Whispers and Lies

by Diane Pershing

  And then there was the sex.

  Lou sighed. Just unbelievable. Improvisation and intensity and surprises. Gentleness one moment, then sheer animal lust the next. Smiling to herself, she felt her body flush with remembered heat.

  “What are you thinking about?” Will asked.

  “How good it is between us.”

  He took her hand, squeezed it. “That it is.”

  She could tell that he had a lot on his mind. His story, the mysteries needing answers. She understood, really she did. She got preoccupied, too, with certain cases back at her clinic: needing to focus tightly on solutions, unable to spare much energy for what else was around.

  But she was mulling over the argument she’d had with herself a couple of days ago. She wanted to ask him about the thing. The love thing. Even more than that. The can-we-plan-a-life-together? thing.

  Absurd, her stern inner voice commented. Lou McAndrews and Will Jamison? Together? Nonsense.

  But why? replied the voice of hope.

  Logistics, for one. He was based in D.C., she had her practice in Susanville.

  Commuting. Others did it, worked it out after a while. Modern life was often like this. It was done all the time.

  But he hasn’t brought it up.

  Then maybe she should.

  Nope. Sorry. Can’t. Lou would not and could not be the one to bring it up, not after all those years of mooning after Will in high school, of knowing she didn’t have a chance with someone of his caliber, looks, personality.

  She might have fantasized being at the prom with Will, but would never have asked him. She’d have died first. She still would.

  She and Will would not be having that discussion, not until he brought it up, if at all.

  Lou gave it up and gazed around her. “It really is beautiful here. I wish I didn’t have so much on my mind.”

  “Like?”

  “Lincoln.” It was the truth, even if she hadn’t been thinking about him right at that moment. “I mean, I haven’t even met him, he could be the biggest jerk in the world and take one look at me and spit on me, but still, he’s my father and here I am worrying about him. Can you believe it? Did the senator say anything about that last night?”

  “Only that he was beginning to worry, too. I assume if he is, he’ll take steps to find him.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Will watched Lou’s profile and felt like a piece of dirt. Here she was on this beautiful summer day, sipping fine coffee, surrounded by flowers and happy passersby, her face filled with life and trust—in him—and she still thought Lincoln DeWitt was her father.

  And here he was remaining silent, again of two minds about what he knew and what he could tell her. Sure, he could tell himself it was his duty to protect the senator’s off-the-record confession and to give the man a chance to do it himself. It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?

  But Will had kept silent on the topic of her father once before and Lou had been pretty damned upset with him for it. Which, from her point of view, he could understand.

  But again, there was that reporter’s code: this could be the story of his career, and the part of him that was ambitious, even ruthless, knew he had to keep all the details to himself until he could piece it together. One slip, one leak, one careless word, and the exclusive would be history.

  Back to that question of trust. Of what he owed Lou and what he didn’t.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. “Yes, Harry?” he said.

  “Just reporting that the leads didn’t pan out. Sorry. But we’re still on it.”

  “Damn.” Will fought to tamp down his disappointment and impatience. Harry was the best. If he couldn’t find something, it might never be found. “Okay,” he said. “You’ll find it, I have faith. But listen. Add one more thing, okay? No, two more things. Hospital records for a Rita Conlon, thirty-four to forty years ago in the Tallahassee area. Any record of female problems, a hysterectomy, like that.”

  “Check.”

  “And then how about looking into young women dead or reported missing in the Boca Raton/Palm Beach area thirty-two, thirty-three years ago. All of them.”

  “Wow. Okay, got it.”

  “And I need it all yesterday.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Harry said with a chuckle.

  When Will snapped the phone closed, Lou was staring at him, her eyes wide. “Dead?” she said. “You mean my birth mother?”

  “We have to accept it’s a possibility.”

  She looked down at her hands. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  She studied her hands for a while, then shifted her gaze back to him. “If she is, that would make two dead mothers. How lucky can a girl get?”

  He had no words of comfort for her, no words at all.

  Chapter 13

  Late Wednesday morning, while Will was clicking away on his computer, Lou began to pack for her flight home. It was slow going because she was distracted and sluggish. Her body felt depleted of energy; all over and through her, she felt wave upon wave of deep, unrelenting depression, different from her recent experience of mourning the woman she’d always thought of as her mother.

  She knew her mood had less to do with all the overwhelming information she’d been receiving about her origins and more to do with leaving Will.

  She didn’t want to leave him. Deep in her very pores, she couldn’t stand the thought of saying goodbye to him. Not just because she would miss him, but because she couldn’t shake the feeling that if they parted now, it was over. Forever. That the minute she was out of his sight, he’d forget her. Goodbye, dear, and amen, etc.

  Old insecurities? Maybe. But he hadn’t said the words, hadn’t told her he loved her. Yes, he’d told her she was special, different. Had shown by every generous act in bed and out that he cared about her, that she was more important than any woman had been before her.

  But he hadn’t said he loved her.

  Was she so shallow that she needed the words?

  Yes. Another person might be able to imagine them being said—fill in the silence with her own script—but not Lou, not the grown-up woman who still housed memories of that girl who thought Will Jamison was so beyond her reach that she never even considered letting him know how she felt.

  “Why are you packing?”

  Startled out of her thoughts, Lou turned to see Will standing in the doorway. He hadn’t shaved yet and he was beautiful.

  A piercing sense of an opportunity lost made her throat tighten up. “Because I have a plane to catch,” she told him.

  “Not till later. Don’t pack yet.”

  “I have to.”

  “But your flight isn’t until three.”

  She slipped her new dress off its hanger and folded it carefully. “I have to be at the airport by 1:30 and the airport is a half hour away, remember?”

  He walked over to her, yanked the dress out of her hands and tossed it onto a chair. Then he set his coffee cup down, put his arms around her and pulled her close. “Come back to bed,” he murmured. “Be with me.”

  “Don’t, Will.”

  Soft, insistent lips nuzzled the side of her neck, behind her ear. “Come on. Just a little farewell toss in the hay, nothing elaborate, promise.”

  Ordering herself to lighten up, she pulled back and gazed up at him. “Oh, yeah? I’m to take crumbs now after having been treated to a banquet?”

  One side of his mouth crooked up, then he swiped a stray strand of hair off her forehead. “A banquet, huh?”

  “Yes, but don’t get too carried away. I was starving, to extend the metaphor.”

  “That you were,” he agreed, then lowered his head to kiss the curve where her shoulder met her neck. The sound of his cell phone jarred the sensual moment. With a muttered curse, he pulled away from her, and she watched him dash out of the bedroom heading for his office.

  As Lou dreamily touched the spot his lips had kissed, she heard
him talking, but couldn’t make out the words. She walked slowly toward the door, curious about who was on the other end of the line. Was it one of his women? she had to wonder, then smiled ruefully. She’d certainly taken care of that Barbara creature, hadn’t she? Never in her life had Lou acted like that: competitive, territorial about her man.

  Her man. Right.

  Will was murmuring something, the tone of his voice excited. Maybe there was some news about Lincoln.

  Or he could be talking to that detective. Walking more briskly now, she entered his office just in time to hear him say, “Really? Huh.”

  He was perched on the corner of his desk, scribbling notes furiously on one of his ubiquitous yellow legal pads. She peered over his shoulder and tried to read them.

  Em Mae Hendricks…oct 18…dr…aut…bab…hsp…st mk

  As she was attempting to decipher his shorthand, he nodded into the phone. “Great work, Harry. Got it…. Oh?…Well, even better. Okay, shoot.”

  He scribbled some more. PID…18…tb

  “Uh-huh…. Hey, you earned your money this time…. Yeah…I’ll let you know.”

  He flipped the phone closed, then seemed to notice Lou behind him for the first time. “Hi,” he said, his upbeat expression giving way to one of concern, as though he was reluctant to share his news with her.

  Steeling herself, Lou lowered herself onto the small armchair next to his desk and gazed up at him. “Okay,” she said, “let me have it.”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah. First of all, Rita did have a hysterectomy, caused by—” he checked his notes “—a PID, a pelvic inflammatory disease that got to her fallopian tubes. She was eighteen.”

  “Poor thing,” Lou said.

  Will nodded. “And I think Harry found your mother. He uncovered a report of a runaway teenager from the backwoods of Tennessee—Emma Mae Hendricks was her name.”

  She noticed the use of the past tense, but made herself remain quiet until she got the whole report.

  “That led to him finding hospital records in Boca, where there was a baby born to Emma Mae—who, by the way, was sixteen years old—with a birth date a few months after your own.”

  “A few months after?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you think I was that baby?”

  “It makes sense. There’s no birth record of a baby girl with a birthmark like yours and born in a hospital in the entire South Florida area on the date you know as your birthday. Think about it. Wouldn’t your mother, I mean, Janice, change your birth date when she got a new birth certificate for you, especially if she was on the run and concerned about being traced?”

  When Lou thought about it, she had to agree. “I suppose she would.”

  “The father was listed as Unknown, but hospital records mention an unusual strawberry birthmark on the baby’s inner left thigh, just where yours is. Hair red, even at birth.”

  “Okay. Still, there’s nothing conclusive, so far, is there?”

  “You’re right. This is all conjecture at the moment, although it’s pretty strong conjecture.”

  She steeled herself further. “Tell me what happened to Emma Mae.”

  He waited a brief moment before he said, “She’s dead.”

  “When?”

  “Shortly after your, I mean, the baby’s birth. The body of an unidentified young woman washed up on Deerfield Beach in December of that year. Death by drowning was the initial finding, but the autopsy showed she’d had a lot of alcohol in her system. No foul play was suspected, but suicide was listed as a possibility. The autopsy also revealed she’d recently given birth, so the cops checked hospital records, learned of the baby’s birth and Emma Mae’s identity, then connected that to the missing person report in Tennessee.”

  “And the baby?” Lou was still thinking of the child as someone separate and apart from her, whether for emotional self-protection or because nothing had been proven yet, she wasn’t sure.

  Will shook his head. “Never found her. Listed her as missing. There was some speculation that Emma Mae had jumped into the water with the baby and that it, too, was dead.”

  She considered this. “It’s possible, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, to give birth so young. She might have felt, what? Ashamed? Helpless? Powerless? Young people feel that way, that there are no options for them.”

  Her mind was reeling, too filled with names and dates and more new information to take in and assess. And she was cold. Out of nowhere, it seemed, severe chills racked her body, forcing her to hug herself for warmth.

  “Lou?” Will got up from his perch on the edge of his desk and crouched down in front of her. He ran his palms up and down her arms. “Hey. You okay?”

  She shook her head, unable to speak for the pain in her throat.

  With one swift move, Will rose and pulled her up out of the armchair. Then he sat himself in it and lowered her onto his lap. He pulled her knees up onto his lap and urged her head down onto his shoulder.

  The chills hadn’t abated yet, but the warmth of his chest, the feel of his hands all over her body, trying to massage it into warmth, made her relax somewhat.

  “Dear God,” she murmured, “if this is true, my birth mother was some innocent, ignorant backwoods teenager. Sixteen!” She shook her head. “I mean, was she already sexually active? Or did Lincoln rape her? Is that why he was so worried when he saw mom’s picture?”

  “Hey,” Will murmured soothingly. “There are lots more questions, but we’ll get to the bottom of it, I promise.”

  “And how did she drown? Why did she drown? Was it on purpose? If I’m that baby, why would she leave me and kill herself? Yes, she was young and probably scared. But… Oh, dear Lord.” Finally, she began to cry. “Oh, Will, this is too much, way too much to take in.”

  As Will heard Lou crying softly, as he stroked her arms and hair, he felt as though his own heart was breaking.

  “Poor thing,” she went on. “Poor, poor thing. I never knew her and yet I carry her inside me. Half of me is made up of her genes, her blood, her heritage.” She shook her head, the tears falling freely now, the sound of sobbing filling his small office, most likely drifting out through the screens of the open windows and into the pocket-size backyard.

  He couldn’t remember a woman’s pain hurting him so much. Not after his dad’s death, when his mother took to her bed for several days. Not when Nancy had had her heart broken a couple of times before she found Bob. Not ever, not like this.

  It was as though Lou had gotten inside him, as though the connection between them was so strong, so intense, that they had exchanged parts of themselves with each other. And man was it painful.

  He kissed the tears from her cheeks. “Lou. Oh, Lou. I can’t stand to see you so unhappy.”

  She tried to swipe at the moisture under her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she sniffed.

  “No, don’t be. It’s okay.”

  She sat up on his lap, uncurled her legs and let them dangle over the side of his bent knees. Her face was puffy and pink from crying. “It’s just that I don’t know how to act now. This whole thing is like something out of a bad melodrama. There I was, living this simple little life, doing my work, knowing who I was. But it was all false. I was nowhere near who I thought I was.”

  “You’re still you.”

  She shook her head vehemently. “But I have no history. Or I do, but it’s not a history that I was ever aware of. I was the center of a mystery and I never even knew it. And I can’t stop thinking about that poor, lost girl who was my mother.” Again, the tears began to fall; again, he hugged her to him. He felt so helpless.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “Just keep holding me.”

  He did, pulled her back into his embrace and tried to be all she needed while she sobbed out her confusion. He stroked her cheek, ran his hand down her neck, traced the curve of her shoulder.

  He heard a small hitch in her throat at the same time he f
elt his body stirring. “Lou?”

  She said nothing, just kept her face buried in the crook of his neck. Gently, he brushed the top of her breast with the palm of his hand. Through the soft cotton top she wore, the tip hardened into a tight bud.

  Like that, he was hard, too. “Let me comfort you,” he murmured, cupping her breast and bending down to tongue the protruding nipple.

  Her body heaved a shuddering sigh as he sucked on that sensitive nub, and she began to squirm. Yes, this was what he could do for her. And for himself.

  Now he brought his mouth up to kiss hers, but gently, using his tongue to trace all around her lips and the inside of her mouth, pulling her tongue into his mouth with gentle suction.

  Her hips writhed some more. He brought his hand over her stomach, pulled down the zipper of her linen pants, reached beneath the elastic of her panties and inserted his hand between her legs.

  She was already wet, slick with desire. A guttural groan rose from somewhere deep inside him as he shoved two fingers into her while he stroked her with his thumb.

  Her breathing was loud as she broke away from his kiss. “Oh, Will,” she said, then moaned before going on. “You don’t know how good that feels.”

  “Yeah, I do.” He kept up the pressure below, moving his fingers in and out, flicking then rubbing the hard little knot with his thumb. Her hips gyrated against his lap, the friction causing his erection to harden until it was painful.

  “So, so good—” Lou didn’t finish her thought. Her breathing became raspier, the movement of her hips more frantic.

  “Let it go,” he murmured, then captured her mouth again, thrusting his tongue deep.

  Her entire body stilled; then, moaning loudly, she erupted into a frenzied orgasm. He kept up the pressure between her legs until she’d finished spasming. Then quickly, he worked her pants down to her ankles and pushed them off onto the floor. Angling her to one side of the chair, he pulled off his own sweatpants, allowing his throbbing erection to stand tall.