They talked for a while then about the future of the Church, and Hattie’s work in Africa. Two hours after they had met, Hattie and Fiona Eckles parted, and Hattie thanked her for all the information she’d provided.
“Check out those movie stars, and see if you can find anything out that way,” Fiona encouraged her. “It’s worth a shot.”
“I will,” Hattie promised, and stopped at an Internet café on the way back to her hotel. She signed on, and googled the names of the three actresses Fiona had mentioned. The first one had been dead for fifteen years, but it mentioned that her daughter was an actress too, and had starred in a recent film. She was the right age. The other two stars were still alive, one had retired recently, the other was still working, and nothing was said about their children. But all three were leads that Hattie intended to follow up on. If Melissa’s baby hadn’t been adopted by a famous actress, the trail would end there. But in the meantime, there was always hope that Ashley had been one of the lucky ones adopted by a famous mother, which would make her easier to find. Hattie printed out the information and went back to her hotel.
She had nightmares that night about her sister as a teenager, screaming in pain during the delivery, and nuns running away with her baby while she tried to crawl after them and couldn’t. Hattie awoke in the throes of a rising wave of panic, crying for Melissa. And like Fiona, it made her feel guilty by association. How could nuns do something like that? The venal cruelty of it all overwhelmed Hattie and made her suddenly ashamed to be a nun. She wanted to throw her habit away. She wanted to go home to the safety of her convent, but she couldn’t yet. She was on a mission, and had a job to do. She knew she had to follow it through to the end. She didn’t know if she would ever tell Melissa all that she had learned. But she loved her as never before for all that she’d endured. And Hattie knew what she had to do next. She couldn’t go back to New York, at least not yet. She had to go to L.A., and track down the two living actresses, and the three adopted children if they had been born in 1988.
In the morning, she exchanged her return ticket to New York for one from Dublin to L.A., with stops in London and Chicago on the way. She hated L.A., after her one visit there as a young actress, but it didn’t matter. She would have gone to the ends of the earth now to find Ashley for her sister. And Fiona Eckles had given her the only leads she had. It had been a stroke of luck finding her at all, and learning about her book from the librarian. And lucky too that the book shop had a copy, and Fiona agreed to see her.
Hattie sent an email to Mother Elizabeth saying that she was on her way to Los Angeles to gather more information. And all she could do was pray that the needle in the haystack she was seeking might be there. Once she found her, if she did, she was going to give Melissa the information, and it would be up to her to decide what she wanted to do next. And that was only if the leads Fiona had given her panned out, and if the needle in the haystack turned up. It was going to take more than luck for that to happen. It was going to take a miracle. Hattie closed her eyes and prayed as her plane to L.A. took off. The trip to Dublin had been productive after all.
Chapter 6
Hattie slept fitfully on the flight from Dublin to L.A. They changed planes at Heathrow, and she had a screaming baby next to her for most of the flight. She was tired and felt physically sick when they landed in L.A., after their stop in Chicago. She had been to L.A. for a screen test when she was young, and had hated it so much she had sworn she’d never return. But she was here now for Melissa, and forced all other thoughts from her mind. She would have done anything for her sister. She felt as close to her now as she had when they were young girls.
She took a bus to downtown L.A., and checked in to a hotel on Sunset Strip. The area looked questionable, with homeless people on the streets, but the hotel was cheap. And she knew none of the convents in the city. It was simpler to stay at a hotel. She changed into her habit, thinking it might protect her when she left the hotel for dinner at a diner nearby. She always felt safe and invisible when she wore it, and the waitress poured her a free cup of coffee because she was a nun, and wouldn’t let her leave a tip.
She used the business center when she got back to her hotel, dazed by the time difference and the long trip. She researched the three actresses online, and saw that the actress who had recently retired had a thirty-three-year-old son. So Fiona hadn’t been wrong. She had obviously adopted a baby the year Ashley was born, but it was a boy. The young actress whose famous mother had died lived in Beverly Hills and was the girlfriend of a punk rock star. Hattie found her phone number and address online, on a website that listed celebrities and their private information, which was not unusual to find online, home addresses and phone numbers. She stared when she saw the information. The girl was beautiful in photographs, but looked nothing like Melissa.
The third actress whose name she had gotten from Fiona was still working, very famous, currently making a film, and she had a daughter, also thirty-three years old. The fan website said she worked for an organization that provided legal and medical assistance for abused inner-city children, and had a degree as a social worker. Her husband was an entertainment lawyer with a well-known firm, and she had two children. There was no photograph of her, and the little Hattie read about her made her sound like a normal, well-educated woman with a good heart. The brief article about her said that she had graduated from the School of Social Work at Columbia University, where Melissa had gone to college. But neither the social worker nor the young actress were named Ashley, so they probably weren’t the right ones. But Hattie wanted to meet them anyway. They were the only leads she had.
Hattie jotted down both phone numbers, still amazed by how easy it was to get the contact information for celebrities. They really had no privacy. She decided to call them in the morning. She wanted to try the actress first. She went back to her room then, lay down on the bed in her habit, fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until the sun was streaming into her room at nine o’clock the next day. She didn’t remember where she was for a minute, thought she was in Dublin, and then remembered that she was in L.A.
Hattie went back to the coffee shop, in jeans and a T-shirt this time, had coffee and toast, and went back to her room to make the calls. She had thought about it that morning. She had told Mother Elizabeth that she wouldn’t try to meet the girls herself, but now that she was there, the temptation was just too great.
The young actress’s name was Heather Jones. Hattie dialed her number, expecting to hear voicemail, or an assistant, and a young voice said hello. Hattie was shocked for a minute, and on the spur of the moment claimed to be a reporter wanting an interview.
“From where?” The voice sounded blasé and not particularly interested, but she didn’t hang up, and Hattie thought frantically and said it was an Internet magazine for teens, and invented a name. She said it was new, and their readers were crazy about her. Heather Jones giggled then and sounded pleased. “Do you want to send me a Q and A?” she asked casually, and Hattie scrambled for what to say next.