“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“You’re jealous,” Hope said after a minute, as if she’d had a sudden revelation. “You wish I’d never been found. You must have hated it when Seth decided to launch a new search for me.”
Seth. Not Detective Chandler. Of course.
“I did.” She leaned forward, her body wound tight. “And do you know why? Because I thought all he was doing was getting their hopes up. Especially Mom’s. She went to see him at least once a week. Did you know that? She took him pictures.” She spat that out. “I’d find her going through albums, looking for the one that would captivate him. She’d make me look at them all again to help her. She baked him cookies. She cried. How could he quit, then? It was such a stupid thing for him to do. What did he think—it was going to make them happy to move your dead body from one grave to another and put your name on a headstone?” Oh, God, she was dripping vitriol and couldn’t seem to help herself. “Or to have it go on and on and on, endlessly, painfully, like it did after you disappeared?”
“Knowing what happened would have given them resolution.” Her eyebrows arched. “But that isn’t what happened, is it? Instead, I walked in the door. And guess what? You were here.”
Eve wouldn’t have thought it was possible to stiffen further, but she did. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You kind of stepped into my shoes and stole the life that was supposed to be mine, didn’t you?”
Eve’s laugh corroded her lungs and throat. “Oh, like that was possible. You’re right—I tried desperately to fill this giant hole in their lives and their hearts, but I always knew I was failing. Hard to miss, when practically every room in this house has a shrine to you.”
Too late, she heard a gasp. A few feet into the living room, Mom stood staring at her in shock and desolation. She’d pressed her fingers to her mouth after the one sound.
“Mom.” Eve started to rise. Anguish replaced the anger.
“You thought we didn’t love you?” her mother whispered.
“I didn’t say that!” She wasn’t sure her legs would hold her if she did try to stand.
“Oh, dear God. I’m the one who failed.” She turned a tearful gaze from Eve to Hope and back again. “Both of you,” she cried, and fled the room.
Eve sat frozen. When she looked, she saw that Hope wasn’t so much as breathing, either. “Why didn’t I keep my big mouth shut?”
“I think... I goaded you.”
Surprised, Eve focused on Hope, who had a hand pressed to her stomach as if she was about to be sick.
“You’re right,” she said. “I shouldn’t have come, should I? They want me to be Hope, and I can’t be. All I’m doing is making us all miserable.” She scrambled to her feet. “Tell them—”
“You can’t just leave,” Eve cried. “How do you think that would make them feel?”
They stared at each other. After a moment, Hope sank back onto the chair, which seemed to startle her by rocking. She grabbed for the padded arms.
“Maybe I should go talk to her,” Eve said after a minute.
“I don’t know. I don’t know her.”
Eve absorbed what Hope had said a minute ago. About not being Hope.
“Would you rather I call you Bailey?” she asked tentatively.
“Please.” Hope—Bailey—swallowed. “Kirk does, but Karen won’t.”
Words pushed themselves out. “I shouldn’t have said all that.”
“I shouldn’t have said what I did, either. I think—” Bailey’s gaze shied from Eve’s.
“You think?”
“That it’s natural for us to both be jealous. Even though...” She stopped again, made a face. “Nobody has ever been jealous of my life before.”
“A lot of kids who were never adopted would be jealous of mine.” Knowing that was true made Eve feel even smaller than she already had. “I was the lucky one.”
Bailey looked right into her eyes and said the unexpected. “Except there was that other bedroom.”
Eve grimaced. “I wanted that bedroom so bad. Except I didn’t, too.”
“But it was always there, no matter what.”
She shrugged.
Hope looked down at her hands. “You want to know something? I can’t make myself so much as take a step into that bedroom, and I don’t even know why.”
Eve gaped at her. “You don’t think something bad happened to you there?”
Bailey shook her head. “It’s like they expect me to be that little girl. I guess it’s symbolic.” Then she said something else, in a voice so low Eve barely heard it. “I’m afraid I’ll remember.”
“I used to sneak in there sometimes,” Eve heard herself confessing. “They never said I couldn’t, but somehow I knew it was...sacred. You know.”
Bailey nodded.
“I’d open drawers and look at your clothes and touch your dolls, and I imagined I was you. How thrilled they’d be. How happy.”
Bailey’s eyes closed again. “And here I am, not making them happy at all.”
Thinking of her as Bailey instead of Hope was easier than Eve would have thought. She found herself seeing her through different eyes, too.
Managing a sort of smile, she said, “Yeah, you are. Why else am I being such a bitch?”
This new sister answered with a smile as wry. “Because it comes naturally?”
Eve laughed. “Maybe.” Now she was able to stand up. “So, what do you say we go find out what the damage was?”
“Only if I can bring up the rear.”
“Coward.”
The truce was probably temporary, Eve thought as they both stood. Maybe they’d cleared the air a little, but the mutual resentment was still there. And then there was the fact that Seth quit seeing her once he got Bailey on his mind. And, no, that wasn’t exactly Bailey’s fault, but... Who says I have to be fair? Eve asked herself, and answered, Don’t have to be.
But hurting Mom the way she just had—that was totally on her. Deep inside burrowed a painful knowledge: words once said couldn’t be unsaid, and forgiven wasn’t the same as forgotten.
* * *
BAILEY DROVE HOME in a daze. She didn’t know how it was possible, but each meeting with the Lawsons felt more stressful than the last.
When she and Eve had tracked Karen down to her bedroom, she insisted she understood they’d said things they didn’t mean and told them not to worry about it. “Of course emotions are high,” she said softly.
She even let them help her finish getting dinner on the table, but was subdued enough during the meal that Kirk noticed, his worried gaze resting on her often.
Bailey’s only consolation was that she could tell Eve felt as guilty as she did.
At this point, her feelings for Eve were more than a little mixed. The hostility, she got. It probably wasn’t anybody’s fault, but they’d been set up from the beginning to resent each other.
It was almost funny, when she thought about it. Sibling rivalry, to the nth degree. And between two women who had never even met a week ago. In fact, Bailey hadn’t so much as suspected Eve’s existence.
Of course, she hadn’t believed in her parents’ existence, either.
Brooding as she drove, Bailey decided maybe she and Eve had cleared the air a little. The sting she felt because Eve had taken her place was so recent, getting past it wasn’t a big deal for her, but Eve had had twenty years to learn to hate Bailey. No, Hope. The real daughter.
Could they be friends? Her mind boggled. Polite? Probably. They’d done pretty well at dinner and after. Bailey thought she might have liked Eve, if they’d met under other circumstances. Even aside from Kirk and Karen, they had something in common: painful childhoods and years in foster care.
Dusk had arrived without her noticing. She had to watch carefully for the driveway, not that different from a dozen others along this narrow country road. With the thick undergrowth pressing close and dark evergreen trees rearing above, it felt l
ike full night. She was relieved to emerge into the clearing around the cabin. Home, sweet home, of sorts.
She’d stayed later at the Lawsons’ than she’d meant. It was sort of hard, she’d found, to make excuses for a getaway when the people you were making them to knew perfectly well you had nowhere else to be. As a result, she’d felt compelled to agree that she’d love to look at photo albums. Love did not accurately describe her confusion of emotions that swung between deep reluctance and shy curiosity. While Eve and Bailey cleared the table, Karen bustled off to get the albums, after which they all resumed their seats, Karen having moved her chair to sit right next to Bailey.
Naturally, she’d already seen her kindergarten school picture, but this— There was a much younger Karen, who looked frighteningly like Bailey did now, in the hospital holding a newborn. Bailey’s gaze switched to the next photo and the next as her mind grappled with the idea that this was her. The vague gaze of that baby, who was almost bald with only a little colorless fuzz. That baby grinning toothlessly, a pink bow somehow stuck to her head. Crawling. Pulling herself up to stand. Walking. Running. Laughing. Me.
There were two fat photo albums, only a couple of pages left empty at the end of the second one. When Karen turned the last page, where one of Hope in her swimsuit grinning was the last, and they all saw the blank, facing page, there’d been a long silence. Even Eve, who’d endured the reminiscences, had looked pained.
Bailey asked to see pictures of Eve growing up. Eve had shot her a quick, unreadable look but said nothing. Delighted, Karen went off to fetch a heaping pile that almost made Bailey groan. Thank God they hadn’t had Eve from the time she was a baby. That would have taken until midnight.
She’d found herself unwillingly interested, however, once she saw the first photo taken when a social worker brought Eve with her single suitcase to stay.
“She was eight, then,” Karen murmured. “Nine when we adopted her.”
At eight, Eve had been scrawny, all eyes and dark, tangled hair. Still petite now, then she’d looked like a wild child, raised in the woods by wolves. Bailey had no trouble at all interpreting the wary stare or the body language, her arms pressed tight to her sides. That’s probably what I looked like, too, she thought with an uncomfortable cramp beneath her breastbone.
Seeing the change from that suspicious, neglected-looking child to a pretty preteen, who became beautiful by her prom picture, was illuminating. It wouldn’t have happened if the Lawsons hadn’t loved that child, Bailey thought, and hoped Eve saw the same thing she did.
Bailey shook off the thoughts of the evening as she pulled to a stop in what had become her spot in front of the cabin. Locking from habit, she hurried up the steps to let herself in. She wished she’d thought to leave on a light. Not that it was completely dark, but still.
She had the door open when she was surprised to hear a car engine that sounded like it was coming down the driveway. Turning, she saw headlights spear the night and glint off her car. Could it be Seth? But he’d have called, not arrived unexpectedly this late, wouldn’t he?
And then she realized a second vehicle was behind the first.
Understanding came in time for her to leap inside, slam the door and lock it. She’d been stupid, so wrapped up in everything she’d learned tonight, she hadn’t paid attention to whether she was being followed.
She pressed her back against the door and stayed completely still, a small creature desperate to avoid a predator’s notice. A moment later, someone hammered on the door.
“Ms. Lawson? I’d like to talk to you.”
Light glinted off to one side. She turned her head and was almost blinded by the flashlight beam shining in one of the small windows. A voice called excitedly, “I see her! She’s in there.”
Her teeth chattered, and she fumbled for her phone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SETH TOOK THAT damn driveway so fast, his head whacked against the roof of his SUV when he hit a rut wrong. He’d made the drive with lights flashing and siren screaming. He was ready to kill someone, to hell with the consequences.
His headlights swept over three separate vehicles besides Bailey’s in the small clearing and a bunch of people who all swung his way. Son of a bitch, wasn’t there a grain of conscience among them?
Slamming to a stop, he turned off the siren but left on the flashing light to make a point. He climbed out and stalked toward the porch, his hand resting on the hilt of his weapon. To make another point.
“Anyone still on this property thirty seconds from now will be under arrest,” he said loudly.
The two people on the porch began to protest.
“There’s no law says we can’t knock on someone’s door,” one of them argued.
He began to count. “One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three.”
The yellow beams of flashlights pierced the near-complete darkness as shapes behind them materialized from the darkness to each side of the cabin. Christ. They’d been looking in the windows? Imagining Bailey’s fear made him pause in his counting.
“Ten-thirty at night, this is an isolated home, and you’re shining flashlights in the windows in hopes of terrifying a lone woman into coming out?” His voice was harsh. “By God, I want to arrest every last one of you.”
“We’re going, we’re going,” one of them said as she scuttled by him.
A woman. He wondered how she would have felt, huddled by herself in that cabin.
He took up his count to allow for the time since he’d left off. “One thousand and twenty. One thousand and twenty-one. One thousand and twenty-two.”
One set of headlights came on, then another. Car doors slammed. Vehicles backed up, maneuvered around each other and his SUV, and he saw red taillights.
He turned then. “Bailey? You okay?”
After a moment, the door opened a crack. He saw only darkness inside. “Are they gone?” Her voice shook.
Son of a bitch. “Yeah. Can I come in?”
“Yes. Okay.” The door swung wider. She must have reached for the light switch, because that bare overhead bulb came on.
The rage in him swelled when he saw her face, pale and pinched, and her body held tight as if to make herself small. He took one step inside and gathered her into his arms.
For an instant, she stayed stiff, so tense it was like gathering in a bundle of high-tension wires. Then she made a muffled sound, threw her arms around him and sagged against him.
He pressed his cheek to her head. “I can’t believe they did that,” he growled.
“It was my fault.”
“What?”
“I forgot to watch for someone following me,” she said miserably. “It was...kind of a full evening, and I got careless.”
“There’s no excuse for that bunch of weasels. They were trying to scare you out.”
“You warned me,” she mumbled into his chest.
“I didn’t expect anything like this.” His hands moved up and down her back. “I doubt any of this bunch were working for the Seattle Times or any reputable national magazines. They don’t operate this way.”
Bailey pulled back a little, crying, “Then who were they?”
One hand now wrapped her nape. He squeezed gently. “At a guess, freelancers. People who don’t get a paycheck unless they produce a story. Apparently, any way they can.”
Her breath came out in a gust, as if she’d taken a blow, and she let herself lean against him again. A couple of minutes passed. He didn’t say anything, just gave her time to gather strength. Unfortunately, he became increasingly aware of her breasts pressing against his chest, the silky texture of her hair beneath his cheek and mouth, a scent that was indefinably her, and the delicate lines of her back, shoulders and neck. He tried to hold her so she wouldn’t notice he was becoming aroused, but, damn, he didn’t want to push her away, either.
When finally she sighed and straightened, it took him a beat too long to let her go.
If she noticed, she
didn’t comment. “Will they come back once they see you leave?” she asked.
He frowned. “I doubt it, but we’re not taking the chance. You can’t stay here anymore, Bailey. It’s time for Plan B.” Or were they on C?
“Which is?” Her tartness sounded more like the gutsy woman he was getting to know, the one who hated needing to be rescued. “One of those freeway motels?”
He shook his head. “You’d be lucky to make it through the night before the vultures descended again. They’ll be watching for you. Desk clerks at that kind of place can be bribed.”
Her expression became mulish. “Then what?”
“You do have a bedroom waiting for you at the Lawsons, you know.”
She closed her eyes. “I can’t.”
Seth didn’t say anything, but he wrapped his hands around her upper arms and felt her shiver.
“I know it’s dumb. I mean, they’re nice people.” She fell silent for a minute. “Maybe...maybe they’d let me sleep on the sofa. Or...or in Eve’s room.”
He couldn’t pretend to understand what was bothering her—he wasn’t even sure she knew—but her horror seemed genuine.
She drew a shuddering breath and met his eyes. “I don’t have a lot of choice, do I? Um...give me a few minutes to get my stuff. And I shouldn’t leave the food to rot, should I?”
“I’ll pack the food while you gather your things.” When she started toward the bathroom, he said, “Bailey.”
Her teeth had closed on her lower lip when she turned.
“I’m going to take you home with me tonight.” Oh, man. Was he nuts? “It’s late to knock on the Lawsons’ door no matter what. I have a spare bedroom,” he finished gruffly. “Nobody will bother you at my place.”
She searched his face with those desperate eyes. “I’ve sort of cornered you, haven’t I? I didn’t mean to.”
Seth shook his head. “My house is the most secure place for you right now.”
“Won’t you get in trouble? I mean, since I’m part of, well, an investigation?”
He had no idea what his lieutenant would have to say about it, never mind the sheriff himself, enough of a politician to make Seth queasy on occasion. He discovered, however, that he didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought. “It’s not like you’re a suspect, Bailey.”
Yesterday's Gone (Two Daughters Book 1) Page 11