Craig held up a childish crayoned picture of a house surrounded by a flower garden. “You did good work.”
“I must have been pretty young. It’s a drawing of this house.”
“I actually can tell.”
She found a pile of essays she’d written.
“It’s strange to find this stuff. I wouldn’t have thought she’d kept it.”
Craig said nothing, only continued searching through papers. When he pulled out a thick folder, she looked at him. “What’s that?”
He thumbed through the contents.
“Do you remember anything about a place called the Solomon Clinic?”
“What is it?”
“Maybe this is what we’ve been looking for. It was a fertility clinic in Houma. There’s a copy of an application, then instruction sheets for what your mother was supposed to do before going there.”
He handed her some of the papers, and she went through them.
“I guess this is it.” She looked up from the documents. “We found out about me. Does the Solomon name mean anything to you?”
Craig considered the question. “As a matter of fact, it does.”
“How?”
His stomach clenched as he said, “Like you, I used to listen in on conversations. Probably all kids do.”
“And what did you hear?”
It was after Sam died, and my mother was pretty upset. I think I heard her on the phone trying to get some information about the Solomon Clinic.”
“You really remember that?”
“Yes, because of the way she was reacting. In her grief, I think she might have been considering trying to get pregnant again, but she found out that the clinic had closed.”
“She could have gone to someone in the DC area.”
“Maybe she thought Dr. Solomon was God—and he was the only one who could help her. For all I know, he could have acted that way with his patients.” He dragged in a breath and let it out. “Anyway, she apparently gave up on the idea.”
“But it sounds like your mother and mine went to the same place.”
“Only she didn’t take you back there for checkups, did she?”
“You went for checkups?”
“Yes. I remembered goingsomewherewith a waiting room full of kids my age. Now I think it must have been part of the deal—that the parents would bring the kids back to be examined.”
“And my mom was back in DC, so she couldn’t do it.” He thought for a minute. “I wonder if she agreed to take me and Sam there for checkups, but then didn’t comply.”
“Was she that kind of woman?”
He lifted one shoulder. “She was always willing to bend the rules when it suited her.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“I was supposed to have Ms. Franklin for my sixth-grade homeroom teacher. Mom got me into a different class because she thought Ms. Franklin was too lenient with the kids. Another time we moved into an apartment building where you weren’t supposed to have pets, but she brought our cat anyway. Luckyfor her it was a well-behaved animal and didn’t mess up the place.”
