Someone Like Her Read online

  She cleared her throat again. “This woman…ah, Ms. Peterson, says she’s in the hospital and needs you.”

  In the hospital? That meant…she was alive? His heart did a peculiar stutter. Adrian had assumed she was dead. Maybe preferred thinking she was.

  Oh, hell, he thought in disgust, this was probably some kind of hoax. Still, he didn’t seem to have any choice but to hear her out. “Send her in,” he ordered, and hung up.

  The wait seemed long. When the door did open, he saw Carol first, elegant in a sleek black suit and heels that made the most of her legs. He quit noticing his administrative assistant the moment the other woman walked in. Nor was he aware of Carol quietly closing the door behind her. He couldn’t take his eyes from this unexpected visitor.

  He guessed her age as late twenties. Lacking the style of an average urban high schooler, she was as out of place as a girl from small-town Iowa wandering into the big city for the first time. Of middle height and slender, she wore a dress, something flowery that came nearly to her knees. Bare legs, flat shoes. Her hair, a soft, mousy brown, was parted in the middle and partially clipped back. He doubted she wore any makeup at all, which was too bad; she might be beautiful after a few hours at a good salon. It was her eyes that he reacted to, despite himself. Huge and blue, they devoured his face as she crossed the room, the intensity enough to make him shift in his seat.

  Adrian had never seen her in his life, and couldn’t imagine how she’d found him.

  Showing no emotion, he held out a hand. “I’m Adrian Rutledge.”

  She shook with utter composure. “My name’s Lucy Peterson.”

  “Ms. Peterson.” He gestured at a chair. “Please. Have a seat.”

  “Thank you.” She sat, smoothing her skirt over her knees.

  She didn’t look like his mother. He realized that had been his first fear; that he had an unknown half sister. Not that children always did look like their parents, he reminded himself. The possibility was still on the table.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I assume you know nothing of your mother’s whereabouts.”

  Dark anger rose in him at this blunt beginning. Who the hell was she to sit in judgment on him? And she was, he could tell, despite her careful tone.

  “And you know this because…?”

  “I live over on the peninsula. Your mother has been homeless in my town for the past ten years. I’m reasonably certain no family has visited her or offered any support.”

  What in hell?

  Adrian sat back in his leather desk chair. After a moment, he said, “You’re correct in thinking I have no contact with my mother. But tell me just why it is that you believe some homeless woman is my mother? Did she give you my name?”

  This Lucy Peterson shook her head. “No. After she was in the accident, I searched her things. It wasn’t easy.” She seemed to assume he’d care. “She had a shopping cart, but she also had several stashes around town. She liked clothes. And hats. Especially hats. We called her the hat lady.” She paused, as if embarrassed.

  Between one blink and the next, Adrian saw a park, maybe—lots of lawn, flowering trees in the background. His mother barefoot and twirling, a cotton skirt swirling bell-like, her arms flung out in exuberance. She was laughing; he could almost hear the laugh, openly joyous. And see the hat, broad-brimmed and encircled with flowers. The image seemed skewed, as if he’d been dizzy, and he suspected he might have been twirling, too.

  He stamped down on the memory. Unclenching his jaw, he asked hoarsely, “What did you find?”

  In answer, she bent to open the purse she’d set at her feet and removed a white envelope. “A very old driver’s license,” she said, and handed it to him.

  In shock, he stared at his mother’s face. She was so pretty. He’d forgotten. Department of Motor Vehicles photos were usually god-awful, the equivalent of mug shots, but hers was the exception. A soft smile curved her mouth, although her eyes looked sad. Honey-blond, wavy hair was cut, flapper style, at chin length. She’d had beautiful cheekbones, a small, straight nose and that mouth, a cupid’s bow.

  He forced himself to read the information: Elizabeth H. Rutledge, the expiration date—one year after she disappeared from his life—and the basic stats, hair blond, height five foot five, weight 118, eyes blue.

  Not as blue as Lucy Peterson’s, he thought involuntarily, looking up.

  He had no idea what his face showed, but those eyes were filled with compassion as she handed him something else. As he accepted it involuntarily he looked down, and experienced a spasm of agony. The photograph had faded and cracked, but he remembered the moment. They had dressed for church, and his grandmother had snapped it. His father was tall and stern, but his arm wrapped his wife protectively. She wore a pretty, navy-blue dress with a wide red belt, and on her head was a hat, this one a small red cloche with only a feather decorating it. And he…he stood beside her, his arm about her waist, her hand resting on his shoulder. He remembered feeling proud and mature and yet filled with some anxiety, as though there had been a family quarrel earlier. He might have been seven or eight, his dark hair slicked firmly into place, the suit and white shirt and tie a near match to his father’s. He could just make out the house behind them, the one in Edmonds where they’d lived, painted sunny yellow with white trim, the yard brimming with flowers.

  He was speechless. His mother had left him, and never once in all the intervening years made contact, yet she’d kept and treasured this photo?

  Not just the photo—Lucy was handing over yet one more memento, this one made of red construction paper. On the front was a drawing, the next best thing to stick figures, an adult and a child seemingly holding hands. A woman, because she wore a skirt. His mother, because she also wore a hat festooned with…God. Those had to be flowers. And beneath, in big, uneven letters that suggested he might have been in kindergarten or first grade, it said “Mom and me.”

  As if through a time warp, he heard his own voice say, “Mom and me are going to the park.” And don’t try to stop us, the defiance in the words suggested. As if he had an eye pressed to a kaleidoscope that spun dizzily, he saw scene after scene, all accompanied by his voice, younger, older, in between, saying, “Mom and me are gonna…” She was his playmate, his best friend, his charge. He stayed close to her. He took care of her.

  Until she disappeared, the summer he wasn’t home to take care of her.

  “God,” he whispered, and let the card fall to the desk. He bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  Lucy Peterson sat silent, letting him process all of this.

  He felt as if he’d just been in a car accident. No warning; another vehicle running a red light, maybe, slamming into his. This was the moment of silence afterward, when he sat stunned, trying to decide if he was injured, knowing he’d start hurting any minute.

  He lifted his head and said fiercely, “And you know this…homeless person is her? Elizabeth Rutledge.”

  Lucy bit her lip and nodded. “I had no idea, until I found the driver’s license. I guessed her name was Elizabeth. She always went by some variant of it. But that’s all any of us knew.”

  “She didn’t tell you her name?”

  “She…took on different names. All famous people, or fictional ones. I think she believed she was them, for a while. I never saw the moment of transition. One day she’d be Elizabeth Bennett, from Pride and Prejudice, you know, and then Queen Elizabeth. Not the first,” she added hastily. “She said Queen Bess was bloodthirsty. Elizabeth the second.”

  “I’m surprised she wasn’t the Queen Mother,” he said involuntarily.

  “Because of the hats? But she wasn’t an Elizabeth, and your mother didn’t take on any persona that wasn’t.”

  Abruptly he heard the verb tense she was using. Took on. She believed. Not takes on, or believes.

  “I thought you said she was in the hospital.”

  She looked startled. “I did.”

  “Yo
u’re talking about her as if she’s dead.”

  “Oh.” Once again she worried the lip, as if she often did. “I’m sorry. It’s just…the prognosis isn’t very good, I’m afraid. She’s in a coma.”

  When he asked, she told him what had happened. That she’d been pushing her shopping cart across the highway, probably on her way to the Safeway store on the other side. The car that hit her had been going too fast, the police had determined, but she had likely been in her own world and hadn’t looked before starting across, either.

  “She was sent flying twenty feet. The cart…” She swallowed. “It was flattened. Her things strewn everywhere. That was over a week ago. She hasn’t stirred since. There was swelling in her brain at first, of course, but they drilled into her skull to relieve it. Which sounds gruesome, but…”

  He nodded jerkily. “I understand.”

  “The thing is, until now it never occurred to any of us to try to find her family. I’m ashamed that it didn’t. We tried to take care of her, as much as she’d let us, but…She was just a fixture. You know? Now I wonder, if I’d pushed her—”

  “If she didn’t know who she was, how could she tell you?”

  “But she must have remembered something, or she wouldn’t have held on to those. Oh, and these rings.” She took them from the envelope and dropped them into his outstretched hand.

  A delicate gold wedding band, and an engagement ring with a sizeable diamond. Undoubtedly his father’s choice. Adrian remembered it digging into his palm when he grabbed at his mother’s hand.

  He wanted to feel numb. “She could have sold these.”

  “It wasn’t just the rings she was holding on to,” Lucy said softly, her gaze on them. “She was holding on to who she was. On to you.”

  “I haven’t heard from her in twenty-three years.” He felt sick and angry, and the words were harsh.

  “Do you think she didn’t love you?”

  He hated seeing the pity in her eyes. Jaw tightening, he said, “Let’s get back to facts. Where is she?”

  “Middleton Community Hospital. Middleton’s not far off Highway 101, over the Hood Canal Bridge.”

  He nodded, already calculating what he had to cancel. Of course, he’d want to transfer her to a Seattle hospital rather than leave her in the hands of a small-town doctor, but first he had to get over there and assess the situation.

  “I was hoping you might come,” Lucy said.

  Glancing at the clock, he said, “I’ll be there by evening. I have to clear my schedule and pack a few things.”

  He saw the relief on her face, and knew she hadn’t been sure how he’d react. He might not be willing to drop everything and come running, had his mother walked out on her family for another man, say, or for mercenary reasons. As it was, he might never know why she’d gone, but it was clear she was mentally ill. His childish self had known she wasn’t quite like other mothers. Even then, she’d battled depression and a tendency to hear voices and see people no one else saw.

  Schizophrenia, he’d guessed coldly as an adult, and still guessed. Her reasons for whatever she’d done were unlikely to make sense to anyone but her. There might be nothing he could do for her now, but she was his obligation and no one else’s.

  He rose to his feet. “You can tell her doctor to expect me.”

  She nodded, thanked him rather gravely, and left, apparently satisfied by the success of her errand.

  He called Carol and told her to cancel everything on his book for the rest of the week. Then, with practiced efficiency, he began to pack his briefcase. Hospital visiting hours would be limited. Once he’d seen the doctor, he could get plenty done in his hotel room.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ADRIAN HAD NEVER taken a journey during which he’d been less eager to reach his destination.

  Instead of turning on his laptop to work while he waited in line for the ferry, he brooded about what awaited him in Middleton.

  He knew one thing: other people besides Lucy Peterson would be looking at him with silent condemnation as they wondered how a man misplaced his mother.

  Yeah, Dad, how did you lose her?

  Or had he discarded her? In retrospect, Adrian had often wondered. He loved his grandparents, but he hadn’t wanted to spend an entire summer in Nova Scotia without his mother. Some part of him had known she needed him. Years later, as he grew older, he’d realized that his father had arranged the lengthy visit so that no fiercely protective little boy would be around to object or ask questions when Elizabeth was sent away.

  Supposedly she’d gone to a mental hospital. His father had never taken Adrian to visit, probably never visited himself. Perhaps a year later he’d told Adrian that she had checked herself out of the hospital.

  With a shrug, he said, “Clearly, she didn’t want to get well and come home. I doubt we’ll ever hear from her again.”

  Subject dismissed. That was the last said between them. The last that ever would be said; his father had died two years ago in a small plane crash.

  Adrian moved his shoulders to release tension. Let the good citizens of Middleton stare; he didn’t care what they thought. He was there to claim his mother, that was all.

  What if he didn’t recognize her? If he gazed at the face of this unconscious woman and couldn’t find even a trace of the mother he remembered in her?

  Ask for DNA testing, of course, but was that really what worried him? Or did his unease come from a fear that he wouldn’t recognize her on a more primitive level? Shouldn’t he know his mother? What if he saw her and felt nothing?

  He grunted and started the car as the line in front of him began to move. God knows he hadn’t felt much for his mother. Why would he expect to, for a woman he hadn’t seen in twenty-three years?

  Usually, he would have stayed in his car during the crossing and worked. But his mood was strange today, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate. Instead, he followed most of the passengers to the upper deck, then went outside at the prow.

  This early in the spring, the wind on the sound had a bite. He hadn’t bothered to change clothes at home, had stopped at his Belltown condominium only long enough to throw what he thought he’d need into a suitcase. He buttoned his suit jacket to keep his tie from whipping over his shoulders, leaned against the railing and watched the gulls swoop over the ferry and the late-afternoon sunlight dance in shards off the choppy waves.

  Why would his mother have chosen Middleton? Adrian wondered. How had she even found it? It was barely a dot on the map, likely a logging town once upon a time. Logging had been the major industry over here on the Olympic Peninsula until the forests had been devastated and hard times had come. Tourism had replaced logging on much of the peninsula, but what tourist would seek out Middleton, for God’s sake? It wasn’t on Hood Canal or the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the north. It was out in the middle of goddamn nowhere.

  Why, Mom? Why?

  He drove off the ferry at Winslow, on the tip of Bainbridge Island, then followed the two-lane highway that was a near straight-shot the length of the island, across the bridge and past the quaint town of Poulsbo. From then on, civilization pretty much disappeared but for a few gas stations and houses. Traffic was heavy, with this a Friday, so he couldn’t eat up the miles the way he’d have liked to. No chance to pass, no advantage if he’d been able to. He crossed the Hood Canal Bridge, the water glittering in the setting sunlight. Summer homes clung like barnacles along the shore. Then forest closed in, second-growth and empty of any evidence of human habitation.

  Reluctance swelled in him and clotted in his chest. A couple of times he rubbed his breastbone as if he’d relieve heartburn. The light was fading by the time he spotted the sign: Middleton, 5 Miles.

  He was the only one in the line of traffic to make the turn. And why would anyone? Along with distaste for what lay ahead came increasing bafflement at his mother’s choice. How had she even gotten here? Did the town boast a Greyhound station? Had she gone as far as her money held ou
t? Stabbed her finger at a map? Or had some vagary of fate washed her up here?

  So close to Seattle, and yet she’d never tried to get in touch with him.

  So weirdly far from Seattle in every way that counted.

  The speed limit dropped to thirty-five and he obediently slowed as the highway—if you could dignify it with that name—entered the outskirts. He saw the Safeway store almost immediately, and his foot lifted involuntarily from the gas pedal. Here. She was hit here. Flung to one of these narrow paved shoulders. With dark encroaching, he couldn’t see where, or if any evidence remained.

  Ahead, he saw the blue hospital sign, but some impulse made him turn the other direction, toward downtown. The Burger King on the left seemed the only outpost of the modern world. Otherwise, the town he saw under streetlights probably hadn’t changed since the 1950s. There was an old-fashioned department store, churches—he saw three church spires without looking hard—pharmacy, hardware store. Some of the buildings had false fronts. All of the town’s meager commerce seemed to lie along the one main street, except for the Safeway.

  A memory stirred in his head. Wasn’t there a Middleton in Nova Scotia? Or a Middleburg, or Middle-something? Had this town sounded like home to his mother? Had she stayed, then, because it felt like home, or because people here were good to her? Lucy Peterson had expressed guilt that they hadn’t done more, but she’d obviously cared.

  More than Elizabeth Rutledge’s own family had.

  His jaw muscles spasmed. If this woman was his mother, he’d have to tell his grandmother, who was frail but at eighty-two was still living in her house in the town of Brookfield in Nova Scotia. Would she be glad? Or grieve terribly to know what her daughter’s life had been like?

  He ran out of excuses not to go to the hospital after a half-dozen city blocks. There wasn’t much to this town.

  The hospital was about what he’d expected: two-story in the central block, with wings to each side. He parked and walked in the front entrance. The white-haired woman behind the desk looked puzzled when he asked for Elizabeth Rutledge. Then her face abruptly cleared.