The Confession (13 page)

She turned her head away. “Keep going.”

Aimee laid the blanket down on the bed and lifted an old newspaper article from the box. “Baby Girl Abducted from Local Hospital” the headline read. She narrowed her eyes, and furrowed her brow. What is this? She lifted another newspaper clipping. “No Ransom Note in Sinclair-Talbot Kidnapping” She quickly scanned the article from the San Francisco Bay newspaper.

“A child was taken only days after her birth from the hospital nursery. There are currently no eyewitnesses. The Sinclair’s, a prominent family in the San Francisco area, pleaded for the man or woman who took their daughter to bring her home. No ransom note has been received.”

Glancing at the date, Aimee’s hands began to shake. March 12, 1981. The month and year she was born.

Aimee felt out of breath as she reached deeper into the box with unsteady hands. More articles were folded neatly in a stack. She pulled them out and set them on top of the baby blanket. At the bottom of the box was a hospital bracelet. Aimee lifted the broken plastic circle. Written next to a picture of a faded pink teddy bear was a hospital identification number with the name “Baby Girl Sinclair.”

Aimee held tightly to the bracelet, a fiery pain seized her chest. “Mother, what is this? Why do you have these things?”

Her mother turned to her, a look of remorse on her face. She reached across the bed, laying a frail hand on Aimee’s leg. “It’s you. You were ‘Baby Girl Sinclair.’ I had to do it. I loved him. You have to believe … ”

Aimee leapt from the bed. She felt scalded by the touch of her mother’s hand. She couldn’t speak. In haste, she began to place the items back in the box, unsure of why. She closed the lid and, standing on unsteady legs, lifted the box from the bed. She looked down and realized her mother was still speaking. The room began to spin. Her chest felt tight. Tears began to fall down her cheeks.

She turned and darted from the room clutching the box protectively against her chest. She pushed past her sister coming up the stairway. Joan reached out to stop her, saying something she couldn’t hear as she began to sob uncontrollably. She ripped her arm out of her sister’s grasp and ran down the stairs. Grabbing her keys, she raced out the front door.

• • •

It took a minute to realize someone was shaking her arm. “Aimee, are you okay?”

She shook her head, attempting to bring herself back to the present. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there. “I’m fine, Joan.”

“No, you’re not fine. You’re standing outside on the porch crying. I called your name multiple times and you didn’t even hear me.” Her forehead wrinkled and she seemed to be genuinely concerned.

“I’m sorry. I was lost in thought. How is she doing?”

Joan opened the door wider, holding it for Aimee to enter and closing it gently behind her.

“Mom’s weak and sleeps a lot, but she’s still with us.”

Aimee nodded her head. She wasn’t sure she was ready for this. She needed to know why her mother had done such a horrible thing. Standing back in her old house it didn’t seem possible that this could actually be happening. She needed the truth, something to clarify what was real, and what wasn’t. If it turned out she actually was Emily’s daughter, then she’d have to figure out how to fix the huge mess she’d created with her own secrecy.

“I made us some lunch, are you hungry?”

Aimee was surprised by her sister’s friendly attitude. She was almost nurturing. In all of her sister’s twenty-six years, Aimee wasn’t sure she’d ever seen this side of her, at least not toward her. Her face must have portrayed her astonishment because her sister added, “Aimee, mom told me. I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine what you must be going through.”

Her mother told her? She wasn’t sure why she was surprised by that, but she was.

“We have some time before she wakes up. Do you want to talk about it?” Joan asked.

She wasn’t sure about that either. “I’m not sure what to say.”

Joan nodded her head and patted her shoulder. “We don’t have to talk now. How about some lunch? You must be starving.”

She was no longer certain what planet she was on. Joan was concerned? Joan cooked her lunch? Was this the same girl who’d never said a kind word to her in her entire life?

Walking with her sister she couldn’t help but notice her hair was too blonde, her makeup too dark, her lipstick too red, her shirt too short, and her pants too tight.

They truly were very different people. Aimee was the good girl. Always brought home good grades, was never late for curfew, and excelled in everything she put her mind too. Joan was the bad girl. She’d been suspended for smoking on school grounds, swearing at a teacher, and vandalism in the school library. Her grades were terrible, so bad that she almost hadn’t graduated. She had the party girl reputation and seemed proud of it. Aimee had gone to college and started her own business. Joan jumped from job to job. She was the girl who fell in love hourly and married almost on the same schedule.

Growing up, she’d always believed she was more like her father, and Joan, more like her mother. She told herself that her mother favored Joan because they were more alike, and her mother seemed to completely understand Joan. She supposed the truth was as simple as her mother favoring her own child. It didn’t make it right, or hurt less, but at least it made sense.

She pulled up a chair at the small table in the corner of the bright kitchen. Her sister set a large Caesar salad in front of her, topped with strips of chicken. She placed a basket of warm rolls in the middle of the table and sat down in the open chair.

Joan bit into a forkful of salad and chewed loudly. Aimee moved the lettuce around on her plate. She wasn’t sure if she really wanted to talk to her sister about this, but she was anxious to find out exactly what her mother said.

“So when you said, ‘Mom told me,’ what did you mean? What exactly did she tell you?” Struggling with eye contact, she stared down at her plate. She broke off a piece of a warm roll to keep her hands busy.

“She told me what happened to make you leave the way you did.”

Aimee looked up at her sister. “What exactly did she say happened?”

“She said she had to tell you that you were adopted. You know, so if you needed any medical information or whatnot, you would know after she was gone. That must have been hard to hear after so many years. Especially with how close you were to Dad. It must be painful to know he never told you.”

Aimee was speechless. Why would her mother lie to Joan? Did she think the truth would stay buried forever? Hell, she was the one who opened Pandora’s Box. Did she think she could slowly push all the pieces back inside?

“What she wouldn’t tell me is why you were in San Francisco. She was really upset about it when I told her you were there, but she refused to tell me why. Did you go to look for your real parents or something?”

“Something like that.” Aimee rose from the table and rinsed off her plate. She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to maintain her calm. She didn’t understand why, but her mother lying to Joan upset her, as did the fact her mother would be upset that she went to meet her birth mother. Or maybe it was her mother’s selfish fear that she would die in a prison infirmary with her name smeared all over the headlines while she was alive to see it. “I think I’m going to go see if she’s awake. Thank you for lunch.”

“Aimee … ” Joan got up from the table and stood in front of her. In a soft tone she said, “I’m sorry. You hear something like this and suddenly everything is clear. I haven’t always been very nice to you. I didn’t understand your goody two shoes personality, or why you were Dad’s favorite. But now I understand and I’m sorry for some of the names I called you and some of the things I may have done to you over the years.”

Before she’d even asked the question she knew she would regret it, but she asked anyway. “What do you understand, exactly?”

“Well, that you can’t help being a little uptight, it must be in your genes. It’s something you probably don’t have any control over. And it can’t be easy after all these years to learn you weren’t really Dad’s favorite. He was such a great man, trying to make it up to you that your real parents didn’t want you.”

With a straight face Aimee replied, “He was a saint really. It’s amazing how many years of hell he was able to endure and still maintain his sanity.”

She walked out of the room, leaving her sister standing in silence with a puzzled expression on her face.

Even after exhausting himself in the pool, Mark hadn’t been able to sleep. The moments he’d dozed off, he’d been plagued by bad dreams.

In them, he’d been trapped behind a wall. He could see out, but like a two-way mirror, they couldn’t see in. Both Aimee and Emily were sitting in a room crying and he couldn’t get to them. Emily was wearing Nathan’s ratty old bathrobe, and holding tightly to a stuffed ladybug. Aimee was wearing a white blouse, unbuttoned to the waist, exposing a lacy black bra. The wall dissipated and he’d rushed inside. It seemed they still couldn’t see him, and his shouts of reinforcement went unanswered. As they continued to cry, their tears began to fall like large stones upon him. He could feel their sadness, as well as his own physical pain.

Sitting up in bed, he rubbed his eyes, threw back the covers and stumbled into the bathroom. He understood why Emily was crying, he’d dreamt of her sadness many times over the years, but Aimee? He stared at himself in the mirror over the sink. Shaking his head, he ran the cold water and splashed his face.

“You need to get a handle on yourself,” he muttered to his reflection. “How long are you going to feel guilty about doing the right thing for both of you?” Judging by the bags under his eyes, he figured that his guilt, and his inability to sleep, was not leaving any time soon.

With his mind made up, he sighed, and headed for the shower. First order of business this morning was apologizing to Aimee. Second, burying himself in work, so he could guarantee he’d keep his hands off her in the future. Sounded like a perfect plan, so why did he doubt his own ability to stay away? It wasn’t like he was in love with her. Hell, he hardly knew her. What little he did know intrigued him, but he wasn’t the type of man that fell for someone because he was curious about her. Or at least, he didn’t think so. Maybe he did find her captivating, but so what? He’d been locked in this house too long. That was all this was.

He was having her investigated. She was keeping secrets, and he knew it. So she was sexy and beautiful, easy to talk to, and funny. He was sure there were a million women out there who were all of those things as well. He switched off the water and grabbed his towel to dry off.

He threw his towel over the top of the shower rod and walked into the bedroom. He stuffed his legs into a pair of well-worn jeans, pulled a T-shirt over his head and pulled his favorite flannel shirt off the end of the bed. He hurried back into the bathroom and running a comb through his hair, turned off the light and rushed from the cottage.

He stopped in front of Aimee’s door. Determined to ease his guilt by convincing her he’d done the right thing, he knocked loudly.

When she didn’t answer, he turned, and marched down the winding path toward the main house. She wouldn’t avoid him today. One way or another, they would resolve this now.

He walked into the kitchen expecting to find her at the table sipping coffee with Emily. She wasn’t there.

“Morning, Em. Have you seen Aimee? I really need to talk to her,” he said, still scanning the room.

“She’s not here. She went home.”

He jerked his head back around. “What do you mean she went home?” He felt the panic bubbling as his heart raced. “She quit? Just like that?”

Emily furrowed her brow. “No, Mark, she didn’t quit. What’s gotten into you this morning?”

Realizing he was in fact, acting like a madman, he pulled out a chair and sat down. His legs twitched under the table. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night and I really needed to talk to her.”

He looked up when Emily didn’t reply. She watched him over the top of her mug, her face emotionless. “I’d ask why you hadn’t slept, but that would be a redundant question.” She sipped her coffee casually, looked at him again, and let out a little humph sound. If he didn’t know better, he would think that Emily was enjoying his suffering this morning.

He growled at her, rose from the table and poured himself a cup of coffee. Sitting back down, he sighed and asked, “Why did she go home? Is everything okay?”

“According to her very nice note, her mother has taken a turn for the worse. She needed to be there.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Emily asked.

He paused, took another sip of his coffee and sat his cup down on the table. Looking up into her caring eyes he replied, “I think I might have hurt her feelings, and I just wanted to clear the air.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

She watched him closely. “Did you hurt her feelings?”

There were days he hated that she could read him so well. “Yeah, I did. I wanted to explain. It bothers me that she’s there and I don’t have the chance to do that.”

“There’s always the phone,” Emily suggested logically.

“Some conversations need to be face to face, and this is one of them. If she is still talking to me when she gets back, I’ll try to fix it.” He stood up from the table.

“Mark … ”

He turned to her.

“It’s none of my business, but maybe it shouldn’t wait. If you’re this upset, I can only imagine how she must be feeling.”

He knew she was right, and it bothered the hell out of him. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, but he had. He didn’t want to feel anything for her, but he did. He didn’t want to talk about this over the phone, but he realized he was more afraid that if he didn’t, she’d never come back. His stomach rolled, and his palms began to sweat. That was something he didn’t want to think about. He
needed
her to come back.

Aimee paused outside the door to her mother’s bedroom. She inhaled and blew out slowly. Placing her hand on the knob, she paused. Her eyes welled with tears. She let her hand fall softly to her side. Turning around, she slid to the floor, pulled her legs to her chest and rested her forehead against her knees.