Tides of the Heart (14 page)

Of course, first of all, she would have to have found a man. Hopefully, one of the ones who, as Maura said, wasn’t like Charles.

She rose from the bed. “I’m going to get the sunblock,” she told Maura. “You’ll need plenty of it down there.” As she headed down the hall, Jess wondered if providing sun-block
was babying her daughter. Then she wondered if she had been overprotective in an effort to make up for Charles being so insensitive. Or maybe she had needed to keep her children close so she would not lose them the way she’d lost Amy. Amy, or whoever her first child had been.

Her name was Nicole, and her father was a Chicago defense attorney who played in the big leagues and had tried—and won—huge settlements for weeping, diamond-clad women whose wealthy husbands had scorned them. Jeanine Archambault played bridge with a friend of a friend of one of Nicole’s father’s much-satisfied clients. Nicole was a first-year law student at Columbia, so naturally she must be in need of a friend like Phillip, someone to show her the ropes in Manhattan, legal and otherwise.

Nicole was attractive in a law-student sort of way, with plain chestnut hair cropped just under her ears, a black cashmere turtleneck and black pleated pants hugging her too-thin frame, and wide brown eyes bloodshot, no doubt, from reading too many books. It was a look that Phillip certainly could relate to.

But Nicole’s smile seemed genuine as she accepted the platter of pot roast from Phillip’s mother now and commented how wonderful it was going to be to taste home-cooked food.

Jeanine smiled at Phillip. Camille smiled at Joseph. Joseph looked at his mother and winked. And everyone seemed to agree that Nicole was a quite suitable girl for the young attorney whose time had come.

Scooping mashed potatoes onto his plate, Phillip hated himself for wondering if P.J. would have tried to fix him up, if P.J. had raised him, if P.J. had not died. Nicole was one more in the long, poor-Phillip-has-no-time-to-meet-anyone string of potential mates handpicked by Jeanine, Camille, and, on one occasion, Joseph himself. To date, they had resulted in a series of rather dull evenings at
Mom’s, followed by Phillip’s obligatory invitation to dinner in the city, which had only heightened the dullness. Except, of course, with Suzanne Devine, who had hung up the proper gray sheath she’d worn to Jeanine’s table and showed up in the city in a red spandex minidress and four-inch stilettos. Phillip suppressed a grin now as he remembered the night he shared with Suzanne—the outrageous way she’d flirted with him all through their obligatory date, the even more outrageous way she’d spent the rest of the night slathering him with whipped cream and giving him head.

He shifted uncomfortably on the tapestry-upholstered dining room chair now, sorry that Suzanne had returned to San Antonio the following clay, where she told him she had a fiancé waiting and that it most definitely was her loss.

Jeanine interrupted his thoughts. “Nicole’s specializing in children’s rights,” she said.

“Labor laws, mostly,” Nicole said. “More and more children are working today. It’s a shame. The world is moving so quickly they barely have time to be kids. We have to protect them.”

Handing the guest the bowl of potatoes, Phillip half-smiled. “Children’s rights is a long way from divorce court.”

A rebellious twinkle came into the bloodshot brown eyes. “If you’re speaking about my father, you’re right. I’m sure he’d rather see me in a gray suit and heels, following in his high-profile footsteps.”

Phillip wondered if it would be appropriate to ask if she owned any red spandex dresses. Instead, he decided he’d invite her to dinner—maybe this weekend—not tomorrow, of course. Tomorrow night was reserved for William Larribee. Tomorrow night was reserved for helping Jess. Then, once he learned what had happened to her baby, he would make time for Nicole. It would please his mother, and it might not be such a bad idea for himself.

•  •  •

The man in the wheelchair had thick white eyebrows that stuck straight out from his forehead as if they’d been glued on. His face was liver-spotted, his eyes filmy from cataracts, and he was completely bald. All in all, he resembled a Mr. Potato Head, one who, perhaps, had spent too many years at the bottom of a bottle of gin. In a court of law, he would not be the picture of a credible witness.

“Dr. Larribee,” Phillip said, extending his hand. “You brought me into the world.”

“Don’t hold it against me,” the old man said, planting a dry, gnarled hand into Phillip’s.

It was not the welcoming response Phillip would have expected from a doctor. He withdrew his hand from the dry one and sat down on the blue plastic chair in the “activities room” where he’d been escorted by the receptionist moments ago when the clock had struck seven.

“I’m an attorney,” he said, handing his card to the doctor.

The old man shook his head and averted his eyes. “Can’t read anything with these damn eyes,” he said. “Don’t need a damn lawyer, either, if that’s why you’re here.”

Just how bad was his eyesight? Too faulty to have written the letter that Jess had received? Phillip slipped his card back into his pocket. “No, Dr. Larribee, I’m not looking for business. I’m looking for answers.” The old man was surly, the old man was curt. Phillip decided to be direct. It might be his only chance to find out the truth.

“Depends on the questions.”

“My mother was P.J. Davies,” Phillip began. “She was a resident at Larchwood Hall.” He had wanted to mention her distinct auburn hair; he had wanted to share with the doctor that P.J. had died, but that he’d been there beside her, reunited at last. He’d wanted to share these things with this man, but he could not. Instead, he watched Larribee rub his palms on the rubber wheels of his chair.

“Don’t remember her.”

Phillip wondered if the old man was lying, or if he himself would be able to remember a client thirty years from now—even one as strikingly beautiful as P.J. had been. “What about Jess Bates?” he asked. “She was very young. Only fifteen. You delivered her daughter in 1968, the same year as me.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Ginny Stevens?”

Phillip would have sworn that a hint of a smile passed over the old man’s pale lips.

“Nope,” he said, then his yellowed eyes closed. “Can’t help you.” With a harrumph, he opened his eyes and began to wheel his chair away.

Phillip jumped up. “Just a minute, Dr. Larribee. You may be an old man, but I can still subpoena you.” He really had no idea what he was saying; he only knew he had come all the way out here—twice—and that Jess was counting on him. If the doctor would not talk to him, Phillip would not know where to turn next. And no matter how old or cranky the guy was, Phillip did not believe for a minute he hadn’t recognized at least one of the three names.

The wheelchair stopped. “Subpoena me? For what?”

“You tell me. And you can start by telling me what you know about Jess Bates. And the baby that was adopted by the Hawthornes.”

The activities room grew quiet. Over by the window, an elderly woman muttered to herself. At a shiny round table, a man knocked over a tower of wood blocks he had built. Phillip blinked back the stale air and the faint odor of urine that permeated the room and wondered if he’d be thrown out for harassing an old man for no justifiable reason.

“Christ,” Dr. Larribee grumbled. “Why don’t you ask that Taylor woman? She was the one in charge.”

Caramba
, Phillip thought, trying to remain calm, steady, trying not to let his excitement show. “Miss Taylor is
dead,” he said evenly. “Tell me what you know. Do it here or in the courtroom.”

“It wasn’t malpractice,” Larribee said. “You can’t pull my license.”

The idea that the dotty old man was worried about losing his medical license was absurd. But what struck Phillip even more profoundly was the doctor’s use of the word
malpractice.
Phillip loosened his tie. He decided to go out on a limb just to watch Larribee’s reaction. “Switching babies is a felony,” he said, with an authority he did not feel.

A mutter or a sputter or something like that blubbered from the doctor’s lips. “Christ, it’s been nearly thirty years.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Phillip commented, unsure if that were true, but sure that corporate law never made his adrenaline pump the way it was pumping now. “You could spend your last days in a six-by-eight cell unless you cooperate.”

The old man’s eyes drifted toward the window. “I had a lawyer once,” he said. “But he’s dead. Everybody’s dead. The only people left alive aren’t worth their salt.”

“What happened, Dr. Larribee?”

He closed his eyes again and let out a shallow sigh. “Frances Taylor,” he said, “God, she was a greedy woman.”

Greedy?
Phillip listened.

“She threatened to turn me in. She knew I liked my gin, maybe a little too much. She blackmailed me into signing those forms.” His voice drifted away, as if his thoughts were sliding back to a painful place.

Phillip leaned forward to hear him more clearly. “What forms?”

The doctor shook his head. “She said no one would ever know.”

Phillip rested his hand on Dr. Larribee’s arm. “What happened to Jess’s baby?”

He did not answer at first, then raised his head and wiped a trickle of drool from his mouth. “It was supposed
to go to the Hawthornes. Another girl’s did instead. A girl from Bridgeport.”

“Who was she?”

The old man’s thin shoulders shrugged. “Can’t remember her name. A charity case. I told her her baby died.”

Phillip held back the rage he felt begin to boil beneath his skin. “What about Jess Bates’s baby?”

“I don’t know what happened to it.”

“Was it born … did it live?”

“Yes,” he responded. “It was small, but it lived.” He slumped a little in the chair, growing older with each tired heartbeat.

Phillip’s anger gave way to a prickly tingle that raced from his forehead straight down to his toes.
Jess’s baby was alive. And it had not been Amy Hawthorne.
He resisted the urge to run from the room, rush to a pay phone, and get Jess on the line. He resisted because there was too much left to learn. Phillip squared his jaw.

“Who took Jess’s baby?” he repeated.

“I told you. I don’t know.”

He stood up straight and moved to the front of the doctor’s chair. He paced three steps to one side, three back again, a practiced performance of cross-examination he’d seen on
L.A. Law
reruns. Then, ever so slowly, the pieces began to fall together, a jigsaw puzzle taking shape. He abruptly stopped and turned to his defendant.

“What about the fifty thousand dollars, Doctor? How much of that did Miss Taylor pay you?”

Dr. Larribee became alert once more. He sat up in the chair. His eyebrows danced. “I didn’t see any of it. I swear. Why don’t you ask Bud Wilson?”

“Wilson’s dead, too.”

Larribee snorted. “See? Everybody’s dead.”

Phillip slipped his hands in his pockets and took another stab. “Who paid her the fifty thousand, Doctor?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, shaking his head. “I swear I don’t know.”

Phillip had another idea. “How many others were there, Doctor? How many other babies did you … switch?”

The big eyebrows danced. “None! It was just hers … just that Bates girl.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes. Not that Frances Taylor would have objected.” He puffed at the air and again rubbed his hands on the wheels. “Now, please. Leave me alone.” He wheeled from the room, his chair creaking and groaning with each turn of the spokes.

This time, Phillip did not stop him. He knew where to find him if he needed more. For now, he had what he wanted: confirmation that Jess’s baby had not been Amy Hawthorne and that the fifty thousand dollars was somehow connected. And, thankfully, it did not appear as if this had been a big business: it was a small-time, one-time scam that happened only because the opportunity had been there and a greedy old woman had grabbed it.

As Phillip walked down the corridor toward the nursing home exit, he realized that he had done what he’d promised for Jess. But he could not stop now. He had to help Jess find her real daughter, even if it meant risking his brother’s wrath.

It was one of those warm, March-leading-to-April mornings that held the promise of sunshine and pastels and spring. Jess gazed out the window of the shop across to the park and wondered how long it would be before the crocuses poked their purple heads above the ground, before the daffodils shared their yellow beauty with the world. It was easier to think of these things than to count the days it had been since she’d seen Phillip (seven), to obsess on the prospect that Amy might not have been hers, or to wonder why, if her baby still lived and knew who Jess was, she had not come forward and let herself be known.

Jess also knew it was easier to think about flowers than to imagine Charles and his new wife playing congenial hosts to his daughter and her boyfriend.

As the sewing machines whirred in the background, her assistants working diligently on the country club draperies, Jess realized that Maura was right. Life had to be more than working and worrying about other people. Working, worrying, and curling up in an old chenille robe, no matter how cozy that was. Her thoughts drifted to the remote possibility that there might ever be another man in her life,
a man not like Charles, but rather someone able to share her pleasures and her pain, someone who loved her and whom she could love back. Someone who would accept her past as well as her present and embrace her right to welcome any child that was—or was not—part of her life.