Part 1 (1/2)

The Pa.s.sions of Chelsea Kane.

By: BARBARA DELINSKY.

Synopsis:.

Left and right, rising toward the triangle's apex, were the buildings she had seen before. Viewed at leisure, in the glow of the sun, they had the appeal she had only been able to imagine in March. The library, housed in a small yellow Victorian, had charm. The bakery, its windows filled with fresh breads, cakes, and cookies, had spice. The post office had dignity, the general store quaintness, the bank gentility. And then there was the church, the focal point of the town, to which her eye climbed time and again Though its wood siding was painted white, the shade of the pines cast it a pale blue. Spilling onto the hill at its side and above, past a small white fence, were the tall, thin slabs that anch.o.r.ed the dead to the town. She wondered who of her flesh and blood was buried there. She wondered who of her flesh and blood wasn't buried there but was alive and well and living in town. She wondered if any of them knew who she was.

acknowledgments.

In the course of researching granite quarrying and small-town New England life, I had the good fortune of talking with many fascinating New Hamps.h.i.+rites. Among the most generous with time and information, and to whom I now give heartfelt thanks, were Jane Boisvert of the Office of State Planning in Concord, Vic Mangini of the Greenfield Inn, SueAnne Yglesias of the Fitzwilliam Inn, and Howard Holman, mail carrier to the citizens of Fitzwilliam for sixty incredible years. Deepest thanks also go to architect Margot Chamberlin of Three-Point Design, Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, for her time and expertise. I would like to thank my editor, Karen Solem, both for her unwavering faith in my work and her determination that more readers enjoy it. Likewise, I thank my agent, Amy Berkower, for her patience and the solid advice she has given me over the past few years. Finally, always, I give thanks and love to my family-to my husband, Stephen, who unfailingly takes time from his law practice to answer my questions, to our oldest son, Eric, who has helped me with more than a plot twist or two, and to the twins, Andrew and Jeremy, who monitor my career with a savvy far beyond their years.

SHE FOUGHT A COMPELLING URGE TO PUSH. She didn't want the baby born yet. She wasn't ready to let it go, wanted to keep it with her longer, but her body wouldn't cooperate. It had taken charge and was relentless in its goal. From the onset of labor the evening before, the contractions had been strong, one more brand of punishment to add to what had already been. Now, though, they seized her even more cruelly, strangling her belly and stealing her breath. They forced the child in her womb steadily downward until she could no more have kept her trembling thighs from opening than she could have kicked away the girl reaching between them. The room was dim, lit only by the glow of the woodstove and the fragile veil of dawn. In hallucinatory moments between pains, she imagined that he had decreed her baby born then, with no one awake to see or hear, no one to know. In the dark, the baby that had been a black mark on the fabric of Norwich Notch would be banished, the stain washed clean. With the sunrise, the town would be pure once again. I varbam Deansiky Another pain came, this one so cutting that she cried out. The sound echoed in the stillness, followed by another cry, then, when the vise around her belly began to ease, the frantic gasping for air. That sound, too, reverberated in the quiet, and with the return of reason, the irony of it hit her. A great blizzard should have been swirling madly around the small shack to mark the birth of the child that had created such a stir-and if not a blizzard, she decided on the edge of hysteria, certainly the kind of torrential rain that often hit New Hamps.h.i.+re at the tail end of March. Mud would have made the roads impa.s.sable. No one could have reached her. She might have kept her baby a little longer. But there was no gusting wind or swirling snow. There was no battering rain, no mud. The dawn was silent, mocking her with its utter tranquillity. Her stomach knotted hard. Unbearable pain circled her middle in coils that tightened with each turn. She wanted a hand to hold for the comfort of knowing someone cared, but there was no hand, no caring soul. So she clutched fistfuls of the wrinkled sheet and gritted her teeth against a bubbling scream. ”Push,” came the soft voice from between her legs. It belonged to the midwife's sixteen-year-old daughter, who had been relegated the task of delivering the town's least wanted child. In her innocence her voice was gentle, even excited, as she urged, ”Push ... There. I see a head. Push more.”

She tried not to. To expel her baby was to expel the only life she was ever to create, and once gone from her body the child would be lost to her. She The raswons of Cbwsca Kawe wondered If it knew that. She wondered if It wanted that, it seemed so determined to be born. She couldn't blame it, she supposed. She had nothing to offer but love, and that wasn't nearly enough to keep it clothed and fed. So for the child's sake she was giving it up. She had agreed to the decision, but she hated it, hated ft. The pain that hit her next drove all thought from mind but the one that she was surely dying. Her whitened fingers twisted the worn sheet, while the rest of her body contorted in agony. For an instant, when the pain subsided, she was disappointed to find that she remained, trembling and sweaty and hurting all over. The disappointment was still strong in her when she was seized again. Instinctively she bore down.

”That's right,” the young girl coaxed in a tremulous voice. ”A little more ... Oooooh, yes. Here it is. The baby left her shaking body, but the pain lingered. ft rose to encompa.s.s her heart and mind and wasn't helped by the tiny new cry that rose poignantly over her own labored breaths. She tried to see the child, but even if there had been more light, her stomach remained a bulbous barrier. When she tried to prop herself higher, her quivering arms wouldn't hold. ”is it a girl?” she cried, failing back to the bed. ”I wanted a girl.”

”Push a little more.”

She felt a tugging. There was another contraction, another fierce cramp, then with its ebb a harrowing sense of loss. ”My baby,” she whispered, devastated, ”I want my baby,” As though in answer, the infant began to wall from the foot of the bed, Bwbw= [email protected] The sound was cruelly l.u.s.ty.

Had the child been stillborn, she might have mourned and survived, but to give birth to a healthy child only to give it up was double the heartbreak. ”I want to see my baby.- There was no response. She was aware of activity at the end of the bed and knew the infant was being cleaned. ”Please.”

”They said no.”

”It's my baby.”

”You agreed.”

”if I don't see it now, I never will.” The work went on at the foot of the bed. ”Pletue. - ”He told me not to.”

”He'll never know. Just for a minute.” Again she tried to raise herself, but the baby was in a basket by the warmth of the woodstove, and her strength gave out before she could do more than struggle to her elbows. When she fell back to the thin mattress this time it was with a sense of defeat. She was weak and hurting and so very tired. For nine months she'd been fighting, and that was before hard labor had begun. She was too old to be having a baby, they'd said, and for the first time she believed them. She couldn't fight any longer. Closing her eyes, she let herself be bathed-the birth area, then the rest of her that was damp with sweat. The tears that trickled down her cheeks were slowed by sheer exhaustion, but her thoughts moved ahead. She knew the plan. Everything was arranged. The lawyer would be coming soon. A clean gown was slipped over her and the cov- The raswons of cuermcm ers drawn up to keep her warm, but the comfort that was intended by the young girl's kind hands only heightened the desolation she felt. Her future was as barren as she had thought herself all those years. She wasn't sure she could go on. Suddenly she felt a new movement on the bed and the weight of a small bundle tucked against her side, along with a whispered, ”Don't tell.” Opening her eyes, she drew back a comer of the swaddling blanket and sucked in a broken breath. In the pale light of dawn the child was perfect. Large, wide-s.p.a.ced eyes, a tiny b.u.t.ton nose, and rosebud mouth-she was definitely a girl, definitely the best of her parents, definitely sweet and strong-and in that instant her mother knew she had made the right decision. There would be no run-down shacks, no shabby clothes or meager meals for this child. There would be no scorn on the part of the townsfolk, no humiliation, no abuse, but rather a life of privilege, respect, and love.. Rolling to her side, she hugged the infant to her breast. She kissed its warm forehead, breathed in its raw baby scent, ran her hands over its tiny form, then hugged it tighter when tears, came again. They fell faster this time, gathering into sobs so gripping that she barely heard the knock at the door. The girl by her side quickly reached for the child. ”He's here.”

”No-oh, no.” She clutched the baby to her, covering its head with her own not so much to protect it as to protect herself. Without the child she was nothing. ”Please,” came the frightened whisper, along with a tugging. ”We have to leave.”

Deffn9AW We. Already her daughter belonged to someone else-the midwife's daughter now, then the lawyer, then the lawyer of the adopting couple, then the couple themselves. The process had been set into motion. There was no way to stop it without incurring his wrath, and no one knew the consequences of that wrath better than she. It was a silent wrath, all the more dangerous in a man as stubborn as he was powerful.

But he was a man of his word. Just as he had warned her that she would suffer if she chose to carry her child and she had, so he had promised to have the child delivered to its destination unharmed and he would.

She raised the infant to her cheek. ”Be someone, baby.”

”Let me take her.”

”Do it for me, baby, do it for me.”

”Please,” the girl begged.

”Now.”

”I love you.” With an anguished moan, she hugged the baby again.

”Love you,” she sobbed softly. When a second, louder knock came, she jumped. She made a sound of protest, but it was a futile expression of the grief she felt. Her own fate was sealed. In the hope that her daughter's would be kinder, she released the whimpering infant into the hands that waited. Unable to watch the child pa.s.s from her life, she turned away from the warmth of the room and closed her eyes. The door opened. There was a low murmur, the rustle of clothing and the creak of the wicker basket, the closing of the door, then a bleak and wrenching silence. She was alone again, just as she had been for most of her miserable life, only now there was no hope. The last of that had been stolen , her along with her beautiful baby girl. ibe Fawsions of Cbels” Kam. She let out a low, animal sound of despair, then clutched at a sudden searing in her stomach. Her eyes grew wide. Her bewilderment had barely eased when the second pain hit. By the time the third came, she had begun to understand. With the fourth, she was ready. one ROM THE PLUSH COMFORT OF THE VELVET love seat that had been brought into the library for the occasion, Chelsea Kane studied the blondhaired, blue-eyed, beak-nosed members of her mother's family and decided that wherever she was from herself, it had to be better stock than this. She detested the arrogance and greed she saw before her. With Abby barely cold in her grave, they had been fighting over who would get what. As for Chelsea, all she wanted was Abby. But Abby was gone. Bowing her head, she listened to the whisper of the January wind, the hiss of a Mahler murmur, the snap of her father's pocket watch, the rustle of papers on the desk. In time she focused on the carpet. It was an Aubusson, elegantly subtle in pale blues and browns. ”This carpet is your father,” Abby had always declared in her inimitably buoyant British way, and indeed Kevin was elegantly subtle. Whether he loved the carpet as Abby had remained to be seen. Things like that were hard to tell with him. He wasn't an outwardly demonstra- The Pa.s.sions Of Cbehma XMW tive man. Even now, when Chelsea raised her eyes to his face in search of comfort, she found none. His expression was as heartrendingly somber as the dark suit he wore. Though he shared the love seat with her, he was distanced by his own grief. It had been that way since Abby's death five days before. Chelsea wanted to slide closer and take his hand; but she didn't dare. She was a trespa.s.ser on the landscape of his grief. He might welcome her, or he might not. Empty as she was feeling, she couldn't risk the rejection. Finally ready, Graham Fritts, Abby's attorney and the executor of her estate, raised the first of his papers.

”The following are the last wishes of Abigail Mahler Kane ... ” Chelsea let the words pa.s.s her by. They were a grim reminder of what was all too raw, an extension of the elegantly carved coffin, the minister's wellmeaning words, and the dozens of yellow roses that should have been poignantly beautiful but were simply and dreadfully sad. Chelsea hadn't wanted the will read so soon, but Graham had succ.u.mbed to the pressure of the Mahlers, who had come to Baltimore from great distances for the funeral and didn't want to have to come again. Kevin hadn't argued. He rarely took on the clan. It wasn't that he was weak; he was an eminently capable person. But where he championed select causes at work, there his store of fire ended, rendering him nonconfrontational at home. Abby had understood that. She had been as compa.s.sionate as compa.s.sionate ever was, Chelsea realized, and let her thoughts drift. She remembered Abby bathing her in Epsom salts when she had fibrkmra Demnsaw chicken pox, ordering gallons of Chelsea's favorite black cherry ice cream when the braces went on her teeth, excitedly sending copies to all their friends when a drawing of Chelsea's won first prize in a local art show, scolding her when she doublepierced her ears. More recently, when Abby's system had started to deteriorate, as was typical of long-term polio victims, the tables had been turned, with Chelsea doing the bathing, doting, praising, and scolding, and she had been grateful for the opportunity. Abby had given her so much. To be able to give something back was a gift, particularly knowing, as increasingly they both had, that Abby's time was short. ”... this house and the one in Newport I bequeath to my husband, Kevin Kane, along with ... ” Houses, cars, stocks, and bonds, Kevin didn't need any of those things. He was a successful neurosurgeon, drawing a top salary from the hospital and augmenting it with a lucrative private practice. He had been the one to provide for [email protected] everyday needs, and he had insisted that it be that way. Abby had taken care of the extras. Often over the years Chelsea had wished she hadn't, for it had only fostered resentment among the clan. Abby's brothers and sisters had felt it wrong that a Mahler trust should be established for Chelsea, who had no Mahler blood. But Abby had been insistent that Chelsea, as her daughter, was to be treated like every other Mahler grandchild. So she had been, technically at least. She had a trust in her name that provided her with sufficient interest to live quite nicely even if she chose never to work. 10 The Paswons of Cheftca Kane ”... to my daughter, Chelsea Kane, I leave ..

” Chelsea was an architect. At thirty-six she was one of three partners in a firm that was landing plum jobs up and down the East Coast.

Moreover, she had personally invested in a well-chosen few of those projects, which meant that her profits were compounded. She lived quite nicely on what she earned. For that reason, perhaps, the acc.u.mulation of a.s.sets had never been of great interest to her, which was why she barely listened to what Graham read. She didn't want to inherit anything from her mother, didn't want to acknowledge that the woman was dead. Her aunts and uncles didn't seem to have that problem. Trying to took blas(@, they sat with their blond heads straight and their hands folded with artful nonchalance in their laps. Only the tension around those pointy noses and their ever-alert blue eyes betrayed them. ”... to mybrother Malcolm Mahler, I leave.. Malcolm got the yacht, Michael the Packard, Elizabeth the two Thoroughbreds, Anne the Aspen con-do Still they waited while Graham read on. ”As for the rubies .. ” The rubies.

Only then did it occur to Chelsea that that was what her aunts and uncles had been waiting for, not that any of them lacked for jewels-or yachts, or cars, or horses-but the rubies were special. Even Chelsea, who would never dream of wearing anything as showy, could appreciate their value. They had been in the Mahler family for six generations, traditionally pa.s.sed from the oldest daughter to her oldest daughter.

Abby had been the oldest daughter, and Chelsea was her only child. But Chelsea was adopted. 1 ”I have given more thought to this matter than to any other,” Graham read, ”and have decided to bequeath the rubies as follows-my sister Elizabeth is to receive the earrings, my sister Anne the bracelet, and my daughter, Chelsea, the ring.” Elizabeth came out of her chair. ”No, that's wrong. If the oldest daughter doesn't have a daughter, the entire set goes to the second oldest daughter. I'm the second oldest daughter.” Similarly appalled, Anne uncrossed her legs.

”The pieces can't be divided. They were meant to be kept together.

Whatever did Abby have in mind?”

”She must have been confused,” Malcolm decided by way of polite invalidation. ”Or she was influenced by someone else,” Michael suggested by way of benign accusation. ”A Mahler would never divide up that set,” Elizabeth insisted. ”The whole thing should be coming to me.” Kevin stirred then, not much more than a s.h.i.+fting on his seat, but, given his prior immobility, enough to draw attention. In a voice that was gritty with grief but surprisingly firm, he said, ”The whole set should have gone to Chelsea. She is the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter.”

”She isn't Abby's daughter,” Elizabeth argued, ”not in the real sense, not in the sense of having our genes and being able to pa.s.s them on. Besides, look at her. She's a career woman. She won't have a child. Even if she was of our blood ... ” Chelsea rose quietly and slipped out the door. She had no stomach for Elizabeth's words. More than any of them, she was haunted by the fact that she had no Mahler blood. For years she'd been trying to find out whose she did have, but Kevin had 12 Um Pa.s.sions of Cbelaw [email protected] refused to discuss it, and Abby had been too frail to be pestered. So the issue had floated. Abby had been her mother in every sense that mattered. With her death Chelsea felt a sense of loss, a sense of coming unhinged, of losing one's anchor. Abby had loved her. Physical limitations notwithstanding, she had doted on her to the point of near suffocation. Many a time Chelsea had wanted to tell her to buzz off. But Abby was too kind for that, and Chelsea wouldn't have hurt her for the world. She had fallen into a good thing when she'd been adopted. The Kane house was a haven. Love made it a secure, happy place. Nonetheless she had been curious. She had wanted to know why she had been adopted, why Abby couldn't have babies of her own, how she had been picked. She wanted to know where she had been born, who her birth parents were, and why they had given her up. Abby had explaine&, with a gentle care that Chelsea remembered even so many years after the fact, that her paralysis had made having children impossible for her, but that she and Kevin had badly wanted a child at the same time that a baby girl badly needed a home., The adoption had been private and closed. Abby claimed to know nothing, and Kevin agreed.

”You're a Kane,” he insisted even when Chelsea was at her most outlandish. ”It doesn't matter where you come from, as long as you know who you are now.” Chelsea drew herself up before the gilt-edged mirror that hung over the console in the hall. She was as tall and slender as any of the Mahlers and as finely dressed, but that was where the similarities ended. She had green eyes to their blue, and her 13 Darbam Deungby I long hair was auburn, with the natural wave that the Mahler women envied only when waves were in style. Thanks to a motorcycle accident when she was seventeen that had resulted in a broken nose and subsequent surgery, Chelsea's previously turned-up nose was small and straight. Likewise, thanks to a dental appliance that she had worn as a preteen, the chin that would have otherwise receded had been coaxed into perfect alignment with the rest of her features. She was an attractive woman. To deny it would have been an exercise in false modesty, and Chelsea was too forthright for that. She had come a long way from the unruly waist-length hair, kohl-lined eyes, and ragtag flower child look she had espoused as a teenager. Abby had been proud of the woman she'd become. Now Abby was gone, and her family was in the library bickering over a set of jewels. Chelsea was sickened. Had it not been for Kevin, she would have walked out of the house. But she didn't want to leave him alone. He was crushed. After antic.i.p.ating Abby's death for so many years, he was finding the actuality of it hard to accept. Chelsea could fault him for thick headedness on the matter of her adoption, but not for his absolute and unqualified love for Abby. The library door opened to Elizabeth and An '. ”We'll fight, you know,” Elizabeth warned Chelsea as she strode past. Anne pulled their furs from the closet. ”The ring should remain in the family.” Without another word-not the slightest gesture of consolation, encouragement, or farewell-they left.

The front door had barely shut when Malcolm 14 The Paswons of CJWhmx XMW and Michael emerged from the library. Chelsea handed them their coats.

Silently they put them on. Malcolm was fitting his hat to his head when he said, ”You made out quite well, Chelsea.” She stood away with her hands by her sides. ”rm afraid I wasn't paying attention to the details.” They didn't interest her now any more than they had then. ”You should have. Abigail has made you a wealthy woman.”

”I was a wealthy woman before she died.”

”Thanks to the Mahlers.” This came from Michael, who pursed his lips at the black driving gloves he was pus.h.i.+ng on finger by finger. ”Elizabeth and Anne are upset, and frankly I don't blame them. They have a point. That ring is worth a lot of money. You don't need the money, and you don't need the ring. It can't have anywhere near the sentimental value for you that it has for us.” He raised his Mahler-blue eyes to hers. ”If you're half the woman Abby always claimed you were, you'll give us the ring. It's the right thing to do.” .

Chelsea was thrown back in time to the parties her mother had given that the Mahlers had attended. Chelsea's friends had been impressed. They saw the Mahlers as jet-setters who hobn.o.bbed with princes and dukes in the glitter capitals of the world and who spoke the Queen's English with flair. But Chelsea had never been charmed, then or now, by civilized speech expressing uncivilized thoughts. She wanted to feel resentment or defiance but didn't have the strength. As with her inheritance, she had little taste for adversity in the shadow of Abby's death. ”I can't think about this, I really can't,” she said. 15 RWbr= Deungky ”If it's a matter of having the ring appraised,” Malcolm suggested, ”that's already been done. Graham has the papers.”

”It's a matter of mourning. I need time.”

”Don't take too much. The girls will likely go to court if you don't give up the ring on your own.” With an upraised hand, Chelsea murmured, ”Not now,” and took off for the kitchen. She was leaning against the center island beneath a tiara of copper pans when Graham burst through the door. ”Ahh, Chelsea,” he breathed, ”I was worried you'd left.” Chelsea liked Graham. A contemporary of her parents, he had taken over as Abby's attorney after his father died. Over the years he had been a quiet constant in her life. Tucking her hands under her arms, she sent him a pleading look. ”Don't you start in on me, too, Graham. It was bad enough reading the will while Mother's still warm in her grave, but to bicker over it is disgusting. They wanted it read, now it's been read, but I have no intention of looking at it, thinking about it, or acting on it until I've had time to mourn her.” She tossed a hand toward the front of the house. ”They're off to jet home and return to their lives as though nothing has changed, and maybe for them it hasn't, but it has for me, and it . nothing to do with inheriting whatever I inherited and being worth such-and-such more than I was before. I refuse to define my mother's life in terms of dollars and cents, so if that's what you're here to do, forget ft.” ”It's not,” Graham said, and drew an envelope from the inner pocket of his suit jacket. ”This is for YOU.” 16 The Pa.s.sions or Ljxcw..- Wanly she stared at the envelope. It was old and wom. ”If that's an ancient stock certificate, I don't want it,” she said, though the envelope didn't look official by any measure. It was small in size, nondescript, and, even from where she stood Chelsea could see that there was no return address. ”Go on,” Graham coaxed, nudging It closer. ”Abby wanted you to have it.”

”Was this listed in her will?”

”No* It was a private matter, something between her and me, and now you.” Curious, Chelsea took the envelope and immediately noted its weight. There was something inside. She s.h.i.+fted it in her hand, then studied the address. The ink had smeared what was an. awkward scrawl to begin with, yet she made out her mother's name. She had more trouble deciphering the name beneath that. Graham helped out. ”It was sent care of my father. That's his office address. He was the lawyer who represented your parents in the adoption.” Chelsea had known that, but Graham's mentioning it out of the blue was startling. Her heart skipped a beat, then made up for it by starting to race. Her eyes flew to the postmark. ft too had faded with age, but its print was more legible than the scrawl beneath it. The date was November 8, 1959, the place ”Norwich Notch, New Hamps.h.i.+re?” she read. ”Nor'ich,” Graham corrected.

”I was born there?”

”Yes.” She was stunned. Wondering where she'd been born was as much a part of her as celebrating her birthday each March. To have an end suddenly put 17 MWrbwa PCOWAly to the wondering-to ask a question and receive a yes-was overwhelming. Nonvich Notch. She held the envelope in her hand as though it were something fragile, afraid to move it, lift It, open it. From across the room came Kevin Kane's somber voice.

”What's that, Graham?” Graham's eyes went from Chelsea's face to the envelope in silent urging. She swallowed, then turned it over, lifted the flap, and drew out a piece of tissue paper that was as worn as the envelope itself. It looked to have been unfolded and refolded many times. Setting it carefully on the counter, she unfolded it but again.