There’ll be plenty of time for your questions later,” Jeremy said. “I’ll probably answer some of them in my presentation.”
“I’m one hundred percent sure my question isn’t in your notes.”
“Okay.” Jeremy placed the legal pad on the table. “I’m listening.”
Sandy took a deep breath.
“Have you ever been curious about your birth mother?”
“Every adoptee thinks about that.” Jeremy shrugged. “My younger sister recently took the first steps to try to locate her birth mother. The record of my adoption was sealed by the court at the request of my mother, so I assume she didn’t want to be found.”
“Does that bother you?”
“I suppose she had her reasons. I was born a year or so after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade and could have been legally aborted. I’m obviously glad my mother didn’t take that step and thankful for my parents who raised me.” Jeremy gave Sandy a curious look. “The hearing in front of Judge Tompkins isn’t going to focus on the merits of adoption. It’s about your free-speech rights and Maria’s access to different perspectives on her reproductive choices.”
“If you had a chance to meet your birth mother, would you want to do it?”
“I’m really not sure. What does this have to do with you and Maria?”
“Nothing. It has to do with you and me.”
“What are you driving at?” Jeremy asked, then paused and opened his eyes wider. “You don’t think that you’re my mother, do you?”
“I don’t think so. I know so.”
Jeremy’s mouth dropped open. He stared at Sandy for a moment.
“That’s not possible.”
Sandy took a deep breath.
“Do you want to know why I believe you’re my son?”
A skeptical look crossed Jeremy’s face, and he leaned back in his chair.
“I’m listening.”
“Shortly before my senior year at Rutland High, I got pregnant. My boyfriend played wide receiver on the football team. I decided not to have an abortion and moved in with an aunt in Atlanta. She took me to an adoption agency that allowed me to pursue a closed adoption with input in the selection of the adoptive parents. I reviewed at least a hundred files with the names and addresses removed. One day my caseworker left the room, and I saw a photo sticking out of a file. I peeked at the picture and saw a woman standing beside a large palmetto tree in front of a brick house with a cream-colored convertible parked in the driveway.”
“What kind of convertible?” Jeremy asked, sitting up straighter in his chair.
“It was a Chevrolet with South Carolina license plates. The woman had short blond hair and was wearing a yellow blouse and green skirt. After I looked at the photo, I slipped it back into the file. Later that day, my caseworker gave me the information, without the picture, and I found out that the woman worked part-time at a florist shop and was married to an airline pilot. When I saw the picture of you as a little boy in front of the same house, I realized who you are.”
Jeremy’s face grew pale. Now that she’d opened the floodgate of information, Sandy felt stronger.
“I’ve never forgotten one sentence your mother wrote as part of the application process to the adoption agency: ‘I believe Jesus will send us the child he wants us to love as he loves us.’ It was such a heartfelt statement of faith and desire to love a child the way he should be loved. I was just a teenager, but her words touched me deeply, and I knew this was the woman to raise my baby.” Sandy smiled. “It also helped that she had blond hair and blue eyes like me. I wanted the baby to fit in with the family based on appearance too.”
Jeremy was now looking at her with a mixture of bewilderment and wonder.
“And there’s nothing I want from you,” Sandy said, then stopped. “No, I didn’t say that right. I’d love to get to know you and your beautiful family, but I don’t want to intrude or force my way into a relationship. You have a mother, and your children have a grandmother. I’ll leave it completely up to you to decide what, if any, contact we should have.”
Jeremy glanced down at his legal pad.
“You’re right. None of this was in my notes. Do you mind if I ask you a few specific questions? I’m having trouble absorbing this.”
“Go ahead.”
“Where was I born and how much did I weigh?”
“You were born on April 5, 1975, at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. You weighed four pounds, ten ounces and were called Baby Smith.”
Jeremy nodded. “My mother still has the card that was taped to my bassinet in the hospital nursery. Why was I so tiny?”
Sandy gulped. From the moment the conversation started, her intent was to finesse her way around the issue of a brother, but it was an impossible goal. Sooner or later, the truth would come out.
“Because you are a fraternal twin. Somewhere, you have an older brother who weighed five pounds, two ounces.”
Jeremy put his head in his hands and leaned his elbows on the table. Sandy didn’t know if he was upset or holding his head up because his brain had suddenly gotten heavy with new information. After a few moments, Jeremy raised his head.
“Do you have any idea where he is?”
“No. The records were sealed by the court, and I’ve never requested they be opened.”
“And my birth father?”
“His name is Brad Donnelly. The last I heard he was living in Pennsylvania. I’ve not had any contact with him since high school. It was a very hurtful situation for me, but if you want to track him down, I’ll help any way I can. Zach looks a little bit like him.”
Jeremy looked down at his hands, then at Sandy’s fingers.
“Our hands look similar.”
Sandy held out her hands. “I hadn’t noticed, but you’re right. Also, the way you touch your right ear with your right hand when you’re thinking is something my brothers and I do.”
“When you were in my office the other day, you mentioned another brother who lives in Chicago?”
“Yes, Jack. You look a lot like him.”
“Do you have a picture of him?”
“Ben does in his office.”
“I’d like to see it.”
Sandy left the conference room. She felt like she’d stepped off a spaceship onto a new planet. She went down the hallway. Ben’s door was cracked open. Sandy knocked.
“Come in,” he said.
“I thought you had someone coming in for an appointment,” Sandy said.
“He rescheduled. How’s it going?”
“Good, I think. I told him who I am, and he wants to see a picture of Jack.”
Ben picked up a photo of himself and Jack taken several years earlier at the beach.
“Would it be okay if I take it to my nephew myself?”
Sandy smiled. “He’s ours, not just mine.”
The three of them spent the next hour without ever discussing the hearing in front of Judge Tompkins. Jeremy got more and more excited and animated. There was so much to talk about that the conversation veered wildly. Sandy shed a few tears, but laughter quickly banished them. Finally, Jeremy looked at his watch.
“I have to get going,” he said. “I’m going to be up late tonight talking to Leanne.”
“When will you tell your mother?” Sandy asked.
“I want to do it the right way,” Jeremy replied thoughtfully. “That will require some planning.”
“Whatever you decide, I’d like for you to give her a letter from me if you think it’s a good idea,” Sandy said. “I want to thank her.”
“That’s a great idea.”
They all stood up. Jeremy leaned forward and hugged Sandy. Her arms hung limply at her sides for a moment, then she reached up and embraced him. He kissed her lightly on the cheek as he let her go.
“Is that okay?” he asked.
All Sandy could do was nod. Ben and Jeremy shook hands, then the three of them walked together to the front door of the office.
“I’ll call you tomorrow to talk about our legal matters,” Jeremy said to Sandy. “We can discuss the hearing over the phone.”
“I need to leave for a football game at five-thirty,” Sandy replied.
“Then I’ll call around four.”
Jeremy left. Ben took his cell phone from his pocket.
“Betsy called me four times in the past hour. Do you think I should call her back?”
“Only if you ever want to eat another bite of corn bread in your life.”
“And you’d better come to supper with us. She’s going to ask so many questions I can’t answer that I’m going to end up in big trouble.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll get a table in the back at Dressler’s place. It shouldn’t be too crowded on a Thursday night.”
Sandy stood beside Ben while he locked the front door of the office.
“What do you think about Jeremy?” she asked.
“He’s an impressive young man. I’d say young, but he’s only fourteen years younger than I am.”
“How is Mama going to react to the news?”
“Awkwardly at first. She’s going to remember how embarrassed she was when you turned up pregnant. It’s going to take her awhile to get her head around the fact that she now has a thirty-three-year-old grandson and two great-grandchildren in her life. She’s going to feel really, really old.”
Sandy laughed. Ben looked down at her and smiled.
“But what I’m going to enjoy the most is the happiness I hope this brings to you. You haven’t spent your life feeling sorry for yourself, but you’re no stranger to disappointment. I pray things work out so you can have a good relationship with Jeremy and his family.”
“Me too.”
Betsy was so excited she barely ate any of her supper.
“Box it up,” she told the waiter when it was time to pay for the meal.
After the waiter left, Ben leaned forward. “And then Jeremy gave Sandy a big hug. He finished it off with a kiss on the cheek.”
“How sweet.” Betsy sighed. “He sounds like such a doll.”
“I wouldn’t use that word,” Ben replied. “At least in front of anyone except the three of us.”
“Sandy knows what I mean,” Betsy said. “It takes a real man to show affection to his mother. I have to stick my cheek out like a highway billboard for Robbie to know it’s time to give me a little peck before he leaves the house for another couple of months.”
When she got home, Sandy called Jessica to share the news. Her friend went into the bathroom and closed the door so Rick couldn’t hear her side of the conversation.
“When can I tell him?” Jessica asked when Sandy paused for a moment.
“Not until I talk to my mother. Okay?”
“I’ll try. The only secrets I remember ever keeping from him were the appointment I had with the diet doctor who wanted me to drink that awful mixture of grass and leaves, and the consultation with the plastic surgeon when my eyes started to sag.”
“A girl has a right to keep a few bits of information to herself. It won’t be much longer before I break the news to my mother, but I’m all talked out for tonight. Part of me wants to tell her in person. I think that’s what Jeremy will probably do with his mother.”
“You’re his mother.”
“Yes, but I’m not going to start calling his mother his ‘adopted mother.’ She’s the one who raised him and influenced who he is today. I’ll be satisfied if he calls me Sandy.”
“How about the grandkids?”
“You know how that works. They’ll come up with their own name for me, and I’ll love it.”
After she hung up the phone, Sandy went out to the porch at the rear of her house and listened to the night noises. During the summer, the evening chorus could be deafening, but with the arrival of cooler weather, it became quieter. Sandy sat in a rocking chair, closed her eyes, and let her imagination about the future fly free.
The following day she floated through her time at school with a slightly goofy grin on her face. At lunchtime she turned around and almost bumped into Carol at the end of the salad line.
“Hi, Carol,” Sandy blurted out before she could stop herself.
Carol gave her a strange look and kept walking. Sandy didn’t care whether she looked foolish or not.
At 4:00 p.m., she was sitting in her kitchen drinking a cup of tea and waiting for Jeremy’s call. Her phone beeped, and she answered. It was Jeremy.
“Hey, Sandy,” he began. “It’s been an interesting twenty-four hours.”
“Tell me.”
“I waited until the kids were in bed to break the news to Leanne. She remembered seeing you come to the office with Maria the other day and wanted me to ask you a strange question. Were you in Tryon when my son, Zach, broke his collarbone in a fall at the elementary school last weekend? There was a woman in a pickup truck who blew the horn to let us know something had happened and then drove off. I know it’s an odd thing to ask, but—”
“That was me,” Sandy said. “I drove over to Tryon to see where you lived and hoped I’d get a chance to see your family. As soon as Zach fell I wanted to jump out and run over to him, but I realized a stranger would frighten him, so I honked the horn to get your attention instead. I called the hospital later in the day to make sure he was okay.”
“Leanne was right.”
“I wasn’t trying to be a stalker, but I guess that’s what I was doing. I apologize.”
“I understand.”
“And please tell Leanne my reasoning. I’ve been in a partial state of shock for the past two weeks. At times I’m not sure I’ve been thinking straight.”
“How could you? Looking back, I can remember you giving me a few odd looks when we were talking about the pictures in my office, but I didn’t think anything of it.”
“I memorized every detail of those pictures.”
“One of the first things I want to do is put together a photo album for you that will include pictures from my childhood up through the present. Leanne started working on it today.”
Sandy felt overwhelmed. “That would be wonderful.”
“Leanne and I are going to wait to introduce you to the kids until after I talk with my mom. I need to do that in person, which can’t happen for a couple of weeks. In the meantime, it would be nice if you could pull together some background information about yourself, including photos and a letter I can take when I go to see her in Charleston.”
“Of course.”
Jeremy was silent for a moment.
“I really enjoyed meeting you,” he said. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”
Sandy felt like she’d received a huge hug.
“It means the world for you to say that,” she said. “This has been such a vulnerable time for me. And I agree with your suggestion about waiting on any contact with the children. But would it be okay if I visited your church on Sunday? Deb invited me, so I could come as her guest. Maybe I could meet Leanne before or after the service and talk to you for a minute.”
“That would work. The kids will be in children’s church and won’t be with us until we pick them up. It would be easy to squeeze in a few minutes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I miss you already. We have so much catching up to do.”
Sandy felt her heart do another flip.
“Deb gave me her cell phone number,” she said. “I’ll give her a call. See you then.”
“Sandy,” Jeremy said before she could hang up the phone.
“What?”
“We’re not finished. We need to talk about the hearing next week.”
“Sorry. It’s been a fight to keep focused on that.”
Forty-five minutes later, Sandy had a better idea of the purpose for the hearing and what she’d be expected to say. The burden of proof would be on the women’s organization to prove the need for immediate action by the judge. Jeremy’s response would largely depend on the evidence presented by the other attorney. He and Sandy would rehearse her testimony some more during the drive to Atlanta for the hearing.
While she got ready to leave for the football game, Sandy glanced at herself in the bathroom mirror. The slightly goofy smile she’d worn to school was still on her face.
And she didn’t want it to leave.