Part 3 (1/2)

'Too bad you can't hire someone to look for your past while you're looking for hers,” she kidded.

”Truly!” I said seriously.

”What's she like, this Destiny?”

”She's incredible, very powerful. I like her, which surprises me. She's the first woman Mich.e.l.le's dated that I genuinely like. The others, I've tolerated, but Destiny's different. She's an amazing woman, especially given the losses she's had in her life. Or maybe because of them.”

”Do they go together?”

”Her and Mich.e.l.le?”

Ann nodded.

”Not hardly! They're so different. Destiny seems so independent, so sure of herself. And Mich.e.l.le... well, you know Mich.e.l.le.”

”I do!” We both laughed.

'To be fair, though, I haven't actually seen them in the same room yet. I'll be curious to see what they're like as a couple.”

The waiter came just then to take our order. After he left, we both were silent for a moment, caught up in our own thoughts.

”You can talk to me if you need to, Kris. I grew up in the same house, you know.”

”I know, Ann. Thanks,” I said, wis.h.i.+ng I could but knowing I couldn't.

That night, in my apartment in the sky, I thought about my life and why I'd decided to take on Destiny's case. More than for any other reason, I think I'd agreed to help her so that I could come to some sort of peace with my own childhood, which had definitely not been a happy one.

What had my parents done? Perhaps their failings were no more serious than those of two people struggling to raise five children when they were barely able to take care of themselves, but to me, they seemed like atrocities.

Bill and Carolyn Ashe. Their sins began when they married but never fell in love. He was back from the Navy, she was nearing the old-maid age, and their families were from the same Catholic parish. Reasons enough for matrimony. If they didn't love each other, at least their backgrounds were alike. He became an architect. She taught school for one year and then spent the next twenty raising children and resenting the loss of her career.

They were married August 1, 1957. Within days of the ceremony, my mom was pregnant. Ann was born the following May. Gail came one year and one day after that. I was born seventeen months after her. David arrived three years after me.

Adding it all up, by the time my mother was my age, twenty-nine, she had four children, ages six, five, four and one. For a woman who never liked children, much less loved them, she was under severe stress. But she was also Catholic. G.o.d forbid she should have exercised her right over the pope's to control her own body.

Four years later, a fifth child was born and somehow, that was the beginning of the end. Capping off nine months of a difficult pregnancy and acute depression was the birth of my sister Jill.

By all accounts, that's when my mother started to go crazy.

She took to her bed for days on end and didn't come out for years. My father held a steady, professional job, golfed every chance he got, and without fail, drank four beers a night. We children ran the house and raised ourselves.

As I lay in bed, I remembered the effect my mother's depression had on me. I remembered walking home from school every day in the third grade, looking up to her bedroom window (for as long as any of us could recall, my mother and father had separate bedrooms). Open curtains meant she was up and about, maybe even acting normal that day. Drawn curtains meant she was still in bed. Maybe we'd eat dinner that night. Maybe we wouldn't. Maybe she'd speak to us. Maybe she wouldn't.

I remembered the Pepsis she drank and the cigarettes she smoked. Most of all, I remembered the way she looked after lying in bed for a week.

I remembered all the years she'd held the family hostage with her moods and her depression. I remembered fearing her and hating her. I never remembered loving her or being loved by her.

As for my father, I remembered he was an alcoholic, though no one dared call him that because he only drank beer and never got drunk. I remembered all the times he'd sent me to the garage. That's where we children ate if we smarted off at the dinner table. I'd spent many nights sitting next to the station wagon, wearing my purple parka, watching the blackened clumps of ice slowly melt away from the tires, trying not to breathe exhaust fumes as I chewed my food.

But I also remembered another side of him. I still had a book he'd given me when I was eight, What Every Woman Should Know About Football, the inscription inside alluding to better times, ”Love, Mommy and Daddy.”

Thoughts of my family kept me awake for hours, but when I finally did sleep, I dreamed about loving a child.

I got out of bed wondering what it would have been like to raise myself. On my way to work, I realized maybe I'd have the chance.

Chapter 4.

My dream prompted me to make a call when I got to work. I rang Peggy Wood, who had worked for me years ago as a copywriter, and asked her if I could see Zeb and Jessica. It had been more than a year since I'd seen her six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter.

Waking up that morning, I'd realized how much I missed them.

With Peggy's permission, I arranged to take them to the zoo the next day. They were ecstatic. I could hear their childish enthusiasm across the phone lines and it infected me. I hung up the phone feeling lighter than I'd felt in a long time.

I spent the rest of the morning preparing for my appointment with Benjamin Greaves. I made a list of questions to ask him. I combed my hair, trying to make it look like I didn't need a haircut. I dug my leather briefcase out of the storage closet. When all of this was done, I was ready for the first step in my search for Destiny's childhood.

I drove the short distance from my comfortable, informal office to his high-priced, contemporary office in a gla.s.s tower in the center of downtown. When I got off the elevator on the thirty-fifth floor of the Downtown Plaza Building, I was surprised to discover Greaves and a.s.sociates, Certified Public Accountants, occupied the entire floor.

I was led to the big man's office by a receptionist who looked bored with her job and my presence. Once there, I was met by another woman who introduced herself as ”Mr. Greaves' secretary.” She never did tell me her name. Instead, she offered me something to drink. I think she meant coffee or tea. I suggested c.o.ke. She frowned but came back shortly with a can of the real thing and a gla.s.s of ice. Before long, I was escorted into the president's office.

Benjamin Greaves greeted me warmly, as if we were old friends. He strode across the room and took my extended hand into both of his. He offered me a seat on one of the three couches in the room and then, instead of returning to the imposing seat behind his desk ten feet away, he positioned himself across from me in a comfortable, overstuffed chair. When he sat, his pot belly easily filled his lap. His thick black hair was parted on the side and graying at the temples. Bushy eyebrows dwarfed his blue eyes.

From my briefcase, I pulled a tiny tape recorder.

”Will Destiny be listening to this?” he asked as I inserted a fresh tape into the recorder.

”She might be. For now, I'm just gathering information and summarizing it for her. At some point, she might want to sift through it all. That's why I'll be taping everything a” to make sure she can if she wants to.”

”Fair enough,” he said easily.

”Ready to go?” I pushed the record b.u.t.ton.

”Before we start, Kristin, if you don't mind, could I ask you a few questions?”

”Sure.”

”What exactly is your relations.h.i.+p with my daughter?”

”What do you mean?” Self-consciously, I glanced at the tape recorder. What had Destiny told him about me? How could I answer that question without giving him an answer?

”Are you special friends?” He looked at me quizzically.

”Oh, no!” I said truthfully. ”Nothing like that.”

”I wish Destiny could find a nice girl to love. Excuse my boldness, but you seem like a nice girl.” He smiled at me.

I started to smile back but then caught myself. This man was smooth. I'd have to watch it or the tape would run out and there would be nothing about the past on it and everything about the present.