Finding Their Son (10 page)

C
HAR LOVED
S
AN
F
RANCISCO
. For a gal straight from Hicksville, she’d never felt intimidated or out of place in this city. Probably because quirky was this town’s middle name.

“We’re getting off at the next stop,” she told Eli, who was sitting beside her in the B.A.R.T train that had just transported them under the waters of the bay. They’d arrived at the Oakland Airport just as the first fingers of dawn pried back the curtain of night.

Early morning commuters, laden with tall, insulated mugs of coffee, earbuds and newspapers made up most of the other passengers. Char was tired but she couldn’t suppress a niggling sense of excitement. Not only was she about to enter one of her favorite places on the planet, but she had a companion. That almost never happened.

Unless you counted the voice in her head, Char was always alone. But not today.

The train came to a smooth stop, the doors opening on a hiss. Eli shouldered the canvas backpack she’d loaned him and offered her a hand. She took it. Why not?

You know why not, chickadee. You like his touch too much.

“Do you have your ticket ready? You have to put it in the machine to get out.”

“Really? But we bought round-trip passes.”

She towed her small, black wheelie bag behind her. “It’ll come back out. Watch.”

She led the way through the cattle gates, as she called them, and pointed toward the nearest staircase. “Our hotel is that way,” she said once they reached Market Street. “The clerk I spoke with said we could probably check in around noon.”

He slid back the cuff of his heavy jacket. His watch was an old one of Char’s. One she’d bought online and felt was too mannish once she got it. “Too early to burst in on your aunt, I suppose. Breakfast?”

She’d packed them food for the trip, but the two remaining power bars didn’t sound very appealing at the moment. “Coffee, for sure,” she said. “I know a place around the corner from Pam’s. It’s a bit of a hike, but after being scrunched up in a plane overnight, a walk sounds good to me. Are you up for it?”

He gave her one of his inscrutable looks and nodded.

“Indian men,” she muttered, starting for the corner. She didn’t jaywalk. Her first trip here, she’d nearly been creamed by a messenger on a bike. Since then she’d become a model pedestrian.

The sheer volume of people hurrying along the sidewalk kept conversation at a minimum. They didn’t actually have a chance to speak until they were seated at a tiny table in the corner café. The glass windows were steamed over around the edges. At home, Char could have called it the lace effect.

“What did you mean when you called me an Indian man?”

She looked up from the laminated menu. Nothing was
cheap in this town, but she no longer griped about the cost out loud. Her aunt once told her such complaining only proved she was a tourist.

“Did I offend you? Sorry. I should have said Native American men. Or do you prefer Indigenous Peoples?”

He scowled. “I couldn’t give a crap about what’s P.C. I meant what did you mean by the comment?”

“Oh. Well, I’ve had hundreds of dealings with men of your tribe over the years and I’ve learned that half the time they only tell you what they think you want to hear. The other half, they lie.”

He stared in shocked silence for a few seconds then burst out laughing. A first. She liked the sound. Deep and masculine. “Actually that’s pretty astute. But I’m only half-Native.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

She folded the menu and set it aside. “I had a huge crush on you, remember? And I was a student helper in the principal’s office.”

“You accessed my records?”

A harried blonde in a retro pink and black uniform paused long enough to give Eli the once-over and take their order before disappearing into the crowded restaurant. Char didn’t like the momentary clutch of jealousy she experienced. “Never date a guy who’s cuter than you are,” her mother once warned. “All the even cuter girls will try to steal him away.”

That was about the sum total of her mother’s maternal advice. And it certainly had proven true more than once when Mom made the wrong choice from the dating pool.

“I didn’t have access to anyone’s records. I just listened
and maybe asked a question or two. You know how people like to gossip. My family got talked about enough.”

“What did you learn?”

She poured cream from a stainless steel pitcher into her cup and stirred, watching it turn the mixture the color of her grandmother’s pine rocking chair. “Well, they said your maternal grandfather was your dad’s commanding officer in the army. Your dad and mom eloped and he nearly got court-martialed for going AWOL.”

“True. He took a less-than-honorable discharge and moved back home.”

“They said your mom hated the reservation. She lasted a couple of winters then moved to Texas or Oklahoma.”

“Oklahoma. My grandmother lived there. She’d divorced my grandfather shortly before I was born. Mom said Granny got fed up with the way Gramps handled things with my mom and dad.”

“That’s where you lived during the school year, but you spent your summers in Lower Brule.”

“Mom remarried when I was six. My stepdad, Carl, had two kids. They were a few years older than me and they lived with their mother most of the time. We were never close. Then the twins were born. Sara and Mike. After Mom died, Carl had a pretty rough time keeping it all together. Dad invited me to come live with him. He convinced me I’d have a shot at some college scholarships if I traded on my ethnicity and went to Pierre High.”

“Do you see your half siblings much?”

“Mike’s in Iraq at the moment. Works for a private contractor. But Sara’s a sweetheart. She’s happily married with two kids. We e-mail each other quite a bit.”

He frowned. “She’s probably starting to get worried. I
haven’t e-mailed her since last week. Normally she would have called Bobbi to find out what was up, but Sara’s loyal to the max. She was furious when she heard the news.”

“It’s probably none of my business, but can I ask what went wrong between you two?”

He brushed back an errant strand of hair from his furrowed brow. “The usual.”

“Another man?” she croaked, louder than she’d planned. Ducking her head slightly, she whispered, “I don’t believe it. Who could she…?”

A memory she’d completely forgotten popped into her mind. Bobbi and a dark-haired guy who wasn’t Eli making out under the bleachers after a home game. “Robert?” she mouthed.

“Yeah. Apparently they had more in common than they knew.”

Like us?
She didn’t ask the question because their server returned at that moment with their food. Scrambled eggs and fruit for Char; eggs Benedict for Eli.

As the woman refilled their mugs, she studied Char. “I like your hair. Very autumnal.”

Self-consciously, Char touched her uncombed mop. She was aware of Eli looking at her. He’d called her odd. Did he still feel that way?

They ate in silence until Char couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer. “So what happened? They were apart for all these years then suddenly got back together? Can you talk about it?”

He took a bite and chewed. “I could, but I’m not going to. Know why?”

She moved her chin from side to side.

“Because I’d either tell you what I think you want to hear…or I’d lie.”

She hid her smile with her mug.
He got you that time, chickadee. Hooeee, I do believe I like this boy.

Me, too,
Char agreed.
Me, too.

E
LI HAD NEVER BEEN
to San Francisco, but he didn’t expect to like it. The freaking air temperature felt colder than the snowy clime he’d just left even though a big sign on a billboard claimed it was fifty degrees.

And the damp moisture that wasn’t rain—according to Char—collected on his eyelashes and cheeks, making his nose drip.

“You don’t like the fog, do you?”

He also hated being transparent. He didn’t answer.

“Don’t get surly. I’m not in charge of the weather. Besides, the fog will burn off in a little while and then it’ll be warm and sunny.”

He didn’t believe her. And how did someone like her get to be so city smart? He didn’t ask because the more he learned about her life, the more he liked her. Like led to friendly, friendly led to knoodling, knoodling was the first step on a slippery slope that would surely lead to a bad, bad ending. Another bad ending. One was enough.

“Here we are,” she said, her cheerful voice breaking through his attitude, as bleak and cheerless as the sky.

She stopped before a waist-high wrought-iron gate. The unusual fence appeared to be made out of old metal headboards—some painted, some rusting.

“Are those…?”

“Uh-huh. Some of these headboards supposedly were
pulled from the debris of the 1910 earthquake. I adore the Painted Ladies.”

He looked up at the narrow, three-story corner home. The house appeared to be touching a similar home on its left. The right side followed the street, and he could see a tiny garage set under the home. “Is your aunt’s partner rich?”

Char’s shoulders lifted and fell. “Carlinda’s family owns another place on Nob Hill. But don’t worry. Carly’s not a snob. She’s a surgeon, a teacher and a political activist for gay rights. She’s amazing.”

Eli followed her through the gate. While she climbed the steep steps to ring the bell, he studied the building’s unusual paint job. He didn’t know how purple, green, orange and a couple of other odd shades he couldn’t name managed to look complementary, but the combination worked on this impressive-looking structure.

“Char,” exclaimed the tall woman who opened the door. “Welcome, dear heart.” A gust of air made the woman’s long, wavy silver hair fly about in every direction. She brushed it away impatiently. “Come in. Come in. Pam is so excited about your visit. She actually seemed to understand who was coming. It might be the new meds. It might be you.”

Once inside the huge, two- or three-story entry, the two exchanged a long, obviously heartfelt hug. “Carly, this is Eli. He and I were in school together.”

“Ah…” the woman said, her lively green eyes checking him out from head to toe. “The plot thickens.” She shook his hand, firmly but warmly. “I knew there had to be a man involved. Char is never this impulsive.”

Eli looked around, hoping he didn’t make a fool of
himself by gaping, open-jawed. The place was a real-life mansion, complete with white marble floors, a dramatic winding staircase and a gigantic crystal candelabra-type light fixture that looked like it had been there forever.

“I’m so sorry we don’t have a bed to offer you,” Carly was saying when Eli tuned back into the conversation she was having with Char. “Our exchange student’s family is visiting from Honduras. You just missed them. They’re doing Alcatraz this morning.”

She looked at Eli as if intending to say more. He braced himself for a comment about the notorious prison’s occupation by members of the American Indian Movement, but she didn’t. Eli was grateful. For one thing, that part of his father’s people’s history was long before Eli’s time. For another, he hated it when strangers made assumptions about him based on his ethnicity.

“No problem,” Char said, shrugging off her coat. She’d left the bright purple one at home, opting for a more practical black slicker-type with a hood. Eli sorta missed her bold colors. Demure didn’t go with her hair. “As I told you on the phone, this isn’t a pleasure trip. It might even be a wild-goose chase, depending on what Pam tells us.”

Carly, who was dressed in black wool pants and a white sweater that looked casual but probably would have taken the better part of Eli’s last paycheck to buy, reached out and touched Char’s arm. “I wish I could be more encouraging, honey. The new drug she’s taking seems to target the short-term memory. She’s able to maintain a more even keel on a day-to-day basis, but I haven’t seen any great improvement in her long-term memory.”

Char looked at him. “That’s what I told Eli, but he was
hoping Pam might have saved some old files or paperwork from the early 1990s.”

Their hostess looked thoughtful. “Well…there might be some of that sort of thing down in the basement. You know what a pack rat your auntie always was. Just like you, if I remember correctly.”

Eli pictured Char’s cluttered hall closet and nodded. She gave him a stern look that made him bite back a smile. Her secret faults were minor compared to some people’s. His ex-wife’s, for example.

Char opened her purse that doubled as a backpack and dug around a moment. “I brought some goodies. Buffalo jerky and chokecherry jelly.” She’d transferred the latter out of her checked luggage at the café. “You can dazzle your South American guests when they come back.”

Carly seemed genuinely delighted. She motioned for them to follow her down a short hall to a bright, high-ceiling kitchen. The yellow walls and black and white tile looked like something Eli might have found in the pages of the home-decorating magazines Bobbi adored.

“Coffee?”

Both Char and Eli declined.

“Well, sweets, I hate to run off, but I have a meeting at the hospital this morning. Your aunt’s upstairs. We have a practical nurse who looks after her during the day. She takes Pam for walks and drives her to therapy. Her name is—”

Suddenly she stopped. Her polished facade dissolved and she reached out for the counter to keep from crumpling. Char rushed to her side.

“Carlinda? Are you okay?”

The older woman took several deep breaths and gave a
weak smile. “Yes. I’m fine. Healthy, if that’s what you mean. But emotionally I’m very close to the edge. As a doctor, I know that caregivers often suffer from depression and are prone to breakdowns. I honestly didn’t think it would apply to me because I have a financial cushion and a wonderful support system of friends and family. But…” She looked up tearfully. “None of that helps when you’re watching the person you love disappear behind a cloud that you’re powerless to obliterate.”