The sky has lightened to a dove gray and the rain mists all around, not falling in drops from the sky, but like it’s raining from the bottom up. My coffee cup is empty and I’m cold. I venture inside and look at the clock. It’s not even nine. I wander upstairs halfheartedly, to find my book buried under sweaters and jeans in my overnight bag. All the doors in the hall are closed and I nudge open the one next to our bedroom. The bed in the center is made simply and a hand-stitched brightly colored patchwork quilt adorns the bed. The pillows are made from old jeans pockets and the walls are adorned with red wooden stars, an upmarket Americana theme. I am sure of two things: Penny decorated this room, not Henry. And nothing has changed since Tara died. Upon closer inspection, the bureau top contains bottles of women’s perfume, turned yellow in the sun. The nightstand holds a mystery book with page 137 folded down at the corner. There are blue peep-toe bedroom slippers (Chanel makes bedroom slippers?) peeking out from under the bed. She could have been here yesterday. Then there is the dawning realization that there’s not the slightest layer of dust on anything. It’s not as though this room has been closed off, never to be entered again. Someone cleans this room. Rearranges the perfume bottles, just so. Moves the slippers to vacuum, and replaces them so that their toes line up perfectly underneath the dust ruffle.
My arms are pricked with gooseflesh. I back out of the room and close the door, my hand paused over the doorknob. I am at once anxious to leave and glued to the spot. My desire to know more about the woman Henry was married to battles some unknown restraining force. I try to pinpoint it and can’t, but suspect I fear measuring up. It’s hard enough to keep pace with an ex-wife when the relationship was permitted to slide downward on its own. But I suspect Tara was ripped from Henry’s arms at the peak of his adoration, and yet I still bumble along somewhere in the middle. It’s a hard thing to know, that you’re second.
I leave the room and turn to examine the other two rooms. The door at the end of the hall is Henry’s office. The door between what I’ve so quickly come to think of as Tara’s room and his office is padlocked. Padlocked? I halfheartedly give the doorknob a good jimmy but unsurprisingly, it doesn’t move. I do the same to Henry’s office and am startled to realize that that door doesn’t open either. It’s been locked from the inside.
My phone buzzes from inside my pocket and a text from Cash blinks. Give me a call ASAP. I sent you an email. I check my service and see that there’s no data—only one unsteady bar of network service. When I open the web browser, the loading circle spins around and around. I jam my phone back in my pocket. Stupid in-the-middle-of-nowhere-land. The house doesn’t have wireless but I vaguely remember Henry assuring me his office computer had Internet access. I jimmy the handle again for good measure. I pull my phone back out and dial Henry. It rings four times and goes to voicemail. Henry, it’s me. Where’s the key to your office door and why is it locked? I want to use the Internet. Call me back.
There’s only one reason that Cash would be calling me, and it has to do with my birth mother. I’m sure he’s found something, and my heart pounds. I clatter down the steps and dig through the kitchen drawers until I unearth a screwdriver.
Back upstairs, I stick the screwdriver through the old-fashioned keyhole and wiggle it around until I feel it catch the lock. It takes me a few minutes but after the third try, the mechanism clicks backward and the handle gives. I pause, with my hand on the door. I’ve never been in Henry’s office before, and now I’m doing this without his permission.
The office smells of the one leather chair, with a faint overtone of sawdust. Henry’s desk is a simple Quaker-style table with a single middle drawer—so unlike his offices at home and work, which boast rich mahogany and more drawers and cabinets than he could possibly fill. The house was his family’s, and I wonder if this was his father’s office. Later, I’ll ask him, when he’s properly plied with whiskey. He’s said very little about his parents and I scan the room for signs of them. Nothing.
I pull out the chair and sit, hitting the power button on the computer. The desktop is a surprisingly old Mac, nothing at all like the sleek silver laptops Henry carts around, always the newest, smallest model. I briefly wonder if the office is even his. I wonder what Tara did for a living.
I’m surprised but grateful that the computer doesn’t prompt me for a password to log on. I click the Internet icon and it takes a minute, but it chugs to my email site. I call Cash back.
“Hi, it’s me. I’m at a computer, what’s up?” I’m breathless and I realize my fingers are shaking.
“Hey, hold on.” He covers the phone and I hear voices and then scratching like he’s got the phone in his pocket. After a minute or so, he comes back. “Okay. Did you check your email?”
“Yeah, it’s open.”
“I sent you a link. Click on it.”
I do and it brings me to a genealogy-tracing website with Evelyn at the top of the page. Her picture knocks the wind out of me. Her smile is bright. She looks so young. I don’t realize I’m crying until a tear hits my forearm. I sniff.
“Are you okay?” Cash asks. I realize I’ve been quiet too long.
“I’m fine. But what is this? How do they have her picture?”
“She must have made a profile. When was this picture from?”
I study it and realize that based on her weight, she was probably already sick, maybe in her first remission. “Maybe six or seven years ago? She was already sick.”
“Okay, scroll down until you see the name Janice Reeves.” He’s clicking in the background. I do what he says. “Do you see the names under her?”
“Gail, Belinda, Caroline,” I say out loud. Then again, “Caroline.”
“It’s a hunch, not a fact yet. I wanted your feedback.” He talks quickly, the words piling out in a rush.
“But the name on the birth certificate is Carolyn. With a y. And the last name is . . . Seever.”
“Remember how I said no one makes up a truly fake name?”