He cursed himself for not driving to Bethany and doing this sooner. Five years sooner. Back when the clerks at the courthouse had first refused to find his sister’s file. He’d made more than twenty calls in the months and years since then, but always the answer was the same: “The records are sealed, sir. No one can get that information.”
Jordan’s heart beat hard in anticipation. He’d learned a few tricks since 1995. The only way past the fortress of red tape was to show up in person. He walked up to a counter labeled Records and waited his turn. Would this be it? In the next few minutes would he actually find out where they’d sent his sister?
“Next.” A stout woman barked the word and cast an impatient glance at Jordan. He clutched his briefcase to his side as he moved up against the counter and smiled at the woman. Her name tag read Olivia.
Often women were moved to do what Jordan wanted simply because of his looks. Olivia scowled at him, waiting for him to speak. Somehow he feared this was not one of those times. “Hi. I’m an attorney working on a local case.” He smiled as though that were all the explanation he needed to provide. “I need to check out a file.”
She scrutinized him, her face a twist of wrinkles and bad attitude. “You new around here?”
Jordan tried to look unaffected by her frigid tone. “Actually, I’m from New York. One of your citizens in Bethany asked me to consult on a matter. Can I give you the file name?”
Olivia shifted her weight, her lips a single line of distrust. “What local citizen?”
There was a beat while Jordan’s mind raced for an answer. “He asked me not to mention his name. The lawsuit is highly confidential.”
“You got ID?”
Jordan pulled out his wallet and flashed her several pieces, including his Bar Association membership card. Finally he tossed her a business card. Jordan Riley, attorney at law. Come on, lady, what d’ya want? When he could think of nothing else to hand her, he smiled again and waited.
Olivia released a heavy sigh. “All right, what file do you need?”
Did all the clerks at the courthouse have Olivia’s charming demeanor or was he just lucky? He cleared his throat. “It’s a Social Services file. Mother died, two kids were sent to different foster homes. Should be two files, actually. I need the one under the daughter’s name—Heidi Riley. No relation.”
He hadn’t spoken his sister’s name for years. The pounding of his heart was so loud within him he figured everyone in the room could easily hear it. He watched Olivia write down the information and waited for her to turn around and head into the archives room for the file.
Instead she shook her head and set down her pen, like a judge rapping his gavel on the bench. “Social Services cases are closed to the public.”
Jordan forced a chuckle to cover up his frustration. “I told you, I’m an attorney. I need the file for a case I’m working on.”
Olivia planted her hands on her hips. “I don’t care who you are, or what high-falutin? big city you’re from. You’re not getting a Social Services file. Cases where children are placed with foster families are of the utmost privacy in the state of Pennsylvania.”
Panic replaced frustration as Jordan saw his opportunity slipping away. “Listen, I can see the file if I want to. But all I really need is one piece of information. Maybe you could check it yourself and give me that detail.”
Olivia stared at him, not answering one way or another.
“I need to know where the girl, Heidi, was placed. Who she was placed with.” Give me a break here, lady …
Olivia’s eyes grew wide and she laughed out loud. “That’s exactly what the state wants kept private.” She thought a moment. “How old did you say the case was?”
Jordan’s shoulders fell. “Sixteen years.” Would he never find Heidi? Was there no way to see the file?
A deep chuckle rang from behind the counter again as Olivia shook her head. “A case that old wouldn’t be at this courthouse anyway. Those files are at the state’s microfilm library. You’d have to petition them if you want a chance to be heard. Even then, I’ve never heard of opening a placement case. Only the person whose file it is has a right to see those records.”
“Fine, I’ll try the microfilm library.” Jordan smiled, wondering if it hid the pain that racked his heart. Heidi, don’t give up on me … I’m trying to find you.
“You know—” Olivia’s expression softened, as though what she was about to say might actually help Jordan feel better about his wasted effort—“after sixteen years she wouldn’t be at the same foster home anymore. She’s probably married and living halfway across the country.”
“Yeah.” A hundred knives pierced Jordan’s heart as he stared at the woman. “Thanks.”
He was in his car in five minutes, driving to his second visit. As he navigated the streets of Bethany the memories came again. He and his mother and sister riding bikes through the shady roads near their home.
“I’ll race you, Jordan … ”
Heidi’s voice echoed in the hallways of his memory, sounding as alive today as it had all those years ago.
Stop! Jordan ordered himself to remain in the present. Three more turns, and he was on Oak Street, the place where he and his family had lived for what seemed his entire childhood. He slowed the car, struck by how small and crowded the houses looked. We thought we lived in a castle back then. He kept driving, searching for signs of the house he still knew better than any other, the only place he’d ever felt at home.
Finally he saw it. It was beige now instead of white, with chocolate brown shutters instead of the blue his mother had painted the summer he was six or seven. It seemed to be about half the size he remembered, but otherwise it looked the same. He thought about walking up to the door and asking for a look around. Then he changed his mind. It would be one thing to walk once more through the rooms where they’d been a happy family. But there would be no avoiding his mother’s room, the place where she’d spent most of her time in the months before her death.
Jordan felt tears in his eyes and blinked them back. That was years ago. He had moved on, and now there was just one reason for driving through the old neighborhood. His gaze shifted to the house next door, where the Moses family had lived. Was it possible they still lived there? That maybe—just maybe—after all the years that had passed … Faith was right here in Bethany?
He parked the car and walked up the sidewalk to the place where he had spent so many of his boyhood days. He knocked on the door, then took a step back, running a hand over his suit, smoothing the wrinkles. If Faith didn’t live here, maybe the new owners remembered the Moses family.
The door opened and a man in his sixties—a man Jordan had never seen before—looked at him curiously. “Can I help you?”
His heart sank. “Yes, I’m looking for the Bob Moses family. They … uh, they used to live here.”
The man smiled, but it didn’t hide his guarded expression. “You a friend of the Moses family?”
Jordan nodded and remembered his small-town manners. “Yes, sir. Lived next door when I was a boy. I live in New York now, just passing through.”
“You haven’t heard then?”
Heard what? Had something happened to Faith? Jordan fought the urge to turn and run before his memories could be altered by whatever the man was about to share. “No, sir. Last I knew, they were still living here.”
The man swept his palm over the top of his white hair. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Bob Moses died not too long ago. Let’s see, it’s been about a month now. Had a heart attack at his law office here in town.”
Jordan could think of nothing to say. Bob Moses had been the only father figure he’d ever known, a man who personified everything good and honorable and trustworthy. Even if he had lied to him. And now he was gone. A thickness in Jordan’s throat made it difficult for him to talk. “The … the rest of the family? They moved, I guess?”
The stranger waved his hand as though he were c
hasing off flies. “Oh, they moved years back, bought a nice place in the country five miles out of town.”
What about Faith? The question perched on his lips ready to take wing, but Jordan contained it. He’d had enough bad news for one day. He reached out and shook the older man’s hand. “I’m Jordan Riley, I should have introduced myself.”
“Joe Cooper.” The man’s handshake was firm and strong despite his years. “Good to know you.”
Jordan took another step back. “Well, I guess I’ll be going. I’m … I’m sorry about Mr. Moses.”
“All of us were. Whole town showed up at his funeral. Never saw two young women cry harder than those girl’s of his.”
Faith! Maybe she did live somewhere nearby. “Girls?”
“Bob’s girls. Faith and Sarah. You musta known ’em if you lived next door.”
“Yes, sir, I did. Do they … are they still in the area?”
“Sarah married herself a chemist and moved a few hours away, I believe. And Faith … well, son, everyone knows about Faith.”
Again Jordan fought to keep control. He loosed a quick laugh. “Like I said I’ve been away for a while now. Lost touch, I’m afraid.”
Joe’s eyebrows lifted. “Faith’s a local star. Does the eleven o’clock news every week-night. I think she married some football hero, but don’t hold me to it. Not sure where she lives, either, but it must be close.”
Jordan fought the urge to race for his car and drive to the news station. So what if she was married? With everything they’d shared as kids he was sure she’d want to see him now. He jingled the keys in his pocket. He had come this far …
Suddenly he wanted to find Faith so badly he could barely stand to wait another moment. “What station is she with?”
The man cocked his head back and squinted. “I believe it’s WKZN.” He leveled his gaze at Jordan. “Yeah, that’s it. WKZN.”
Jordan backed up another two steps. “Listen, I gotta run, but thanks for the tip. Maybe I can find her before I leave town.”
Joe waved and let his hand hang in the air. “Nice meetin’ you, Jordan. Now don’t go and get yourself lost in that big city of yours.”
Jordan waved one last time and climbed in his car. Maybe Faith would know what happened to Heidi. He was out of the neighborhood and on Main Street before he realized that Faith wouldn’t be at the station yet. It was only ten thirty in the morning. Besides, Jordan had one more visit to pay. Even if it was the hardest one he’d make all day, he had no choice but to go. He stopped at a local florist, purchased a dozen long-stem yellow roses—his mother’s favorites—and headed for the cemetery.
He had only been to the place where his mother was buried three times. Once on the day they buried her and twice after that—in the weeks before Social Services stepped in—when he had needed her strength and had ridden his bike to the cemetery to sit by her simple grave, marked by a flat, square stone supplied by the state. Jordan had promised himself he’d replace the marker with a proper tombstone when he had the money, but he hadn’t been back to Bethany to take care of it. Now the idea seemed to belong to another person.
Carrying the roses, Jordan tried to remember where his mother’s plot lay. His eyes fell on a grave that looked newer than the rest, with tiny blades of grass just starting to poke through a fresh mound of dirt. Jordan meandered toward it and saw a large, bronze plaque at the base of the plot. “Robert Samuel Moses, 1944-2001, Lover of Betty, Sarah, Faith, and Jesus, most of all. Religious freedom fighter.”
What?
Jordan’s gut recoiled at those last words. Religious freedom fighter? Bob Moses? Hadn’t he worked corporate law back when their houses were next door to each other? If he was a religious freedom fighter, that meant …
Jordan hunched down near the stone and hung his head. It meant he and Bob Moses had been waging battle on opposite sides of the war. They could even have wound up in court against each other. The reality cut Jordan to the core. How disappointed would Mr. Moses be if he knew the truth about Jordan’s occupation? Especially after the Moses family had done so much for Jordan, his mother, and his sister …
Jordan studied the tombstone again. Jesus, most of all … Jesus, most of all … Jesus, most of all …
His mind flooded with images of his dying mother, of Heidi driving off with the social worker—and Jordan’s heart steeled itself again with determination. What good had Jesus done for his mother? For him or his sister? For that matter, what good had He done for the Moses family? Faith and her parents and sister had lived for God, trusted in Him, depended on Him, and where had it gotten them? Bob Moses was buried just as deep underground as Jordan’s mother. Two people who loved God more than life, yet here they were. Their lives cut short by the very same God they’d spent a lifetime serving.
He stared at the roses in his hands and scanned the burial grounds. The image of a willow tree appeared in his mind and he looked over one shoulder, then the other until he saw it. There, at the back of the cemetery … the pauper’s section, where they buried people with little money. People forgotten over time. Jordan clenched his teeth and strode in that direction, not stopping until he found it. The white marker was dirty, dulled by the years and neglected. Weeds—though cut back—grew around the plot.
Tears stung at Jordan’s eyes. Mom …
He knelt and laid the flowers on the ground, noticing how they dwarfed the small stone. “Evelyn S. Riley, mother.” That was it; all that was left to remember her by. Jordan ran his fingers over the rough marker and ached to have her at his side again, yearned once more to be the boy who would run home from school and share his day with her, feel the validation of her hug.
Jordan pictured her, pretty and petite, a brown-haired woman whose hardships in life he’d known nothing about because she’d never once complained about them. Jordan’s father had abandoned them before he and Heidi were out of diapers. Two years later police notified his mother that Earl Riley had been killed in a head-on collision with a cement wall. Drunk and out of work, behind the wheel of a stolen car. Jordan’s mother had been careful to spare him and Heidi the sordid details, but after she died—when Social Services stepped in and took them—the facts were repeated before judges and social workers a number of times.
“Jesus will take care of us, kids … don’t you worry about us …”
His mother’s words rang simply, sweetly through the whispering fronds of the willow tree, as though she were still speaking them now. A teardrop rolled off Jordan’s cheek and landed on the grave marker and he rubbed it with his fist, cleaning off some of the dirt.
Jesus. Jordan released a short laugh. Yes, lot of good He’d done. Left Jordan’s mother to raise two kids alone, then sat back and watched while she died of cancer. What kind of God would let that happen?
“I’m going home, Jordan … this isn’t my home and it isn’t yours, either. Cling to Jesus, son … Don’t let walls grow around your heart because I’m sick … because I’m sick … because I’m sick.”
His mother’s words ran across his heart again and again. His poor, sweet, gullible mother. There was no God and no heaven. Only lonely, old cemeteries where people such as Evelyn Riley and Bob Moses lay rotting beneath the earth’s surface.
“Jesus loves you, son.”
Right. Jordan wiped his cheeks, stood up, and stared once more at his mother’s tombstone. “I miss you, Mom.” His voice came out in a strained whisper, which was all he could manage under the burden of his emotions. “If you can hear me, if you can see me … I miss you.” A sob lodged in his throat and he swallowed it back. “I’m trying to find Heidi, but I’m not sure how. I wish … ”
He couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t bring himself to say that he wished the God she had so strongly believed in had been real after all, and that if He were real, He might have cared about them as much as his mother believed. If He were, if He had … maybe she could ask Him to help find Heidi.
But it was all a batch of fanciful
stories and groundless traditions. Jordan bent down and touched the stone once more. “Good-bye, Mom. I still love you.”
He turned and made his way out of the cemetery, back toward his motel … back to consider whether he would file a lawsuit against Bethany that afternoon. He would lock himself in his room, lay out the briefs he’d written, and make a decision, once and for all.
He drove back along Main Street and—
Jordan slammed on his brakes, nearly causing a pileup. Waving his apology at three drivers, he pulled to the side of the road and stared. There it was—a block from the old neighborhood—Jericho Park and the infamous Jesus statue.
He climbed out of his car, crossed the street, and found the bench he’d been so familiar with sixteen years ago. A bench just five feet from the statue. As he sat, his eyes were drawn to the lifelike expression in the carved eyes. Powerless against the pull, Jordan felt himself drifting back in time.
He could see his mother, stirring a pot of soup on the stove and smiling at him. “You know what?” The memory of his mother’s voice rang in his heart. “My favorite place in town is Jericho Park and the Jesus statue.”
The Jesus statue … the Jesus statue … the Jesus statue. Jordan closed his eyes and pictured himself a ruddy-cheeked teenage boy riding his bike to this spot, this very bench … night after night after night … to his mother’s favorite spot.
Begging God to let his mother live.
He blinked and saw the statue the way he had as a boy, the arms beckoning him, the eyes seeming to know his pain. And suddenly it wasn’t one memory or two, but a whole flood of scenes and voices all taking Jordan back in time to the days when he had actually believed they would all live happily ever after.
6
The house had belonged to Earl Riley’s family. Otherwise there would have been no way Evelyn Riley and her two children could have afforded to live on Oak Street. They’d lived in a one-bedroom apartment until word came that Jordan’s father was dead. Jordan was five at the time and though he didn’t remember Earl or the policemen who came to the door that afternoon, he remembered what happened next.