49

At six-thirty Jean was in her hotel room when she finally received the call she'd been hoping would come. It was from Peggy Kimball, the nurse who had been in Dr. Connors' office when she was his patient. "That's a pretty urgent message, you left, Ms. Sheridan," Kimball said briskly. "What's going on?"

"Peggy, we met twenty years ago. I was a patient of Dr. Connors, and he arranged a private adoption for my baby. I need to talk to you about it."

For a long moment Peggy Kimball did not say anything. Jean could hear the voices of children in the background. "I'm sorry, Ms. Sheridan," Kimball said, a note of finality in her voice. "I simply cannot discuss the adoptions Dr. Connors handled. If you want to begin to trace your child, there are legal ways of going about it."

Jean could sense that Kimball was about to break the connection. "I've already been in touch with Sam Deegan, an investigator from the district attorney's office," she said hurriedly. "I have received three communications that can only be construed as threats to my daughter. Her adoptive parents have got to be warned to watch out for her. Please, Peggy. You were so kind to me then. Help me now, I beg you."

She was interrupted by Peggy Kimball's alarmed shout: "Tommy, I warn you. Don't throw that dish!"

Jean heard the sound of glass breaking.

"Oh, my God," Peggy Kimball said with a sigh. "Look, Ms. Sheridan, I'm baby-sitting my grandkids. I can't talk now."

"Peggy, can I meet you tomorrow? I'll show you the faxes I've received threatening my daughter. You can check on me. I'm a dean and professor of history at Georgetown. I'll give you the number of the president of the college. I'll give you Sam Deegan's number."

"Tommy, Betsy, don't go near that glass! Wait a minute… by any chance are you the Jean Sheridan who wrote the book about Abigail Adams?"

"Yes."

"Oh, for heaven's sake! I loved it. I know all about you. I saw you on the Today show with Katie Couric. You two could be sisters. Will you still be at the Glen-Ridge tomorrow morning?"

"Yes, I will."

"I work in neonatal at the hospital. The Glen-Ridge is on the way there. I don't think I'll be any help to you, but do you want to have a cup of coffee around ten?"

"I would love to," Jean said. "Peggy, thank you, thank you."

"I'll call you from the lobby," Peggy Kimball said hurriedly, then her voice became alarmed. "Betsy, I warn you. Don't pull Tommy's hair! Oh, my God! Sorry, Jean, it's becoming a free-for-all here. See you tomorrow."

Jean replaced the receiver slowly. That sounds like mayhem, she thought, but in a crazy way, I envy Peggy Kimball. I envy her the normal problems of normal people. People who mind their grandkids and have to clean up messy babies and spilled food and broken dishes. People who can see and touch their daughters and tell them to drive carefully and be home by midnight.

She had been sitting at the desk of her room in the hotel when Kimball phoned. Scattered in front of her were the lists she had been trying to compile, mostly the names of people in the nursing home who had befriended her and also the professors at the University of Chicago where she had spent all her spare time taking extracurricular courses.

Now she massaged her temples, hoping to rub away the beginnings of a headache. In an hour, at seven-thirty, at Sam's request, they would be having dinner together in a private dining room on the hotel's mezzanine floor. The guests included the honorees, Gordon and Carter and Robby and Mark and me, Jean thought, and, of course, Jack, the chairman of the godforsaken reunion. What is Sam hoping to accomplish by getting all of us together again?

She realized that unburdening herself to Mark had been a mixed blessing. There was astonishment in his eyes when he said, "You mean that on graduation day at age eighteen, when you were tripping up to the stage to accept the History medal and a scholarship to Bryn Mawr, you were aware that you were expecting a baby and that the guy you loved was lying in a casket?"

"I don't expect either praise or blame for that," she had told him.

"For God's sake, Jean. I'm neither praising nor blaming you," he'd said. "But what an ordeal. I used to go to West Point to jog and had seen you once or twice with Reed Thornton, but I had no idea it was more than a casual friendship. What did you do after the graduation ceremony?"

"My mother and father and I had lunch. It was a really festive lunch. They had done their Christian duty by me and could now separate with a clear conscience. After we left the restaurant, I drove to West Point. Reed's funeral Mass had been that morning. I put the flowers my parents gave me at the graduation ceremony on Reed's grave."

"And shortly after that you saw Dr. Connors for the first time?"

"The next week."

"Jeannie," Mark had said, "I always felt that, like me, you were a survivor, but I can't imagine what you must have been going through, being alone at a time like that."

"Not alone. I gather somebody must have known about it or found out about it even then."

He had nodded and then said, "I've read up on your professional life, but what about your personal life? Is there someone special, or has there; been someone special you might have confided in?"

Jean thought of the answer she had given him. "Mark, remember the words of the Robert Frost poem. 'But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep…' In a way I feel like that. Until now, when I've had to talk about her, there's never been a single soul I've ever wanted to tell about Lily. My life is very full. I love my job and love writing. I have plenty of friends, both men and women. But I'll be honest. I've always had a feeling that there is something unresolved in my life that has to be settled, a sense that in a way my life itself has been held in abeyance. Something needs to be finished before I can put this behind me. I think I'm beginning to understand the reason for that. I still wonder if I shouldn't have kept my baby, and now that she may need me I'm so helpless, I want to turn back the clock and have the chance to keep her this time."

Then she had seen the look on Mark's face. Or are you setting up a manufactured scenario because of your need to find her? He might as well have shouted the question. Instead he had said, "Jean, of course you must pursue this, and I'm glad Sam Deegan is helping you since you're obviously dealing with an unbalanced individual. However, as a psychiatrist, I warn you that you must be very careful. If because of these implied threats you are able to access confidential records, you may intrude into the life of a young woman who isn't ready or willing to meet you."

"You think that I have been sending those faxes to myself, don't you?" Jean winced, remembering how angry she had been when she realized that some people jumped to that conclusion.

"Of course I don't," Mark had said promptly. "But answer me this: If you received a call right now asking you to meet Lily, would you go?"

"Yes, I would."

"Jean, listen to what I'm saying. Someone who somehow found out about Lily may be deliberately getting you into a fever pitch so that you'll be vulnerable to rushing off to meet her. Jean, you've got to be careful. Laura is missing. The other girls at your table are dead."

He had left it at that.

Now Jean stood up. She was due downstairs for dinner in forty minutes. Maybe an aspirin would prevent the oncoming headache she sensed, and a hot bath would revive her, she thought.

The phone rang at seven-ten as she was stepping out of the tub. For a moment she debated about letting it ring, then grabbed a towel and rushed into the bedroom. "Hello."

"Hi, Jeannie," a smiling voice said.