“Except, it’s not exactly the next morning. Aaron left six weeks ago. As I was saying, back when he was my future husband, I decided I loved him more than I loved Ithaca, so I left.”
“Do you regret it?”
“No. New York is home. What I regret is not figuring out why Aaron wouldn’t consider living upstate. It’s not because he’s such a city person. He grew up in Jersey and he just moved into a condo in Westchester. What he didn’t like about Ithaca is that my friends Jessie and Silas live there. She’s a fellow foundling, and he’s the professor who inspired my career and was one of the first scientists to use DNA to trace biological roots.”
“Your husband doesn’t like them? Is he jealous?”
“It’s not that.”
A couple of adolescent boys ride by on cobbled-together bikes, helmetless and smoking cigarettes. The dog next door starts barking again.
“Hey, Buck, will you quiet down?”
The dog ignores Barnes.
“I don’t think he speaks English,” Amelia says. “Hey, Buck? Cállate la boca!”
“You speak Spanish?”
“Fluently, but I don’t think Buck cares.”
“Oh, well. Tell me about your husband and your friends,” Barnes says over the yapping.
“Aaron’s always been polite to them, but he never embraced them the way they’d have embraced him, if he’d given them the chance. In therapy, I found out that to him, they’re anchors to my unresolved past. To me, they were—they still are—lifelines. And family.”
“But you left them to marry him.”
“And become part of another family—Aaron, and my in-laws. When I met them, I thought they were perfect—just like the Huxtables on The Cosby Show.”
“Bill Cosby doesn’t exactly live up to that image these days,” Barnes reminds her, considering that the man who’d played the lovable patriarch stands accused of molesting women.
“I know, but Aaron’s family does. If they weren’t so damned wonderful, I probably wouldn’t have married him in the first place, or stayed with him for twenty-five years.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I—for telling you all this. I didn’t mean to—”
“Oh, hey, it’s okay. I get it. I have a broken marriage in my past, too.”
“What happened?”
“We were both cops. That never works.”
“I know a few who are happily married to each other.”
“Well, they probably didn’t mistake infatuation for love at an age when most people decide it’s time to settle down. That was our other problem.”
“One of ours, too. But mostly, Aaron doesn’t want to live in the past, and he says I’m fixated on it. I guess when you’re always feeling like someone important is missing, you hurt the people who are there.”
“Yeah, I can relate to that. Probably one more reason my marriage didn’t work out. People like us should probably just stay single, or . . .”
Or have relationships with other people like us.
A Jeep pulls into the driveway. The dog begins to bark.
“Shut the eff up, Buck!” a middle-aged Black woman calls as she gets out of the car, and the dog falls silent.
“Guess it wasn’t the language barrier,” Barnes mutters to Amelia as they get to their feet. “We were just too polite.”
The woman walks toward them, keys in hand. She’s sturdy looking, with an attractive face and wearing an unzipped down puffer coat over a dark uniform.
“Cynthia Randall?” he asks and she nods, walking slowly toward them, keys in hand.
He introduces himself and Amelia the same way he had back at the Harrisons’, only this time he doesn’t mention that they’re here from New York.
“We’re investigating a case, and we wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”
She sighs. “Is this about the break-ins down the block?”
“Sorry, but do you mind if we talk inside?” Amelia asks, bouncing a little as if she’s freezing.
“Not if you have ID.” She sticks her key into the lock.
Barnes shows her his badge.
“NYPD? What are you doing up here?”
“As I said, we’re on a case, and we’ve had a lead that brought us to Connecticut.”
Cynthia takes that in stride, inviting them in. She flips on a light, throws her coat on a hook by the door, takes theirs, and does the same. The place is clean if small and cluttered, with too much furniture in a mishmash of styles. There are a couple of foil-potted poinsettias on the coffee table and a small tabletop Christmas tree. She stoops to plug it in, bathing the room in a colorful glow, as Barnes and Amelia sit on the couch. The bulbs are the old-fashioned pointed oval kind, opaque and deep-hued.
“Nice tree,” Barnes comments.
“Fake.”
“You don’t see lights like that very often. Remind me of when I was a kid.”
“Yeah, well, these days everyone has those little twinkly, transparent candy-ass lights.”
He checks out several framed photos—Monica, he guesses, in various stages of her life. School photos, a graduation shot, and one in a military uniform.
Cynthia follows his gaze. “My daughter. She’s in the military, stationed overseas.”
“Guessing she’s no candy-ass.”
“You got that right.”
Cynthia sits in a chair and swaps her black lace-up shoes for Dearfoams. “Sorry, but my feet are killing me. I’m on them all day at the shelter.”
“Shelter?”
“For domestic abuse victims—I’m a security guard there, and I figured that’s why you— Why are you here?”
“Following up on a cold case.”
“But you’re getting warmer, son . . .”
“Not domestic abuse?”
“Missing persons.”
No need to bring up the double murder. While he still believes Gypsy Colt and Perry Wayland are behind the Harrison slayings, Cynthia Randall may be the key to finding Charisse, and he has to tread carefully.
She repositions a throw pillow behind her and settles against it as if her back, too, is aching. “I worked doubles over the holidays. Tough time at the shelter, especially for the poor little kids dragged through their parents’ messes.”
“That’s true. And the case we’re investigating involves a child,” Barnes tells her, opening the notebook to a clean page. “Her name is Charisse Montague.”
Cynthia sits up in her chair, gripping the arms, eyes narrowed.
“You know her, then?”
“She’s my stepdaughter.”
“Your . . .” Amelia pauses and looks at Barnes.
“Stepdaughter. My ex-husband Bobby’s kid from his first marriage.”
Something flutters in Barnes’s gut—not instinct. Dread.
He stares down at the motionless pen as Amelia does the talking. “When was the last time you saw Charisse?”
“When she was, I don’t know, maybe three or four? Bobby’s ex was bad news.”
“Drugs?”
“Even before that. Aimless, kind of shifty, you know? Looking for a free ride. She’d been arrested, too.”
Barnes nods. He’d found her mug shots in the system when he’d gone looking for her years ago. Not just the shoplifting charge, but a couple of other misdemeanors after Charisse was born. And then, after 1990—nothing at all. Meaning she cleaned up her act, or changed her identity, died . . .
“After Bobby told Delia he was leaving her for me because I was pregnant, she got pregnant, too, to trap him.”
“So she conceived a baby with someone else? That doesn’t seem—”
“No, not with someone else. With Bobby. He had one foot out the door and she got pregnant because she thought she’d be able to hang on to him, and I guess it worked for a while.”
“We . . .” Amelia glances at Barnes. “We were under the impression that Delia’s daughter was fathered by another man.”
“Oh, hell, I wish! Bobby w
as still with her on and off in January, and the due date was nine months later.”
Barnes finds his voice. “The baby wasn’t born until later in October, and she was—”
“Overdue. Yeah, I remember. Monica was born in September.”
Not overdue! Premature!
That’s what Delia had told Barnes.
His daughter had been so tiny and fragile.
His daughter. His, not Bobby’s.
“So there we were with our own life and our own daughter, and Delia kept bouncing back. Nothing was ever enough for her. Years after they split up and she had his wages garnished, she was looking for more money. It was like she just—”
“Wait, she had his wages garnished?” Barnes cuts in, incredulous.
“Yeah, for child support.”
But . . .
But that would take a court order, and establishment of paternity.
He can’t speak.
Amelia clears her throat. “So then . . . Charisse was definitely Bobby’s daughter?”
“Oh, hell, yes. One hundred percent.”
Barnes attempts to take a deep breath and resume the questioning, but the air has been sucked out of the room.
Bobby’s daughter.
Not mine.
Chapter Nine
Westport, Connecticut
Plunking the last red plastic storage tub on the attic floor, Liliana Ford hears the unmistakable tinkling of broken glass.
“Damn!”
Please don’t let it be one of her mother-in-law’s old German mercury baubles, presented, along with vintage colored light strings and an antique treetop angel, as a wedding shower gift last spring.
“They belonged to my grandmother. I know you’ll cherish them.”
“Oh, I absolutely will.”
I absolutely won’t shatter an ornament when I take down the tree the moment your son leaves for a business trip.
Liliana doesn’t open the box now to investigate. The broken glass can wait until next December, when she and Bryant have another year of marriage under their belts and her relationship with his intimidating mother has solidified.
Liliana returns to the second floor and walks down a short hall lined with a bathroom and three bedrooms, all roughly the same size. No master suite in this small shingled colonial that had been at the top of their budget and the only affordable house in her husband’s toney hometown.
Downstairs, the living room looks oddly empty, the tree standing dark and unembellished in its stand. Maybe she should have waited till January 6—the Feast of the Epiphany. Her Catholic parents have always left theirs up till then, and she’d always been disappointed when it came down.
But theirs had been decorated with white fairy lights, and they’d know why she isn’t comfortable with the colored ones she’d just stashed in the attic. Bryant will not.
“He’s your husband now,” her mother had said, calling in December from her Florida retirement condo. “You should tell him what’s going on.”
“I know, and I will . . . when the time is right.”
“How about now? It’s the anniversary, and—”
“I know what day it is, believe me, but Bry’s in Boston, and I’m about to get on a train to Philly.”
They have important sales rep jobs, a busy life, and a bright future. No need to dwell on a long-ago night, and a little Christmas tree with bright old-fashioned lights, two women screaming at each other.
She’d been so cold, wet, sleepy, and young . . .
Just three years old. Yet she’d understood what they were saying: both her mother and father were gone, and neither of those women wanted to take care of her.
She doesn’t remember much of her life before that night—snippets of gloomy rooms, city streets, strangers. Her mother, miserable. Her father, smacking her. Nor does she remember the six-month aftermath—being abandoned, discovered, turned over to social services, placed in foster care.
Her next retained memory is a happy one—a summer beach, building sandcastles with a new dad who never lifted a hand to her, as her new mom laughed, holding a camera.
Maybe she only remembers because she’s seen those pictures countless times, the first in a childhood photo album that began midway through June 1991—essentially, when her life began. Everything that had come before should be irrelevant. All that should matter is the wonderful life that followed.
She walks over to the tree, reaches into the branches, and clasps her hands around the trunk. Dry needles rain over her new Christmas sweater. Her own mother had sent it from Florida in a boxful of gifts that had included an “Our First Christmas” ornament and a rectangular package labeled with her name and a Post-it that read “Open in Private.”
Inside, she found a new book by Nelson Roger Cartwright, who hosts the television program The Roots and Branches Project. She’s never seen it, but she knows it’s about finding biological relatives.
Avid viewers, her parents have always been honest with her about how she came into their lives. It’s not as if they could lie. They’re white; she’s Black. So of course Bryant knows she’s adopted. He just doesn’t know the circumstances. It’s not easy to admit to the man who loves and wants her that there was a time when no one did. When the authorities plastered her face over newspapers and television the way they do children that have gone missing, and she’d gone unrecognized—or at least unclaimed.
She’d hidden the book in her nightstand drawer, alongside the DNA test kit her mother had given her after she got engaged.
“Maybe it will be easier to tell Bryant about your past if you have some answers about where you came from.”
“I’m not ready for that.”
“Then maybe you’re not ready for marriage. Spouses shouldn’t keep secrets this big from each other. Don’t you think it’s time you found out about your birth parents?”
She didn’t then.
But she’d changed her mind this fall, after an unsettling incident she’s kept to herself.
It was probably nothing. Still, she’d spit into the test tube and mailed the test away. The results should be back any day now.
She has no intention of reuniting with her biological parents, but she wants to know whatever happened to them, for her own peace of mind, and her future children’s.
Clumsily maneuvering the tree to the door in its stand, she feels water slop onto the hardwood. It’s all right. She’ll clean it up. She just wants the damned thing out.
She drags it onto the porch. A foggy evening is pushing in. She shivers in the chill, goose bumps prickling her skin like pine needles poking through her sweater.
It’s because she was thinking about her past. She needs to stop. A new year is underway. She’s a newlywed, settled in a charming neighborhood filled with large trees and cozy houses populated with young couples and families.
She just needs to get rid of this damned—
Poised to drag the tree down the steps, she sees someone standing just beyond the streetlamp’s glow.
She peers at the shadow and it—he—watches her in return.
She drops the tree onto the porch, hurries back inside, and closes the door. The dog ambles over.
“It’s all right, don’t worry. We’re safe.”
Briana wags her tail. She’d probably wag it at an armed intruder, so grateful is she to have a home and family after having been abandoned by her previous owner.
I know how you feel, sweetie.
Bryant had wanted to buy a purebred, but she’d talked him into a shelter pet. Now he wants to go back to find a male companion for Briana.
“She seems lonely, doesn’t she?” he’d asked last night, packing for his business trip as Briana lay watching with her nose on her paws. “We need to save another dog.”
“We can’t save all the dogs, Bry.”
“I know, but . . . just one more. We can call it, uh . . . some other combination of our names.”
“Like what? Li-an?”
�
�For a guy dog? No way. Maybe our last name and your maiden name . . .”
“Ford and Tucker? Yeah, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Their laughter echoes in her head now as she stares out into the dusk, wishing her husband were here.
When this happened in the fall, she’d chalked it up to her imagination.
Now Liliana turns the dead bolt with a trembling hand, certain someone is out there watching her . . . again.
Amelia has spent her career warning her clients that the answers they find might not be the ones they’d hoped for or expected. Though her work sometimes leads to happy reunions, it just as often leads to disappointment, or devastation. Sometimes, she senses which it will be even before she starts her research.
That hadn’t been the case with Stockton Barnes. Not in the beginning, when he was just another client, and she was caught up in her own personal drama. Not until the photographic resemblance had convinced her she’d found his biological child.
Guess my clients aren’t the only ones who see what they want to see.
The revelation that the little girl abandoned at the mall may not have been his biological child changes Barnes’s relationship to the case, but they still need to find out what happened to her, and what Cynthia Randall had to do with it.
“When did you last see Bobby’s daughter Charisse?” she asks Cynthia, and there’s a subtle shift in her demeanor.
“Right after he left for rehab.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know . . . late ’80s? Why aren’t you asking him about her? She’s his kid, not mine.”
Barnes speaks at last. “We did ask him! That’s why we’re here. Bobby told us you and Delia had a falling-out on Thanksgiving in 1990. Do you remember that?”
“I had a lot of arguments with Delia. She liked to show up here like she was part of the family. She wasn’t.”
“But her daughter was,” Amelia points out. “Did she have regular visitations with her father?”
“One weekend a month until Bobby went to rehab. By the time he got back, Delia had cut him out of her life, and the kid’s. Can’t say I blame her. I wised up and did the same thing.”
“What did he say about the estrangement with Delia and Charisse?” Barnes asks.
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