STEVE WASN’T TAKING no for an answer. So after breakfast we set off for the Lake Madrid library, which had Internet access. I kept my head down as Steve barreled toward a private corner at the back. I imagined everyone in Lake Madrid was staring at me. Rick O’Toole was at the library! He can hardly read a cereal box! My cheeks flushed just at the thought of their laughter.
Steve flipped open his laptop. He sure knew his way around the Internet. He found what we needed right away, but we were halfway through filling out the form when we hit our first stumbling block.
“What’s your address?” he asked.
“Why?”
“So they can mail the kit.”
I get maybe one or two dozen pieces of mail a year, mostly junk. I pictured Molly at the post office, staring at this strange box, addressed to me, with DNA test kit printed on it. Before nightfall half the town would know.
“We can’t use my address.”
“Why not?”
“Do you live in a small town?”
He studied me. “Okay. I’ll sign up for a post-office box.”
“People will still talk. A stranger comes to town and orders a DNA kit?”
“Well, Jesus H. It’s got to go somewhere!”
“There’s another post office in Hawley Bay. Only a twenty-minute drive away.”
“So we have to go all the way to another town to get this damn PO box before we can do anything?”
I shrugged. “We’ve already waited thirty-four years.”
Annoyed, Steve closed his laptop, shoved back his chair and headed out of the library, leaving me to scramble after him. Lots of curious eyes followed us.
The side trip to Hawley Bay took the rest of the morning, but we found a café there with Internet access and finished ordering the kits. I breathed easier now that we were out of Lake Madrid.
“This will take a few weeks,” Steve said when we’d finished. “But we don’t have to twiddle our thumbs. We can nose around town and see what people remember from the 1980s.”
I winced. Steve’s idea of nosing around would start the rumors flying. We might share the same blue eyes and love of tinkering, but he was a bulldozer compared to me. “Before you go stirring things up, let me ask a few people. Much easier than a stranger asking.”
I could tell he was itching to get at it, but he seemed to get my point. I left him back at the farm, heading to the barn to “make myself useful.” I piled a few eggs, goat’s milk and organic lettuce into the truck and drove back toward Lake Madrid. My aunt Penny’s grocery store has been at the crossroads outside town for as long as anyone can remember. Every year she grows a little more shriveled, like a parsnip forgotten in the cellar. But she knows every secret in town.
There’s a fancy new grocery store on the highway outside Hawley Bay. It’s taken away some of her business, but lots of village folk still come to Aunt Penny’s for a bit of gossip and local produce. Even the cottagers are starting to buy my eggs and cheese, which she sells under the counter in the back. She’s been after me to get a license. But that means paperwork. Not my strong suit.
As I helped her move some boxes and load up the shelves, I tried to figure out how to get her talking. She always snaps shut like a clam whenever I ask about my past.
I decided to stick as near to the truth as possible. Aunt Penny can spot my lies a mile off. “I got a friend visiting from Calgary,” I started, with my head deep in the fridge. “He wants to trace his roots. He thinks his father came to these parts from Alberta. You know anyone who moved from Alberta… maybe thirty, forty years ago?”
Aunt Penny didn’t answer, and I wondered if she was getting deaf. I knew her eyesight was going. But when I pulled my head out of the fridge, she was giving me the Aunt Penny look. The What is going on, Ricky? look.
I plowed on. “Apparently he worked in the oil sands.”
“What friend?”
I shrugged. “Just a guy. Name’s Steve.”
She crossed her arms. “You don’t have any friends from Calgary.”
It pissed me off that she knew me so well. Knew that I didn’t have many friends period. “Well, he was in the service. Traveled around.”
“Where did you meet this Steve from Calgary?”
I turned to walk up the aisle to unload the next box, trying to buy myself time. I should have thought this through better. Whatever story I made up now was going to have to last me. “On a jobsite last year. He’s just passing through.”
She pursed her lips. “What makes him think his father is here?”
“A letter his father sent to his mother.”
She gave me another long look, like she was weighing her answer. “Then why doesn’t he ask his father?”
“Um…” I looked away. More lies to make up on the fly. “They lost touch. Listen, it’s no big deal. He’s just curious, and I figured if anyone knew, it would be you.”
It was Aunt Penny’s turn to look away. To get busy arranging broccoli. “Well, Ricky, I don’t. I’ve been here eighty years, and I don’t know anybody who came from out west or anyone who worked in the oil fields. Except—” Her mouth snapped shut.
I let that go. “What about in another town? Hawley Bay?”
She broke a stalk off angrily. “If they did, I never heard about it. Now there’s a crate of milk out back, so jump to it before it curdles.”
Afterward I turned the conversation over in my mind. I’d never been able to keep anything from her, and she knew I was hiding something. That would be enough to make her annoyed. But there was something else going on. She hadn’t wanted to know about Steve. Aunt Penny is the only family I have. In her own way, she fusses over me like a mother cat. She’s always worried about me living out on the farm by myself. She should be happy I have a new friend. But she didn’t even ask to meet him.
It was like Aunt Penny was hiding something too.