After a few minutes, she turned back to Zane. “Have you ever tried to find your mom?”
His eyes widened with surprise. “That’s a random question.”
“Have you?”
“Nah. Why would I? There’s nothing to say to her. She left her own infant to follow a rock band. I have zero memories. It’s not like she was ever a mother to me. We share DNA, that’s all. Anyway, whatever. My dad was more than enough.”
Liar.
“Did you ever miss her?” Maggie asked. “Like when we were growing up?”
“Sure. Sometimes.”
“When?”
Zane scratched behind his ear. “I don’t know. There were times when it would’ve been nice to have a mother. Not someone like my birth mother, but one like Lily Waller. My dad was the best, don’t get me wrong. But I think I’d be a better man if I’d had a woman around to teach me to be gentler, less aggressive and judgmental.”
“What do you mean by gentler?”
“Are you asking me these questions to avoid the situation at hand?” he asked.
“No, actually. I’m asking because I want to know. When I was away, I thought a lot about how I could’ve been a better friend to you. A friend who inspired loyalty.”
“Let’s put a pin in that for a second,” he said. “To answer your question, I wonder if I’d been easier to talk to and more interested in her feelings, if things might’ve ended differently with Natalie. The guy she left me for is the exact opposite of me. He’s got long hair that he puts in one of those man-buns and wears clothes made out of hemp and works as an environmental lawyer. He’s the approachable type that women love.”
“You’re approachable.”
“Not like him. He’s a Buddhist, I think. Is it Buddhism? I think so. Anyway, he was always talking about how everything was connected to everything else and that’s why one shouldn’t kill a spider.”
“But one can run off with someone else’s fiancée?”
Zane laughed. “That must not be as important in the karmatic order of things. Spiders first, humans second.”
“Is karmatic a real word?” she asked.
“Who knows? We’d have to ask Jackson. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I could’ve been a lot better boyfriend. If I had to do it over again, I’d change some things.”
“Like?”
“Listen more and instruct less. Deny my initial instinct to ‘fix’ things instead of just being there. Encouraging her more, instead of being such a realist pig. Some of the things I said to her make me cringe. I could have amped up the romance, too. Another thing that having a mother might’ve given me. All I learned from watching my dad was how to work my tail off.”
“Maybe that’s why Natalie came into your life. You had to learn these lessons to be ready when the right woman comes along. Because, trust me, compared to my girlfriends’ men over the years, your list of grievances is minor.”
“I’m not really interested in having a relationship,” he said. “It’s probably best if I keep to myself instead of having my heart wrecked again.”
“Are you lying to me?” she asked. “I’m pretty sure you’re lying.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I’m not stupid. I saw how you react to Honor.”
“Honor Sullivan.” An expression of annoyance muddied his face. “You have no idea how much trouble she is.”
“You used to like trouble,” she said.
“When I was young and stupid, yes.” They were quiet for a few seconds.
“How come you never talked about your mom?”
“Boys don’t do that.”
The flock of sparrows lifted from the oak and soared as one entity toward the sea. “We have to at least look for her.”
Zane fidgeted in his chair . “I know.”
“They say it’s better to risk a broken heart than never love at all. Or try.”
“People who say crap like that are people who’ve never had their heart broken,” Zane said.
“Then, we’re fine. We’ve already had ours broken a thousand times, so we have nothing to lose.”
“What do we do?” Zane asked.
“I have no idea. How do you look for people?”
Zane snapped his fingers. “I have an idea. Brody’s housekeeper who’s like his second mom gave a child up for adoption when she was only sixteen. She hired a private detective to find him.”
“Did it work?”
“Yes, and pretty fast. But, it might cost a lot of money.”
“Maybe we can do it ourselves? There’s this thing called the internet,” she said.
“We have the number of the fire station and a date of birth, right?”
“Correct. She was born December 21, 1997.”
“What if we started with searching public records?” Zane asked.
“Or, a call to the fire station? Maybe someone there remembers.”
“Let’s just put the date and fire station number into Google and see what we find,” Zane said.
“Good idea.” She put her hand on his arm. “But wait, are you sure we want to do this?”
“Let’s do it before we lose our nerve. My computer’s on the coffee table.”
Zane gestured for her to follow him into the living room. She paced in front of the window as he opened his laptop. “I’ll search for ‘baby left at fire station’ with that date.”
“Good. Yeah. Go.” Maggie’s stomach catapulted like one of those hammer rides at the fair that Jackson and Zane used to make her go on with them.
“Oh, God,” Zane said.
She turned away from the window to look at her friend.
“It’s an article about fire station thirty-eight finding a baby girl on the morning of December 22, 1997. This is her. It has to be.”
Maggie joined him on the couch. Accompanying the article was a picture of a firefighter holding a tiny bundle in his arms and grinning at the camera. According to the article, the baby was taken to the local hospital and was in perfect health. The firefighter who found her was quoted as saying, “She was perfectly calm. Calmer than me.”
“It’s her,” Maggie said. “Right there in his arms.”
“The article says there were over a hundred couples who wanted to adopt her.”
“How do we know who got her?” Maggie asked. “If it was an open adoption, it shouldn’t be too hard. I guess. I’ve heard it’s a lengthy process in situations like this. She could’ve gone to foster care first.”
“Wait. I have another idea.” He typed additional words into the search engine: adoption of baby found at fire station thirty-eight. An article popped up right away. A photograph of a couple holding a fat baby and the caption “Childless Couple’s Christmas Miracle.”
“This is them. It has to be. I can’t look.” Zane popped up and immediately began pacing. “You have to read it first.”
Maggie read through the article before summarizing for Zane. “It says Micky and Rhona Woods had been trying to adopt a baby for years and had almost given up hope. They’d decided to try foster care instead and were already approved in the program when they saw the local news program about the baby left at the fire station. They rushed down to the hospital, along with a lot of other hopeful couples. Ultimately, because they were already approved in the system, the baby went home with them, but it was another year before they could legally adopt her. They had to make sure they couldn’t find the biological parents first, along with a bunch of other red tape. Rhona, the mom, says there were many moments of heartbreak—wondering if they would be able to adopt her or if her biological mother would suddenly appear. Two days before Christmas, when the baby was already a year old, they made it official.”
“Their Christmas miracle took a whole year. It must’ve been brutal, waiting to make it legally binding but having no control.”
“It’s awful to think about.” Loving someone so much and knowing she could be yanked from them at any moment. Talk about brave. “I
don’t get it, though. If they were looking for her real parents, how come your dad never came forward? And why wouldn’t the police have thought to look for her?”
Zane looked up from the screen. “I guess they just assumed she was dead and never thought to look for anything but a body. I mean, no offense, but the local cops aren’t really used to dealing with murders. As far as my dad goes, he must’ve assumed she was dead.”
They put the names of the adoptive parents into the search engine. It didn’t take long to find their profiles on Facebook, along with an article about their participation in getting the Safe Haven Law passed after the adoption of their baby girl, Sophie Grace, who had been left at fire station thirty-eight. The law allowed people to leave babies at fire houses with no risk of arrest or punishment. “It’s her. It has to be her,” she said.
“Seems like it,” Zane said. Even Zane couldn’t hide the hopeful tone in his voice. He wants this as much as I do.
“They named her Sophie Grace. I love that name,” Maggie said. “I wonder what she looks like?”
“Maybe it’s not right for us to bother them.”
“What about her, though? Wouldn’t she want to know about us? That she has two half-siblings.”
“I would want to know.” Zane looked away as his face contorted like he had a sudden pain.
“What is it?” Maggie asked.
“You remember what her parents said about how excruciating it was not knowing if they could keep her forever.”
“Yes?” Where was he going with this?
“It made me wonder what kind of woman leaves her baby when he’s only six months old?
Like his mother left him.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“I get it if people decide they can’t be married to someone. But how could she leave me?”
“Sometimes people’s demons make it impossible to love and care for someone.”
“Even their baby?” Zane asked.
“I guess so.”
“I had my dad. Can’t forget that.”
“He was the greatest,” Maggie said.
“Anyway, enough about me. What’s our next step here?”
“Do we reach out to her, or the parents?” Maggie asked.
“Her, I think.” Zane picked up his phone from the table. “Let’s see if she’s on Instagram.”
“All young people are on there, right?” Maggie asked. “Not just entertainers?”
He raised an eyebrow, teasing her. “Yes, us regular folks use social media too.”
She poked him in the ribs with her elbow. “Don’t be mean.”
Zane typed in her name. Several women with the same name came up, but only one from California, and only one with eyes the color of the Mediterranean Sea. “Zane, those are your eyes.”
“My dad’s eyes,” Zane said.
Maggie stared at her photograph, looking for her mother or herself in the young woman’s face, but could only see Zane and his father looking back at her. “She’s pretty, just like you,” she said.
“And, she’s from the Bay Area. Look.” He pointed to her profile photograph. “That’s the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.”
“Um, yeah, and it says it in her profile description too,” Maggie said.
Sophie Grace Woods. San Francisco. UC Berkley graduate. Marathon runner. Dog lover.
“She sounds like a super star,” Maggie said.
“Totally.”
They sat there looking at one another for a few minutes, stunned and unsure what to do. A knock on the door startled them from their reverie.
It was Jackson, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. “You two look like the cat that ate the canary. What happened? Did you get anything out of Darla?”
“You could say that,” Maggie said.
“We have some news,” Zane said. “You better sit down for this.”
Chapter Sixteen
Jackson
* * *
JACKSON SPRAWLED ON Zane’s couch as Maggie told him of Darla’s confession and their subsequent discovery. When she was finished, he stared at her for a moment before he spoke. “I guess this explains why my dad never found the body. There wasn’t one.”
Zane paced between the couch and window with his hands clasped behind his back. Maggie stared at Jackson with feverish energy, her face bleached of color. “Bird, sit down by me. You don’t look so good,” Jackson said.
She did so, letting him take her hand. Her palm felt clammy inside his warm, dry hand.
The baby had lived. A sister. Zane’s dad and Maggie’s mom? He’d had no idea and he was certain his parents hadn’t either. “Do you want to try and contact Sophie?” Jackson asked.
“We, we don’t know exactly,” Maggie said.
“It’s a lot to take in. Maybe take your time to decide,” Jackson said.
“Do you want to see her photograph?” Maggie asked.
“We found her on Instagram,” Zane said, handing Jackson his cell phone.
Jackson first looked at her profile photograph. His pulse quickened. Holy God. “Her eyes.”
“That’s what we thought too.” Maggie trembled next to him.
Sophie’s feed was filled with photographs typical of a young woman: selfies with friends, a latte with a heart drawn in steamed milk, her arms wrapped around a golden Labrador, and her in front of a ride at Disneyland. She appeared harmless and normal, but pictures could deceive. Who was this girl, exactly? A stranger to them. Maggie had been through so much trauma and change in the past few days. Zane’s heart was as tender as it had always been. What if Sophie Grace Woods rejected them?
Or, worse. She could play them. Not everyone had integrity or good intentions. She might claim that she was owed half the bar, for example.
Zane wagged his finger at Jackson. “Stop it. This is nothing to worry about.”
“We’re not even sure what we’re going to do yet,” Maggie said.
“We’re going to think it through carefully,” Zane said.
“You’re both such liars,” Jackson shook his head as involuntary muscles stretched his face into a smile. Maggie had always been a leaper, whereas he was a looker. A long looker, analyzing each piece of data before making a move.
Zane was somewhere in the middle. Usually.
“What harm could come from contacting her?” Maggie asked. “Worse case, she tells us she’s not interested in expanding her family, so to speak.”
Jackson scrutinized Maggie, expecting her to continue with something along the lines of, but she won’t. Instead, she pressed her fingers to her lips and stared back at him with sparkling eyes.
“Whatever happens will be fine,” Maggie said.
What sounded like a benign comment, wasn’t. He would bet his life Maggie didn’t believe for one second that the girl wouldn’t want to meet them. She’d always been romantic and overly optimistic, as well as too generous with her love. Not everyone had good intent. Not everyone yearned for family like Maggie.
This Sophie had a family of her own. Right, what about her parents? If they were alive, which it looked like they were if the photo Sophie labeled as “My Amazing Family” was any indication. Maybe the “Amazing Family” didn’t want anything or anyone to wreck what looked to be a perfect unit.
“Remember when you convinced us that sneaking out of the house to go to that Foo Fighters concert was a bad idea?” Zane asked.
“Sure,” Jackson said. “But that’s hardly the same thing as calling up an unsuspecting young woman and telling her that, surprise, she has two new siblings.”
Maggie put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Jackson Waller, I’m surprised at you. Where’s your sense of destiny?”
He sighed and threw his hands up in the air. “You two were always impossible to reason with.”
“We love you for worrying about us.” Maggie moved closer to him and rested the side of her face on his shoulder. He placed his chin on the top of her head. How could hair smell this g
ood?
“Even though you sound like somebody’s grandmother half the time,” Zane said.
“Someone has to be the voice of reason,” Jackson said. “Do you think I like it, always being the mature one? It’s not nearly as much fun as it looks.”
“I’m still mad about missing that concert,” Zane said. “For the record, that grievance is still on the table.”
“You should be thanking me for the extra brain cells you still have,” Jackson said.
“True. I didn’t have any extras to spare,” Zane said.
Maggie tossed a throw pillow at him. “You had plenty to spare.”
“Had?” Zane tossed the pillow back at her.
“You’re not as bright as you used to be,” Maggie said. “Especially when it comes to your love life.”
“Why do I tell you stuff?” Zane asked.
Maggie blew him a kiss. “I have my ways of getting stuff out of you. It’s futile to resist.”
Zane once again began to pace, this time between the coffee table and the bookshelf. “Jackson’s right, though. You have to be prepared for the worst. We have to prepare for the worst.”
Maggie nodded. “I’ve been auditioning for the last twelve years. I think I know a thing or two about disappointment.”
Jackson squeezed her wrist. What he would give to wave a magic wand and give her everything she wished for. Even if it meant leaving him. He would follow her if he had to. Maggie deserved to be happy. Whatever he could do to make that happen, he would do.
“We have to call her,” Maggie said. “I have to let her know, at the very least, that we’re out here and would love to meet her if she wants to.”
“She’ll want to know about her birth parents,” Zane said. “Even if she doesn’t want a relationship with us. Most people would want that, anyway.”
Jackson’s stomach clenched as he realized the pain in Zane’s comment. His mother had left when he was an infant. Zane didn’t remember anything about her. Now his father didn’t recognize him. Possibly, Zane yearned for more family as much as Maggie.
“She deserves to know the truth,” Jackson said. “I just don’t want you two hurt. You’ve already been through enough.”
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