I was halfway through my sandwich when my cell phone rang. It was Rose, so I quickly answered.
“Hi, Mom,” she said. “Do you have a second?”
My heart picked up speed because I could guess why she was calling. “Yes. I’m on my lunch hour. Did you hear back?”
“I did,” she replied. “And they told me there was no mistake—that the girl in Australia is definitely my sister, but she has nothing to do with Melanie Brown. Her mother is alive and well and living in Brisbane.”
A breath shot out of me, as if I’d been punched, because this sounded like proof that Dean hadn’t died in the plane crash, like everyone had pushed me to believe. He had survived.
“Who’s her father?” I asked, needing to know for sure.
Rose hesitated. “Well, here’s the thing. The genealogy site has no record of who her father was. He wasn’t even named on her birth certificate.”
I looked up at the overcast sky and the stark, leafless branches on the trees and shivered. “So we still don’t really know . . .”
“But wait, there is more,” Rose said, clearly trying to bolster my spirits. “When I spoke to them, they told me that my sister was open to talking to me and maybe even meeting me in person if I was interested. That’s why I waited to call you. I wanted to speak with her first and try and get some more information.”
Something inside me froze. Was I sure I wanted to hear this? I had been living without answers for so long I was accustomed to it. It was a comfortable and familiar state of being. “Well? Did you talk to her?”
“Yes,” Rose replied. “We just got off the phone a minute ago. Her name is Susie.”
I forced myself to think of Rose and what this must mean to her. “My goodness. How was it?”
“Great,” Rose replied. “Well . . . a little awkward for the first few minutes, but then we had an amazing conversation. You should hear her accent, Mom. It’s so cool. I loved it.”
I heard the excitement in my daughter’s voice—my darling Rose, who had felt so lost and adrift lately—and had to smother the desire to ask more questions about the identity of Susie’s father. I had decided, long ago, that it was better to focus on the living, not the dead, so I listened patiently, with fascination, while Rose continued to describe her phone call.
“She just started college, and guess what she’s taking? Biology.”
“No kidding. That’s what you took.”
“I know, right? Isn’t that wild?”
“It is.” I sat down on the edge of the fountain again.
“But she only took it because she didn’t know what career she wanted. Sound familiar? But she’s decided to switch to nursing next year. She wants to be an RN.”
Rose told me more about Susie, and when she was finished, I checked my watch and realized I had only a few minutes left on my lunch break.
“Did you tell her why you signed up for the genealogy site?” I asked, circling back to the reason why she had found Susie in the first place. “Because you were curious about your father?”
“Yes, we talked about that. That’s kind of the same reason she did it. She was interested in her biological heritage, which is what got us talking about her father. Here’s what she told me . . .”
I had trouble catching my breath as I watched a group of elementary school students make their way up the wide library steps.
“It was a one-night stand for her mother,” Rose explained. “She was thirty at the time, recently divorced, no children. She went snorkeling with some friends on the Great Barrier Reef and had a fling with a guy who operated the tour boat. His name was John, but she never knew his last name. She wasn’t looking for anything serious with him, but she was feeling wild that weekend, after her divorce was finalized. Susie said her mother used it as a cautionary tale when she told her about it.”
By this point, I was riveted, and I didn’t care if I was late getting back to the reference desk.
“Did Susie ever meet him?” I asked.
“No. He knows about her, though. Her mother went back and told him that she was pregnant, but she also told him she preferred to raise the baby on her own and she didn’t expect him to be involved at all. He agreed, so Susie never met him. She’s never even seen a picture. Her mother got remarried when Susie was two, so she was raised by another father, just like me, and she had a good life. But she’s been curious lately. Seriously, Mom, our lives are so weirdly similar.”
I realized my hands were shaking. There was a fluttery sensation in the pit of my belly. Looking up at the concrete pillars at the entrance to the library, I said, “That is pretty remarkable.” Then I checked my watch again. “Listen, it’s past the end of my lunch break, but I still want to hear more. Did you tell her that your father, who might also be her father, was a suspect in a homicide case?”
“No, I didn’t tell her. She was just so happy and excited to talk to me. I didn’t want to spoil it.”
“I understand.” A small flock of pigeons hopped around, close to my feet, pecking at the ground, fluttering their wings. It made me feel disoriented, as if I were floating above them, strangely removed from the physical world. “So we still don’t even know if that John person is Dean. Was she able to describe him at all?”
“Susie said her mother described him as handsome with blue eyes and blondish hair. That’s all she knows.”
Blue eyes. Blondish hair. That sounded like Dean, but there were plenty of handsome blue-eyed men in the world. I couldn’t let myself make any assumptions.
But still . . . there was a DNA result. Real science that affirmed he was Susie’s father.
“I find it so hard to believe,” I said as I plodded up the library steps. “I mean, what are the odds that it could be a different person with the same DNA? A twin? I’m not a biologist, so I don’t know how it works, but—”
“Mom. She also said he had an American accent.”
“I see.” I entered the building, where it was warmer, but I still felt cold. “Does he still work in the same place?”
“Susie doesn’t know, but she said she would ask her mother to make some phone calls and try and track him down. She wants to meet him too.”
I reached my desk and shrugged out of my jacket. “I’m glad you found her, Rose.”
“Me too. And Mom . . .”
“Yes?” I waited nervously for her to continue.
“Susie and I want to meet each other in person. So I want to travel there for a visit. Would that be okay?”
I heard whispers, people milling about in the stacks. The world felt oddly secretive and remote. “Of course,” I replied, hiding my fears and uncertainties from my daughter. “I want to meet her too.” I sat down. “But I have to get back to work now. Maybe come over for dinner tonight? We can talk about what to do next.”
“I have two weeks’ vacation I can take anytime,” Rose replied. “Are you serious, Mom? You’ll come with me?”
“We’ll talk about it tonight,” I said.
But I knew I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t go on living without answers to a question that had haunted me for more than twenty years.