Kristin Ashe: A Safe Place To Sleep Part 3

'Too bad you can't hire someone to look for your past while you're looking for hers," she kidded.

"Truly!" I said seriously.

"What's she like, this Destiny?"

"She's incredible, very powerful. I like her, which surprises me. She's the first woman Mich.e.l.le's dated that I genuinely like. The others, I've tolerated, but Destiny's different. She's an amazing woman, especially given the losses she's had in her life. Or maybe because of them."

"Do they go together?"

"Her and Mich.e.l.le?"

Ann nodded.

"Not hardly! They're so different. Destiny seems so independent, so sure of herself. And Mich.e.l.le... well, you know Mich.e.l.le."

"I do!" We both laughed.

'To be fair, though, I haven't actually seen them in the same room yet. I'll be curious to see what they're like as a couple."

The waiter came just then to take our order. After he left, we both were silent for a moment, caught up in our own thoughts.

"You can talk to me if you need to, Kris. I grew up in the same house, you know."

"I know, Ann. Thanks," I said, wishing I could but knowing I couldn't.

That night, in my apartment in the sky, I thought about my life and why I'd decided to take on Destiny's case. More than for any other reason, I think I'd agreed to help her so that I could come to some sort of peace with my own childhood, which had definitely not been a happy one.

What had my parents done? Perhaps their failings were no more serious than those of two people struggling to raise five children when they were barely able to take care of themselves, but to me, they seemed like atrocities.

Bill and Carolyn Ashe. Their sins began when they married but never fell in love. He was back from the Navy, she was nearing the old-maid age, and their families were from the same Catholic parish. Reasons enough for matrimony. If they didn't love each other, at least their backgrounds were alike. He became an architect. She taught school for one year and then spent the next twenty raising children and resenting the loss of her career.

They were married August 1, 1957. Within days of the ceremony, my mom was pregnant. Ann was born the following May. Gail came one year and one day after that. I was born seventeen months after her. David arrived three years after me.

Adding it all up, by the time my mother was my age, twenty-nine, she had four children, ages six, five, four and one. For a woman who never liked children, much less loved them, she was under severe stress. But she was also Catholic. G.o.d forbid she should have exercised her right over the pope's to control her own body.

Four years later, a fifth child was born and somehow, that was the beginning of the end. Capping off nine months of a difficult pregnancy and acute depression was the birth of my sister Jill.

By all accounts, that's when my mother started to go crazy.

She took to her bed for days on end and didn't come out for years. My father held a steady, professional job, golfed every chance he got, and without fail, drank four beers a night. We children ran the house and raised ourselves.

As I lay in bed, I remembered the effect my mother's depression had on me. I remembered walking home from school every day in the third grade, looking up to her bedroom window (for as long as any of us could recall, my mother and father had separate bedrooms). Open curtains meant she was up and about, maybe even acting normal that day. Drawn curtains meant she was still in bed. Maybe we'd eat dinner that night. Maybe we wouldn't. Maybe she'd speak to us. Maybe she wouldn't.

I remembered the Pepsis she drank and the cigarettes she smoked. Most of all, I remembered the way she looked after lying in bed for a week.

I remembered all the years she'd held the family hostage with her moods and her depression. I remembered fearing her and hating her. I never remembered loving her or being loved by her.

As for my father, I remembered he was an alcoholic, though no one dared call him that because he only drank beer and never got drunk. I remembered all the times he'd sent me to the garage. That's where we children ate if we smarted off at the dinner table. I'd spent many nights sitting next to the station wagon, wearing my purple parka, watching the blackened clumps of ice slowly melt away from the tires, trying not to breathe exhaust fumes as I chewed my food.

But I also remembered another side of him. I still had a book he'd given me when I was eight, What Every Woman Should Know About Football, the inscription inside alluding to better times, "Love, Mommy and Daddy."

Thoughts of my family kept me awake for hours, but when I finally did sleep, I dreamed about loving a child.

I got out of bed wondering what it would have been like to raise myself. On my way to work, I realized maybe I'd have the chance.

Chapter 4.

My dream prompted me to make a call when I got to work. I rang Peggy Wood, who had worked for me years ago as a copywriter, and asked her if I could see Zeb and Jessica. It had been more than a year since I'd seen her six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter.

Waking up that morning, I'd realized how much I missed them.

With Peggy's permission, I arranged to take them to the zoo the next day. They were ecstatic. I could hear their childish enthusiasm across the phone lines and it infected me. I hung up the phone feeling lighter than I'd felt in a long time.

I spent the rest of the morning preparing for my appointment with Benjamin Greaves. I made a list of questions to ask him. I combed my hair, trying to make it look like I didn't need a haircut. I dug my leather briefcase out of the storage closet. When all of this was done, I was ready for the first step in my search for Destiny's childhood.

I drove the short distance from my comfortable, informal office to his high-priced, contemporary office in a gla.s.s tower in the center of downtown. When I got off the elevator on the thirty-fifth floor of the Downtown Plaza Building, I was surprised to discover Greaves and a.s.sociates, Certified Public Accountants, occupied the entire floor.

I was led to the big man's office by a receptionist who looked bored with her job and my presence. Once there, I was met by another woman who introduced herself as "Mr. Greaves' secretary." She never did tell me her name. Instead, she offered me something to drink. I think she meant coffee or tea. I suggested c.o.ke. She frowned but came back shortly with a can of the real thing and a gla.s.s of ice. Before long, I was escorted into the president's office.

Benjamin Greaves greeted me warmly, as if we were old friends. He strode across the room and took my extended hand into both of his. He offered me a seat on one of the three couches in the room and then, instead of returning to the imposing seat behind his desk ten feet away, he positioned himself across from me in a comfortable, overstuffed chair. When he sat, his pot belly easily filled his lap. His thick black hair was parted on the side and graying at the temples. Bushy eyebrows dwarfed his blue eyes.

From my briefcase, I pulled a tiny tape recorder.

"Will Destiny be listening to this?" he asked as I inserted a fresh tape into the recorder.

"She might be. For now, I'm just gathering information and summarizing it for her. At some point, she might want to sift through it all. That's why I'll be taping everything a" to make sure she can if she wants to."

"Fair enough," he said easily.

"Ready to go?" I pushed the record b.u.t.ton.

"Before we start, Kristin, if you don't mind, could I ask you a few questions?"

"Sure."

"What exactly is your relationship with my daughter?"

"What do you mean?" Self-consciously, I glanced at the tape recorder. What had Destiny told him about me? How could I answer that question without giving him an answer?

"Are you special friends?" He looked at me quizzically.

"Oh, no!" I said truthfully. "Nothing like that."

"I wish Destiny could find a nice girl to love. Excuse my boldness, but you seem like a nice girl." He smiled at me.

I started to smile back but then caught myself. This man was smooth. I'd have to watch it or the tape would run out and there would be nothing about the past on it and everything about the present.

It also bothered me that I couldn't get a read on him. I couldn't tell if he was trying to put me at ease, or if he was trying to distract me from the task at hand.

I could have told him the truth about me and Destiny, that we'd only met yesterday, that she'd hired me to investigate her past, that she was dating my friend Mich.e.l.le, but I didn't. Frankly, I thought the truth was too intimidating. For a moment, I wished that Destiny and I genuinely were friends and that she wasn't my client.

"We're good friends," I said without blinking, and he seemed to accept that.

Before he could think of another question, I blurted out one of my own.

"What exactly has Destiny told you about what I'm doing?"

"She told me you'd be coming here to ask questions about her natural parents."

"Mmm."

"She also instructed me to tell you everything I know. She was quite adamant about that."

"How do you feel about her instructions?"

He didn't reply at once. I watched him pick his words, almost one by one.

"I'm relieved she wants to know, I suppose. I've often wondered why she didn't come to me sooner. For a time, I was even disturbed by her apparent lack of interest in these people who cared for her the first four years of her life. It didn't seem normal."

"What's normal for a young girl who loses both her parents when she's only four years old?" I blurted out, surprising myself with the harshness of my tone.

Destiny's father didn't seem taken aback by my forcefulness.

"You have a point there," he said equably. "I suppose that's why I never pushed her. I hoped she'd come to me someday...."

He paused, a faraway look in his eyes.

"To be candid, Kristin, I never would have imagined she'd send someone in her place. It's odd. We're quite close, closer than most fathers and daughters, I'd venture to say. It's strange she didn't come to me herself. I can't quite understand her motivations."

"Even if you don't understand her, Mr. Greaves, try not to judge her," I said gently. "It took a lot of courage for her to come this far. It's not for us to say if this is far enough."

He looked at me sharply, then softened his features.

"You're right again, young lady. How can I help you... or help Destiny?"

He shifted back in his chair, extended his long legs and put his feet up on the coffee table in front of him. His left foot covered Business Week, his right foot covered Fortune. I was starting to like him. I took the liberty of matching his pose and put both my feet on President Bush's face, which was disgracing the cover of Newsweek.

'Tell me about how you and your wife came to adopt Destiny."

"Let's see... I met Destiny's mother, Liz, when we were seniors at the University of Denver. After we graduated, she went off to Europe for a year a" her parents' graduation present to her. Shortly after she returned, we were married."

"Were you in love?"

He intently studied the pattern on his tie. Finally, he looked up and spoke.

"I suppose we were before Liz went to Europe. When she was gone, to occupy my time, I took a few other girls on dates, but nothing serious. When Liz came back, I wouldn't say we were in love, but we did feel a great deal of affection for one another. After her return, our relationship was strained at first. She seemed different, quite a bit more mature, as if she'd aged ten years instead of one. I always suspected she had an affair with a man in Europe, but she never told me about her year away and I never asked."

"How old were you when you got married?"

"We were both twenty-four." He paused. "We honored our wedding vows for almost twenty-five years. Then one day, she asked for a divorce and I granted it. It was quite civil, a formality almost."

"Tell me about Destiny a" when did you decide to adopt a child?"

"For several years after we got married, we tried to have a child of our own a" without success. When we finally faced the fact that we couldn't have children, Liz insisted we adopt. She was quite anxious to be a mother."

"Er, what prevented you from having children?" I delicately posed the question, hoping for a discreet answer. The gentleman didn't disappoint me.

"I don't know exactly. I suspected something was wrong with Liz's, ahm, workings. I never knew for sure, though. In those days, there weren't the tests available that there are today. Also, I don't think either of us wanted to know for certain. Too much finger-pointing, you know. Even then, Liz and I had an uncanny knack for using that sort of thing against one another."

I saw his point.

"I didn't realize this until years later, but the more we began to realize we couldn't have a child, the more we wanted to have one. We were both quite accustomed to getting our way in the world. We saw this a" our barrenness a" as an insult."

How bizarre! I wasn't sure Destiny would ever be ready to hear what was on this tape.

"But we also saw it as a challenge, and we set out to adopt a child."

"How did you go about that?"

"Privately. If you've been around the block even once, you'll find the private sector always operates more efficiently than the public one."

Remembering my last trip to the post office, I nodded in agreement.

"It was set up through our church, Church of Christ."

"A Catholic church?"

"Yes. At the time, Liz and I were both practicing Catholics. We raised Destiny as a Catholic."

Poor Destiny.

"By the time we finally put our name on a waiting list, they told us it would be two or three years before we'd get a healthy, Caucasian infant."

"Did you want an infant?"

"I did initially. I don't know if Liz did, but she went crazy when she heard how long we'd have to wait. As I said, the more times we, er, had relations without conceiving, the more desperate she became."

"You couldn't wait a couple of years?"

"No, we couldn't. We wanted to get on with the business of having a family. I was a practical man. I couldn't give a home to a child who wasn't Caucasian. Liz couldn't provide care for a child who was ill. We both knew that much about ourselves. As I said, I was practical. Older children needed homes, too. I was content to settle for an older child. Liz agreed, although she insisted the child be a girl."