Finding Home (11 page)

So, now, he called on those skills to
help him delve into all the secrets surrounding Sarah Sauter.  First, was
to pull up the phone number of someone who would help Sarah more than anyone
else right now.

Sarah wasn’t sure how long she lay
crumpled on her kitchen floor.  She’d cried until the tears just wouldn’t
come any more.  Now, she lay there, breath still hitching from her tears,
mind and body exhausted.  She’d just begun to think maybe she should get
up when she heard her front door open and then heard someone calling her
name.  Looking up, she saw Janine rush into the kitchen to her.

“Sarah!  Oh, my gosh, are you
hurt?”

“No,” she managed, her voice raw.

“Come on, honey, let’s get you up,”
Janine said, putting her arm around Sarah’s waist to help her to her
feet.  Together, they walked into the living room and Janine helped ease
her down onto her couch.  Sarah watched her friend get a blanket from the
hall closet and come back to cover her up.

“What are you doing here?” Sarah
asked her.

Janine brushed Sarah’s hair from her
face, giving her a sympathetic look.  “Well, Colt called me.  He said
y’all had gotten into a huge argument and that you might need me.  What
happened, sweetie?”

“He doesn’t think I’m good enough for
him.”

“Why do you say that?”

Sarah drew in a deep breath and then
told Janine all that had happened and all that Colt said.  Janine listened
to her but Sarah could tell her friend thought she was overreacting.

“And he said your social security
number wasn’t legit?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Well…if his FBI contacts said that…”

“But what does that mean?  That
my whole life has been a lie?”

“I don’t know, honey.  But I do
know that he doesn’t think you’re not good enough for him.  He looked me
up and called me at work because he was worried about you.  He told me he
screwed up and that you were upset and you needed me.”

“But why is he doing this?  God,
last night was so good, and this morning…I told him I was falling in love with
him, Janine!   And now…why can’t he just accept me as I am.”

“I think he thought he was helping
you,” Janine said.  “He knows you’re all alone in the world and he wanted
to help you find your family.”

“They aren’t my family.  My
parents, or at least my mother, gave me up for a reason.”

“Aren’t you just a little bit curious
as to what that reason is?  Have you looked in that box that your mother
left you?”

Sarah sighed, “No…I can’t.  Not
yet.  I’m not ready.”

“But, if there’s something wonky with
your social security number, that could come back to haunt you one day.”

“I know.  And I’ll look into
it.  Someday.  I’m just not ready for that now.  And I told Colt
that the first time he asked me about my adoption…but he went ahead and started
looking into it anyway, whether I wanted him to or not.  That’s the bottom
line.  He didn’t respect my wishes and that’s just not cool with me.”

Janine nodded.  “I guess that
would bother me, too…want me to hang out and wallow with you for a while? 
We can order pizza and eat ice cream and watch sappy movies.”

“What about Grant and Evan?”

“They can do without me for one
night.  What d’ya say?”

“OK, sure.”

Janine gave her a hug and then they
settled down for a night of man-bashing and what Janine called wallowing. 
In spite of her anger with him, Sarah was thankful that Colt had been thoughtful
enough to contact Janine for her.

Sarah ignored five phone calls and
countless text messages from Colt over the next week.  She went back to
work on Tuesday and threw herself whole-heartedly into it.  Colt sent her
flowers on Wednesday.  She sat them on her desk but didn’t text or email
him to thank him.  Terry asked her about him almost every  day but
for the first time since she met him, Sarah didn’t want to talk about
him.  She knew her co-workers were worried about her but she couldn’t
bring herself to discuss him with them.  She went to work, did her job,
went home and kept to herself.

On Friday, she went home to find Colt
sitting in her driveway waiting for her.  She sat in her truck, staring at
him a minute, before she got out and went to her front door, knowing he was
right behind her.  She walked in and he followed her, closing the door
behind him.  Continuing to ignore him, she crossed to Izzy’s kennel to let
her into the backyard.

“Are you going to ignore me all
night?” he asked when she turned back from the back door.

“I’m tired, Colt.  It’s been a
really long week.”

“We need to talk about all of this,
Sarah.”

“No, we don’t.”

“You’re pissed at me, I get it, and
that’s fine.  But you need to know what I’ve found.”

“God, Colt!  No, I don’t. 
I don’t want to know what you’ve found.  I don’t want to look at my
mother’s box.  I don’t want to talk about it.  None of it!”

“Your parents’ names were Ken and
Donna Alexander.  They had one daughter, Sherry, born in 1962 in
Torrington, Wyoming.”

She glared at him. “Stop.  Just
stop.”

“Why are you being so stubborn about
this?” he snapped, “I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“I didn’t ask you to do this,
Colt!  Why can’t you understand that?  I am not ready to deal with
any of this!  I don’t know if I ever will be, but it is
my
life,
not
yours!  Whether I want to know about my birth family or not is my
decision, can’t you understand that?  Everything was so good between
us.  Why did you have to screw things up like this?”

He shoved his hands into his pockets
to keep from reaching out to touch her when he knew she probably wouldn’t
welcome his touch.

“Look, I know I shouldn’t have jumped
the gun like I did, and I would have backed off if all this other stuff hadn’t
started coming out.  You’ve got to address this, babe.  This business
with your social security number is a big deal.  You could lose all the
money you’ve acquired since you started working.  And don’t you want to
know why you don’t have your own social security number?  And what
happened to Sherry Alexander?  And why your parents changed their names?
And –“

“Enough!!” she cried, putting her
hands over her ears, tears falling down her cheeks.

“Baby,” he began, stepping toward
her. 

She backed up, shaking her
head.  “Don’t touch me.”

“Sarah.  God, it’s killing me to
see you unhappy.  I just want to help you.”

“How would you feel if I came and told
you Claire wasn’t your sister?  That your parents aren’t who they said
they were?  How would you feel if you were suddenly hearing that
everything in your life was a lie?”

“I’d feel like shit, babe, just like
you do.  But I wouldn’t turn away from someone who only wanted to help
me.”

“The same person who dug all this up
in the first place?” she cried.  “I was happy not knowing any of
this!  I was happy to just be with you.”

“Let me help you through all of
this.”

She shook her head.  “I
can’t.  You need to go.”

“Sarah.”

“Go, Colt.”

He stood staring at her for several
moments, not wanting to give in, but knowing she was on the verge of losing it.

“You need to open that box your
mother left you.  If you aren’t somehow biologically related to them, and
there is no adoption on record, then we need to find out where you came
from.  Someone could be out there looking for you.”

Sarah clutched her stomach as if he’d
physically hit her, doubling over as if in pain.

“Oh, God,” she managed.

“Baby,” he said, rushing to her,
sweeping her up into his arms and carrying her to the couch.  He cradled
her in his lap as if she were a child, gently rocking her and stroking her hair
to sooth her.  He was aware that she wasn’t returning his embrace but at
that point all he was concerned about was comforting her.

“I c-can’t d-deal with th-this right
now,” she whispered.

“Shh,” he soothed, kissing her
brow.  “Everything’s gonna be OK.  We can get through this
together.  Let me help you.”

She began shaking her head.  “I
really need you to go now, Colt.  Please.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“I’ll be fine.  I need you to
go.”

“Sarah,” he said sternly, taking her
upper arms into his hands to push her back so they could look each other in the
eye.  “Listen to me.  You don’t have to do this alone.  I’m
here.  You don’t have to be alone.”

“I’m always alone.  I’ll be
fine.  I just…I want to be alone.”

“Don’t push me away,” he pleaded.

“I need you to go,” she repeated, her
voice weak.

Colt was torn.  He absolutely
did not want to leave her by herself but how many times would he make her tell
him to go? 

“Look at me, baby,” he said softly,
cupping her face in his hands.  When her teary eyes met his, he was
undone.  “You really want me to go?”  She nodded slowly.  “Say
the words.”

“I want you to go, Colt,” she
whispered.

He nodded and placed a lingering kiss
to her forehead.  Not really wanting to but knowing he needed to respect
her wishes, he lifted her off his lap and placed her on the couch then stood.

“Call if you need me.”

She didn’t respond.

Another two weeks passed and Sarah
felt like she was just drifting through her life.  The box under her bed
became the huge elephant in the room.  Every time she walked into her room
she could see it, like it was taunting her.  Colt texted her every day;
sometimes several times a day.  She rarely responded.  She did miss
him; missed his smiles and his kisses.  She missed talking to him but she couldn’t
bring herself to forgive him just yet. 

It actually wasn’t even a matter of
forgiveness.  What it really came down to was trust and respect, at least
that was how she felt.  Colt, in typical male fashion, had seen a problem
and waded in to fix it, not respecting her wishes in the process.  While
she did appreciate that he cared enough about her to try, she didn’t like that
he did it even after she’d said she wasn’t ready to deal with any of that.

Today, she had plans to spend at the
ballpark watching Evan’s games.  It was a gamble because she had a feeling
she would see Colt there.  She’d been avoiding him and she knew he wasn’t
above taking an umpiring job for the day if it meant he got to see her. 
When she walked up to the ballpark’s front parking lot, she saw her suspicions
were confirmed: Colt’s truck was parked in the lot reserved for umpires. 
She thought about texting Janine and giving Evan her apologies but decided that
wouldn’t be fair to him.  She’d promised she would come so she wasn’t
about to go back on her word.

“Hey, chickie,” Janine greeted her
when she approached the stands.  “You look like something the cat dragged
in.  What’s up?”
            “Saw Colt’s
truck in the umpire’s lot.  I’m sure he’ll have worked it so he’s on the
crew for Evan’s games.”

“Oh, honey, you don’t have to stay.”

“No, that’s OK.  I can’t avoid
him forever. “

“Do you want to work things out with
him, or is this enough for you to wash your hands of him?”

Sarah sighed.  “I think I’m just
mad at him.  I don’t think I want to lose him over this, though. 
But, whenever I see him, or see texts from him, I just get so mad and hurt…but
at the same time, I just want to be in his arms again.  I love him.”

From where he stood a few feet behind
her, Colt heard what she’d said and for the first time since it all happened,
felt hope spread through his chest.  He could give her space as long as he
knew there was something to hold out hope for, and she’d just given that to
him. Following his partner into the dugout and onto the field, he sat his water
jug down and called the coaches over for the pre-game meetings and coin
toss.  When he finished, he turned to face the stands and caught Sarah’s
eye.  For a moment, they just locked gazes, each trying to silently convey
different things to the other.  When the batter approached the box, he
gave her a wink then pulled his mask on to call the game.

Cheyenne, Wyoming…

Lewis Dalton was a cautious
man.  In his line of work, he had to be, especially considering his role
in that fiasco twenty-some odd years ago.  He knew that his associates
dismissed him for a computer nerd, but he also knew they held stock in his
findings.  All these years, he’d been monitoring the case, checking to see
if any investigators ever lit onto their trail.  For the first couple of
years, things had been hot.  He’d constantly been dodging and
misdirecting.  But, as in all things, as time passed and trails grew cold,
the amount of manipulating he’d had to do became less and less and eventually
stopped altogether…until a couple of weeks ago.

Someone was looking into the
Alexanders again.  And not just anyone; the FBI.  He hadn’t alerted
the rest because at first, it was just initial inquiries.  He figured some
rookie had been given the task of sorting through cold case files…but the
little pings he’d set up on his computer began to be more frequent, and more
interesting.  He’d traced the IP address of the main one poking around in
the files to a small town in Texas.  And through that, he’d found
something that really sparked his interest.  So, for the first time in
over twenty years, he called the original group to meet.

He watched as they all filed into
Wayne’s office.  The years hadn’t been kind to a few of them.  He
decided their leader, Wayne Robinson, still looked pretty much the same, though
he had a few more scars than Lewis remembered.

“What’s this all about, Geek Man?”
Sammy asked once everyone was inside.

Lewis scowled at him.  He hated
being called Geek Man.

“As you know, I’ve kept tabs on
everything having to do with the Bainbridge case over the years.  There
hasn’t really been much activity until the last few weeks.”

That got Robinson’s attention. 
He sat up straighter at his desk, frowning at Lewis.

“Has someone re-opened the case?”
Wayne asked.

“I don’t think it’s officially
re-opened, but someone has been poking around.  Someone’s been looking
into Sherry and her family.”

“Yeah, so,” Sammy said, “They all
disappeared twenty-six years ago.  Along with the kid.”

Lewis nodded.  “Yeah, they did.”

“And we know why Sherry disappeared,”
Carl added.

“Exactly,” Lewis said, “we all know
what happened to Sherry.  Which is why I find it curious that through their
inquiries, I found that Sherry’s social security number is still in use.”

Wayne sat up straighter in his chair
if that were at all possible. 

“What are you telling us, here, Lew?”

“The social security number belonging
to Sherry Alexander has been in use the past almost eleven years, by a young
lady in Waco, Texas, by the name of Sarah Sauter.”

“How young?” Wayne pressed.

“Twenty-six years old,” Lewis
replied, scanning the room with a knowing look

“Holy shit!” Sammy exclaimed. 
“Are you saying that…”

“Christine Bainbridge is alive,”
Wayne concluded.