Martha Caldwell's plane taxied through a gusty March rain to one of Northwest's bays at the Seattle airport. The leaden skies reflected the sadness of her heart, not to mention the apprehension surrounding her sudden flight from Dayton, Ohio, to attend her brother's funeral — a brother she had never met. The plane rolled to a smooth stop, and the passengers, gathering up their hand luggage, began to disembark.

"Mrs. Caldwell?" a smartly tailored woman in her mid-forties inquired hesitantly as Martha emerged from the covered walkway into the passenger lounge.

"Yes," she replied timidly.

"I'm Janet Aikens, Mr. Gooding's administrative assistant. He's asked me to see that you're comfortably settled in the hotel."

"Oh, yes, Mr. Gooding. . .from the law firm. He's the gentleman who wrote me the letter."

Janet nodded and took Martha's roll-on bag to begin the long trek to the baggage claim section.

"Do you have any other bags?"

"No, just the one you have and this big purse," she smiled, patting a huge soft leather bag, suspended from her shoulder by wide straps.

They went directly to the parking garage. Janet paid the parking fee, exited the Seattle-Takoma International Airport, and turned her BMW onto I-5, north, toward Seattle. "I'll just wait in the lobby until you've freshened up," Janet told Martha as they turned onto Broad Street, toward the Hyatt. "Bob . . . uh, Mr. Gooding will meet us for lunch in the hotel dining room."

In her room, Martha hung up her dresses and placed her undergarments and hose in the dresser drawers. She took a hot washcloth and rubbed it across her face, pausing to look at herself in the mirror. Can this be happening to me? she thought, as she stared at her reflection. Last week I thought I was an only child. Today, I'm in Seattle to attend the funeral of a brother I never knew I had. Martha patted her face dry, raked a brush through her hair, and applied a thin coat of pale pink lipstick. She smoothed out her dress and turned to view her profile. She'd not change into another dress, she decided.

"Oh, you look as fresh as a spring flower," Janet remarked as Martha walked up to her in the lobby. "I just spoke to Mr. Gooding, and he is on his way. We'll go on into the dining room and have a glass of wine until he arrives."

The two women engaged in small talk and had taken a few sips of Chardoonnay when Robert Gooding arrived, introduced himself to Mrs. Caldwell, and sat in one of the empty chairs, to Martha's left. "I hope you had a smooth flight, Mrs. Caldwell," Gooding remarked by way of opening the conversation.

"Yes, I did. But I'd hoped to see some sun," she replied pleasantly.

"We can never guarantee that in Seattle." Robert paused a moment and decided to go directly to the subject of her visit. "I'm sure the news that you had a twin brother came as a shock to you, Mrs. Caldwell."

"Well, I had no idea."

"I'm sorry that your trip to Seattle didn't end in a happy reunion."

"Yes. I would like to have known him."

"Albert was very successful, did you know that?"

"No, I didn't know that."

"After the funeral tomorrow I'd like for you to stop by the office, and we can discuss the details of his will. For now, I'll mention only that you stand to inherit something over 10 million dollars — in cash and stocks."
Martha, stunned, looked at Janet, who gave her a congratulatory smile. Martha could barely absorb what had happened to her in the last 36 hours. Learning that she had a brother she'd never met and that she was to inherit a large sum of money were developments yet to make an emotional impact on her. Not really hungry, she ordered a Caesar salad with blackened chicken for lunch.

"And how did all this happen?" she asked Robert, as they waited for the meal to arrive.

"Apparently, your parents, still experiencing financial distress at the end of the Great Depression, couldn't support the addition of twins to a family of five and gave you and your brother up for adoption," Gooding said sympathetically, knowing that the empty blanks in her family history had to be filled in.

"Why were we separated?"

"Times were hard. Getting a family to take two infants would have been almost impossible."

Martha stared at him wide-eyed, stunned at the revelation. "And my brother . . . did he know what had happened?"

Gooding nodded and continued to brief her. Albert had been adopted into a moderately well off family that had moved to California in the late '30s as the economy started to improve. They had told him, when he was 18, that he had a twin sister somewhere in the Midwest. He resolved to try to find you someday.

In 1960, when he graduated from the University of California with a degree in mechanical engineering, he moved to Seattle to work for Boeing Aircraft Co. During the height of the Cold War, in the early '60s, he and a friend established a company to forge and turn out machine tooled parts for the aircraft industry. His drive to make the company succeed absorbed all his energy and attention. Finding his twin sister, it seems, receeded into the background. Diagnosed two years ago, at age 61, with a heart arrhythmia, he had asked his personal lawyer, Robert Gooding, to try to locate her. Shocked by the sudden death of both his parents in a Bay area freeway pileup several years ago, Albert remembered his lost sister, the only known surviving family member. He had never married.

"Albert instructed me to leave no stone unturned in my search to find you."

"Why did it take so long?"

Gooding explained that Martha's adoptive parents had her name changed legally to their surname. Then she had married and carried her husband's name for 20 years. "All this took quite a bit of detective work and inquiries to uncover," he tried to reassure her. "Only two weeks ago did the final piece of conclusive evidence reach our office. And then. . ." He left the sentence unfinished.

"And then the last link of my real family chain snapped," Martha intoned sadly.

Robert Gooding looked at Martha and nodded.

He knew something of the twists and turns in her mostly unhappy and austere life. He had learned this in his investigation. She had stayed in an unloving marriage before divorcing her husband when the last of three children were grown and had left the house. Martha worked all her life in part to escape the drudgery of the house and to make up the income deficit from her husband's frequent layoffs.

Janet had remained silent during the lunch, allowing the play of revelations and emotions to wash over Martha. Lunch ended, Robert asked for the check and excused himself, setting 4:00 P.M., tomorrow, for their meeting in his office when Martha would find out the details of her brother's bequest.

"The funeral home will have a car here at 9:30 tomorrow morning," Janet said softly. "I'll be here to accompany you. In the meantime, I'm sure you would like some rest."

After lunch, Martha walked a few blocks from the hotel to buy a suitable black dress and shoes for tomorrow's funeral. On the way back to the hotel she passed a floral shop and bought a single long-stemmed red rose. Returning to her room, she placed the rose in the small refrigerator under the wash basin counter. She removed her clothes, put on her pajamas, and collapsed onto the bed. The events of the last few days spun in her head. She could not imagine what impact such an influx of wealth would have on her life. A simple, intelligent woman, but of no great intellectual achievement, Martha doubted that her good fortune would change her life measurably, beyond helping her children and perhaps buying a new house. While imagining what life might have been like if she had known Albert, Martha fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning, friends and business colleagues of Albert filled the funeral home chapel. Janet escorted Martha to the side of her brother's casket, where, somber, she peered into the waxen face of a man she had never spoken to. His nose, she noted, was aquiline, like hers. Albert's eyebrows had the same arch. Other than those features, she would never have noticed any other family resemblance. She could not believe both of them had been in their mother's womb at the same time. His lips, sealed in eternal silence, could never say, "Oh, sis, look at all we've missed over the years." Trembling, she lifted her pale hand over the edge of the casket and laid the red rose across his chest.

"For my brother Albert. I never had a chance to love you . . . or to fight with you. But I'm glad I found you at last."

Martha removed a Kleenex from her purse and shed her first tear in four days.

Copyright .© 2000 Mel Niswander.  All Rights Reserved...