Felicia blinked, then pushed her glasses farther up the bridge of her nose. “You sound like some of my students. I mean, I teach African American studies. It’s serious stuff. And as an African American woman, I’ve spent my whole career trying to take my work seriously.”
“We’re not your students,” Lizzie pointed out. “We’re your friends. Or we’re trying to be.”
“Okay. Point taken. Lighten up. Loosen up. Anything else?”
“Yeah. Turn the page on that datebook. Any other interesting entries?” Lizzie asked.
“Hmm. Red Cross committee meeting. Junior League committee meeting.” Felicia flipped pages. “Bond drive.” She looked up, startled. “March 20. Maternity clothes.”
Lizzie reached for the datebook. “Let me see that.”
Felicia stabbed the notation with her index finger. “Right here. See?”
“It actually says, ‘Mtnty clothes,’ but yeah, you’re right. Shit. Maybe C. D. is for real,” Lizzie said. “Why else would she be shopping for maternity clothes?”
“Okay, I think we shouldn’t start jumping to conclusions,” Brooke said, trying to be the voice of caution. “Lizzie, maybe you and Felicia can team up to finish going through all Josephine’s papers.”
“Or maybe—” Lizzie started.
“We go to Savannah and start doing some primary research,” Felicia finished. “Talk to that Catholic whatever-it-is. Visit the orphanage where C. D. says he was raised.”
“Brilliant!” Lizzie beamed at her newfound colleague. “Let’s do it.” She turned to Brooke. “I say we head up to Savannah first thing in the morning. And since you’re a native daughter, you can be our Savannah tour guide.”
“I can’t just drop everything. I’ve got a job, you know. And a child,” Brooke said.
“Have your calls forwarded to your cell phone and get the babysitter to take care of the kid,” Lizzie said. “Come on, Brooke. You know people in Savannah, and we don’t. This is important. To all of us.”
“It’s just one day,” Felicia said.
Brooke sighed. “Okay. This is crazy, but I’ll do it.”
“High fives!” Lizzie declared, and the three slapped palms and bumped fists. “Now group hugs!” she added.
“Let’s not get carried away,” Felicia drawled.
48
Brooke was standing beside the Volvo, waiting, as Felicia and Lizzie walked toward the marina parking lot.
“Shotgun,” Felicia said, climbing into the front seat.
Lizzie rolled her eyes and opened the rear door. “Um, Brooke?”
Henry was belted into his car seat, quietly munching on a toaster waffle. His face and hair and hands were smeared with peanut butter.
“Ladies, this is my son, Henry. Henry, that’s Lizzie. And this is Felicia, up front with me.”
“Hi, Henry,” Felicia said, turning around to wave.
“Heyya, Henry,” Lizzie added.
“He was running a little temperature this morning, which meant I couldn’t take him to day care, and Farrah, my babysitter, has graduation practice today and she couldn’t keep him,” Brooke explained. “So we’re going to drop him off at my mom’s house in Savannah before we go do our thing. And Henry’s going to be a really good boy today. Aren’t you, Henry?”
“No,” Henry said, throwing his sippy cup onto the floor.
“He’ll fall asleep any minute now, I promise,” Brooke said.
“He’d better,” Lizzie muttered. “So what’s our game plan?”
“I thought we’d start where C. D. says he got his initial information, at the archdiocesan office in Savannah. It’s just a few blocks from my mom’s house in Ardsley Park. Depending on what we find out, we’ll hopefully also make it out to Good Shepherd too.”
“Remind me exactly what that place is?” Felicia said.
“It was the oldest continuously operating home for boys in the country. But their mission has changed over the years, and now it’s morphed into a privately operated all-boys prep school,” Brooke said. “C. D. says he lived there from the time this Catholic orphanage placed him there at six until he ran away at sixteen.”
“Louette says she almost hopes we can prove C. D. is Josephine’s son,” Felicia said. “He’s definitely a strange one, but she says he’s way better than those awful cousins.”
“I think we have to try to go into this with an open mind,” Lizzie said. “Ask the right questions and just follow the bread crumbs until we reach the truth.”
“Agreed,” Brooke said. “But realistically, I don’t have high hopes that the archdiocese will share much information with us, especially where it relates to those old adoption records. I’m sure they’ll cite privacy concerns.”
Lizzie leaned forward in her seat. “Listen, I dig up dirt for a living. It’s my job to outrun or outsmart every version of the answer no. When we get there, how about I ask the questions?”
“Works for me,” Felicia said.
“So whatever kind of pretext I come up with, you guys just go with it. Okay?”
Brooke felt uneasy. “You’re not going to tell any outright lies or try to make me do anything unethical, right?”
“We’ll see,” Lizzie said.
*
Marie met them at the front door of the Ardsley Park home where Brooke had grown up. She transferred the limp, dozing toddler to her mother’s outstretched arms.
“He feels a little warm,” Marie whispered, touching the child’s pink cheek.
“There’s some children’s Tylenol in here,” Brooke said, handing her mother the diaper bag. “Give him that with some juice.”
“We’ll be fine,” Marie said. “Call me and let me know how it’s going.”
“I will. Thanks again for pinch-hitting, Mom. Love you.”
Brooke made the turn from Victory Drive onto the impressive-looking grounds of the Catholic diocese campus. “This used to be a children’s home too,” she told her passengers. “When I was growing up, it was St. Elizabeth’s. But the grounds were so overgrown with trees and moss, it looked really spooky.”
They parked and started walking toward the entry. “Rule number one for seeking information you probably don’t have any right to is always make friends with clerks and secretaries,” Lizzie said as they mounted the marble steps.
“You mean suck up to the man?” Felicia asked.
“No. Not the man. The man’s secretary or assistant or clerk, who is almost always a woman. The gatekeeper, if you will. Now watch and learn,” Lizzie said.
She swung open the door and approached a middle-aged woman at a reception desk.
“Hi,” she said brightly. “I’m Lizzie Quinlan.”
“Hello.” The woman looked quizzical. “How can I help you ladies?”
“I’d like to see some records from a now-defunct Catholic children’s home here in town, and I understand you have those on microfilm? The years I’m interested in are roughly 1942 through 1948 or ’49. And I’d be happy to pay whatever photocopying costs are incurred.”
“I’m sorry. We have strict privacy rules. Those records are only open to the actual children who were placed in the home and their biological mothers.”
“Oh.” Lizzie’s shoulders slumped dramatically. She stared down at the clerk’s nameplate, which said Debbie Winters.
“Well, I guess I did see something about that on the archdiocesan website, but I just thought maybe, because of the special circumstances, you all might make an exception, just this one time. And we’ve come such a long way too.”
“That’s a shame,” Debbie said. “Where are you ladies from?”
“I’m actually from California, and she’s from Florida,” Lizzie said, pointing to Felicia. “You see, Debbie,” she continued, “our dad is very, very ill. He’s in his seventies and we really don’t know how much longer we’ll have him with us.”
“Is it…?”
“Cancer? Yes. Very advanced. And very, very aggressive.”
“My sympathy to you girls,” Debbie said.
“He only recently shared with us the story of how his mother left him—abandoned him, actually—in a church here in Savannah. It was the first time he’s completely opened up to any of us about this. Naturally, my sisters and I wanted to follow up and get to the truth.”
“Naturally.” Debbie nodded.
“He told us that the priest in one of the churches in town found him under a pew when he was an infant after mass one Sunday morning.”
Debbie’s face registered her disbelief. “But that’s horrifying.”
“Shocking,” Felicia put in. “We had no idea.”