Maura took a deep breath. “After my father died, I found my adoption papers. It was all done through an attorney here in Boston. I called him a few years ago, to see if he would tell me my birth mother’s name.”
“Did he?”
“He said my records were sealed. He refused to release any information.”
“And you didn’t pursue it?”
“I haven’t, no.”
“Was the attorney’s name Terence Van Gates?”
Maura went dead silent. She didn’t have to answer the question; she knew Rizzoli could read it in her stunned gaze. “How did you know?” Maura asked.
“Two days before her death, Anna checked into the Tremont Hotel, here in Boston. From her hotel room, she made two phone calls. One was to Detective Ballard, who was out of town at the time. The other was to Van Gates’s law office. We don’t know why she contacted him-he hasn’t returned my calls yet.”
Now the revelation is coming, thought Maura. The real reason she’s here tonight, in my kitchen.
“We know Anna Leoni was adopted. She had your blood type and your birth date. And just before she died, she was talking to Van Gates-the attorney who handled your adoption. An amazing set of coincidences.”
“How long have you known all this?”
“A few days.”
“And you didn’t tell me? You kept it from me.”
“I didn’t want to upset you if it wasn’t necessary.”
“Well, I am upset that you waited this long.”
“I had to, because there was one more thing I needed to find out.” Rizzoli took a deep breath. “This afternoon, I had a talk with Walt DeGroot in the DNA lab. Earlier this week, I asked him to expedite that test you requested. This afternoon, he showed me the autorads he’d developed. He did two separate VNTR profiles. One was Anna Leoni’s. The other was yours.”
Maura sat frozen, braced for the blow she knew was about to fall.
“They’re a match,” said Rizzoli. “The two genetic profiles are identical. ”
SEVEN
THE CLOCK ON the kitchen wall ticked. The ice cubes slowly melted in the glasses on the table. Time moved on, but Maura felt trapped in that moment, Rizzoli’s words looping endlessly in her head.
“I’m sorry,” said Rizzoli. “I didn’t know how else to tell you. But I thought you had a right to know that you have a…” Rizzoli stopped.
Had. I had a sister. And I never even knew she existed.
Rizzoli reached across the table and grasped Maura’s hand. It was unlike her; Rizzoli was not a woman who easily gave comfort or offered hugs. But here she was, holding Maura’s hand, watching her as though she expected Maura to crumble.
“Tell me about her,” Maura said softly. “Tell me what kind of woman she was.”
“Detective Ballard’s the one you should talk to.”
“Who?”
“Rick Ballard. He’s in Newton. He was assigned to her case after Dr. Cassell assaulted her. I think he got to know her pretty well.”
“What did he tell you about her?”
“She grew up in Concord. She was briefly married, at twenty-five, but it didn’t last. They had an amicable divorce, no kids.”
“The ex-husband’s not a suspect?”
“No. He’s since remarried, and he’s living in London.”
A divorcée, like me. Is there a gene that preordains failed marriages?
“As I said, she worked for Charles Cassell’s company, Castle Pharmaceuticals. She was a microbiologist, in their research division.”
“A scientist.”
“Yeah.”
Again, like me, thought Maura, gazing at her sister’s face in the photo. So I know that she valued reason and logic, as I do. Scientists are governed by intellect. They take comfort in facts. We would have understood each other.
“It’s a lot to absorb, I know it is,” said Rizzoli. “I’m trying to put myself in your place, and I really can’t imagine. It’s like discovering a parallel universe, where there’s another version of you. Finding out she’s been here all this time, living in the same city. If only…” Rizzoli stopped.
Is there any phrase more useless than “if only”?
“I’m sorry,” said Rizzoli.
Maura breathed deeply and sat up straight, indicating she was not in need of hand-holding. That she was capable of dealing with this. She closed the folder and slid it back to Rizzoli. “Thank you, Jane.”
“No, you keep it. That photocopy’s meant for you.”
They both stood up. Rizzoli reached into her pocket and laid a business card on the table. “You might want this, too. He said you could call him with any questions.”
Maura looked down at the name on the card: RICHARD D. BALLARD, DETECTIVE. NEWTON POLICE DEPARTMENT.
“He’s the one you should talk to,” said Rizzoli.
They walked together to the front door, Maura still in control of her emotions, still playing the proper hostess. She stood on the porch long enough to give a good-bye wave, then she shut the door and went into the living room. Stood there, listening as Rizzoli’s car drove away, leaving only the quiet of a suburban street. All alone, she thought. Once again I’m all alone.
She went into the living room. From the bookshelf, she pulled down an old photo album. She had not looked at its pages in years, not since her father’s death, when she’d cleaned his house a few weeks after the funeral. She had found the album on his nightstand, and had imagined him sitting in bed on the last night of his life, alone in that big house, gazing at the photos of his young family. The last images he would have seen, before turning off the light, would have been happy faces.
She opened the album and gazed at those faces now. The pages were brittle, some of the photos nearly forty years old. She lingered over the first one of her mother, beaming at the camera, a dark-haired infant in her arms. Behind them was a house that Maura did not remember, with Victorian trim and bow windows. Underneath the photo, her mother, Ginny, had written in her characteristically neat hand: Bringing Maura home.
There were no pictures taken in the hospital, none of her mother in pregnancy. Just this sudden, sharp image of Ginny smiling in the sunshine, holding her instant baby. She thought of another dark-haired baby, held in another mother’s arms. Perhaps, on that very same day, a proud father in another town had snapped off a photo of his new daughter. A girl named Anna.
Maura turned the pages. Saw herself grow from a toddler to a kindergartener. Here on a brand-new bicycle, steadied by her father’s hand. There at her first piano recital, dark hair gathered back with a green bow, her hands poised on the keys.
She turned to the last page. Christmas. Maura, about seven years old, standing flanked by her mother and father, their arms intertwined in a loving weave. Behind them was a decorated tree, sparkling with tinsel. Everyone smiling. A perfect moment in time, thought Maura. But they never last; they arrive and then they vanish, and we can’t bring them back; we can only make new ones.
She’d reached the end of the album. There were others, of course, at least four more volumes in the history of Maura, every event recorded and catalogued by her parents. But this was the book her father had chosen to keep beside his bed, with the photos of his daughter as an infant, of himself and Ginny as energetic parents, before the gray had crept into their hair. Before grief, and Ginny’s death, had touched their lives.
She gazed down at her parents’ faces and thought: How lucky I am that you chose me. I miss you. I miss you both so much. She closed the album and stared through tears at the leather cover.
If only you were here. If only you could tell me who I really am.
She went into the kitchen and picked up the business card that Rizzoli had left on the table. On the front was printed Rick Ballard’s work number at the Newton PD. She flipped over the card and saw he’d written his home number as well, with the words: “Call me anytime. Day or night. -R.B.”