Finding Their Son (8 page)

“Are you a cop or a lawyer? Do you want to see the alleged child’s birth certificate?”

“Yes.”

Her frown intensified but after a moment she eased back in her chair. “Fine. Drink your coffee. It’s in my safe in the shop. I don’t open until noon on Sundays in the winter. And if this snow doesn’t let up, I might not open at all,” she added, looking out the window past his right shoulder.

Eli turned his chin. When he’d looked outside earlier, he’d felt a strange sort of peace. He liked the grouping of pine trees that formed a kind of sheltering cove around her little home. Another inch of the wet white stuff had fallen while they had talked.

He didn’t begrudge the moisture. The entire state needed it, but he wasn’t thrilled about setting out in search of his uncle in this kind of weather. Maybe he was better off calling someone else to ask for help.

But as his mind ran through the list of possible names, the emptiness in his belly became more pronounced. He hadn’t made it easy for his friends and family to be supportive the past few months. The bridges were probably still there, but they were mined with sympathy. He didn’t want to give people any more reason to feel sorry for him.

Maybe that had been the reason he wound up with Joseph. For all his faults, Joe spoke the truth. He didn’t try
to gloss over the ugly parts to make Eli feel better. “If the way was easy, people would complain about that, too,” Joseph had said over their first six-pack. Their first of many.

As if tapping into his thoughts, she said, “I met your uncle at a powwow near Bear Butte a few months ago. He asked about my aunt. Small world, huh?”

Eli set down his cup a bit more forcefully than necessary. He knew what she was implying and he refused to believe it. “You think I’m here because my uncle—mystic seer that he is—found out where you lived and figured I’d unerringly stumble across you and you’d share the deep dark secret of your life with only a stolen B.B. pistol at your temple.”

She not only laughed, she pretended to clap. “Now, that’s more like the Eli I remember. Smart, funny, irreverent, full of himself.”

“How could you know me? Except for that one night—”

“Alleged night,” she put in.

He gave her a look that would have made his daughters sit back and listen.

It didn’t work with her. She made a face and said, “I knew you better than you could have imagined. It’s one of the unrated aspects of being invisible.”

He got up and walked to the counter to refill his cup. “You were younger than me. I didn’t know any underclassmen—unless they were on the basketball team or related to someone on the basketball team.”

She nodded. “I’m not accusing you of ignoring me. Heck, no. I went out of my way to be invisible. You would, too, if the only thing that set you apart from the rest of the world was a pair of giant upright udders.”

He bit his lip to keep from smiling. “There wasn’t a single guy on the team that would have called them that.”

He could tell the topic embarrassed her, but she’d been the one to bring up the subject.

“Well, maybe girls today are more comfortable with their sexuality, but my mom made such a big deal out of my figure—like I was trying to outdo her on purpose—that I did my best to be inconspicuous.”

He could be thankful that at least Bobbi was a good mother. When she first told him she was leaving, he’d wanted the girls to stay with him. They’d looked at him like he was crazy. Another killer blow to his ego coming on top of learning his son wasn’t his biological offspring.

He was about to bring up the subject of their supposed kid, when she said, “I signed up for every after-school activity where you might be. I took tickets at games, sold popcorn and candy at the school store, and worked in the library because you sometimes studied there.”

He let out a gruff hoot. “I made out with Bobbi in the stacks, you mean. I didn’t have to study that hard because I knew I was getting a basketball scholarship.” He’d had one, too. For a week. “You sound like a stalker.”

“I was a listener. I heard things. I knew Bobbi planned to snag you before you could get away by going to college. Although, in all fairness, I think her goal was to go with you, not to make you give up school altogether.”

Bobbi.
His wife’s name didn’t sound right coming from this stranger’s lips. And yet Char wasn’t a stranger. She knew more about him than he thought possible. And it made him curious. “What else do you know?”

She got up to refill her mug. He could have offered to do that for her, but this way brought her closer to him.
Standing shoulder to shoulder, he could smell her light, citrus fragrance. When she leaned over to retrieve the creamer, he caught a wonderfully evocative glimpse of her breasts—even though they were completely covered all the way to her chin. Still, the outline was sexy. Black was sexy. Funny how he already knew she didn’t think of herself that way. At all.

“Well…” she said, closing the fridge. “I knew that your cousin, Robert, and Bobbi—people with the same first name should never get together, don’t you agree?—had a thing going before you broke up with Jenny Reid. She was a nice girl. A lot friendlier to the less popular kids than Bobbi was. But I’ve observed that sometimes nice isn’t as exciting as naughty. That was certainly the case with my mom.”

Eli hadn’t thought of Jenny in years. “Jenny’s parents didn’t like me.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “They were white. My dad was the groundskeeper at the State House.”

“You think they were prejudiced?”

He couldn’t explain something as complicated as race relations to a woman like her. But she appeared so scandalized, he tried anyway. “They were nice to my face, but I always felt as though they were relieved when I left. Especially after a quick count of the silver.”

Her jaw dropped. “Did you discuss this with Jenny?”

He shook his head. “It was easier to date Bobbi. Her mom’s Lakota. Her grandmother was Nell Thompson. Did you ever meet her?”

She took a box of instant oatmeal—the variety pack of flavors, he saw—from the cupboard. She looked at him and
said, “I get jittery if I drink coffee without eating something.”

He wasn’t sure he believed her, but he got out of her way and returned to the table. After she set a kettle of water to boil, she answered his question. “Yes, I remember Nell. I was sorry to hear of her passing.”

“I’m glad she’s gone,” he said, without really meaning to. “She never would have understood any of this.”

She tilted her head to one side and fiddled with the long, silver and turquoise earring. The design looked complicated and expensive. For someone living in a mobile home—even a nicely finished double-wide on a permanent foundation—she seemed to have expensive tastes in jewelry.

“What else did you observe about me?” he asked, both curious and anxious to fill the silence between them.

“Well, you got better grades than anyone else on either the football team or the basketball team. Several of the track guys had 4.0s, but you were pretty smart for a jock.”

“Not really. Look where I wound up.”

She gave him a scolding look that reminded him of his mother. He wondered how it was possible to miss someone who had been dead for half his life.

“I do a lot of business with members of your tribe, Eli,” she said. “Mostly by phone or over the Internet,” she added, as if anticipating his question.
How come I’ve never seen you in Lower Brule?

“From what I’ve heard, you’re a good cop. Serious. Conscientious. Forward-thinking. My friend Linda Thompson said your son was involved in ritual dancing thanks to you.”

Eli didn’t dance. He would have felt like an imposter.
But he had tremendous respect for the art and passion of traditional Lakota dances. He’d gotten into the project as a way to connect with E.J., who had a bit of the performer in him. Bobbi’s contribution, he’d always assumed. Now he wondered if that came from Robert’s side of the family.

“Yeah, well, that’s in the past. My s…so—” The word wouldn’t come out. “E.J. quit dancing. The only ritual I’ve been involved with was courtesy of my uncle, whose brain has probably become pickled from all the booze he’s imbibed over the years.”

The whistle from the kettle made her turn to the stove, but over her shoulder, she said, “And yet you chose him as your spiritual advisor.”

Her soft snicker made him smile. Even though he was still pissed off about his circumstances, he could appreciate the irony. But he quickly reverted to his impassive cop face when she brought him his bowl of hot cereal. Surly helped keep her at a distance, which was the smart thing to do. She was pretty, kind, smart and forgiving. And he was attracted to her. Too attracted.

They ate in silence. He wolfed his down in five or six bites, the way E.J. would have. He didn’t know where he left his manners—in the Badlands, maybe?

“So. Your first point was my uncle’s supposed insight into my fractured psyche. What’s number two?” he asked, pushing his bowl to the middle of the table.

Her hand stopped halfway to her mouth. She lowered the spoon and took a deep breath before answering. “Last night you said that seventeen was a pivotal age for you. I bet you’ve arrested your share of kids who made some dumb mistake at that age and spent the rest of their life regretting it.”

If they had the rest of their lives.
Too many wound up dead. Not that he’d tell her that. Still, the idea that any kid of his—even one he’d never heard about until yesterday—was in trouble made his breakfast lodge in his throat. “What do you expect me to do?” he asked, after swallowing a big gulp of coffee.

“I don’t
expect
you to do anything, but I
want
you to help me find our son.” She pushed her bowl to one side and sat forward. “I need to do this, Eli. The more time I have to think about it the more convinced I am that you’re here for a reason. I can’t explain why. I’m not usually a mystic, woo-woo kind of person, but your showing up at this moment in time…” She hesitated as though she might elaborate, but instead she said, “I started a college fund for him with my first paycheck. When I worked for the B.I.A., I had an automatic withdrawal that put a share of every check in his account. It’s not a fortune, but I want him to have it.”

“He’s still a minor. You can’t hand a kid money without his parents’ approval.”

“I know that. I wasn’t suggesting we track him down and suddenly thrust ourselves into his life. Would I like to meet him someday? Of course. But that’s got to be his decision. All I want for now is to know he’s okay.”

Eli started a mental list of all the ways a teenage boy could mess up his life. Drugs. Gangs. Reckless driving. Unsafe sex with a predatory she-bitch who screwed your best friend first. “He could be happy and safe and perfectly content. He might not even know he was adopted.”

She nodded. “That’s what I’ve prayed for every night since he was born. And if that’s the case, then we’re both free and clear to move on with our lives. Right?”

“Where have I heard that before?” he muttered. “Oh, yeah, Bobbi. Her parting words after she asked me for a divorce.”

Char didn’t say anything right away. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out for you, Eli, but if you were still happily married you wouldn’t have been on a vision quest. Maybe you need to find him, too. For reasons of your own.”

Reasons of his own. Like to replace the son he lost? As if that was possible. Or because this kid might be the only son he’d ever have?

“How are we supposed to find him? Didn’t you say you’ve been looking for years?”

“I tried contacting the lawyer who handled the adoption, but he was dead and the law office he worked for couldn’t find any of the paperwork.” She shook her head. “Knowing my aunt, she had the whole thing burned in case I changed my mind. But she couldn’t keep me from putting my name and all the information I had on the national registry.”

“What registry?”

“Online. There’s a sort of clearinghouse for adopted children and birth parents.”

“Did you put my name on the list?”

“No,” she exclaimed, her tone scandalized. “Of course not.”

“Why? Because you couldn’t prove I was the father?”

“Because you didn’t know about him. I imagined all sorts of terrible scenarios if he showed up at your doorstep, first.”

He could picture the chaos that might have caused—a bit like learning the kid you called your son wasn’t your son.

“You never got a hit.” It wasn’t a question. Her sad, wistful look was answer enough.

“I was going to give him two more years. I figured by his first year in college he ought to have figured out whether or not he wanted to know about his birth parents.”

“And if he never called? What then?”

She didn’t answer. “More coffee?”

“No, thanks. Before I make up my mind about what to do, I’d like to see the paperwork on the birth.”

She nodded and got up. “Do you wanna wait here or come? It’s probably a little cold.”

He stood, too. Did she really think he trusted her to give him proof without him watching her every move?

She rolled her eyes the way his daughters would have. “Oh, Daddy, get over yourself,” they liked to say. Char didn’t speak. She walked to the hall closet and grabbed a coat—the same bright purple one from yesterday. “There’s a man’s parka in there that might fit. Someone left it in the store and never came back for it.”

He knew immediately which one she meant but getting it out was no easy task. The rack was stuffed tight. He slipped it on over his sweatshirt and hurried after her. The snow had stopped but the first bite of cold air reminded him of waking up in the Badlands.

Badlands. Vision quest. Missing piece.
Was there any chance his destiny—if he believed in such things—was tied to this woman’s?

She ignored the shovel resting against the side of the building and marched through the snow on the sidewalk between the house and the rear entrance of the log building. The teepee and auxiliary corridor that connected the two edifices sat at an angle favoring the parking lot.