The Homecoming

by Anne Marie Winston

  “You’re incredibly lucky,” he said, his voice harsh. “You could have been ripped to shreds on that coral, or swept right on past the island into one of the Pacific currents.” He stopped abruptly, his tone altering. “You wanted to meet me?”

  Too late, she realized this wasn’t the way to tell him. But she’d been so shaken by the return of the memories she’d just blurted it out. Her throat was so tight she couldn’t speak, and she just stared at him, wondering how to tell him why she’d come.

  “Sydney,” he said in an implacable tone. “How did you know my name and why was it so important to see where I lived that you took a chance with your life like that?”

  She cleared her throat. Quietly, she said, “I didn’t intend to contact you this way. But I had hoped to meet with you while I was in Hawaii.” She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath, wondering how she was going to live with the hurt her suspicions would bring. “Danny…I believe my adopted son, Nicholas, is your Noah.”

  He couldn’t believe his ears. He’d thought she was so special, had been so attracted to her. And all the time she was nothing but a fortune hunter. Fury rose, swift and boiling. “And let me guess,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “For the small sum of what? One million? Two? You’ll let me have him without a court battle? Or has the price gone up in the past couple of years?” He pushed back his chair so abruptly it crashed backward onto the stone floor of the lanai. “You don’t honestly think you’re the first person who’s tried to hoodwink me with a fake kid, do you?” He laughed, a bark of sound devoid of any humor. “You know, the first time—hell, even the second—I believed it. I wanted Noah back so badly that I’d have believed anything. But after the fifth time I’d gotten pretty wise to the tricks. Just goes to show I’ve been hiding away too long since I didn’t recognize you for what you were.”

  “Danny, no,” she said, a quaver in her voice, and he steeled his heart against the plea in her soft eyes. “I don’t want your money.”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t!” She sounded a little indignant now. Playing it just right, he thought bitterly. “All I want is for you to take a DNA test that will prove whether or not my suspicions are correct.” Her voice hitched and she paused, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth for a moment until she’d regained control. “I couldn’t live with myself if I denied my son the chance to be reunited with his real father.” Her voice dropped. “And you with your son.”

  No. She was lying. She might be pretending she didn’t want money, but she’d change her tune once she thought she’d hooked him into believing her. They all did. Noah was dead, had probably been dead for several years by now. Without the heart surgery he’d needed, he wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  Pain he thought he’d managed to shut in a forgotten box seared him and he actually reached out for the door frame to steady himself. He couldn’t look at Sydney anymore.

  “You won’t be going to Kauai this afternoon,” he informed her.

  Behind him, she said, “I won’t?” in a startled voice.

  “You’re not going anywhere until the police talk to you.”

  “Please,” Leslie Logan said. “We want to know everything you can find out about his past. His parents. Any other family. His childhood, what schools he attended, who his friends were…” She bit her lip fiercely as her eyes welled with tears.

  Terrence Logan put one arm around his wife’s shaking shoulders. “Can you help us?” he asked the private investigator.

  The man shrugged. “I can try. But there are no guarantees in this kind of work.”

  “We understand that,” Terrence said.

  “Now tell me everything you know about this…” He consulted his notes. “Everett Baker.”

  “He was an employee of Children’s Connection, the adoption and infertility treatment program that’s been our special project for years,” Terrence said. “He was arrested for kidnapping babies and adopting them out to wealthy people for astronomical sums of money.”

  “You already know our firstborn son was abducted at the age of six. About a year later we were told his body had been found. Now we learn that our son didn’t die.” Leslie carefully dabbed beneath her eyes one final time, then straightened her shoulders.

  “And this Baker says he’s your son?” the P.I. asked.

  Terrence nodded.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” Leslie leaned forward. “Fortune hunter, right? But we’re already convinced he’s our son, based on things he’s spoken of that no one else could possibly have known. We simply want you to fill in the blanks.”

  “Why don’t you just ask him to take a DNA test?”

  “We will,” Leslie said, “but we want to know more about him before we discuss that.”

  “He’s been accused of a crime,” Terrence said bluntly. “And we don’t believe he would willingly have done the things he’s accused of without someone else leading him on. We need information because we plan to provide for Robbie—for Everett’s defense.”

  “I’ll have to check your information,” the investigator said almost apologetically. “I’ll only take on the case if I believe you have a legitimate reason for wanting information about this young man.” He grimaced. “I’ve had too many enraged spouses in my office wanting background on someone for the sole purpose of harming them in some way.”

  Terrence nearly smiled. “We appreciate ethical convictions. That only convinces me you’re the right person for the job.”

  “Our lives are an open book,” Leslie said. “Would you like us to give you the names of people you can talk with about us?”

  The man nodded. “That would be helpful, Mrs. Logan.”

  Leslie stood and went to an elegant mahogany desk along one wall of the sitting room in which they’d met with the investigator. She returned with a notepad as well as a slim file folder, which she handed to the man. “This is everything we know about our son’s past, both before and after he was abducted.” She sat again and took several moments to write on the notepad she held. Tearing off the top sheet, she extended it to him. “These are people you can call for references on us as well as for any more information on the original investigation. The first name is the retired police chief who handled the abduction when it occurred. The second is the general number for Children’s Connection. People there knew Everett Baker. They also know us and you can speak with anyone there you like. The last three numbers are our family physician and two longtime friends. Our children’s names—our other children’s names—and numbers are already in the folder, in case you should need to speak with them. But they’re all younger than Robbie. None of them even knew him.” Her lip quivered again but she took a deep breath and bit into her lip. After a moment, her lovely features relaxed again.

  The private investigator stood, sliding the loose note into the folder as he extended his hand first to Terrence and then to Leslie. “I expect that will be a formality, Mr. and Mrs. Logan. I’ll be in touch within the week to let you know how the investigation is going.”

  “Thank you,” Terrence said.

  “Yes, thank you,” Leslie echoed. “You can’t imagine what it means to us to learn that our son is living.” A smile lightened the sorrow in her eyes. “After all these years…it’s a miracle.”

  “Then I’ll do my best to ensure that your miracle stays out of prison,” the P.I. said.

  Within an hour, Danny’s lawyer and the police chief had arrived. Danny and the chief watched through a hastily set up video feed while Danny’s lawyer questioned Sydney. She’d agreed to answer the man’s questions without any hesitation. She’d even asked Danny if he wanted to listen, and had looked disappointed and unhappy when he’d refused. Oh, she was good. No doubt about it.

  “Tell me why you think your son is Noah Crosby, Ms. Aston. You say you got him under questionable circumstances?”

  “It’s Miss,” Sydney said quietly. She linked her fingers in her lap. “Four years ago, in January of 20
01, I received a call from a woman who’d been a friend—an acquaintance, really—from college. She said she’d gotten my name from another friend and wanted to visit while she was in Seattle. That’s where I was living at the time.”

  The lawyer made an encouraging noise, and Sydney went on. “When she arrived, she had her son with her. She said he was about a year old, but she was evasive about his birthday. Also, I remember thinking that she and the child didn’t seem bonded. The baby didn’t seem to find her particularly comforting, didn’t look for her or hold up his arms when she came near. It was…odd. But at the time, it didn’t seem significant. Margo, my friend, looked bad. Her clothes weren’t especially clean and she had a bruise down the side of her face and several more on her arms that she tried to keep covered. She was dead broke and if I had turned her away she would have had to go to a shelter. So I let them stay with me. Eventually Margo confided in me. She said the baby’s name was Nicholas—Nick—and that his father was dead. She said the bruises were from a boyfriend who’d gotten abusive. I think his name was Charlie or Chuck, something like that. I’m afraid I don’t really remember.”

  “It’s all right. Go on.”

  “They stayed with me for three weeks and I adored little Nick. He seemed to like me, too, and I told Margo she could stay as long as she needed. But one day when I got home from work, Margo was gone. Nick was alone in my apartment in the crib I’d bought, screaming his poor little head off.” She took a deep breath. “On the floor by the bed was a paper bag and in the bag…in the bag was one hundred thousand dollars. In cash!” She sounded sincerely shocked. After a moment, she gathered herself again.

  “I put the money in the bank and got a neighbor to baby-sit during the day. I was sure Margo would be back soon. Who in the world walks away from a precious child like that?”

  Not to mention the money, Danny thought. But Sydney never said another word about it.

  “One day, when she’d been gone for a little more than three weeks, I saw on the news that they’d found a woman’s body caught on some branches in a stream in the mountains outside Seattle.” She put a hand to her throat and Danny could see horror on her face. “They identified her through dental records. It was Margo.”

  “The baby’s mother.” The attorney wore no expression as he listened.

  “Yes. Or so I believed at the time.” She unclasped and relaced her fingers in the first sign of nerves she’d shown.

  Maybe the first part of the story was true, Danny thought. She sure hadn’t sounded like she was lying. But the lies were about to begin. This was where she would claim Nick was really his Noah.

  “I called Social Services and applied to become his temporary foster home, which they granted. They tried to find family, both the mother’s and the father’s, but no one ever came forward, so after going through a lengthy adoption process that lasted over a year, I adopted Nicholas. And shortly after that we moved to Portland because I got a good job offer there.”

  “And the money the woman left?”

  “I put it in a trust for Nicholas. It’s in care of a local bank until he turns eighteen. I couldn’t access it if I wanted.”

  The lawyer let a silence hang. After a moment, he said, “Miss Aston, why do you think your son is Noah Crosby?”

  Danny closed his eyes for a moment. God, it still hurt so badly.

  “Nick has had nightmares,” she said, “from the time he was an infant. Every once in a while he wakes up screaming.”

  “I’m no expert,” said Danny’s lawyer, “but don’t a lot of children do that occasionally? Mine did.”

  “This is different,” she said in the same patient tone she’d employed all along. Why wasn’t she angry at this interrogation, Danny wondered. “Margo had told me Nick was about a year old so I chose a January birth date. By his third birthday, he could articulate his dreams. It’s always the same dream. Over and over. As he’s grown older, he’s continued to describe the dream, and it’s still always the same. Someone is stealing him. Now, of course, someone is stealing him from me, which obviously wouldn’t have been the case four years ago, but the basic dream is the same.”

  “Have you ever consulted anyone about these dreams?”

  “Dream,” she corrected. “One dream, many times over. And the answer is yes. After we moved to Portland I joined a group called the Parents Adoption Network. After several months I mentioned the dream. Most people had your reaction, but one mother took me aside later and told me that if it were her child, she’d be concerned, too, that what I described wasn’t normal. So I took him to a child psychologist, whom we’re still seeing. The dream hasn’t changed, but he’s been having fewer nightmares recently.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why you think your child is Mr. Crosby’s son.”

  “Timing,” Sydney said. “I only became aware of the traffic in stolen infants after I joined PAN. A few months ago, Nick’s counselor told me the fact that Nick had the same dream over and over might be significant. Of course, I immediately wondered if he was a stolen baby. I did some research on children who had been stolen within the year before I got Nick. The time frame of Noah Crosby’s kidnapping fits most closely within the Pacific Northwest. The only other one that matches the time frame, assuming Nick hadn’t been with Margo very long, was a child taken in Georgia, and that was a newborn. I think this might explain why Nick didn’t seem attached to Margo when they first arrived. And there was something else: I told you how odd I thought it was that Margo didn’t seem especially good at calming her child. He screamed a lot at first and seemed to have a lot of gastric distress. Margo said it was just gas, but after I became his foster mother, I took him to a doctor who diagnosed him as severely lactose intolerant. Looking back, I don’t believe Margo knew it.”

  Danny caught his breath and his heart leaped. His son, Noah, had been lactose intolerant. Felicia had also been allergic to dairy products. She hadn’t even been able to eat a slice of their wedding cake because of the milk content in the recipe and the butter in the frosting. Noah had inherited it. He’d even had a reaction to Felicia’s breast milk and they’d had to put him on soy formula.

  It was one of the things they’d agonized about after the kidnapping. That and the heart defect.

  Still, this could just be coincidence, he assured himself. Nick Aston wasn’t his son. Noah was as dead as Felicia. For a long time he’d hoped…but that hope had been futile. He had no intention of destroying himself on that emotional roller coaster again.

  On the screen, the lawyer was thanking Sydney, who got up and left the room. He turned to face the camera, shaking his head. “I don’t know, Danny,” he said. “My gut feeling is that she’s not lying. Not about any of it. I suspect she’d take a polygraph if you asked her to. And of course there’s DNA testing.”

  There was no need for DNA testing. None at all. Nicholas Aston was not his son! He forced himself to take deep, calming breaths, but he could feel his whole body trembling with the anxiety that had risen again. Dammit! He could not afford to do this again, he thought wearily. He glanced at the cop seated beside him. “So?”

  The chief had listened impassively to Sydney’s story and the lawyer’s subsequent comments. He looked at Danny and then sighed. “What, exactly, do you want me to do? The young lady washed up on a public beach and you invited her to stay in your home. It’s true that she did it under false pretenses, but it sounds as if the way she contacted you was a genuine accident. And Dr. Atada said he didn’t think she was faking the memory loss. In any case, that’s not a crime. And she swears she doesn’t want money from you, so I can’t charge her with attempted extortion.”

  Danny raked his fingers through his hair. Despite his agony, he’d suspected the chief couldn’t do much of anything to Sydney. “All right,” he said, exhaling heavily. “Thanks.”

  The chief rose, placing a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “What if she be right?”

  “She’s not,” Danny said flatly. “I’ve hoped over a
nd over again that some child would turn out to be my Noah. And it never was.”

  He felt, more than saw, the cop shrug. “Okay. What you gonna do? I can take her back to Kauai since you canceled Dr. Atada’s visit.”

  Danny shook his head instantly. Then he wondered just what in the hell he was doing. He should get her out of his life. But…he was curious about her kid. Even if it wasn’t Noah, it was still a compelling story.

  He saw the two professionals onto their launch back to Kauai, then sped back up the path to the house. “Where is she?” he asked Leilani.

  “She sittin’ outside by the pool,” she replied. “You want lemonade?”

  “That would be nice.” Danny turned and walked out to the pool deck. Sydney sat in a lounge near the shallow end, big sunglasses on her nose and a slim black tank suit covering her curves. It wasn’t a revealing suit by any means, but she still was so attractive he caught his breath. Knock it off, he told himself. The last thing he needed was to get involved with her.

  “Hello,” she said as he approached. “Have you watched the video?”

  “I was watching live,” he said tersely.

  “Oh. Good.” She paused, then leaned forward anxiously. “Do you have any questions I can answer?”

  He shrugged. “Not really. You covered everything I wanted to know.”

  She nodded and relaxed. “I can’t believe I forgot all that,” she said ruefully. “I wonder if I was afraid to remember it. I knew before I came here that if I did get the chance to meet with you, it would be a pretty explosive topic.”

  “What would you have done if things had turned out differently, if you hadn’t gotten to talk to me?”

  “Gone home and approached you through your family or through a lawyer, I imagine. I hadn’t even considered that you might refuse to see me. I thought you’d be thrilled at the possibility of finding your son.” She sounded as if she couldn’t comprehend his attitude.