He Never Forgot Page 4

  “Some of the other things that tend to bring back feelings and emotions when we aren’t sure of the memories they are attached to are food and music. Do you have any particular favorites? Or things you hate? Foods or songs that have strong emotions attached to them?”

  “Can’t stand fish,” Burton offered, after due consideration. “And I’m probably the only kid ever who didn’t like mac and cheese.”

  Zachary smiled. One of his favorites as a kid. “How could you not like mac and cheese? Next thing you’ll be telling me you don’t like French fries.”

  “French fries I like,” Burton said, pointing at Zachary, a gesture that suddenly brought Rhys to mind. Mute though he was, Rhys had never learned American Sign Language, but made do with a mixture of gestures, facial expressions, texts, and pictures on his phone. It worked okay, but was always a challenge. He frequently pointed at Zachary when he got something right. You got it.

  Zachary cleared his throat and tried to continue with the conversation without getting sidetracked.

  “But not mac and cheese.”

  “Nope. Can’t abide the stuff. Even the smell of the cheese sauce.” He gagged and shook his head. “No way.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not that picky.”

  “And how about music. Anything take you back? Or induce strong emotions?”

  Burton stared off into space for a while, then shook his head. “No. I like loud music. I mean, I like it shaking the walls. Nothing quiet. If it’s one of my favorite songs, it needs to be played at top volume.”

  “What do your parents like?”

  A brief shadow, and then it was gone. The memories were there. But reaching them was going to be challenging.

  “Have you talked to your parents about what they remember from when they first adopted you? Something that the social worker might have told them, or something that they thought just from your behavior?”

  “I called them last night. They know that I’d like to know more about my history, but they don’t think it’s a good idea, and they don’t know that I’m here looking for my house.”

  “Why don’t they think it’s a good idea?”

  “I don’t know. Just because… they don’t want me to get upset, I guess. They don’t think that it will lead to anything that will make me happy.”

  “So they don’t think that you had a very good life before you went to them.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Burton agreed. He motioned for another drink. “But they don’t know.”

  “Kids don’t usually come up for adoption for happy reasons. Not five-year-olds.”

  “But it could just mean that my parents or whoever was taking care of me died. It doesn’t mean that I had an unhappy childhood.”

  “Do you think you had a happy childhood?”

  Burton waited until he had another glass in front of him. He took a few swallows. “Okay. So I probably didn’t have a happy childhood. But I still want to know. I want to walk through that house. Or at least to see it again. I need—I just really would like to see it again.”

  “Do they think that you were neglected or abused?”

  “My mom will say things now and then. Like how I used to not be able to sleep without a light on. Like it’s significant. But lots of kids are afraid of the dark.”

  “It’s only natural to be afraid of what we can’t see.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What else did she say that she thought might be significant?”

  “I don’t know. I was skinny, but I ate a lot. I didn’t fill out until I was older. But lots of five-year-olds are skinny. They have legs like sticks at that age. It’s not unusual.”

  “Right.”

  “When I talked to her last night, she said that she didn’t think the social worker wanted them to know about where I came from. That it was better if I just started off fresh, like I hadn’t lived anywhere else before that. So that’s how they raised me. Like I’d always lived there and there was no history. But I knew that they weren’t my natural parents, so what was the point of that?”

  “Were they very different from your natural parents?”

  Zachary again glimpsed something in Burton’s eyes that was just out of his reach.

  “They were…” Burton blew out his breath and slumped down. He took several long swallows, almost reaching the bottom of the glass. “I don’t know. I have no idea. It’s just not there.”

  “What do you like about your mom?”

  “She’s very loving. She… smells nice. She’s soft and… she gives great hugs.” Burton’s pale face turned pink, and he laughed at himself. “So does that mean that those are the things about her that were like my birth mother? Or that those are the things that are different from her?”

  “What do you think?”

  Burton didn’t answer the question, diverting. “They remembered the name of the social worker. I don’t suppose she’s still around anymore, and she wouldn’t remember anything about my case, but it’s a possible line of inquiry.”

  Zachary looked at him for a minute, then nodded. “Do you have her details?”

  Burton gave him the name and the general description of the woman that his mother had been able to provide. Age, what she looked like. She was probably still alive, but would she remember anything about one case out of the hundreds she had probably dealt with during her career?

  “What else?” Burton asked briskly. “There must be channels to go through. I filled out one of those online forms to request my adoption records, but they still protect the identity of the parents if you were born before 1986, unless they’ve signed a release, so they’ll only give me non-identifying information.”

  “That might still produce something helpful. Sometimes there is actually trackable information included. Profession, ethnicity, other information that we can use to narrow things down. So if they release something to you, let me know.”

  “It was a few weeks ago. I don’t know how long it will be before they send me a letter.”

  “It takes a while. But it might be getting close now. And there’s a possibility that we can hurry things along if I can find someone who knows someone in the department.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Not officially, no. But sometimes, just talking to the right people can move things along.”

  Burton nodded without enthusiasm and drained his glass. “Are we about done here?”

  Zachary looked at his notepad, considering the information he had so far. Nothing that was going to provide the key to the search. But he could start brainstorming and come up with some suggestions as to where to go next.

  “Soon. Have you spent any time driving around town?”

  “Why?”

  “In case you might recognize something. If you’re that drawn to the city, you may recognize landmarks once you get out there. You might be able to find your house just by looking. I might be able to narrow down the neighborhoods to check out. It’s not that big of a city.”

  Burton rotated his cup in a circle of condensation on the table. “I don’t have a driver’s license.”

  “It was revoked?”

  Burton nodded.

  “How did you get here?”

  “That’s really none of your business, is it?”

  Zachary held up his hands. “Okay. No, it’s not. We should schedule some time to go out driving together, then.”

  “Sure. But not today. I’m about done in today.”

  Zachary pressed the button on his phone to check the time. Burton had said that he wouldn’t get up until noon, and he was done in after an hour with Zachary. Because of the emotional toll, or because there was something physically wrong with him? Did he have some illness pushing him to dig into the past before it was too late? Or was he just finished with talking with Zachary?

  7

  Zachary had carefully selected a few neighborhoods to take Burton to. He figured from the way that Burton had talked tha
t he had grown up in one of the poorer neighborhoods. And it wasn’t an apartment building, not if there had been a basement. Add to that the fact that Burton always referred to it as his old house, not his old home or apartment or just where he had lived. He had specified a house.

  That didn’t eliminate duplexes and fourplexes, unfortunately. There was nothing to indicate whether it had been a single-family dwelling or a larger building. Zachary pictured some of the areas of town, thinking of a young boy walking down the street with his mother trailing behind, of him meeting a man walking a dog, and maybe being allowed to pet the dog. Poor, but not crime-ridden. Somewhere it was safe enough to walk without fear of being shot in a drive-by or mugged on the way to the store or park. It was okay to stop and talk to a stranger or a neighbor who was also out for a walk.

  There wasn’t much else he could work out from what Burton had told him. Liking loud music and not quiet. Hating fish sticks. Was there a fish and chips shop close by? Or were they from a grocer or corner store? Mac and cheese could be sold almost anywhere, which was probably why Burton hated it. Food deserts existed even in Vermont. Neighborhoods where it was virtually impossible to get fresh food and the residents had to rely on highly processed foods for survival if they were not able to drive far enough away to find grocery stores and produce stands.

  Burton’s love of dogs and bugs didn’t tell Zachary anything about where he had lived. Dogs and bugs were everywhere.

  Burton was waiting in the parking lot of the Best Western smoking when Zachary arrived. He put the cigarette out and tossed it to the side. Zachary pulled in and unlocked the doors. Burton climbed in, reeking of cigarette smoke. Zachary cleared his throat a couple of times and nudged buttons to roll the windows down a crack, even though it was still chilly out. He turned the heat on, blowing toward Burton to clear as much of the smoke as possible. Burton didn’t apologize, either not noticing or not caring that it bothered his host.

  “How are you doing?” Zachary asked in a neutral tone.

  “Didn’t sleep. Couldn’t sleep… thinking about things.”

  “What things?”

  “What we were going to find today. If I’ll ever know anything about who I am and where I came from. If coming here was just one big mistake. My parents can’t understand why I would come back here. No one understands it.”

  Zachary cocked his head slightly as he drove. “Have you talked to any other adoptees? I think it’s actually pretty common to want to know where you came from. People often search for their biological families. Even people who aren’t adopted, but who don’t know who their father was, or who grew up apart from siblings.” He shrugged with one shoulder. “I don’t think it’s that hard to understand.”

  “Maybe it would make more sense if it wasn’t about the house. Maybe they’d understand more if it was about finding my biological parents.”

  “But it isn’t?”

  Burton shook his head, staring out the window. “Maybe eventually, someday. I can’t say I never want to see them again… not without knowing something about what happened. Why I was adopted in the first place. There’s a big difference between a parent who put you up for adoption because they couldn’t take care of you anymore, and being taken away from your family because you were… being hurt.”

  “Makes sense,” Zachary agreed. “So you think that the house will lead to some clues about what happened? Whether they are… people you want to see again or not?”

  “I guess.”

  Zachary glanced over at Burton following the unenthusiastic reply. He really didn’t seem to have any goal beyond finding the house. Finding his family was secondary to seeing the house. Standing where it had all started. Something about the place drew Burton.

  “If you had to say what direction it was now, which way would you say to go?”

  Burton scowled. “I have no idea.” He looked at the street signs and the intersections. “I don’t know my way around here. None of this is familiar.”

  “But if you had to point in one direction, directly at your house, where would it be?”

  Burton considered for a moment, then finally pointed ahead and to the right. Zachary projected the path of Burton’s finger in his head, thinking of a map of the city and what Burton could be pointing at. He did have a neighborhood in that direction that he had been considering, so he would start with that one.

  Did Burton know subconsciously which direction his old house was in? Would a five-year-old have absorbed that information? Could he have a picture of the city in his head and know the approximate placement of various landmarks, the most important of which would have been his home?

  It was possible. If he had good visual-spatial memory. He thought he had remembered the name of the city. It was entirely possible that the details of where his house was were stored in his brain somewhere, even if he couldn’t access them directly.

  “We’ll go to Eastside,” Zachary suggested, watching Burton’s face for any flicker of recognition.

  Burton didn’t appear to recognize the name of the neighborhood. Not like the name of the city. So maybe it wasn’t where he was from. What were the chances that they would just be able to get into the car and find it on their first attempt? Not very good. More than likely, their driving around looking for a familiar neighborhood would be fruitless. Maybe there would be something in his adoption records that would be helpful.

  They were both quiet. Zachary drove, watching the road and the traffic and pondering what else Burton might be able to remember, if Zachary only knew how to shake it loose. Everything was stored in there somewhere. Burton stared out the window, his eyes searching for some familiar landmark or feeling.

  The landscape around them began to change. They got away from the commercial areas into residentially-zoned neighborhoods. Nice houses at first, but gradually getting down to older, more dilapidated houses. Burton’s body language became more attentive. He sat forward and leaned toward his window, trying to catch sight of something that his brain wouldn’t give up.

  There were not a lot of people out for walks or other business, but there were a few. Zachary watched for someone walking a dog, wondering if it would unlock something for Burton. Anything around them could trigger him, could take him to a memory that would provide the information they needed.

  Burton’s nose was almost glued to the passenger side window. Like a dog who wanted out or a toddler flattening his face against the glass. Zachary touched the brake, slowing a little, giving Burton a long look at each house that they passed.

  “Maybe,” Burton muttered, studying them all. “Maybe, this could be the right area. I just… don’t know.”

  “Don’t force it,” Zachary advised. “Don’t try to remember. Just look at the houses, like you never saw them before. The harder you try…”

  Burton nodded. He tried to relax in his seat, but that didn’t happen. He touched the window with his fingertips, resting them on the glass as he searched.

  “Turn up here,” Burton said, pointing to the right at the intersection.

  Zachary obeyed, but he took a scan around the intersection before turning to identify any marker that might have been familiar to Burton. What would a five-year-old have noticed in that intersection? There was a corner store, not one of the big chains, but a little neighborhood place. Had he gone there for candy? Had his dad picked up beer there? Did his mother buy his mac and cheese there? Zachary turned.

  Burton’s head swiveled back and forth. He hit his knuckles against the door in frustration. “No. This isn’t it. This isn’t right.”

  “What did you see? What was the feeling?”

  “Nothing, it just seemed like… I might have been here before. But none of this makes any sense. It’s not right.”

  “That’s okay. We didn’t expect to find it in ten minutes, did we? Let’s just drive around, get a feel for the neighborhood. See what else might feel familiar. Don’t worry if we don’t find it today. We’re just taking a chance.”


  Burton nodded, but his jaw rippled as he clenched and ground his teeth, clearly upset about it.

  “This is going to take time,” Zachary reassured him. “You don’t have a lot of memories, so we don’t have a lot to go on. But that doesn’t mean we won’t succeed.”

  “There’s no way we’re going to find one house in the whole city. Not without knowing anything about it.”

  “We might. And we’ll figure more out along the way. Just keep watching. Notice when things are familiar. Take it slow.”

  Burton said nothing else for the next half hour. Zachary wound in and out through the residential streets. It didn’t look like he had picked the right neighborhood on his first try. But there were others. He hadn’t expected to be right the first time.

  “Stop. Pull over!”

  Zachary slowed, then guided his car into a parking space along the curb. Burton unlocked his door and was out the door before Zachary even came to a complete stop. Burton looked back the way they had come. He jogged back down the sidewalk, looking at the houses. He ran past one, then returned. He stepped out into the street and turned to look back at it from the same vantage point he’d had in the car. He stepped closer, and stopped on the sidewalk, studying it. Zachary let him look at it by himself for a minute and, when he didn’t come back to the car, Zachary got out, locked up, and joined Burton on the sidewalk.

  “Is that it?” He studied the bungalow. Dirty white with brown trim. Nondescript. Some shrubbery around it. The lawn not yet green.

  Burton paced back and forth to the two front corners of the lot, looking at it, studying it from every angle. Zachary pulled out his phone and took a picture of the front of the house.

  “Do you want to go around? Check the side and the back?” Zachary suggested.

  Burton hesitated. “Do you think it’s okay to go onto someone else’s property?”

  Interesting, Zachary thought, that he was so concerned about doing the right thing. His behavior up until that point suggested that he didn’t care about social conventions. He didn’t care if Zachary saw him as a drunk. That was Zachary’s problem. He wasn’t concerned about getting into the car smelling of smoke, not even making weak excuses about how stressed he was. He slept halfway through the day. But he was worried about going onto someone else’s property. Because the house looked like the one he had lived in? Or was he just a naturally law-abiding person and was concerned about trespass?