on the computer, trying to track down the whereabouts of one Joan Haywood, now Cunningham.
It was far from easy. She was good, but she wasn’t in Jeremy’s league. From what she had managed to piece together, both while in San Francisco and now here, her birth mother had gone on to have a regular life after she’d given away her firstborn. Joan Haywood had attended a local four-year college, gotten married in her senior year and then moved down to Southern California.
Her husband, Ron, a former air force pilot, now aerospace engineer, had gone where the jobs were. There’d been five addresses in the past twenty years. And a sixth she couldn’t find. The last known address had been in Bedford, even though he was working for an aerospace company in El Segundo. Having gotten familiar with the area, she could appreciate that it was quite a drive. One he didn’t have to make for long. Raytheon had laid him off. And then he and Joan, along with their children, had disappeared, going down somewhere beneath the radar. They’d moved, leaving no forwarding address.
Facing a dead end, she’d turned to Jeremy, her computer fairy godfather. In part, he was responsible for her broken night’s sleep. Jeremy had called yesterday, saying that he’d managed to hack into records that were far off the beaten path. The records testified that a Ronald Cunningham had undergone a top-secret clearance check a little more than two years ago. The check had been requested by one of the leading companies in defense. When Jeremy had mentioned the name, she’d recognized it instantly. A major branch of the company was domiciled in Orange County, just north of Bedford.
It took Jeremy a little while to ascertain that the social security number for Ron Cunningham and Ronald Cunningham were one and the same. To elude detection, his “break-ins” could last only ninety seconds. Gleaning information had been slow-going. He’d waited until he had more before calling Cate.
When he did, it was well past midnight. Closer to two in the morning. “Got an address for you, Cate. You ready to take it down?”
She’d been in a deep sleep when the phone rang. It had taken her a couple of breaths to get her mind reasonably in gear. It took a little longer to find a writing utensil and paper.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” she asked.
Jeremy was a self-described insomniac who prowled chat rooms in the dead of night when nothing else presented itself as a diversion. This was a diversion.
“Not when something’s on my mind. I’ve been looking for this woman for you since you left our field office. By the way, how is it down there?”
Her first response would have been “chaotic,” but that would have been describing her life, not conditions. She gave the standard reply. “Weather’s perfect.”
Jeremy made a little disparaging noise with his teeth and lips. “Huh. It has no character.”
She thought of the cold, clammy winters, the sticky, humid summers she’d left behind. Watching leaves turn color did not balance out the minuses. “That’s okay. I’ve got character enough to spare.”
There was no paper to be had, but the local newspaper caught her attention. Scooting off the bed, Cate bent down to capture a corner of the paper and pull it back to her.
In a pinch…
She spread the paper on her lap, her pen poised over one of the margins. “Okay, shoot.”
Jeremy recited the address and phone number he’d found in the top-secret files. He turned down her offer to pay him for the information. This was what he did, he told her, he challenged himself. Not for any personal or monetary gain, but just to see if he could do it.
Grateful for his help, Cate jotted the address and phone number down along the margins of the newspaper. She did her best to print carefully. Someone once told her that her handwriting looked as if a spider had been dipped in ink and then allowed to run pellmell over a page. Cate fervently hoped she’d be able to make it out in the morning,
“That’s it for now,” Jeremy had concluded.
She put the pen back down on the nightstand. “Thanks, Jeremy. I owe you one.”
She heard him laugh shortly. “After all the work I’ve put in, you don’t owe me just one. You owe me your firstborn.”
There was a slight pang in her stomach. She tried not to think of Gabe. “Since there’s little chance of there ever being a firstborn, let me take you out to lunch the next time I’m up there.”
“You’re coming back?”
He sounded eager, which she thought was sweet. She’d always liked Jeremy, thinking of him as a slightly unkempt younger brother, even though in reality he was a couple of months older than she was.
As to what she’d just said to him, she’d meant coming back to Frisco for a visit. His question made her stop to consider. And realize again that from where she was standing, her future was undecided and murky.
“I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see.” She knew nothing was going to be decided until after she’d met with her birth mother and eradicated the hollow feeling she’d been carrying around inside of her for the past three weeks. “First I need to take care of these loose ends.”
Everyone who knew Cate knew she was like a bulldog with a bone. Once she clamped down on something, she wouldn’t let go until it was resolved to her satisfaction.
“Just don’t let them strangle you. Pleasant dreams, Cate.”
“Yeah, you, too.”
But even as she hung up the receiver and stifled another huge yawn, Cate knew she wasn’t going to get any sleep, not tonight. If she forced herself to remain in bed, all she was going to wind up doing was counting the minutes as they trickled their way into dawn. And then count more minutes as she waited for a decent time to arrive before she showed up on her birth mother’s doorstep.
Glancing at the address and phone number she’d written in the newspaper margins, she decided that she needed to transcribe both while they still looked reasonably readable.
After that, she promised herself, she’d see about maybe unpacking a few more things.
Cate’s hand felt damp on the receiver as she gripped it, her fingers tightly holding the mouthpiece. Her hand was so sweaty, she was surprised that the receiver didn’t just slip out of it.
The line on the other end was ringing. She silently counted the number of rings.
She’d waited until eight o’clock, forcing herself to shower and get dressed before she made the call. To hear the voice of the woman who had rejected her. Granted, she’d wound up in a home most kids only dreamed about, rich in love if not possessions, but it could have easily gone another way. She could have landed in an abusive home.
Or worse.
Her birth mother had no way of knowing what her fate was to have been when she gave her away. Right now, it was very hard not to be resentful, if not downright angry with the woman.
“Hello?”
The high-pitched female voice that answered the telephone on the fourth ring sounded way too young to be the woman she was seeking. Joan had been seventeen when she was born. That would make her forty-four or forty-five now. The person on the other end of the line was definitely not forty-five.
Her mouth felt like cotton. Cate forced herself to speak. “Hello, this is Catherine Kowalski. Is this Joan Cunningham?”
There was a short, breathless, nervous laugh. It was as if the girl was unaccustomed to speaking to people. “No, this is Rebecca.”
That would be Joan’s daughter, Cate thought. There was a pause, after which Cate pressed on. “Then may I speak to Joan, please?”
“Sorry, she’s not here.”
Damn it, she’d waited too long. Joan had left the house for the day. According to what she’d found, her birth mother worked as