HADN’T come today, either... the letter from Denise Graham with news of Kimberly and the photographs spanning another year.
Meredith Palmer struggled to fight off a depressing wave of anxiety as she entered her apartment and locked the rest of the world out. Again she shuffled through the stack of mail she’d just collected from her box; Christmas cards, bank statement, an advertising brochure. She opened the envelopes and extracted the contents, making doubly sure there was no mistake. Nothing from Denise Graham.
The packet usually came in the last week of November. It had done so for the past eleven years. Today was the fourteenth of December and the uneasy feeling that something was wrong was fast growing into conviction. Denise Graham had come across to Meredith, even in her letters, as a very precise person, the kind who would live by a strictly kept timetable. Unless the packet had somehow been lost or misdirected in the volume of Christmas mail, something had to be badly wrong in the Graham household.
Illness? An accident?
The tight feeling in her chest grew tighter as disastrous possibilities flew through Meredith’s mind. Not Kimberly, she fiercely prayed. Please...not Kimberly. Her little girl had to have a wonderful life ahead of her. Only by believing that had Meredith managed to repress the misery of not having kept her daughter.
She shook her head, fighting back the worst-case scenarios. Maybe something had happened to the solicitor who had handled the legal aspects of the adoption and subsequently become a conduit for the annual updates to Meredith. Whenever she’d had a change of address she had contacted him, at least half a dozen times before she’d saved enough money to invest in this apartment at Balmoral. Each time she had received a note of acknowledgment and nothing had gone wrong. Nevertheless, it could be that someone else was now handling his business, someone not as meticulously efficient.
She walked across her living room to the writing desk which spread across one corner, linking two walls of bookcases. Having automatically sorted her mail for future replies, she dropped it into in-baskets, then opened a drawer and took out her address book. It was too late to contact the firm of solicitors today but she’d do it first thing tomorrow. It made her feel better, simply copying the telephone number into the notebook she always carried in her handbag.
Despite having set herself a constructive course of action, Meredith still found it impossible to stop worrying. She switched on the television set to catch the evening news but didn’t hear a word of it. The glass of white wine she poured herself was consumed although she had no conscious memory of drinking it. After opening the refrigerator and staring at the contents of the shelves for several minutes without connecting anything together for a proper meal, she gave up on the idea of cooking and settled on cheese and pickles and crackers.
The problem was, she didn’t have a legal leg to stand on if Denise Graham had decided, for some reason, to break off the one promised contact with her. It had been a matter of trust, her letting Meredith know about their daughter’s life once a year...one mother’s word to another... an act of compassion in the face of Meredith’s grief at giving up her baby. If the solicitor told her there was to be no more contact, there was nothing she could do about it. Absolutely nothing.
A sense of helplessness kept eating at her, robbing her of any appetite, distracting her from doing anything purposeful. When the doorbell rang, she almost didn’t answer it. A check of her watch put the time at a few minutes past eight. She wasn’t expecting anyone and wasn’t in the mood to entertain a visitor. Only the thought of a neighbour in need prompted her to open the door.
Living alone had established automatic precautions. The security chain lock on the door only allowed an opening of a few centimetres. It was through this space—like a long crack in the fabric of time—Meredith saw the man she had never expected to see again.
His eyes caught hers, triggering the weird gush of feeling that only he had ever evoked...the wild whoosh from her heart to her head, like the sea washing into her ears, followed by a fountain of excitement shooting, splashing, rippling through her entire body, setting up an electric tingling of expectation for the most special connection in the world.
It had been like that for her thirteen years ago. As she stared at him now, the shocked sense of her world reeling backward was so strong, all she could do was stare and grip the doorknob with painful intensity, needing some reinforcement of current physical reality.
“Miss Palmer? Meredith Palmer?”
His voice struck old familiar chords that had lain dormant so long Meredith had forgotten them... chords of pleasure, of some sixth sense recognition, a deep resonant tone that thrummed through her, a seductive beat of belonging drawing on her soul.
Yet he didn’t know her. She could see he didn’t. He would have called her Merry. It had been his name for her...Merry...Merry Christmas... the best Christmas he had ever had.
“Yes,” she said, affirming her identity, her heart still bleeding over what his sister had sworn to her was the truth when she’d denied Meredith access to the father of her baby all those years ago. An accident had wiped out all memory of his summer vacation. He would have no recollection of her. Since he’d already left for the U.S. on a two-year study grant, Meredith had no possible way of testing if what his sister claimed was fact or fiction.
Now the evidence was in front of her. Not Merry. Miss Meredith Palmer with a question mark.
Yet shouldn’t there be a gut memory? Shouldn’t he feel at least an echo of what she was feeling? It hadn’t been one-sided back in the summer of her sixteenth year.
“My name is Nick Hamilton...”
There was a pause, as though he had to regather his thoughts and concentrate them on his purpose for coming to her. Since it wasn’t prompted by any memory of her—nerves tightened around Meredith’s stomach—it had to be related to Kimberly. Had he found out Kimberly was his daughter? Had something happened to her? Was he the carrier of bad news from his sister?
“...I’m Denise Graham’s brother,” he stated, identifying the connection that gave him credentials for calling on her.
“Yes,” Meredith repeated numbly, painfully aware of all the ramifications of that relationship. “You must have come about Kimberly. The packet...” She swallowed hard, a sickening wave of fear welling up over the emotional impact of seeing him again. “...I should have got it over a fortnight ago.”
“So I understand,” he said sympathetically. “May I come in? There’s a lot to explain.”
Meredith nodded, too choked up to speak. This man and his child had dominated the course of her life for thirteen years. To have him physically in front of her after all this time was both a dream and a nightmare. Her fingers fumbled over the chain slot. Her mind buzzed with the thought of letting him in... to far more than her apartment. And what of his child—her child—who had to be the reason he was here?
“Is Kimberly all right?” The question burst from her as she shakily drew the door wide for him to enter.
“Yes. Couldn’t be healthier,” came the quick assurance. He stepped inside, pausing beside her as she sagged in relief. His brow creased in concern and he made an apologetic gesture. “I’m sorry you were worried. Your daughter is fine, Miss Palmer.”
The acknowledgment that she had a daughter brought tears to her eyes. No one in her current life knew. It had always been a painfully private part of her, not easily shared. Who could understand? There’d been so many forces pushing her into letting her baby go—for the best, they’d all said—but
