by Mary Frame
“No. Not until this morning, when my accountant and your officer outside there,” she motions to the door, “met me at the shop.”
“And now that you know, do you intend to press charges?”
“Oh, absolutely not.” She puts a hand on her chest. “Charlotte may have been using my name, but she has done a great job with everything during my absence. In fact, the store has done better in her care than it would have in mine, I’m sure. My accountant went through the records this morning and everything is in perfect order. We’re already making a profit.”
“So it doesn’t bother you that she pretended to be you?”
“It’s a little odd, I admit. And I can’t speak for her giving readings to people or what she’s said, but I think she’s done more good than harm from what I’ve been hearing.”
“She hasn’t done anything wrong,” Tabby’s voice yells over the crowd. “She’s helped everyone here. Real Ruby is right.”
“She saved my life,” Miss Viola says. “Sort of.”
“She saved us, too.” Little Gary and Greg step forward with Mr. Bingel behind them.
“And in doing so, she saved me, too,” says Mr. Bingel.
A chorus of voices rises, chiming in.
“She helped me get rid of the little people!”
“She listened to me when no one else would!”
“She’s the reason I’m baking again!”
“I don’t know why I’m here!”
“Okay everyone, quiet!” bellows Jared. The crowd simmers down and shifts uncomfortably in their seats. “We’re not saying Ruby, I mean Charlotte, isn’t a good person. What we’re trying to do here is follow the law, and there are still some things that need to be resolved. Now, her family is saying she might be a danger to herself and others because of a mental condition and that she kidnapped a minor child. Those are serious charges. We can’t just let them slide.”
“It’s just her word against theirs,” Tabby calls out. “How do we know they aren’t lying?”
I would kiss her right now if I weren’t handcuffed and she weren’t across the room.
“There’s really only one way to know. We have to ask Paige,” Jared says.
The door in the back opens again and this time Paige walks in. She’s flanked by two people in suits. Two people I recognize. The couple that was at the shop the other day, the ones acting a bit off right before the parents came in with their ultimatum.
“Come on up here, Paige,” Jared calls out.
Paige winks as she walks by.
She knows something.
“Why don’t you tell us your side of the story, honey,” Judge Ramsey says.
She bites her lip and glances around. “Charlotte isn’t crazy. Yes, she pretended to be Ruby, but it was only so we could have some money for food and stuff. It was more my fault than hers.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I speak for the first time. “I take full responsibility for everything.”
“You can’t say you kidnapped me, not when I came with you willingly.” Her eyes leave mine to flick to Jared and then to Judge Ramsey. “They aren’t our aunt and uncle. They’re our parents.”
A gasp goes through the crowd.
Paige is still talking. “They aren’t nice people. You guys don’t understand. We had to leave. Charlotte wanted me to have a normal life. I was never allowed to go to school. They barely let me leave the house unless it was for a con.”
She stops talking and looks at me.
It feels like everyone in the room is watching me, waiting.
“Our parents are con artists,” I say. “I knew how to pretend to be Ruby because that’s the life I’ve lived. I wanted to protect Paige from that. But it didn’t work. I can’t protect her. And I should be charged with a crime. I lied to all of you. You can send me away, just please, please take care of Paige. She’s innocent in all of this.”
“No one can take her, she’s our daughter!” Mother yells.
“Now that, we know, is not true.” Jared slips opens the file on the table. “She’s not your daughter. I have her birth certificate.” He waves it in the air. “She’s the daughter of John and Mary Winchester, who are both deceased. I have the proof here.”
The whole room explodes.
Judge Ramsey bangs on the table until the voices quiet down.
Jared continues. “Paige’s real name is Andrea. Her parents died in a plane crash when she was just an infant, and these people kidnapped her.”
“That’s a lie!” Father shouts.
“It’s not.” The stocky guy in the suit with Paige speaks up.
The parents recognize the tables have turned. They rush for the exit, but the room is too small for them to slip out unnoticed.
“Someone stop them,” Jared calls out.
There are too many people here against them now. Mrs. Olsen pushes Miss Viola’s wheelchair, tripping Father, and the two suits are on him. Anderson grabs Mother, and the suits click handcuffs on the duo with ease.
Mother’s face is ashen and Father’s jaw is clenched. It’s the last thing I see before they’re escorted out of the room.
I whip back toward Jared. That couple. They came into the shop that day, acting strange. And there was the nondescript sedan, the one I thought was following us after our day at the beach. The same one that drove by when I was casing the parents’ house. The clothes, the haircuts, the way they move like they’re in charge of everything. They must be FBI, or some kind of federal agents. They’ve been here, in town for a while. Have they been working with the local PD? Has Jared known about them, about everything this whole time?
Paige runs into me, throwing her arms around my waist. My hands are still cuffed, so all I can do is lean my head against hers.
“What does this mean?” I ask Jared, my eyes meeting his over Paige’s head.
“It means we used this fake arraignment to get your parents here in front of witnesses. It means we aren’t going to be charging you with anything but . . .”
His eyes flick behind me.
One of the suits is back. The woman. She makes her way up to the front of the room where we’re standing. “I’m Agent Sparks. I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.”
They’re taking me, too.
“No!” Paige says, her arms holding me a little tighter.
I nod at the agent, my throat full of emotion. “Can you just give me a second?” I turn back to Jared. “What about Paige?”
“She’ll be okay,” he says quietly, and then without removing his eyes from mine, he pulls another stack of papers from his file. “Your Honor, while you’re here, I was wondering if you would sign some temporary guardianship papers until we can contact the relatives of Andrea Winchester.”
He walks to Judge Ramsey.
“I had someone at the county draw these up this morning so she can live with me, since she has stayed with me before.”
Judge Ramsey lifts a brow. “If there are no objections?”
No one objects. The people in the room are too busy murmuring to one another, reiterating the story, watching me and Paige. Or Andrea. I don’t know if I can get used to her real name.
“Paige, you can go with him. It’s going to be okay.”
Her head shakes back and forth against my chest. “No.”
Jared walks over to us, leans down, and whispers something in Paige’s ear. I can’t hear the words because suddenly Tabby is there, questioning Agent Sparks.
“Where are you taking her? Are you charging her with something? She didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step back, please.” Agent Sparks’s voice is clear and strong and no-nonsense.
“You aren’t the boss of me.”
“Tabby.” Troy comes up behind her. “You have to get out of the way.”
“I do what I want!”
With an apologetic look at Agent Sparks, Troy picks Tabby up, slinging her over his shoulder.
“
This is anarchy!” she yells as she’s carted out of the room.
I just shake my head and laugh, but it emerges as more of a sob.
Agent Sparks faces me. “Am I going to have to carry you out of here, too?”
“No. I’m ready.” And with one last glance at Jared and Paige, I turn and follow her out of the room.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I spend the next four days in a small FBI office in Portland.
I talk to psychologists and various agents who all start to look the same, reiterating my story over and over and over. They’re especially interested in the hot-shot attorney guy. I find out his name is Bradford Stone. Apparently, the parents tried to run a con on him, but it backfired and then he was blackmailing them for money and/or Paige, who they couldn’t give up because they needed her for their trust-fund scam.
“They really thought Paige would turn eighteen and just hand over the money?” I ask Agent Sparks.
She shrugs. “Maybe they hoped to ransom her. Or blackmail her.”
Hanging with the feds is actually not too bad. Agent Sparks is fairly young, only twenty-eight, and she’s nicer than I imagined an FBI agent would be to a young con like me. After the first day, we almost come to some sort of understanding of one another. I wouldn’t say we’re friends, she’s not like Tabby, but we get along.
She stays in a hotel with me, adjoining rooms, and we get room service every night. Every day I tell her, everyone else at the small office, and more people via conference and video call everything I know about everything that happened in Castle Cove. I even tell them about my childhood and young adult life. Over and over again. Then there’s paperwork that has to be signed, statements, you name it.
On the third day, I see Bradford Stone. They bring him in and I have to ID him as the man I saw with my parents the night they made Paige act as a cocktail waitress. Also the same person I saw loitering around the gala the other night.
“You have a good memory for details,” Agent Sparks tells me. “And it’s impressive how you pieced information together.”
I shrug. “I’ve adapted.”
Once they have gathered enough information and done their own research and hacking, they have enough evidence to nail the parents. For good. Or for at least twenty years in a federal penitentiary. They don’t tell me all the details, but I pick up enough.
I even learn their real names: Donna and Alan Crowley.
And just like that, I have a last name. Charlotte Crowley. Once I’m alone, I repeat the name out loud a few times, the syllables foreign and awkward against my tongue. I’m not sure what I had hoped for, exactly, but even saying the name over and over doesn’t lend me any sense of possession. More like they belong to someone else, some other Charlotte.
As for the parents, they have such innocuous names. Donna and Alan. Not that I really expected them to be named Beelzebub and Medusa, but I expected something a little less . . . normal.
“Do you want to talk to your parents before we’re done with all this?” Agent Sparks keeps asking me.
No, I don’t want to see them. Ever.
Agent Sparks shares information with me when we’re at the hotel and away from the office. She can’t tell me everything, but she probably discloses more than she should.
Father was raised as a con artist, just like me. But his parents were charged and imprisoned when he was fourteen. He was sent to live with an uncle who used him as a drug runner. When the uncle also went to prison, Father was tossed around from foster home to foster home before finally aging out of the system and starting up his own rackets.
Agent Sparks thinks it’s rather amazing he didn’t get caught himself, or turn into some kind of druggie. Most do, apparently. Her eyes are sad when she tells me that, and it makes me wonder about the things she has to deal with on a daily basis.
He met Mother when he was running a con on her parents. This part I already knew, but Agent Sparks adds some details that put the old story in a new light.
It’s true that Mother was raised by a wealthy family, but it sounds as though they were just as crooked as Father’s, albeit in a more white-collar way. Her father was a banker who allegedly laundered money for the mafia, and she was raised by a string of nannies. When Father and Mother first met, they had an instant connection. They understood each other, despite his more rugged upbringing. She helped him con her parents and then they ran away together. They’ve been running ever since.
I was an accident. I knew that. I am their biological daughter, but they didn’t want children.
Then came Paige. Or, really, Andrea.
Mother was already pretending to be pregnant for a con when they saw the article about Andrea’s parents in the paper. It was perfect. They took her and pretended she was theirs. After all, who would suspect them when she’d had a pregnant belly for months? They moved so much anyway, we left the area before Paige was more than six months old. It explains why they kept her relatively secluded. They raised her as their own, treating her better than they did me.
“Why is that?” I wonder aloud.
“Andrea was their ticket to wealth. Their retirement plan, so to speak. Plus, they may have some degree of self-hatred. Maybe they projected those feelings onto you, while Andrea, who doesn’t carry their DNA, embodies something better. A better life. A kinder world.”
Agent Sparks also explains a few other pieces I had been wondering about. Namely, Ruby. When Jackson Murphy, the accountant, had been trying to reach me, it was to let me know that she was coming back early. Apparently, her time with the Maharishi was cut short when he had to leave for speaking engagements on some kind of world tour.
Anyway, the whole FBI debriefing thing isn’t bad, especially since it becomes clear fairly quickly that they aren’t throwing the book at me. But I miss Paige. And Jared.
And Tabby, but that doesn’t last as long.
I only have one more day left in Portland. Agent Sparks and I are sitting on the couch in my hotel room, watching reruns of The Andy Griffith Show and eating room service, when there’s a knock at the door.
We look at each other. “Did you order any more food?” she asks.
“No.”
She gets up to check it out. Her hand unsnaps the gun always at her side, but she doesn’t pull it out of the holster. Looking through the keyhole, she releases a muttered curse.
She opens the door, but I can’t see beyond her frame. “I’ve told you at least twenty times to leave me alone. How did you find us?”
“What? Like it was supposed to be hard?” I recognize the voice. “You told me that once you caught the bad guy I could see her. Well you caught him. And here I am.”
It’s true, Agent Sparks told me that just today Bradford Stone was taken into federal custody. But there’s been no press release. The FBI hasn’t had a chance to throw one together yet.
“How did you—” Agent Sparks throws up her hands and moves back as Tabby shoves through the doorway. “Your friend is remarkably persistent. I’ll be next door if you need me.”
She disappears back into the adjoining room, leaving the door open an inch.
Tabby is here. She’s here. She’s wearing the same colorful top and jeans she had on when I first met her, except this time, instead of holding a casserole and standing on Ruby’s porch, she’s hovering near the door, as determined as I’ve ever seen her.
“Tabby what are you—”
“Do you know how hard it is to get an FBI agent to crack? It’s like trying to nail jelly to a tree.”
I laugh and some of my tension eases. She must not hate me. She’s here, she’s making jokes. No matter what else I’ve lost, if I still have a friend, that’s . . . everything. “But you managed it.”
She smiles. “You’re damn right I did.” She still hasn’t moved away from the entryway.
I clasp my hands together in front of me and meet her eyes. “I’m so sorry. You’re the only friend I’ve ever had, and I lied to you. You have every right
to hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.” She finally walks into the room and plops on the couch, right next to where I’m still standing. “I’ll forgive you, but only if you spill it all. And give me the rest of your fries. And any time we play games, you have to let me win.”
Laughing, I sit next to her. “Is that it?”
“And you have to name your first child after me.”
“Even if it’s a boy?”
Her lips purse and her eyes narrow at me. “Especially then.”
“Done.”
Her lips grow into a wide grin and she leans over and hugs me.
~*~
The next day, my last day with the FBI, Agent Sparks takes me to see my parents at the local county jail, where they’re awaiting extradition.
I need closure after all. I need to let go of my past so I can have a future.
It’s like the movies. There’s a booth with a glass window and a phone that we have to use to talk through.
When I get there, only Mother comes out to see me.
She’s not wearing an orange jumpsuit or anything, just a plain black T-shirt and blue jeans. There’s no makeup on her face, and her hair is pulled back into a simple ponytail. She looks small and vulnerable, less of an imposing figure than I could ever imagine her being.
I wonder if she’s always been this way and I just saw what I wanted. Has my perception changed, or has she?
Maybe both.
When she picks up the handset, I expect her to say something terrible. Really lay into me with the guilt trips and anger, but instead she says in a low voice, “I’m surprised you came.”
“I am, too. I wasn’t going to.”
“Your father couldn’t make it.” She averts her eyes, her fingers fiddling with the phone cord.
And then we’re silent for more than a few seconds, sort of sizing each other up, each passing second increasing in awkwardness.
And then I have to ask. “Why did you keep the birth certificate? Why not get rid of the evidence of Paige’s birth when you knew it could be used against you? Why remind me of the safe to begin with? It was intentional, wasn’t it?”