“So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason—to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?” Molly asks when Vivian reads some of these stories aloud.
“It certainly helps,” Vivian says. She is sitting in one wingback with a laptop, scrolling through stories from the Kansas archives, and Molly in the other, reading actual books from Vivian’s library. She’s already plowed through Oliver Twist and is deep into David Copperfield when Vivian squeaks.
Molly looks up, startled. She’s never heard Vivian make that sound. “What is it?”
“I think . . .” Vivian murmurs, her face glowing bluish in the skim-milk tint from the screen as she moves two fingers down across the trackpad, “I think I may have just found Carmine. The boy from the train.” She lifts the computer from her lap and hands it to Molly.
The page is titled Carmine Luten—Minnesota—1929.
“They didn’t change his name?”
“Apparently not,” Vivian says. “Look—here’s the woman who took him out of my arms that day.” She points at the screen with a curved finger, urging Molly to scroll down. “An idyllic childhood, the piece says. They called him Carm.”
Molly reads on: Carm, it appears, was lucky. He grew up in Park Rapids. Married his high school sweetheart, became a salesman like his father. She lingers over the photographs: one taken of him with his new parents, just as Vivian described them—his mother, slight and pretty, his father tall and thin, chubby Carmine with his dark curly hair and crossed eyes nestled between them. There’s a picture of him on his wedding day, eyes fixed, wearing glasses, beaming beside a round-cheeked, chestnut-haired girl as they cut a many-tiered white cake—and then one of him bald and smiling, an arm around his plumper but still recognizable wife, with a caption noting their fiftieth wedding anniversary.
Carmine’s story has been written by his son, who clearly did lots of research, even making the pilgrimage to New York to scour the records of the Children’s Aid Society. The son discovered that Carmine’s birth mother, a new arrival from Italy, died in childbirth, and his destitute father gave him up. Carmine, it says in a postscript, died peacefully at the age of seventy-four in Park Rapids.
“I like knowing that Carmine had a good life,” Vivian says. “That makes me happy.”
Molly goes to Facebook and types in the name of Carmine’s son, Carmine Luten Jr. There’s only one. She clicks on the photo tab and hands the laptop back to Vivian. “I can set up an account for you, if you want. You could send his son a friend request or a Facebook message.”
Vivian peers at the pictures of Carmine’s son with his wife and grandchildren on a recent vacation—at Harry Potter’s castle, on a roller coaster, standing next to Mickey Mouse. “Good Lord. I’m not ready for that. But . . .” She looks at Molly. “You’re good at this, aren’t you?”
“At what?”
“Finding people. You found your mother. And Maisie. And now this.”
“Oh. Well, not really, I just type in some words—”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day,” she breaks in. “About looking for the child I gave away. I never told anybody this, but all those years I lived in Hemingford, anytime I saw a girl with blond hair around her age, my heart jumped. I was desperate to know what became of her. But I thought I had no right. Now I wonder . . . I wonder if maybe we should try to find her.” She looks directly at Molly. Her face is unguarded, full of longing. “If I decide that I’m ready, will you help me?”
Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011
The phone rings and rings in the cavernous house, several receivers in different rooms trilling in different keys.
“Terry?” Vivian’s voice rises shrilly. “Terry, can you get that?”
Molly, sitting across from Vivian in the living room, puts her book down and starts to rise. “Sounds like it’s in here.”
“I’m looking for it, Vivi,” Terry calls from another room. “Is a phone in there?”
“It might be,” Vivian says, craning to look around. “I can’t tell.”
Vivian is sitting in her favorite chair, the faded red wingback closest to the window, laptop open, nursing a cup of tea. It’s another teacher-enrichment day at school, and Molly is studying for finals. Though it’s midmorning, they haven’t yet opened the curtains; Vivian finds the glare on her screen too strong until about eleven.
Terry bustles in, half muttering to herself and half to the room. “Jeez Louise, this is why I like landlines. I never should’ve let Jack talk us into cordless. I swear—oh, here it is.” She pulls a receiver out from behind a pillow on the couch. “Hello?” She pauses, hand on her hip. “Yes, this is Mrs. Daly’s residence. Can I ask who’s calling?”