Lost Cause. Janice Johnson Kay

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      Or had it been last night? He realized he had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. Hours? Days? With indifference, he dismissed his speculation and returned to his main preoccupation.

      Speeding down the canyon road, he’d felt the pull of the darkness beyond the white strip of guardrail. He’d known it before; who didn’t have those fleeting thoughts: What would it feel like if I sailed off the road? Maybe fantasies like that were a brief surfacing of the subconscious awareness of danger.

      But tonight… Tonight, it had been stronger than that. He’d wanted danger. Maybe he’d wanted to die.

      Bleakly, he examined the possibility. Could you be suicidal without realizing it?

      Yeah, he decided; you could. But he didn’t think he’d gone that far. Flirting with death was one thing, marrying her another. He didn’t feel ready to cash it in. But he also had a little trouble pinpointing what appeal living held.

      Maybe his attitude wasn’t so good. He’d been calling his despair cynicism. Loneliness was his choice.

      A choice that meant darkness, the seductress, called to him. Or was it ignoring him, and he was the one sidling closer?

      Either way, lying in that hospital bed, he saw he did have a choice now. Let himself keep sidling, or figure out how other people made themselves happy and try some of it on for size.

      He shifted in bed and had to go still until the pain eased back on the throttle. One leg hadn’t shifted at all, weighted down as it was with plaster.

      Okay, he thought, with a flicker of humor: he wouldn’t be trying anything on for size for a while.

      But once the cast was cut off and he could throw away the crutches he predicted in his future, he had to find a way to give his life some meaning, or another time he would toss aside that helmet.

      The nurse came in and showed him how to give himself minishots of morphine, then went. Gary punched the button and felt a wave of relief that clouded his mind and made his eyes heavy.

      As he drifted, he heard himself saying, Was that my name? Chauvin?

      That’s right, someone said. Lucien Chauvin.

      He’d always known that he’d once been Lucien, not Gary. When he was younger, he hadn’t understood how that could be or who the people he remembered were, but later he was told about the adoption.

      Your sister, Suzanne Chauvin, hired me to find you, the other man said.

      He heard himself again. This sister looking for me? Too little, too late. Don’t need her, don’t want a sister.

      As the comfort of sleep rolled over him, Gary’s last sensation was surprise.

      He’d lied.

      THE VOICE ON THE PHONE was light and pleasant. “Ms. Chauvin, I’m calling from The Complete Family Adoption Agency. My name is Rebecca Wilson, and I’ve been given your file. I’d like to set up a home visit.”

      Suzanne’s heartbeat did a hop, skip and jump. “Wow, that was fast!”

      “Having second thoughts?”

      “Not a one! I was just afraid months would go by. I’d love to have you come over.” But she’d need time to clean house first.

      They settled on a day almost three weeks away. Plenty of time to organize every closet and cupboard the social worker wouldn’t look into anyway. Suzanne wasn’t that bad a housekeeper, but she wanted the house to shine when Rebecca Wilson came. If she didn’t impress her, the agency wouldn’t give her a child. She had to impress her! She just had to.

      She’d start today. The sun had peeped out after a rainy week, so she would rake up the soggy, fallen leaves and then consider loading her temperamental lawn mower into the trunk of her car and taking it to the shop. Once again it had refused to start Sunday when she’d tried. Maybe, if she were really lucky, she’d get it back soon enough to mow one more time before the ground got too wet—and before the home visit.

      Bursting with energy and ambition, she changed into scroungy gardening clothes and pulled up the garage door. She’d get the automatic opener replaced this week, just in case she had reason to open the door when Rebecca Wilson was here. She wouldn’t want to look as if she couldn’t afford to maintain her house, let alone take care of a child.

      She stole a glance toward her neighbor’s before stepping outside with her rake and a box of plastic garbage sacks. She tried to work outdoors when Tom Stefanic wasn’t in his yard. Not that he wasn’t perfectly pleasant when they exchanged their occasional neighborly greetings, but, darn it, his lawn was smooth enough to be the 18th hole of the U.S. Open, his flower beds were edged with military precision, his driveway power-sprayed weekly. No moss grew on his roof, the leaves barely dared drop from his trees. In fact… She studied the two flowering cherries along the street in front of his house with suspicion. Neither bore a single leaf, even though her trees were still festooned with slimy dead leaves hanging like dirty, wet socks. She knew he had a blower. Did it vacuum, too? Would he have vacuumed his trees? she wondered incredulously.

      But his garage door was shut, and she heard no sound from the backyard. Maybe he was gone today. Determined to put him out of her mind and pretend the contrast between their respective properties wasn’t painful, Suzanne breathed in a lungful of damp, earthy-smelling air.

      She loved autumn almost as much as spring. The leaves had been spectacular, until the heavy rains the last couple of weeks had finished them off. There was something satisfying about tucking in flower beds, so to speak—trimming the dead stems of the perennials, pulling out last weeds, mulching. Partly she looked forward to a break from outside work, and partly she enjoyed anticipating the new growth that would poke from the dark earth in just a few months.

      Would she have a child by then? A little boy or girl to crouch beside her as she worked? Or one old enough to actually help, even to mow?

      She still wasn’t all that fixed on how old a child she preferred. Suzanne thought she’d like to adopt a girl, just because it might be easier as a single mom, but she hadn’t ruled out a boy if the agency had one who needed a home. Her sister, Carrie, had just married a man who had a six-year-old, and Suzanne would adopt Michael’s clone in a second if she could.

      She worried that the agency would look with more favor on her if she’d made up her mind about what she wanted, but then sometimes she convinced herself she was more likely to be given a child sooner if she wasn’t too demanding about specifics. After all, if she were having a child the normal way, she couldn’t be, could she? When you got pregnant, you didn’t know if you would have a boy or girl, a towhead or a brunette, a child with a placid nature or one who couldn’t sit still. And you didn’t care; you just wanted a baby to love.

      She’d turned thirty-two this summer, and she was beginning to think she would never have children. Of course she could have gone the route of finding donor sperm, but she didn’t feel that compelling a need to actually be pregnant. In fact, she liked the idea of adopting.

      Carrie was right. Adopting a child who needed her would be Suzanne’s way of atoning for not being able to hold on to her baby sister and little brother when they were taken away after their parents’ deaths. What she couldn’t do for them, she could do for someone else.

      Raking СКАЧАТЬ