Chapter 26 (My Story)

WE WERE ALL pretty exhausted after the sale and then had to get Mom and Dad ready to move when the cottage was signed off as finished. Of course, that included an inspection tour and a punch list of things that had to be fixed before the funds were released. It was about the same procedure we used when developing software.

Then there were the first people coming to the house for tours. They could only come by appointment, but Mom and Dad’s real estate agent really got things moving. As soon as they were out of the house, the agent would have the house deep cleaned and then she’d bring in some furniture to stage rooms that would otherwise be empty.

The sum was that I didn’t get the story of Dad’s Revolutionary War experience written until the next weekend. I understood Dad telling me the story to try to convince me that he wasn’t a good person. I didn’t see a big problem with it. Yes, he’d screwed a bunch of prostitutes in Philadelphia while enlisting men in the new Continental Marines. That part was pretty cool. As for the women, I had a feeling he’d made life a little better for those women—even the spy. Sure, they’d be pregnant, but that wasn’t as disqualifying a situation for marriage as one might think. I was pretty sure some of those new Marines would want to tie down a woman before they sailed in mid-December. They might never even know the child wasn’t theirs.

It pointed out Dad’s feelings of guilt over what he’d done, which I felt was really a transference of the guilt he felt for cheating on his wife. He couldn’t admit to that without opening his entire life to scrutiny and he was still crippled by the guilt of what he did to Mary. I could understand that.

I could also understand his single-minded devotion to making sure he never strayed once he and Mom were married. He became obsessively devoted to her and to his family. That was something Mom just ate up. She’d always been loving and loyal, but maybe she thought she deserved that kind of devotion more than other women did. It was part of her karma.

We finished packing Mom and Dad for the movers Sunday night and they went to spend a couple of nights in a motel. The moving truck would be at the house on Monday morning and everything would be moved to the cottage later that day. It would take at least all day Tuesday to get the cottage in good enough order that they could actually live there.

I finally collapsed in my study Sunday evening for my weekly call with my sister. I wasn’t expecting what she opened with.

“I found the link!” she said excitedly.

“Like the missing link in the evolutionary chain?” I asked.

“I don’t know why I bother with you,” she huffed. “The link between Brenda and Rachel.”

“Whoa! What? How did you find that?”

“I submitted the DNA to all the databases that people use to find out if they are really Egyptian royalty or something,” Meg said.

“Are there people related to Egyptian royalty?” I asked.

“You know what I mean. Apparently, one of Brenda’s cousins decided to submit their DNA. The site I found it on allows people to submit a family tree and contact information. You wouldn’t be able to get some of that information in the laboratory because everything is confidential and only given a catalog number. On the family tree site, though, there’s all kinds of information. This is a guy who still lives in St. Louis and has the last name Erickson—Rachel’s last name.”

“I keep getting stalled trying to find anyone else,” I said.

“Well, I have the contact info for Richard Erickson, son of Lemuel Erickson, son of George Erickson. It goes back a little further, but that’s the significant line,” Meg said. “You need to contact him and find out how he was related to Rachel. It looks to me like he and Brenda share a link at the level of his grandfather and her maternal great-grandfather. If you really want to find out if they’re related, you need to contact him. He’s obviously into genealogy, so he’ll probably be willing to talk to you.”

I took down the information and said I’d send him an email.

In the meantime, I’d also started researching Brenda’s parents. I searched for Brenda’s birth certificate and came up with a blank. Instead, I found an adoption record! I was floored. This was a paper that had been in Dad’s folder of certificates and papers that he’d given me. It came from the State when they got custody. By then Brenda was already sixteen and only knew the names of the parents who were killed when she was ten or eleven years old. The certificate bore the name of the adoption agency, though, and I decided to contact them. I was surprised when they responded rather quickly.

Mr. and Mrs. Holbrook,

It is agency policy not to divulge information regarding birth parents unless they have explicitly released that information. However, when I read of the tragic death of Brenda’s adopted parents, I was moved to investigate further. That brief investigation has indicated Brenda’s birth mother is deceased. There is no record of her father. Therefore, we have determined release of this information is within the scope of our confidentiality agreement, since none was signed by the parents.

Deirdre Avery was Brenda’s birth mother. We have little information regarding her, other than her birthdate and death date. She was born February 22, 1969 in St. Louis, MO. She died March 15, 1987 in Niles, MI. The cause of death was listed as ‘complications during childbirth.’

We hope this information will help your family history research along. We have become increasingly aware of how important discovering their history can be to children who were adopted. At least Mrs. Holbrook can rest in the assurance that her birth mother did not simply give her up as unwanted, as sad as the story is.

We are sorry we have no further information to offer.

Sincerely,
Norma Atkins
Loving Placement Adoption Center
Attached: Birth Certificate for Brenda Avery

I immediately went to Brenda and showed her what I’d uncovered.

“Honey, we have the name of your birth mother,” I announced happily. She’d been shocked when she saw the adoption certificate in Dad’s folder instead of a birth certificate.

“Do I want to know?” she asked.

“It’s a sad story, but I think you want to know,” I said, putting my arms around my wife protectively. She pushed herself more firmly into my embrace.

“Tell me,” she whispered.

“Her name was Deirdre Avery. The sad part is she died in childbirth. But that means she didn’t abandon you. Being adopted doesn’t mean she didn’t want you. It wasn’t her fault you were orphaned. And the record of your adoptive parents and your memories of them are still valid. They were the only real parents you knew. It was the State that failed to protect you when they were killed. And then Mom and Dad found you and they loved you, too,” I said.

She smiled up at me through tears.

“You found me. You loved me. Yes, Mom and Dad provided and cared for me and loved me, but I would still have been lost if it hadn’t been for you,” she said, kissing me.

“I have never regretted one moment of that,” I said. “Honey, I think I might have another link that will tell us who Deirdre Avery was. It’s too soon to really tell, but I’ll follow through on that. I don’t want to get false hopes up, though. I’ll wait until I can either confirm or deny it.”

Of course, I still had no idea how I was going to tell my wife that she was my niece if my conversation with Richard Erickson bore that out. Maybe having proof that Brenda was his granddaughter would help my dad heal from a wound he’d felt for too many years. I realized that even when he married Mary Fletcher, Dad had held a part of his heart in reserve for Rachel Erickson. When he discovered Rachel had died, he fell to the temptation of loving a woman who reminded him of her and ended up destroying his life.

I wasn’t going to justify his behavior. I knew he’d been sick and tormented by grief and by guilt. I was thankful I’d never faced a similar set of circumstances in my life, but I understood a little of why he was willing to subsume his earlier life in a bunch of stories of time travel in which he seduced and sometimes fell in love with women in six centuries, justifying it with the belief that he was contributing to the salvation of humanity.

I also knew I’d head to Niles, Michigan as soon as possible to try to find Deirdre Avery’s burial place and see if I could find out any more about her. Had her mother moved back to Michigan? If so, where was she now?

I’d begun filling out a chart for Zach and Lisa that showed their family genealogy. I wasn’t quite sure how to show Brenda’s parentage or grand parentage. Maybe I’d need to leave that line blank. I’d be able to explain it to them better after they had read the story of Dad’s time travel.

I sent an email to the address for Richard Erickson Meg gave me, not really expecting a response. I explained that I was doing genealogical research and found a common ancestor with him through a DNA match. I asked if he’d be willing to talk.

Nathaniel,

I’d love to chat about our possible connection. I can’t imagine we have a link more recent than my grandparents or great grandparents, but I find genealogy to be a fascinating subject. I’ve devoted a good bit of my time in the past couple of years to researching it and there is, indeed, a connection to Michigan. Perhaps we both have information that will help us fill in some blanks. Let’s talk soon.

Richard Erickson

Contact information accompanied the email and I planned out a time for our phone conversation.