The Inheritance Paradox
Twenty-Six (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.
I took Tuesday off work to help Mom and Dad get settled in their cottage and then had to scramble on the job to get caught up with the documentation the next day. We were making progress pretty quickly, but the code testing was all in a simulator. We wouldn’t get any positive results until our partner company had test units of the hardware approved for implant into humans.
I finally talked to Richard on Friday evening after work.
“I don’t often get a chance to talk to someone about family history,” Richard said. “Tell me how you think we’re related.”
“It’s not me directly, but my wife. Her heritage has been extremely hard to trace since it seems both her mother and grandmother may have passed away during or soon after childbirth,” I said. “Her mother was named Deirdre Avery of Niles, Michigan. We suspect her mother was Rachel Erickson.”
“Rachel! Dear me. I’ve not heard her mentioned in years,” Richard said. “Uh… I’m sure I have a limited folder of information on her. Let me get to the right directory. Never really wrote much about her because she passed so young. Of course, years before I was born. I know she’s buried in Battle Creek next to my grandmother.”
“I’d managed to find that, but no definitive link between Brenda and her until the DNA link came in identifying her great grandfather with your grandfather,” I said.
“Oh, that would be much too good! I’ve not discovered an unknown relative since I discovered Great Aunt Sylvia had a child she gave up for adoption before she married Raymond. Of course, that was scarcely a relative, but it did make for an interesting connection and some fun conversations. Ah. Here it is.”
He paused, presumably to scan through his documents.
“Oh, yes. Now I remember. My Aunt Rachel Erickson, older sister of my father, Lemuel. She was just eighteen when my grandfather, George Erickson moved to St. Louis from Grand Rapids. That was after my grandmother passed away. Rachel was born December 13, 1949, died April 18, 1969. Sad, isn’t it? Only nineteen years old.”
“Do you have any information on a child of hers?” I asked.
“Hmm. I don’t have anything specific. I jotted down some things my father said. His Aunt Sylvia took him, his sister, and his baby niece in after George died. She was his sister. He died just a month after Rachel did. His sister didn’t bother to ship him back up to Battle Creek like he’d done for Rachel. Said he didn’t belong there anyway. Dad said she gave the baby up for adoption and we never heard anything after that. I can check with him. He’s seventy-two now, but still a sharp mind. You and I must be near the same age, right?”
“Yes, it seems so. Brenda is six years younger. It seems we have that connection. I don’t see how Rachel could have had time to make a child after she left Battle Creek and my dad,” I said.
“Your dad? I thought we were talking about your wife,” Richard said. I realized I hadn’t said anything about my own distant relationship.
“Oh. Yeah. In a way, both. You see, when I met Brenda, she’d been in foster care for a few years. My parents took her in. A few years later, we married. We never had an inkling we might be related. My dad is Eugene Holbrook. From everything I’ve been able to find, he and Rachel dated through high school and planned to marry. She sent him a letter early in 1969 that broke off the relationship. It must have been very hard on her, having a new baby. As far as I can tell, though, she never told my father she was pregnant.”
“That would mean you married your niece?” Richard said. “This is much more interesting than Aunt Sylvia’s child she gave up for adoption. That seems to have been a theme for her. Unwanted child, give her up for adoption. I don’t suppose there is any legal ramification to the relationship. Your kids okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Healthy as horses and eat like them, too.”
“Isn’t that the way with kids? Mine are out of the house now but constantly threatening to move back home if the economy doesn’t improve. I’m thinking of moving and not leaving a forwarding address,” he laughed.
“Well, take care, Richard. If I find any additional information, I’ll let you know. I’ll forward the record of this branch to you, so you can expand Rachel’s folder.”
I didn’t know what else to do with the information. The DNA connection was clear, and the timeline was compatible. That Dad and Rachel had a daughter, and she’d been given up for adoption so soon after Rachel died wasn’t concrete evidence that their daughter was Deirdre Avery. It seemed more than likely, though.
I went to Niles to search for Deirdre Avery on Thursday a week later, unable to take a day off before that. I had a death date now and word of her birth mother and date of birth. I spent the day buried in records at the county courthouse and then searched out her grave in the Silverbrook Cemetery. It was a beautiful and well-cared for cemetery. I was able to search for the burial plot at the office and found a plain grave with just a flat marker with the name of Deirdre Avery and her birth and death dates. It was in a section of the cemetery where the graves were very close together and were all marked with similar flat markers. Apparently, they were the graves of people who died alone. It was very sad.
I snapped pictures. I was sure Brenda would want to visit someday. Maybe not soon, but eventually. I couldn’t find any record of her prior to her burial.
I’d had good luck with high school yearbooks in Battle Creek, but when I went to the high school, I was informed that the school library was not open to the public. The school had a pretty elaborate security system, including metal scanners at the entrance. I guessed you couldn’t be too careful these days. The public library was a few blocks away, so I tried it next.
After presenting identification and indicating what my interest was, I was finally granted an audience with the 1986 Tattler, which was taken from a locked cabinet and placed on a desk in the reference section. I managed to find a junior picture of Deirdre Avery at age seventeen. I snapped a picture of it and then turned to the librarian to ask for the 1987 edition.
I didn’t hold much hope for this because she’d died in childbirth in March, before the school term had ended. I wasn’t sure what school policy was in the 80s for pregnant girls. That might have been before the rules were liberalized. I leafed through the yearbook, not knowing what to expect.
What I found was a small memorial box on the first seniors’ page. It contained the same photo I’d seen in the previous year’s book with a black border around it and the birth and death dates with the words “Rest in Peace.” So, she’d at least been acknowledged by her classmates. Just looking at the picture, though, was enough to make the connection between Brenda and Rachel. This was definitely Rachel’s daughter and Brenda’s mother.
I found a classmates’ bulletin board online where people posted open notices and requests for information. I had to leave all my contact information on an open forum, but there was nothing that indicated recent use.
Of course, I talked to my sister about it.
“I think you need to confront Dad about it,” Meg said. “Seriously, this now affects your family.”
“Does it?” I asked. “What would be different if Dad said, ‘Yes, Rachel and I had a daughter and Brenda is my granddaughter?’ Will this do anything but create pain? I’ll talk to Brenda and see what she wants to do.”
“It’s your choice,” Meg said. “I won’t interfere. Maybe you could get Dad to tell a story. If you hint around broadly enough, maybe he’d get the idea that he should share it.”
“We’ll be over this weekend. Mom says she’s about ready for company, though I can’t imagine it. I think we’ll plan to bring them to our house for dinner. We’ll just see if there are any little jobs we can do.”
“Let me know what you find out.”
We went over Saturday afternoon to see what we could do to help. Zach and Val stayed home to work on the car. He’d been ready to install the engine when he decided he should rebuild the transmission as well. The Corvair was rear engine and rear wheel drive, so the engine and transmission were transverse-mounted. That saved having much of a hump in the middle of the car but created some odd engineering that wasn’t common on other vehicles. I’d picked up his tires from the shop that morning and dropped them off, but now it looked like he was another week away from actually mounting them.
When we got to Mom and Dad’s, Mom waved me into Dad’s little library while she, Brenda, and Lisa went to the kitchen to ‘get things sorted.’ I found Dad with open boxes of books, carefully sorting them before he decided which shelves they should go on. This library had only about a quarter of the shelf-space his former library had, but it looked like it would take him a week or two to get things shelved at the rate he was moving.
“Just who I wanted to see,” Dad said when I walked in. “Can you please get that damn computer set up? I know there was some kind of order to how we bundled cables and whatnot, but I can’t make heads or tails of it.”
“Sure, Dad. I should be able to figure it out. If worse comes to worst, I’ll give Zach a call. Or Lisa is with Mom and Brenda in the kitchen. Maybe she could help.”
“Oh, now, I don’t know if we want to bring the kids in on this. They could see something they shouldn’t.”
“Dad! What would you have on your computer the kids shouldn’t see?”
“Well, I remembered something last week and just before we shut down the computer and packed it up, I was doing some research, you know.” He actually looked embarrassed.
“Dad, were you looking at porn?” I laughed.
“No! Filthy stuff. I have everything I want right here at home. It’s… I was thinking about one of my trips and ended up online searching for witchcraft.”
“Witchcraft, Dad? Did one of your trips include witches?”
“I’d almost forgotten it until I was looking in the little box after the last time we had time for a story—after the sale.”
He pointed at the box I’d learned to recognize, sitting on the desk next to where I was supposed to hook up the computer. Dad went to it and took out a little piece of fired clay. When he put it on the tip of his finger, I finally recognized it as a thimble.
“I think her name was Brighde.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
