I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(74)

I didn’t read further than the header before I stopped, reached over, took Dev by his T-shirt sleeve, and pulled. “Get over here,” I said, and he walked around the corner of the table, and together, we read.

“Oh, my God,” I breathed.

“Holy shit,” breathed Dev.

“Gareth Grace,” I murmured.

“G.G.,” murmured Dev.

“Tell us!” barked my mother.

We told them.

On December 29, 1956, in a Canadian town called Canterbury Mills, Gareth Lambert Grace and Louisa Cole Grace of Rye, New York, adopted a healthy baby boy, Caucasian, eyes brown, hair brown. In the spaces for the boy’s place of birth, for his mother’s name, and for his birth date, the same two words were typed: UNKNOWN, FOUNDLING.

As I read and for at least twenty seconds after I finished, no one moved or said a word. We all just stood around the table, swaddled in an awestruck hush. But after that one rapt moment, I got busy putting all the puzzle pieces together inside my head, and I could tell from the expression on Dev’s face that he was doing the same thing. After about ten seconds of this, our eyes met.

“We should fill in the blanks,” I said.

“Birthplace,” said Dev.

“Antioch Beach, Delaware,” I said.

“Birth date.”

“December third, 1956.”

“Birth mother.”

My eyes filled with tears. “Sarah Giles.”

Dev smiled and bumped me with his shoulder. “Go on. Sarah Giles, who?”

I lifted my head and told my family, “Sarah Giles, my grandmother.”



We all moved into the family room, Cornelia having suggested that comfy chairs and sofas lent themselves to the task of processing revelation far more readily than did standing around a dining room table. As usual, she was right.

“Food would help, too,” said Gordon, and a few minutes later, he was carrying in wooden carving boards covered with cheeses, smelly and not-smelly, soft and hard, and prosciutto sliced so thinly you could see through it; baskets of cut-up baguettes; bowls of blueberries and strawberries and olives; and a big plate of molasses cookies he’d baked the day before.

“I love you, Gordon,” I said, popping a blueberry into my mouth. “With all my heart.”

“I love you, too,” he answered, dropping a kiss on the top of my head. “Now, partake, people.”

We didn’t just partake. We gorged. We relished. We destroyed.

Finally, my mother said, “Clare, I don’t know why I never gave you that box of your father’s things before. I’ve been trying to decide whether or not I kept it from you on semipurpose because of some kind of deeply buried resentment I harbored toward your father, and the answer I’ve come up with is that I honestly don’t think so.”

“No,” I said, “that doesn’t seem like something you’d do. Your resentment is never deeply buried. If it isn’t buried in a very shallow grave, it’s alive and well and walking among us.”

“My thought exactly,” said my mother. “We just moved so soon after your father died, and there were so few personal items. Most everything was sold, the furniture, the apartment, the artwork. All the proceeds went into a trust with the rest of what he left you, the money you’ll get when you’re twenty-five. Anyway, I forgot all about that box and that ring until I saw Edith’s photo. I even forgot that Martin was adopted. His parents were dead when I met him, and he wasn’t big on discussing personal information. He told most people that he was born and raised in Rye, New York, but, now that I think back, he did mention the adoption to me once or twice, right after we got married. Anyway, I’m sorry about the box.”

“That’s okay,” I said.

“It’s lucky that I left the key sitting in the lock. Not particularly security-minded, but lucky. I’m sure I would never have been able to track it down.”

“I’m pretty sure that if you couldn’t find the key, Clare would’ve yanked that box to pieces with her bare hands,” said Dev.

“And teeth,” I said.

“So Gareth Grace, who you think called himself George Graham, was Mr. Big City?” said Cornelia. “Is that what we’re thinking?”

“It all fits,” I said. “He and Louisa are from New York, too, not far from the city.”

“And Gareth worked in Manhattan,” said my mother. “Finance, banking, some money thing. I remember that now. Not sure about a Richmond connection, but we have a name, so it should be easy enough to track down.”

“Oof. Trying to put everything together in the right order is making my brain hurt,” said Cornelia. “Can someone tell me, in a slow, step-by-step manner, how Sarah and her baby ended up in Canada?”

“Dev, you start,” I said. “My brain’s a little sore itself.”

“Okay,” said Dev. “So the night Sarah killed her husband, we’ll assume things unfolded the way John described them at the trial. Sarah and Steven weren’t meant to be part of Gareth’s escape system, but when John found Sarah distraught after shooting her husband, he took her to Edith’s for medical treatment and so that she and the baby could be relocated. Then, he drove her to the next safe house on the route, which must have been in this Canadian town Canterbury Mills. Gareth probably didn’t drive with him, but he must have met them there, either because that’s how it always worked or because he already had the idea of adopting Steven. We don’t know what happened between him and Sarah, but I’m guessing that either she died of her injuries or she decided that her kid would be better off with Gareth and Louisa.”