Love Me Tonight. Gwynne Forster

now, seems to me you ought to call me Aunt Cissy. Everybody else does.”

      His face broke into a smile. “Thank you, Aunt Cissy. I’m looking forward to meeting you. See you tomorrow.”

      Maybe he would finally know. He told himself that because the woman knew the Motens was not reason to think she knew the circumstances of his adoption. But he couldn’t help hoping. He’d needed to know so badly and for so long.

      Heather read the letter a third time. As she stared at the bold signature of the Secretary of State, she knew that her next move could determine her foreign service career. She was not going to Albania. In that post, a diplomat was no more than a special envoy, and everybody knew that. She needed to talk with someone about it, and she reasoned that it wouldn’t be fair to discuss it with Scott.

      She heard a knock on her door. “Come in.”

      “How’s it going?” Scott asked her. “I thought we had a lunch date. What happened?”

      What else had she forgotten while she digested the letter? She picked up the letter and handed it to him. “This was not what I expected, Scott.”

      He glanced over it. “You’re turning it down, of course.”

      “That’s what I had in mind. My problem is how to do it. I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot.”

      “You know, Pete is separating from his wife. He said a minute ago that he wants an overseas assignment, any assignment anywhere. He wants a change.”

      “Goodness! Is he still in love with her?”

      “Quite the contrary. They’ve been miserable for some time. Tell you what—if you want me to, I can drop a hint that he wants out of here, and you don’t want to leave. That job is not a promotion for you, and you could be stuck there for maybe four years, but at least two.”

      “You can drop that hint, and I’m going to tell the Secretary that although I’m due a promotion, this doesn’t seem to me to be the one. I’ve received perfect scores on all of my evaluations, so I’ll assume that by exercising my right of refusal, I haven’t adversely affected my career.”

      “Sounds good to me,” he said, “but be very careful of your choice of words. What did Judson say about this?”

      “I haven’t had a chance to tell him.”

      “Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”

      “Scott, do you mind if we cancel today? I don’t much feel like eating. I need to go someplace and blow off steam.”

      “Heather, this is your first disappointment here. Let me tell you that you’ll have to learn to take the lumps and still walk as if you just won a presidential election. By tomorrow, everybody will have heard about this. Half of the staff will think you got what you deserved. The other half will know you didn’t. But not one will ever say anything to that effect. Some people are ignorant, some are cowards, and the others just don’t give a damn.” Scott turned to the door. “See you later.”

      “I’d better do this before I lose my nerve.” She wrote the letter, read it once, printed it out, signed it and called for a messenger. It’s what I believe is right, and I’m going with it. I’ll take the consequences.

      She’d just begun to outline a plan designed to introduce self-help programs to women in sub-Saharan Africa when her cell phone rang.

      “Hello, sweetheart.” His deep velvet voice had the ability to comfort her. Somehow, hearing it made everything right. “I have the most wonderful news.”

      “You found something?”

      “No, but I found someone.” She listened to his tale about Cissy Henry. “That’s wonderful. Judson, I’m so happy for you. The pieces will all come together. I know they will. When are you going there?”

      “Tomorrow morning. If I thought you’d be free, I’d invite you to come with me.”

      “That probably wouldn’t be a good idea. She’ll speak less freely if another person is present. I have some news, too. I’ve been offered a post in Albania, and I just signed a letter turning it down. Well, not in precisely those words.”

      “Congratulations. And since you don’t want the post, congratulations for having the courage to turn it down. I’ll be anxious to see you when I get back from Hagerstown tomorrow, so can we have dinner together?”

      “Yes. Do you think you can come to dinner at my place? I’m a fair cook.”

      “I’d love that. What should I bring? Do you have wine?”

      “Yes, but bring whatever you like to drink. Seven o’clock.”

      “All right. I’m…I’m anxious to see you. I’ll have to work tonight. Otherwise, I’d suggest that we get together this evening.”

      “Call me and tell me good-night.”

      “I’ll do that. Bye for now.”

      “Bye.”

      Cissy Henry stood at her front door when Judson parked in front of her house, a white, green-shuttered bungalow with a well-manicured lawn. A profusion of seasonal flowers marked the property lines.

      He strode up the walk to the steps and stopped. “Come on up,” she said. “You must be Judson Philips ’cause don’t nobody around here dress up this good on a Saturday. How’d you do?”

      He shook hands with her. “I’m fine, ma’am. How are you? I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your agreeing to see me.” It surprised him that she seemed so youthful and fit. He indicated as much.

      “I’m eighty-four. All my life I ate right, never smoked or drank. Went to bed early, got up early and said my prayers every morning and every night. Why shouldn’t I look well?” And certainly she had her mental faculties in order, too, he observed.

      “Let’s sit out on the back porch where it’s nice and cool. I don’t turn on the air conditioning till around three o’clock. Money don’t grow on trees.”

      He sat beside her on the swing in the screened-in porch, and gazed at the irises, peonies, roses, daises and other flowers that beautified and perfumed the garden. “This place is enchanting,” he said.

      “I’m happy here, Judson. Now, tell me what I can do for you.”

      “My adoptive mother passed on about a month ago. It’s been a terrible blow to me, especially since my dad died a couple of years ago.”

      Cissy’s eyebrows eased up. “Who was your dad?”

      “Louis Philips. He was a wonderful father, and I still miss him.”

      “I imagine you do. What do you need to know?”

      “As I told you, I’m adopted. I’d like to know who my birth parents were. I never asked my parents, because I didn’t want them to think I was unhappy. I wasn’t. They gave me far more than my share. However, I need to know who I am.”

      “You look like a prosperous man, and the way you talk tells me you’re educated. What kind of work do you do?”

      “I’m a lawyer, and I have a degree in law from Harvard.”

      “Good, then I know you’ll know how to handle what I’m going to tell you. I don’t know how it applies to you, but this is what I know about Beverly Moten. She had a baby out of wedlock when she was, oh, I don’t know, twenty-two or twenty-three. She was going around with this man, but she never married him. After she had the baby, she left the boy here with her mother and moved to Baltimore.”

      “It was a boy?” She nodded. He started adding. Twenty-two or twenty-three. He was thirty-four, and his adoptive mother was fifty-seven when she died. Was that the other child? He shrugged.

      “That’s not the end of it,”