The wind picks up and I put up my collar to keep it at bay.
Why can’t we have this meeting at a coffee shop or a restaurant, I have no idea. But it’s his call.
He shows up ten minutes later, half an hour late. I wait for him to apologize but he doesn’t offer even a cursory I’m sorry.
I don’t press it because I want to know what he has found.
“Don’t you just love this weather?” Kip Flunderson, the investigator says with a wide, beaming smile across his face.
He is in his sixties with broad shoulders and a casual attitude.
A little too casual if you ask me.
“I’m not a fan of the cold,” I say with a shrug.
He laughs and waves me off as if I’m a fly.
I cross my arms across my chest and shift my weight to the back foot. I kick myself for not stopping for a cup of coffee before coming here.
I had plenty of time since he was half an hour late and didn’t bother to leave me a text.
“Are you okay?” Kip asks.
“Yes,” I lie. “No.”
“Which is it?”
“I wish you had told me you were going to be late,” I blurt out, annoyed.
“I don’t text, kid,” Kip says with that same annoying grin.
“You could have called,” I point out. “Anything would’ve been good.”
Kip opens his jacket and pulls out a manila folder. “How about this?” he asks, holding it out to me.
“What’s this?” I ask, taking it.
"It's everything about Olive Kernes’ mother. Her name. Where she lives. Who she is. Who her family is.”
I open the file and start to peruse the paperwork. The sheer quantity of it takes me by surprise.
“Wow,” I finally say, a little out of breath.
“How did you find this?”
“That’s for me to know and for you to pay me for,” Kip says with his eyes twinkling under the streetlights.
Suddenly, waiting all of this time on the bench overlooking the pond sounds like a small price to pay, along with the actual price of ten thousand dollars.
“You know, I didn’t think there would be so much information about that adoption,” I say.
“Okay, now, Nicholas, tell the truth,” Kip says. “You didn’t think that an old man like me who refuses to communicate via texts would be able to find much of anything.”
“Yeah.” I give him a nod, admitting defeat. “You got me there.”
I hand him the envelope with the ten grand in crisp one hundred dollar bills.
He looks at it, peruses the hundreds but doesn’t count it. Instead, he looks at the size of the stack and then puts it in his pocket.
“So, are you sure that this is her?” I ask, nodding at the folder in my hand.
“Absolutely.”
“But…how can you be so sure?”
“Take it with you. Read through it. If you aren’t satisfied, reach out to me and we’ll talk. I’ll give you a full refund if you find any discrepancies in that file.”
“Really?” I’m taken aback a little bit. “Wow.”
“I stand behind my work 100%.”
“Yes, I guess so,” I say, holding out my hand to him.
His grip is strong and forceful but not like he’s trying hard to impress me.
I wait for him to disappear down the street before I sit back down on the bench and open the folder.
I can barely feel my hands by the time I get to the last page of the folder but I know one thing for sure. This is her mother and everything in this packet has to be true.
It isn’t organized very well or even in any logical manner, but somewhere in the middle of the pile are the results of the DNA test.
Apparently, during these last few weeks, Kip had the time to stalk both Olive and her mother and get samples of their DNA.
I don’t know exactly how he did it but I imagine discarded coffee cups were involved in some way.
In any case, they are a match.
There is a 99.999% certainty that this is her mother.
There is only one thing left to do now; tell Olive.
I put the file safely into my jacket and zip it over it.
It makes a crinkling sound as I walk but I can barely hear it over the pounding of my heartbeat in my head.
This folder feels like it’s going to fix everything. It’s going to make every weirdness between us disappear and make her mine again.
It’s going to be just like it was in the beginning.
It’s going to ignite that spark that pulled us close together and made it impossible for us to stay away from each other.
When I get to the hospital, I look for her in the waiting room, but she’s nowhere to be found.
She’s probably in the bathroom, I say to myself and take a seat.
The hospital feels warm and cozy and I don’t unzip my jacket to cocoon some of that feeling.
“Oh, hey, Marlene!” I yell out to one of the nurses walking briskly past me. “Have you seen Olive recently?”
“You haven’t heard?” she asks with a huge toothy grin. “He’s awake.”
9
Nicholas
When he wakes up…
I hear the hesitation in my knock when my knuckles collide with the wood.
An eternity passes before anyone answers.
I knock again.
Louder this time.
Again, no one answers.
When no one responds, I turn the knob.
I can hear her voice inside.
When I crack the door, Olive’s excitement and exuberance spills out into the hallway.
“Hey…Owen…you’re awake,” I say, walking in.
He is pale and his lips are chapped but there is an inkling of a smile on his face.
Olive waves me over to the bed.
She is talking nonstop and neither Owen nor I try to get a word in edgewise.
Her fingers are intertwined with his and there are dried tears on her cheeks.
“How are you?” I ask when she stops for some air.
I half expect him to get angry at me, but instead he just nods and whispers, “I’m good.”
His voice is raspy, barely audible but I get the sense that he’s happy to see me.
Or at the very least, not upset that I’m here.
Olive tells him how we have all been waiting around the clock for him to wake up outside and how happy we all are that he’s finally back.
“You both, and Mom?” Owen asks slowly, clearing his throat in the middle.
His question is like a punch to the gut to Olive.
She recoils a little bit but quickly gathers her footing and lies.
“Yes, us and Mom,” she lies, squeezing his hand.
When our eyes meet, hers dart away.
We both know that their mother hasn’t been around much.
If she had come here three times over the last month and stayed for more than two hours that would be stretching the truth.
But Owen doesn’t need to know that.
No one wants to hear that about someone who is supposed to love them unconditionally.
“Actually, not just us,” Olive adds. “Sydney and James as well.”
“Your roommate?” Owen asks.
Olive nods, rubbing her hand on his.