moment, there was only one word on the page that mattered—Lowell.





THIRTY-EIGHT


RORY

Rory felt her heart skitter against her ribs, like a stone skipping down the walls of a bottomless well. There was nothing to get hold of, nothing to break the sudden sensation of falling. Why was her mother’s name on this piece of paper? And what was the paper doing among Owen Purcell’s things? She was dimly aware of Thia beside her as she scanned the page again.

State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations

Department of Vital Records

Certificate of Decree of Adoption.

Maiden name of natural mother: Soline Louise Roussel

Name of natural father: Unknown

Name of child at time of birth: n/a

Name of adoptive mother: Gwendolyn Lucille Lowell

Name of adoptive father: George Edward Lowell

Name of child after adoption: Camilla Nicole Lowell

Rory laid the paper in her lap and stared at it, head spinning. Her mother’s name—and her mother’s mother. What did it mean? Finally, she looked up at Thia. “I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do.”

“She’s . . . You’re saying . . .” She broke off again, pressing the flats of her fingers to her eyes. “I don’t understand.”

Thia pulled in a breath, as if gathering her words. “Your mother is the baby listed on the adoption decree, Rory. Which makes Soline your grandmother. And my brother your grandfather.”

“It has to be a mistake. One of those weird coincidences you read about in the tabloids. There are Lowells all over Massachusetts.”

“Look at the picture again. It’s not a mistake. Or a coincidence. You can demand a blood test if you need confirmation, but I knew the instant I saw your face. You’re a Purcell—because your mother was a Purcell. Or should have been.”

“My mother,” Rory repeated, recalling something Camilla had said once about how she’d been trained to live up to the position she’d been given as a Lowell. Given. It had seemed an odd word at the time, but Camilla had ended the conversation before she could delve further. Was it possible her mother knew the true circumstances of her birth and how she’d become a Lowell? And if so, why would she have kept it a secret all these years? Either way, it all led back to Soline.

Rory felt as if the floor were shifting beneath her feet, her world suddenly turning inside out. Nothing made sense. Or maybe, finally, everything did. Maybe there was a reason she’d felt such a strange affinity for the row house the first time she saw it, and to Soline the first time they met. Fate had pushed them together somehow. But was such a thing even possible?

She looked at Thia, sitting quietly beside her with her hands in her lap. “You’re saying that after all these years, Soline and I managed to cross paths . . . by chance?”

Thia answered with a strange smile. “I never said it was by chance. I mean, it couldn’t be, could it? Chance is one of those things we pull out when we have no other explanation for what’s happened. But there are all kinds of things we don’t understand. Forces we can’t see. That doesn’t mean they’re not at work. And there’s always been something special about Soline. Something . . . otherworldly.”

“You’re saying all this is the result of some kind of magic?”

Thia shrugged. “Magic. Kismet. Some fluky psychic connection. I really don’t care what it is. I only care that it’s happening. When Paulette told me you were asking about an old friend of my brother’s, I assumed the friend was Soline. And then I saw you and I thought about those adoption papers and . . . I knew. I thought maybe you did, too, or that Soline had sent you because she suspected. Did she never mention that you look like my brother?”

“No,” Rory said softly. “Never.”

It was too much to absorb at one time, an avalanche of questions and emotions tumbling at her so fast there wasn’t space to sort them out. Soline, her grandmother. Anson, her grandfather. Suddenly there were tears in her eyes.

She ignored them, trying to wrap her head around the implications of what she’d been told. Her mother, the proudest woman on the planet, had apparently been walking around with a phony pedigree and would soon be forced to confront the truth—that she’d actually been born out of wedlock to a woman who’d recently compared her to the Nazis. It wouldn’t be an easy conversation to have. But the conversation with Soline would be worse. To learn her child had been stolen from her, that all this time she’d been right here in Boston, would be the cruelest cut of all. And after their disastrous lunch . . .

“My god, Thia. How am I supposed to tell either of them about all this?”

“I’ve been thinking about that, and I don’t think you should. At least not straight off. My brother may still come around when he knows what really happened. In fact, I’ll make sure he does. Soline has gone forty years without knowing the truth. If there’s a chance that some good can come from all of this, some healing for them both, isn’t it worth waiting a few more weeks?”