Breaking the Silence (38 page)

After he’d been walking for at least half an hour, he spotted a small, helium-filled hot air balloon flying in the darkening sky. It was illuminated by a spotlight from the ground, and it glowed. He walked toward it. If Emma had been near enough to that balloon to see it, she would have been drawn to it.

As he neared the balloon, he saw that it was an advertisement for a used-car dealership. Red letters on the balloon read
Shaw’s Pre-Owned Cars
, and the parking lot beneath it was blanketed with an eclectic mix of used automobiles.

Dylan walked slowly through the lot.

“In the market for a great car?”

Dylan jumped as a salesman appeared out of nowhere. The man was in his fifties and wearing a red baseball cap. “Have some terrific deals tonight,” he said.

“Just looking around right now.” Dylan turned his back on the salesman and was relieved when the man didn’t try to follow him.

He continued to scour the lot, scrutinizing the dark confines of every vehicle until he finally found what he was looking for: Sarah and Emma, huddled together in the back seat of an Oldsmobile, fast asleep.

His tears surprised him, and he took a minute to compose himself before opening the rear door.

Emma opened her eyes a crack. Sleepily, she held her arms toward him.

“Daddy,” she said.

It was a voice he had never heard before, but one he hoped to hear for many years to come.

Ten months later

“S
HOULD
I
HOLD ON TO THE ROPES
, D
ADDY
?” E
MMA ASKED
.

Dylan turned his attention from Brian, who was standing on the ground outside the basket, to his daughter. “You don’t have to hold tight yet, Em,” he said. “We won’t be going up for another few minutes.”

Dylan was wearing a tux that seemed to make his hair darker and his eyes bluer, and Laura could not tear her gaze from him for long. She herself wore a long, pale blue dress that was gauzy and soft and ethereal. The violet-and-lavender dress Emma was wearing was one she’d picked out herself. “That’s it, Mom!” she’d shouted a few weeks before as she ran toward the violet-clad mannikin in the store. “We don’t have to search any further!”

There were four of them in the basket: Laura, Dylan and Emma, and Dylan’s friend, Gregg, who was a minister and who, in a few minutes and several hundred feet above the ground, would make the three of them a family.

Brian and the new crew member, Steve, were wearing tuxedos, as well, and it was comical to see them going over the
preflight checklist with Dylan in their formal attire. As they marked off items on the list, Laura turned her attention to the grassy field, which was alive with color and sound and motion. A zydeco band, more friends of Dylan’s, pumped out its rhythmic, happy music from a platform set up near the barn, and the guests moved between the lawn chairs and umbrellas and the food-laden tables provided by the caterer. Dylan’s family was there—his sister and her family and cousins and aunts and uncles—all of whom had taken Laura and her garrulous daughter into their hearts. There were a few dozen of Laura’s colleagues from the Smithsonian and Hopkins among the crowd, and Laura could see John Solomon’s son and daughter and their spouses standing by the drinks table. They’d flown in from Alaska a few days earlier for the marriage of their half sister.

Dressed elegantly and sitting in the shade of an oak tree were John and Elaine Solomon and Sarah Tolley. John and Elaine had arrived the week before and were staying at the lake house. Nervous about meeting Sarah, John had tried to prepare himself for any possible reaction she might have. Laura had known there would be no problem; Sarah would not recognize him, nor would she understand when he told her his true identity. Laura had been right. Although John had spent a fair amount of time with Sarah this week, taking walks with her and Laura, picnicking with her at Dylan’s cabin, Sarah still had no idea who he was. If she wondered why this man treated her so lovingly, she didn’t ask. Memory and mastery were leaving her in small increments, day by day.

“Mommy, what are you looking at?” Emma asked. “You’re supposed to be watching Daddy get the balloon ready.”

“Look at Grandpa.” Laura helped Emma onto the propane tank so she could see more easily over the side of the basket.
John had gotten to his feet and was dancing with Elaine, twirling circles around one of the food tables in time with the fast-paced music. Still the risk-taker, Laura thought, chancing a broken ankle on the uneven surface of the field.

“Grandpa’s being outlandish again,” Emma said with a giggle. Her new word. They were hearing a lot of it these days.

“Back to your corners, ladies,” Dylan said as he and Brian finished the checklist.

He helped Emma step off the propane tank, while Laura slipped into her own corner, turning again to face the crowd on the field.

The other night, she and John had sat together on the pier by the lake, watching Comet Brandon and its spectacular tail, while Elaine, Dylan and Emma played a game in the house. Laura and John had talked quietly for a while, and there was an easy camaraderie between them. John said that he felt truly at peace for the first time in his life now that he’d found his daughter.

Looking up at the stars, he commented on their beauty, and Laura was reminded of those nights from her childhood when she’d sit in the darkness with Carl while he quizzed her on the constellations. John didn’t care if she knew one constellation from another or if she could pick Jupiter from a sky crowded with stars, she thought. John didn’t care if she’d discovered the comet they were observing or had won a dozen awards. All he cared about was that she was his Janie.

Before she climbed into the basket of the balloon, Laura had watched as John leaned forward from his chair to speak to Sarah. She’d heard him ask his former wife if she understood whose wedding they were attending. “Do you know who’s going up in that balloon?” he’d asked.

Sarah had nodded. “It’s that nice girl who takes me for walks,” she’d said.

I’m grateful to Jane Drewry, Liz Hain and Joan Winslow for nurturing this story and for being gentle with me when my plotting went astray.

Thanks to Ann Allman, Barbara Bradford, Alana Glaves, Pat McLaughlin, Priscilla McPherson, Joann Scanlon and Brittany Walls for their caring and careful critiques of outlines and early drafts, and to hot air balloon fanatic Dan Heagy and reference librarian Henry Zoller for helping me bring a dose of reality to my fictitious world.

And a special thank-you to my agent, Ginger Barber, and to Amy Moore-Benson and Dianne Moggy of MIRA Books.

Although Saint Margaret’s Hospital and its staff are imaginary, the experiments described in
Breaking the Silence
were actually performed at psychiatric facilities and universities during the 1950s, with governmental sanctions. When the extent of the experimentation became known in the late seventies, a congressional committee investigated the impact of that research on unwitting subjects. The need for informed patient consent and the federal approval of new drugs—two protections we take for granted today—resulted in part from this investigation.