The Search Angel by Tish Cohen Read Free Book Online Page A

so many times?” he asks.
    No. “Yes.”
    “It’s ridiculous.”
    “I don’t have the luxury of waiting around to see what happens between you and me. Nancy’s waiting for us and if she senses any trouble, they could give Sylvie to someone else.”
    “You’re asking me to lie.”
    “Not lie. Pretend.”
    “Same goddamn thing.”
    “It’s not like anyone’s going to ask any questions,” she said. “We look like we’re together. We’ll go in and meet with Nancy whenever she asks.”
    “And I fly to California and put on the show of my life?”
    “I won’t have you do that. We’ll have Sylvie brought in with Luiz the way they wanted to do it anyway, remember? You’ll just come with me to the airport.”
    “I’m really not comfortable doing that. Plus, there’ll be follow-up stuff. You’ll never pull this off.”
    “Please. I’m begging you.”
    “I just—I can’t make such a big decision right now. I’ve got two cardiac cases waiting; I’ve been up all night.”
    “Just say yes.”
    “It’s a terrible idea, lying to get a child.”
    “I don’t care.”
    “It would be tough enough raising your own child all alone, let alone this way.”
    “‘No one would make a better mother than you.’ That’s what you told me a few hours ago.”
    “Where would this leave
us
, El?” he says quietly.
    She lets the moment lapse into grainy silence by staring at a hairline crack in the wall and mentally measuring the length. Fourteen inches, maybe fifteen if it continues behind the shelf Jonathan hung to display her cookbooks. Outside, a truck roars down Newbury. In the next room, Angus groans in his sleep.
    “Okay. I’ll do it.”

Chapter 6
    S omeone wonderful enough to know how much we needed you and generous enough to let you go.” That was the answer every time Eleanor asked about her birth mother’s identity.
    Thomas and Marion Prue were in their mid-fifties before they seriously considered adoption. Marion herself, a school secretary, had been born to a mother of fifty-three. It hadn’t seemed impossible that it could still happen for them.
    They’d been living a hushed life in Hyannis, tucked away in a weathered cedar cottage at the end of a cul-de-sac, walking distance to the water. The house was perfect, they’d thought when they first saw it—waves of the Cape’s blue mophead hydrangeas lapping at the split-rail fence that surrounded the property, massive trees providing a watery shade for children to play.
    The original plan was this: Marion, a drugstore cashier, would retire early and take the kids to the beach every morning, teach them to swim. Unimpressed with the quality of teachers at the neighborhood elementary, she planned to home-school them. Snack and lessons after the beach, a healthy lunch, then naps all around. Three children theywanted. Two girls and a boy. Or two boys and a girl. In the meantime, as month after month passed without so much as a missed period for Marion, they focused all their attention on prettying up the house. Carefully lifting back the rambling roses from the wooden fence and re-staining it each year. Tugging dandelions out of the lawn with a skewer so as to keep the yard pesticide free, should the children ever come. Building a garden shed that for now would hold their tools, but later could be converted into a playhouse, complete with window that opened onto a covered platform, all ready for someone to play store. No make-believe shop owner worth his salt would allow his imaginary customers to get wet while counting out their pennies.
    Hope withered gradually as, month after month, pregnancy tests came back negative. It dropped dead May 3, 1973, on a verdant stretch of freeway with nothing but grass trimmed as short as velvet and oak trees being softly strangled by English ivy gone wild. Marion wanted to plant the dark waxy groundcover in the garden and Thomas slowed to point out just how high up the trees the ivy had climbed.
    “It’s