“You didn’t happen to get the license plate, did you?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.” Barbara Shields went for her purse.
Willow Grove, Iowa, sat on a bluff looking down over a branch of the Iowa River. It was a town of church steeples and antiques shops, a town where red brick houses alternated with white clapboard and where mature maples shaded the narrow streets. A small private college occupied several blocks near the center, and an old inn sat across from City Hall, which was topped with a copper cupola. The rain had ended, and the copper glinted in the frail streaks of late afternoon sunshine that managed to peak through the cloud cover.
Nealy told herself there couldn’t be a more perfect place for children to grow up, and apparently Mat was thinking the same thing. “This is going to be great for the girls.”
He’d stopped at a store on the outskirts to buy dog food and get directions to the street where the girls’ grandmother lived. It was close to the downtown area and ran along the top of the bluff. In the spaces between houses, she caught occasional glimpses of the river below.
“Number one-eleven,” he said. “There it is.”
He pulled up in front of a red brick two-story with white trim. All the houses on the street seemed to have front porches and detached garages. This one was square and solid, the kind of house that generations of families all over the Midwest had grown up in.
It looked a bit more neglected than the others on the street because there were no summer flowers blooming by the shrubbery or growing from pots on the front porch. The grass needed mowing, and the white trim didn’t look as fresh as its neighbors’. But it wasn’t rundown. Instead, it simply appeared as if its inhabitant had other things she’d rather do.
“That mangy mut’s staying locked up until Grandma’s had time to get over the shock of the girls,” Mat said.
She realized he was nervous. So was she. At least he’d stopped snapping at her.
Button had calmed down when they’d entered the town, almost as if she knew something monumental was about to happen to her life, and Lucy had sealed herself in the back with Squid. As Nealy began to unfasten the baby from the car seat, she noticed the old food stains on her romper, a small hole in the sleeve, and the fact that her hair could use a fluffing. “Maybe we should fix Button up a little before she meets her grandmother. For all we know, this might be the first time she’s ever seen her.”
“Good idea. I’ll get her out of this. See if you can find something decent for her to wear.” Then he remembered who he was talking to. “If you don’t mind.”
“I’m the one who suggested it,” she snapped.
Lucy lay stretched out on the bed with the dog curled against her, dirt and all. She pretended to be reading her book, but Nealy wasn’t fooled, and she squeezed her ankle. “It’s going to be all right, Lucy. This is a great place.”
Lucy pulled the book closer to her face and didn’t answer.
Nealy chose the little peach denim jumper she’d bought at Baby Gap. It had a row of tiny blue flowers embroidered across the yoke and a matching knit top with puffy sleeves. As she emerged with it, she saw that Mat had stripped Button down to a diaper and was giving her a pregame pep talk.
“I want you on your best behavior, Demon. No b.s. And not too loud, okay? No yelling. No hurling. Just be a regular baby, for a change.” He frowned at her as he fastened the tabs on a fresh diaper, and she cooed back at him. “Yeah, yeah . . . save the goo-goo eyes for Grannie.”
Nealy handed him the outfit, and he had the baby dressed in less than a minute. “You’re so good at that. It takes me forever to get her into her clothes.”
“You’re too tentative. With babies, you have to take charge or they’ll walk all over you. Just like with women.”
“Oh, yeah?” This was more like it, and she shot him a challenging grin, only to see the mischief fade from his eyes.
“You want to see if you can find her shoes?”
She turned away without a word. She wasn’t going to beg for his affection. Not that she wanted his affection, exactly. She wanted his . . . well, she wanted his body, no need to lie to herself about that. But she also wanted his friendship, his irreverence, even his annoying male chauvinism.
The words to an old Sheryl Crow pop song skittered through her head. Was he strong enough to be her man? Had she really thought he might be?
She was skirting dangerously close to self-pity, and she pulled herself together. “Lucy doesn’t seem to want to come out.”
“She probably knows her grandmother’s going to run a lot tighter ship than Sandy did.”
“Maybe.” She slipped the hairbrush through the baby’s fluff. To her astonishment, she found herself the target of the megawatt smile Button normally reserved for Mat. Her heart ached. “No way,” she muttered. “You’re not going to start flirting with me right before I have to give you up.”
Button gave a shriek of delight and held out her arms for Nealy to pick her up. Her throat constricted, and she turned away.
Mat lifted her from the couch. “Too little, too late, Demon. Some people can’t be bought.” He bent down, opened one of the built-in drawers underneath, and pulled out the Wal-Mart pillow. “As much as I hate to say it, you’ll need to wear this.” His expression showed his distaste. “Other than me, it’s the best protection you have.”
He was right. They were going to be in town for a while, and the whole world was looking for her. She located one of the old maternity tops and slipped into the bathroom. As she came out, she heard Mat talking to Lucy.
“. . . the detectives Nell’s ex-husband hired might be showing up. She needs to throw them off, so she’s going to make herself look pregnant again. If anybody asks, I’m saying she’s my wife, so back me up, okay?”
“Okay.” Lucy sounded sad.
A few beats of silence ticked by. “I’m not going to just dump you and leave, you know. I’ll stay around for a while to make sure you get settled. This is going to be great. You’ll see.”
Lucy moved toward the door as if she weighed a thousand pounds. Squid lumbered after her.
“I think we’d better leave the dog here for now.” Mat pulled his shirt collar from Button’s mouth.
It was a silent group that made its way up the steps to the front door. As Mat pressed the bell, Nealy glanced at Lucy. She was leaning against the porch rail looking miserable.
Nealy moved over to her and slipped an arm around her waist. She wanted to tell the teenager that everything was going to be all right, but she couldn’t do that because it so obviously wasn’t.
Lucy looked up at her, and Nealy saw a whole world of anxiety in her eyes. “I’m not going anywhere, either,” she whispered. “Not until I know you’re all right.” She just hoped she could live up to her promise.
“Nobody’s answering,” Mat said. “I’ll look around back.” He passed Button over to her.
Lucy stared at the front door.
“Do you want to tell me about your grandmother now?” Nealy asked.
Lucy shook her head.
Mat was muttering under his breath as he came back around. “The windows are open, and there’s music playing. She probably can’t hear the bell.” He banged on the front door. “More good news, Lucy. Your grandmother likes Smashing Pumpkins.”
“Cool,” Lucy murmured.
The door swung open. A young man in his mid- to late twenties stood on the other side. Everything about him screamed that he was a charter member of the slacker generation: close-cropped hair, goatee, earrings. He wore a T-shirt with a pair of cargo shorts and Teva sandals. “Yeah?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Nealy saw Lucy swallow and step forward.
“Hi, Grandpa.”
15
MAT CHOKED—NOT easy to do with a mouth as dry as dust. He spun toward Lucy. “Grandpa?”
Her hands were clasped in front of her, she was biting her lip, and she looked like she was going to cry. Then he turned back to the sla
cker, who was scratching his chest and looking confused.
“I don’t know who you think . . .” He paused and studied her more closely. “Hey, are you—Laurie?”
“Lucy.”
“Oh, yeah.” He gave her an apologetic smile. “You don’t look too much like your pictures anymore. How you doin’?”
“Not too good. My mom died.”
“Man, that’s a drag.” He looked back at Mat and seemed to realize this was more than a social call. “You want to come in?”
“Oh, yes,” Mat said through tight lips. “We definitely want to come in.” He gripped Lucy by the arm and pushed her ahead of him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Nell looked as dismayed as he felt. Only the Demon seemed to be unaffected. She was patting Nell’s cheek trying to get her attention.
They followed the slacker into a living room that held a hodgepodge of comfortable furniture upholstered in dark green and brown velvets, along with a few dusty arts and crafts style tables. There were bookcases on each side of the fireplace, with contents that appeared to be well-read. He spotted some primitive wooden figures, a few pieces of pottery, and a couple of etchings. The sound system that was playing the Smashing Pumpkins sat on a library table cluttered with stacks of CDs. There were magazines lying around, a guitar, a pile of free weights in the corner, and a duffel bag open on the coffee table.
The slacker turned down the music. “You want a beer or something?”
“Yes, please,” said Lucy, darting Mat a nervous glance as she broke away.
Mat shot her a hell-to-pay glare and tried to figure out where to start. “No, thanks. We’re here to see Mrs. Pressman.”
“Joanne?”
“Yes.”
“She’s dead, man.”
“Dead?”
Nell reached for Lucy, as if she could somehow cushion her from the shock. But Lucy didn’t look shocked. Instead she looked as though she knew she was in big trouble.
Mat stared at the slacker, forced out the words. “Lucy didn’t tell us her grandmother had passed away.”
“Joanne died almost a year ago. It’s rough, man.”
“A year?” Mat was so furious he could barely contain himself. “I was told that Mrs. Pressman had been out of the country for a few months.”
“Yeah, man. Way out.” His pitch rose. “She took my bike one day and wrecked it on County Line Road.”
Nell absentmindedly patted Button’s leg. “She was riding a bike?”
“I think he means a motorcycle,” Mat said tightly.
Lucy tried to slide behind the couch, apparently under the mistaken notion furniture would protect her.
“My new Kawasaki 1500. I was really bummed.”
“About the bike or Mrs. Pressman?”
The slacker regarded him with steady eyes. “C’mon, man, that’s low. I loved her.”
Mat wondered why nothing in life was ever simple. He’d never thought to question the authenticity of the note Lucy’d shown him because the stationery had been embossed with the college seal. Also, the handwriting hadn’t looked like the work of a teenager. Fool. He knew how smart she was. Why hadn’t he done some digging?
He asked the question he’d been avoiding ever since Lucy had called the slacker Grandpa. “Who are you?”
“Nico Glass. Joanne and I’d only been married a couple of months when she died.”
Nell seemed to be having as much trouble as he was taking it in. “The two of you were married?”
Nico’s eyes held a hint of challenge. “Yeah. We loved each other.”
Nell made the understatement of the day. “There seems to be quite an age difference.”
“In a lot of people’s eyes, maybe, but not in ours. She was only fifty-three. She was my anthropology professor at Laurents. They tried to fire her after we got involved, but because I was over twenty-one, they couldn’t do it.”
“Laurents?” Nell said. “That’s the college in town?”
“Yeah, I changed my major a couple of times, so it was taking me a while to graduate.”
Mat finally confronted Lucy. He decided it was a good thing there was a couch between them after all because he wanted to do serious harm. “Who forged the letter?”
Her thumbnail came to her mouth, and she took a step away from him, misery etched in every line of her body. He didn’t feel one bit sympathetic.
“This lady I was baby-sitting for,” she mumbled. “And it wasn’t for you! It was for Sandy’s lawyer! I knew he was getting suspicious, so I was going to show it to him next time he showed up, only you came instead.”
He clenched his teeth. “You knew your grandmother was dead. You lied about everything.”
She regarded him mulishly. “I might have known she died, but I didn’t know about the Kawasaki.”
Nell must have realized he was losing it because she put her hand on his arm and gave a light squeeze.
“Look, man. Am I supposed to know you?”
He struggled for composure. “I’m Mat Jorik. I used to be married to Sandy, Joanne’s daughter. This is . . . my wife Nell.”
He nodded at Nell. Button started batting her baby blues at him, and he smiled back. “Cute kid. Joanne was worried when Sandy got pregnant because of her drinking. They didn’t get along too good.”
“Sandy didn’t drink when she was pregnant.” Lucy started working on the other thumbnail.
Button wanted down, and Nell lowered her to the floor. The toddler immediately began waddling around the coffee table, toes pointed outward like a drunken ballerina. Mat needed to get himself under control, so he headed for the framed snapshots sitting on the dusty wooden mantel in the feeble hope that they might tell him something.
The pictures in the front were all of Joanne and Nico. They could have been mother and son, except for the hungry way they looked at each other. Joanne had been an attractive woman, slim and well proportioned, with long salt and pepper hair parted in the center and held away from her face with barrettes. Her gauzy skirts, loose-fitting tops, and silver jewelry bore the indelible stamp of an aging flower child. The proprietary way she leaned against Nico’s bare chest in one photo after another made it obvious that she’d been sexually smitten by him. As far as his attraction to a woman thirty-some years older—that was probably best sorted out on a psychiatrist’s couch.
The row of pictures in the back showed both Sandy and Lucy at various ages. He lingered over the pictures of Lucy. In the early ones she was too young to have figured out how to put on her tough act, and her bright eyes and wide smile showed a little girl in love with life. The hospital picture of Button with a misshapen head and mashed-in face bore no resemblance to the baby beauty queen who was currently trying to stuff a finger up her nose.
He was about to turn away when he caught sight of the photograph at the end of the row. It was a picture of Sandy and himself that had been taken at a friend’s party. Both of them were holding drinks, something they’d done a lot of in those days. She was beaming and beautiful with her dark hair and full mouth. He wondered if the tall, gangly kid sitting next to her trying too hard to look older could actually have been him. The photograph was depressing, and he turned away to see Nico staring at Nell.
“Don’t I , you know, know you from somewhere? ”
Before Nell could respond, Lucy said, “She looks like Cornelia Case, the First Lady.”
Nell tensed, but Nico only smiled. “Yeah, man, you really look like her.” He turned to Mat. “So, are you on vacation or what?”
“Not exactly. Lucy, get lost.”
Normally she would have mouthed off, but now she didn’t dare. Instead, she snatched up Button and headed out the front door. Through the window, he watched her take a seat on the glider, where she’d be near enough to the door to eavesdrop.
He turned to study the kid who was the closest thing the girls had to a relative and began to dig in. “Here’s the way it is, Nico . . .”
Nealy eventually went outside to check on Lu
cy. The teenager had retrieved Squid from the motor home, and the dog lay next to her on the porch like a pile of smelly rags. Button was watching a robin hop on the ground while she gripped a spindle of the railing with one hand and sucked the other. Nealy refused to let herself think about lead poisoning from old paint. This time with Button had been good for her, she realized. She no longer felt quite so much like the Angel of Baby Death.
She sat on the top step across from Lucy and gazed out at the shady street. At one end, an elementary school with a small playground sat beneath the maples; at the other end, two boys dodged puddles with their bikes. Across the street, a man in a business suit was studying his lawn. Nealy heard the tinkle of an ice-cream truck and the sound of a mother calling a child inside. These everyday sights were as exotic to her as foreign lands were to most people.
Lucy toyed with one of Squid’s ears. “What do you think Mat’ll do to me?”
“I don’t know. He’s definitely upset. You shouldn’t have lied to him.”
“What else was I supposed to do? They’d have put us in foster homes!”
And that’s where they were still going. Not for a moment did Nealy believe Mat would leave the girls with Nico Glass, despite the fact that he’d been going to great lengths inside to point out that Nico was the girls’ only relative.
Of course, Nico wasn’t having any of it. When he’d announced he had a rock-climbing trip to Colorado planned, Mat told him to forget about it, but Nico kept throwing his things in a duffel bag.
She glanced over at Button, whose peach denim jumper was already dirty from crawling around on the porch, and then at Lucy, who looked miserable. What was going to happen to these girls? Mat was a decent man, and he was trying hard to do the right thing, but he’d made it clear that his life didn’t include raising children. That left foster care or adoption. Families would jump at the opportunity to adopt Button, but nobody was going to adopt Lucy. She’d be separated from the little sister she was trying so fiercely to protect.
Lucy had moved from thumbnail to forefinger. “He’s going to kill me when he comes out.”
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