Free BRIDAL JEOPARDY by REBECCA YORK Page B

faded.
    “Your dad sleeps here?” he asked.
    “This was Mom’s room.”
    “They had separate rooms?”
    “She told him about fifteen years ago that she needed her own space,” Stephanie answered, embarrassed to be revealing private family matters.
    The room had two large closets, both full of women’s clothes.
    When Stephanie saw them, she caught her breath.
    “Everything’s still right where she left it,” she murmured.
    “I guess he misses her. Or he didn’t feel like making the effort to get rid of her stuff. All he had to do was shut the door.”
    She dragged in a breath and let it out. “I feel funny about poking around in their lives.”
    “Yeah, but we need to do it,” Craig answered. “Are those what you’re looking for?” He pointed to the cardboard boxes neatly stacked on the top shelf. They were old department-store boxes, the kind nobody made anymore.
    “Yes.”
    He lifted several down and set them on the bed.
    Instead of reaching for them, Stephanie stood unmoving.
    Craig turned his head toward her. “I know this is making you feel...unsettled.”
    She nodded. “And Dad is going to be mad if he comes back and finds me snooping.”
    “I guess that’s tough. But maybe we can get out of here before he comes back. Do you want me to help you look?”
    “Yes. Thanks.”
    They each opened a box and began checking through the contents. Inside were old photographs of Stephanie and her parents, plus other memorabilia.
    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.”
    “Well, we found out about me. Does the Solomon name mean anything to you?” she asked.
    Craig considered the question. “As a matter of fact, it does.”
    “How?”
    His stomach tightened 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 burned down.”
    “She could have gone to someone in the D.C. 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,” Stephanie said. “Only she didn’t take you back there for checkups, did she?”
    “You went for checkups?” he asked.
    “Yes. I remembered going somewhere with 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 D.C., 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,” Craig said.
    “Was she that kind of woman?”
    He lifted one shoulder. “She was