Elizabeth’s eyes widened.
“Wilson and I stood a few grave sites over. I’d come to bury him for the final time, and to speak with you. But before I could summon the courage, you left. Walked away before the service was even over.” She dropped her head in her hands, tears spilling. “As much as I’d wanted to believe someone had loved my son…”
With those words, Elizabeth slumped beneath the unrelenting burden of misunderstanding. “I did love your son, Miss Parker!” she cried. “With all my heart. I still do.” She glanced up at the lab where they’d first met, her face flattened by grief. “Calvin Evans was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she choked. “He was the most brilliant, loving man; the kindest, the most interesting—” She stopped. “I’m not sure how else to explain it,” she said, her voice beginning to break, “except to say we had chemistry. Actual chemistry. And it was no accident.”
And maybe it was finally using the word “accident,” but the crushing weight of what she’d lost overtook her and she laid her head on Avery Parker’s shoulder and sobbed in a way she never had before.
Chapter 45
Supper at Six
Within the lab, time seemed to stop. Six-Thirty lifted his head, watching the two women. The older one’s arms surrounded Elizabeth like a protective cocoon, Elizabeth’s loss something she seemed to know by heart. Although he would never be a chemist, he was a dog. And as a dog he knew a permanent bond when he saw one.
“I’ve spent the majority of my life not knowing what happened to my son,” Parker said, holding a trembling Elizabeth close. “I have no idea what his adoptive family was like, if the bishop’s story was completely false or only partly true. I don’t even know what brought him to Hastings. The truth is, I still know very little,” she said. “Or did until I checked the foundation’s P.O. box and found something unusual buried beneath months of junk mail.”
She reached down into her bag and took out a letter.
Elizabeth recognized the handwriting immediately. Madeline.
“Your daughter wrote to Wilson and mentioned her family tree project—the one that appeared in Life. She insisted that her father had been raised in a boys home in Sioux City—somehow, she knew Wilson had funded it. She wanted to thank him personally, tell him the Parker Foundation was on her tree. I thought it might be a crank letter, but she had so many details. Adoptions are usually sealed, Miss Zott— a heartless practice—but with Madeline’s information, a private investigator was finally able to ferret out the truth. I have it all here.” She reached back into her bag to withdraw a large folder. “Look at this,” Parker said, her voice defiant as she extended her own faked death certificate, payback for her non-cooperation at the unwed mothers home. “This is how it all started.”
Elizabeth took the certificate in her hands. Madeline had once said Wakely believed some things needed to stay in the past because the past was the only place they made sense. And as it was so often with the things Wakely said, Elizabeth saw the wisdom in it. But there was one last thing she felt Calvin would have wanted her to ask.
“Miss Parker,” Elizabeth said carefully, “what became of Calvin’s biological father?”
Avery Parker opened the file folder again, handing over yet another death certificate—although this one was real. “He died of tuberculosis,” she said. “Before Calvin was even born. I have a picture.” She opened her billfold and extracted a weathered photograph.
“But he—” Elizabeth gasped as she took in the young man standing next to a much younger Avery.
“Looks exactly like Calvin? I know.” She slid a copy of the old Chemistry Today magazine out and placed it next to the photograph. The two women sat side by side as Calvin and his even younger father looked up at them from their separate histories.
“What was he like?”
“Wild,” Avery said. “He was a musician or wanted to be. We met by accident. He ran me over with his bike.”
“Were you hurt?”
“Yes,” she said. “Luckily. Because he lifted me up, put me on his handlebars, told me to hang on, and rushed me to a doctor. Ten stitches later,” she said, pointing to an old scar on her forearm, “we were in love. He gave me this brooch,” she said, pointing to the lopsided daisy on her lapel. “I still wear it every day.” She glanced around at the lab. “I’m sorry about meeting here. In hindsight, I realize this might have caused you some pain. I’m sorry. I just wanted to be in the room where—” She stopped.