Darkmoon(31)

And that is exactly what we did.





6





Unburying the Past





We took our time the next morning, sharing the shower, luxuriating in one another’s company. There was a restaurant on the resort’s grounds, so we wandered over there to fortify ourselves for the day. By the time we were done, it was past ten o’clock, and I knew I couldn’t delay any longer.

“So….” Connor said as we climbed back into the Cherokee. By tacit agreement, he got into the driver’s seat. “Hospital or house?”

“House,” I replied. I’d briefly toyed with the idea of going to Hoag Hospital to see if there was any more information I could dig up, but realized that was a dead end. There might be the remotest chance that there were nurses or doctors still on staff who’d been there when they delivered me, but I kind of doubted it. Twenty-two years was a long time. At least at the house, even if no one was around who remembered Sonya McAllister, there was a slim chance that she might have left something behind, something that could have been kept, just in case.

All right, a very slim chance. But I didn’t have much else to go on.

It turned out that 822 Oceanfront Drive was at almost the opposite end of Newport Beach from the resort where we were staying. We inched our way up Pacific Coast Highway, drove past the Porsche dealerships and yacht dealerships and restaurants, passed the turn-off for the hospital where I’d been born, and then turned left into a development that was built right up against the beach. The houses were all on the large side, vaguely Cape Cod in style with their clapboard siding in various shades of brown and cream and deep gray-blue. I didn’t know a lot about real estate, but I knew anyplace built this close to the ocean had to be extremely expensive. And yet this was where my mother had lived during her time here, had probably conceived me? I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that.

“Maybe it’ll turn out that your father is some long-lost millionaire or something,” Connor suggested, although I noticed he gave me a quick glance to make sure I hadn’t taken the quip the wrong way.

“Maybe,” I allowed. I knew that my mother had told Rachel before she left that she wanted to see the ocean, but this seemed to be taking that idea to the extreme.

Parking was horrendous, of course, but then Connor spotted a convertible Beetle pulling out of a space just ahead of us, and he hit the brakes, waiting for the car to get out of the way. Then he somehow managed to jigger the Cherokee into the too-small spot while I held my breath and hoped he wouldn’t hit the Mercedes in front of us or the Land Rover behind us. Somehow he managed it, though, and we both got out, feeling once again the wind in our hair and tasting salt on the breeze.

“Which way?” he asked.

I looked up at the street signs, trying to calculate which way the house numbers ran. “Up there,” I said, pointing to my left.

In this development, the garages faced out on the street, while the front yards were actually on the ocean side of the houses, their gates opening directly onto the sand. After a few steps, I decided to take off my flip-flops and walked along barefoot, although Connor didn’t seem too eager to abandon his hiking shoes. We progressed slowly, reading the house numbers.

And then there was 822.

It was one of the smaller houses on the block, but still impressive-looking, freshly painted, with a balcony that ran along the entire façade and what looked like a staircase that led up to the roof, probably for more ocean viewing. I’d seen a few houses in Sedona built like that, too. What I didn’t see were any real signs of occupation, like patio furniture or potted plants — unlike the house directly next door, which had a riotous collection of fuchsias and orchids and other tropical flowers I didn’t recognize blooming in the small fenced-in yard.

“What do you think?” Connor murmured, standing close and reaching out to give my hand a reassuring squeeze.

Frankly, I didn’t know what to think. The last thing I’d expected was to come all the way out here and find a house that didn’t look like anyone lived in it. I supposed it could be a vacation home. In fact, that made sense, if it turned out that my mother or her mysterious lover had rented it all those years ago.

In that moment the front door to the house next to it, the one with all the flowers, opened. A trim-looking older woman with expertly highlighted hair came out, holding a water can. She seemed to notice Connor and me right away, and smiled. “Are you looking for someone?”

Well, of course I was, but I couldn’t think of a good way to explain that to her. “Um…sort of,” I confessed. “I think my mother lived here a long time ago. At least, this is the address she put down on the birth certificate.”