Page 85 of Jar of Hearts
Dominic picks up the photo of her mother and father on their wedding day, and a small smile passes his lips. Geo sees it, and something happens to her heart. A melting and swelling, at exactly the same time. That’s her smile. Her thoughtful one.
After all this time,she thinks, I’ve never not loved you.
“Your parents?” he asks. If he notices the look on her face, he doesn’t say anything.
“Yes, your grandparents. Walter and Grace Shaw.”
“I know a little bit about them from the file,” he says, setting the picture back in its place. He sits down on the chair closest to the fireplace and stretches his legs. “When I turned eighteen, I wrote to the adoption agency, asked them for whatever information they could give me. They said I had access to everything and sent me a file. It didn’t say much more than what I already knew about you, except it had yours and your parents’ names in it. I googled, didn’t find much on them, but the local library had an archive of the newspaper obituary from when your mother passed away. It hadher picture. She was thirty-three when she died, right? You look so much like her.”
Geo smiles. “I know. As I got older, I used to freak my father out. My voice started sounding like hers. He came home from work one day when I was visiting from college—I hadn’t told him I was coming home. I was in the kitchen making dinner and I turned around and he was standing there, white as a ghost. He thought I was her. I now know how he feels—” She catches herself again, stops.
“Can we talk about him?” Dominic says. “My father, I mean. I feel like he’s the elephant in the room.”
Geo takes a breath. How will she find the words? But she has to. Somehow, she has to. “Of course we can.”
“I know who he is,” he says.
Geo never named Calvin on the birth certificate. She certainly didn’t tell the Kents. And while she never specifically told her father about Calvin, he finally put it together during the trial, as the timing fit.
“I did a little investigating,” Dominic says. “My mother told me when I was maybe eleven or twelve what your name was. Dad was long gone by then, had remarried, and his wife had given birth to their second kid. And my mom was drinking. She drank a lot. Not in the early days, but after they got divorced.”
“I’m sorry,” Geo whispers.
“We were living in Vancouver at the time, had been there for a couple years already. Mom got a job at one of the universities, and her parents were there. She wanted to live closer to them after the divorce. It was why my dad agreed to sign over custody of me. She couldn’t move me to Canada without his consent, but apparently he didn’t feel too bad about it. Was kind of relieved to be done with me, from what I hear. I barely saw him, anyway.”
“I’m sorry,” Geo says again. The matter-of-fact way that her son was speaking about all this also reminded her of herself, and it hurt her. She knew that the more unemotional he sounded, the more painful it actually was.
“I’m not,” he says. “People change. They say you don’t love adopted children any differently than biological children, but I know for a fact that’s not true. I remember visiting Dad and Lindsay, his new wife, right after they had their first baby. A boy. I overheard Dad in the nursery, through the baby monitor. He was trying to get Holden to go to sleep, and when he finally did, Lindsay said, ‘Is this like when Dominic was born?’ and Dad said, ‘No, this is better.’”
Geo winces. “Oh god. He should never have said that. And you should never have heard it. Not every adoptive parent feels that way.”Just the ones I picked for you, apparently.
Dominic shrugs. “Anyway, when my mom told me your name a couple years later, I looked you up, found your mother’s obituary from way back. And later, I found a bunch of other stuff. By that time, you were testifying at a murder trial.”
Geo closes her eyes. “Yes, that’s right.”
“The article I read said that you and the accused used to be boyfriend and girlfriend. When you were in high school, when you were sixteen. I did the math. And then I saw his picture. We look a lot alike.”
The understatement of the century. “Yes. You do.”
“So he is, right?” Dominic says. “The Sweetbay Strangler is my father?”
She wishes to god that he hadn’t used the nickname. She’s horrified he even knows it. And though her son already knows the answer, it’s clear from the way he’s looking at her that he needs her to confirm it. Because she’s the only person in the world who can. “Yes. Calvin James is your father.”
Dominic doesn’t move, doesn’t react. His eyes grow distant, and for a moment he’s somewhere else, thinking about something else. The life he might have had, perhaps?
“Did you kill her?” he asks.
“What?” Geo blinks.
“Angela Wong,” Dominic says. “I followed the trial. You signed a plea deal. But did you kill her? A lot of people think you did, and that you got off easy.”
Again, he says it with no trace of emotion, no judgment. There’s only one way to answer, which is truthfully. After everything he’s been through, the life he’s led,and his goddamn genetics, the least she can do is answer his questions as honestly as she can.
“I didn’t kill her,” she said. “But I helped Calvin cover it up. And then I lied. To the cops, to her parents, to my father, to our friends, to everyone.”
“And you got away with it for a long time.”
“I…” Geo wants him to understand. “I honestly expected to be caught. I thought they’d figure it out. But somehow, nobody did. Year after year, nobody did, until fourteen years passed.”
