Part 4 (2/2)

Regardless the price. Regardless the pain.

Out loud, I asked again, ”I would appreciate it if you would give me her name.

”Kenwood, Marie Kenwood,” he said, looking tired. ”Last I knew, she lived somewhere in southeast Denver.”

”Thank you.”

We finished up then. I turned off the tape recorder. I asked if I could return for more information if I needed it at a later date. He said I could. We shook hands, as if we'd just conducted a satisfying piece of business. As I was walking out of his office, I wondered if he'd sleep well that night.

I know now that there's no way he would have gotten a wink of sleep if he'd had any idea what he'd started. It didn't seem like much at the time, but the information he'd given me, sometimes willingly, sometimes not, was to lead to drastic discoveries in his daughter's life... and in his own.

Chapter 5.

When I got back to my office, I called Destiny and summarized my meeting with her father. I left out all the emotion, all the description of her life as a four-year-old, and got straight to the point.

”You may have a grandmother living in Denver, Peter Kenwood's mother. Do you want me to find her?”

”My father told you that?” Her voice registered both shock and fear.

”Yes.”

”How does he know about her. What does he know about her? Why haven't I heard about her before now?” she cried.

”He doesn't know much about her, just what little the nuns told him at the time, which believe me, wasn't very much. It seems the church was very concerned with there being as little connection as possible between your old life and your new life. For your sake, they said.”

”Right,” she said angrily.

”Nothing about this is fair, Destiny. Or easy. That much I got, very clearly, in my meeting with your dad. What happened to you is incredibly sad. I know you know that in your head. But now, Destiny, if we follow through with this, you'll know it in your heart. It's not the same thing. What you're doing a” what we're doing a” is hard.”

I waited for her to say something. Silence.

”Are you still there?”

”I'm here,” she said, sounding as if she were fighting back tears.

”Do you want me to keep going? Do you want me to try to find this woman?”

”Yes,” she said with simple determination.

Her resolve frightened me.

”Okay, then, I'll let you know when I find her. But don't hold your breath, Destiny. There's a good chance she's dead. Or senile. If she's alive, she'd have to be well into her eighties. Don't get your hopes up, okay?”

”I never do.”

”All right,” I let out a sigh, ”so I'll look for Marie Kenwood?”

”Yes.”

When she agreed, I knew then that she really trusted me. And I was flattered, because the more I found out about her, the more I knew trust couldn't possibly have come easily to this ”little warrior.”

G.o.d help us all, I thought as I opened up the phone book and started to call the Denver-area Kenwoods. G.o.d help us all.

Finding Destiny's grandmother was so easy it startled me. On the third try, I located her. Marie Kenwood was very alive, very lucid, and very suspicious of me. It took every ounce of charm I had to get her to reluctantly agree to meet with me the following week.

I left work that evening feeling like I'd accomplished quite a lot for one day. Not even the forecast of snow for the following day could dampen my spirits. I felt better than I'd felt in months.

It didn't last long.

Alone, I went to a mindless movie, ate more popcorn and chocolate-covered raisins than I should have, and inched my car home in the driving sleet.

When I got home, I cleared the debris from my bed, and tried to fall asleep.

But I couldn't sleep. I couldn't stop thinking about what Benjamin Greaves had told me.

I thought about what he'd said about Destiny not wanting to cry in front of them. I never cried in front of my parents either. I didn't have a single recollection of my mom comforting me when I cried. Just the opposite, in fact. In my teens, when I fought with her, I would will myself not to cry in front of her. I would focus on something in the room, stare at it and try to keep control of myself because I never wanted to show emotion to her. If she saw me cry, she won. If I held back the tears, I won.

By then, obviously, I didn't trust her with my feelings, but I wondered when that mistrust had started.

I remembered hiding myself from her. When I started menstruating, I threw away my soiled underwear and used Kleenex as Kotex because I didn't know what else to do and was too afraid to talk to her or to my older sisters. When one day after I stood up in front of my entire eighth-grade French cla.s.s, and a girl I barely knew pulled me aside to tell me blood had soaked through my orange bell-bottoms, I had to call my mom to come get me. On the way home, she told me how surprising it was that my flow was so heavy with my first menstrual cycle. I never bothered to tell her it was actually my sixth one.

When did my own mother become my enemy, so much so that I was afraid to tell her anything?

And where was my father when I was growing up? The memories of him were almost completely blocked. It was as if he didn't exist. Why?

These questions, the questions to which there were no acceptable answers, depressed me until eventually I fell asleep.

I woke up long before morning came, sweating and shaking from a terrifying dream.

Ann and I are walking through the woods at night. In line, Ann is in front, then me. As we go to cross a bridge, I step aside. I won't cross it. I am going to walk parallel to it.

Ann goes on ahead, then disappears, as if into a hole. I scream and scream for her. I am terrified. I keep trying to wake up. In my dream, I remind myself I am in my apartment and safe. I'm calm, then the terror again. I scream louder and louder but never make a sound.

As I remembered pieces of the dream, thoughts flashed through my mind: Camping trips. We'd taken several family camping trips. My mother never went along because she hated camping. Who slept in the tent with Dad? Who slept in the car? My incomplete thoughts terrified me more than the dream itself.

I started crying from a place I could not touch.

Total amnesia. It could no longer protect me. What would?

Finally, when I could no longer stand the noise inside my head, I put on my stereo headphones, turned up the music as loud as I could, and read People magazine.

For hours, I kept the external noise going to override the internal noise. I was exhausted, yet couldn't chance sleep. Just before dawn, I returned to my bed, lit a candle on the nightstand, and prayed for peace.

Mercifully, the morning finally came, but not soon enough, and not nearly easily enough.

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