Even Now (28 page)

Like a bolt of lightning, it hit her.

What if her mother had used more than one name too? Everyone assumed she’d changed her name, otherwise the private investigators hired by her grandparents would’ve found something by now. She darted back to her bed and grabbed the first spiral notebook she could reach. As fast as her fingers could move, she opened the cover and stared at the title page.

A Summer’s Day

by Lauren Gibbs

May be her mother was using the name Lauren Gibbs! Emily stared at it, then she smacked her knee. Of
course!
Why hadn’t she thought of that sooner? Once her grandpa told her the name came from a fictional character, she assumed there was no point searching it on the Internet. The most she would find would be a novel her mom liked to read as a young teenager. But now . . .

She dropped the notebook and sprinted down the hallway to the office. The computer was on and connected to the Internet in no time.

“God — ” she whispered His name, her fingers trembling — “You gave me this. I can feel it.” She centered her hands over the keyboard, typed in the name, and hit enter. She couldn’t breathe while the machine worked, and then in a flash a list of entries appeared.

Emily stared and began reading them out loud. “
Time
magazine correspondent Lauren Gibbs has been stationed in Afghanistan since — ”

Emily’s heart raced.
Time
magazine correspondent? Her eyes flew to the next entry. “ ‘Children of War’ — a profile on the orphans of Operation Enduring Freedom, by Lauren Gibbs,
Time
magazine correspondent. Photos by . . . ”

One after another she read the entries in the list of hits and by the time she reached the end of the page, she was shaking all the way to her toes. Every entry mentioned Lauren Gibbs as a
Time
magazine reporter. Emily pressed her palm against her forehead, pushing her bangs back, the way she did when a soccer game got too intense. “Okay, God, walk me through this.”

Just because Lauren Gibbs wrote for
Time
magazine didn’t mean Emily had found her mother. She went back to the search line and typed, “Lauren Gibbs
Time
magazine profile.”

The results were just as quick as before. The first link said simply “a profile of Lauren Gibbs,
Time
magazine correspondent.” Again Lauren held her breath as she clicked the link. And there, instantly, was a photo that took up a fourth of the screen. The woman was blonde and pretty in a plain sort of way. She wore khaki clothing, and in the background were what looked like army tents. More than that, though, was the look on her face. A haunting look that revealed everything and nothing all at the same time. A look Emily had seen more often than she cared to admit.

In photographs of herself.

“Dear God . . . ” Tears filled Emily’s eyes, and she reached out, brushing the image with the tips of her fingers. It was her mother, she was absolutely sure. After a lifetime of looking, she’d found the woman who had walked out of her life when she was just an infant. She had no doubts, none at all. Because in more ways than one, looking at the woman’s image was like looking at her own.

She brought her hands back to the keyboard and scanned the profile, gobbling up every small detail, all the pieces that had been missing for so long. Lauren Gibbs was based in Los Angeles, but she’d lived in the Middle East for most of the past three years. She was thirty-six years old with a master’s degree in journalism from University of Southern California. She interned with the
Los Angeles Times
, and took a position at
Time
magazine a few years later, when she was just twenty-six.

Emily read the last part out loud again. “Lauren Gibbs has won numerous awards for her gutsy reporting throughout the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. She is credited with helping bring humanitarian assistance to the Middle East and with helping to open a number of orphanages throughout the region. She is single and has no children.”

What?
Emily sat back, hard. The last line screamed at her, hurting her as much as if she’d been slapped. The single part was sad, but not surprising. Her mother went to Los Angeles to find the love of her life, and her search apparently turned up nothing. But . . .

No children?

“Is that what you tell people, Mom?” Fresh tears slid down her cheeks, and she didn’t bother to wipe them away. The information was a lie, and it made her mad. Lauren Gibbs — Lauren
Anderson
— did too have a child. She had a daughter. Even if she thought her daughter was dead, she had a child.

Emily stared at her mother’s image, trying to see past the hurt in her eyes. Other people might think the look was stone cold, the way people would expect a hardened journalist to look. But Emily recognized the look. It was the way she, herself, looked when she let circumstances get to her. When going through a tough day without a mom and a dad was more than she could handle, when she saw her teammates scan the sideline and wave to parents and the reminder hit her again. Her parents hadn’t seen her play a single game.

Again she touched the image, tracing her mother’s cheek, her chin. “Was it that easy to let me go? To tell yourself I never existed?” Her tears became sobs, and she drew back from the computer, hanging her head and giving way to a lifetime of sadness and doubt and question marks.

After a few minutes, she heard someone at the door behind her. “Emily?” It was her grandma’s voice, and it was filled with alarm. “What on earth — ”

Emily sat up and looked over her shoulder. Between sobs she said, “I found her. I found my mom.”

Her grandma looked like she might drop from shock. Her face went pale, and she sat on the arm of the sofa, her eyes glued to the computer screen. “How did you — ”

Emily dragged her fists over her eyes and found a trace of control. “Her . . . her name’s Lauren Gibbs.”

“Lauren Gibbs.” Her grandma was on her feet, moving trancelike across the office toward the computer screen. The closer she got the more grief-stricken her face became. She reached toward the image on the screen and a cry left her. “Lauren . . . my baby.” She brought her hand to her mouth and shook her head. Again she reached out, as tears flooded her eyes. “My girl.”

Emily couldn’t stop the sobs. All her life living with her grandparents, they talked about her mother only a handful of times. It was as if they wanted to give her the most normal life possible, and that meant they couldn’t raise her in an environment of sorrow and regret. But now — watching her grandmother — she knew the truth.

The woman had grieved the loss of her daughter every day of her life. Lauren watched her back up a few steps and sit on the other arm of the sofa, the one closest to the screen. Then she dropped her face into her hands and wept, praying out loud as her emotion allowed. “God, You found her for us. Thank you . . . thank you. My baby girl . . . my Lauren.”

Emily went to wrap her arms around her. In every way, her grandmother had been a mother to her, but they both paid the price for being without the woman on the computer screen. Now, their tears were for too many reasons to count. They were for every one of Emily’s missed birthdays and lost milestones, for all her school years and teenage years and soccer tournaments when she had privately ached for her mother. And they were tears of relief. Because they’d found her. Finally.

Emily sniffed and grabbed three quick breaths. “It’s the miracle we prayed for.”

Her grandma uncovered her face and looked at the computer screen again. Beneath her eyes, her mascara had left dark smudges, and her cheeks were red and blotchy. But Emily had never seen her look more joyful. Grandma grabbed two tissues from the office desk and handed one of them to her. They both blew their noses and wiped their eyes some more.

“I still can’t believe it.” Grandma slumped forward and her eyes found Emily’s. “I can’t believe we didn’t think of it a few weeks ago.”

“Me neither.” Emily sniffed, but she felt a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I was standing at the window in my room and I begged God to show me the next clue. You know what He did?”

“What?” Her grandma reached out and the two of them joined hands.

“He reminded me of His names, all His marvelous names.” She made a sound that was more laugh than cry. “All of a sudden, it was so obvious. God has dozens of names, and some people have multiple names too.”

Her grandmother looked drained, as if she wouldn’t have had the energy to stand if she needed to. “What do we do next?”

Emily released her grandma’s hands and sat in the computer chair again. She slid it forward and looked once more at the profile next to her mother’s picture. At the bottom was the thing she was looking for. A link that read, “Contact Lauren Gibbs.” Emily’s breath caught in her throat, and she shook her head. It was too much, but she wasn’t going to stop now.

She clicked the link and an e-mail template opened up. In the top line was her mother’s e-mail address:
Lauren.Gibbs@Time Magazine.com
. Her hands were still shaky, but she tabbed down to the subject line and typed, “From Emily.” Then she moved the cursor to the text area and drew a deep breath. She’d had a lifetime to think about what to say next. Her fingers began to move across the keyboard, and the words came without any effort at all.

Hi, my name is Emily Anderson, and I’m eighteen years old.

She exhaled and looked at her grandmother. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

Her grandmother looked breathless, dazed. “Keep typing.”

“Okay.” Emily looked back at the screen.

I believe that you might be my mother. I’ve looked for you since I was old enough to know how to do it. I live with my grandparents — Bill and Angela Anderson. They’ve looked for you too. But just today I thought about looking under the name Lauren Gibbs, because that’s the name my mother used when she was young and wrote short stories. I found that out a few weeks ago.

I did a search on the Internet, and I found your profile. Please, could you write back and let me know if I have the right person. This is very important to me, obviously. Sincerely, Emily Anderson.

She lifted her hands from the keyboard and scanned the note once more. There were a million more things she wanted to say, but she had to make contact first. Once her mother read the e-mail, they could talk about all the other details. Why she’d changed her name and what she’d been doing for the past nineteen years and whether she’d ever come close to finding Shane Galanter.

She exhaled hard. “That’ll have to do for now.”

Her grandmother made an approving sound. “Send it, honey. Please.”

Emily moved the cursor over the send button and clicked it. In an instant, the e-mail was gone. Emily stared at the screen and thought for a moment. They still had some logistical problems to work through. If her mother was overseas in Afghanistan, then maybe she wouldn’t seethe e-mail right away. Soldiers could get e-mail. Emily knew because she kept in touch with a few guys from high school who were serving overseas. Certainly the same would be true for reporters. Unless she had a different business e-mail address, one that her editors could use for her. The one on the website might only be for readers, and because of that maybe she only checked it when she was stateside.

Emily turned to her grandma and pushed her fears back down. “We need to pray.”

“Yes.” They held hands. “Let’s do that.”

Emily closed her eyes and for a few seconds she was too overwhelmed to speak. After a few moments she found her voice. “Dearest Lord, thank You.” She giggled and it became a sharp breath. “
Thank You
doesn’t even come close. The miracle we asked for is at hand, God, so please . . . let my mother read the e-mail soon. And direct her to respond to me so we can arrange a meeting.” She paused, her heart full. “I’m doing what You ask, Lord. I’m praying, expecting you to help us. Thanks in advance, God. In Your name, amen.”

When she opened her eyes, her grandma pointed at the screen. “Print me a copy, will you, honey?”

Emily grinned and gave her grandma a quick hug. “Definitely.” When the picture was finished printing, Emily picked it up and handed it over. Then she printed another copy for herself.

“Your papa’s resting downstairs. He’s had so much bad news the past few weeks.” Grandma looked at the single page. “Let’s go give him the best news ever, news he’s waited eighteen years to hear.”

Angela felt weak as she took the stairs, arm in arm with Emily.

Her heart was exploding with a dozen brilliant colors, because this was the day she never really believed would come. They’d found Lauren! After all the private detectives and investigators and phone calls to elected officials, they’d found her the simplest way of all. With information that had been sitting for nearly twenty years a dozen yards away in the garage. They went into the family room and found Bill in his chair, his eyes closed.

“Bill.” She held out the piece of paper. Emily stayed back as Angela approached him.

He opened his eyes and a slow smile filled his face. He held out his hand toward her. “Hi, love.” He looked past her. “Emily, how are you?”