by Mary Stone
He shook his head. He’d hoped to be cuddling in bed with his girlfriend, but it looked like that wouldn’t be happening. Again.
“All right! I’ll see you!” She pulled his head down for another quick kiss before darting through the screen door, letting it slam behind her.
He followed her, stopping in the doorway, watching her climb into the tall Jeep.
She didn’t even wave as she pulled away.
5
Kylie drove into work after ditching Linc, her fingers shaking on the steering wheel.
Yes, she actually felt like she’d ditched him. The way she’d tried to skulk out the door before he woke up…was terrible. Then, when he’d come down the stairs and caught her trying to slip away, she’d averted her eyes, guilty as charged, and ran as fast as she could to get away from him, like a criminal avoiding pursuit.
She’d ditched him.
And he didn’t deserve that.
“What’s wrong with me?” she asked the road. The road said nothing in return, just twisted its way down the mountain, the sharp curves feeling like a resemblance of her life.
When she came to the place where she and Vader had gone off the road, she carefully adverted her eyes once again from the shiny section of guardrail. Against her will, her heartrate increased, and she took several deep breaths trying to calm herself.
But her thinking didn’t calm.
She couldn’t stop from thinking of how terrible she’d been to Linc. She’d given him a terrible haircut, then avoided him the rest of the night. She’d tried to sneak away this morning and could barely look him in the eye when he found her before she could creep out the door.
They’d only known each other a few months, but they’d been through a great deal together during that time. On the surface, they seemed an unlikely pair. She was outgoing and bubbly. He was calm and contained. But instead of their personalities competing with each other, they complemented each other. His calm soothed her, bringing her back to reality.
Well…it would if she’d let it.
Heck, they still hadn’t officially said those three little words that normally preceded a couple moving in together or getting married. Why was that?
Just more to think about.
But she didn’t want to think. She wanted to work. She wanted a meaty case.
When she was working, she had something to focus on…someone to save…a mystery to solve. She was important.
Hmmm…importance.
Was that what she truly craved?
Significance. Influential. Relevant.
Or was she just hoping to not be the opposite?
Worthless. Trivial. Dull. Weak. Insignificant.
Like how insignificant you would have to be for your own father to leave you?
She sighed, tears pricking at her eyes. It all circled back to that.
Linc deserved so much better than her, it was ridiculous.
She knew he was the perfect man, but it felt like something was clouding her vision. He was perfect, but she wasn’t. That was the problem. She wasn’t good enough for him.
But did that matter?
She sighed. She didn’t know.
Maybe what she needed was some time away from him. Maybe that would give her a sorely needed dose of perspective. Maybe if she went away and cleared her mind, she’d come home, ready to say those three little words and wholeheartedly mean each syllable, with all that came with them.
Hope. Family. A future.
An unending I’m-here-for-you commitment.
There was only one way she could do that. She had to find her dad.
Not just for herself. For them. Her and Linc.
Everything in her head seemed to be pointing her toward New York. She needed to make it happen. She needed to talk to her boss.
To her surprise, Greg was already in the office by the time she arrived, fiddling with the Keurig she’d gotten him for his birthday the week before. He’d had a regular old coffee pot that had to have been a hundred years old, and it’d spit out burned coffee that was barely fit for human consumption.
Kylie’d thought he would appreciate the upgrade. Unfortunately, Greg had a way of making any technology built in the last twenty years hate him. His computer was constantly giving him the black screen of death, and he hadn’t been able to wrangle a single decent cup of coffee out of the Keurig. Kylie didn’t understand it. She’d thought the thing was so easy a toddler could do it. Wasn’t technology supposed to improve people’s lives, not destroy them?
She dropped her purse on her desk as he fisted what was left of his bushy salt and pepper hair in his hands and let out a long string of curses. His normally doughy complexion was bright red.
“Um, dude,” she said, walking up to it and noticing the problem right away. “You didn’t fill the reservoir with water.”
He grumbled something that sounded like reservoir my ass under his breath and went back to his seat. “That thing is the devil.”
“It is not. Plenty of people love their Keurigs.”
“Not me. I don’t need coffee anymore. I need Xanax.”
She studied him. He looked like he was about two seconds from having steam blow out of both ears like a tea kettle. Her heart sank. This wasn’t the mood she needed her boss to be in on the morning she asked for a few days off. She’d just gotten back after a two-week concussion hiatus. She needed to smooth off his rough edges before she could ask.
She went and filled the reservoir at the sink in the back of the office, popped in a new K-Cup, and a few minutes later, delivered him a perfect mug of steaming black coffee, just as he liked it.
“How was your day yesterday?” she asked, gathering her courage. “You doing more surveillance for Impact?” She figured Impact Insurance was a safe bet because it was their biggest client, and he was constantly working with them, doing workers’ comp fraud investigations.
He nodded. “Thanks. How was yours? You still working that Davidson case?”
Kylie lifted up a thick file with all the data she’d amassed thus far. “Yep. I’m finishing it up today. I’m meeting with Barbara Davidson this afternoon to turn the goods over to her.”
“Good.” He flipped on his computer.
The Keurig was strike one. She had to be quick before Windows 98 thwarted him and he started complaining about how stupid it was to buy the computers. She sat on the edge of his desk. “Can I ask you something?”
He looked up at her, eyebrow raised. “You ask me things constantly. Nothing’s ever stopped you before.”
Well, that was true. Though he was rarely in the office, when he was, she bombarded him with question after question, barely stopping to take a breath. She’d been so hungry to learn everything about the business. It was what she had to do, she thought, in order to become a world-class private eye. And though he was grumpy with his answers, he’d always been helpful.
“I mean, something that’s not about the private investigations business.”
He raised a suspicious eyebrow. “This ain’t personal, is it?”
Kylie knew better than that. Greg didn’t like talking about his home life at all. She’d worked for him for months, and she still wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure about anything other than that he was a private investigator. “No. I guess it’s semi work-related.”
He pushed away from the desk and laced his hands over his pot belly. “Shoot.”
“Well, you know I haven’t taken any time off, except for when I was recovering from that gunshot wound, and the car crash and—”
“Are you asking for a vacation? Approved,” he said, slamming his fist on the desk like a judge hammering down a gavel. Case closed.
That was it?
Kylie’s eyes widened. “Wait. Really? I thought you’d say something about how I needed to ask for one in advance, because you really needed me, or—”
“In case you didn’t notice, short stuff, we don’t have any pressing life or death cases. And Jesus, you were nearly killed
a few times, and you got your car torched, all in the line of duty. I’m thinking you’re due a little break.”
She smiled, not just because he’d approved her request but because of the backhanded compliment. “Really? So, it’s not a problem? But what about the—” She waved her hand toward the… hmm, there really wasn’t a very big stack of paperwork because she’d gotten things all caught up already. Maybe she wasn’t a total failure at every part of her life after all.
“The filing can wait. Go.” He waved his hand in a shooing motion. “Be young. Have fun with that dreamy boyfriend of yours.”
Her stomach sank. Yes, she supposed that was what most people her age would be up to—having good, footloose and fancy-free times with their significant others. But no, not Kylie Hatfield. She couldn’t just be happy with what was right in front of her. She had to go digging up the past, hoping the skeletons in her family’s closet didn’t jump out and kick her curious ass.
She was officially the worst girlfriend in the world. The craziest person on earth.
But maybe…just maybe…if she could have some type of closure around her father’s abandonment, she could lay that fear to rest.
“Thank you,” she said, going back to her desk and opening her computer. “I’ll just be gone a couple days. Three at the most. I…I mean, we’ll probably—”
“Whatever. Take the whole rest of the week, if you want to.” He was stabbing his finger at the keyboard, and she smiled, affection for the grump nearly bringing tears to her eyes.
What was wrong with her?
For the rest of the day, she did her best to prepare for her two o’clock appointment with Barbara Davidson. Not prepare physically…she had all the research she needed and had spoken to everyone she needed to speak to. From a purely private investigator perspective, this one was open and shut.
Emotionally, though? Even as she walked into the coffee shop, she was still torn on what she should do. As she stepped through the door, she tossed up a prayer that she’d say the right words.
She found Barbara already waiting, looking very nervous. Equipped with her thick manila folder, Kylie sat across from the older woman and passed on coffee when the waitress came by. She was already too jittery.
“Did you find anything out?” Barbara asked anxiously, wrapping her hands around her coffee mug.
Kylie pressed her lips together, thinking of what that poor woman on the phone had said to her. She’d gotten into this business to help people, not ruin lives. She knew Barbara wanted to know…but did she really need to know this news?
Barbara’s birth mother, Sarah, ran away from home when she was only thirteen years old, escaping an abusive father who’d been raping her since she was six. Alone and broke, Sarah was pulled into the world of drugs and prostitution. When her pimp found out she was pregnant, he kicked her in the stomach so many times that the baby shouldn’t have lived.
The baby did.
In the hospital, Sarah was taken into protective custody and sent to a home for wayward girls. There, she gave birth and the baby was whisked away within the first minute of delivery.
“What did I have to offer a child?” Sarah had told Kylie when Kylie appeared at the woman’s door. “And how could I ever face her? I was a drugged-up prostitute who didn’t even know the baby’s father.”
But the woman wasn’t any of that now. Which was why Kylie had been so puzzled and sad that she refused to meet her long-lost daughter. So far, in every adoption case she’d investigated, the biological parent had been open to see their child.
Not Sarah.
“I can’t do it,” she told Kylie. “I can’t think about those dark days, of the grief and loss, of the fear and guilt. I can’t do it, and I won’t.”
Sarah explained that no one in her new life knew that she’d had a baby that young. They knew nothing of the abuse, the prostitution. The drugs.
“I clawed my way out of that life and turned it all around. I married a preacher. I am a respected member of my church and my community. I have three other children.”
In a nutshell, this could destroy her life.
Sometimes, knowledge wasn’t power. Sometimes, it could be a bad thing.
And where was Kylie going? To New York to find a father who obviously didn’t want to be found. And if she did find him and he had a story as heartbreaking as Sarah’s, what would she do? What if she found her father and wished she hadn’t? She couldn’t simply unlearn the things she found out.
Fighting back the tears that seemed to be on the surface today, Kylie met Barbara’s nervous gaze across the table. She needed to just give her the news, like ripping off a bandage.
“I found your birth mother, and I’m very sorry to tell you that she wouldn’t give me permission to give you her information.”
Kylie had warned Barbara at the beginning that this result could be a possibility. It was even written in the contract Barbara had signed too.
Still…the look in the woman’s eyes was devastating. Kylie reached over the table and covered her hand with her own.
“I’m so sorry, Barbara. I spoke to her at length, and she told me that she didn’t want you to carry the burden of knowing your birth story, but that she thinks of you every day and lights a candle on your birthday each year.”
Barbara swallowed hard and squeezed Kylie’s fingers. “Are you sure? Can you tell me the…circumstances of my birth?”
Kylie hated to disappoint her even more. “She was adamant that I not tell you because she said she wanted you to focus on your future, not your past. She told me to tell you that she wanted the best for you and that she knew she wouldn’t be able to give you anything close to what you deserved, and she said that she hoped you would see her giving you up as an ultimate act of love rather than an act of abandonment.”
That word again.
Kylie cleared her throat and reached into the folder and pulled out the letter Sarah had written her daughter and slid it across the table to the devastated woman.
“She wanted me to give you this.”
Barbara took the letter in trembling fingers. She didn’t open it, though, and Kylie didn’t blame her. It was something better done in private, and Kylie deeply hoped it gave the woman some peace.
“I gave her your contact information in case she changes her mind.”
Barbara simply nodded, staring at her named scrawled across the front of the envelope. Her mother’s handwriting. The first time Barbara had ever seen something so personal from the woman who’d given her life.
Dreading this next part even more, Kylie pulled out another envelope. The invoice.
She felt terrible.
The retainer was nonrefundable and the fee plus expenses was due at the delivery of whatever information was found, regardless of whether anything was turned up. That was just standard operating procedure, Greg had told her, when Kylie questioned why they’d charge people if they delivered absolutely nothing. All the investigators charged similarly.
Business was business and all that, but still…
“What’s that?”
Kylie nearly told her it was nothing and slid it back into the folder. Instead, she did what she was obligated to do…slid it over to the other woman. “I’m so sorry, but it’s the invoice.”
Barbara simply nodded and put it in her purse.
Kylie wanted to stay and talk to the woman about her feelings, but she wasn’t qualified to be a counselor to anyone, even herself.
Plus, she could almost hear Greg talking in her head. If you want to help people work through their family problems, that’s a different line of work. Become a psychologist.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t deliver what you were hoping for,” Kylie said.
Barbara took a sip from her mug. “It’s okay. Maybe it was meant to remain hidden for a reason.”
Kylie nodded. “Maybe.”
And her own mother might have been right. Maybe no good would come from finding out about her dad.
But as Kylie left the coffee shop, she couldn’t help thinking about the bad things that were happening in her life because she had so many questions about her father. She was so scared of whatever characteristics he might’ve passed on to her that she didn’t know if committing to Linc was a good idea. She was on her way to ruining her relationship with the man she loved because of it.
It was worth the risk.
Barbara had risked finding out about her mother, but she seemed to be glad she’d tried anyway.
Kylie climbed in her Jeep, and as she headed back to the office, decided to make plans to travel up to The Big Apple tomorrow. She’d never been there before, and she’d have to book a flight and hotel in a rush, but she was convinced it would be worth it.
She was ready to find Adam Hatfield and get her answers.
6
It was never more apparent to Kylie how much Linc loved her as he sat on the corner of the four-poster bed, silently watching her pack her suitcase. He had a lot of clothes, mostly t-shirts and cargo pants, but he’d cleared away nearly three-quarters of his drawer and closet space so that she could fit the pieces of her wardrobe that had slowly migrated to his place. And he did her laundry, too, folding everything so neatly, with military precision.
She’d never felt so guilty.
She wasn’t exactly lying to him, but she wasn’t exactly telling him the truth, either.
Linc was fully supportive of her finding her father, but when he said that, she knew he meant an internet search. A phone call. Not hopping on a plane and tracking him down in person. That, to Linc, would be too risky. But to Kylie? It was a necessity.
“I’ll only be two days,” she said, packing some jeans, some tights, some skirts…more than she could possibly need, but the weather was supposed to be warm during the day and cold at night, so she needed a little bit of everything. “Thank you for taking care of Vader for me.”
He didn’t say a word, but she could tell he wasn’t happy. Or maybe he was just unhappy about his hair because he kept taking off his baseball cap and scratching at the fuzz.