Erica’s silence didn’t keep her out of his thoughts. Their time together had replayed through his mind countless times. Finally Lock had figured out why gazing into her eyes gave him the sense of staring into his own soul.
The two of them were emotional twins. Both had been emotionally abandoned—in his case literally, by his birth mother and his adoptive parents; in her case by parents who’d turned a cold shoulder when she’d needed them most and later by her creep of a husband. Now he and Erica had the same instinct for pulling away from relationships, the same prickly insistence on independence and the same fierce resistance against being caged.
Except this time, he didn’t feel like ducking out. Not yet, anyway.
“Was Grandma’s heart attack related to the diabetes?” Mike’s voice echoed down the hallway. Hadn’t he ever heard of closing the door? “No, Mom, I’m not having problems. Like I told you, I have to fill out a medical history.”
Was this a new insurance requirement? Lock had been astonished at the mountains of paperwork required to operate a business in California.
If he had to fill out a family medical history, he’d be done in a minute. What little he knew came from the papers that had followed him from the adoption agency through several foster homes. Mother’s age at birth: seventeen. Her marital status: single. Her health: good. Her occupation: student. Nothing about his father. No idea if his parents or grandparents had suffered from diabetes, heart disease, leprosy or beriberi.
“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. I’ll never find out, so you won’t, either.” Mike’s conversation with his mother appeared to have moved to a new topic. “What’s the big deal? Marianne’s only thirty. I’m sure she’ll get married and have kids one of these days. And how about Lourdes? She’s got two and Denzel has one that we know of. Also, aren’t Fatima and her husband expecting?”
Lock set down his pool cue. He couldn’t concentrate while his brain was puzzling over this one-sided conversation. Marianne was Mike’s biological sister. Lourdes and Denzel had been among the foster kids who came and went during Lock’s time with the Aarons, while Fatima had joined the flock later. Although many had lost touch over the years, those three, along with their various spouses and kids, and Lock joined the dinner table at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
If he understood correctly, Mike was reassuring his mother about grandchildren. But what did this have to do with his medical history or that odd statement: “I’ll never find out”?
After racking the balls, Lock went into the kitchen, his shoes scuffing the worn linoleum. They were out of tortilla chips, he discovered. No cookies, either. Mike had taken the last turn at shopping, and all he’d bought for snacking appeared to be fruit.
Lock was finishing a banana when his brother showed up, sandy hair tousled as if he’d been running his fingers through it. Conversations with Nina Aaron tended to do that to her son.
As for Lock, he enjoyed her probing into the details of his personal life, because it showed that she cared. Recently, though, he’d steered their discussions onto safer topics, such as how well he’d done on the two-hour private-investigators exam. That had been an ordeal, covering laws and regulations and civil and criminal liability, as well as evidence handling, undercover investigations and surveillance. He’d passed with flying colors and earned his license.
From a bowl on the counter, Mike snatched an apple and bit into it. “What was all that about?” Lock asked him.
“What was all what?” he responded through a full mouth. “Did you wash these?”
“You bought ’em,” Lock said. “Besides, washing fruit is for sissies.”
Mike pretended to lob the apple at him, then took another bite.
“Next time, get chips,” Lock said.
“Next time’s on you. You can buy whatever you want. Just get healthy stuff for me.” A few more bites, and the apple core made a clean arc into the wastebasket. His brother opened the fridge and stared at the shelves. Beer versus juice. Tough choice. His hand moved back and forth several times before alighting on the juice.
“You must have had your physical,” Lock surmised. “High blood sugar?”
“No.” Mike collected a tumbler from the top shelf in the cabinet. Easy reach for him.
“Why the health kick? And why all the questions about your grandmother?”
“Quit being so nosy.”
“You hired me to be nosy. So speak.” When Lock had first arrived at the Aarons’ home, he’d been a scared twelve-year-old who hid his feelings behind a defensive wall of anger. Gradually, guided by his new family’s combination of strictness and love, he’d begun to trust them enough to open up. Now, Lock couldn’t imagine not prying into his brother’s business.
Mike leaned his tall frame against the counter. “I’ve applied to become a sperm donor.”
Lock blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Money isn’t that tight.”
A rude noise greeted this remark.
“It can’t pay all that much, anyway.” Lock stretched his leg and massaged the thigh. Although it hurt less these days, it still felt tight.
“I’m not doing it for the money, which is about a hundred dollars per specimen, if you must know,” Mike said.
“Then why?”
His brother’s blue-gray eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Does it matter?”
“It must matter to you, or you wouldn’t go through this,” Lock stated.
“I’m helping women and couples have families. Isn’t that enough of a motive?”
“No.”
Mike gulped the juice and set the glass in the sink. “The idea’s fascinated me ever since I heard the hospital was opening a sperm bank.”
“Does this have to do with Patty’s husband working there?” Lock queried.
“He’s an embryologist. Different department,” Mike said. “Okay, here’s the deal. After spending years helping out with foster kids, I have no desire to be a father. But I’m arrogant enough to want to pass along my gene pool.”
Hence the health kick and the medical history. “What if your kids come looking for you someday? Or a woman demands child support?”
“There are laws protecting my rights and theirs.” Those issues didn’t appear to trouble him. “Think about it. I come from a high-achieving family with no history of drug or alcohol abuse. All but one of my grandparents lived into their eighties in good health. Why not pass those genes to another generation?”
Lock had a ready answer. “I can’t imagine knowing you’ve got a kid out there, or maybe several kids, that you’ll never meet. Wouldn’t you wonder every time you see a child whether it might be yours?”
“I think having a lot of kids would be cool, as long as I don’t have to take care of them,” Mike returned evenly.
Surely he hadn’t weighed all the implications. “Suppose you get married. How do you think your wife will feel about this?”
“I tried marriage. Didn’t work for me.” Mike’s marriage had fallen apart after he’d caught his wife having an affair. In the years since then, he’d dated only casually.
Lock wasn’t finished. “You grew up with foster kids. You saw what being thrown away does to them.”
“I’m not throwing anyone away. I’ll be making a donation to women who badly want a family,” he replied smoothly.
“You have no idea what it’s like not knowing where you came from or what your real parents were like!”
His brother fixed him with a steely look. “If you’re hung up about your genetic parents, bro, why don’t you check them out? You’re a detective. Shouldn’t be hard to find your birth mother.”
“I’ve considered it.”
“Consider it harder. Now quit bugging me.” Mike propelled himself away from the counter. �
��I’m going to hit the treadmill.”
That meant an hour of mechanized creaking and churning next to Lock’s bedroom. If he’d had any plans for hitting the sack early, he could forget about them.
Grabbing the laptop he’d left in the den, he carried it into the living room and set it up on the coffee table. For an unguarded moment, he reflected on how totally unlike Erica’s place this was, with its threadbare couch and chairs facing a giant TV screen. Not even the most dedicated bargain hunter would bother to refinish this scarred coffee table, decorated only by mug-size rings and the scuff marks of countless shoes.
Erica. He saw again the defensiveness in her crossed arms and tight expression after she’d learned she might be pregnant. Why was she so stubbornly insistent about standing on her own? Well, that was her right, just as it was Mike’s right to fill the world with his offspring if the sperm bank accepted his application.
As he’d said, he wasn’t throwing anyone away. Rationally, Lock knew his birth mother probably hadn’t intended to do that, either. But why had she given him up?
On the internet, he clicked on an adoption search site he’d bookmarked during his convalescence. Being seriously wounded made a guy reflect on life, death and major unanswered questions, and he’d taken the first steps toward locating his birth mother, before deciding he wasn’t ready.
He’d listed the little he knew about the circumstances of his relinquishment, including the agency involved, along with his birth date. Although he’d been born in Orange County, he had no idea at which hospital. It would have been easier if he could have talked to his adoptive parents, but his father had vanished after their divorce, and although Lock’s mother had been released from prison while he was with the Aarons, she’d made no attempt to see him.
He’d heard that she’d died of a drug overdose not long afterward. A few years later, her own mother had passed on, ironically leaving no heirs except her unwanted adoptive grandson. The inheritance had paid for college and his share of Fact Hunter Investigations, with a tidy sum left over.
How could his birth mother have entrusted him to such unstable people? Sure, there’d been a few tender moments that ached in his memory: his adoptive mom singing him to sleep, his father teaching Lock’s five-year-old self to bat a ball in the backyard. He’d loved them with all his young heart, and they hadn’t cared enough about him to put their lives in order.
Lock shifted his attention to the website, which allowed both adoptive children and birth parents to input their information. They could then learn if there were people whose parameters matched, without names or other identifying data. Instead, you could, if you chose, agree to have your email address forwarded.
Three women were listed as having given birth to male babies in Orange County on the same date and had relinquished them for adoption at the same agency. Since he’d posted his information months earlier, none of the mothers had forwarded their addresses to Lock. Presumably, they were waiting for him to make the first move.
His fingers hung over the keyboard. All he had to do was click in the right spot and he’d be on the road to answering his questions.
Or opening Pandora’s box. He’d read on chat sites about painful experiences, as well as joyous reunions. There was no guarantee his birth mom hadn’t been a druggie, too. Or that she wouldn’t cling to him obsessively, or have other children who would resent him.
Alternatively, Lock reflected, he might ruin a nice woman’s fantasy about the picture-perfect life her son had led with his adoptive family. Most adoptions worked out well, after all. Plus his lingering resentment was likely to spill over and poison whatever chance they had of forming a bond.
He logged off and closed the laptop. What was that old saying about letting sleeping dogs lie? In this case, it might be more like a pack of wolves.
Better to let them snooze than to end up provoking an experience he might forever regret.
Chapter Six
Although Erica assisted surgeons other than Dr. T when the schedule required, she didn’t usually enjoy the experience. Not being accustomed to their preferences regarding instruments and procedures, she couldn’t achieve her usual standard of near perfection. Also, she missed his dry wit and easy banter.
But one afternoon in March, when she looked at the board and saw that she was set to assist Dr. Paige Brennan next, she felt a touch of relief.
Dr. T hadn’t been very pleasant that morning. Both twins had come down with bad colds, and he’d worried aloud about the possibility of them developing something more serious. After listening to him recount in excruciating detail how he’d spent the night suctioning their little noses and monitoring their temperatures, Erica had tried to change the subject, only to receive a sharp response.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have asked for hints about the announcement he was scheduled to make at a staff meeting later in the week. But she’d figured she deserved some advance notice, since it likely involved the proposed contest for which they’d been tossing around ideas for weeks. In addition to boosting morale and gaining publicity, he’d mentioned his goal of encouraging doctors to be more aggressive in using the latest fertility techniques, and he’d liked her suggestion of offering a reward. So she hadn’t expected him to snap, “In case this hasn’t occurred to you, Nurse, it’s called a surprise announcement because it’s supposed to be a surprise.”
“Yes, Doctor,” she’d said as evenly as she could. Given her edgy mood these past few days, she figured she deserved a gold star for keeping her cool. But doctors didn’t give nurses credit for that sort of thing.
As she downed a power bar to settle her queasy stomach, Erica missed the boost she normally got from coffee. But the stuff tasted bitter, no doubt due to a flood of hormones. The awareness that she couldn’t postpone taking a pregnancy test much longer didn’t help her mood, either.
Delaying the news meant putting off having to decide what to do when the results came back positive, as she was pretty sure they would. For all Lock’s promises of aid, she was in this alone. Her body, her future.
The fact that he’d phoned a few times didn’t reassure her. The guy must be trying to learn whether he was off the hook. Once she took the test, Erica supposed she’d have to call him back. And say what, exactly?
Yeah, we had a great time. You reminded me of how wonderful it can be to connect with a man.
Reminded wasn’t even the operative word. She’d never had that strong a sense of bonding with her husband.
It scared the hell out of her. Far better to keep her distance, physically and in every other way. Falling in love led to pain and disappointment, and she’d had more than enough of those.
She went to scrub in. Thank goodness for the orderly, focused nature of surgery.
Erica had worked with Dr. Brennan before and liked the obstetrician’s no-nonsense manner. Nearly six feet tall, with dramatic red hair, Paige had joined the staff to fill in during Nora Kendall Franco’s extended maternity leave. No one seemed to know what Paige would do when Nora returned, but that didn’t appear to be imminent.
Today’s surgery was a hysterectomy on a woman in her thirties seeking relief from endometriosis. Fortunately, she already had two children.
“I don’t suppose you can tell us what Dr. Tartikoff plans to announce, can you?” Paige asked once the surgery was under way.
“He nearly bit her head off when she asked this morning,” said Rod Vintner. The anesthesiologist had witnessed that unfortunate exchange.
“Dr. T was in a bad mood,” Erica explained. “His kids are sick.” No matter how irritated she might feel, she didn’t criticize her doctor to others.
“He fussed about them all morning.” Rod kept an eye on the display showing the patient’s heart rate and blood pressure. “I didn’t even get a chance to tell him about my hot date last S
aturday.”
That sounded more interesting than runny noses and crying kids, Erica thought as she handed Dr. Brennan a scalpel. She saw the circulating nurse perk up, too.
“Pray don’t keep us in suspense,” Paige said.
Rod cleared his throat. “We had great vibes at dinner. Ever see the movie Tom Jones? That kind of dinner. Then she mentioned that she plans to get married next Valentine’s Day.”
“She went out on a date when she’s engaged?” Erica asked in disbelief.
“Not exactly.” Rod paused for dramatic effect. “She booked the hall, bought the dress, reserved the caterer and for all I know hired the band, but she doesn’t have the man yet. It’s kind of like baiting a trap and hoping Mr. Right will fall into it.”
“Incredible,” said the circulating nurse. “Even if it is nearly a year away.”
Erica couldn’t imagine being that presumptuous or that foolish. “What’s her rationale?”
“She believes in the power of positive thinking,” Rod chortled.
“That woman doesn’t understand men,” Dr. Brennan said. “To bait a trap, she should have used a big-screen TV and a refrigerator full of beer.”
“And invited him over on Super Bowl Sunday,” Erica added.
Paige laughed. “Since that’s only about a week before Valentine’s Day, she could drag him down the aisle before he knows what hit him.”
Rod responded with a grin. “I’d better watch my back around you two.”
He and Paige went on to swap observations about the failings of the opposite sex, both having had their share of disillusioning experiences. Erica would have contributed a few remarks of her own if her stomach hadn’t chosen that moment to wage a rebellion. As the wave of nausea passed, she caught a concerned glance from Dr. Brennan.
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