G'Day to Die: A Passport to Peril Mystery - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,79
you are.”
Guilt lodged like a hairball in my throat. “I’m sorry,” I rasped, hoping a whirlpool would appear at my feet and swallow me whole.
“They could have told me when they were alive, but no, I had to find out after they were dead.”
I placed my hand on Guy’s forearm. “They probably had a very good reason for not telling you.”
“It was all lies. There was no newspaper job in London. It was one giant cover-up to keep the truth from me. But I couldn’t understand why. The newspaper clippings, the old family records, why would they want to hide those from me? Madelyn was one of the most respected names in Australian history. You’d think they would have been proud of that. But that’s exactly why they had to keep it from me: because if I started asking questions, their world would collapse like a house of cards.”
I could hear him talk; I just wish I understood what he was saying. “Um, I’m a little confused. Would you mind backing up to the part about newspaper clippings and old family records?”
He regarded me with eyes so distant, I wasn’t sure he could actually see me. “I found them in the attic after my dad died—after the nephrologist told me that in addition to my being diabetic, my blood type was incompatible with my dad’s, which meant, he couldn’t have fathered me. I found everything—travel documents, passports. My parents left Canada right before the war for Australia. I found clippings about the Meridia and photos of my dad with his Aussie relatives. News articles about a ship that carried English orphans to New South Wales in nineteen-forty-six. A record of adoption for an English male child named Beverley Gooch by Nicole and Guy Madelyn. My adoption papers. I was apparently born in England, but my parents adopted me in Australia, then whisked me back home to Canada even before the ink had dried. I guess my dad didn’t want the Aussie relatives finding out that Guy Junior, no longer known as Beverley, wasn’t the genuine article. What a blow to the ego, eh? A man so inept, he can’t get his own wife pregnant, so he needs to settle for someone else’s kid.”
“It’s not settling! Adopting a child has to be a wonderfully rewarding experience. Your dad couldn’t have thought that.”
“Then why the lies? Why the isolation? I’ll tell you why. Because he was so ashamed, he couldn’t face telling them the truth! So he cut off all ties to them so he wouldn’t have to. I knew something was wrong. My dad always gave off these tense, angry vibes that would earn you a good smack if you crossed him on certain days. He was so cold and secretive. And that was the other thing. I wasn’t blind. I wanted to know why I didn’t look like either of my parents, and you wouldn’t believe the double talk my dad dished out to explain it. I think that’s the reason I went into photography. I wanted to find a face that looked like mine.”
“And now you’ve found one!” I enthused. “Heath! Did you get pictures of him? Could you see the resemblance?”
Something dark and disturbing flickered in his eyes. “I didn’t need to see him.” He removed his wallet from his back pocket and slid a photo out from its plastic sheath. “I knew the moment I saw this.”
He handed me a photo of a young woman with bobbed hair who was cuddling two toddlers in frilled pinafores and pipe curls. “This is Nora’s picture. What are you doing with it?”
“It was in the same box as my adoption papers. When my mother delivered us to the orphanage, she apparently left a photo with each of us, only mine didn’t include any names. I didn’t know who the three people were until Nora showed me her photo, then it became fairly obvious. The three of us had been a family at one time. It was a photo of my biological family.”
“So from that first day at Port Campbell, you knew Nora was a relative?”
“I knew she was a relative. You made the nightmare complete by telling me she was my twin. What a great way to ruin a gold mine tour.”
“You knew, and you didn’t say anything?”
He reacted as if he’d been slapped. “What? Give up the celebrity of being a Madelyn to admit I was brother to a pathetic old crone whose biggest thrill in life had been