A Family Name (4 page)

Will paused in the doorway, glancing back and
forth between the two twin beds. How had so much changed in the
space of one week? Before he had been a distinguished professor and
a happy bachelor, granted one who had to live on the family
homestead, but unattached for the most part. His mind drifted
briefly to the pretty woman he had rear-ended during the ice storm.
He had gone back to her over and over during the past week. Reflex,
he told himself. The woman was intricately tied to the day of Steve
and Gretchen's accident. If he paid a shrink to evaluate the
reasons, he assumed he would be told that the woman had become a
crutch, something tangible to hold onto when thinking about his old
life.

He ran a hand along the back of his neck, and
felt the hair prickle along his palm. Time for a haircut. A raw
laugh escaped his throat, sounding tight and strangled in the hush
of the children's bedroom. So many things raced through his mind,
but the one at the forefront was that he hoped his laughter hadn't
woken Sierra or Shane. After a few moments of stillness, he felt
assured that both children were asleep.

With a sigh, Will wandered back down the hall
to his office, where a stack of papers waited to be graded. Then he
needed to grab a few precious hours of sleep before he taught a
class in the morning. The dean had asked him to teach a few of
Steve's introductory courses until a replacement could be found.
Saying no had never crossed Will's mind, but after a week of being
a surrogate dad he felt the strain building.

He sank into his desk chair with bone-weary
relief. Lowering his head to his folded arms, he told himself he
would rest his eyes for only a minute, but a minute later sleep
tugged him into a blissful oblivion.

The next thing he knew his cell phone was
buzzing in his ear like an angry wasp. He flipped it open with a
quick, "Yes?"

"Sorry. Sorry, did I wake you?"

He recognized the voice instantly. The woman
he had rear ended weeks ago.

"Actually, yes, but I needed to wake up
anyway." Will straightened, running a hand over his face to wake
himself up.

"Oh, well, this is Charlotte. Charlotte
Miller. The, um, the quote came from the auto body shop on my
bumper. You said to call so…"

Will found himself nodding. "Yes, absolutely.
You can send me the information or have them bill me directly. If
you use a place in Rapid City I can stop by after I teach my last
class." He stopped and sighed. That wasn't exactly true. Sierra
needed to go to the dentist today.

"It isn't a big deal," Charlotte said, her
voice strained over the line.

"No, really I want to pay for the repairs.
It's just that life is complicated right now." Will flinched as he
said the words. He prided himself on being tough and stoic, and
even thinking such a thing, let alone voicing it, made him feel
like a grade A wimp.

Charlotte paused. He could hear her breathing
on the other end of the line. "It sounds like things are more than
complicated. It sounds like you're…sad."

She spoke softly, compassionately. The lilt
of her voice got past his defensive walls.

"My best friend died a few weeks ago."

"Oh." They sat in silence for a few
moments.

When the moments turned awkward, Will forced
a laugh. The sound came out like a harsh seal bark. "I don't know
why I told you that."

"Maybe you just needed to tell someone. Maybe
you needed to make it real so you can begin grieving."

"Maybe. Listen, give me a call later and I'll
run by the auto shop and pay the bill. Right now, I have to finish
some work before my day gets started."

"All right. Thanks." Charlotte paused again,
this time for so long that Will thought she might have hung up. "If
you need to… talk, I'm willing to listen. I'm a social worker so I
know a bit about grief counseling."

Embarrassment heated his neck. "Maybe."

They exchanged parting pleasantries, and Will
punched the end call button. Covering his eyes with one hand, he
wondered when he would start to feel like himself again. The old
Will would never have almost broken down with a near stranger, no
matter how beautiful a woman she might be. He kept his emotions
reined in, and as he shuffled the papers on his desk, he resolved
to get back to that place. As he made the vow, though, his mind
drifted to Charlotte and her open ended offer to talk. Despite his
discomfort, the thought of spending more time with her did appeal
to him. Suddenly he felt cheered as he hadn't in weeks. Maybe today
wouldn't be so bad after all.

****

Lexi's heart beat so hard, she worried it
might jump out of her chest. The hardwood floor creaked under her
as she inched forward into Charlotte's room. She knew she shouldn't
be snooping, especially since Charlotte was always so nice to her.
Lexi felt a pang of regret and hesitated near the foot of the bed,
which was hastily made. This had been her nicest placement in
years, and everything Charlotte did made Lexi feel welcomed. Like
how they cooked dinner together every night, and Charlotte actually
seemed to care what Lexi wanted to eat. She treated Lexi like an
equal, like a friend.

Biting the inside of her cheek to force her
to focus, Lexi continued her slow forward progress. She knew that
Charlotte had her file on her bedside table. They had watched a
movie in there the other night, a sappy girly movie night complete
with nail polish and popcorn. Lexi had let herself sink into the
fantasy of a happy life until she glimpsed her file. All the
information she ever needed to find her real mother was in that
little folder. For the rest of the evening and every day since,
Lexi had been formulating her plan to swipe the folder and get the
info she needed. She hadn't thought beyond that point.

"You can do this," she whispered. The bedside
table was within reach. Lexi paused. She calculated that Charlotte
would be at work for another hour at least. Still she held her
breath and strained to hear any noises coming from the rest of the
house. There would be no way to explain why she was in there, and
then Charlotte would probably send her away just like all the
others had done.

All the more reason to find her real mom.
Lexi grabbed the folder, and wrenched it open. The first page was a
basic fact sheet about her current and former placements; names and
addresses. Lexi scanned the list for anything useful before she
turned the page. Several more page flips yielded little but when
she hit the fifth, she caught sight of the photocopied birth
certificate. Her mother's name sat there, typed neatly onto the
page by some hospital worker thirteen years ago. The name that
linked Lexi to her real family.

"Mary Hoffman." The name tasted delicious to
Lexi. Her mother. Her real mother. "Hoffman?"

If her mother had been named Hoffman then
where had her last name come from? Lexi rechecked the birth
certificate but in place of her father's name it merely read
unknown.
The mystery made Lexi's thirteen-year-old brain hum
with possibilities. She concocted half a dozen theories in a matter
of four seconds as to why her mother wouldn't have listed her
father. What if he didn't even know she existed? Maybe after she
and her mother got settled, they could find her father and the
three of them would be a family again.

She flipped to the next page, and there
staring back at her was an address beside her mother's name. A mess
of other information littered the page, but the only thing Lexi
could see was an apartment number followed by a familiar street
name. All this time her mother had been just across the city.
Lexi's heartbeat sped up as it raced through her veins and
thundered through her ears. Quickly, she calculated the general
distance from Charlotte's house.

Tossing the file folder onto the bed, Lexi
made up her mind. She hurried out of Charlotte's room before she
had a chance to change her mind.

****

"Lexi?" Charlotte tossed her keys onto the
table in the entryway beside the stack of mail. "I brought pizza. I
hope that's okay?"

Silence met her call. Kicking off her shoes,
Charlotte breathed a sigh of relief. Those heels always hurt her
feet, but they looked so professional that she always made a point
to wear them on days she met with clients. The last time she had
worn them she had met Lexi. She hung up her coat in the closet as
she thought back to that day. Despite the minor bumps they had
endured so far, Charlotte had never made a better decision in all
her life.

As she thought about that day, the memory of
meeting a certain man with startlingly familiar eyes came over her
without warning. She was embarrassed to admit how often she had
thought of Mr. — no
Dr.
Will Wright over the past few weeks.
She had even run a search on him one night when she just happened
to be online. None of what she discovered had shocked her, but it
had intrigued her. Of course, she knew that she probably would
never see him again, but the tiniest, most sentimental part of her
glimmered with hope. The man did work in Rapid City. There was
always a chance, no matter how minute, that they could run into one
another again.

"Lexi?" Charlotte headed for the stairs. The
girl probably had her ear buds in and her music cranked to top
volume. Charlotte had to laugh every time Lexi insisted that was
the only way she could do her homework. It sounded like an excuse
Charlotte would have used years ago, although her foster mother had
been insistent that she study in a quiet environment.

Charlotte paused outside Lexi's door, and
knocked. "Lexi? I got pizza. I'll just go change and we can eat,
okay?" She waited a moment. When Lexi didn't respond, Charlotte
cracked the door open. "Lexi?"

She stepped inside the room, and knew
instantly that something was wrong. Lexi wasn't there, but more
than that, Charlotte could feel the emptiness of the room. The
backpack Lexi used for school lay open beside her desk, but her
purse was gone. The plasticky neon pink bag would have been hard to
miss. Panic tightened Charlotte's throat and made her stomach
churn. She told herself to calm down. There had to be a logical
explanation for the girl's absence. Maybe Lexi had left her a note.
She hadn't seen one in the entryway, but maybe there was one in her
bedroom.

The file folder laying open on her bed made
Charlotte stop in her tracks. "Oh no. She couldn't have."

Grabbing the file, Charlotte flew back down
the stairs, grabbed her keys, and ran to the car.

****

Lexi looked at the slip of paper in her hand,
and back up at the shabby apartment building. Confusion warred
within her. How could her real mother live here? When she saw the
address she had assumed that her mother lived in a little house
like Charlotte, just in a different part of town. Her shoulders
slumped in disappointment. After two bus changes and a walk through
downtown Rapid City in the chilly April evening, Lexi had hoped for
more. She had been waiting for this moment her entire life. Now all
she wanted to do was run back to Charlotte's house and be wrapped
in that lovely warmth. Thinking about Charlotte made Lexi feel
guilty.

She shook herself. Who cared where her mother
lived? Lexi had lived in far worse places, and this was the woman
she had been searching for. The front sidewalk was cracked so badly
that Lexi stumbled. The hot blush of embarrassment burned along the
back of her neck. But no one had seen her – mainly because no one
was around. The neighborhood gave Lexi the creeps. Bare trees
scraped the sky as the wind sent a cold gust whooshing by. On her
way down the block, Lexi had noticed three broken down cars, one a
burned-out hull. The only warmth she had seen came from a barred-up
liquor store. Somewhere down the block Lexi knew was the Black
Hills Paleontological Institute. Why couldn't her mother have lived
closer to that?

The hallway to the building smelled faintly
of cigarette smoke, and a bare bulb swung from the ceiling. Lexi
followed the worn, stained carpet to apartment 1D. Outside the door
she felt her first moment of hesitation since she had left
Charlotte's house. Who was this woman she had been separated from
as barely a toddler? Why had she been taken? The thought that she
had been so close to having all those answers in her file made her
cringe. She raised her hand to knock but found the door swinging
open before she got the chance.

A tall, thin woman with shaggy blond hair and
sunken eyes peered around the door frame. "What do you want?"

Lexi felt her jaw go slack from disbelief.
This woman couldn't be her mother, could she? Why did she sound so…
scared?

Before Lexi could answer she heard footsteps
pounding down the hallway. Then: "Lexi! I was scared to death."

****

Charlotte wrapped her arms around the girl.
Instead of pulling away as Charlotte feared she would, Lexi hugged
her back, burying her face in her shoulder. Only after Charlotte
had reassured herself that the girl was fine did she look up at the
woman hovering in the doorway. This must be Lexi's mother.

"Mary?" Charlotte took a deep breath and
shifted Lexi to her side.

The woman's eyes widened, her mouth puckered
into a tiny frown. "How do you know my name?"

"My name is Charlotte, Charlotte Miller. I'm
a social worker…"

"No, I can't do this again."

Before Charlotte could do anything Mary
pushed the door shut. Reacting quickly Charlotte shot her foot out
and jammed it in the door. The heavy wood cut into her foot above
her dress shoe. Now that they were here, Charlotte knew she needed
to let Lexi go through with the meeting.

"Please, Mary, your daughter just wants to
meet you." The words choked in Charlotte's throat and came out
sounding strangled.