“We’re not even in the realm of chance,” Jim said.
“But it happened, didn’t it? So doesn’t that make it possible?” Amy said, leaning forward.
“Possible? Sure.” Then, after taking another sip of his coffee, Miller said, “After all of this, I’m a big believer in anything being possible.”
“So what happens to Louisa now?” Jim said.
“Well, that’s the bulk of why I wanted to meet you. Seems she only has a few living relatives. Her mother had one sister; she lives in Germany and apparently wants nothing to do with the family. Her father was an only child. Both the maternal grandparents are dead, killed in a car accident two years ago. Her paternal grandfather has late-stage Alzheimer’s and is cared for at home by his wife. She was contacted, the situation here was explained to her, and she feels she simply can’t care for Louisa and her husband at the same time. So . . . ”
“So that leaves Louisa a ward of the state,” Jim said.
Miller nodded. “Yeah, it does.”
Still holding Amy’s hand, he looked at her and nodded then turned to Miller. “We want to adopt her. Is that possible?”
For the first time during their discussion Miller smiled. “Not only possible, but in the works. I thought you’d feel that way, so I took the liberty of contacting the folks in Colorado. A hearing is scheduled for next week. In Colorado. You need to be there for it, and if all goes well and the judge agrees, you’ll get custody of her, and then you can begin the official adoption process.”
Jim looked at Amy again. Tears rolled down her cheeks and caught in the corner of her wide smile. His tears were flowing freely now too.
“Are you interested?” Miller asked, smiling earlobe to earlobe.
Through her tears Amy laughed. “Do rabbits have big ears?”
Louisa sat propped with several pillows in her bed, nestled in like a single chick in a nest. She’d been sent home with an immobilizer on her hip and orders of no weight bearing on the right leg for six weeks. The covers were pulled up to her chest and turned down at the top, revealing the horse sheets Amy had bought her. One of the things the girl remembered was that she loved horses, was crazy about them.
Jim and Amy stood before her, holding hands. After almost four weeks of no news following the hearing, they’d just gotten word from the attorney’s office in Colorado.
Louisa’s eyes were wide and expectant. She’d taken the news of her family’s demise as well as could be presumed when placing such weighty matters on a nine-year-old. But this was no ordinary nine-year-old. She was mature much beyond her years. Jim considered that she’d probably concluded on her own that her family hadn’t made it out of the house alive. It was a weight she’d toted around for a whole week following the ordeal at the Appleton farm and her recollection of the fiery inferno that claimed the lives of her dearest.
“Louisa,” Jim said, “we want you to know how much you mean to us.”
“You’re such a special little girl, you know?” Amy said. She glanced at Jim. “You’ve changed all of our lives.”
Jim smiled and cleared his throat. “We love you, Louisa, and we have good news.”
“Awesome news,” Amy added.
“The judge gave us custody.”
Louisa was quiet for a moment, her eyes shifting back and forth between Jim and Amy, her fingers pinching the folded edge of the sheet. Finally she said, “So I’m going to be your daughter?”
Jim nodded. “Unofficially for now. But as soon as we get all the adoption papers signed and approved, then it’ll be official.”
Louisa bowed her head then stretched her arms toward Jim and Amy. Amy approached her first, sat on the edge of the bed, and wrapped her arms around Louisa. Then Jim followed, rounding the bed and sitting on the opposite side. He joined in the hug. They stayed like that for a full minute, holding each other, relishing in the bond that held them together.
Eventually Louisa pulled away and looked up at Jim. “I’m glad I get to stay with you, Mr. Jim. I know you’ll be a great dad.”
Jim couldn’t stop the tears that came, nor did he wipe them away. “Thanks, kiddo. That’s because I’ll have a great daughter.”
“But the good news isn’t over,” Amy said.
“No?” Louisa smiled, and her eyes, those crystal blue eyes, flashed in the light of the sun coming through the window.
She knew; Jim knew she did. She’d known it since the first time she came into their bedroom and placed her hand on Amy’s abdomen. She knew there was still life there.
Amy reached for Louisa’s hand and placed it on her belly.
“Looks like we have to unpack the baby stuff,” Louisa said.
They were all crying now, gushing tears like a park fountain.
“We have a lot of getting ready to do,” Amy said. “Our family is growing.”
“Everything’s gonna be okay now, isn’t it,” Louisa said.
Jim hugged her tight. “You betcha, kiddo.”
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM
MIKE DELLOSSO . . .
FRANTIC
Chapter 1
THE NIGHT MARNY Toogood was born it rained axheads and hammer handles.
His grandfather made a prediction, said it was an omen of some sort, that it meant Marny’s life would be stormy, full of rain clouds and lightning strikes. Wanting to prove her father wrong, Janie Toogood named her son Marnin, which means “one who brings joy,” instead of the Mitchell she and her husband had agreed on.
But in spite of Janie’s good intentions, and regardless of what his birth certificate said, Marny’s grandfather was right.
At the exact time Marny was delivered into this world and his grandfather was portending a dark future, Marny’s father was en route to the hospital from his job at Winden’s Furniture Factory where he was stuck working the graveyard shift. He’d gotten the phone call that Janie was in labor, dropped his hammer, and run out of the plant. Fifteen minutes from the hospital his pickup hit standing water, hydroplaned, and tumbled down a steep embankment, landing in a stand of eastern white pines. The coroner said he experienced a quick death; he did not suffer.
One week after Marny’s birth his grandfather died of a heart attack. He didn’t suffer either.
Twenty-six years and a couple of lifetimes of hurt later, Marny found himself working at Condon’s Gas ’n Go and living above the garage in a small studio apartment George Condon rented to him for two hundred bucks a month. It was nothing special, but it was a place to lay his head at night and dream about the dark cloud that stalked him.
But his mother had told him every day until the moment she died that behind every rain cloud is the sun, just waiting to shine its light and dry the earth’s tears.
Marny held on to that promise and thought about it every night before he succumbed to sleep and entered a world that was as unfriendly and frightening as any fairy tale forest, the place of his dreams, the only place more dark and foreboding than his life.
On the day reality collided with the world of Marny’s nightmares, it was hotter than blazes, strange for a June day in Maine. The sun sat high in the sky, and waves of heat rolled over the asphalt lot at the Gas ’n Go. The weather kept everyone indoors, which meant business was slow for a Saturday. Marny sat in the garage bay waiting for Mr. Condon to take his turn in checkers and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“Man, it’s hot.”
Mr. Condon didn’t look up from the checkerboard. “Ayuh. Wicked hot. Newsman said it could hit ninety.”
“So it’ll probably get up to ninety-five.”
Mr. Condon rubbed at his white stubble. “Ayuh.”
He was sixty-two and looked it. His leather-tough skin was creased with deep wrinkles. Lots of smile lines. Marny had worked for him for two years but had known the old mechanic his whole life.
Mr. Condon made his move then squinted at Marny. Behind him Ed Ricker’s Dodge truck rested on the lift. The transmission had blown, and Mr. Condon should have been working on
it instead of playing checkers. But old Condon kept his own schedule. His customers never complained. George Condon was the best, and cheapest, mechanic around. He’d been getting cars and trucks through one more Maine winter for forty years.
Marny studied the checkerboard, feeling the weight of Mr. Condon’s dark eyes on him, and was about to make his move when the bell chimed, signaling someone had pulled up to the pump island. Condon’s was the only full-service station left in the Down East, maybe in the whole state of Maine.
Despite the heat, Mr. Condon didn’t have one droplet of sweat on his face. “Cah’s waitin’, son.”
Marny glanced outside at the tendrils of heat wriggling above the lot, then at the checkerboard. “No cheating.”
His opponent winked. “No promises.”
Pushing back his chair, Marny stood and wiped more sweat from his brow, then headed outside.
The car at the pump was a 1990s model Ford Taurus, faded blue with a few rust spots around the wheel wells. The windows were rolled down, which probably meant the air-conditioning had quit working. This was normally not a big deal in Maine, but on a rare day like this, the driver had to be longing for cool air.
Marny had never seen the vehicle before. The driver was a large man, thick and broad. He had close-cropped hair and a smooth, round face. Marny had never seen him before either.
He approached the car and did his best to be friendly. “Mornin’. Hot one, isn’t it?”
The driver neither smiled nor looked at him. “Fill it up. Regular.”
Marny headed to the rear of the car and noticed a girl in the backseat. A woman, really, looked to be in her early twenties. She sat with her hands in her lap, head slightly bowed. As he passed the rear window she glanced at him, and there was something in her eyes that spoke of sorrow and doom. Marny recognized the look because he saw it in his own eyes every night in the mirror. He smiled, but she quickly diverted her gaze.
As he pumped the gas, Marny watched the girl, studied the back of her head. She was attractive in a plain way, a natural prettiness that didn’t need any help from cosmetics. Her hair was rich brown and hung loosely around her shoulders. But it was her eyes that had captivated him. They were as blue as the summer sky, but so sad and empty. Marny wondered what the story was between the man and girl. He was certainly old enough to be her father. He looked stern and callous, maybe even cruel. Marny felt for her, for her unhappiness, her life.
He caught the man watching him in the side mirror and looked at the pump’s gauge. A second later the nozzle clicked off, and he returned it to the pump. He walked back to the driver’s window. “That’ll be forty-two.”
While the man fished around in his back pocket for his wallet, Marny glanced at the girl again, but she kept her eyes down on her hands.
“You folks local?” Marny said, trying to get the man to open up a little.
The driver handed Marny three twenties but said nothing.
Marny counted off eighteen dollars in change. “You new in the area? I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before. Lately, seems more people have been moving out than in.”
Still nothing. The man took the money and started the car. Before pulling out he nodded at Marny. There was something in the way he moved his head, the way his eyes sat in their sockets, the way his forehead wrinkled ever so slightly, that made Marny shiver despite the heat.
The car rolled away from the pump, asphalt sticking to the tires, and exited the lot. Marny watched until it was nearly out of sight, then turned to head back to the garage and Mr. Condon and the game of checkers. But a crumpled piece of paper on the ground where the Taurus had been parked caught his attention. He picked it up and unfurled it. Written in all capital letters was a message:
HE’S GOING TO KILL ME
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