"Dr. Jonathan Adams? Sorry. There isn't a… Wait, there is a Jonathan Adams Junior. An obstetrician. In San Francisco. His office number is…"

You hurriedly write it down and with equal speed press the numbers on your phone. Just as lawyers often want their sons and daughters to be lawyers, so doctors encourage their children to be doctors, and on occasion they give a son their first name. This doctor might not be the son of the man who signed your birth certificate, but you have to find out. Obstetricians? Another common denominator. Like father, like…?

A secretary answers.

"Dr. Adams, please," you say.

"The doctor is with a patient at the moment. May he call you back?"

"By all means. This is my number." You give it. "But I think he'll want to talk to me now. Just tell him it's about his father. Tell him it's about the clinic at Redwood Point."

The secretary sounds confused. "But I can't interrupt when the doctor's with a patient."

"Do it," you say. "I guarantee he'll understand the emergency."

"Well, if you're – "

"Certain? Yes. Absolutely."

"Just a moment, please."

Thirty seconds later, a tense male voice says, "Dr. Adams here. What's this all about?"

"I told your secretary. I assumed she told you. It's about your father. It's about nineteen thirty-eight. It's about the Redwood Point Clinic."

"I had nothing to do with… Oh, dear Jesus."

You hear a forceful click, then static. You set down the phone. And nod.

Throughout the stressful afternoon, you investigate your only other lead, trying to discover what happened to June Engle, the nurse whose name appears on the Redwood Point birth certificates. If not dead, she'd certainly have retired by now. Even so, many ex-nurses maintain ties with their former profession, continuing to belong to professional organizations and subscribing to journals devoted to nursing. But no matter how many calls you make to various associations, you can't find a trace of June Engle.

By then, it's evening. Between calls, you've ordered room service, but the poached salmon goes untasted, the bile in your mouth having taken away your appetite. You get the home phone number for Dr. Adams from San Francisco information.

A woman answers, weary. "He's still at… No, just a minute. I think I hear him coming in the door."

Your fingers cramp on the phone.

The now-familiar taut male voice, slightly out of breath, says, "Yes, Dr. Adams speaking."

"It's me again. I called you at your office today. About the Redwood Point Clinic. About nineteen thirty-eight."

"You son of a – "

"Don't hang up this time, doctor. All you have to do is answer my questions, and I'll leave you alone."

"There are laws against harassment."

"Believe me, I know all about the law. I practice it in Chicago."

"Then you're not licensed in California. So you can't intimidate me by – "

"Doctor, why are you so defensive? Why would questions about that clinic make you nervous?"

"I don't have to talk to you."

"But you make it seem you're hiding something if you don't."

You hear the doctor swallow. "Why do you… I had nothing to do with that clinic. My father died ten years ago. Can't you leave the past alone?"

"Not my past, I can't," you insist. "Your father signed my birth certificate at Redwood Point in nineteen thirty-eight. There are things I need to know."

The doctor hesitates. "All right. Such as?"

"Black-market adoptions." Hearing the doctor inhale, you continue. "I think your father put the wrong information on my birth certificate. I think he never recorded my biological mother's name and instead put down the names of the couple who adopted me. That's why there isn't a sealed birth certificate listing my actual mother's name. The adoption was never legally sanctioned, so there wasn't any need to amend the erroneous birth certificate on file at the courthouse."

"Jesus," the doctor says.

"Am I right?"

"How the hell would I know? I was just a kid when my father closed the clinic and left Redwood Point in the early forties. If you were illegally adopted, it wouldn't have anything to do with me."

"Exactly. And your father's dead, so he can't be prosecuted. Besides, the statute of limitations would have protected him, and anyway it happened so long ago, who would care? Except me. But doctor, you're nervous about my questions. That makes it obvious you know something. Certainly you can't be charged for something your father did. So what would it hurt if you tell me what you know?"

The doctor's throat sounds dry. "My father's memory."

"Ah," you say. "Yes, his reputation. Look, I'm not interested in spreading scandal and ruining anybody, dead or alive. All I want is the truth. About me. Who was my mother? Do I have a brother or a sister somewhere? Was I adopted?"

"So much money."

"What?" You clutch the phone harder.

"When my father closed the clinic and left Redwood Point, he had so much money. I was just a kid, but even I knew he couldn't have earned a small fortune merely delivering babies at a resort. And there were always so many babies. I remember him walking up to the nursery every morning. And then it burned down. And the next thing, he closed the clinic and bought a mansion in San Francisco and never worked again."

"The nursery?"

"The building on the ridge above town. Big, with all kinds of chimneys and gables."

"Victorian?"

"Yes. And that's where the pregnant women lived."

You shiver. Your chest feels encased with ice.

"My father always called it the nursery. I remember him smiling when he said it. Why pick on him?" the doctor asks. "All he did was deliver babies. And he did it well. If someone paid him lots of money to put false information on birth certificates, which I don't even know if he did – "

"But you suspect."

"Yes. God damn it, that's what I suspect," Dr. Adams admits. "But I can't prove it, and I never asked. It's the Gunthers you should blame! They ran the nursery! Anyway if the babies got loving parents, and if the adopting couples finally got the children they desperately wanted, what's the harm? Who got hurt? Leave the past alone!"

For a moment, you have trouble speaking. "Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate your honesty. I have only one more question."

"Get on with it. I want to finish this."

"The Gunthers. The people who ran the nursery."

"A husband and wife. I don't recall their first names."

"Have you any idea what happened to them?"

"After the nursery burned down? God only knows," Dr. Adams says.

"And what about June Engle, the nurse who assisted your father?"

"You said you had only one more question." The doctor breathes sharply. "Never mind, I'll answer if you promise to leave me alone. June Engle was born and raised in Redwood Point. When we moved away, she said she was staying behind. It could be she's still there."

"If she's still alive." Chilled again, you set down the phone.

The same as last night, a baby cries in the room next to yours. You pace and phone Rebecca. You're as good as can be expected, you say. You don't know when you'll be home, you say. You hang up the phone and try to sleep. Apprehension jerks you awake.

The morning is overcast, as gray as your thoughts. After checking out of the hotel, you follow the desk clerk's directions to Cape Verde's public library. A disturbing hour of research later, under a thickening gloomy sky, you drive back to Redwood Point.

From the highway along the cliff, the town looks even bleaker. You steer down the bumpy road, reach the ramshackle boarded-up hotel, and park your rented car. Through weeds that cling to your pantlegs, you walk beyond the hotel's once-splendid porch, find eroded stone steps that angle up a slope, and climb to the barren ridge above the town.