Somewhere Between Luck and Trust (35 page)

“We aren’t going to church today, Mrs. Merton. And now, you have a visitor.” The chair moved easily on wide casters, and she turned it slowly so Georgia could see Tricia’s full face.

“I don’t know you,” Tricia said bluntly, with no trace of interest in a voice that wavered in pitch.

“We met a long time ago.”

Tricia still didn’t look interested.

“Mrs. Merton doesn’t always remember people,” the attendant said. “I’m Landa Riggs, her aide. Maybe if you tell her where you first met?”

Georgia realized how little she wanted to have the aide in the room while she tried to talk to Tricia. “It might take a little time to jog her memory. Do you need a break? I’ll be happy to stay with her.”

“I’m not sure I should....”

“We’ll be fine. If there’s a problem I’ll use the call button to let someone know. There is one?”

Landa changed her mind. “Sure. You go ahead. I’ll be back in five.”

“Ten,” Georgia said. “If you don’t mind. We need some time together.”

“Call button’s there.” Landa pointed to the wall near a corner bed with a mahogany headboard. Georgia supposed that after her initial hesitancy Landa had realized that getting away from her patient was a treat too good to question.

Landa got a shawl off another chair and draped it over Tricia’s legs. Tricia frowned and pushed it to the floor. Landa picked it up and set it nearby. “I’ll be back in a little while,” she told Tricia.

“You go home. I want Essie.”

“Essie used to work for the Merton family,” Landa told Georgia, in quiet explanation, before she left the suite.

By her expression Georgia realized that “used to work” meant Essie had been gone in some form or the other for many years.

“Who are you?” Tricia didn’t whine, not exactly, but she sounded annoyed and possibly just a shade frightened. Her voice quavered even more, and she drew out the “you” as if she wasn’t sure how to cut off the sound.

“You knew me when I was very small. It’s no wonder you don’t recognize me.” Georgia pulled up a chair so they were face-to-face. Up close she could see the ravages of time, and most likely the ravages of the strokes. Tricia Merton was almost skeletal, and there were no traces of the beauty that had been her ticket to Zeta Chi and later to a wealthy husband and an assured place in Jeffords society.

There was also not one trace of Georgia herself. She couldn’t see any resemblance, unless possibly the shape of their lips was similar. Tricia’s eyes were green, not the rusty-brown of Georgia’s. Her nose was thinner and her face was heart-shaped. Georgia’s was almost rectangular.

Was this where Edna’s green eyes had come from?

“You have two sons, isn’t that right?” Georgia asked.

“James and Robert.”

That Tricia had remembered their names so quickly was a good sign. “Did you ever have a daughter?”

Tricia shook her head. “I have two sons. James and Robert.”

“Before the boys. When you were younger?”

“I have two sons.”

Georgia saw this line of questioning was going nowhere and changed to another. “This is a lovely suite. I like the blue walls with the dark furniture.”

“I will be going home soon.”

Georgia nodded, although she was sure it wasn’t true. “Have you always lived in South Carolina?”

“I am a Pinette.”

“And the Pinette family has been here a long time.”

“Everyone knows that.”

Georgia wondered how much Tricia had changed after her stroke, and how much of the imperious tone, the inability to show warmth or interest in another human being, was just part of who she had always been, rather than a symptom of her dementia.

She didn’t know how long Landa would actually leave them alone. It was time to move forward.

“But you did leave South Carolina for a time. A long time ago you went to the University of Georgia, didn’t you? And pledged Zeta Chi?”

“Zeta Chi,” Tricia repeated, with no inflection.

“I’ve been to the house. It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t like it.”

Georgia was surprised at the response, and encouraged. “They’ve done a lot of renovations since you were there as a pledge. I was there recently, and they still remember you. But you weren’t there long, were you?”

“I told you, I didn’t like it.”

“I see. Was that because you were pregnant and didn’t want anyone to find out?”

“Where is Essie?”

Tricia didn’t seem upset by Georgia’s question, she just seemed confused, as if the subject was completely foreign. Georgia decided to try something else.

“I have something that might belong to you. Would you like to see it?”

“Essie knows how to fix my hair the way I like it.”

“She sounds like a keeper.”

“Keeper?”

“Someone who was probably worth a lot more than you ever paid her.” Georgia reached into her purse and held out the charm bracelet for Tricia to examine. “I think this used to be yours. Does it look familiar?”

Tricia didn’t take it, but she bent over and squinted. “I don’t like cheap jewelry.”

“It’s actually quite a nice bracelet, real gold. Whoever it belonged to added lots of charms.”

“I have a diamond tennis bracelet. Essie will find it.”

“Would you like to look at this one?”

“I have diamond rings.”

“There are so many charms on this bracelet that seem to relate to your life. Did you play the French horn?”

Tricia had straightened, no longer looking at the bracelet. “I got a scholarship. Not that I needed it.”

“You must have been good.”

“I stopped playing....” She frowned. “Sometime. Who did you say you were?”

Georgia clenched the bracelet in her fist until she realized the charms were cutting into her palm. She looked more closely at Tricia and realized that someone, most likely Landa, had taken the time to apply eye shadow and lipstick so that Tricia’s sallow skin had a little color, although the effect wasn’t pleasing. It was more like a mask than an enhancement.

The dementia was a mask of its own. Georgia wished she knew exactly how many of Tricia’s responses were triggered by a lack of memory and how many by a desire not to cooperate. Had she really forgotten giving birth to a baby girl? Or was she still capable of deceit, even with her mind and memory in turmoil?

She decided to go for broke, because so far, at least, the conversation wasn’t upsetting the woman in the chair.

“My name is Georgia Ferguson. I was born in a hospital in Columbus, and my mother wrapped me in a University of Georgia sweatshirt and left me in a bathroom sink. The nurses named me Georgia because of the sweatshirt.”

Tricia was frowning now, but her gaze flicked away. “I have two sons.”

“I have a feeling that’s as much of an admission as you’re going to give me,” Georgia said softly. “But I think you’re my mother, Tricia. I think you’re the woman who left me in that sink, for some reason I’ll never know.”

“James and...” The frown deepened. “James and someone else.”

“Did you give birth to a daughter and leave her behind without telling anyone? Were you frightened an illegitimate child would destroy your life, so it was easier just to leave me there and escape?”

Tricia stared at her, then she narrowed her eyes. “I don’t have
any
children. I never liked them, and I don’t like you.”

Georgia was afraid that this time, Tricia was telling the truth.

She closed her eyes for a moment and wished the departed Essie were there to question. She wondered if Tricia had ever confessed what she had done, and if so, to whom. The baby’s father? Essie, the maid who had clearly taken care of every need? Or had the pregnancy and birth been such nonevents in her life that she had kept them to herself, put them out of her mind, moved on so thoroughly that the memory of the things she had done in a Columbus hospital had faded long before her stroke?

Georgia dropped the bracelet back in her purse. “I guess there’s nothing else for us to talk about.”

“I don’t know why you came.”

Georgia wished she knew exactly what Tricia meant. Did she sense who Georgia was and wish she’d left well enough alone? Or was she just confused because a stranger was questioning her?

Georgia started to stand, but she realized she had to have some kind of closure, because she would never see this woman again. She framed her words carefully.

“I just want you to know something. I’ve had a good life, Tricia. It hasn’t been an easy life, the way yours was, but I don’t think I would trade a minute of it. I have a wonderful daughter and a remarkable granddaughter. You missed so much by not knowing them, but I think that was for the best.”

She got to her feet, lecturing herself not to shed one tear. “So I guess we’re done now. I’ll find Landa for you.”

“Charlie gave me a charm. A heart. He was poor, but he wanted to marry me.”

Georgia stood very still, hoping for more.

Tricia’s laugh was anything but pleasant. “It was a miracle I didn’t have to.”

“Because you went into labor before you had to admit you were pregnant? Before it was obvious?”

“I was never pregnant.”

“Does Charlie have a last name?”

Tricia narrowed her eyes and sealed her painted lips into a grim line, as if she was afraid an answer might escape them.

Georgia knew she wasn’t going to get anything more. If Charlie was her father, his identity would remain a mystery. She supposed she could do more research, question people who might have known Tricia, search through high school yearbooks. But she was finished. She wanted to leave Jeffords forever, to put this woman and everything she had done behind her.

Before she could turn away, a woman spoke from the direction of the doorway, her voice low and her speech softly Southern. “Wentworth. Charlie’s last name is Wentworth, and I’m very sure, Georgia, that sweet, sweet man is your father.”

Chapter Forty-One

GEORGIA TOOK A
moment to compose herself before she turned away from the woman who had given birth to her. The woman in the doorway was as tall as she was, with dark hair and features that looked surprisingly familiar, because Georgia saw similar ones in the mirror every morning. The woman’s green eyes glistened with unshed tears.

“I’m Yvonne Clemmons. Yvonne
Pinette
Clemmons, Tricia’s younger sister, but everyone calls me Dottie because I loved polka dots as a little girl. Which is why we should never give any child a silly nickname.” She clamped her lips together, as if she realized she was babbling, but then she couldn’t help herself. “I have so hoped to meet you,” she added in a rush.

Dottie looked considerably younger than Tricia. She probably wasn’t as much younger as she seemed, but her face was relatively unlined, and she had an athletic body that spoke of hours on a tennis court or in a pool swimming laps. She was dressed as if she had just gotten out of church: heels, pearls, a pretty blue wraparound dress topped by a tremulous smile.

“How do you know who I am?” Georgia asked.

“The moment she heard your name, Landa called me. I asked her to let me know if you ever came to see Trish. I just wish you had talked to me first, so I could have prepared you for the way she is.”

“
Talk
to you? How could I? Until this moment I didn’t know you existed.”

Dottie looked bewildered. “But you
must
have gotten my letter. How else would you know where to come today?”

Tricia spoke from behind Georgia, her voice petulant. “Where is Essie? I want her right now!”

Dottie gave a slight shrug, as if to ask Georgia to let her deal with her sister. She moved past her, until she was standing between Georgia and Tricia.

“Essie died years ago, Trish, but Landa’s here. She’ll be back in a moment. May I get you anything?”

Tricia seemed unconcerned by the news of Essie’s death. “Ice cream.”

“I’ll see if Landa can rustle up some for you. Here she comes.”

Georgia saw that the aide had returned, and in a moment the woman was on her way to Tricia Merton’s side. Georgia herself started toward the door, anxious to leave the room.

Once she was in the hallway she was torn. Part of her wanted to leave, but another part, the more relentless, knew she had to see this through. Dottie emerged and pointed to the end of the hallway. “There’s a nice place to sit down there. Will you come with me?”

Georgia pulled her cell phone out of her handbag and held it out. “I have a friend waiting near the nursing station. I’m going to ask him to join us.”

“I’m glad you brought someone with you.”

Georgia dialed Lucas’s cell phone, and once he answered she told him where to come. Then she followed Dottie down the hallway, which was lined with photos of historical events captioned in large letters.

No one else was in the visitors’ room, and Dottie suggested they sit at the far end, in case anyone else came in. “It’s unlikely,” she added, as if it was hard to stop talking. “The patients here don’t get many visitors. It’s difficult for their loved ones to come and not be recognized. Eventually they wonder why they’re putting themselves through it when their visits don’t seem to make a difference.”

Georgia seated herself on the end of the sofa closest to the door, although she knew she wasn’t going to leave. “Is that why Tricia’s sons don’t visit often?”

“Partly.” Dottie paused, as if to think about what to say, then she grimaced. “The larger part is that they were never close to their mother. She would have been happy not to have children at all, but Henry insisted. She wasn’t abusive, you understand, just rarely engaged. The Essie she mentioned? When we were children she was our housekeeper. Then later she raised Tricia’s boys, or at least she was the go-to person when their dad wasn’t home. Henry was very involved, and I filled in whenever I was needed.”

Georgia felt no satisfaction that her mother hadn’t particularly cared for her half brothers. Despite her obvious confusion, Tricia had already hinted at that.

Lucas joined them, and Georgia introduced the two with the little information she had. Then, after he had settled himself beside her, she turned to Dottie and went straight to the point.

“You mentioned a letter, but I never received one. Somebody left a charm bracelet on my desk and an envelope of clippings about my birth. That’s all I found.”

Dottie was clearly surprised. “I gave the girl three things to put on your desk.”

“What girl?”

“A student, I guess. She was working in the reception area.”

Students sometimes helped in the office during study periods, so that was probably true. It was also possible that when Georgia asked the office staff about the bracelet, the particular student who had delivered it to Georgia’s desk hadn’t been there. She might even have been filling in for someone else.

“I wrote you a letter explaining who I was and what I’d found, and I asked you to call me when you were ready. I planned to give it to you myself, but when I got there...” Dottie shook her head. “I decided it would be better to give you a chance to absorb this whole thing without me standing over you. So I gave it to the student. I knew you might not call, but I was hopeful. I’d decided to try again in the fall if I didn’t hear from you, but I didn’t want to be pushy.”

Georgia tried to put that together. Edna had found the bracelet, but days had passed before Georgia discovered the clippings. And in between...

“Our janitor.” She glanced at Lucas. “That was just about the time I warned Tony he needed to do a better job of cleaning my office. When Edna...” She glanced at Dottie. “Edna’s my granddaughter. She was waiting for me when I got back from a faculty meeting the day the bracelet appeared. She showed it to me, but I didn’t look for anything else until the next week, and that’s when I found the clippings.”

Lucas was splicing facts. “Maybe Edna knocked the letter to the floor without realizing it when she reached for the bracelet, or whoever delivered it did. Tony probably tossed it in with your trash.”

Dottie leaned forward, addressing her question to Georgia. “But how did you find Tricia without my letter to go on?”

When Georgia didn’t answer immediately, Lucas explained the way they had tracked her down through the charms.

“I can’t believe you managed that.” Dottie sounded amazed. “It just blows my mind.”

“Let’s move on.” Georgia realized she sounded abrupt, but none of this was easy, and she didn’t want to dwell on her own part of the story. “Why don’t you start by telling us how you came to write the letter I didn’t get?”

Dottie let out a long breath, not quite a sigh, but something more preparatory, because the next breath must have filled her lungs to capacity.

“Tricia’s had several strokes. In between she declined until it was clear to the boys that even with constant nursing, she couldn’t live at home. So they settled her here. Then they asked me to oversee an estate sale, so they could list the house with a Realtor. The house where they grew up’s very large, very formal, and neither of them was interested in keeping it.”

She paused. “They’re wonderful men. I’m so fond of them both.”

“So you were handling the estate sale...” Georgia said, leaving the sentence open to get Dottie back on track.

“Jamie and Bob wanted me to take charge. That way if I found anything I wanted to keep, I could. They’d chosen a few things for themselves, but they wanted to be sure no family heirlooms were sold that they should hold on to for their children. So I took my time going through everything.”

Her face lit up. “And don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with more of that. I’ll cut to the chase. At the bottom of a trunk in the attic, in a metal candy box, I found the clippings I sent you, along with the charm bracelet. I remembered the bracelet, of course. I’d given Trish a charm with my name on it, but the clippings were a mystery.”

“Why was it a mystery to find old clippings in a trunk that was probably filled with old things?” Lucas asked.

Dottie seemed to struggle for the right words. “I can only be honest. Trish was never interested in anybody else’s life. Yet here were three clippings from different newspapers about the same baby girl born in Georgia. At first I didn’t think much about it, but before I could throw them away, I began to wonder. I looked more closely at the date and realized the baby had been left in that sink right about the time Trish quit school. Not only that, I remembered that she took off on a road trip afterward, when nobody in the family knew where she had gone. My parents were frantic. When she finally came home, she told us she’d just hated the University of Georgia and needed time alone to think, but after I found the clippings...” She shrugged.

“That was it? Using a little arithmetic you figured out that your sister was the mother of the Sweatshirt Baby?”

“Yes, I did the math, and when I looked up the story online I also saw your picture as an adult, which was all I needed, since you so strongly resemble our mother and me, although not Trish. But I realized if Trish had given birth to you, then she must have gotten pregnant before she went away to college. And there was only one boy who could have been the father.”

“Charles Wentworth,” Georgia said.

“So I tracked him down, which took about a minute since he’s a successful businessman in Columbia. He started a publishing company that produces textbooks and ships them all over the world. Our high school is very proud of him, so they gave me his phone number with a minimum of fuss. I drove to Columbia, and we met for lunch. I asked him point-blank if Trish had ever been pregnant with his baby.”

She sat back, as if she knew she no longer had to lean forward to hold Georgia’s attention. “He told me he was good enough for Trish in high school, because he was something of a basketball
and
academic star. She liked being seen with him then, but after graduation she told him to get lost. I guess she didn’t think he was going to amount to enough in the future, at least not enough to keep her in the style she’d been accustomed to. His family was poor. He said Trish called them sharecroppers.”

Despite Dottie’s attempt to keep her voice even, Georgia sensed an undercurrent of distaste, which made her warm to the other woman a bit. “And so?”

“Charlie said that in early November Trish called him at Emory, where he was on scholarship, and told him she was pregnant. She was frantic. She didn’t know what to do and demanded he fix things. He told her he would marry her, and she said she would think about it. A couple of weeks later she called to tell him she was on her way back to Jeffords, and he should meet her there. He hitchhiked home, but she never showed up, and three days later, after no word from her, he went back to school. After he found out she had finally arrived in Jeffords, he tried and tried to call her, but she wouldn’t speak to him. Weeks later she finally told him she’d had a miscarriage, and no longer had any reason to marry him.”

“And he didn’t suspect anything else?”

“He figured she’d had an abortion. He asked her point-blank, but she said, of course not, she was a good Baptist.” Dottie looked chagrined. “Knowing my sister, she believed it, too.”

“Did you tell him what you had discovered about me?”

“I just told him I had found something in Trish’s things that made me curious, and thanked him for being honest. I didn’t want to tell him about you until I was sure you wanted me to. But I’m sure Charlie’s your father. I brought this to show you.” She reached in her purse and took out a photo, passing it to Georgia.

The young man looking back at her had hair the cinnamon-brown of her own, and she knew if she could see them, his eyes would probably be exactly the same.

“Keep it,” Dottie said, when she started to give back the photo.

Georgia was at a loss for words.

“You went to a lot of trouble, Dottie,” Lucas said, filling in for her. “You put facts together, did research, tracked down Georgia’s father. I’m guessing most people would have let this go. They would have put their suspicions firmly behind them.

“I won’t say I wasn’t tempted. It’s not a pretty story, and I hated asking you to focus on it again. At the same time, I thought that in your shoes, I would have imagined all kinds of scenarios, some of them worse than reality, and knowing the truth might bring you some closure. So I left it up to you.”

“By writing the letter I didn’t see.”

“There was more to it.”

Georgia looked up from her father’s youthful photo. “More?”

“
I
wanted to know you. I want to be the aunt you never had. I read about you on the internet, you see. It wasn’t hard to find out who you were and what had happened to you. And I just couldn’t help myself. I had missed out on so much, and so had you. You’re part of the Pinette family, and I wanted you to know that despite everything that Trish did, we’re not a bad lot.”

“That sounds like you’re not alone here,” Lucas said, as if he was still trying to give Georgia time to recover.

“You have oodles of cousins in the area, an aunt approaching ninety who’s still playing golf once a week, a younger uncle who’s an absolute joy. They’ll welcome you, and I think your brothers will, as well. Then there’s Charlie’s family. He has three sons, all of them educators like you, including a college professor. Charlie and his wife have been so happy in their marriage that I don’t think she’ll have a hard time welcoming you into their family. I think once the shock recedes, they’ll be so glad to know you.”

Georgia didn’t know what to say. She felt battered and worn. As she had long feared, the woman who had given birth to her was self-centered and grasping, a woman who probably, even at the peak of mental stability and prowess, would have denied their relationship or threatened Georgia if she dared repeat the truth. After today she knew enough about the woman Tricia had been to think her conclusion was realistic.

But along with that not-unexpected truth had come a possible gift of more family than she had ever hoped for. Not trouble-free, of course. Dottie was probably overly optimistic about the welcome she would receive from everyone in the Pinette and Wentworth clans, but within that web of family ties, there would be some, at least, who would be happy to know her. Some who would expect her to hold out her hand when they extended their own. Some who would want to know Samantha and Edna and bring them into the fold.