The Unbidden Truth by Kate Wilhelm Page B

Not her. She had to have a car and take to the road, just like her father. Gypsies, that’s what they were.”
    Barbara asked her a few more questions and found the answers to be meaningless, filtered through a layer of hatred. “Mr. Colbert, was that your opinion of Carrie, also?”
    His wife answered before he even had a chance to turn his gaze from the ceiling to Barbara. “He always said to give her time, she’d been through a lot for a little girl. He always took her side like that. He wasn’t with her day in and day out like I was.”
    When Barbara decided there was little point in listening to any more of this vitriolic blather, she stood up. “Well, I’ll be on my way. Thanks again for talking to me.”
    â€œYou still haven’t told us what kind of trouble she’s in,” Adrienne said. “What has she done? I have a right to know.”
    Barbara regarded her for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t think so, Mrs. Colbert.”
    Stuart Colbert roused and got to his feet. Adrienne’s face had turned to a shade of purple-brown. “I’ll see you out, Ms. Holloway,” Stuart Colbert said, and walked to the door with her. He stood on the stoop and said in a low voice, “If you go down to the café and have another iced tea or something, I’ll join you in a few minutes and try to fill in a few more details.” He didn’t wait for her response as he turned and reentered the house.
    If she had left a chicken on the seat it would have been done to a crisp, she thought when she got into her car again. She opened windows and turned on the air conditioner full blast, but it had not been effective yet when she stopped at the caféin the village, and by then she felt roasted to medium rare. The café was cool and dim, with blinds on the windows against the glare. She drew in a breath of relief. Fifteen minutes later Stuart Colbert joined her.
    He sat opposite her in the booth, ordered a draft beer and wiped his face with the napkin. “I won’t apologize for Adrienne,” he said. “Pointless for one adult to apologize for another one. She’s what she is. Life didn’t turn out the way she expected, and our retirement isn’t what she expected. We lost a lot of money these last two years, and there went our plans to travel, see more of the world. Anyway, she’s what she is.”
    The waitress brought his draft beer and replenished Barbara’s tea. After she left, Stuart Colbert took a long drink, then said, “We were on lists for over two years before they called and said they had a child for us. Adrienne had a room ready, all pink and frills. I guess she had an idealized child in her mind, and when Carol was brought, it was a letdown. I doubt that any human child would have measured up, and Carol was pale and thin, scarred from surgeries, and fearful. Whatever they had told her she had interpreted as going home, and instead she ended up at our place, and she let out a howl like a wounded cat. She wanted her mommy and daddy.” He drank again, then shook his head. “Not a good beginning. We explained that she would live with us now, and she clung to the social worker, yelling that she wanted to go home.”
    After Carol settled down, he said, the social worker had told them about the amnesia, that it often happened to trauma victims, and very often involved a loss of memory. Post-traumatic stress syndrome, she said. She might recover her memories, or possibly never would. In any event she had made up a past to account for the first eight years of her life, and it wasmore real to her than any reality, but she would drop that as she matured. Think of it as something like schizophrenia, she had said, where the person could not distinguish reality from fantasy. Children often invented playmates, other realities that they believed in absolutely, but they gave them up eventually, and she would