Love In Plain Sight

by Jeanie London

  “He worked the weekends in Jackson Square.”

  “What did he do there?”

  “Drew tourists.”

  Courtney frowned up at him, and in the split second he saw understanding dawn on her beautiful face. “Mrs. Calderone, do you mean draw, like sketches or caricatures?”

  “Caricatures? Dibujos.” She visibly searched for the word, her creased face twisting with concentration. “Drawings.”

  “Araceli’s father was an artist.” The revelation dropped a piece of the puzzle in place. The good sketches in Araceli’s sketchbook could have only been her father’s. No doubt the kid would have been devastated if they’d been willfully ruined by a bully with a magic marker.

  For the first time, Mrs. Calderone smiled, her creased face stretching to reveal smooth-edged teeth. “Wait here.”

  Backing away from the door on shuffling steps, she vanished into the bowels of the dark apartment. He glanced down to find Courtney staring up at him with those clear eyes. He didn’t have a clue what she was thinking, only what he was feeling.

  Proximity was getting the better of him, the way the top of her head reached his nose, as if the cool scent of her hair might overtake the mildew in this hallway.

  He stared down into her face, the perfection of her features, the expression shadowing those wide eyes, her mouth parted around a breath. They were so close, he could have bent his head, and his mouth would have been on hers.

  His body vibrated with that realization.

  “Araceli has been gone for years.” Courtney’s words were a frail whisper that didn’t penetrate the dark, dank hallway.

  But they penetrated him. How long had it been since he’d been with a woman? Too long. And right now, with his insides alive for the first time in so long, the only thing that stopped him from capturing that mouth with his was her distress.

  And the realization that a kiss was about all he had in him. Nothing more would happen. He could kiss her. He could cop a feel. He could plow through all the sassy remarks and the demands to play nice with his family. But how could he make love with this busted leg in his way?

  Sex?

  The idea was a joke. A joke as bad as the rank smell in this hallway.

  But Courtney was oblivious to his turmoil, was trapped with some unsettling realizations of her own.

  He was such a jerk. She was all torn up about this missing kid, and he was worried about himself.

  “Marc, if the Pereas and Mrs. Calderone are telling the truth, and we’ve got the Red Cross registries to prove Araceli made it to Atlanta, then that means Jane Doe must have been the one to return to New Orleans.”

  He’d already realized that, but understood why Courtney hadn’t. The fact that Araceli may have been missing for years had always been a possibility, the most likely scenario even, but narrowing the time frame of her disappearance didn’t leave room for much hope.

  Courtney couldn’t afford to lose her grip.

  And in that moment, Marc understood, as if they were the only two people who knew what it felt like to be robbed of hope. He found himself unable to resist touching her. He slipped an arm around her shoulders and steadied her, gave her a shoulder to rest against, offering all he had to give right now, but taking as much as he gave.

  “Don’t jump to worst-case scenario,” he whispered against her hair, soft against his skin. “All we know is that Araceli made it to Atlanta with the Pereas’ friends. We’ve heard nothing to indicate she was harmed. All we know is we had one unhappy little girl who didn’t want to be in foster care.”

  “You think she may have purposely taken off the way she did to find Mrs. Calderone in the Superdome?”

  “I’m saying it’s something to consider.”

  “She was eight years old, Marc. A little girl.” Her tortured voice tugged at him. “She could not fend for herself at that age. There’s no possible way.”

  He searched for something to reassure her, anything to help her hang on to hope. She felt responsible for this child. Rationality had nothing to do with why. She cared. How had he ever thought she didn’t genuinely care for these kids?

  “Remember what I said about the unforeseeable luck factor? We have no clue what may have happened in Atlanta.”

  She trembled against him, a silent shudder that ran the full length of her.

  “Luck comes in both the good and bad varieties.”

  “There’s more of the good kind than bad.” He needed to believe that, too. For the sake of a child, and far more selfishly, so he had something to hang on to. “We hear about the bad more often because the media’s so damned irresponsible. Look at that girl who got nabbed on her way to the bus stop. Everyone thought she was dead for what—sixteen, eighteen years? She turned up alive because she ran into some good people.”

  Courtney jerked back so fast that he caught himself against the doorjamb unsteadily.

  “Not the best example,” he said quickly. “Sorry. But at least that girl is alive. That part’s good.”

  She looked haunted. He was. He was an idiot. So caught up in the feel of her pressed against him that he didn’t know what was coming out of his mouth. All he could think about was how right she would feel in his arms. So right. “Come on. You’re the one who deals with kids. You know better than I do what a kid that age is capable of. They’re resilient.”

  “I know Araceli wasn’t thinking about potential consequences. Like what might happen to her in the middle of a hurricane without adults to protect her. She probably was just thinking about how she didn’t want to deal with any more bullies who destroyed all her mementos from home.”

  No argument there. “Then we’ll operate on the assumption that whatever happened in Atlanta had the good luck factor.”

  That there was still hope.

  He knew how easily his words could turn out to be a lie.

  Then the sound of Mrs. Calderone’s slippers shuffling over linoleum, and they looked to this old woman to give them something, some reason to not lose all hope.

  The woman reappeared, holding several folded and yellowed pieces of paper that she kept stored in an airtight plastic bag. “So many things were destroyed in the hurricane. Not these scraps of paper. I always thought they must be some kind of sign I would see Gracielle again, so I kept them safe.”

  Courtney took the squares of paper, neatly folded, a stack of one, two, three, four sheets. She carefully unfolded the first to reveal a pencil sketch of a face.

  The striking image was the face of a man who wasn’t old. Early thirties, maybe. He had crinkly hair of an indeterminate color, big eyes, a mustache and a stubbled jaw.

  “Who is this?” Courtney asked.

  “Silvio. Araceli’s papa. A good man and a very great artist.”

  “A self-portrait?” Marc scanned the depicted face. It was more than the effective shading or the balance of the features. Much more than the confident use of lines that came together to bring the image to life.

  The true skill was the way all the elements created emotion on the face. Though the man’s expression was pensive, something about his eyes made Marc think this was the face of a man who laughed often. A man content with his life.

  Marc agreed with Mrs. Calderone. The man who had sketched himself did indeed have talent.

  “Silvio drew many pictures, of himself, of Gracielle and their family, of me and my grandbabies, of the dog that hid in our building always waiting for food. Always drawing. He would sit on the front step at night with his drawing book and a pencil while the children played in the street.”

  Courtney unfolded the next sketch to see a beautiful woman with dark hair and eyes that smiled on the page. Another depicted two young children seated close together on a couch with a book spread across their laps. Araceli and her brother?

  “Amaz
ing,” Courtney whispered. “How did you get them?”

  “I stole a whole folder when the super emptied Gracielle’s apartment after she was taken away,” Mrs. Calderone said proudly. “I knew only these would matter to her. She wouldn’t care about clothes or furniture. Silvio’s drawings were all she had left of him. I wanted to give them to Araceli once she was settled, but the hurricane came. The flood destroyed the folder, even my drawings. You find Araceli and tell her I have something that belongs to her, but she must come claim it herself.”

  Courtney unfolded the final drawing. Not a sketch like the others but a caricature. The cartoon image was of a girl with a ponytail seated in front of an easel with a marker in one hand and a wad of cash in the other. The scenes bordering the girl were easily recognizable—three spires of a church, a statue of a man seated on a horse, an artist’s pitch along a gate. Chartres Street or St. Ann or St. Peter...

  Jackson Square.

  “He was teaching Araceli to draw?” Marc asked.

  Mrs. Calderone smiled that toothy smile. “He was an artist. He came from generations of artists in his country. He was very proud. He was teaching his daughter. If Silvio had lived, he would have taught Paolo one day, too. He wanted his children to have an education. That is why he came to America.”

  Mrs. Calderone smiled fondly. “But Silvio did not want them to lose touch with their roots. When Araceli wanted to play with her friends on Saturdays, she was told her job was to carry on the family tradition. Silvio always said one day she would thank him for teaching her to work hard because she would never starve if she could draw to make people happy.”

  Courtney glanced up at Marc, disbelief all over her lovely face. But there was hope, too.

  He rallied first. “Mrs. Calderone, I can’t tell you how helpful you’ve been.”

  “Do you think you will find Araceli?”

  “We’re going to do everything in our power to find her.” To Marc’s surprise he meant what he said. This search had become about more than proving himself. Sometime since he had started working on this case, when he wasn’t paying attention, he had begun to care about what had happened to a little girl whom no one had noticed missing for too long.

  And for the woman who cared so much.

  * * *

  COURTNEY WAS GRATEFUL for Marc right now. He rested his head back against the car seat with his eyes closed. He hadn’t once spoken since they’d left Mrs. Calderone’s neighborhood, but she found his presence reassuring. Alone would have been so much more than she could handle.

  He had directed the search, was responsible for every piece of the puzzle they put in place. Sure, she was paying him, but there was a personal cost for him, as well.

  She had witnessed the cost earlier. Mrs. Calderone’s building had three flights of stairs, and Marc had been forced to climb every single one because the antiquated elevator had been out of service. Mama and Vince might be convinced work was what Marc needed, but Courtney saw the struggle up close and felt guilty.

  She hadn’t counted on any of the emotional elements of involving Marc in this search. How could she have anticipated being physically attracted to this man? She hadn’t even known she was so needy that all Marc had to do was sit there and breathe to make her feel better.

  Which begged the question: When had her life dwindled down to days strung together running from one responsibility to the next, busyness masquerading as life? Why hadn’t she noticed?

  Courtney had lots of answers—none of them good.

  Her disengagement from life had been gradual, a series of quick choices that had ultimately led to the monumental place she was now—alone and surprised by how she had let her life slip away. An unexpected end to her engagement. The derailment of her plans for a future that had involved more than work. The hurricane and the aftermath. The rebuilding of systems within the department, which had taken years to complete.

  The list went on.

  And here she was, attracted to a man just as disengaged as she was. An emotionally unavailable man.

  “If we go back to your place, I’ll sit down and pass out,” Marc said without opening his eyes. “I need to clear my head and think. How about a Starbucks?”

  “You got it.” Would caffeine help clear her head, too?

  Courtney headed west, cutting through town and heading to the location on the corner of Magazine and Washington, where there was outdoor seating so he could stretch out his leg.

  Fresh air would do them both good, she decided. The heat of the day was winding down, and she needed to get a grip on herself. Her emotions were all over the place. But reining in the way she felt wasn’t going to change the reality of six, possibly eight, long years when a beautiful child should have been growing into a young woman. Wasn’t going to change the reality of all the time she had wasted in her own life.

  But Courtney was responsible for her life choices. Not so for Araceli.

  If Jane Doe had returned to New Orleans instead of Araceli, would there have been any reason for Nanette, or the Pereas, to suspect the girl wasn’t who she claimed to be? Jane Doe did fit Araceli’s description. But had the child who’d returned been a budding artist?

  Would anyone have known if she was or wasn’t?

  Not Protective Services, whose job was to protect, not acquaint themselves with a child’s talents.

  Not the Pereas, who had welcomed Araceli into their home only briefly before the hurricane forced them all out.

  Not Nanette, whose job was to acquaint herself with the child’s talents, and protect her and manage her needs—but Nanette hadn’t had any time to get to know Araceli, either.

  The unforeseen luck factor, as Marc would say. But for Araceli, it had been bad all the way around.

  So many variables came into play in this situation. Two weeks in a home wasn’t nearly long enough to settle in, let alone establish routines and memories that might ultimately arouse suspicion that Jane Doe wasn’t exactly who she said she was.

  So the girl they knew only as Jane Doe just stepped into Araceli’s situation and took over her life. Jane Doe was complicit—that much seemed obvious.

  And she had not managed this switch alone.

  The Pereas had entrusted another foster family with Araceli during the evacuations. The only possible explanation Courtney could see involved that interim family keeping up documentation, remaining in contact with Nanette and the Pereas, collecting funds to care for Araceli, then sending Jane Doe back.

  Why? Why? Why?

  A thousand possible explanations raced through her head, from the unlikely to the horrific.

  By the time she crossed Canal Street, she could no longer contain the frenzy inside her.

  “Everything comes back to the foster family in Atlanta, doesn’t it?” she asked. “You thought the foster parents were responsible from the minute you read Araceli’s file, and you were right. Only not the Pereas, but the foster family in Atlanta, the Aguilars.”

  “That’s the most likely explanation, but we don’t know that yet. We don’t have facts, and until we do, we’re speculating.” He finally opened his eyes, his molten gaze somber. “You’ll only make yourself nuts running through too many possibilities. Emotions fuel your imagination, and that’s a dangerous combination when you’re worried. The facts will tell the story. Most of the time it’s just best to let them.”

  There was compassion in that advice, hidden beneath a matter-of-factness so easily mistaken for indifference. But that compassion could only be had from understanding. “You have to do this in your work, don’t you? Stick with the facts, I mean.”

  “This case is different from what I do. I track down people who don’t think the law applies to them. Most are criminals, or they wouldn’t jump bail in the first place. I’m usually killing myself to find them so the trail doesn’t get cold.
”

  Then how was he well-versed on the way caring fueled anxiety, and how to counter the effects?

  “This case is exactly the opposite,” he explained. “We’re tracking down people and events from a long time ago, like we’re working a cold case. When I’m tracking a skip, my information is usually current, and I’m only interested in my premium.”

  Was Marc saying he cared about what had happened to Araceli? This man who kept everyone at a distance? Courtney knew little about his life beyond the family he avoided. She knew only bits pieced together through the years, stories heard during family dinners, news shared that kept Marc a part of the family even though he was almost never at Mama’s kitchen table.

  And Harley had warned that Marc was a charmer. But Courtney had never heard about any long-term relationships. To her knowledge, he had never brought a girlfriend home. From her vantage, he appeared a man of few commitments.

  And content that way.

  But as Courtney pulled to a stop at an intersection, she remembered the licorice from earlier today, and Mama’s response.

  A marshmallow center? That’s what Harley had said.

  “I agree with Mrs. Calderone,” Marc said. “What happened to Araceli’s family is a tragedy. I can’t believe Immigration.”

  “No easy answers for the situation,” she agreed, appreciating a reprieve from her thoughts.

  “I don’t think the answer is deporting parents. Araceli and her brother are U.S. citizens. All Immigration did was split up a family and give you another kid to deal with.”

  “Sometimes they’re able to send kids back with their parents, but you might be surprised by how many parents don’t want that. They’ll sign away custodial rights so kids can stay in this country.”

  “In foster care?”

  She nodded, glancing in the side mirror as she merged with traffic on Magazine Street. “If parents can’t be sure they’ll be able to feed or protect their kids, then foster care seems like a better option. Not all kids wind up in our system, though. Deportation is always a possibility for people here illegally, so some families make arrangements for the kids in case they don’t make it home. Friends. Neighbors. I even knew of a situation where parents left their kids in the care of a teacher. If Araceli’s mother had made written arrangements, she could have legally left Araceli with Mrs. Calderone.”