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as he stood tall and proud. I looked furious.
    I pulled out a black-and-white of my mother and father who smiled at me from the beach at Ocean City, New Jersey. It had always saddened me that I couldn’t remember a single thing about them. In fact, I didn’t even think of them as my mother and father. They were Trey and Caroline, the names Mom and Pop always called them when they spoke of them. With a jolt I realized that I was now older than my parents had ever been. They had both been twenty-nine when they died.
    I reached blindly into the now almost empty photo box, and my fingers closed over an envelope. I lifted it out. The old-fashioned, Palmer Method handwriting on the front read John Seward’s papers .
    Curious since I thought Ward and Mr. Havens had all Pop’s papers, I extracted the contents. I took the topmost page and unfolded it.
    Commonwealth of Pennsylvania it read across the top in a swirl of Gothic letters.
    Stunned, I read the paper and then the accompanying letter. When I could finally find my voice, I turned to Rainbow.
    “Baby!” I said in disbelief. “We’re not really Bentleys!”

Chapter 4
     
    T here were eleven Biemsderfers listed in the phone book. I took a deep breath and reached for the phone. My heart was thudding faster than Thumper’s hind foot.
    I hated to admit it, but I’d been disappointed in my meeting with Todd Reasoner. I’d expected him to be clever enough to tell me just how I could get the information about Pop’s family in spite of the general consensus about the difficulties—no, the impossibilities involved.
    “Go here and ask this question of that person,” my fine new attorney was supposed to tell me. Or better yet, “Just give me a minute to tap a couple of computer keys, and I’ll have everything you need.”
    Talk about naïve, but that’s what I’d hoped for, expected, wanted so badly I believed sheer desire would make it happen.
    Instead he hadn’t even offered me hope. I sighed so loudly that Rainbow raised her head from her pillow to check out my level of distress. Apparently it wasn’t high enough for concern because she quickly put her head back on the pillow and went back to sleep.
    I had to face the fact that Todd was probably right about finding answers. Probably? He was right. He was, after all, the lawyer. And everyone involved in the original adoption was dead by now.
    “You’ve made yourself this sweet, cozy little world, Cara,” Ward told me the night we discussed my plans. “Only good things happen where you live. True love always wins there. And if something goes wrong, you just rewrite it.”
    It was embarrassing to admit even to myself, but I had come to Lancaster with a plotline firmly in place for my adoption search. For me, doors would open. For me, answers would appear. I, in true Bentley fashion, would be in control of the situation. Wasn’t that what Marnie had said? I liked to be in control just like Pop and Ward?
    “You can control your writing,” she told me. “The trouble is, you can’t control life.”
    Of course I knew that on some level. I wasn’t stupid. And I had gone online before I came up here, looking up Pennsylvania adoption law. It stated clearly that the adoptee had to approach an uninvolved party like the agency through which the adoption occurred or the state itself with a request to meet the natural parents. Then this impartial party would contact the natural parent or parents on the adoptee’s behalf. If there was a reciprocal interest, the plans to meet would be made. If not, that was it. Closed door.
    But that law assumed the parties involved were still living. And because in my case they weren’t, I wanted Todd to work miracles to find the answer I sought.
    I might as well face it. Neither Todd nor I were going to walk into the Lancaster County Courthouse and be given the information. If it was out there somewhere, I was going to have to search for it in creative ways.
    Not that I thought Todd