Chapter Twenty
Ransom
“So today’s the luau and the prom,” I said to Bethany over brunch the next morning. There were surprisingly few people in the hotel’s dining room. Probably a lot of them are at work preparing for the luau.
“It’s not really prom, but it’s a dance,” Bethany said absently.
I’d found her asleep on the bed the night before and instead of waking her up--it didn’t seem fair, somehow--I’d climbed in on the other side of the bed and just slept next to her. By the time I’d dragged myself awake in the morning, we’d been cuddled up, and Bethany had nearly jumped out of her skin in realization, shifting away from me like I might have the plague, and apologizing for intruding on my personal space.
“So, I was wondering something,” I said, glancing around the room to make sure that no one could be eavesdropping on us. I’d gotten eggs benedict and a load of hash browns, and the hotel had managed to do both pretty well. Alongside their coffee, I thought I could recommend their dining services pretty wholeheartedly.
“What’s that?” Bethany looked up from her pancakes and bacon.
“I know we technically agreed that you’d give me access after the reunion was over, but we might not have time--and anyway, I think we can both agree that I’ve gone above and beyond,” I said.
Bethany looked at me for a long moment, and I got myself ready--mentally--to argue with her about it.
“If you really want to get the information now, I can give you my login credentials,” she said.
I was stunned. “Just like that? No restrictions?”
“I want to know what you need the information for,” Bethany told me.
I thought about telling her--just for a second--and then shook my head.
“If I get the information I need, and I think it’s okay for you to know, afterward, I’ll tell you,” I said. “But until I know I can find what I need, it’s my business.”
Bethany crunched on some bacon and took a sip of her coffee. “You said you need access to the records for kids we’ve adopted out, and for the people who turned them over to us?”
“That’s all I need,” I said, nodding. I’d been itching for more information--to finally get my answers, or know that there was no way to get them--ever since I’d gotten my first taste, two nights before. I was so close to finding out what I needed to know that I almost couldn’t stand to wait any longer.
“I can give you my login credentials for those specific databases, but not for anything else,” Bethany said. “When do you want to do it?”
“Well if you were going to go do stuff at the luau, I could do it then,” I said. “I mean, just because we’re boyfriend and girlfriend, doesn’t mean we have to be together every minute of the trip.” My fingers were itching to get on a keyboard, my brain felt like it was being tickled.
“Once we’re done here, I’ll give you the logins, and the links,” she said. She sounded a little sad, and I wondered why. She’d gotten what she wanted--and it wasn’t like I was going to abandon her at this point. Even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t get out of town.
“Just tell them I had accounting stuff that came up, or something,” I said.
“It’s not that--it’s just that I’m kind of bummed that it’s the tail end of this,” Bethany said.
“I didn’t know you were so into being social,” I said with a laugh.
“I like being social with you around,” she said. “But it’ll be fine. Jess will be at the event, and you’ll come over when you’re done--right?”
“As soon as I get the information I need, I’ll come find you,” I promised.
We finished up brunch just in time for some more of Bethany’s classmates to arrive, and I made excuses for us to leave. Bethany promised to carpool with a couple of the people in the group to work at the luau, and we stopped at the front desk to get a sheet of paper and a pen.
“This will only get you to the adopted children database,” she said, scribbling something quickly on the sheet. She added something else underneath it. “This is the records site for the parents who gave up kids. The login is only good for that. Don’t even try to use it elsewhere--you might get me locked out and then I’ll have to explain.”
She looked at me firmly and I grinned.
“I promise you, this is the only information I’m looking for,” I said. “Can I use your laptop, or do I need to use one of the hotel’s computers?”
“Better if you use mine--they know it’s authorized.” She sighed. “Password to get on is Adirondak4639. Capital A.”
“That’s an interesting password,” I said.
Bethany shrugged. “Just come to the luau quickly--if you’re not there, I am not in a million years going to do the hula class,” she told me, managing a smile.
We parted ways and I couldn’t get up to the room fast enough. I found Bethany’s laptop in her luggage, put in her personal password, and opened up a browser to check the first of the databases that I needed to look at. I logged in, holding my breath as the page loaded the verification, and there it was. Children Served by Us.
I pressed my lips together and tried to think of what name to search for. Would it be under the adoptive name, or the name before adoption? If it was the second one, I had no chance--I didn’t even know what the pre-adoption last name had been. I could--I thought--do a search just based on first name.
I thought about it a moment longer and made up my mind. I felt a tingle work down my spine as I typed in a name I had stopped using a good five years or more before. Patrick Nolan. At first, the results field said it found nothing, and my stomach sank halfway to my knees, making me regret getting extra hollandaise on my benedict. But a second or two later, I saw One result found!
I opened it up and saw a picture of a child, aged three. My heart leaped up into my throat and I scrolled down. Adoptive parents of record: Janice and Raymond Nolan. Those were my parents. I looked over my own file, feeling weirdly like a voyeur. I’d been given to the agency that Bethany worked for at the age of two, given up by birth parents. I’d been assessed at above-average intelligence for my age, diagnosed with minor behavioral issues “consistent with an unstable attachment to birth-parents.” Nowhere on the file were my birth parents listed, which disappointed me--but then I reminded myself that I had the other database to look through. I saw the records for the interview the agency had done with me and my new parents before I’d been sent home with them, and shook my head at my own childish answers.
I hadn’t been Patrick Nolan before that, though. I looked through the attached files until I found what my birth name had been. Patrick Cartwright. That, at least, should help me find at least one--if not both--of my parents.
I opened up a new tab and put in the web address that Bethany had given me for the birth parents database, and waited impatiently for it to load. I logged in, feeling tense but less full of dread, and when the search option came up I put in my last name at birth.
There were about a half-dozen Cartwrights, and I scrolled through the results until I found one attached to my birth name. Genevieve Cartwright, Alexander Cartwright. That was what I needed to know. That was what I’d been trying to find for years.
Relief flooded through me and for a second I just sat there, my eyes closed, breathing in the realization that the missing puzzle piece was finally there.
I wrote down the names and their information and closed out both databases, opening a new window and putting in the web addresses for some records searches I knew about, that I’d used in some odd jobs in the past. I put in my parents’ names, opening a new tab for each search I wanted to run, and switched between them, waiting for information.
Genevieve Cartwright was dead. My heart sank as I read through her obituary. She’d died when I was about twenty, not survived by anyone--she hadn’t even still been with my birth-father, though she’d kept his name, and her other two kids had died before her in an accident at the home.
Alexander Cartwright, my birth father, was still alive. He was living in another state, about a day’s drive from where I’d been staying until I’d come back to my hometown in the hopes of finding something to get me back on the trail to finding him. He had a criminal record, but nothing too intense. Apparently, my parents had put me up for adoption right around the time my birth father had been getting ready to go to jail on a plea deal for grand theft. I couldn’t entirely blame them for that--but the note on my adoption file about unstable attachments told me there was a lot more to know about the situation. And there was only one person on the planet who could tell me.
I closed everything out and cleared the history, shut down the computer, and put it aside. I’d promised Bethany I’d catch up with her as soon as I was done, but for a few minutes I just sat in the room, trying to make sense of what I’d found out about my own past. It was a relief in one sense, to finally know. But I had no idea if I even wanted to contact my biological father to get the rest of the story, the stuff my files had left out.
“I’d better get back to her,” I told myself, more to stir myself into leaving the room than anything else. I tried to think of someone I could talk to about what I’d found out, but I couldn’t bring a single name to mind. My adoptive parents had died a few years before, leaving me with their estate. I didn’t have any siblings, and my friends weren’t the type that I would normally talk about something like this with.
I thought about talking to Bethany about it--I’d even promised her I’d explain myself after I had the information. But we’d be around her classmates for the next several hours, and I wasn’t about to risk making the whole thing go pear-shaped for the sake of bouncing my troubled thoughts off of her. After the luau, or maybe after the dance, I’d talk to her about it. I’d see what she had to say.
I hurried downstairs and went out to the car. It had started snowing lightly, but I figured it wouldn’t harm anything too much—the forecast had promised it wouldn’t do much more than put a light little scrim of frost on what was already on the ground, after the big snowstorm.
I climbed into the car and started for the hotel where the luau was going on, and tried to push the news I’d gotten out of my mind for a few hours, at least until I could actually talk to Bethany about it. “It’ll be fun to see her face, at least,” I said to myself. That gave me a smile, and I focused on getting the rest of my official job done for the day, instead of on my weirdly sordid past. It would be better that way, I told myself. I might even have fun--and I should arrive in time to make sure that Bethany learned how to hula.