The Midnight Hour

by Karen Robards

  She worried, too, about the origin of the circled horoscopes, although she tried not to. Convincing herself that they had to be pure coincidence had been difficult, but to a large degree she had managed it. Stamping out the niggling “what if” factor entirely, though, was proving almost impossible.

  If it had not been for the threat of danger to Jessica, whose safety she valued more than her own life, she would have been content to let the investigation drag on forever.

  Because when it was over, Tony would move out of her house.

  Thinking about that, Grace realized that she didn’t want it to happen.

  Tony’s presence was something she had come to count on.

  He fit into the fabric of her life, and Jessica’s, as seamlessly as if he had always been a part of it.

  She did not want him to go away.

  But there was something on his mind, something bothering him. Grace could see it in his eyes when he looked at her, hear it sometimes in the timbre of his voice. Once she had even asked him if anything was wrong. Of course, being a man, he had denied that there was.

  She knew better. But she didn’t know what it could be, or how to pry the truth out of him.

  On Wednesday, they had fantastic news: Jessica made the varsity basketball team. The roster was posted on the school bulletin board at the end of the day, and Jessica called her mother from the school office before she and Gloria even started home.

  Grace had interrupted the case she was hearing to take the call on her cell phone—Jessica never called her at work unless it was an emergency—and rejoiced with her daughter when Jessica told her.

  Emily Millhollen made the team, too.

  Finally, at the end of the conversation, Jessica had said something startling.

  “I want to call Tony, too,” she said, as casually as if calling Tony with her good news was the most natural thing in the world for her to do. “Do you have his number?”

  Masking her thoughts—not even sure what her thoughts were, because Jessica’s request had put them in such a jumble—Grace gave her Tony’s pager number.

  That night, she and Tony and Jessica went out with the other varsity members and their families for an impromptu, celebratory dinner. As they ate, Grace realized that it felt right to have Tony there with them. He seemed as excited about Jessica’s triumph as she and Jessica were.

  He was becoming a part of their family, Grace thought. But she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that.

  She was in love with him. The time had come to acknowledge that, at least to herself.

  But was it the kind of love that would last? Or was it a short-term thing, fueled by great sex, that would burn itself out by the sheer blazing intensity of its heat?

  Before she allowed Jessica to grow too attached to him, she had to make sure that Tony wasn’t going to just go away when his investigation ended. She didn’t want Jessica to be hurt.

  She didn’t want to be hurt.

  On Friday, when Tony came to pick her up for lunch, he was frowning. One glance at him told her that something had happened.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, as soon as she slid into his car and they were alone. He was wearing a charcoal-gray sweatshirt and jeans and, from the smoothness of his chin, had shaved within the last hour. He looked tired—he couldn’t be getting more than three hours of sleep a day—and faintly grim.

  He looked at her then, as he pulled the car out into traffic.

  “We got the DNA results on the gum back from the lab this morning.”

  “That’s good—isn’t it?” A single glance at his face told her that the answer was negative. “What’s wrong? Doesn’t it help?”

  “Whoever chewed that wad of gum has DNA that’s compatible with yours.”

  “What?” For a moment Grace didn’t understand. “What does that mean?”

  “I mean the saliva that was tested could only have come from a relative of yours.”

  “What?” Grace felt panic, cold as ice water, start to flow through her veins.

  “It’s not Jessica. We compared the sample with the sample we got from her. They’re similar, but not a match. I want to take a sample from your other relatives. Jackie, for example, and her children, and your father and his second batch of children.”

  “My father? But—we hardly have a relationship. You know that. I told you.” Indeed, she had told him how her father, influenced by Deborah, had grown increasingly distant from her over the years. He lived in Minnesota with the three children he had fathered with his second wife and had, to all intents and purposes, forgotten about his oldest daughters. Grace was lucky to see him once a year. He would be hard put to pick Jessica out of a lineup. She barely knew her three half-siblings, who were all under twenty.

  “Whoever chewed that gum is a close relative of yours. From what you told me, your only close relatives are Jessica, Jackie, her children, your father, and his children. Jessica’s out; her sample is close, but not a match. That leaves the others as possible suspects, and I’m going to need a sample from each to determine which one it is.”

  Grace was so cold by now that she was surprised her teeth weren’t chattering.

  “Tony—Paul and Courtney are too young. They couldn’t possibly have broken into my house and left that cake, for example.”

  “I don’t really consider Paul and Courtney suspects.”

  “Who, then? Jackie? My father?”

  They reached his house before he could answer. Tony parked at the curb, and as he came around the hood toward her Grace stepped out of the car into the bright sunshine of another beautiful fall day. It was warm for October, but she was freezing despite the black wool suit she wore. All around her the foliage blazed with brilliant colors. Falling leaves drifted lazily through the air, littering the streets and piling up on the lawns. A pair of gray squirrels chased each other through the yard across the street, chittering noisily as leaves swirled in their wake like rustling mini-whirlwinds. Mrs. Crutcher was in her yard, her gray hair curling tightly about her head, wearing what in the fifties would have been called a housedress as she raked her leaves into neat piles. Tony took Grace’s hand, steering her past his nosy neighbor.

  “Hi, Tony. Working again, I see.”

  “Always, Mrs. Crutcher. Always.”

  Grace was only vaguely aware of any of this. She felt as if she were in a dream. Nothing seemed quite real.

  Except for that long ago January 21st.

  Oh, God, she couldn’t believe it. It made her sick to even consider the possibility. But it—almost—had to be true.

  They were inside his house now, in his living room. Tony shut the door and turned to take her into his arms, which was their modus operandi for “lunch.” But something in her expression stopped him. He frowned down at her.

  “Grace . . .” His voice was sharp.

  “Oh God, Tony. I need to sit down.” Her knees felt as if they would buckle at any second. Her sensible two-inch heels suddenly felt like stilts; her ankles wobbled as she fought to keep her balance. He caught her elbows, his expression alarmed, and half carried her the few steps to the couch. Sinking down on it, she buried her face in her hands.

  “What’s the matter? Are you sick?” He hunkered down in front of her, one hand on her thigh. Although he sounded ready to resort to drastic measures, she could do no more than shake her head no.

  “Jesus God, are you pregnant?”

  This horrified question was enough to raise her head from her hands.

  “No!”

  “Then what?” He looked, and sounded, baffled and worried at the same time.

  Grace took a deep breath. There was no help for it. She had to tell him.

  “Tony.” She stopped. Her throat closed up. She physically could not go on. For a moment she simply sat there, concentrating on remembering to breathe as she stared into his frowning eyes. If he was in love with her now, he wouldn’t be when she finished talking, she knew.

  She tried again. This time h
er vocal chords worked.

  “I had—have—another child. A son.”

  There, it was out. The secret that she had guarded all her life, that she had meant to take with her to her grave. Just blurted out in the time it took to take a breath, just like that.

  Something so momentous should have taken longer to say.

  But now he knew.

  His eyes narrowed on her face. Grace lifted her chin and met his gaze with challenge in her own. She had done what she had done. There was no changing the past now. If she was ashamed and regretful and sick with guilt and sorrow, she would die before she would let anyone know. The truth had to be shared, for Jessica’s sake. The emotions were her own.

  “You have a son?” Tony asked carefully, his eyes searching hers.

  “Yes.” Bald statements seemed to be all she could manage today, Grace thought. But she supposed she should be thankful that she could speak at all.

  “Okay.” He stood up abruptly, towering over her for an instant. Then he moved, scooping her up off the couch, and walked over to the shabby old recliner with her in his arms. Clinging to his shoulders was a reflex reaction on her part. She felt no pleasure in being in his arms. In fact, she felt nothing at all, except cold. She was so very, very cold.

  “So talk to me,” he said, sitting down with her on his lap. “I told you about Rachel. You tell me about this.”

  Grace sat stiffly in his hold, refusing to surrender to the warm comfort of his arms around her or the tempting proximity of a strong shoulder to lean on. Her story was different from his. In his, he was both hero and victim. In hers, she was the lowest of the low.

  He would despise her when he knew. But she had to tell him, for Jessica’s sake.

  “I had a baby boy when I was a teenager and gave him up for adoption.” It seemed that all she could do was blurt out bald facts. If she said more, if she gave voice to the torment inside her, she feared that she would shatter into a million pieces, and like Humpty Dumpty, no one would ever be able to put her back together again.

  “The chewing gum,” he said, as if an issue that had troubled him was resolved.

  Grace nodded jerkily. “It almost has to be him. I—I—there’s something else I haven’t told you.”

  He said nothing, merely lifted his eyebrows at her. He was sitting comfortably in the recliner, his head resting against the curved back, his gaze on her face, while she perched rigidly in the loose circle of his arms. She did not look at him fully, only glanced at him from time to time. Her arms were crossed over her chest to ward off the chill that threatened to freeze her blood. Her feet did not quite reach the floor. In the center of the room, golden sunlight streamed through the open curtains, dust motes dancing in its path. The corner where they sat was gloomy with shadows. The faint musty smell of the place warred with the scent of soap and clean clothes and man.

  “On Monday morning, I picked the newspaper up off the doorstep. It has a . . . horoscope column on the comics page.” She took a deep breath. “Three horoscopes were circled in red. Virgo—that’s mine, August 30th. Pisces—that’s Jessica, March 8th. And, and Capricorn. January 21st. My son was born on January 21st.” She took a deep breath. “I suspected then, but I prayed it wasn’t true. But it’s obvious, isn’t it? He’s found me. God, he must hate me to do this!”

  Grace closed her eyes, her fingers digging into her upper arms. Her grief was beyond tears. It was a dry, burning sorrow, so intense that she felt it as a physical pain, as though a giant fist were squeezing her heart.

  His arms tightened around her, pulling her closer. Grace resisted for a moment, but then her spine went as limp as cooked spaghetti and she sagged against his chest, her head resting tiredly against his shoulder, her hands splaying against the front of his sweatshirt. She drew a deep, shuddering breath. It was an effort to fill her lungs.

  “No one knows—but you,” she said. His face was turned toward her so that she was looking up at him at an angle. Her gaze touched on the hard, clean lines of his features with a sense of loss. “All these years—I never told anyone. Not my father, not Jackie, not Jessica. No one. It was as if, once I gave him away, he ceased to exist. Except I could never forget that he did.”

  Tony’s eyes darkened on her face, and he pressed his lips to her forehead in the kind of gentle kiss he might have bestowed on a hurt child. When he drew back, Grace’s fingers curled in the folds of his sweatshirt, clutching it desperately.

  “You want to talk about it?” he asked.

  Grace shook her head because no, she didn’t. But then she began to talk anyway, the words spilling out of their own volition.

  Chapter

  43

  “MY MOTHER DIED when I was fourteen. I loved her so—we were so close. I felt as if my whole world had been blasted to smithereens. I was angry. Angry at myself, for not being able to save her, angry at my father for living while she had died, angry at God, even angry at my mother for dying and leaving me. It was as if my Ufe had lost its center. I just—went nuts. I got hooked up with a wild crowd and started drinking and partying and staying out late and doing anything and everything under the sun. Jackie was little, she didn’t know what was going on, and I don’t think she even remembers much about those years now. My father—my father remarried within a year of my mother’s death and didn’t have time for me. I was a huge source of trouble in our home. My stepmother hated me. To be fair, I hated her worse. My father sided with my stepmother in everything. Our house was in a constant state of warfare, and nothing they did made any difference to me: I was going to do what I wanted and to hell with the consequences. Then one night I went to a party and got so drunk I passed out. In the morning, when I came to, I was sprawled in the backseat of somebody’s car, with no idea whose, or of how I got there. My clothes were all messed up, and I realized—I realized that someone had had sex with me while I was unconscious. I didn’t remember anything about it, didn’t know who or even how many. It bothered me enough so that I never got drunk again after that—but there was worse to come. It took a while—I was young and dumb in those days—but after about four months I realized I was pregnant.”

  Grace took a deep breath. “The truth is, if I had figured it out any sooner, I probably would have had an abortion. But it was too late. I was scared to death. Terrified. I knew my father would probably beat me half to death—he believed strongly in physical discipline, especially for me—and then disown me. My stepmother would gloat. All her predictions about the way I would end up had come true. I couldn’t face them. When I was almost seven months pregnant and couldn’t hide it any longer, I ran away. It was about a month before Christmas.” She laughed mirthlessly. “Needless to say, I had a rude awakening into what Ufe without a family was like. I had just what money I’d been able to save, a couple of hundred dollars, and nowhere to go. I couldn’t face my friends. Their parents would have called my parents in any case. I walked the malls, looking at all the lights and decorations and crying because it was Christmas and I was all alone. I slept in cheap hotels for a while, and ate as little as I could, and still I got down to my last twenty dollars unbelievably fast. When I was almost at the end of my rope, I saw an ad for abortion alternatives in the newspaper, and I called it. They told me to come on in. I did, and they gave me a place to stay and, when the time came, delivered my baby.” Grace stopped, swallowing. When she continued, her voice was low. “I never even held him. He was born, and they took him away. I signed papers consenting to his adoption, and that was that. The only reason I know he was a boy is because of something I overheard one of the nurses say.”

  She stopped again, and Tony’s arms tightened around her. He didn’t say anything, just held her close. After a moment she was able to go on.

  “I went back home. I had nowhere else to go. I went back home and took my father’s punishment for running away and finished high school—I only had a few months to go. I didn’t want to party anymore, not ever again. I applied for loans, and got them, and went to co
llege. I concentrated on studying and made top grades. I met Craig when I was a junior and married him the summer between my junior and senior years. Then Jessica was born. When I held her in my arms for the first time, that’s when I really understood what I had done. I loved Jessica so much. I hadn’t understood how much I would love a baby. Before Jessica, my son was—I guess you’d say an abstraction. He didn’t seem real. There was so much fear and shame and pain surrounding his birth that I had just wanted to make it all go away. But after Jessica—after Jessica, I knew. From the moment they put her into my arms, I loved her from the bottom of my heart, and I knew what I had done in throwing away my son.” She shuddered. “If I could do one thing over again in my life, it would be that. I would not have given away my child.”

  Her voice broke, and her eyes closed. Her throat ached with the pain of unshed tears, but still she did not cry. All the tears in the world could not wash away the pain she felt. She did not deserve the heart’s ease of tears.

  “Grace.” Tony’s voice was low, his arms warm and strong around her. She curled more tightly into his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck, ashamed of needing him so desperately but unable to help it. He knew the worst of her now, was seeing her emotionally naked, and she was terrified that he would find her ugly. If Tony wanted nothing more to do with her now that he knew, she would not blame him. He had loved his own daughter so, only to have her wrenched from his arms by fate. She had deliberately walked away from her son.

  “Grace,” he said again, when she did not respond. “I want you to think about this: What would have happened if you had kept your son? Realistically, now. What would you have done? Would you have gone back home?”

  Grace shuddered. “No. I could never have gone home again. My father and stepmother would not have let me in the door.”