If Anything Should Happen

by Bonnie Hearn Hill

  ‘The Internet had nothing.’

  ‘Do you really think you need to go all the way to some little hickville newspaper office in Arizona to find out if the story is true or not?’

  ‘Well, it was so many years ago, and it seems like it never went national,’ I said. ‘How can I possibly find out anything here? How can you?’

  ‘Have you forgotten?’ He gave me one of those disarming smiles that were his specialty. ‘I drink with cops.’

  What I had always considered one of Farley’s few flaws had blossomed into a huge asset. While we ate omelets I barely tasted, he made phone calls to people he addressed as, ‘Hey, man.’ Most of all, he reassured me.

  ‘My buddies are going to do everything they can, Kit. We’re going to get to the bottom of this, I promise you. We’re going to find out the truth, maybe as soon as today. Do you realize that? As soon as today?’

  If he were a preacher, I’d be saying the amens. Instead, I just kept repeating, ‘Thank you.’

  We drove to his place for coffee and to wait for news from his contacts. The wind had tangled my hair into knots, but it didn’t make any difference now.

  Farley patted my knee. ‘Why so glum?’ he asked in that way of his.

  ‘Not glum, just worried about Tamera and nervous about hearing back from Mick,’ I said. ‘I appreciate your trying to help.’

  ‘Purely selfish motives, ma’am.’ He glided the car into the underground parking place for his building and sat there in the cool, dusky garage without moving.

  ‘Selfish? How’s that?’

  I could sense him turn his head and knew he was watching me. ‘I want my partner back.’

  ‘I haven’t really been gone,’ I said, trying to feel indignant, but suspecting he was right. Our eyes met, and I felt a flash of something – recognition, connection, that nameless thing we used to have before Richard left, before my mom died, before I discovered that my mom wasn’t really my mother. ‘I think we’d better go get that coffee,’ I said.

  I’d been to his apartment numerous times, but not recently and never alone. I felt awkward in the elevator and more so when I stepped inside and smelled the combined scents of leather, sandalwood, and something I could only describe to myself as tranquility.

  ‘I see you still have the same maid service,’ I said, as a way to break the ice. The dark leather and ebony wood that filled the room dared anyone to as much as run a finger along it and find dust.

  ‘You know me,’ he said. ‘Sometimes, I throw out the newspaper while I’m still reading it.’

  Still, I knew he was proud that his apartment, with its balcony, mirrored dining room and adjoining kitchen with stainless-steel appliances, wasn’t the typical DJ crash pad. No, this was a home where anyone who visited felt compelled to linger. He headed for the back, and I started to follow.

  ‘No way.’ He held up a hand. ‘Farley’s maid service didn’t make it back to my office today.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ I said.

  ‘But I do.’ He gave me that disarming look again. ‘I’ll go check my email. You wait here. Put on any music you like.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can wait,’ I said.

  He closed the louvered doors behind him, and I sat on the leather sofa. I did not play any music. I looked at the window leading to the balcony. I didn’t think about anything except why we were here and what I hoped Farley would be able to find. I heard him before I saw him again. ‘Bingo.’

  I’d heard the word palpitate all my life, but I never felt it until Farley shouted out like that. He burst through the door, all smiles and sheets of paper.

  ‘May first,’ he said. ‘That’s when it happened. Look at this.’

  In that heart-pumping moment, I felt as if he held my future in his hands. Like gleeful children, we spread the papers out along the leather sofa – newspaper stories, several of them. Child Reported Missing was the first headline I spotted. I grabbed it and read it aloud:

  Jillian Trafton, three months old, was reported missing yesterday by her mother, Kendra Trafton. The Buckeye resident said she left her daughter in her car around noon, while she stopped at a phone booth to make a call. Approximately fifteen minutes later, she reported Jillian’s disappearance to an officer.

  ‘There are no suspects at this time, and no signs of a crime,’ said Sergeant Ray Nolan of the Buckeye Police Department. ‘No family members are under suspicion at this time.’

  Jillian’s father, Edward, a teacher at Lowell Elementary, has organized a private search party.

  However, Nolan asks that anyone with information contact the police department. He also reminds parents not to leave children unattended, even briefly. ‘This wouldn’t have happened if the mother hadn’t stopped to make that call,’ he said.

  Farley took the paper from me. ‘What a hatchet job,’ he said. ‘They weren’t trying to find her child. They were trying to hang the blame on her.’ He stared at the paper. ‘She doesn’t look much like you, does she?’

  ‘The mother?’ I asked. ‘Or the daughter?’

  ‘The mother,’ he said. ‘I guess.’

  I shook my head and moved close so that I could take another look. Kendra Trafton’s haunted face stared back at me. She had to have been younger than I was now. Either her hair was very short, or it had been pulled from her face.

  I tried to recognize myself in her, to see that she was my mother and know for certain that I was the missing Jillian. I couldn’t, though.

  Her eyes looked dark, but maybe that was the fault of the blurry copy I was viewing. Her cheekbones were high and strong. This was a woman of big bones, not at all my body type. That might not matter, though. I didn’t know what Jillian’s father, the Edward of the newspaper article, looked like. Maybe the Lowell Elementary teacher, who’d organized a private search party for his daughter, was smaller, curly-haired, and fair. I still had a chance.

  Then, I took a good look at Jillian Trafton. It was a baby picture, but even so, I felt little connection to it. She was a beautiful baby, which I had not been in those early pictures taken with my mom. Jillian’s head looked shadowed, as if the soft hair growing in there was dark. For one long moment, I tried to believe, to pretend. It was as if I were some kid at an orphanage, resorting to any trick to be selected.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Farley asked. ‘All right?’

  I nodded, no longer knowing. Then, I remembered what I’d been searching my mind for: the first photo I ever saw of myself. Only frizzy blond curls. Elaine had laughed and said she’d had to stick the bow to my head with tape.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m that girl,’ I told him. ‘She doesn’t look like me.’ Tears appeared from nowhere. I couldn’t stop them. I felt orphaned then, for the first time since I’d read my mom’s letter.

  Farley’s expression turned sad, and his smile couldn’t disguise that he felt the same way I did. ‘You can’t be sure,’ he said, although I knew he was as certain as I. ‘She’s only an infant. Besides, we’re going to find out.’

  ‘It’s not me. It’s not my hair.’ My voice, my sobs weren’t mine. They were the voice and the sobs of a child.

  ‘Kit.’ He put his arms around me and patted my back, awkward pats but sincere, if only because they were so self-conscious. I dove for his shoulder and buried my sobs there. ‘Please don’t, Kit. It breaks my heart to see you like this.’

  His words sank in. My outburst subsided, then stopped. The storm had passed. Farley said it broke his heart to see me hurting. Farley cared about me, cared about my feelings. Someone cared. Farley did. I lifted my head from his shoulder, which was drenched now, thanks to me. His face was close, his expression no longer scared, but his lashes looked wet. ‘I didn’t want to cause you more pain,’ he said. ‘I wanted to help.’

  ‘You did. Farley, you’ve helped me more than you know.’

  ‘I’d do anything.’ His voice was warm. ‘I’d do anything for you.’

  Then, his lips settled on mine. And it seemed the m
ost natural thing in the world to lace my arms around his neck, to fall into the kiss and into him. In that one movement, I slipped into the sensations of taste, smell, the clammy feel of his leather sofa on my bare arms. I tried to pull away, but he seemed to take my squirming for passion.

  ‘It kills me to see you like this,’ he whispered. ‘I want you back the way you were.’

  ‘I will be,’ I said. ‘I will.’ Then, somewhere in me, a brake screeched my body to a halt. My hands went to his chest. I pushed, and then pushed harder. ‘I can’t do this,’ I said.

  ‘I hear you.’ He froze, and I knew he was processing, deciding how far to take it. ‘Do you want to go home?’

  ‘I need to,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t have any idea what to do next. Tamera is out in Arizona meeting with some woman who doesn’t even look like me. Mick’s not returning my phone calls, and that little girl in the newspaper photo …’ I couldn’t go on.

  ‘You wanted Kendra to be your mother,’ he said. ‘Maybe she still can be. Maybe you’re wrong about the photos.’

  ‘I’m not wrong, Farley.’

  ‘You could be. You’re upset. These are rotten copies.’

  ‘Farley.’

  ‘All right.’ He stood suddenly and put out his hand for me to do the same. ‘I’ll take you home,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about that.’ He waved at the sofa. ‘I don’t know what got into me.’

  But it wasn’t him. It was us. He was just giving me an out. ‘There’s too much going on with me right now,’ I said, as a weak attempt at apology.

  ‘I know it hasn’t been that long,’ he said, and I knew he meant since my separation from Richard.

  We stepped on the elevator that still smelled of his cologne.

  ‘Don’t give up. For all we know, Kendra is your mother. You can’t base everything on one old photo.’

  ‘Do you believe that, Farley?’

  ‘It’s possible.’ The door opened, and he was Radio Farley again, making his way through the dim, chalky-smelling rows of cars as if he wasn’t concerned about anything more important than if he’d remembered his sunblock. His carefree gait and calm, deceptive smile hid his true thoughts, I knew.

  I wanted to give him more, but I was stuck back in that spotless living room of his, looking into the dark eyes of that beautiful little girl with all the hair. A little girl I never could have been.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  We drove to my place in silence. He turned on the radio, and some Norah Jones floated in. I studied his profile and that tight smile he sent into the wind and wondered how well I knew him. Although we were close, neither of us had ever crossed that line of mutual attraction before. Farley had just gotten out of a relationship when we had met, and I had sworn I would never get involved with anyone who worked in radio. Yet we had kissed back there in his apartment as if we’d meant it. We’d come close to doing more. I tried to figure out why. The closest I could come was that, although I didn’t know him as well as I should after two years together on the air, there was something about Farley Black that made me feel safe.

  For that reason, perhaps, when he stopped the car in front of my house, I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

  He moved his lips to mine. I let the kiss linger, and then touched my finger to his face. ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘for trying to help.’

  ‘I wish I could have done more. Let me know the minute you hear from Tamera.’

  ‘I will.’

  He leaned over to open my door, and on the way back, his lips brushed mine again. That was one time too many, I thought, but it didn’t matter. I was going inside now, anyway.

  I slid out of the car seat and looked back at him. I don’t know what I was planning on saying, because I didn’t get a chance to say anything. Approaching the car, walking a little too fast, came Mick and Richard. No, it couldn’t be my father and my ex-husband, marching up to us with the conviction and self-importance of two cops who’d just discovered a crime in progress.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded, realizing I was directing the question to Richard.

  ‘Trying to help you out,’ he said. He looked ridiculous, still wearing his white veterinarian coat with tennis shoes and a baseball cap. He pulled the cap down over his eyes in a nervous gesture he probably wasn’t even aware of. ‘We didn’t plan to interrupt a love scene.’ Richard looked at Farley with such disdain that I almost expected him to spit. Then he turned his fury on me. ‘I can’t believe you’d pull something like this.’

  ‘Lay off her.’ Farley got out of the car, slammed the door, and went eye-to-eye with him. ‘What you saw was friendship, man, all right? And if you don’t know the lady any better than that, maybe you ought to get the hell out of here before someone knocks you on your sorry ass.’

  Richard met the challenge. ‘That someone had better be a whole lot bigger than you, Farley.’

  ‘Easy,’ Mick shouted, as if giving a command to a dog.

  ‘Out of respect for you and for her, I won’t press it,’ Richard told Mick. Then, with a look at Farley: ‘You’re lucky.’ Richard looked ready to charge, and then stopped, the way I’d seen him stop in the middle of too many arguments with me. Logic kicked in, and he slowly adjusted his baseball cap.

  ‘Will you cut it out?’ Mick wedged himself between the two of them like a squat little referee between two towering boxers. ‘I understand that you two have hard feelings, but we can’t deal with that now. We’ve got to help Kit.’

  ‘I don’t have hard feelings,’ Farley said. ‘I just don’t like him accusing me of something he knows nothing about. Kit doesn’t care about anything except finding her mother, and I’m trying to help her. If he cared about her, he’d understand that.’

  An impassioned speech, but still my cheeks burned as I remembered what had happened and what almost happened up in Farley’s apartment. I looked from him to Richard. Farley was bright as sunlight, but with a secret side I was only just beginning to sense. Richard was guarded, moody, and brilliant. If I had to choose right now, could I? And why would I have to choose? Richard had already left me.

  ‘How crazy is this?’ I started laughing. ‘All four of us wearing dark glasses. We’re having this heated discussion, and we can’t even look each other in the eyes.’

  ‘You can look me in the eyes.’ Farley yanked off his glasses. His eyes were his best feature. He couldn’t hide the emotion brimming there, and that only increased his appeal. I didn’t want to, but I took off my own glasses and met his gaze.

  ‘You know, Farley,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to stick around for this soap opera. It’s not in your contract.’

  ‘Don’t be harsh, Kit,’ Mick said and took my arm. ‘I know you’re hurting, and so am I. Richard came to see me yesterday, damn near yanked me out of the motorhome.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘And why haven’t you answered my text?’

  ‘Work’s been a killer.’ He looked down.

  ‘Well, you’re here now. How old was I when you adopted me?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ he said. ‘You were a baby. Elaine would have known. It’s probably written down somewhere.’ He avoided my eyes.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘This isn’t easy for me to talk about,’ Mick said, ‘but Richard made me realize what I’m about to tell you will come out sooner or later, and it will hurt you even more then.’

  I couldn’t deal with any more confessions. I felt my legs threaten to give out. I couldn’t balance. It was as if they were not made of flesh and bone, but something insubstantial. Farley seemed to sense it, and his arm shot out around me. Richard glared. I glared back. He’d been the one to leave. He had no reason to play the broken-hearted victim now.

  ‘What?’ Farley demanded. ‘Just tell her.’

  Mick took off his glasses, too. In his pale eyes, I saw something I’d never glimpsed there before. I saw fear. And that fear ignited my own.

  ‘Please tell me,’ I said.

&nbs
p; He looked around at the sunlit sidewalk, the kids across the street with their Frisbees. ‘Don’t you think we should go inside?’

  I broke free of Farley’s grip. ‘Tell me, Mick, and tell me right now.’

  He looked down, then up at me. ‘This might be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,’ he said. ‘I told you that we adopted you, remember?’

  ‘That’s right.’ I nodded and felt my head move up and down through the air. ‘I’m adopted. I know that.’

  ‘You aren’t adopted,’ he said. ‘Not really.’

  My body and mind froze to a standstill.

  Farley, however, leapt to life. ‘What do you mean she’s not adopted? What are you trying to pull now?’

  ‘Settle down, please.’ Richard stiffened, and even behind the dark glasses, I could feel the fire in his eyes. ‘She’s not adopted. That’s why Mick’s here. That’s why I went to see him. I knew something was wrong, even when we were married. She couldn’t locate her birth certificate.’

  ‘But if I’m not adopted—’ I began.

  ‘What is she?’ Farley finished, his arm tightly around me now. ‘Whatever it is, you owe her the truth.’

  ‘Her mother, Elaine, moved heaven and earth to get her,’ Mick said. ‘She wanted a baby. She wanted this baby.’ His gaze lingered on me.

  ‘Tell her the rest,’ Richard said. ‘Just tell it, Mick.’

  ‘Kit, honey, it’s not as if we stole you or anything. The mother, Kendra Trafton, wanted you to go to a good family. But we didn’t adopt you at all.’ His eyes bore into mine, full of tears, now, full of remorse. ‘We had to pay.’

  ‘You had to pay? You paid for me?’ I echoed, trying to keep myself separate from the chilling words. ‘What does that mean?’ But I knew. I knew.

  ‘Kit …’

  ‘Leave me alone, Mick.’

  ‘We had to. It was the only way we could be sure we’d have you. There was another couple behind us, and if we’d waited even a few hours, we might have lost you.’

  The betrayal I had experienced in the past couldn’t begin to touch this.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘for not telling you sooner.’