The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  The previous night I had joined ten adoption support groups online. I created a name for myself ([email protected]) and made lists from the websites in an empty Moleskine notebook.

  1. USE STATE REGISTRIES.

  2. REGISTER WITH ISRR—the Index of Search and Reunion Resources, the biggest registry there is.

  3. REGISTER WITH THE WORLD WIDE REGISTRY.

  4. TALK TO YOUR ADOPTIVE PARENTS . . . AND COUSINS, UNCLES, OLDER SIBLINGS . . .

  5. FIGURE OUT YOUR CONDUIT. In other words, who arranged the adoption? A church, a lawyer, a physician, an agency? They might be a source of information.

  6. FILE A WAIVER OF CONFIDENTIALITY, so if your birth mom comes looking for you, she knows that you want to be contacted.

  7. POST YOUR INFO REGULARLY. There are people who really do forward all over in the hope that your info gets to the right place!

  8. PLACE ADS IN THE PRIMARY NEWSPAPERS OF YOUR BIRTH CITY.

  9. ABOVE ALL ELSE, IGNORE ANY SEARCH COMPANY YOU SEE ON TV ADS OR TALK SHOWS! THEY ARE SCAMS!

  At two in the morning, I was still online in an adoption search chat room, reacting to horror stories from people who wanted to save me the trouble of making the same mistakes. There was RiggleBoy, who had contacted a 1-900 search number and given them his credit card information, only to be socked with a bill for $6500 at the end of one month. There was Joy4Eva, who’d found out that she was taken away from her birth family for neglect and abuse. AllieCapone688 gave me a list of three books that she used when she was getting started—which cost less than all she’d spent on private investigators. Only one woman had a happy ending: she’d gone to a psychic named Meshinda Dows, who had given her such accurate information that she found her birth mom in a week’s time. Try it, FantaC suggested. What have you got to lose?

  Well, my self-respect, for one. But all the same, I found myself Googling Meshinda Dows. She had one of those websites that takes forever to load, because there was a music file attached—in this case, an eerie mix of chimes and humpback whale songs. Meshinda Dows, the home page read, Certified psychic counselor.

  Who certified psychic counselors? The U.S. Department of Snake Oil and Charlatans?

  Serving the Cape Cod community for 35 years.

  Which meant she was within driving distance from my home in Bankton.

  Let me be your bridge to the past.

  Before I could chicken out, I clicked on the email link and sent her a message explaining my search for my birth mom. Within thirty seconds of sending it, I got a reply:

  Marin, I think I can be of great help to you. Are you free tomorrow afternoon?

  I did not question why this woman was online at three in the morning. I didn’t let myself wonder why a successful psychic would have an opening so quickly. Instead, I agreed to the sixty-dollar consultation fee and printed out the driving directions she gave me.

  Five hours after I’d left my house that morning, I pulled into Meshinda Dows’s driveway. She lived in a tiny house that was painted purple with red trim. She was easily in her sixties, but her hair was dyed jet black and reached her waist. “You must be Marin,” she said.

  Wow, already she was one for one.

  She led me into a room that was divided from the foyer with a curtain made of silk scarves. Inside were two couches facing each other across a square white ottoman. On the ottoman were a feather, a fan, and a deck of cards. The shelves in the room were covered with Beanie Babies, each sealed in a small plastic bag with a heart-shaped tag protector. They looked like they were all suffocating.

  Meshinda sat down, and I followed suit. “I take the money up front,” she said.

  “Oh.” I dug in my purse and pulled out three twenty-dollar bills, which she folded and stuck into her pocket.

  “Why don’t we start with you telling me why you’re here?”

  I blinked at her. “Shouldn’t you know that?”

  “Psychic gifts don’t always work that way, hon,” she said. “You’re a little nervous, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose.”

  “You shouldn’t be. You’re protected. You have spirits around you,” she said. She closed her eyes and squinted. “Your . . . grandfather? He wants you to know he’s breathing better now.”

  My jaw dropped open. My grandfather had died when I was thirteen, of complications from lung cancer. I had been terrified to visit him in the hospital and see him wasting away.

  “He knew something important about your birth mother,” Meshinda said.

  Well, that was convenient, since Grandpa couldn’t confirm or deny that now.

  “She’s thin and has dark hair,” the psychic continued. “She was very young when it happened. I’m getting an accent . . .”

  “Southern?” I asked.

  “No, not Southern . . . I can’t quite place it.” Meshinda looked at me. “I’m also getting some names. Strange ones. Allagash . . . and Whitcomb . . . no, make that Whittier.”

  “Allagash Whittier is a law firm in Nashua,” I said.

  “I think they have information. It might have been a lawyer there who handled the adoption. I’d contact them. And Maisie. Someone named Maisie has some information, too.”

  Maisie was the name of the clerk of the Hillsborough County court who’d sent me my adoption decree. “I’m sure she does,” I said. “She’s got the whole file.”

  “I’m talking about another Maisie. An aunt or a cousin . . . she adopted a baby from Africa.”

  “I don’t have an aunt or a cousin named Maisie,” I said.

  “You do,” Meshinda insisted. “You haven’t met her yet.” She wrinkled up her face, as if she was sucking on a lemon. “Your birth father is named Owen. He has something to do with the law.”

  I leaned forward, intrigued. Was that why I’d been attracted to the career?

  “He and your birth mom have had three more children.”

  Whether or not that was true, I felt a pang in my chest. How come those three got to stay, but I was given away? The old adage I’d been told over and over—that my birth parents loved me but couldn’t take care of me—had never quite rung true. If they loved me so much, why had I been dispensable?

  Meshinda touched a hand to her head. “That’s it,” she said. “Nothing else coming through.” She patted my knee. “That lawyer,” she advised. “That’s the place to start.”

  • • •

  On the way back home, I stopped off at McDonald’s to eat something and sat outside at the human Habitrail playspace that was filled with toddlers and their caregivers. I called 411 and was connected to Allagash Whittier. By telling them I was an associate with Robert Ramirez, I was able to sweet-talk my way past the paralegals to a lawyer on staff. “Marin,” the woman said, “what can I do for you?”

  On the small bench where I sat, I curled a little closer into myself, to make the conversation more private. “It’s sort of a strange request,” I said. “I’m trying to find some information about a client your firm may have had in the early seventies. It would have been a young woman, around sixteen or seventeen?”

  “That shouldn’t be hard to find—we don’t get too many of those. What’s the last name?”

  I hesitated. “I don’t have a last name, exactly.”

  The line went silent. “Was this an adoption case?”

  “Well. Yes. Mine.”

  The woman’s voice was frosty. “I’d suggest you try the courthouse,” she said, and she hung up.

  I clutched the cell phone between my hands and watched a little boy shriek his way down a curved purple slide. He was Asian, his mother was not. Was he adopted? One day, would he be sitting here like I was, facing a dead end?

  I dialed 411 again, and a moment later was connected to Maisie Donovan, the adoption search administrator for Hillsborough County. “You probably don’t remember me,” I said. “A few months ago, you sent me my adoption decree . . .”

  “Name?”

  “Well, that’s what I’m looking f