Cassie jotted down the name, thanked the woman, wished her husband a speedy recovery, then ended the call and punched out the partner’s number. Alex Fireman might have been both young and good, but he was not pleased to be called on a Sunday.
Cassie explained the urgency, then said, “Jonathan offered to go to bat for us on this.”
“I’m already swamped covering for him. If you call again on Tuesday or Wednesday, I may be able to get a name of someone else who can help.”
“You have the records there, I believe.”
“Not me. Jonathan. I won’t go into his records unless he directs me to. I’ve only been with him two years.”
“He felt strongly about this case.”
“I can’t bother him now. I’m sorry.”
The call lasted less than a minute longer, at which point Cassie rifled one-handed through her papers. Her second call was to have been to the assistant attorney general in charge of the case in Sacramento. Given this newest glitch, though, she went over his head to the attorney general himself. One of her law school friends worked for the A.G. from Washington state, who was a good friend of the A.G. from California, which meant that Cassie’s friend knew something of the man—although not his home phone number. She got that from the sister of another friend, who worked on numerous committees with the attorney general’s wife.
What Cassie learned from the first friend was that the attorney general of California had been adopted at birth and then, in his early twenties, had gone looking for his biological parents on the premise that children needed to connect to their roots. Cassie was hoping that she would find him to be a man whose own life experience might make him more sympathetic to Heather and her cause.
What she got was a man who was beholden either to the DiCenzas or to the letter of the law. “I don’t know what you want from me, Ms. Byrnes,” he said after she quietly and efficiently laid out her case. “Are you admitting that Heather Malone is Lisa Matlock?”
“I can’t do that until I find the child.”
“Then find the child.”
“That’s easier said than done, given what I told you about the situation in Chicago.”
The man sighed. “There are certain accepted avenues here, Ms. Byrnes. Calling me at home isn’t one. Have you talked with Mr. Grinelle about this?”
Bud Grinelle was the assistant officially leading the charge. “Mr. Grinelle has been agreeable,” Cassie said. “He hears me out and promises to get back to me. You and I both know that he is checking with you at every step. With a case like this, he would have to. You’re too good a lawyer—too responsible an attorney general—not to have him do that. I haven’t mentioned the child to him. Did you know about her before?”
“There were allegations at the time. The family denied them.”
“Tests can prove a connection. I’d like the existence of the child brought into the equation.”
“Find the child, and we’ll do it.”
“She exists. We know where and when she was born. Unfortunately, with the lawyer who handled the adoption sidelined, it will take longer to find her.”
“Whenever is fine.”
“Not from the point of view of my client. My own resources are limited. Yours are less so. Quite frankly, I’m thinking of the child, too. If she’s to be found, it should be done quickly and cleanly. This is a child who was adopted at birth. She’s fourteen now. That’s a vulnerable age. I’d hate to see the press ferreting her out before I’m able to. You have resources that could make it happen before harm is done to the girl.” If there was any chance that his own experience as an adopted child would enhance his empathy for this one, she had laid the groundwork. She couldn’t be more obvious.
But the man was dogmatic and impersonal. He wasn’t thinking about the case in human terms. “You don’t seem to understand, Ms. Byrnes,” he said, and she knew right then that she’d struck out. “ We don’t need the child. You’re the one who does. Our case is solid.”
“What about justice? Wouldn’t you like to know what really happened between Lisa and Rob?”
“We already know. We have a dozen different statements, all pointingto the theory that a scorned and conniving woman ran down a good man. We have a thorough case. The core of it will be part of the governor’s warrant that we present to the judge there. We’re ahead of schedule. You can expect it at the end of the week.”
Cassie was dismayed. At the rate she was going, she would need every one of those thirty days. Playing the game, though, she said, “I was hoping we could talk turkey before then.”
“We’ll do that once Lisa’s back here, and in any event, I don’t talk turkey. You’d have to do that with Mr. Grinelle.”
“Thank you,” Cassie said politely. “I will. I’m sorry to have bothered you. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.”
She ended the call and set down the phone. Where to go now? There was only one place. Lifting the phone again, she called Griffin.
* * *
Griffin didn’t get the message until the wee hours of Monday morning, which was how late he and Micah were in the sugarbush. They had taken the tractor up, because it was the only thing that would hold ground on the ice, and they supplemented its headlights with handhelds. Even then, assessing the damage at night was hard.Micah, of course, knew what he was looking for and therefore saw more than Griffin. As soon as they returned to the house, he sat with paper and pencil, listing the parts that he needed to buy for immediate repairs. His first concern was the lowest portion of mainline that had split under a fallen tree. Its proximity to the sugarhouse would make it easier to repair. Conversely, its proximity to the sugarhouse made it a final destination for the rest of the lines, which meant that it was crucial. No sap at all would make it to the sugarhouse tanks until it was fixed.
While Micah made his list, Griffin accessed his messages. He smiled at the ones from Poppy, which had come in hourly until eleven and were amusing monologues that passed on the good news that help would be at Micah’s come morning. Griffin’s smile faded, though, when he listened to Cassie’s. Moments later, he left another message for Ralph.
“It’s crunch time on Lisa Matlock’s baby,” he said, meeting Micah’s gaze when the man looked up. “The lawyer we thought would help is inthe hospital in intensive care, nothing related to this, but out of the picture, and the A.G. in California would be happiest if the child wasn’t found at all. Also, time is shorter than we thought. The governor’s warrant will be on its way by the end of the week. Do what you can. Thanks.” He ended the call and was lowering the phone when, with the scrape of his chair, Micah rose, but he did it with a fatigue that Griffin had never seen in him, but totally understood. They had come so far and were so close. It didn’t seem fair that when they knew what they needed, they couldn’t seize it.
“Think your man can find her?” Micah asked.
“Yes. In time to keep Heather from going back to California? I don’t know.”
“Micah?” Camille was at the door. She had been staying with the girls while Micah and Griffin were in the woods and, as of ten minutes before, had been asleep on the living room sofa herself. “Star just woke up. Should I go in?”
“No,” he said quietly. “I’ll go.” As he passed her, he said softly, “Thanks.”
When his footsteps faded, Camille looked at Griffin. She was alert in a way that belied the hour. Clearly, she had heard the message to Ralph. “If the child is found,” she asked, “would that keep Heather here?”
Griffin suddenly felt as tired as Micah looked. Pushing a hand through his hair, he let out a breath. “I don’t know, Camille. The child is a smoking gun. She’s proof that Rob lied, and that he lied about an innocent child. The family may not want that coming out. My guess? Heather will have to go back to face the charges at some point, but if we can find the child, the deal will be better.”
Camille considered that. Frowning, she looked at the table. Then she approached it, took Micah’s pencil, tore of
f a piece of paper from the bottom of the pad, and wrote down something. She handed the paper to Griffin. “That’s the child you want.”
Griffin studied the paper, then Camille, and suddenly it made sense—the quiet concern, the surrogate grandmotherhood here, the offer of money. “What are you to Heather?”
Camille smiled sadly. “Not her mother. That would have been tooeasy. If I’d been her mother, I’d never have left her. I’m her aunt. Her mother was my sister.”
“Was?”
“She died years ago. She was a tortured soul.”
“Because of Heather’s father?”
“No. He was just another by-product of her problems, like drugs.”
“Why was she so tortured?”
Pondering that, Camille studied her hands. “I don’t know. I never did.” Her eyes came up. “Would you like some tea?” She answered herself. “I’d like some tea.” She went to the stove and put a kettle on to boil.
“Were you the older or the younger?” Griffin asked, one of dozens of questions he suddenly had.
“Older. By four years. We aren’t native-born Americans.”
Griffin knew that about Lisa’s mother. Now it explained the feeling he’d often had that Camille spoke too well, too carefully, as though loath to make the slightest verbal slip.
“We were born in eastern Europe, in a small town that doesn’t exist anymore, at least, not as we know it,” she said. “After our parents died, we came here looking for a better life. I wanted to settle in a small town like the one we had left. Stacia—short for Anastasia, her given name and very theatrical, very fitting—Stacia wanted excitement and glamour.”
“Hollywood?”
Camille nodded, then turned the nod into a slow headshake. “She had no acting ability. None at all. I could never tell her that, of course. She had her dream. Somewhere along the line she met Harlan Matlock. Now, there was another tortured soul.” The kettle whistled; she took tea bags from the cupboard. “They went north to Sacramento and settled down, at least as much as my sister ever could. She was pregnant, but that didn’t seem to help. She had a restlessness. She needed to be on the move, only she didn’t have the slightest idea where she wanted to go. She disappeared when Lisa was five. She left a note saying that since Lisa was in school, there would be teachers looking after her and doing a better job of it than she could ever do.” Camille poured the tea.
“Were there?” Griffin asked.
“There must have been. Lisa certainly did well in school. Someone hadto have inspired her, and it surely wasn’t Harlan. Oh, she was smart to begin with, but that doesn’t always translate into academic success. It didn’t with her mother.”
“Where did you come in?”
“Lemon? Milk?”
“Black, please.”
She set an eathenware mug in front of him. “The more appropriate question would be when did I come in, and the answer is, too late. My sister stopped calling me somewhere between Hollywood and Sacramento. I’d write, thinking someone would forward my letters, but they always came back marked ‘addressee unknown.’ I used to dial information from time to time to see if there was a phone listing. Whenever I got one, I called it. Harlan would answer and say Stacia was out. He would give me a little tidbit of information about what she was doing or how the baby was, tempting me, letting me know what he had and I did not. Then he would tell me not to call again or write or try to visit. He said Stacia didn’t want it.” Profoundly sad, she added, “It was probably true.”
“Why is that?”
Camille took up her own mug, and sipped from it as she leaned against the counter. When she answered, her voice held an element of defeat. “When we first came to this country, we had lofty dreams. Hers were always more so than mine, which meant that she had more at stake. I found a lovely place here in Lake Henry. I found work and friends. There is nothing lofty about my life here. I certainly didn’t find the wealth Stacia and I dreamed about, but I’ve been happy. Stacia was never happy. Her life was a disappointment to her. She would have been embarrassed to have me see it.”
“Why didn’t you go after her?” Griffin asked.
Her eyes flew to his. “Didn’t I just answer that?”
She had. Indirectly. Dismayed, he realized that he was voicing his own frustration, which had to do with his own sister, not with Stacia.
While this realization registered, Camille continued. “The truth is I was afraid of her. She was always temperamental. I reasoned that she knew where to find me, and that if she wanted to see me or wanted me to come to visit, she would call. I didn’t want to impose myself on her. Thenshe died. I didn’t learn of it until months afterward, when I made one of those chance calls and got through. Lisa was eight at the time. He said she was fine.” Her spine seemed to stiffen. “No, I did not believe him. I wanted to see for myself. So I flew out there. I waited at the schoolyard.” She chuckled softly, sadly. “Like in the movies. Just like that. I was prepared to ask a teacher who she was, but I recognized her right away. She was the image of Stacia. She recognized me, too. She’d seen pictures, but it was more like there was a mystical connection.” She smiled, shrugged, said in a self-mocking way, “I always imagined there was that, because I needed it. It was probably more a case of her looking at me because I was staring at her.”
“Did you talk?” Griffin asked.
“For a bit,” Camille said, and took another sip of her tea. When she spoke again, it was from the distance of years. “I do think there was a connection. I told her who I was. I told her a few of the things Stacia and I used to do when we were children. I gave her pictures that I had. I gave her my address and my phone number. I told her that if she ever wanted to call me, she should. I told her that if she ever needed help—with anything —she should call me.”
“Did she ever call?”
“Not until after the accident.”
“Were you the one who gave her the name of the lawyer in Chicago?”
“No. She got that herself. She was a resourceful young woman. She had to be, raising herself. She did tell me about the arrangements, so I knew where the baby was born, and we talked about her coming to Lake Henry. I didn’t know she would actually do it until she arrived. It was really quite seamless. She showed up one day and signed on with Charlie. He found her a room to rent. We led our own lives. We both knew it was safer that way.”
“You never met secretly?”
“Never as aunt and niece. She was Heather by then. My niece was Lisa. I talked with Heather the same way I would any lovely young woman who had newly come to town. We became friends, and visited as friends do. I do Micah’s bookkeeping, though Heather’s taken over most of that. I’ve helped her with the computer. I do take comfort in her being here,and I believe she feels the same. But our relationship has evolved naturally, as one between friends might. No one in town suspects anything more.”
More quietly, Griffin asked, “Not even Micah?”
She answered in kind, little more than a whisper. “No. Not even Micah. If he’s going to know, she’ll be the one to tell him.”
Griffin studied the name on the paper. “How did you get this?”
“That baby was my grand-niece. I was at the hospital the day she was picked up by her adoptive family. If you’re in the right place at the right time, you hear the right things. I was, and I did. I interpreted that to mean that I was meant to keep an eye on the child.”
“Have you?”
“Covertly. I’m good at that,” she added. “The adoptive mother was initially from Chicago, hence the lawyer there handling the adoption. She had an illness that precluded her ever having children of her own. As it happened, she died when the child was eight, the same age Lisa was when her mother died. Is that eerie?”
“Very,” Griffin said. “What happened after that?”
“All good things, relatively speaking. Obviously, there were never any other children, and the father hasn’t remarried. But he’s been successful at what
he does. They live in Florida, in a luxury condo. He appears to adore the child. He spends time with her. She wants for nothing. She’s fourteen now, not so little a girl.”
“What will she feel about Heather?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will she cooperate with us?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never talked with her.”
He held up the paper. “Does Heather have this?”
Camille thought about that a moment. Then she took in a deep breath. “No. She does not. There were times when I was tempted to share it, but I thought that giving the child an identity might make it harder for her. For the most part, she doesn’t think about the child, any more than she thinks about that night in Sacramento. There’s too much pain involved. Far easier just to push it from her mind. But then there’s the anniversary of the child’s birth, and Heather gets melancholy. She never says why. ButI can tell. That’s the day when she seeks me out, even just for a cup of tea. She needs to be with family that day.”
* * *
Driving back to Poppy’s in those wee morning hours, Griffin punched in Ralph Haskins’ number twice. Each time, he cleared it and set the cell phone on the seat. Poppy was asleep when he came in. He undressed, climbed into bed, and drew her close.She whispered a smiling hi against his throat. He didn’t know if she was awake enough to take in what he had to say, but he told her anyway.
Chapter Nineteen
Poppy wanted to go to Florida. She knew it the minute Griffin told her about Heather’s child, and lay awake beside him for a long time thinking about it. She couldn’t explain the compulsion she felt. Lord knew, she didn’t travel easily; she hadn’t been on a plane since before the accident. But something told her if Heather couldn’t be there to talk with the child, she had to do it for her.Cassie, whom they called at first light with the news, wasn’t sure that a trip was necessary. She had a friend with a law firm in Miami whom she felt would gladly meet with the family and do the asking. After all, what did they need? A mouth swab? A strand of hair? It seemed a simple enough request.
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