A Gentle Rain Read Online Free PDF Page B

never understood that custom."
    "This necklace isn't just a sentimental keepsake. I have this strange, despairing need to be certain Mother and Dad really are part of me. That's why I'm wearing this locket." I held out my hands, searching thin air. "It's as if... as if I've always felt orphaned."
    He took my hand. "My dear, I assure you. You have always been loved. And you have always been a Whittenbrook. And you always tivill be." He sighed and rose to his feet. "It's a cold night. I'll get you a brandy. No more of these morbid thoughts."
    I stood there thinking. What if I don't tivant to be a Whittenbrook, anymore?

    I couldn't sleep at all, that night. I didn't sleep much, anyway. I had nightmares about the crash site, and often woke up in a cold sweat. I thought I'd never sleep soundly again.
    At four a.m. I sat cross-legged on the steel floor of Mother and Dad's walls-in safe, a vault built in what had once been The Brook's cellar. The steel floor was cushioned by a hand-woven Peruvian rug. I was dressed in organic cotton pajamas and an alpaca sweater. I recognized the contrast and the irony.
    Trays of jewelry surrounded me; millions in fine gems and precious metals were at my fingertips, some of them important Whittenbrook heirlooms, others mere baubles given by friends, family, royalty, state leaders and captains of industry.
    Uncle William stored his share of the ancestral loot elsewhere. My parents had rarely mentioned their personal hoard, which they'd intended to donate to museums or charities. I planned to pick out only a few mementoes. Then Sedge's staff could disperse the rest as Mother and Dad had wanted.
    I pulled my father's boyhood stamp collection from a lock box in the wall. I leafed through a collection of handwritten notes he'd received from philatelist pen pals in the late 1940s when Dad was a young teen. I never thought of my parents as older than average, but they were both over forty when I was born in the mid-1970s.
    So here were Dad's World War Two era pen pals: Churchill, Truman and Eisenhower. Oh, and here was one from a distant cousin of Dad's. That handsome war hero from Massachusetts. Jack Kennedy.
    I put the letters down and sat there numbly. I had a prized childhood collection, too, which I'd carefully itemized, catalogued and stored at Dos Rios. But my collection consisted of posters, telenova videotapes and fan magazines featuring Latin American wrestlers. Lucadores.
    Dad had collected stamps with Churchill.
    I'd collected pictures of masked, bare-chested, tights-wearing wrestlers.
    I got to my feet again and staggered to a wall. Another lock box protruded slightly from its berth. I pulled it out, set it on a small table, then poked a master key into its lock. I expected another stamp collection. Instead I lifted out a slender manila folder with a yellowing label across the top.
    CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENT REGARDING KARA
    I frowned. My parents had kept no secrets from me. None, certainly, that need be locked in a vault. I flipped the folder open.
    I stood there for a long time, weaving slightly in place as I read and re-read my birth certificate. I tried to convince myself it was some joke, or hoax, or mistake. Jane Austen, however, reminded me that instincts speak far louder than turgid rationalizations.
    As she said: Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am r qht, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?
    These papers and their meaning were real.
    Slowly my legs folded, and I sat down on the cold steel floor.
    Charles and Elizabeth Dos Rios Preserve, Brazil 1974
    Haggard and red-eyed, Charles Whittenbrook waited beside a Jeep in the warm, foggy rain. He watched dully as a pilot landed a small plane on the refuge's airstrip. Sedge had traveled for more than twenty-four hours straight to arrive this quickly in the remotest region of western Brazil. He took Charles in a deep hug, despite the soft rain falling on their bare heads. "How is she? And how are