Chương 2
A woman pushing a stroller passed the windshield and glanced toward her.
Mara lowered the phone.
Her first impulse was to call the company.
Her second was to call her mother.
She did neither.
Instead she searched Thomas Bell.
There were dozens.
She added the town listed on his profile, Easton, Maryland.
The photograph appeared halfway down the results on the website of a marine engineering firm.
Thomas Bell, founder and retired president.
Mara opened the biography.
He was sixty-eight.
He had founded Bell Marine Systems thirty-four years earlier.
He had served on a hospital board, funded a scholarship, and apparently enjoyed offshore sailing with his wife, Caroline.
No children were mentioned.
Mara calculated his age when she was born.
Twenty-nine.
She hated herself for calculating it.
Her phone rang in her hand.
MOM.
Mara let it ring four times before answering.
“Hi.”
“You sound strange.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“I’m your mother, I’m allowed to skip good morning when something is wrong.”
Elaine’s voice was brisk and polished, the voice she had used for thirty years while running the front office of an orthodontics practice and for sixty-seven years while running everyone else.
Mara closed her eyes.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
Apparently everyone in the family had expertise in this area.
“Did you get an email from HeritageMap this morning?”
The silence was immediate.
Not confusion.
Not the small searching pause of a person trying to remember the name of a company.
Silence.
Mara sat straighter.
“Mom?”
“I get a hundred emails.”
“You know which one I mean.”
“I’m getting ready for work.”
“You retired in June.”
Another silence.
Mara heard a cabinet close on the other end.
Then running water.
Her mother was doing something with her hands.
Elaine always cleaned when cornered.
At seventeen, Mara had once confessed she might be pregnant, and Elaine had scrubbed the stovetop while asking whether Mara understood how condoms worked.
She had not been pregnant.
The stove had never looked better.
“Mara, whatever that company sent you, don’t call your father about it.”
Her body went cold so gradually she noticed the sensation first in her fingers.
“Why would I call Dad?”
“I’m asking you not to.”
“You haven’t asked what I saw.”
“I don’t need to.”
Outside the pharmacy, an employee unlocked the front doors and flipped a plastic sign from CLOSED to OPEN.
Mara watched him struggle with the blinds.
“Who is Thomas Bell?”
The water stopped.
Elaine said nothing.
“Mom.”
“I cannot do this on the phone.”
“Then I’ll come over.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because your father is home.”
Mara laughed once, a sound with no humor in it.
“That’s becoming a problem for me.”
“You need to listen.”
“I’ve spent my entire life listening to you.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
“Mara, please.”
Her mother rarely said please.
The word frightened her more than denial would have.
“What does Dad know?”
Elaine inhaled slowly.
“Nothing.”
Mara pressed her forehead against the steering wheel.
The horn gave a short accidental blast.
She jerked upright.
A man leaving the pharmacy stared at her.
“Thirty-nine years,” Mara said.
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I know how old you are.”
“That’s what you have to say?”
“I’m trying not to make this worse.”
“Then you’re failing.”
“I understand that.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“Mara.”
“Is Thomas Bell my biological father?”
Elaine made a sound that might have been a breath catching.
Mara waited.
The pharmacy employee came outside carrying a little chalkboard advertising flu shots.
He positioned it, frowned, repositioned it six inches to the left.
Mara watched him because looking at something ordinary seemed necessary.
“Yes,” Elaine said.
The word did not feel explosive.
It felt small.
Almost bureaucratic.
Mara had the absurd thought that such a word should require paperwork.
She looked down at her own hand.
Her wedding ring was loose because she had lost twelve pounds since spring without trying.
Daniel had noticed only after his sister complimented her.
“Does he know about me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I haven’t spoken to him in decades.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No.”
Elaine’s voice changed, losing its office-manager efficiency.
“I don’t think he knew.”
Mara rubbed her thumb against the seam of her jeans.
“Was it an affair?”
Her mother did not answer.
“Mom.”
“I said I won’t do this on the phone.”
“You lied to Dad about who his daughter was, but suddenly you have standards about communication?”
“That is not what happened.”
“Then tell me what happened.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both.”
Mara opened her mouth and closed it again.
The anger arrived late, behind the shock, and when it came it was cleaner than she expected.
“You bought the tests.”
“I know.”
“For Christmas.”
“I know.”
“You handed them out.”
“I know, Mara.”
“To all of us.”
“I made a mistake.”
That stopped her.
Elaine Ellison did not make mistakes of this magnitude.
She mislabeled freezer containers and forgot dentist appointments and once backed into a mailbox.
She did not casually detonate thirty-nine years of family history because she had failed to understand consumer genetics.
“You knew these tests could match relatives.”
“I didn’t understand how quickly.”
Mara sat very still.
“What does that mean?”
Elaine said nothing.
“You expected this eventually.”
“No.”
“You just said you didn’t understand how quickly.”
“I misspoke.”
“You don’t misspeak.”
“Mara, stop.”
There it was.
The old command.
The one that had ended teenage arguments, wedding disagreements, fights about childcare, questions about why Richard and Elaine had slept in separate rooms for six months when Mara was twenty-four.
Mara had obeyed it so often that part of her body still responded before her mind did.
Then her phone vibrated against her palm.
A message appeared from the genealogy site.
Thomas Bell has sent you a message.
Mara stopped breathing.
“Mom.”
“What?”
“He contacted me.”
On the other end, something struck the floor.
“Mara, do not answer him.”
“Why?”
“Promise me.”
May you like
“Why?”
“Because you don’t know what you’re walking into.”
