Sins of Innocence Read Online Free PDF

She really is. “Then the hard part,” she said quickly. “Doing the search for the children. The records, I assume, are sealed.”
    The woman took another cigarette from her pack. “Nothing I can say will make you change your mind?”
    Jess pictured Maura, frightened yet determined. Determined to do the one thing Jess had never been allowed. “No,” she answered.
    Miss Taylor tucked the cigarette between her old lips, staining the white paper with now-faded red dye. She struck a match and held it to the tip, slowly igniting the end as she sucked in the smoke. She plucked the cigarette between her yellow-stained fingers and sighed. “It seems there’s no such thing as ‘sealed’ records any longer. Besides, that doesn’t apply to Larchwood, anyway.”
    Jess felt her stomach roll again. “What do you mean?”
    “We were governed by the state, but the adoptions were considered ‘private.’ The home was privately owned, and privately run—by me. It was part of what made Larchwood so attractive to our wealthy clientele.” She inhaled another drag, then coughed. “I kept the names and addresses of the adoptive parents. I felt it was the least I could do—for my girls.”
    Jess studied the old woman and thought about how few caring people there were left in the world. She reached over and touched Miss Taylor’s hand. “When can we start?”

CHAPTER 2

Wednesday, September 15
    Susan
    It wasn’t on the side of the Atlantic, but Susan’s parents’ Palm Beach house overlooked the Inter-coastal. Instead of waves and sand, the view was one of million-dollar yachts cruising by: young, tanned bikini-clad ladies stretched across the bow; white-haired, firm-bodied gentlemen poised with crystal glasses on the deck.
    “What a life,” Freida Levin barked as she pointed toward the water. “Oy, to be that young and do nothing but lie around in the sun.”
    “You couldn’t have sat still that long when you were that age,” her husband commented as he pruned a yellow hibiscus.
    “Ah,” Freida said, tilting the green plastic brim of her sun hat. “But our Susan here …”
    “What is it now, Mother?” Susan turned on the chaise and looked at her mother. Incredible. Seventy-five years old and she was still trying to manipulate Susan’s life. You’d think she’d have given up on that years ago.
    “Don’t be flip with me young lady,” Freida warned.
    Susan rolled back and closed her eyes to the sun. Thank God she’d be going back to Vermont tomorrow.
    “Can I help it if I only want the best for you? That’s all I ever wanted, isn’t that right, Joseph?”
    Susan’s father clipped another blossom and grunted in reply.
    “And what happened? You left that wonderful man you married.…”
    “Mother, that was eons ago.”
    “Eons, schmeons. You left him for what? Now he’s got a family who appreciates him. And you. What have you got? You’re an underpaid college professor in a no-name town.”
    “I like my job, Mother. And I have Mark.”
    “Mark! Sixteen years old and even
he
doesn’t understand his mother. And what’s going to become of him? Hidden away in, of all places, Vermont?”
    Susan stopped herself from saying, “Vermont is a nice place, Mother.” Sometimes she grew so tired of hearing her mother go on and on. Sometimes? Most times. She shifted her weight again, and adjusted the elastic around the bottom of her bathing suit. It left red puckery grooves in the flesh of her thighs—forty-six-year-old thighs that had, she knew, spread beyond the point where she should be wearing something as revealing as a bathing suit.
    “Mark will be okay,” Susan said. She turned from her mother and plucked this week’s copy of
The Palm Beach Review
from the wrought-iron table. The
Review
. Scandal sheet of the rich. Every inch and every pica scrutinized by Freida Levin with a reverence usually reserved for the Torah.
    Susan opened the tabloid to a photo of Ted Kennedyand his vibrant young wife. She