The Lost Bird Read Free Page B

twin barrel-shaped chairs arranged in front of the desk.
    “Will you need me for anything?” Laola sounded hopeful.
    “I don’t believe so.” Vicky took her own chair, aware of Sharon David’s eyes watching her, taking her measure. There was a tenseness about the woman.
    At the sound of the door closing, the actress seemed to relax. “Call me Sharon,” she said. “I’d like to call you Vicky. I hope we’re going to be friends.” Shepaused, then hurried on: “I feel that I’ve come home.” The words were barely a whisper, but so clear, Vicky thought, that patrons in the last row of a theater could have caught the line.
    Vicky sat back against the leather cushion of her chair and studied the woman across from her. This was not home. The newspapers and television would never have stopped reminding people that a local Indian girl had made good in Hollywood. There would have been stories about every movie, every appearance on
The Tonight Show
, every scandal. In the quiet that settled over the office, she realized the next line was hers. “How can I help you?”
    The actress cleared her throat, a quick, impatient sound, as if the previous lines had been blown and it was necessary to begin again. “I want you to find my parents.” A smile tinged with sadness started at the corners of the red lips. “Does that surprise you? A movie actress searching for her biological parents, trying to find where she belongs, who she really is?”
    Vicky said nothing. She was struck by the irony: a woman known to millions, yet unknown to herself.
    Suddenly Sharon propelled herself out of the chair and stepped over to the window. She stared outside a long moment then turned back. Every action, Vicky thought, calculated for dramatic effect.
    “What about this?” Sharon David might have been pitching a script. “Parents claim child is their own. ‘But why is my hair black?’ child wants to know. ‘Why do I have brown skin?’
    “‘You’re just like Great-uncle Al,’ parents explain. ‘Just like Aunt so-and-so or Cousin we-forgot-her-name. They had black hair and dark skin, like you.You’re our only child, and we love you just as you are. So don’t ask any more questions.’”
    Sharon let out a long sigh as she strolled across the room and sank into the chair. “No child could have asked for a better home,” she said. “But at night, before I went to bed, I used to stare at the brown face and dark eyes in the mirror. I knew the home wasn’t mine. My home was somewhere else . . .”
    The actress’s voice trailed off, and her gaze shifted to some point beyond Vicky’s shoulder. After a moment she said, “I had decided long ago not to try to find my birth parents as long as my adoptive parents were alive. I didn’t want to hurt them. Besides”—a quick shrug—“I was caught up in my career, which took off like a hot air balloon and surprised everybody, me most of all. So I rode with it. Why not? I told myself it didn’t matter who I really was or where I came from because I had everything—money, fame, more men than I needed.”
    She gave a little laugh and raised one hand. The red-tipped fingers smoothed back the blue scarf. “I was kidding myself. There wasn’t enough money or fame, not even enough men, to fill up the emptiness or drive away the sense of abandonment. I knew someday I would have to find the truth.” Drawing in a long breath, she seemed to consider the next line. Then she said, “My father died five years ago. Last spring, when my mother died, I knew the time had come to find my real home, so I sat down and had a long heart-to-heart with my aunt. She was reluctant to tell me the truth at first. But she understood I wasn’t going to give up, and eventually she admitted my parents had been unable to have a child. I was adopted from the Loving Care Adoption Agency.”
    Vicky was quiet a moment, allowing the sacred information the woman had just divulged—the most important fact of her