by Becky Wade
“I think because she’d had her fill of hospitals and doctors. When she was a teenager, she basically gave the middle finger to her condition and decided to live her life as if she hadn’t been born with a heart defect. Eventually . . . tetralogy of Fallot had the last word.” A breeze whisked the maple leaf away.
Sebastian flopped onto his back and stuck a forearm behind his head. Leah rose onto her own arm and looked down at him. Grooves marked his forehead.
“How did you deal with her loss, emotionally?” she asked.
“I didn’t. I’ve since learned that trauma splits an event from its emotion. My mom’s death was the most terrible thing that could have happened to me. But when it happened, I felt cold and hard inside. That’s all.”
Sorry seemed far too trite and small a word. She picked up a waxy magnolia leaf, arranged his free arm just the way hers had been arranged moments before, and swept the leaf’s tip delicately along the inside of his strong forearm. “Did CPS try to contact her family?”
“No. She refused to accept the fact that she was dying until just a few weeks before she did. At that point, she clearly specified that she wanted me to become a ward of the state of Georgia.”
“Because?”
“Because she wasn’t going to let me anywhere near her family, and she didn’t have anybody else. She loved the mountains of northern Georgia and wanted me to grow up there.” His lips firmed. “I think she believed the odds were best for me in foster care.”
“Do you think you would have been happier with her family?”
“No. My foster parents were all good people who were fostering kids for the right reasons. They weren’t the problem. By the time I went to them, I was the problem.”
“How so?”
“My attitude.”
“Elaborate.”
“I was reclusive. Argumentative. Bitter. I hated the first family who took me in, even through they tried their best to help me.”
“You were an eight-year-old child whose only family member died. Dylan was around that same age when my mother left. I saw how that affected him. He floundered, too, and I understood why. His grief was warranted. His anger was warranted. So was yours.”
Sebastian didn’t reply.
After what she’d been through with Dylan, she had a soft spot for the kid Sebastian had been and the heartbreak he’d endured. Dr. Grant, a man who appeared to have everything, did not have everything.
“Did your foster parents ensure that you received counseling?”
“For years. I hated that, too. I mostly just sat there with my mouth shut and waited for it to be over.”
“You were a tough nut to crack.”
“Still am.”
Regret flashed within her because she wanted to be the person who cracked his hard shell.
Of all the disastrous, ill-conceived urges!
He lived like a bear in a cave, keeping those who did not have the last name of Coleman at arm’s length. He was a heart surgeon who did not understand the inner workings of his own heart. He’d determined that he didn’t want to love or be loved, and who was she to quibble with that?
She didn’t want romantic love, either. But even if she did want that from Sebastian, she was smart enough to know that the very worst thing a woman could do was invest herself in a man based on the fruitless hope that he would change.
It was crucial that they keep things just as they were.
Light and uncomplicated.
Trina and Jonathan Brookside unknowingly fulfilled Leah’s hopes by showing up for church the following morning.
Sebastian sat beside Leah in a pew one section over from the older couple and several rows back. From what Leah had told him, he knew that Sophie, Sophie’s husband, and Sophie’s younger sister had all attended the service the last time Leah had come here. Today, only Trina and Jonathan were present.
The congregation rose to sing. Instead of focusing on the lyrics, he assessed the couple. Leah had her mother’s build and hair color. Trina leaned close to her husband to say something near his ear. Jonathan responded by turning his head to hers. Trina and Leah’s profiles were alike, but Leah’s cheekbones and chin appeared to have come from her father.
How would Trina and Jonathan react if they knew the daughter that should have been theirs was just yards away? Singing the same praise song?
When the service ended, he caught Leah watching the Brooksides with a combination of interest, pain, and sweetness.
She wore high heels that buckled around her ankles. Her jean dress had a wide skirt and a belt made out of floral fabric that knotted at her waist. The charm dangling from the necklace he’d given her rested just below the hollow at the base of her throat. Her hair shone gold under the lights.
He swallowed against a groundswell of tenderness. The swell was so strong, it was a physical force. So strong, it stole his words.
“Are you going to tell them who you are?” he managed to ask.
“Not today.”
“Someday?”
“I don’t know. In my mind, I frequently run through the costs and benefits of telling them. I still haven’t reached a conclusion.” She gathered her purse. “Ready?”
They moved toward the exit.
“Do you have a favorite restaurant around here?” she asked.
“Yeah, but it’s casual. It’s this little authentic Mexican place.”
“Let’s go.”
“Look at what you’re wearing. That dress and you deserve a nicer restaurant.”
“And yet, this dress and I want enchiladas.”
They ate enchiladas from stools at the restaurant’s long bar. Blue paint and framed Latin music records from the ’70s and ’80s plastered the walls.
They bantered, teased, laughed. Sebastian concentrated on memorizing her characteristics. He wanted to be able to replay them so they could keep him company when she left.
They’d almost finished their meal when his phone pager beeped.
“No,” he moaned.
Her face held amused sympathy. “I knew from the start that you were on call this weekend.”
He’d planned to take her to the arts district after this. More than anything, he wanted the chance to walk through museums with her.
He read the information on his phone. “They need a consult on an infant who’s being airlifted to the hospital.”
“Sounds like it’s time for you to save small humans.” She looked around and signaled their server. “Check, please.”
“Will you come with me to the hospital?”
“We took your car this morning. It’s only logical for me to go where you go.”
I want to go where you go for the rest of my life.
He shoved the thought away before it could put down roots.
For the second time, Leah had been granted exclusive access to Sebastian’s office.
She went straight to the long, vertical corkboard full of photos and notes. The day she’d finagled Dylan into touring this place, she hadn’t had time to study all the items on the board. Now, very satisfactorily, she did. Once she finished her survey, she made herself comfortable in a leather chair and checked the app on her phone that tracked Dylan’s location. He was at home with Tess and Rudy.
Good Dylan. She placed a call to him and proceeded to pry conversation out of him with a chisel. After a few minutes she took pity on the boy and asked him to put Tess on. Not only was Tess much more agreeable to talk to, she could be trusted to give Leah an unvarnished update on Dylan. Dylan had been cranky when Tess had woken him this morning, but after eating half a box of cereal out of a mixing bowl, he’d gotten himself together, and they’d made it to church before returning to Leah’s house.
“Rudy!” Tess stopped mid-sentence to call out. “Put that down. That’s breakable.”
“What does he have?” Leah asked.
“An expensive-looking calculator.”
Blimey. She’d continued to carry her old graphing calculator aroun
d in her purse. She kept the new one that Sebastian had given her on a shelf at home to use on special occasions.
Tess released a resigned sigh. “I’d best go take it away from him. Enjoy your time in Atlanta.”
Leah opened the most challenging math app she’d been able to find and worked problems until the door swung inward, admitting Sebastian. He still wore his church clothes—a beautifully tailored white shirt, gray herringbone patterned tie, navy suit pants.
“Ready?” he asked.
“I am. What’s the status of the baby who was airlifted in?”
“Stable.” In the hallway, he opened the door to the stairwell for her. “Mind if we stop in the PICU on our way out?”
“Not at all.”
She followed him into a room where a toddler boy slept. He had tawny skin and silky black hair. Dressed in Superman pajamas, he clasped a faded stuffed dog.
She watched Sebastian do what she’d seen him do before, assess the monitors and then carefully straighten the tubes running from the child.
A male nurse with a kind face and balding head slipped inside. “Good afternoon, Dr. Grant.”
“Good afternoon.” Sebastian introduced him to Leah, then asked, “Kidney function?”
“I’m still seeing a negative fluid balance.”
“Good. H and H?”
“Steady.”
Sebastian and Leah left the room.
“Can we look in on Isabella?” she asked.
“If you’d like.”
“I would.”
He led her to the room she remembered. Almost everything remained eerily unchanged. Isabella looked the same, with the ventilator sealed to her mouth. Eight weeks had gone by since Leah’s last visit, and only a few things had altered: today Isabella’s blanket was lavender, and her mom wasn’t present. Megan must have just stepped out because her Bible rested open on her chair.
“I thought sepsis might take her down,” Sebastian said. “But it didn’t.”
“Pull through,” Leah said to the baby, entreaty in her voice.
“She’s a fighter.”
“Then fight,” she said to Isabella.
Silently, she prayed over the tiny girl.
How would she have dealt with this had it been Dylan lying here with a machine breathing for him? How could she have kept it together if Dylan’s life had been the one hanging by the thinnest piece of thread, a thread that God could extend or cut?
All life hung by a thin piece of thread.
Her life included. She knew this.
It’s just that inside this room, Isabella’s thread seemed excruciatingly fragile.
Leah transferred her focus to Sebastian and found him watching her with a look both soft and somber.
“C’mon.” He extended a hand.
She took it.
Sebastian drove Leah to a museum that contained many fine works of art and one particularly private and dim corridor between galleries. When he came to a halt in the corridor, she glanced at him. Immediately, she read what he was thinking in his unrepentant expression.
“Sebastian. You’re a well-respected surgeon in this city. You cannot be found making out in museum hallways.”
“Can’t I?”
“No.”
He stepped toward her, his hands curving around to support the back of her head. “As far as I know, making out in hallways isn’t against museum policy.”
“How familiar are you with this museum’s policies?”
“As familiar as I want to be.”
“How familiar are you with what’s in good taste?”
“Leah?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve never cared about what’s in good taste.”
She saw so much desire in his eyes that her breath turned shallow.
Heat rose, awareness built. One of his fingertips caressed the tender skin at the back of her neck. She could feel the hammer of her heart, hear the hitch in his inhalations.
“You wouldn’t want to ‘let a gorgeous guy like me out of your sight,’ would you?” he asked.
She could not resist a man who quoted Han Solo to her. But in the name of spunkiness, she leaned toward his ear and reciprocated with another quote. “‘Don’t get cocky.’”
“Kiss me.”
“I don’t remember a quote about kissing—”
“That last one,” he whispered, “wasn’t a quote.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake, who cared about what was or wasn’t in good taste? She pulled him to her and they kissed deep and slow.
A sound of approval rumbled in his throat.
Someone might come in.
But the danger of discovery only heightened the thrill.
His fingers speared into her hair.
Sebastian.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Late the next morning, Leah woke in her hotel room to a column of sunshine falling across the foot of her bed. Clean, crisp sheets cocooned her.
A text from Sebastian, who’d be back at work by now on this Monday morning, awaited her.
Meet me for coffee before you drive home? I know a place.
Is this my life? she thought, tossing a hand onto the pillow above her head with a happy sigh.
The enormous gray monolith otherwise known as the Lewis R. Slaton Courthouse had been constructed more than a hundred years ago. Leah sat in the waiting area of the “closed file room,” smelling the building’s age in its dust-scented air and seeing the building’s age in the old-fashioned glass partition separating her from the room’s attendant.
This morning she’d placed a phone call to the courthouse and learned that criminal records were not available online, but that both criminal and civil records were available here. So she’d checked out of her hotel and relocated to the courthouse computer lab. She’d begun by searching for criminal and civil proceedings that named her parents, Erica and Todd Montgomery. Her efforts generated no matches. Nor did her efforts generate a match for Trina Brookside.
When she’d moved on to Jonathan Brookside, however, she’d hit pay dirt. So much pay dirt that she’d been momentarily caught by surprise, like a hide-and-seek-player who jumps when they discover their friend blinking at them from underneath a bed.
Seven civil suits had been filed against Jonathan over the years. But only two—one for wrongful termination and one for breach of contract—had been filed recently enough that the associated documents were available digitally.
She’d combed through those two suits and recorded all the pertinent details on her phone. Then she’d jotted down the case numbers for the other five cases.
When none of the nurses’ names resulted in a single criminal or civil charge, she’d consulted the staff member in the computer room, who’d informed Leah that she’d need to visit the closed file room to gain access to documents pertaining to the old suits filed against Jonathan.
She’d submitted a records request for the case numbers in question thirty minutes ago. Ever since, she’d been waiting alongside an elderly woman speaking Spanish quietly into her phone and a middle-aged couple. The wife was reading Better Homes & Gardens and the husband was dozing while sitting upright.
Seven suits against Jonathan.
Seven! That seemed like an unusually high number, but perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps that was a low number of suits for an individual who owned a company as large as Gridwork Communications Corporation.
“Ms. Montgomery?”
She approached the young blond man stationed behind the glass.
“Here you are.” He slid her the stack of pages he’d photocopied from the originals.
She thanked him and returned to her still-warm chair.
Quickly, she skimmed the pages. One suit for breach of contract. One for discrimination. One for intellectual property rights. Two for wrongful termination.
At first glance, it appeared two of the suits had been settled out of court and that he’d been acquitted of the rest. Which, of course, did not necessarily mean Jonat
han had been innocent. The acquittals might simply mean that he’d had an excellent defense team.
Leah crossed her legs, collected a pen from her purse, and started wading through the dense legal language of the topmost sheet. Page by page, she circled every key fact—names, dates, the gist of the accusation, the result.
When she reached the intellectual property suit, she circled the plaintiff’s name. Ian Monroe O’Reilly.
Instantly, recognition clicked. One of her nurses at Magnolia Avenue Hospital had the same surname.
The mysterious Bonnie O’Reilly.
This particular suit had been filed thirty years ago. Ian O’Reilly (age twenty-seven) had accused Jonathan Brookside (also age twenty-seven) of stealing his idea, his technology, and his research and using it to found Gridwork Communications Corporation.
Leah read through the remainder of the document. The case had been tried. Jonathan had not been found liable.
Think, Leah.
A plaintiff named O’Reilly had sued Jonathan Brookside. Two years later, a nurse named O’Reilly had cared for Jonathan Brookside’s daughter on the day of her birth.
O’Reilly was one of the most common American surnames of Irish origin. The fact that Baby Brookside’s nurse shared the same name as a plaintiff who’d sued Jonathan Brookside a few years prior could comfortably be attributed to coincidence.
If everything had proceeded normally from there, had she and Sophie gone home with their rightful parents, suspicion would not be justified. But instead, while a nurse named O’Reilly was on duty, Baby Brookside had been switched with Baby Montgomery.
Under those circumstances, suspicion seemed highly justified.
Tilting back her head, she peered at the crown molding dividing wall from ceiling.
Ian and Jonathan had both been twenty-seven. According to Joyce, Bonnie had been fifty or so at the time of Leah’s birth. It was feasible to think that Bonnie could have been Ian’s mother. Or perhaps his aunt? Cousin?
If Bonnie had been related to the Ian who’d sued Jonathan, then, no doubt, Bonnie was not one of Jonathan’s admirers.
So . . . What?
Bonnie had taken it upon herself to punish Jonathan by swapping his child with someone else’s?