“How did you find them?” Emily did the math. Anna was thirty-five years old, which meant their father would have been about seventeen when Anna was born. That was a lot of responsibility for a senior in high school. Emily could understand how her father could have reached the decision to place his own flesh and blood with adoptive parents. Years later, though, it must have haunted him. Dad loved kids, and he and Emily’s mother had always wanted more. But they weren’t able.
“I talked to the adoption agency first. They rejected my request because it was a closed adoption. So I did one of those online DNA tests. And the results pulled up my mother’s name. Apparently she had done one, too, which is why it was in the database.”
Emily detested how few secrets there were in this world anymore. Everyone’s personal business was on display for anyone to discover at the click of a mouse. This was exactly why she shunned social media. And she would continue to protect as much of her privacy as she could.
“When I contacted my bio mom, she was actually elated. Even though she had a wonderful life, husband, more kids, she had always thought about me and wished she had chosen an open adoption. But it was a different time and she wanted to move on in life with no strings attached.”
“Was she the one who told you about Dad, then?” asked Emily.
“She did. My mom’s name was Angela,” Anna replied.
“Was?”
“Yes. She passed away about five years ago from a stroke.”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry.” Could life have doled out any more grief for this poor soul? Any doubt, worry, or resentment she had been holding on to about her half sister melted away. Anna’s lot had been a hard one, but from her upbeat tone and bright expression, she had found a way to make lemonade from lemons. Emily liked this survivor attitude. It seemed in many ways they were cut from the same cloth.
“Angela and Robert were a summer fling,” said Anna. Emily found it strange that she referred to her parents by their first names. But then, they were just another set of people to her, not the mom and dad who’d raised her. “They met when their families were staying at a resort on Mackinac Island. After the summer, Angela went back to their home in New York City and Robert went back to … where was he from, again? I don’t even remember anymore.”
“He and his family were from Chicago,” Emily offered. “My grandparents have both passed, but Dad’s sister, Laura Hartford Pennington, still lives in the city.”
“Well, when Angela found out she was pregnant at the beginning of her sophomore year, she didn’t tell Robert at first. Then, after a couple weeks, she called him and told him about the baby but that her parents had made her have an abortion.”
“Oh my goodness!”
“You can imagine how shocked Robert was when I showed up in his life two decades later claiming to be his daughter.”
“I’m guessing he didn’t believe you,” said Emily, knowing her father’s penchant for investigation.
Anna laughed. “No. He did not. He insisted on paternity testing. Which I happily agreed to. I sent him my DNA results. A couple months later he reached out with the results to his test, and it confirmed that we were a match. He agreed to meet me one spring morning for breakfast after I dropped my girls off at school.”
“Your girls?”
“Yes, I have two now. Flora, twelve. And Fiona, eight.”
I have two nieces!
Emily nodded. This whole thing had been going on behind her and her mom’s backs. Both of them going about their daily business, school, activities, meals. Neither aware that a whole melodrama was unfolding beneath them. One that would have disrupted their perfect little trio forever. And perhaps in the nicest way. She couldn’t imagine her mother would have been upset about a child created years before she’d ever met Emily’s father. She knew Mom would have welcomed Anna into their family.
“What happened when you met?” Emily asked.
“We never did.” A sadness overshadowed Anna. “He got called to your mother’s accident before our meeting. And he never showed up.”
“How … how do you know that?” Emily’s emotions took a swift kick to the gut.
“I did a little investigation of my own. I tracked the obituaries in your hometown paper. I knew he investigated deaths and I thought I’d be able to piece it together. Your mother’s death was the only one listed in the next week’s paper. I never heard from him after we scheduled that meeting. I didn’t want to reach out because I knew he hadn’t told you. Or your mother. I had to respect that.”
Emily struggled to comprehend what was happening. The morning her mother had died. The blue slippers she was wearing at the scene. She had rushed from the house so quickly she hadn’t even bothered to slip on her shoes. She must have suspected something was amiss. She was following him. Spying on him.
“Where were you and my fath—our father—supposed to meet that morning?” Emily asked.
“The Rose Café.” Emily knew the location well. It was halfway between Freeport and Rock River. A tidy shack along the main highway that served home-cooked breakfasts and lunches, recipes passed down from Great-Grandma Rose, who had lived in the shack a hundred and fifty years ago, feeding loggers who worked to clear the forests that provided lumber for Chicago’s big boom after the great fire.
What’s more, Mom’s accident had happened less than a mile from Rose’s Café. Which meant … there hadn’t been a deer in the road like the police had stated in their official report. Mom had been majorly distracted. In her distraught state of mind, she had made the most common driver mistake.
“Emily, are you okay?” Emily’s eyes traveled from her lap to Anna’s eyes. She realized she had been quiet for a long moment. She felt cold from the inside to the exterior of her skin and through her scalp.
“I think my mother knew about you,” she said in almost a whisper. “I think she thought you were his … that he was having an affair.”
“An affair? What would give her that idea?”
“She rushed from the house that morning with her slippers on. She was … I’m guessing she felt desperate because she believed her husband was cheating on her. And she hadn’t told him about the cancer.”
“Your mother had cancer?”
“I only recently learned this myself,” Emily said.
“But the paper said she died in a vehicle fatality.”
“She did. It came up during the autopsy and my father hid it.”
Anna took a sharp inhale. “I don’t know what to say. I feel like this is all my fault.” Her voice started to stutter as if she were holding back emotion. She sipped in little gasps of air.
“It’s not your fault, Anna,” said Emily. There were so many secrets. So many misunderstandings. So many lost years. It was all a huge, mistaken tragedy. She looked up and saw Anna’s soft, loving eyes looking back at hers, baring their own measure of guilt and sorrow. Here they sat, sisters, together over coffee. Trying to make sense of family mistakes, unspoken hurts, and hidden mysteries.
“I am sorry,” Anna said. “I’ve always wondered about you. And I’ve always wanted to meet you.”
“Why didn’t you … I mean, reach out again after mom’s death?” Emily asked.
“I was waiting for Robert to make the first move. I didn’t really know what would be the best timing. Then Flora was born, and my whole life changed. A few years later, Fiona came along. I guess life just … it’s not that I didn’t want to know you and Robert, but the more time passed, the more I figured he had changed his mind. That he didn’t want to know me anymore.”
“I won’t pretend to know what you’ve been through—”
“What we’ve both been through,” Anna interrupted. “I understand if you never want to see me again.” She gathered her Chanel bag.
Emily looked at the stock certificate lying on the table between them. There was a lot to process from their conversation. But one thing was obvious—nothing Anna had done in this drama was her fault. She was j
ust as much a victim of circumstances as Emily was. Perhaps they could build something from the ashes of their charred pasts.
“Please, stay. Our food should be arriving any second,” she said, not wanting the meeting to end. “I would love to hear more about my nieces.”
12
Emily left her meeting with Anna brimming with emotion. She couldn’t go home to that empty house. She had to talk to someone she trusted. Cathy was on the road and not answering her phone. Jo texted that she was midshift and couldn’t talk.
Emily called Delia. And within ten minutes she was at her doorstep being swept in with a tight hug. Delia led her to the kitchen, where a plate of homemade turkey and baked potato was waiting for her. Over their leisurely comfort meal, Emily relayed every single detail of her talk with Anna and her hypothesis about her mother’s death.
“So what do you think? Does it make sense?”
“Sadly, it does, doll,” said Delia, starting a kettle for tea. “The one thing I don’t understand is why your father held this back from you all these years.”
“I know. It would have made things between us … resolvable. We could have avoided all those lost years when I was in Chicago.”
“Your dad was under an immense burden of guilt himself. People do unimaginable things when they’re torturing themselves with it. He knew how much you loved your mother. It can be hard to get out from under. But please try. He loved you very much. The emotional distance between you two never changed that.”
Emily knew she was right. She’d run away from home because she was in pain. How much pain had that added to her father?
“I’m going to try to stop guessing and guilting,” Emily stated. “I know it’ll never serve me. From this moment on, I’m going to embrace the good things in my life. My last few days with my father and Anna are two of those.”
Emily believed she could actually feel a shift in her being. Delia smiled at her as the kettle screamed from the stovetop.
“Believe me, love, that is the best decision you could have made. The whole world is going to look different to you now that you’re out from under the shroud of the past.” She turned down the gas dial and poured two mugs of hot water. “Isn’t it lovely that you’ve been given a second chance at family? I only wish your father could have lived long enough to enjoy both of his daughters … and granddaughters.”
She saw the tears well up in Delia’s eyes, which caused a wellspring in her own. They both shed a few tears as they sipped their after-dinner mugs of tea.
“I hear you entertained a fan recently?” said Emily, wiping under her eyes with her napkin, eager to change topics.
“A fan?”
“Dr. Charles Payton?”
“Oh yes, he cleared me out of bear claws.”
Emily laughed. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I’m surprised anyone’s still reading my crusty old papers,” said Delia.
“Don’t be modest. You could write the textbook on tool marks. Hey, maybe you should. Good winter project.”
“Funny, Dr. Payton suggested the same thing. Did you two talk about this?”
“No.”
“I’ll admit it felt nice to be flattered, even though I do believe his motive is purely to pry.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was asking about some prior classified cases, but I sent him home without any supper.”
“Do you think he’s harmless?”
“He’s hungry.”
“For what?”
“For his breakthrough case. The one that will earn him international acclaim and engagements.”
Emily nodded. Nothing was ever veiled from Delia.
“And he’s hungry for you.”
“Ridiculous.” Emily dunked her green-tea bag back into her mug and poured more hot water over it.
“He wanted to know about you growing up here. What you were like as a kid. Did you always have an interest in forensics.”
“That sounds like small talk.”
“And if you were seeing anyone.”
“He asked you that?”
“In so many words.”
Emily plunked her tea bag into a bowl Delia had set between them.
“I may have told him you were single. Again.”
“Delia! Now is not the time.”
“Now is exactly the time. Get out there, doll. No one’s asking you to marry the guy.”
“I thought you wanted me to get together with Nick.” Delia had almost pushed them together during their first murder investigation. Had she misread Delia’s intentions?
“Nick’s great. So’s Charles. Play the field a little before you lock it down.” So, Delia was on a first-name basis now with Dr. Payton? He must really have charmed her, because she was usually more formal about professional names. “You’ve been through a lot lately. It’s okay to sprinkle in an ounce of fun between all the worry. I speak as someone with dating regrets.”
Delia with dating regrets? She had never married. And to Emily’s knowledge, never come close. “I want to change the subject and talk about that,” Emily suggested with a wry smile.
“No, no, doll. Not tonight. Not over tea and the heavy surprises of your day. That is a conversation best served over a couple good cold brews.”
Fair enough. Emily was so glad she had stopped by. Talking to Delia over the past few hours had lightened her spirit and calmed her worries. As the minutes had ticked by, she’d been grateful she didn’t have to sit alone in her father’s—well, now her—big home. She looked at the clock. It was nearly eleven PM. She yawned, realizing how thoroughly exhausting the day had been.
“I was thinking today about those bones found in Pinetree Slopes,” said Delia, reheating her tea with the kettle. “I’m aware that there is chatter going around about them belonging to Sandi Parkman. But I remember an incident a few years back now. Maybe eight or nine. There was a boy, I think about fourteen years old, who went out hunting with his dad in that same area and never came home.”
“There was? What happened?”
“They never found his body. His father claimed he had left the boy to run into town to get something for them to eat, and when he got back to the site, the boy was gone. The police were called out. This was right before Nick became an officer. I think he was probably still a cadet in training. But they couldn’t find anything. No evidence of him being taken or killed. He just vanished. Like that.”
“And the parents? The family? What did they do?”
“The mom moved with the little brother shortly after the incident. Rumor was that she was too distraught to continue living in Freeport. I heard they divorced about six months later.”
“And he never showed up.”
“Never.”
“Was the father a suspect?”
“For a short time, because he was the last person to have seen the boy.”
“Was there legitimate motive?”
“Who’s to say? Rumors flowed that he had accidentally shot the boy and then disposed of his body out of fear and shame.”
“There were gunshots heard?”
“Of course. But it was hunting season. Everyone and their cousin’s brother’s best friend’s neighbor had a blind in those woods. But there were records of him buying food at the market during the time he said he was in town.”
“He had an alibi. That complicates things,” said Emily.
“People can fudge an alibi. Or perhaps he created one after he shot the boy?”
Emily nodded. This certainly put a new wrinkle into the case. She would bring it up to Nick and have him look into the boy’s file.
“I just mention it because, well, no one else has. And it would do no good to start a witch hunt for the wrong witch.”
“Thank you. You always know how to keep things in perspective,” Emily told her. Knowing the sex of the remains would be crucial now in pointing them in the right direction. And, of course, the DNA results would be the capstone. Until then,
there was no use speculating too much.
Emily took her last sip of tea as an image of Dr. Payton’s infectious smile drifted to the forefront of her mind and that twitter and tingle returned. His interest in her had captured her curiosity.
13
After three days of being cooped up in her father’s house taking care of estate stuff, Emily was ready to get out of Freeport for a little while. Nick was coming over to drive them to Rock River for ramen. Date night, he had called it over the phone to confirm. Emily had quickly tamped down his rhetoric with her own term—dinner with a friend. It was way too early to start putting labels on any future relationships. She still felt the sting of her recent breakup with Brandon.
Nick pulled up and Emily dashed out the front door. When she got into Nick’s car, he immediately handed her a jump drive. “Here. Before I forget. I’ve been meaning to drop these off. Pictures from the autopsy,” he said. She took the drive and slipped it into her purse.
“Thank you. Did you send a set to Dr. Payton, too?” she asked, sliding her seat belt across her lap.
“Oh, him. Nah.”
She shot him a look.
“Of course I sent them.” He grinned. “But please tell me you can see right through his tactics.”
“Tactics? Come on, Nick. You make him sound villainous.”
“He’s a career climber and he’s using you and this case to get to the next rung.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“He’s using Delia, too.”
“That’s what Delia said. In so many words.”
“I think he thinks that if he can get on Delia’s good side, then she’ll do something for him. Professionally speaking.”
“Don’t worry about Delia. She’s wise to that. And so am I.”
“Are you?”
Emily shrugged off his comment and turned her focus outside, where late-October leaves blanketed lawns in red-yellow-and-orange mosaics. The early-setting sun was cresting over the browning corn and wheat fields. Farmers were bringing in their last harvest. Frost was forecasted tonight.
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