Baked Alaska Read online

  “Why did you have my mother’s picture?”

  They all turned around to see Ms. Lewish coming down the hallway, the picture in her hand, though she no longer had the documents.

  Ms. Lewish reached Breanna and pushed her aside before Bre had a chance to hold her ground. They were similar in height, but Ms. Lewish was built larger and was sturdier than Breanna’s more willowy form. Pete wouldn’t be so easy to get past, and Ms. Lewish stopped a few feet away from him. Her eyes cut past Pete to land on Sadie, who returned her stare. As they faced off, Sadie was surprised to feel an odd bond with the younger woman; she wanted answers, just like Sadie did.

  “What were you doing with this?” Ms. Lewish asked again, holding out the photo.

  Pete turned sideways, looking back and forth between the women on either side of him.

  Sadie couldn’t think of any reason not to be honest. “She was talking to my son on the first day of the cruise, but he wouldn’t tell me who she was. I don’t really know why I bought it. Just wanted answers, I guess, and thinking it might have some.”

  Sadie didn’t expect her words to affect the woman so strongly, but the confrontational look on Ms. Lewish’s face disappeared. The photograph dropped to her side as she looked past Sadie to Shawn.

  “This is your . . . adoptive mother?”

  A flash of heat landed in the middle of Sadie’s chest. Adoptive mother?

  Shawn’s hand was suddenly at Sadie’s back, pulling at her shirt as he moved down the hall, taking her away from Ms. Lewish. “Mom,” he said from behind her, but didn’t finish his thought as Sadie fought and pulled against his attempts to remove her from this confrontation.

  “She doesn’t know?” Ms. Lewish continued, still looking at Shawn.

  “No, I don’t know,” Sadie said quickly, finding her voice and trying to dig her heels into the cheap carpet. She threw an elbow behind her and hit Shawn, but it didn’t seem to faze him. “I don’t have any idea what’s happening here.”

  “Sadie,” Pete said.

  “Mom,” Breanna said at the same time that Ms. Lewish also spoke.

  “I’m Shawn’s birth sister,” she said. She lifted the photo and pointed at Tanice. Sadie’s entire body froze in dreadful anticipation. “This is our birth mother.”

  Chapter 11

  “As a reminder, disembarkation is taking place on deck seven, midship and aft, with a wheelchair-accessible exit on deck four, aft. Please join us back on the ship tonight at eight and ten for the tribute to the Temptations in the Starlight Theater on decks nine and ten, forward. All passengers must be back on the ship by nine thirty tonight. Have a lovely afternoon in Juneau, Alaska.”

  Sadie let the cruise director’s words go in one ear and out the other while she leaned against the railing of deck thirteen forward and stared at the expansive forest that made up the backdrop of Alaska’s capitol city. It was obvious that the city planners had tried to preserve the land as much as possible. In the class about the different ports, Sadie had learned that Juneau was only accessible by boat or plane—there were no roads that crossed through the mountains. Though it taxed Sadie’s levels of poetry, she could relate to the feeling of stuckness that some of the Juneauites must feel from time to time. If the weather was bad, or the water too rough, they had no choice but to stay put, right? Kind of like she had no choice but to stay and deal with everything she’d learned, everything Shawn had been keeping from her.

  Shawn’s birth mother was named Lorraina Juxteson—not Tanice—and had discovered his profile on an adoption reunification website eight months ago. He’d only posted his profile a couple of months earlier but hadn’t determined how to tell Sadie about his search before they found each other, so he chose simply to not tell her anything at all. He’d pursued the relationship with his birth mother without Sadie’s knowledge. In fact, the reason he’d only stayed in Colorado for a few days at Christmastime wasn’t because of work, it was because he’d spent the rest of the break in Knoxville, Tennessee, with his real mother. That’s not what he’d called her, of course, but it’s how the term “birth mother” sounded to Sadie’s ears. He’d met some of Lorraina’s family; they had a single picture of him, taken at the hospital before Lorraina had signed the paperwork putting him up for adoption.

  A stiff breeze came at Sadie from behind, barely moving her gelled-stiff curls, and she shivered. She looked around for a deck chair she could settle into, as though being more comfortable would help her work things out in her head. She’d always known her children might one day want to seek out their birth parents. Both adoptions had been closed, with minimal information about the birth parents made available to Sadie and her late husband, Neil. Today, birth parents often received pictures or even had visits with their biological children, but twenty-something years ago, things had been different. Even so, Sadie would have told them everything she knew and helped them in their search, even if it were painful. It was far more painful to be left out; being excluded from this important discovery made her feel so oddly insignificant.

  And after all these years, this woman—Lorraina—could waltz in and share Sadie’s motherhood? Just like that?

  Sadie had thought that the woman’s obvious drunkenness of the night before would have worn off by morning, but the opposite had taken place. Lorraina had gone into arrhythmia not long after being taken to the infirmary and had stopped breathing at one point, requiring a breathing tube. As her condition worsened, the medical staff onboard the ship reached the limit of care they could give her and the decision had been made to transport her to a hospital in Juneau. A helicopter had picked her up early in the morning while Sadie had been fast asleep. Lorraina was now in the Intensive Care unit in Juneau. Shawn said that Lorraina was a recovered alcoholic with a bad liver. Her condition was serious.

  Sadie’s feelings were twisted and complicated and hard to make sense of in her own head, let alone put into words. That’s why she’d excused herself after Shawn’s rushed explanation. She needed some time alone to line up her thoughts.

  Now that she’d had that time, she could admit she was angry, but felt guilty for it. Sadie was hurt that Shawn hadn’t told her, but felt guilty about that too. She knew his pain was greater than hers, and yet she still hurt so much that she didn’t know how to talk to him about what he was feeling. She was also sad, and that just made her feel silly because, regardless of how she felt, the birth mother Shawn had only recently met was fighting for her life. It said a lot about Lorraina’s condition that she had been life-flighted off the ship just a few hours before they docked.

  Sadie closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair while zipping her jacket up a little higher. It wasn’t all that cold—mid-50s—but her lack of movement made her more sensitive to the chill.

  Shawn, Breanna, and Pete were probably worried; she’d been gone for nearly an hour. There was cell service now that they were in port, but Sadie had ignored the text messages that had chimed on her phone, certain they were from the three people she really didn’t want to talk to right now. Surely there was a thought or realization on the fringe of her consciousness that would help even out her jumbled emotions. Surely if she took enough time to meditate and think things through, she’d find salvation somewhere.

  “Mrs. Hoffmiller?”

  Sadie looked at the top of the stairs where Shawn’s birth sister stood, looking at her with trepidation.

  “May I speak with you?”

  Sadie didn’t want to talk to anyone, and yet the fact that this woman had told her the truth before Sadie’s own family had counted for something. Not only had Shawn hidden the truth from her, but Breanna had known for a few months. When Pete had learned about it last night, he had agreed with Shawn that telling Sadie in the morning was a better choice. It galled her to have been the one left out when she felt as though she deserved to know more than any of the rest of them, other than Shawn. But Ms. Lewish had nothing to do with all that, and it was nice not to be angry at someone.

>   Sadie smiled, patting the chair next to her. “Call me Sadie.”

  Ms. Lewish looked down the stairs and waved at someone before making her way to the chair Sadie had indicated. “I’m Maggie,” she said.

  “I assume they’re down there?” Sadie asked, nodding toward the stairs where Ms. Lewish—Maggie—had waved.

  Maggie nodded, and once again Sadie felt left out, though this time it was her fault.

  “How did you guys know I was here?”

  “I passed your family when they were heading this way looking for you. I offered to go first when they started debating who would be the best choice to send up. If you have any demands, you’re in a perfect position to get them.”

  She spoke so formally, Sadie noted, smiling politely at the attempted humor. “I’m not sure my demands are the kind that anyone can meet.” What she wanted was a do-over. She wanted Shawn to have told her the truth from the beginning. She wanted to have given him her blessing—which she totally would have done—and then process through this transition as it unfolded, rather than trying to untangle the ugly mass of feeling she had now. She wanted to feel included, not discounted simply as the woman who had raised Lorraina’s child until that child decided he wanted his birth mother back. Hot tears rose with that thought, and she quickly blinked them away. These were thoughts she could never say aloud.

  Maggie sat down in the deck chair next to Sadie, her hands in her lap. She had changed into jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, but her hair was still in a ponytail. She was a pretty girl—wholesome looking, which Sadie liked—though Sadie struggled to see the resemblance between Maggie and Shawn other than skin, eye, and hair color. Maggie was darker-skinned than Shawn, with a thinner nose and more pronounced cheekbones that gave her a leaner look than Shawn had.

  Knowing what she knew now, Sadie recognized the commonalities between Shawn and Lorraina: a similar roundness of their faces, and the same shape of their big, brown eyes. Maggie must have taken after her father; Shawn’s Polynesian heritage probably came from his father as well. Maggie and Shawn clearly didn’t share a paternal line, though Sadie hadn’t asked. She hadn’t asked anything at all following Shawn’s rushed explanation. Perhaps she should have.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Maggie said, shifting awkwardly and making Sadie wonder why she’d come at all, “but I wanted to apologize for what I did this morning. I was out of line.”

  “You were exactly what I needed. I don’t like secrets.”

  Maggie looked at her hands in her lap. She sat on the edge of the chair, as though not wanting to get too comfortable or stay too long. “I also wanted to thank you for the picture. I hadn’t even thought about getting it from the gallery, what with everything happening. I don’t have many pictures of Lorraina, and I’m glad to have this one before I leave the ship. I’m grateful for the tender mercy of the gift. Thank you.”

  Sadie felt humbled by this girl’s gratitude. She had no reason to seek out Sadie, and far less reason to apologize for anything. “I’m sorry about the way it happened, and about everything else, of course. I can imagine this has been very difficult for you.” Maggie had come aboard with her mother and was leaving without her.

  Maggie blinked quickly and looked across the deck to the city below them. “It’s all pretty intense.”

  “You’re getting off the ship in Juneau?” Sadie asked, changing the subject just a little bit. “For good?”

  “I’m going to go to the hospital, first. I’ll decide what to do from there, I guess. Thank goodness my dad talked me into getting travel insurance for both of us. This would have cost a fortune otherwise.”

  “Your dad?” Sadie asked. Her curiosity about Maggie’s life was growing.

  “He’s in Northern California—just south of Sacramento, where I live.”

  Lorraina lived in Tennessee, not California. Maggie seemed to read Sadie’s thoughts. “I didn’t grow up with Lorraina either,” she said. Sadie had suspected as much; Maggie was so comfortable with adoption terminology—birth sister; adoptive mother.

  “You were adopted too?” Sadie asked, then held up a hand. “I’m sorry, it’s really none of my business.”

  Maggie waved away Sadie’s feigned politeness. “Lorraina found me a couple months ago through an adoption reunification website.”

  Lorraina, Sadie repeated in her mind. She hadn’t broached the name confusion of Tanice versus Lorraina in her own mind yet, let alone bring it up with someone else. The wine bottle obviously wasn’t Lorraina’s. Where did Lorraina get it? Why was she drinking at all if she had a bad liver?

  “You found each other so recently,” Sadie commented.

  Maggie nodded; her smiled faded as she continued. “It’s been a gift from God to have her in my life again. No matter what happens next, I will always have that.”

  Sadie tried to keep her own smile in place, but she had to look away under the guise of scanning the shoreline of Douglas Island, which was connected via a bridge to Juneau. Did Shawn feel that the reunion with his birth mother was a gift? Sadie hated how her jealousy festered in light of this consideration.

  “I’m sorry,” Maggie said, apparently reading Sadie’s thoughts again. “I know this is difficult for you too. My dad had a hard time when I told him I was looking for my birth mom.”

  Sadie took a breath and turned her attention back to her companion. “How did your mother react?”

  Maggie looked at her pink fingernails and smoothed her hands over her thighs. “Mom passed away when I was fourteen.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Sadie said. That chipped away at Sadie’s hurt more than anything else had so far.

  Maggie took a deep breath. “She was first diagnosed with cancer when I was three and fought a very good fight through a couple remissions and some surgeries until God finally called her home.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, so am I,” she said, shrugging slightly. “But I can see I’m a stronger person for it, and I have faith that one day I’ll see all this as part of God’s road for me as well. There is always something to learn, right?”

  “You have beautiful faith, Maggie.” Had Sadie given Shawn the kind of foundation that would make him open to seeing things from that type of perspective? She hoped so, but then Sadie thought she’d given him the kind of foundation that would let him know, without any doubt, that Sadie would support him in his search for his birth parents. She’d been wrong about that. How many other failures had she made along her path of motherhood? Was it because he’d grown up without a father? Was Sadie too smothering? Did she encourage too much independence?

  They sat in silence for several seconds, then Maggie stood. She didn’t have a purse or anything and seemed unsure what to do with her hands. Finally she clasped them in front of her. “Well, it was nice to meet you, even this way. And I am sorry for bursting into a private conversation like I did earlier; my parents raised me with better manners than that.”

  “No apology needed. And I appreciate you coming to say good-bye. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” She glanced toward the stairs and then back at Sadie. The wind shifted and blew her long ponytail over her shoulder. She had black hair, but with lighter highlights that softened the color. “You’re not what I expected, but it looks like both Shawn and I got lucky with our adopted families.”

  Not what she expected? Why would Maggie have any expectations of Sadie?

  Suddenly Sadie wasn’t as eager to let her leave. Had someone given her a poor impression of Sadie? “Had you ever met Shawn before this morning?”

  Maggie tucked her hands in her pockets. “I didn’t even know he was on the ship until yesterday, and I didn’t know he was with his family until this morning—though in hindsight I should have figured out your connection to him. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  Sadie straightened slightly, her curiosity piqued. “You didn’t know he was on the ship?”

  Maggie shook her head. “Lorraina said she was goin
g to surprise me with it. I’d wondered why she’d insisted on us taking this cruise.”

  Sadie thought back to the conversation she’d interrupted between Shawn and Lorraina that first day. Shawn had seemed angry, and Sadie hadn’t thought to ask why. “Did Shawn know you guys would be here?”

  Maggie shrugged. “When I realized Lorraina hadn’t told me what to expect, I suspected she hadn’t let Shawn in on it either, but I’m really not sure.”

  “I see,” Sadie said, then lapsed into silence, lost in her thoughts.

  “Anyway, I better get going,” Maggie said again.

  Sadie stood and walked with Maggie to the stairs, not remembering until she was a few feet away that Shawn, Breanna, and Pete would be at the bottom waiting for her. She stopped, not sure she wanted to face them, even though she knew she had to. They had a shore excursion planned to pan for gold at 2:30, and though it was the last thing she wanted to do, maybe being with a group of other tourists pretending like they were real prospectors was just what they needed. Or maybe Shawn wanted to go to the hospital with Maggie. Either way, this conversation had reminded her that she didn’t want to hold on to her hurt to the detriment of her most valued relationships.

  Maggie realized Sadie had stopped walking and turned to face her again. “Well, I hope you enjoy the rest of your cruise. Sample some of the chocolate buffet on Thursday for me.”

  Sadie smiled. “I’m not sure how much of this trip will be salvaged, but I appreciate you coming and talking to me. It’s easier to understand other people’s stories sometimes, and you’ve helped me better know how to make sense of Shawn’s perspective.”

  Maggie’s smile fell a little at the mention of Shawn’s name. “It’s none of my business,” she said, lowering her voice, “but I don’t think Shawn has been as . . . fulfilled by his relationship with Lorraina as I was, so maybe this isn’t as difficult for him.”