| |
“That’s a wrap, team.” Nicole clapped excitedly as the last platters of caramel cheesecake were whisked out to the twenty-five tables they’d successfully served that night. Luke leaned back against the glossy kitchen counter and removed his chef’s hat, his shoulders dropping low. Nicole headed over to him and shook his hand. “Don’t know what I would do without you.”
“I wish I could say the same,” Luke teased. “Actually, I do know. I’d get a whole lot more sleep.”
Nicole rolled her eyes as she selected a platter of cheesecake for herself and took a sinful bite. “God, I’m good,” she laughed.
“And arrogant, too,” Luke returned as he selected a plate for himself.
“As every chef should be,” Nicole said.
Luke splayed a tiny piece of cheesecake lined with sticky caramel on his tongue and chewed luxuriously.
“Admit it,” Nicole said. “I’m good.”
“Okay, okay. You’re not bad, kid,” Luke told her.
Just then, Heather appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. Her face was strange, paler than Luke had seen it in quite some time. He felt a punch in the gut. Had she changed her mind about him again? Had she stormed in here to tell him it was over?
“Hey, Luke. Can I talk to you in private? Maybe in the office?” Heather asked.
Luke placed his cheesecake on the counter and headed for the office door, unable to speak. Fear coated his tongue. Heather was hot on his heels. When they entered the office, she closed the door firmly behind them. He wanted to scream.
“What’s wrong?” Luke’s face was marred with confusion. “What is that?”
Heather’s hands shook so that the yellowed piece of paper she held quivered between them.
“I just had the strangest conversation,” Heather told him. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
Luke felt slightly lighter. He tilted his head and found her eyes. “You’re scaring me.”
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I don’t even know how to tell you. This woman... She saw us on the talk show. And she’d just discovered this...”
Heather flipped the paper around to show Luke an old photocopy of a driver’s license. The man within the square was the spitting image of Luke himself. The name read: GLENN BARRINGTON. And the address: 433 W. TREEHILL RD. OXFORD, OH.
“Heather...” Luke’s voice was all over the place. He gaped at this image, at this strange man from Ohio, and at the older design of the driver’s license. “What is this?”
“She wants to meet you,” Heather whispered. “She has more documents. More things you might want to see.”
“Who do you think it is?” Luke demanded. “Or who does she think she is?”
Heather sighed. “There’s a possibility she’s your sister, Luke. Your sister.”
Luke walked like a blind man through the office door and out into the dining room, where the people of Bar Harbor laughed wholeheartedly, tore through their cheesecakes, and drank their wine. He paused at the edge of the dining room, realizing he’d left Heather behind without knowing where he headed. He scanned the dining room as his ears screamed with fear.
A middle-aged woman sat across from a teenage girl toward the right side of the dining room. The teenage girl continued to eat through her cheesecake while the middle-aged woman sat quietly, her hands beneath her chin, waiting. Her eyes turned toward the kitchen door and latched onto him. It seemed like a shiver of recognition passed through them, although Luke couldn’t be sure. Suddenly, she stood, and her chair fell back behind her with a loud clatter.
Heather appeared beside him, breathless. “She’s seen you. Would you please go talk to her?”
“We can’t do it here,” Luke told Heather. “Not in the dining room.”
“What about the library upstairs,” Heather suggested. “It’s always empty this time of night.”
Luke nodded. Heather wrapped a hand around Luke’s elbow and led him toward the woman who remained standing, watching him approach. When he reached her, Luke placed the photocopy of Glenn Barrington on the table between them and brought out a hand to shake hers.
“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. “I don’t know quite what to say.”
“I’m not one for words right now, either,” the woman told him.
The teenager across from the middle-aged woman stood to greet him. Her smile was warm, inviting. “My mother’s been nervous for days.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Luke tried to joke, flashing her a forced smile.
The woman laughed outright, then snapped her lips closed again. “My name is Angela. Angie,” she finally said, taking his hand. “I’m sorry for my strange behavior.”
“I guess it’s to be expected,” Luke said. “During this very unexpected occasion.” He again studied the photograph of Glenn Barrington, flabbergasted. “I wondered if you wanted to head upstairs to talk for a little while?”
Angie agreed and spoke with the teenager, whom she introduced as Hannah, telling her she would return soon. Hannah said she would eat another two slices of cheesecake by that time. Luke instructed one of the servers that Hannah could eat as many cheesecake slices as she pleased.
“I like him,” Hannah told her mother excitedly.
Luke nodded in goodbye to Heather as he led Angie toward the foyer’s circular staircase. There, they walked in silence all the way to the top, where they collected themselves on the cozy chairs of the round library. Although it was pitch-dark outside, the light from the inn glowed out, reflecting against the billowing snowflakes that fell from the night sky.
“It’s beautiful here,” Angie whispered.
“It really is,” Luke told her. He again studied her, wondering if they looked like siblings.
Angie flipped open the folder and began to explain what she knew. Her father had recently died and left behind paperwork about her adoption. When she’d spotted Luke on the talk show and compared him to the photograph of her birth father, she’d been mesmerized, yet still doubtful.
“It was this medical document that changed my mind,” she said, showing him Wendy Barrington’s handwriting which listed a Leo, an Angela, and a Luke as her children.
“That’s... that’s my birthday,” Luke whispered, shocked.
Angie exhaled deeply. “We tracked you down just to see you. Just to tell you what we know. But obviously, there are many possible stories...”
“And you don’t have any kind of birth certificate for me?” Luke asked.
“Nothing in the folder,” Angie admitted.
“What about death certificates?”
“Nothing in the folder,” Angie continued. “And nothing at all about Leo Barrington that I can find. Maybe I just haven’t looked hard enough. Or maybe he was adopted, too, and is off somewhere, living some other life. Not knowing he’s adopted...”
Luke dropped his head back on the forest-green cushion behind him. Outside, the snow had picked up, frothing beautifully along the window sill.
“Have you ever been to Bar Harbor?” Luke asked her now.
“Never. I’ve hardly been outside of the Midwest,” Angie admitted. “My husband and I were musicians in Chicago for years and years and never had more than rent and a little bit more to keep our lives together. Plus, we always had gigs and could never turn a gig down just to run off somewhere together.”
Luke’s eyes widened. “A musician?”
Angie blushed. “It sounds stupid to say that. And to be honest with you...” She trailed off for a moment, then continued. “I’m not even playing right now. My husband had an affair with someone in our jazz ensemble. I just found out on New Year’s Eve.”
“New Year’s Eve? Of this past year?”
“A little more than a month ago,” Angie admitted. “And since then, I’ve been, well. Falling apart is maybe the term. My father died on top of it all. And then...”
“You learned about the adoption,” Luke confirmed. “And your real parents. And then, maybe, me.”
“Maybe even you.” Angie shared a sensitive, enthralling smile. She cleared her throat as her eyes watered. “I’m sorry to drag you into my mess like this.”
Luke shook his head. “My life’s been nothing but a mess since the tenth day after my birth.”
“Ten days?”
“That’s when they dropped me off. My parents.”
“God...” Angie’s eyes dropped to the floor. “It looks like I was just a year and a half.. Maybe it was around the same time.”
“And then your father adopted you?”
“Yes,” Angie said. “And I know how lucky I was for that to happen. I know that the foster system is no picnic.”
“No. No, it wasn’t.”
They shared the silence. Luke again lifted the paper with the list of Wendy Barrington’s children: Leo, Angela, and Luke. If this was, in fact, his family, his real family, he tried to imagine some other story, where Wendy and Glenn had raised Leo, Angela, and Luke as their own. What would it have been like to have a brother, four years older? Would Leo have taught Luke the ways of the world? Would Luke have annoyed Leo until they’d become friends later, maybe drinking in bars in Cincinnati through their twenties and then raising families side-by-side? Where would Angie have come into this? Probably, she would have both loved them and hated them, picking fights with their brothers and then, in turn, standing up for them till the bitter end.
That’s what family was meant to be. That’s what they should have been allowed to be for each other.
Luke’s eyes filled with tears again. He blinked them away before returning his gaze to Angie.
“I know,” Angie said with a simple shrug.
“What do you know?”
“I just know what it’s like. Spiraling into all these different ideas of what life could have been. It’s haunted me the past few days. I don’t know whether to hate them or find a way to love them,” Angie offered.
It was like she’d taken the words directly from Luke’s lips.
“Thank you for coming to see me,” Luke said suddenly. “My girlfriend and I have had a little bit of a difference in opinion when it comes to discovering the secrets of our past. For her, it was an accident to learn that she was adopted. For me, it was always a fact that I never was adopted. Digging into the past seemed stupid, but with you in front of me, with your very old folder of papers... It all feels a little bit different. Even if we aren’t actually siblings. Seeing you here gives me hope.”
“Mom? Are you up there?” Hannah called from the staircase.
“Up here, honey!” Angie leaped to her feet to meet her daughter at the top of the steps. There, she hugged her with her eyes closed, exhaling into her.
“I’m tired, Mom,” Hannah told her.
“Me too.”
Luke jumped to his feet, feeling dizzy. “Let me get you a room. We’re only half-booked today. Maybe one of our suites is available?”
Downstairs, Abby booked them into one of the “presidential” suites, with a gorgeous view of Frenchman Bay and the Acadia Mountains behind the Keating Inn.
“You’re going to have quite a view tomorrow,” Abby informed them sleepily as she handed over the antique key. Her lips were tinged with red wine.
“It’s taken care of,” Luke told Abby from the left of Angie and Hannah.
“Got it,” Abby said, noting something on the bill.
“You really don’t have to do this, Luke,” Angie told him, bowing her head and giving him what Luke could only imagine was a “sister” look.
“I think I do, actually,” Luke told her. “Even if you aren’t really my sister, you drove all this way to meet me. Nobody’s ever done that for me.”
Before Angie and Hannah headed up for the night, Luke hugged both of them and wished them well. They exchanged phone numbers so that they could easily communicate over the next few days of their stay.
“Let me know if you need anything at all,” Luke told them as he hauled their backpacks and duffel bags up the staircase to the second floor. “I’m always either in the kitchen at Acadia Eatery or just down the road. I can always help.”