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"No," I insisted, my hands clenching the paper tight. "Not younger. Older. This says she was born in 1952. But she wasn’t. She couldn’t have been. She was only sixteen when she had me, and I was born in 1974."

  The lawyer didn’t speak for a moment. "Perhaps you should check her birth certificate," he suggested.

  I rose with a jerk and retrieved the bag of Sheila’s personal effects I had brought from the hospital. I returned to the common room, pulled out a tattered black leather purse, and placed it on the table top. A single piece of paper protruded from the flat pocket on the purse’s side, and I pulled it out.

  Sheila Marie Tresswell. Female infant, born to Margaret Orr Tresswell, age twenty-eight, and John Franklin Tresswell, age thirty-two. In Uniontown, Pennsylvania. May 13, 1952.

  My hands fell to my sides.

  The lawyer remained silent.

  "Another lie," I said in a whisper. If I didn’t whisper, I would shout, and my parents had never tolerated shouting.

  A wave of nausea rolled up in my throat. Sheila hadn’t been a frightened teenager when she gave birth to me. She had been twenty-two years old.

  Chapter 8

  I shifted in the comfortably padded chair, crossed my legs the opposite way, and stole another glance at my watch. Exactly three minutes had passed since the last time I had checked it.

  Sheila’s coffin, plain but dignified, lay underneath a single spray of flowers—the least expensive fresh ones that had been available. A pair of silk ficus trees, no doubt permanent residents that had been moved from the room’s corners to help fill the emptiness, marked either end of the coffin. In an hour and forty-five minutes, only one visitor had strayed into the room. That had been David Falcon, whose dutiful appearance had provided a brief but welcome diversion, despite his gentle castigation over my failure to hire an attorney since our last meeting.

  No one had contacted the funeral home in regard to Sheila’s obituaries. Nor had anyone called my home number directly, despite the carefully worded plea in all three that asked friends and family members to contact Meara O’Rourke for more information. I hadn’t wanted to spell out my relationship to Sheila in print—at some level I feared the disclosure might alienate the very people I was trying to reach. But I had included virtually all the facts I knew about Sheila before her life with Mitchell, with the exception of the surname she had used at the coffee shop, which I strongly suspected was fictitious.

  At this point, believing anything she had ever told me seemed naïve.

  I had had three days now to absorb the information I had learned about Sheila, and to come to grips with the reality of her death. But I was making great progress on neither front. Learning that she had lied to me about her age when I was born had been a slap in the face, and my cheek was still smarting. I had returned to my parent’s house in a fog of denial, setting about the grim task of preparing for the mold abatement with a single-mindedness that precluded introspection. I hadn’t wanted to think about Sheila. And for the last three days, I had succeeded.

  But there was no avoiding the issue now.

  I stared at the closed coffin from a safe distance. The funeral director had insisted I view the body privately before the lid was brought down, a task which had stabbed at my very core, releasing a landslide of raw emotions I had hoped to keep contained. Every ounce of evidence in my possession pointed to the same conclusion—that my birth mother had been a drifter and a swindler. An attractive woman physically, yet evidently so unlikable that in a half-century’s worth of living she had acquired not a single friend to mourn her passing. She had given me up when I was a child, and she had lied to me when I was adult. There was little in her history to engender my sympathy—certainly nothing that should obligate me to become embroiled in her affairs, much less oversee her burial.

  Nothing except my memory of a dying woman lying in a hospital bed, looking at me with love in her eyes.

  It shouldn’t matter to me. I knew that. Sheila had never known me as a person, and now she never would. Within an hour her body would be in the ground, and by the end of the day her few belongings would be out of the Sheepsworth Inn and on their way to charity. But it wouldn’t be over then. Not for me. Her last words would haunt me for the rest of my life.

  I always loved you, Meara.

  Once upon a time, those same words might have begun to heal the chasm her abandonment had left in my heart. But now, with the incongruity of all I had learned, they brought only more confusion. And more pain.

  "Ms. O’Rourke?" Two funeral home employees entered the viewing room from the rear, propping open the double doors as they came. "We’re ready to transport your mother to the cemetery now. The minister will meet us there. Are you—expecting anyone else?"

  Unsure whether I could answer, I simply shook my head.

  ***

  It was a beautiful June day. The mountain breeze was cool, but the sun was comfortably warm, sitting high in an azure sky marked only by the thinnest of clouds. The cemetery was a picturesque one, uniformly populated with flat, unostentatious stones. Rolling mounds of grass were punctuated by splashes of color from an abundance of silk wreaths, and in every direction higher hills towered above, verdant with the lush, deciduous forest of the Laurel Mountains.

  I had driven to the gravesite alone, sparing myself the further expense of a limousine. I watched silently as the coffin was manipulated onto position, then breathed a sigh of relief when the designated pastor arrived. Recommended to me by the funeral home, the Presbyterian minister had not known Mitchell personally, much less Sheila, and the information I had shared with him had been scant. Subconsciously, I suppose, I had thought it best she be eulogized by a stranger.

  He took in the scene with a compassionate eye, asking directly if I were ready to begin, rather than inquiring over the obvious lack of mourners. He had spoken only a few words when his gaze caught something over my shoulder, and he smiled. "Let’s wait another moment," he suggested.

  I turned to see a man approaching up the hill, and for several seconds, I didn’t recognize him. My pulse quickened as I wondered whether he were a relative, and the old half-sibling dream doggedly raised its head again. But when I saw his face, my childish hopes were replaced with bewilderment. Clean-shaven and dressed in a nicely tailored suit, Fletcher strode purposely up to the gravesite, greeted the minister with a solemn nod, and took a place two paces from my side.

  I stared at him, dumbfounded. A few days ago, the same man had essentially accused Sheila of killing his father. Now he was attending her funeral?

  I tried to catch his eye for some hint of explanation. But once again he avoided the contact, seemingly intent on the ceremony. Only after the minister had finished his fitting, though necessarily impersonal, discourse, did Fletcher’s gaze waver toward me.

  He offered only a single, mute nod, then averted his eyes again. Reading anything from his expression was next to impossible—the emotions brewing therein were far too convoluted. His manner, so sophisticated and reverential, was in complete contrast to that of the boorish outdoorsman I had previously met. Yet somehow, I sensed that this incarnation of Fletcher Black was even further removed from the reality. As perfectly as the suit fit him, as elegant a picture as he made, I couldn’t help but notice the rigid set of his shoulders, the tautness of his jaw.

  He was uncomfortable in the suit. And it was a fairly good bet that he hated even being here.

  The coffin began its descent into the ground, and I tried once more to make myself accept what was happening. Fletcher’s presence was just one more incomprehensible incident in a span of days that, for me, continued to feel hopelessly surreal. From the moment I had received the hospital call about Sheila I had felt like Alice in Wonderland—dropped into a world of nonsense where nothing I saw was what it appeared to be. Sheila had said she loved me; yet she had cast me aside, lied to me, run from me. She and Mitchell had seemed to have genuine feelings for each other, yet they were a wealthy widower and a drifter, eloping wit
hout a prenup. Sheila had died trying to warn me of something, but her words had been nothing but gibberish. My heart ached to know that I would never see her again; yet every time I thought of her, my gut twisted with anger.

  Fresh dirt lay piled on the grave’s edge before my foot, and as I thought again of the severed picture of me as a toddler, of the tumult I must have endured, I felt an impulse to step forward and kick it. I imagined the clods of earth falling down, thudding onto her coffin and covering her, ending once and for all the anguish she had inflicted on my soul.

  I would never have done such a thing. It was just a thought. But I must have stepped forward slightly nevertheless, because almost immediately I felt a steadying hand grasp my arm above the elbow. I turned and faced yet another rendition of Fletcher Black.

  His eyes were studying mine with concern. His touch was gentle, his expression kind. "Are you all right?" he asked quietly.

  I met his gaze, and my heart warmed. This behavior, surely, was genuine. Considerate and caring—at least when caught off guard. I felt a wave of self-satisfaction. I had known from the start that there was good in the man, no matter how hard he’d been working to conceal it.

  "I’m fine," I answered with my best smile. "Thank you."

  To my surprise, his expression immediately clouded over. He dropped my arm and turned away from me.

  The coffin reached its destination, and the whirring of the machinery ceased with a thump. I stared down into the grave, my stomach churning.

  Contradictions. They were everywhere. They were all I had left of her.

  Staring at that hideous coffin, its one skimpy floral arrangement barely covering a third of its surface, I was nearly overcome. I needed another cry. Not just for the loss of my birth mother, but for everything in her life and mine that had never been—and now would never be—right. And had I been standing above her coffin alone, surrounded only by those I had paid to be here, I might have given into the urge right then. But I wasn’t alone. Sheila’s stepson had come too, and as uncertain as I was of his motives in doing so, the mere knowledge that there was a warm body next to mine somehow gave me the strength to stave off my sobs—at least for a little while.

  I was only vaguely aware of the minister leaving, and of the funeral director explaining that the remainder of the burial could take place after I was gone. I moved toward my car like a robot. A hand touched my arm.

  "Do you need a ride somewhere?" Fletcher inquired, his voice strained. In the sunlight, his eyes seemed a grayish-blue, midway between his dark suit and the sky above. They were beautiful eyes, but he was guarding them again, using a thin veil of resentment to mask whatever hid beneath.

  "No thank you," I answered, wondering again why he had come. Was he feeling some sort of guilty obligation, given how he had tried to pressure me about the inheritance? Or was this a new plan—an act to win me over? If so, he needn’t have shaved his beard and donned such an expensive suit. One civil conversation would suffice.

  "I appreciate your coming today," I said evenly. "It was very thoughtful of you. Thank you."

  His eyes flashed with the same penetrating sadness I had seen so many times before, but he averted them quickly, nodding his head. "You’re welcome," he answered, dropping my arm. "No one should be at a funeral alone."

  There was a flash of sensitivity in his words that moved me, but before I could respond to it, his tone turned cool again. "Is there—anything else you need while you’re here? Did you get what you wanted from the inn?"

  His discomfort in my presence was palpable, and I ached with the frustration of it. I wanted to know what was hurting him—why he felt like he had to keep up this facade with me.

  "I do still need to pick up Sheila’s things," I explained. "Would it be all right if I came by the inn now?"

  He nodded. But his attention had become fixed on something over my shoulder.

  A car door slammed behind me, and I whirled toward the sound.

  A dilapidated station wagon had stopped at the base of the hill next to my own car, and a pale, haggard-looking woman was standing next to it. She appeared to be in her fifties, with short, dark hair and bespectacled eyes that darted back and forth between the gravesite and me.

  Someone came.

  My heart raced. I walked toward her.

  "Are you here for Sheila Tresswell’s funeral?" I called out before I had even reached her.

  The woman shrank back at my approach, but after hearing my words, she relaxed again. She watched me thoughtfully as I neared, and then she smiled. "Yeah, I am," she said in a voice so meek I had to strain to hear it. "Are you her daughter?"

  I nodded, a wave of emotion rushing through me like a flood. Her daughter. Keeping my tears dammed took every ounce of strength I could muster. "You knew her?" I whispered hoarsely.

  The woman smiled again, shyly. "We were friends for a while. But it’s been years, now."

  I smiled back, even as another pang of disappointment shot through my gut. She was not a relative. But that was okay, I assured myself. She was a friend. I should be grateful that Sheila had had at least one of them.

  "I’m so glad you came," I sputtered. "The funeral is over, but—" I paused, uncertain how to phrase my request. Would you mind hanging around for a moment and telling me absolutely everything you know about my birth mother? It sounded too ridiculous.

  "You look so much like her," the woman offered, sparing me. "Sheila told me once that she had a daughter. She never would say much more, which I thought was sort of strange, but I could tell she missed you." She grinned, revealing crooked teeth and a lifetime of dental neglect.

  "She gave me up for adoption," I explained, intent, for whatever reason, on setting the record straight.

  The woman’s eyes widened. "Oh," she said, her voice turning slightly anxious. "But you two met up again after she got out?"

  A coldness began to gnaw at my insides. I cleared my throat again. "I met her for the first time six years ago," I answered. The rest I didn’t address. I wasn’t sure I could.

  "Well," she offered, her voice softening. "Sheila was a good one. Always made me smile. Everybody got down, you know, but Sheila, she had a gift. Always said she wanted to be an actress, and she was pretty enough for it, too. But she took what she was dealt and did the best she could with it. Kept everybody smiling."

  The gnawing turned to an ache that moved upward through my chest. "When exactly did you meet?" I asked.

  "In eighty-two," she answered. "When I went in. She was still there when I got out in eighty-seven; I’m afraid we lost touch after that." She settled back against the car, and her eyes became distant. "I never knew what she was in for—she wouldn’t say. I just knew she was one of the good ones. I felt like calling it quits myself a couple times, but Sheila was the kind that could always talk you out of it. There’s always something to live for, she’d say. No matter how bad you’ve screwed up, there’s always something. You just have to figure out what."

  She looked at me and chuckled. "I always figured for her, that was her kid, but then I wondered why nobody ever brought you to visit her. Now I get it. Sheila didn’t talk, you know—never would say anything about her life outside. And she never had any visitors. Whole five years I knew her, nobody ever came. Still, she kept her spirits up." She smiled at me maternally. "That’s why I say, honey—your mum was a good one."

  My whole body seemed frozen.

  "That’s why I figured I’d come today," she announced, straightening. "I never went back to see her, you know. I said I would, but I just couldn’t do it. Couldn’t face that place again. I know it’s late now, and heck, looks like I even missed the minister, but I’m here." She smiled at me again, sadly. "Sheila’s gonna have at least one visitor now—I owe her that."

  She gave my upper arm a squeeze. "It’s nice to meet you, honey. If you don’t mind, I’ll just pay my respects and be on my way."

  She was three paces away from me before I was able to speak. "I’m sorry," I croa
ked. "But I didn’t get your name."

  "Stephie," she answered, turning. "Stephie Linwood. I live in Boswell now."

  "And when you met Sheila," I forced out, "you were where, exactly?"

  Her eyes turned cautious. "Muncy," she answered.

  I nodded immediately, hoping to give the indication that I already knew. "Right," I said. "Thank you for coming."

  She nodded back at me, then began her trek the rest of the way up the hill.

  I turned and walked to my own car. My hand shook as I extended it toward the door handle.

  Muncy. The word seemed to pound against the inside of my skull, ricocheting from side to side. Muncy was the name of a small town near the center of Pennsylvania.

  The site of the women’s state penitentiary.

  Chapter 9

  I stuffed Sheila’s clothes into a couple of garden-sized trash bags and hauled them to my car. Her clothes, her boots, her knickknacks, and the big shabby suitcase were going to the first charity drop-off center I could find.

  As for the smaller suitcase, the one with the quilt and the Bible, I had opened the lid just wide enough to throw in Sheila’s purse, then shoved the works into the corner of my trunk. When I got home, the suitcase would go straight into storage, along with what I had saved of my parents’ belongings, until I could find a suitable place to rent. Then everything I had of Sheila’s would be settled deep into the back of a closet somewhere, and with luck, out of my mind.

  I couldn’t bring myself to dispose of everything that was hers. Not when someday the keepsakes might mean something to my own children. Family was important; I of all people ought to know that. And if I handled things right, maybe the next generation would be able to remember their biological grandmother with fondness—as opposed to with a searing pain in their middle.

  Prison. Sheila had been in prison. And not just for five years. Longer. What sort of crime resulted in a sentence that long? I doubted simple fraud would suffice.