Reborn

2

This is it, Jim thought as he and Carol stood in the foyer of St. Francis. This is where my history begins.

Entering the place never failed to raise a lump in his throat. He owed these priests and nuns a lot. They had taken him in when his real parents had no use for him, and had found him a home where he was wanted. He tended to be suspicious of altruism, but he felt he had certainly received a lot from St. F.'s while unable to offer a thing in return. That must be what the nuns in school had meant when they talked about "good works."

The drafty foyer was as drab as the rest of the building. The whole place was pretty forbidding, actually, with its worn granite exterior and flaking paint on the wood trim around the windows and doors. The molding and trim had been painted and repainted so many times that whatever detail had been carved into the original wood was now blunted into vague ripples and irregular ridges.

He shivered, not just with the February cold that was still trapped within the fabric of his corduroy jacket, but also with the anticipation that he was finally going to be able to move backward in time, beyond the day he was left here. In all his previous trips to St. F.'s, that day in January of 1942 had proven an impenetrable barrier, impervious to all his assaults. But he had found a key today. Maybe it would open the door.

"It's starting to become real to me," he said to Carol.

"What?"

"The Hanley thing."

"Not to me. I still can't believe it."

"It's going to take awhile, but this is going to open all the doors for me. I'm finally going to find out where I came from. I can feel it."

There was concern in Carol's eyes. "I hope it's worth the effort."

"Maybe I can really start to concentrate on what's ahead, if I can stop looking back and wondering what was there."

Carol only smiled and squeezed his hand in reply.

Maybe he could get a better grip on the novels if he could find the answers to all the whys that cluttered his mind.

Like why had he been dumped here?

If Dr. Roderick Hanley was his natural father, it stood to reason that the old boy may have felt that his reputation would be damaged by acknowledging a bastard child.

Fine. Jim could live with that.

But what about his mother? Why had she deserted him as a newborn? He was sure she had a good reason—she must have! He wouldn't hold anything against her. He just wanted to know.

Was that too much to ask?

And there were questions he had about himself that he'd never discussed with Carol, questions about certain dark areas of his psyche that he wanted answered.

Suddenly Carol was tugging at his sleeve.

"Jim, look! My God, look who it is!"