Lost Cause. Janice Johnson Kay

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СКАЧАТЬ little sister grinned, then held out a hand. “Truce?”

      “Truce.” He shook.

      Sipping wine, they asked questions about his life, which he gave sketchy answers to. They seemed to notice how much he wasn’t saying, but didn’t comment, which he appreciated. He told them briefly about Holly Lynn, a city health department official of all damn things.

      “I guess I’m not made for marriage.”

      “Carrie seems to be the only one of us who is,” Suzanne commented.

      His little sister’s face softened. “I wasn’t so sure I was, either, until I met Mark. You’ve talked to him,” she said to Gary. “The P.I.? Did Suzanne tell you I married him? He’s a good guy.”

      “He seemed decent when he called.”

      If she was underwhelmed by this accolade, she ignored that, too. “Mark has a son, Michael. He’s six, in first grade this year. He’s accepted me wholeheartedly, for which I feel blessed.”

      “His mother?”

      “Died when he was two. He barely remembers her.” She paused a beat. “Mark and his wife adopted him.”

      A lot of that going around.

      “Tell us about your adoptive parents,” Suzanne suggested. “Mark said you grew up in the central valley in California?”

      “Outside Bakersfield. Harold is a farmer. I was driving a tractor by the time I was ten.”

      “Really?” She looked appalled.

      He shrugged. “Farming families need their kids. He and…” Mom. He’d almost said Mom. “…Judith couldn’t have their own little worker, so they went out to find one.”

      Both sisters stared at him. “You think they adopted you just to provide labor for the farm?”

      Voice devoid of emotion, Gary said, “Harold told me he wanted to get an older boy. He was indulging his wife to bring home one as young as I was.”

      “That’s awful!” Carrie breathed.

      He shrugged again. “Some people take home a kitten so they can cuddle it and have something to coo at. Some just want a mouser.”

      “And you were the mouser. Oh, God.” Suzanne pressed a hand to her breast, her eyes huge.

      He hoped like hell she didn’t start to cry again.

      “My adoptive mother was nice enough, until she got fed up with Harold and just upped and left one day. It wasn’t so bad.” Until then. A part of him had died that day.

      “I thought adoption agencies were supposed to be picky! How could they have let those people take you?” Carrie demanded.

      “Maybe Suzanne should ask Ms. Wilson,” he suggested. “My guess is, she’d use a bunch of statistics to claim that most adoptive homes are happy.”

      “I would give anything…” Suzanne began.

      He shifted in alarm. There she went again, ready to fling her body onto the tracks to stop the train.

      Too bad the train had derailed twenty-six years ago.

      “It’s over and done,” he said flatly. “That’s what I tried to tell you when your P.I. contacted me.”

      “We can’t change the past,” Suzanne argued, “but we can make the future better. We can be a family again.”

      Since he had only a distant acquaintance with the whole concept, he wasn’t all that sure what she had in mind, except he guessed holiday get-togethers figured in it somewhere. He’d probably better find out just what she did envision, before he found himself sucked in.

      When he didn’t comment, she said, “Do you want to see pictures now?”

      He gave a clipped nod, less than sure he really did.

      She fetched a big photo album bound in green leather and wordlessly set it in front of him at the table. Then she sat again and both sisters gazed expectantly at him.

      Throat constricted, he opened it.

      On the first page was a wedding photo. God almighty, Gary thought in shock. He could have been the groom. Dark, lean, a dent in the cheek because the man was smiling at his bride. She looked like Suzanne and Carrie, startlingly so. Pretty, brunette, delicate to the point of being ethereal.

      His mother. His father.

      People who might have loved him.

      Very softly, his big sister said, “Do you see why I burst into tears at the sight of you?”

      He lifted his gaze but didn’t really see her. “Yeah,” he said, voice hoarse.

      More wedding photos followed, some including another young woman who resembled the bride as well as an older woman who must be…his grandmother?

      Silent, staring with a hungriness he didn’t want either of his sisters to see, Gary kept turning pages. He saw the young couple with a Volkswagen Beetle, then a tiny house, run-down in the first photo but painted and edged with a white picket fence in later ones. The woman acquired a radiance along with an enlarging belly, and then suddenly a shrivelled, frowning infant appeared. He had to look up after seeing that picture, as if to measure it against the beautiful woman who sat at the table, the one who’d been that infant.

      He could see it better as she became a laughing toddler and a stick-thin girl with pigtails tied with red bows. Gary tensed when he saw that the woman was pregnant again, but still felt unprepared when he turned a page to reveal a photo of another newborn baby, this one wrapped in a pastel blue blanket.

      That was him. He stared for the longest time, then shifted his gaze to the cluster of photos on the next page, all showing the baby at the center of attention. The woman held him against her shoulder and had her head turned. She looked at him with so much love, it tingled in the air. The pigtailed girl making a horrible face at him in one photo, cradling him in another for a staged picture. The man—his father, giving him a bottle, smiling down at him.

      In a daze, he turned the page again and saw himself sitting up, eating in a high chair, crawling, in virtually every picture guarded by his big sister. He was walking when they apparently moved into another run-down place, but a bigger one. It was decorated in colors that reminded him of the famous Painted Ladies in San Francisco, Victorian houses that flaunted their lacy trim and gaudy hues. A garden bloomed in a yard that had been bare in the first picture. He was running around, soaring on a swing set, crouching in a sandbox frowning with intense concentration at something out of sight.

      The mother was pregnant again, and he tensed at how close the story was to over.

      This newborn looked like the others, red-faced and raisinlike, but he and Suzanne seemed to find her fascinating nonetheless. A studio portrait appeared in there, the three kids dressed up like dolls and posed, with him sitting next to his baby sister and Suzanne hovering protectively over both.

      His third birthday choked him up. СКАЧАТЬ