An Open Book by Sheila Connolly Read Free Book Online

good terms. We never corresponded, and I never thought to look her up when I returned,
     nor did she try to contact me. I filed our brief time together as a happy memory and
     went on with my life.”
    “I assume she was pregnant when you left?” I asked the obvious question, although
     it was hard for me to reconcile the Edith I had known with Edward’s description of
     her.
    “She was, though of course she didn’t know it then, and she never informed me. You
     younger people don’t know the stigma of an illegitimate child in the forties, although
     of course there were many conceived under such circumstances, especially during wartime.
     She did not seek my help, although I would most certainly have offered it had I known.
     Instead, I went on in happy ignorance until this young man here approached me a month
     ago.” He nodded toward Philip. “Will you tell them how that came about?”
    Philip blushed and cleared his throat. “I feel bad that I started all this, but here’s
     how it happened. I’m a senior in high school, outside of Cleveland, and we had a research
     assignment to put together a family tree. We were supposed to get an oral history—you
     know, talk to our families and see what they knew—and then add whatever we could find
     online. Part of the project was to see how oral histories differed from documented
     history; kind of cool, actually, because people’s stories get kind of garbled over
     time. Anyway, I asked my mom and dad to tell me about their parents—where they were
     born, where they met, that kind of stuff. My mom’s family was pretty simple, and I
     got copies of things like birth certificates and marriage licenses for them where
     I could. On my dad’s side, things were harder. My grandma Sylvia passed away a couple
     of years ago, from cancer, and when I talked to my grandpa George, he was kind of
     clueless. He knew she had been adopted, but back in those days nobody would let you
     look at the records, you know?”
    I nodded my encouragement. “But things have become a lot more open recently, right?
     So I take it you followed up?”
    He ducked his head. “Yeah. I like to finish what I start, and my teacher said it would
     be a good thing to follow through and tie up loose ends if I could. So I started looking
     online and writing people, and finally I found a record of who had adopted my grandmother,
     and then I got a look at her birth certificate.”
    “I thought that was still difficult these days?” I said.
    “It is.” He blushed again and twisted his hands. “It wasn’t totally on the up-and-up.
     I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but I kind of talked with the people at the
     records offices and they let me sneak a peek. They wouldn’t let me make any copies,
     so I just took notes.”
    I looked at him critically: he was a fairly attractive young man, and he came across
     as shy and polite. I could see how town clerks would feel sorry for a charming and
     bashful young man when he explained what he wanted. “That was nice of them. So, what
     did you find?”
    “My grandma’s birth certificate—Sylvia Mercer. It listed both parents, Edward Fairfield
     and Edith Mercer, but since the Mercer name came from her mom I kinda guessed they
     hadn’t been married, particularly when I put that together with the adoption, and
     that was why Grandma had never talked about it. I’m not even sure what she knew—Grandma
     was given up when she was only a couple of days old.”
    He really was a bright and enterprising young man, to have found so much, so quickly.
     “What did you do next?”
    “Well, I had two names to work with from the certificate. I thought Edith Mercer had
     probably gotten married later, so she would have a different surname and be harder
     to find, so I went looking for Edward Fairfield. And I found him.” He glanced quickly
     at Edward, seated beside him. “I mean, I was really surprised, because they were so
     old. Who would have