My Way Home (St.Gabriel Series Book 1) (St. Gabriel Series) (43 page)

“No, Race, I’m not.” My eyes filled with tears, and I felt completely drained. “Something’s not right. I can feel it. I can’t take all this not knowing anymore. Why is George always so secretive… about everything? And now this picture? I just can’t stand it anymore.”

Race put his arm around me. “I’ll talk to him, okay?”

Sara walked in and said, “You found her. The supply train is leaving. What do you need?”

Answers, I need answers.

Sara stepped into the room and asked, “What’s wrong?”

I knew if I spoke, I’d lose it, so I just shook my head.

Sara sat on the other side of me and grabbed my hand.

Soon after, Frank came in and asked, “What’s going on?”

And a laugh-cry welled up and shook my chest.

Race handed him the framed picture. Frank’s eyes widened and his head rocked back as if it had suddenly gotten heavier. Before long, in walked George with Celia Alexander.

“Cammy, George and I need to talk to you,” said Celia.

My heart was pounding in my chest, and I didn’t know why.

“Do you want us to leave?” asked Sara.

“That’s up to Cammy.” Celia was looking intently at me.

“No, stay,” I said and squeezed Sara’s hand tighter.

Celia saw the picture Frank was holding and held out her hand for him to give it to her, and then she sat across from me on the coffee table. George stayed standing.

She set the photo on my knees. “George wants to tell you who this is.”

I looked up at George and he said, “It’s my mother.”

“And… it’s your grandmother, Cammy,” said Celia.

“What?” I was truly beyond confused.

“Oh, man,” said Frank.

“Cammy, do you know you were adopted?”

“I wasn’t adopted.” I looked at Frank. “I’m not adopted.”

Frank looked at me and nodded.

“Frank?”

“Look at you, Cammy. Mom and Pop are German down the line. Look at me, German right?”

“What are you saying? Because I don’t look like you, I was adopted?”

“No, Cam, Pop told me.”

“That I was adopted?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“You remember the beer Uncle Axel sent to Pop from Germany every Christmas?”

“Yes.”

“One night, a week or so before you came home from college for Christmas, he’d had a few bottles, and then he came into my room and woke me up. You know how he rambles when he drinks. Well, Mom had been after him to give me the sex talk. I’d heard them arguing about it in their hushed tone, the way they do. The beer loosened him up, I guess, and that was the night he decided he’d get the talk over with. First, he took inventory of what I already knew, and then he started to get emotional and was telling me if I got a girl pregnant, I was going to take care of her.”

Frank looked at Sara with a sweet smile and then he continued, “Then Pop said, ‘If someone had taken care of Cammy’s mom, she wouldn’t have been shipped across the country to us.’ When I asked him what he was talking about, he patted me on the head and said, ‘Nothing, son, and don’t tell your mother about this, okay?’ Well, I didn’t say okay, and the next day I told Mom what Pop had said, and she slapped me across the face. She said she didn’t ever want to hear me say anything more about it. For the next week Pop and I ate dinner alone. Mom would set the food on the table and then tell me to go get Pop and eat. When we were done and had left the table, she would go back to the kitchen and clear the dishes.

“I know I should have said something to you, Cammy. I almost did that Christmas when you came home from college. I thought I knew what Pop was saying that you’d been adopted. But I thought if you didn’t already know, you might leave when you found out we weren’t your real family, and you wouldn’t be my sister anymore, and I’d have to be there all by myself. Of course when I got older, I knew you’d always be my sister, but I didn’t know that when I was twelve. You gave me that beanbag chair you made. Do you remember?”

Frank looked all blurry through my tears. I nodded and I was thinking about Frank and how scared he must have been. Leaving him to go to college was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

Frank said, “I liked that gift so much. It made me think how much I didn’t want you to go away. And I was afraid of Mom. I decided I wouldn’t say anything, and I made myself forget about it. Honest, Cam, I’ve thought about talking to you, so many times since, but you never even seemed to suspect a thing, or I thought you must know but didn’t want to talk about it either. And, Cam, I shouldn’t have let it keep me from talking to you, but I knew Mom would be so angry if I said anything, and it would be a big mess. I’m sorry.”

I wiped the tears out of my eyes and looked up. “George, are you my father?”

“No, I’m your uncle. Lucy’s your mother.”

“My mother? Lucy?”

I was so overwhelmed. I stood up, left the cottage and walked down to the lake. Race followed me and held me while I cried. When I was almost cried out, I asked Race, “I don’t understand how any of this can be true. How, Race? Is it possible that I’m adopted and that…?”

Race gave me a half smile as if he knew.

“You didn’t know, did you?” I asked him.

“No, Cammy. It does make sense, but I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have kept that from you. But deep down, you probably knew or suspected you might be adopted, don’t you think?”

And I probably did know, but children just want to belong, and I had spent my childhood trying to belong in my family.

“If I am, Race, how can this… Lucy… here…?” I was crying again and Race held me and calmly suggested, “We could go back up the hill and find out.”

We did go back to George’s cottage. Sara and Frank were gone, and Celia and George were standing in the corner, holding hands and talking. Race and I sat back down on the sofa, and I asked, “How do you know what you’re telling me is true?”

“We didn’t at first, Cammy.” Celia sat next to me. “George saw you taking pictures down by the gate two summers ago, and then he watched you walk around the property. He thought he was seeing a ghost.” She looked at George and smiled. “Then when you tried to contact George about the lodge, we found out your name and where you were from. I hired an investigator. Then we knew you had come back to us.”

“Come back to you?”

“Yes, we think it’s a miracle, Cammy. You should have never been taken from the island, taken from Lucy.”

“Taken?”

“Lucy wasn’t always the way she is now. She was perfect, smart, funny, beautiful. When she was sixteen, she fell in love with a boy from the island that lived up on the Hill, Jonathan Tadyshak. Lucy and George’s father Heinrich Miller and Jonathan’s father Terrance Tadyshak forbade them to see each other. There was a lot of bad history, and that generation firmly believed there was an economic line that was not to be crossed. It’s the way it was then, and I married a man I didn’t love because of that stupid line.

“Lucy and Jonathan never considered for a moment that anyone would keep them apart, and they continued to find ways to be together. Before they turned eighteen, they ran away to the mainland and found someone to marry them. They had it in their heads that if they were married, no one could tell them they couldn’t be together, and they could still live on the island. When they came back to St. Gabriel, they found out their marriage wasn’t legal because they weren’t of age, and they didn’t have parental consent. But Lucy was already pregnant.

“Lucy knew her father would send her away, or worse, if he knew she was going to have a baby. She and Jonathan decided they would keep the pregnancy a secret until they turned eighteen, and then they’d get married again. Lucy went to George for help, and he came to me. When she began to show, we kept her here at the lodge. Jonathan’s family still owned the property, and it hadn’t been occupied since the war. So we prepared a room in the lodge, room number ten, where Lucy stayed until you were born.

“Mr. Miller thought Lucy had run away. I don’t know that we did the right thing. We were all so young, and it was such a confusing time. But Lucy and Jonathan were so happy. We couldn’t help but want them to be together. George and I had been kept apart.” Celia looked over at George and her eyes welled up with tears. “And we couldn’t bear the thought of Lucy losing her chance with Jonathan. Somehow it was easier to fight for someone else. You were born in that room, Cammy, and George was the first person to hold you. We kept the room just as it was then.”

I looked up at George. He was looking out the window.

“Lucy and Jonathan loved you so much, Cammy. They would twirl you around the lobby and when the weather cleared and temperatures warmed, they’d bundle you up, take you out to the second floor balcony and dance with you in their arms. When the ice thawed, they were going to leave the island with you and get married again.”

“When the ice thawed? I was born in June.”

“No, honey, you were born in January. January 14th.”

“But my birth certificate…”

“It was applied for well after you were born, by the Engels, maybe. And that made it impossible to find you.”

“How did I get adopted?”

“It’s horrible what happened after that. We hoped we wouldn’t ever have to tell you about it.” Celia’s tears overflowed and washed over her cheeks.

“I want to know.”

Celia took my hand, pressed it between both of hers and closed her eyes. She was shaking.

“Please, Celia, tell me.”

George walked outside, and Celia took a minute before she said, “One day Jonathan and George had gone out to pick up supplies. When they came back to the lodge, Lucy was on the floor crying and rocking with one of your baby blankets in her arms, and you were gone. Mr. Miller had seen George and I together and got suspicious, and then he followed George to the lodge. He waited until he knew Lucy was alone and then took you away. We never knew where or what he might have done. When we went to your grandmother to try to find out where you were, she cried and said, ‘He took the baby. He found out and he took the baby,’ but she didn’t know where.

“Jonathan went after you. He was out of his mind. The ice had begun to thaw but not enough for boats to get through. He fell through the ice and drowned. Lucy was watching from the shore, and her mother and I had to hold her to keep her from going after him. I’ve never seen pain like that, not ever. There’s been so many times that I’ve thought that maybe we should have just let her go. Celia sobbed and then collected herself and continued.

“When Mr. Miller came back to the island, he sent Lucy away. Then George left the island, and for three years he looked for Lucy and for you until his father died, and your grandmother opened a letter addressed to Mr. Miller from the home Lucy had been placed in. Camellia sent for Lucy and brought her back to the island. But she was never the same. George has always blamed himself that Lucy had been left alone that day. He blamed himself that he wasn’t there to help Jonathan when he fell through the ice, and he regretted that he had never stood up to his father, either for Lucy or for he and I. We blamed ourselves, Cammy. If Mr. Miller hadn’t seen us together…”

Celia wept.

I gave her some time and then I asked, “George’s mother’s name was Camellia?”

“Camellia Quinn-Miller and that’s what Lucy named you too, Camellia. After you were taken she said over and over again, ‘I told him her name is Camellia’ over and over she said that. When we found out your name was Cammy, we couldn’t believe it. That’s something you’ll have to ask your parents about.”

My parents, it didn’t sound right to call them that. Who were my parents? I think adoption is a wonderful thing. My adoption didn’t feel wonderful.

“Who did I buy the lodge from?”

“After Jonathan died, his father went into reclusion and eventually, he left the island. He never did know about you or why Jonathan was out on the ice that day. No one did, except for Lucy, Camellia, George, and I. Later I contacted Mr. Tadyshak and bought the lodge and kept it in a trust. When George came back, he moved into this cottage, and Lucy went back to live with her mother in the house she lives in now. Lucy would never come out to the lodge again, so we think she remembers what happened, but she’s never talked about it. She doesn’t talk about much of anything. But this place has always been George’s and my connection to you, and it’s what brought you back.”

I felt a flood of confusion, pain, anger, and I couldn’t separate any of it. “Why didn’t you just tell me? Why all the mystery? Selling me the lodge? You and George?”

“I’m sorry about that, Cammy. It wasn’t our intention to deceive you. We just didn’t know what to tell you and when. We didn’t know if you would even want to know. We decided it would all come out in time if it was supposed to. And George and I? That’s a whole other story.”

“Does James know, Diana, Stephen?”

“About George and I?”

I nodded.

“No, but now I’m going tell them.”

“Celia, why is George so… the way he is with me? Doesn’t he want me here?”

“Cammy, George was never the same after what happened to Lucy and to you. None of us were. That day you were taken, set a lot of things in motion that changed all of our lives. It’s been overwhelming for him to have you here, talking to you, looking at you, trying not to break down. But he is so glad you’re here, honey.”