CHAPTER
Four

Until now, Nora hadn’t realized that she found punctuality sexy in the extreme.

John strode through the doors of Shelton’s library five full minutes ahead of their scheduled meeting. Nora was glad that she’d made an effort to arrive even earlier. The extra time had allowed her to select a table, arrange her office supplies, compose herself, and smooth a stray piece of hair into her Victory Curl updo.

He’d dressed more casually today than in the past, wearing jeans and a brown T-shirt with Hurley written across it. Even so, he walked toward her like a high-ranking naval officer ready to brief his team on their mission. All broad shoulders and relaxed leadership.

“Hi, Nora.”

“Hi, John.”

“The requested documents.” He handed her a manila file folder.

“Thank you very much.” She motioned to the table. “Shall we make ourselves comfortable?” Wait here, John, while I slip into something more comfortable—

Stop it, Nora! This is a business meeting.

They settled into side-by-side chairs and, wow, he smelled good. Like some edible, very appealing combination of cedarwood, bergamot, and maybe a hint of . . . rosemary?

She rolled the fragrance around in her mind, entranced by it and priding herself on the fact that she knew what bergamot smelled like. She’d been congratulated on her excellent nose more than once during the courses she’d taken on tea.

“Right. Well.” She may have just spent a few too many moments smelling him. “Let’s see what we have here.” With an air of clinical professionalism, she opened the file folder.

Nora was a naturally curious person. The genealogies of the people she assisted never failed to interest her. John’s genealogy, however, interested her keenly.

His birth certificate sat on top. It contained the information he’d related to her at their last meeting as well as a few details he hadn’t mentioned. Sherry Thompson, his birth mother, had been twenty-two at the time of his birth. Oregon was listed as the state of Sherry’s birth, and John’s delivering physician had been a Dr. Paul Douglas.

Nora pointed to the name of the physician. “If Sherry was a patient of this Dr. Douglas and if he’s still practicing, then his office will likely have a file on Sherry, her pregnancy, and your delivery. That file should contain her address at the time.”

“Can you explain how her address at the time of my birth could help us find her now? She’s probably not still living at that address, right?”

“Right,” Nora agreed. “However, at this stage of our search, our goal is simply to collect as much information as we possibly can. So, for example, if we could meet and speak with Sherry’s old landlord, then maybe he could tell us something about her that might prove to be useful. Or, say her old address leads us to an outreach for unwed mothers. The outreach might have further documents about Sherry.”

“Got it.”

“It’s impossible to know which innocuous piece of information might later become the clue that makes all the difference. So . . . no detail is too small.”

John studied her in a way that caused her pulse to throb in her neck. “Okay.”

Nora flipped to the next page, an information sheet that the adoption agency had no doubt given to John’s parents. The name Sherry Thompson wasn’t listed here, but other pertinent facts were.

Physical description: 5' 7", 135 pounds. Brown eyes. Brown hair.

Birthdate: March 18

Nationality: American

Religion: Christian

Occupation: Teacher

“Could the fact that she was a teacher help us at all?” John asked.

“Absolutely, it might.” She turned her ring around her finger a couple of times, pondering. “I’ve seen a few background sheets like this in the past. In those cases, information about the birth father was also provided.” She glanced at him.

His eyes were a mellow shade of hazel that brought to mind glinting rocks at the bottom of a mountain stream. The attention he leveled on Nora through those eyes was anything but mellow, however. It was concentrated, smart, forceful.

“My birth father wasn’t mentioned on the birth certificate, either,” he said.

“No.”

“Do you think that’s because Sherry didn’t know who he was? She may have had more than one boyfriend at the time I was conceived.”

“It’s possible. Or maybe she knew exactly who he was but had a motive for wanting to keep his identity to herself.”

More of that crackling silence. She was bookish! She had no experience at holding eye contact with Navy SEALs. All the practice she’d put in with Mr. Darcy and Rochester and Adolphus didn’t seem to be holding her in good stead. “I suppose,” she said, “you can ask Sherry about your birth father when you meet her. If you want to.”

He nodded.

She tugged her focus to the tabletop, where his hand rested. His black watch with its black band, round black face, and white numerals whispered to her of the precision timing necessary for special ops so far away and dangerous that they boggled her mind.

Nora turned to the next sheet in his folder. “Interesting.”

“What’s interesting?”

“This waiver of confidentiality that your parents signed means that they rescind their rights to any implied or explicit confidentiality they had with their attorney or adoption agency. In other words, they’re opening the door for you to learn all the facts you can.”

He looked unsurprised. “This waiver’s been with these other documents for years.”

“According to the date, you probably would have been in . . . high school at the time your parents printed this out and had it notarized.”

“The date listed there was my eighteenth birthday.”

“Had you mentioned to your parents that you were interested in finding your birth mother?”

“No.”

“Well, this paper may make our search easier. Individuals and companies are hesitant to share information they think other people might want kept secret. Because of this paper, they’re likely to be more willing to work with us.”

John’s parents may have had reservations about John connecting with his birth mother while he was still a child. But at eighteen, he’d technically become an adult and this paper indicated that on that day John’s parents had decided to give him access to his history when and if he wanted it.

She knew from his book and movie how decent his parents were. Yet this one sheet of paper, quietly added to John’s adoption folder, revealed much more to her about the generosity of their character.

Together they went through the rest of the file. The amended birth certificate named his adoptive parents as his mother and father. His Final Decree of Adoption. A business letter from the attorney John’s parents had used, a Mr. Harvey Morrow. A business card from the adoption agency who’d placed John.

No Petition to Adopt. No foster parent paperwork either, which might mean he’d never been fostered. Some hospitals allowed adoptive parents to visit their newborns while they were in the hospital’s maternity ward and to take them home once the baby passed health checks and all the official procedures were complete.

“I’ve already scanned all these papers and saved them on my computer,” John said.

“Great. I brought along a binder. So, if you’re in agreement, we can use it to store the physical copies of the documents we collect.”

“That’s fine.”

Whenever working “in the field,” she always packed her monogrammed canvas bag with her laptop, a binder, a coin purse full of change to use on copy machines, a notepad, pens, highlighters, sticky notes, and two emergency packages of M&Ms. She’d already taken the liberty of stocking John’s binder with dividers and enough clear sleeves to make a landfill groan.

Overly obsessive compulsive? Possibly.

She slid his documents into sleeves, then freed the notepad and a pen and started jotting a to-do list. “I think we should contact the attorney who handled your adoption. Among other things, he may be able to give us a copy of the Petition to Adopt, which may in turn list Sherry’s address. We can query Presbyterian Hospital for their records of your birth. We can look for Dr. Douglas via the American Medical Association Directory.”

Nora spared a peek at John to see whether he was tracking with her or whether she’d inadvertently left him by the road miles behind. A bemused expression graced his face. Almost as if he found her to-do list, or her—or both—humorous.

“Everything I just said may have been too large of an information dump,” Nora confessed.

“No, I was just thinking that this is exactly why I hired you. You know your way around research.”

“From what I’ve heard, you know your way around Navy SEAL-type . . . stuff.”

His face went blank. “Huh?”

“I know about your past with the SEALs.”

“I don’t have a past with the SEALs.”

Terror flashed through her. Had she—had she gotten it all wrong?

No. No, she’d seen his picture—his face—on the Wikipedia profile and again in the shiny, picture-filled pages in the middle of his book, and in all the online articles. “You do have a past with the SEALs,” she stated.

“I run an emergency preparedness and response training company.”

“Yes, but you’re also a Medal-of-Honor-winning SEAL.”

A gap of quiet. Then a small, crooked smile broke across his rugged face. “I am?”

“Yes!” She laughed, because as positive of his background as she’d been, he’d had her going there for a second. “After I flunked out of your hostage exercise, I looked you up. Your name was familiar to me.”

“It was?”

“Yes. You’re pretty famous in these parts.”

“I am?” His eyes twinkled beneath straight, no-nonsense brows. His jaw formed a pronounced, indomitable line.

“You’re pretty famous everywhere, truth be told. You may or may not have heard, but there’s a book and a movie . . . ?”

“You read the book?”

“And watched the movie. They were both excellent. But as is usually the case, the book was superior. It was an exquisitely written book.”

“I didn’t write it, so I can’t take credit for it.”

“Someone else wrote the book, but it was about you, so I do believe you can take some credit.”

He shrugged.

“I gather you prefer not to tout your past glories?”

He chuckled as he sat back in his chair, casually resting a forearm across his abdomen.

Her heart did a goofy little somersault.

“Did you just say tout?” he asked.

“Do you or do you not prefer to tout your past glories?”

“I don’t mind people knowing. But I’m definitely against touting. Definitely.”

“Understood. Even so, I’ll now know whom to call when I need Navy SEAL-type . . .”

“Stuff?”

“Exactly.”

“I’m expensive,” he answered immediately, deadpan.

She released a peal of laughter. Was he picking up on this uncanny, rare, wonderful click between them? Of course, the click she perceived could just be her heretofore dormant hormones talking.

“You’re expensive, and yet here I am,” she said, “trying to give you my help for free.”

“You practically still are. That thing you called a bill was sort of a joke, Nora.”

“It was the best I could bring myself to do.”

He regarded her for a long moment, looking unconvinced. Then he moved his gaze to the to-do list. “I’ll contact the attorney who handled my adoption,” he said. “And I’ll call Presbyterian Hospital.”

“Before we leave the library, we should take a look at the medical directories to see if we can locate your delivering physician.”

Within the pages of the American Medical Association directory they found Dr. Paul Douglas. Fortunately for them, he was still a practicing obstetrician, though he now worked in Pullman, Washington. John entered the number for Dr. Douglas’s practice into his phone.

Nora watched him while furiously brainstorming ways to prolong their meeting. She wanted more time with him. She shouldn’t want more time with him. He had a girlfriend.

He looked up as he pocketed his phone.

“Would you like to take the binder?” She extended it a few inches, hoping she didn’t look like the mother in the Bible story who was asked by Solomon to hand over her baby so it could be cut in two. This was John’s search, yet Nora already felt deeply invested. She wanted to keep the binder.

“No, that’s fine.” He barely spared it a glance. “I have the computer files.”

“Ah, yes.” As if she’d forgotten.

“I’ll follow up on my end and be in touch.”

Two days later John stood before his home’s floor-to-ceiling windows, holding his cell phone to his ear, waiting while it rang. The sun sat directly overhead, covering the navy blue water of Lake Shore Pine and the green hills that climbed from its edges with bright light.

Since his meeting with Nora, he’d done nothing to further his search for Sherry. Several times he’d thought about making the calls he’d told Nora he’d make, but each time a sense of reluctance that felt like a low-pitched hum had held him back. The hum reminded him of the intuition of danger he’d experienced at times during his years in the service.

Even before he’d contacted Nora, he hadn’t been 100 percent sure about his decision to search for Sherry. He didn’t think any adopted person could ever feel 100 percent sure about something as full of divided loyalties and unknown consequences as this was. Searching for a birth mother meant stirring up the past, potentially hurting his parents, and barging into the life of a person who might not welcome him.

The fact was that he wanted to find Sherry. And he didn’t.

In the end, he decided to look for her because he needed answers about the medical condition that had thrown his life onto its side. He’d finally made himself dial the office of his delivering physician just now for the same reason.

“Obstetrical Associates of Pullman,” a woman’s voice answered.

John explained his reason for calling.

“What year did you say you were born?” she asked kindly.

He told her.

“I wish I could help you, but I’ve been Dr. Douglas’s office manager for twenty years, and I can tell you without a doubt that he was a resident at Presbyterian Hospital that year. He wasn’t in private practice at the time, so he didn’t have patients, per se. I’m afraid we won’t have any records concerning your mother or your birth.”

“I understand.”

“However, if you’ll give me your phone number, I’ll certainly ask him to call you. He’s delivered a lot of babies over the years, but it’s possible that he might remember something about your mother or you.”

John gave over his information, and they disconnected. He Googled the main number for Presbyterian Hospital and dialed. After making his way through a few different “please listen carefully as our options have changed” messages, he reached a live person in the records department.

This time John simply asked for his birth records without explaining that he’d been adopted. He told the man his birthdate and his birth mother’s name, then waited. He could hear computer keys clicking.

John watched a bird fly along the lake’s surface. He’d had the house built into a steep hillside, so when you looked out from indoors, it almost seemed like you were hovering above the water.

The sound of the man’s typing faded. “I see here that you were adopted.”

John frowned. “Yes.”

“Because of that, I can’t provide your birth records to you.”

Anger tightened slowly within John like fingers curling into a fist. This stranger on the other end of the phone could look at his records, but he could not? “My adoptive parents signed a waiver of confidentiality that I can fax or email to you.”

“That won’t make any difference.”

“Washington State has opened sealed birth records.”

“Yes, but this hospital is independently owned. Our policy is to respect the privacy of birth mothers. They were patients of ours, and when they left our care they believed that their records would remain closed.”

“The records belong to two people. My birth mother. And me.” He spoke evenly but without apology.

A frustrated sigh. “I realize that. However, our policy stands. We do not make closed records available. To anyone.”

Tense quiet followed. John’s brain turned, searching for solutions. “Could you block out the identifying information and send me the medical details only?”

“No.”

His jaw tight, John ended the call, stuck his phone in his pocket, and pushed open two of the glass doors that had been built to fold in against one another along a track. He paced up and down his deck, scowling, struggling to cool his irritation.

The hospital records department viewed him as if he were still the baby in their documents. He was no longer an adopted child. He hadn’t been a child for a long, long time. He was a thirty-three-year-old adult with every right afforded to adults by the United States of America.

He could understand the hospital’s desire to protect his birth mother’s rights.

But what about his rights?

He wasn’t having any success at cooling his irritation. Knowing he could trust the lake to calm him, he headed down the path leading to his dock. As he walked, he studied the small ripples on the lake’s surface to gauge today’s wind.

He’d always loved the water. His grandfather had felt the same way about it. His dad, too.

John had grown up making the drive to his grandfather’s cabin in Shore Pine on weekends and school vacations. He might have been raised near Seattle, but Shore Pine had always been where he belonged. From as far back as he could remember, he’d liked the valleys and mountains here. The quiet. He liked his grandmother’s pancake breakfasts, the card games his family played after dinner, and the bowling alley in town his dad took them to. He liked being surrounded by nature, breathing air that smelled like fir.

The water, though. The water had been the biggest draw of all.

When he’d been with the SEALs, he’d held on to God during his worst moments. In those moments, he prayed for God to fill his head with something other than physical agony and fear. Each time, God answered that prayer by giving him memories of Shore Pine.

God had kept him alive. And God had used Shore Pine to keep him sane.

When he left the Navy, there’d been no question where he’d live. He parked himself in his grandfather’s cabin for an entire year. It was a simple, hand-built house. Familiar. He’d valued simple and familiar during that first year, when he’d been trying to get his head around what had happened in Yemen and adjust to life as a civilian.

He could have lived in that cabin for a long time, except that the whole Lawson family shared it.

His grandfather had passed away when John was in college and left the cabin to John’s dad, Ray. John’s dad continued his father’s open-door policy with the cabin. John’s parents, his sister, Heather, and her husband all made an effort to spend as much time at the cabin as their schedules allowed. Aunts, uncles, and cousins used it, too.

John hadn’t felt right about monopolizing their vacation spot, so he purchased this piece of land five miles down the road and built a house of his own.

He reached his boat and released its cover. Once the moorings were free, he started the motor and pointed the bow toward Shore Pine. His own home stood in one of the lake’s many undeveloped coves. As the boat glided past a series of cliffs and around a few wide turns, the land grew more developed near Shore Pine.

The town’s streets marched back from the water like rows of soldiers. Good restaurants now dotted those streets, thanks to the customers Rhododendron Lodge and the new high-tech orthopedic rehab center had brought with them.

John steered standing up, keeping his speed slow, letting the wind rake through his hair. He catalogued the other craft on the water, most of which he recognized.

He’d spent the morning catching up on work from his home office, something he did when he needed to focus or preferred to be alone. When you owned the company, you could work from home when you wanted. And you could take your boat out at one p.m. on a Thursday when you wanted to think about your search for your birth mother.

When he’d talked to his parents about being adopted as a kid, his mom had told him that she believed his birth mother was brave and sacrificial. She said his birth mother loved him so much that she’d given him up so he could have an opportunity at a better life. His mom always followed that up with, “We prayed for you and you’re God’s answer to our prayer, John. You’re our son, born into our hearts. God meant you for us and us for you. We love you.”

He’d been curious about his birth, but for the most part he’d just nodded and accepted what his parents said.

Then he’d reached middle school. Like a lot of kids that age, he was miserable. He started to question what his mom had told him about his birth mother. His mom had never met his birth mother, so how could she know why she’d given him up? It seemed more likely that his birth mother rejected him because she hadn’t loved him or wanted him.

Then in high school, baseball became the most important thing in his world. That, girls, and working on his dad’s boat. Not knowing about his origins hadn’t seemed all that important. More baseball, thanks to a partial scholarship, and a lot more fun had followed him into his college years.

When he’d graduated, he moved into a boring apartment and took an entry-level corporate job. He hated it. His restlessness with his life brought back all the old doubts about his roots. Desperate, he started searching for a job—any job—that didn’t involve sitting at a computer for eight hours a day.

A friend suggested the SEALs. The instant John heard the suggestion, it connected with him.

The more he researched the SEALs, the more right it felt. Eight months later he finished Indoc and started the First Phase of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training—also known as six weeks of torture—in Coronado, California.

Just like in the movies, guys quit the First Phase of BUD/S right and left because they couldn’t hack it. And just like in the movies, they had to ring the brass bell in the courtyard when they left.

His first day there, John looked at the bell with one single, focused, ferocious thought in his mind: Never. I will never ring you. If I die, I die. But I will never ring you.

He hadn’t rung the bell, and he hadn’t died—though there’d been times when death seemed like a better option than SEAL training.

He’d been too consumed by exhaustion and determination over the next seven months and three phases to have the luxury of thinking about the details of his birth. Every time he went through medical testing, though, he was reminded by the questions they asked about his family history.

Six years after BUD/S, news reports about what had happened in Yemen caught the interest of a publisher. While he’d been getting Lawson Training off the ground in Shore Pine, he’d also worked with the writer assigned to him. The writer wanted to know everything about him, but John put limits on what he would and wouldn’t share. His adoption had been off the table.

The book became a runaway bestseller, a fact that still seemed incredible to him because he didn’t think his story was all that interesting. He certainly didn’t think his actions had been unusually brave. He’d done exactly what any SEAL would have done in the same situation.

The movie followed the book. Money poured in—was still pouring in like sand. Add that to the income he generated from the eight or ten speaking jobs he agreed to every year. Plus, the current American climate of mass shootings and terrorist threats had put the emergency training his company offered into high demand.

His career success had given him the luxury, or maybe the curse, of time to think again about his birth mother. He shifted the boat into neutral and pulled out his phone. There was one more call he’d told Nora he’d make.

The memory of the redheaded librarian caused him to smile. She was quirky. Very quirky and sort of fussy with her tight hair and her to-do lists and her huge bag of office supplies.

Even so, during their last meeting, it had felt to him like they’d known each other for a long time. Or maybe like they’d been meant to know each other when the time was right. He liked her honesty, her sense of humor, her quick intelligence.

Beneath his feet he could feel his boat rocking as he called the law firm of the attorney who’d represented his parents in his adoption.

“Smith and Morrow,” a young woman answered.

“Hello. Does Harvey Morrow still work for the firm?”

A beat. “I’m sorry, Mr. Morrow retired twenty years ago and passed away three years ago.”

“Ah.”

“Don’t feel bad! People call all the time asking for him.” She laughed lightly. “He was a Seattle institution.”

“He represented my parents in my adoption. Is there someone else I could make an appointment with? To discuss my case?”

“Absolutely. His daughter, Melissa Morrow, is one of our partners.”

Twenty-four hours later, John sat across the desk from Melissa Morrow in her high-rise Seattle office.

“My dad practiced family law for forty-five years,” Melissa said. She was a heavy-set woman, middle-aged, and friendly. “He handled a lot of adoptions during that time.”

“I can imagine.”

“One of the joys of following in his footsteps has been getting to meet people like you, people who were in some way involved in my father’s cases.”

John nodded.

“We used to have whole rooms dedicated to files. No longer. We went digital a while back. As a result, my secretary was able to pull up your adoption records in no time.” She rested her palms on her desk blotter. “Thanks for supplying us with the waiver of confidentiality, by the way, and for letting us know which documents you had in your possession already.”

“You’re welcome.”

“The only relevant piece of information we have that you were missing is the Petition to Adopt.” She reached toward a paper tray, pulled free a printed sheet, and extended it to him. “Here you are.”

He scanned it. There. Right there, beneath the name Sherry Thompson . . .

Was her address.

Bingo.

Written in a card from John’s mom, Linda, to John:

I just wanted you to know that your dad and I watched Uncommon Courage again last night. We went with you to the premiere, and then saw it at least three times when it was in theaters, but we love watching it on our own TV. It gets better every time!

You’ve proved to the whole country that you have the heart your dad and I always knew you had. We’re so proud of you, John. And we’re praying for you.

You’re on my mind all the time. Ever since you told us what the doctors said, I’ve been asking the Lord to “strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being.” Ephesians 3:16.

Dad and I are coming to Shore Pine next weekend, so we’ll check in on you then.

I’ll bring lasagna.

Love, Mom

Facebook message from Duncan to Nora:

Duncan: I can’t sleep again tonight. Insomnia bites.

Nora: Cup of warm milk?

Duncan: I wish. I gave up dairy and gluten last month.

Nora: In that case, healthy eater, is there anything of actual value I can do? I’d like to help.

Duncan: I’m just discouraged. I’ve been working quite hard, but no one seems to notice or care. I’m not getting the type of traction I hoped I would.

Nora: You’re extremely talented, Duncan. Extremely!

Duncan: If only you were a casting director.

Nora: If only. I’m a very discerning layperson and believe me, your talent is a rare, rare gift. In time, you WILL gain traction.

Duncan: Not every talented person does.

Nora: You will. You must! I think it’s time for me to organize another email and letter-writing campaign to the show’s producers on your behalf. What say you to that?

Duncan: I say thank you. What would I do without you, Miss Lawrence?

Nora: Perish?