25

"I'm planning to stay on for a few extra days," Jean told the front-desk clerk who answered the phone on Sunday morning. "Will that be a problem?"

She knew it wouldn't be a problem. All the other reunion guests would undoubtedly be on their way home after the brunch at Stonecroft, so there'd be many empty rooms.

Although it was only eight-fifteen, she was already up and dressed and had sipped the coffee and juice and nibbled at a muffin from the continental breakfast she had ordered. She had arrange d to go back to Alice Sommers' house after the Stonecroft brunch. Sam Deegan would be there, and they would be able to talk without fear of interruption. Sam had told her that no matter how private the adoption was, it had to have been registered, and a lawyer must have drawn up papers. He had asked Jean if she had a copy of the document she had signed, giving up her rights to the baby.

"Dr. Connors didn't leave me any papers," she explained. "Or maybe I didn't want to have any reminder of what I was doing. I really don't remember. I was numb. I felt as if my heart was being torn out of my body when he took her from me."

But that conversation had opened another avenue of thought. She had been planning to go to the nine o'clock Mass at Sit. Thomas of

Canterbury on Sunday morning, before the memorial service for Alison. St. Thomas had been her parish when she was growing up, but in talking to Sam Deegan, she had remembered that Dr. Connors had been a parishioner there as well. In the midst of one of her sleepless periods during the night, it had occurred to her that it was at least possible the people who adopted the baby had been parishioners of St. Thomas as well.

I told Dr. Connors that I wanted Lily to be raised Catholic, she remembered. And if the adoptive parents were Catholic and were members of St. Thomas of Canterbury at that time, it would have made sense for Lily to be baptized there. If I could look at the records of baptisms between late March and mid-June of that year, it would be a start in searching for Lily.

When she woke at six, it was to feel tears running down her cheeks and to hear herself whispering the prayer that now was becoming a part of her subconscious: "Don't let anyone hurt her. Take care of her, please."

She knew that the office of the church wouldn't be open on Sunday. Even so, maybe this morning, after Mass, she could talk to the pastor and make an appointment to see him. I've got to feel as though I'm doing something, she thought. Maybe there's even a priest who was at the parish twenty years ago and who might just remember a parishioner adopting a baby girl at that time.

A sense of something imminent, a growing certainty that Lily was in immediate danger, had become so strong that Jean knew she could not go through the day without taking some kind of action.

At eight-thirty she went downstairs to the parking lot and got in her car. It was a five-minute drive to the church. She had decided that the best time to speak to a priest was after Mass when he would be standing outside, greeting people as they exited.

She started to drive to Hudson Street, realized she was at least twenty minutes early, and impulsively turned the car toward Mountain Road to look at the house where she had grown up.

The house was almost halfway up the winding street. When she had lived there, the exterior had been brown siding with beige shutters. The people who owned the house now had not only enlarged it but refinished it with white shingles and a forest green trim on the shutters. The new owner obviously understood how trees and plants could frame and beautify a relatively modest home. It looked almost jewel-like in the early morning mist.

The brick and stucco house where the Sommerses had lived also looked well cared for, Jean thought, even though it was obvious no one was living there now. The shades were drawn in all the windows, but the trim was freshly painted, the hedges neatly clipped, and the long bluestone walkway from the front door to the driveway was new.

I always loved this house, she thought as she stopped the car for a better look. Laura's father and mother kept it up when they lived there, and then the Sommerses did as well. I remember when we were nine or ten, Laura said that she thought our house was ugly. I thought the brown was ugly, too, but I wouldn't give her the satisfaction of admitting it. I wonder if she would approve of it now.

Not that it mattered. Jean turned the car around and began to drive down the hill toward Hudson Street. Laura never deliberately meant to hurt me, she thought. She was taught to be self-centered, and I don't think, in the long run, it's done her much good. The last time I talked to Alison, she said that she was trying to get Laura a job on a new sitcom, but that it was tough to make it happen.

She said that Gordie-then she laughed and changed it to Gordon-could make it happen but that she didn't think he would, Jean recalled. Laura has always been the golden girl. It was almost pathetic to see her playing up to all the guys, even, for God's sake, to Jack Emerson. There's something downright unattractive about him, she thought with a shiver. What makes him so certain that I'll buy a house around here someday?

Earlier it had looked as though the mist would clear, but in the way of October weather, the clouds had become stronger and the mist was now a wet, cold drizzle. Jean realized that it was the same kind of weather as the day when she realized she was pregnant. Her mother and father had been having another of their arguments, although this one ended in what passed for peace. Jean was going to college on a scholarship. There was no need for them to have to put up with each other anymore. They had done their duty as parents, and now it was time for them to lead their own lives.

Put the house on the market-with luck, they'd be rid of it by August.

Jean thought of how she had come silently down the stairs, slipped out of the house, and walked and walked and walked. I didn't know what Reed would say, she thought. I did know that he would feel he had betrayed his father's expectations for him.

Twenty years ago Reed's father had been a lieutenant general stationed at the Pentagon. That was one of the reasons we never mingled with his classmates, Jean thought. Reed didn't want it to get back to his father that he was seriously dating anyone.

And I didn't want him to meet my parents.

If he had lived and we had married, would it have lasted? It was a question she had asked herself many times in the last twenty years, and she always came to the same answer: It would have lasted. In spite of his family's disapproval, in spite of the fact that it probably would have taken me years to get the education I knew I had to have, it would have lasted.

I knew him such a short time, Jean thought as she drove into the church parking lot. I'd never even had a boyfriend before him. And then one day when I was sitting on the steps of the monument at West

Point, he sat down beside me. My name was on the cover of the notebook I'd brought with me. He said, "Jean Sheridan," and then he said, "I like Stephen Foster's music, and do you know what song I'm thinking of now?" Of course I didn't, and he said, "It begins like this: 'I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair

Jean parked the car. Three months later he was dead, she thought, and I was carrying his child. And when I saw Dr. Connors in this church and remembered having heard that he handled adoptions, it was like a gift, telling me what to do.

I need a gift like that again.