A Secret Identity (14 page)

Todd’s fingers, still folded over his stomach, were tapping, tapping. His face was carefully devoid of emotion. Completely gone was the pleasure he’d shown when I first arrived.

“May I ask you a question?” His voice was deadly soft.

“Sure,” I said.

“Why did you bother to hire me?”

“For your legal advice.”

“Which you’ve either ignored or not waited to hear.”

“You’re mad because I went to Harrisburg?”

“I did not say that.”

“You didn’t need to. It shows. You’re really used to people doing exactly what you say, aren’t you?”

“I did not say that either. Cara, if you’re going to run off here, there, and everywhere all on your own, you don’t need a lawyer.”

“In other words, you don’t want to be my lawyer anymore?”

“I did not say that.”

“You aren’t saying much of anything, are you?”

We stared at each other, jaws set.

“You really like to be in charge, don’t you?” I said coolly.

“That’s what I’m hired for,” he said. “Because I’m the authority.”

“So you say.” I couldn’t help it. Bentley genes.

“If you want to talk about people who like control, you might just want to look at yourself,” he suggested, ice in his voice.

“I’m only doing what I do every time I write a book,” I said. “I’m researching. We
romance writers
pride ourselves on our research skills.”

He ran one hand through his hair, and the curls on the left side of his head leaped to disarrayed life. With his other hand he straightened his already straight tie. I could tell he was struggling for a calmness he didn’t feel.

There was a gentle ping from his desk, and Todd spun toward it. “My next client is here,” he said.

So that’s how she did it. I rose. “Fine.”

We walked stiffly to the door. He reached to open it for me.

“What time will you be picking me up Friday night for dinner with Ward and Marnie?” I asked, my voice neutral.

He started. “You still want me to go?”

“Of course. Why not?”

“But we just had a fight.”

I almost laughed. “You think that was a fight? That was just a good, old-fashioned clearing of the air.”

“It was?”

“If you want to talk fight, you should have seen Mom and Pop when they had one of their rare disagreements. Those were real fights.”

I told him the story of the time Pop was going to San Francisco for a convention and Mom wanted to go along and stay for a week or two afterward for vacation.

“We can’t do that, Tess,” Pop had said, making a unilateral decision just like he made at work all day. “I need to get back to the office as soon as I can. And you can’t leave the kids anyway.”

I was ten and Ward was twelve at the time.

“I can’t
not
go with you,” Mom said, her voice crisp and emphatic. That half-strident tone should have been a warning to Pop, but he was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to notice. Mom plowed on, her voice getting louder and louder. “You have become a workaholic, John. We have to get away together so you can remember who you’re married to. And it isn’t
business
in spite of what you seem to think!”

He stared at her, unable to believe his gentle wife was screeching, but he wouldn’t yield. “No, Tess. The issue isn’t open to discussion.”

“Then I am also not open to discussion.”

And she didn’t talk to him for four days. She did all her regular things around the house with a pleasant manner and she joked with us kids and loved us kids as usual, but whenever Pop spoke to her, it was like she had gone deaf.

Finally on the fourth night he came home from work late to find Mom, Ward, and me eating dinner. He stalked up to the table and threw a pair of airplane tickets down in front of her.

“Satisfied?” he roared.

Mom picked them up, read the dates, looked at him and smiled. “Completely. I’ll call the babysitter tomorrow.”

“No more sulking?” he demanded.

“No more dictating?” she shot back.

He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her out of her chair and into his arms.

“I can’t stand it when you’re mad at me, Tess,” he said, his voice soft and hurt.

“And I can’t stand it when you forget me, John.” There were tears in her eyes.

He gave her a huge kiss while Ward coughed and gagged expressively. Then with arms about each other’s waists, Mom and Pop disappeared upstairs, giving Ward and me a whole evening to watch TV, which we did until our eyes bugged out.

“
That
was a fight,” I said, smiling at Todd. “You and I had a mere clashing of wills.”

He looked at me thoughtfully. “Cultural divergence due to family background.”

“Seems like it.”

“A great gulf fixed? Or is there a sturdy bridge we can cross?”

I squeezed his hand, which I found myself holding somehow. “We’ll find one.”

He squeezed back. “Or build one.”

We were staring at each other when Mrs. Smiley opened the door and snorted.

Chapter 7

I
liked Alma Stoltzfus immediately. She was just the kind of woman I’d always wanted for an aunt. She laughed easily, talked readily, and seemed genuinely interested in helping me. If she didn’t have the information I needed, she would do her best to help me find it.

Her brown eyes snapped and her expressive face showed a keen intelligence. She had legs to die for under a slightly plump, chesty body, and like Pop and Ward, she seemed unable to talk without using her hands. They sliced through the air in whorls and lines and circles, pointing, underlining, explaining. She was hard-pressed to get her spoon full of Tuscany potato soup to her mouth without waving it and losing its contents en route.

While we ate lunch, I told her about Pop and Mom and my family, and she told me about her husband, Art, and their children, Art, Jr., called Bub, Suzanne called Sissy, the twins, Theodore called Ned and Theodora called Dolly.

“I don’t know why we named the kids one thing and called them another. I’m sure it says something about Art and me, but I haven’t the vaguest idea what, and I frankly don’t care. All I care is that Bub and Sissy have given me four of the cutest grandkids you ever saw, three from Bub and one so far from Sissy. When the twins finally get married, I expect several more. Oh, lucky me! Believe me, young lady, there’s nothing like grandkids.” And she pulled out a passel of pictures.

Nodding and looking, I felt a zip of pain that there was no one I could ever give grandchildren to.

Finally I finished my pasta figioli and salad and Alma her lunch, and we got down to the purpose of our visit. We pushed everything to one corner of the table, and she unrolled a large chart. Lines and brackets were laced with names and dates, beginning with a single name in 1821, Karl Biemsderfer, and getting progressively more dense and complex as the years passed.

“Lots of fascinating stories here,” she said, indicating the upper reaches of the chart. “But your point of interest begins with this generation,” she said. “My grandfather’s.”

I looked where she pointed and read
Dwayne Biemsderfer m. Rebecca Crum
.

“I found their wedding announcement in the newspaper archives,” I said. “I was looking for Biemsderfer birth announcements and found this instead.”

“Old Dwayne was quite the looker,” Alma said. “I’ve seen sepia photos of him and Rebecca. Even in those formal pictures, he looks very handsome. I can’t say much about Rebecca though. The severe hairstyle of the day didn’t do much for her.”

“Maybe she had personality,” I suggested.

“That’s a kind thought.” Alma shrugged. “I don’t remember Dwayne and Rebecca well enough to comment. They died when I was pretty young.” She tapped another set of lines. “Now here’s Dwayne’s brother, Harold, who married Julia Miller and had five children—my aunts and uncles. There are lots of people for you to trace in this branch of the family, but it will be more difficult and time-consuming because most of them have moved away from Lancaster County. They’re literally all over the world because several of them are missionaries.”

I stared at Harold’s name and the list of descendents that trailed from it. If I had to try and locate all those people, I’d be forever trying to solve Pop’s mystery. Of course, I would have the pleasure of traveling all over the world. Look how much fun I’d had since coming here.

“And this,” said Alma, finger snapping against the chart, “is the baby of the family and the apple of everyone’s eye, at least according to Grandfather Dwayne and my father. Here’s Madeleine Biemsderfer who married Enos Lehman.”

“What?” I stared at the paper, goosebumps on my arms. I reached out and put my finger on the name, as if that would make it more real. “Enos
Lehman
? Like in
Lehman
Biemsderfer?”

It couldn’t be coincidence, could it?
Dear Lord, don’t let it be just coincidence
!

Alma looked at me speculatively. “I knew you’d jump at that name, so I checked carefully. They married in 1920, well after Lehman Biemsderfer was born. And their children are listed here. Elizabeth who married Harlan Yost and Joshua who married Kay Proust.”

“Of course Pop wouldn’t be listed even if he were Madeleine’s son.” I put my hand to my chest over my rapidly palpitating heart, patting my fingers against my upper rib cage, trying to tamp down my excitement. “Children born on the wrong side of the blanket don’t make family trees.”

“True,” Alma granted, her fingers rubbing over Madeleine’s name and freeing the paper of nonexistent wrinkles.

“I need to know more about Madeleine,” I said as much to myself as to Alma. “I need to know more about Enos.”

“Then you need to speak with Aunt Lizzie. She can tell you as much as anyone about her parents.”

“Aunt Lizzie is Madeleine and Enos’s Elizabeth? Aunt Lizzie?”

Alma smiled. “Don’t get too hopeful, Cara. The repeating of the name Lehman doesn’t have to mean a thing. And it certainly doesn’t
prove
a thing.”

I nodded. “I know.” But it did. I knew it did. I felt it in my bones.

“Tell me about Madeleine’s line of the family,” I said. “What do you know of her parents?”

Alma traced her finger back a generation on her chart to Joshua and Lottie Biemsderfer. She tapped their names for a few minutes while I waited, trying to curb my impatience.

“Lottie was supposed to be a kind woman, and her pictures indicate she was quite lovely, made for the old-fashioned gowns and hairstyles. Joshua, on the other hand, was a stern man, the product of a strict German family, when strict meant rigid and unyielding. That he married the charming Lottie is amazing. I have some letters he wrote to her before they were married. He went West for a time, trying to determine if he’d seek his fortune as a rancher. If he was intimidating in person, and everyone seems to agree that he was, on paper he was a true romantic. The letters are beautiful and full of genuine passion. She drew him back, the flame attracting its smitten moth, and he returned to claim her as his bride and settle here. They were married for fifty years before he died, a truly long marriage for those days when people died younger than today.

“Family legend has it that he was besotted with their daughter Madeleine because she was so like Lottie. He pampered her and loved her, but instead of growing up spoiled, she grew up as charming as her mother. If Madeleine was your great-grandmother, the pregnancy must have broken Joshua’s heart. And his background, that old rigidity, and the mores of the day must have made it almost impossible to allow knowledge of the pregnancy to be public.”

I sat mesmerized as Alma talked about these people who may have been my ancestors, my family, every bit as much as they were hers. I kept swallowing, trying to control the teeming adrenaline attacking my stomach.

“Oh, Alma,” I said, almost breathless with speculation, “what if Madeleine had Pop before she and Enos married? What if Joshua didn’t approve of them as a couple, and they decided to take things into their own hands?”

Alma looked at me with kind, intelligent eyes. I knew she’d already thought of several possible scenarios of her own.

“What if,” I said, “he was marching off to war? After all, Pop was born in the middle of World War I. It could have been one of those I-might-never-see-you-again things, you know?”

“I’ve thought of that,” Alma said. “And it’s definitely a possibility. The other thing that was happening historically was the influenza epidemic, in which thousands of people died. I’ve wondered if that somehow played into this situation, though I haven’t figured out how.”

I had a scenario immediately. “Maybe Enos had a brother who was Madeleine’s first love and he died of the flu before they could marry.” I could see the pathos of the scene as clearly as if I were writing it—which was sometimes with more clarity than if I witnessed it. “Then she had to give away her baby, her only real link to her true love. Enos, devastated by the death of his brother, came alongside Madeleine to comfort her at the loss of both her love and her child, and she fell deeply in love with him. Happy ending.”

“I can see why you’re a successful novelist.” Alma laughed gently at my excitement and handed me a glass of watered-down Coke. “Take a drink, my dear. It’ll calm you.”

I blushed but I didn’t back down on my imagined plots for Madeleine. I wanted desperately for my great-grandmother to have been happy. “I must visit your Aunt Lizzie.”

Alma nodded. “She lives at Tel Hai Retirement Community in Honey Brook. I’ll call her and tell her you’d like to visit. Then I’ll call you and tell you what she says.” She turned concerned eyes to me. “I don’t think you should just show up, you understand. Aunt Lizzie is old and frail and has a bad heart.”

“Of course. I certainly don’t want to give her a heart attack.”

Then I looked at Alma, my heart on my sleeve. She stared for a moment, trying to understand my expression. Then she nodded and pulled a cell phone from her purse.

I grinned happily as she dialed. Not wanting to seem too impolite in spite of the fact that I listened with an intense excitement that sent little zaps of anticipation zinging thorough my entire body, I busied myself rolling up her marvelous chart.