Doris took a pair of wire framed glasses from a carved wooden box on the coffee table, put them on and scrutinized her closely, then shook her head. "I've thought since I first saw you standing on the porch that you look vaguely familiar, but I'm afraid I can't quite put my finger on it." She sighed. "I've lived a long time, seen a lot of people and watched a lot of television. You're a lovely young woman. You probably look like someone on my favorite soap opera."
But Rebecca didn't believe that.
She couldn't.
Her mother lived in this town.
The phone call last night and Doris Jordan's comment that she looked vaguely familiar verified that hope.
Jake asked more questions, things Rebecca had to admit she would never have thought of, but elicited no more information.
Finally they rose to leave. Doris walked to the door with them.
"Thank you for talking to us, Mrs. Jordan," Jake said. "You have my number at the motel if you remember anything."
"I'll be sure to call if I do." She turned and lifted slim, dry fingers to Rebecca's cheek. "I hope you find what you're looking for, my dear. But try to keep an open mind. It's more likely to be in the future, not the past."
Rebecca felt a lump rise in her throat and could only nod in response.
She hated to leave this woman's house with its feeling of home and belonging. She and Doris Jordan were two of a kind, alone in the world.
But, Rebecca thought in abrupt self-loathing, Doris had come to terms with her aloneness. She wasn't grasping for any pseudo-family member to fill the void the way Rebecca was.
She walked outside with Jake, into the sweltering mid-day heat. He opened the car door for her, and she slid in, the leather hot through the fabric of her slacks.
"We passed a barbecue place on the way here. That sound all right for lunch?"
"Sure."
It didn't. It sounded horrible. Hot and greasy, and she wasn't hungry anyway.
Doris Jordan was probably having a salad or cucumber sandwiches with cream cheese and a huge glass of iced tea for lunch.
She thought of the older woman's words.
What you're looking for...it's more likely to be in the future, not the past.
She'd always forged ahead toward the future, optimistic and determined, searching for whatever lay ahead, whatever might be lacking in her life, always certain she would find that something. Now she had no past and couldn't conceive of a future.
The present was a barbecue lunch with Jake Thornton.
A very present, very temporary, very shaky situation.
It was all she had at the moment...and the present moment was the only fragment of time in which she existed.
Chapter 6
September 30, 1979, Edgewater, Texas
Mary stepped back to study the table and see if she'd forgotten anything. The good china Ben's mother had given them, linen napkins, candles....everything had to be perfect.
She spread one hand over her still-flat stomach and smiled. She'd suspected for the last couple of weeks but hadn't wanted to get Ben's hopes up until she was certain. Though she had been certain in her heart, so certain her joy had filled every crevice of her soul and pushed out all but an occasional stab of the pain and horror that had been her constant companion since that day in August.
Blackness tugged at the edges of her mind even now, but she shoved it aside as she heard Ben's car pull into the driveway. Moving quickly, she lit the candles, determinedly focusing on the happy excitement, leaving no room for that darkness to intrude.
A few moments later his key turned in the door she always kept locked now, and he stepped inside, a big bear of a man, a warm smile on his face. "Something sure smells good."
Mary rushed into his arms, lifting her face for his kiss.
"Umm," he murmured. "I don't know whether you or dinner smells the best." He touched his lips to hers again, this kiss more intense, and she felt a response to his passion. He nuzzled her neck. "I know dinner couldn't taste any better than you do. I don't suppose it's one of those meals that could wait a few minutes?" He kissed his way back to her lips. "Better make that a lot of minutes. Maybe an hour or so."
She pulled away from him with a small giggle and took his hand. "No, it can't wait. This is a very special dinner." She tugged him toward the kitchen.
"Uh oh. Is this another new recipe?" he teased. "Are we going to be up half the night with heartburn again? Maybe we better go upstairs first just in case we don't feel like it afterward."
"Oh, you! Stop that! Our steaks are under the broiler and they're going to burn if we don't get in there!"
"Steaks, eh? Hmm." His face took on a mock-pensive expression. "Okay. I guess I can pass up making love with my wife for a big, juicy steak."
Mary danced into the kitchen, Ben's hand clutched firmly in hers.
"Candles and wine, too! Omigosh! It's our anniversary, isn't it? Your birthday? My birthday?" he teased.
"Just sit down and pour the wine. Only half a glass for me." Mary gave him an enigmatic smile, then bent to turn the steaks.
She went back to the table, sat next to her husband and lifted her half-full glass. She'd planned every moment of this evening for over a year, but now a lump in her throat threatened to interfere with her rehearsed speech, the eloquent toast she'd planned to propose.
"Mar? Are you all right? Are you crying?"
Mary smiled though her eyes were moist. "No. Yes. Oh, Ben! We're having a baby!"
"A baby?" A look of wonder spread over Ben's face. He leaned around and touched Mary's stomach reverently. "Are you sure?"
Mary's heart swelled with love for this man and for the child growing inside her. "Yes, I'm sure. Doctor Wilcox called me with the results today. I had everything planned so carefully, how I'd tell you, what I'd say, but then I forgot everything and just blurted it out! I'm sorry. I wanted to do this right."
"Oh, honey, you can blurt out news like that any day. When? When's she going to...you know...be finished? Be born?"
Mary laughed softly at Ben's flustered questions. "What makes you think it's going to be a girl?"
"Because I'm her father and I know these things."
"What if it's a boy?"
"I guess we can keep him. But I don't think we ought to make him wear that pink dress and those booties you've been crocheting."
Mary gasped. "How did you know about that dress?"
"Because I'm her father and I know these...what's that smell?"
Mary shot up from her chair. "The steaks! Omigosh!" She jerked them from the oven. "They're ruined!"
"Nah. They're just a little black on one side." He took the broiler pan from her and set it on the stove top then turned her to face him. "For the second time, the first being when you said I do, you've made me the happiest man in the world. Right now, your hamburger casserole would even taste like gourmet food. Come on, Mother. Let's enjoy our steaks. You and Sharise need the protein."
Sharise. The name of Ben's twin sister who'd died at birth, the name of his mother's dress shop. It thrilled Mary to know that Ben and his parents wanted to pass such a special name on to her baby, to give the child history and a place in a big, loving family. Her baby would never know the loneliness she'd known since her parents' deaths, the sense of belonging nowhere to no one. This baby would have lots of family to love her and keep her safe...her or him.
"Sharise or—" She broke off, choking on the name Ben had selected for a boy. Charles.
"Are you all right?" Ben asked, a bite of steak poised in midair halfway to his mouth, his brow wrinkled in concern.
"Of course. I just...I'm sorry about the steaks. I wanted everything to be perfect."
"The important things are perfect. I love you, you love me, and we're both going to love our baby more than anybody's ever loved a baby before since the world began. I can't wait to tell Mom and Dad. And Charles. I can just see his face when this kid wraps her tiny little fist around his thumb and calls him Uncle Charles
. I don't think he had the best of families back in Ohio. This baby is going to be very spoiled with so many people adoring her."
For a fleeting instant an ugly thought reared up amidst all the happiness, but Mary quickly shoved it aside.
It was impossible.
No way could that one nightmare experience, that cruel torture that bore no similarity to making love, result in the miracle of a child, the ultimate gift of love.
"Yes," she agreed, her voice firm, "our baby is going to be spoiled rotten. That's the way it should be."
Chapter 7
Jake held the heavy wooden door open for Rebecca to enter the Smokehouse Barbecue, a block off the main street of downtown Edgewater.
They'd had breakfast together, visited Doris Jordan together, and now they were having lunch together. What's wrong with this picture?
Hell, what was right with it?
Nothing that he could see.
He was a loner. Rebecca desperately needed somebody. One hundred eighty degrees out. Opposite ends of the spectrum.
For her sake if not for the sake of doing his job, he had to get rid of her. He couldn't let her start to depend on him, to need him when he had nothing to give.
Nor could he spend any more nights separated from her by nothing but a thin wall. Not after he'd seen what she slept in.
The small restaurant was crowded, but Jake located an empty table and guided Rebecca toward it with a gentle hand at the small of her back.
If you're so damned anxious to get rid of her, why do you keep touching her every chance you get?
Jake ignored the nagging voice in the back of his head since he didn't want to think about the answer to that question.
"Smells good in here," she said as they sat down at the square table covered with a red checked vinyl cloth.
"Yes, it does. I didn't think I was hungry after that big breakfast, but that smell has changed my mind."
Rebecca frowned. "If you weren't hungry, why did you suggest we come here to eat?"
She was as good with questions as that little voice in his head. He knew the answer but he wasn't about to tell her that he did it because he hadn't known what else to do with her after they left Doris Jordan's house, because she made him uncomfortable and a public restaurant seemed a good place to be with her.
"I thought you might be hungry," he lied.
The waitress came to take their orders—two sandwiches, tea for her and beer for him.
"Doris Jordan's a special lady," Rebecca said when the waitress left.
"Yeah," Jake agreed. "She is. Special and a lady."
"She's lonely."
"Who isn't? She's doing all right."
"I guess." She unrolled her paper napkin and carefully laid out the cheap flatware. "We didn't learn anything from her."
"More than you realize. I told you before, detective work goes one inch at a time. Sometimes it goes by centimeters. It's tedious and time-consuming. That's why you pay me to do the work while you wait at home in air-conditioned comfort for my reports."
"And I told you before, I can't do that."
They sat staring at each other, stalemated.
She was so self-contained today, it was hard to believe this was the same distraught woman who'd run to his room last night.
In the silence that lengthened at their table, the laughter and talking around them, punctuated by the clink of silverware on plates, seemed to grow louder. The ding of the bell announced another order was up.
Jake didn't like crowds, avoided them as much as possible, and this place was beginning to feel very crowded. When they'd first walked in, the air had felt cool, but that was compared to the noon heat outside. Now it seemed warm and suffocating, the sweet, spicy scent of barbecue overpowering in its tantalizing appeal. If Rebecca weren't with him, he'd get up and leave.
If Rebecca weren't with him, he probably wouldn't feel the need to leave.
The waitress returned with their drinks, and Jake took a long, soothing swallow of his ice-cold beer.
"Okay," Rebecca said, "so I missed whatever it is we learned from Doris Jordan because I'm not a skilled detective. Can I have my report now instead of waiting for you to leave a message on my answering machine in my air-conditioned home which I'm not in right now?"
Jake set his frosty mug back onto the table. "Whatever you want. You're paying the bills. Today we learned that your mother very likely came from an affluent family."
"What makes you think that?"
"Because Doris Jordan said that at one time having a dress with her label in it was considered special. She even compared her private label to Neiman Marcus. While she admitted that wasn't a completely valid comparison, any small shop with a private label is going to be in a price range above K-Mart. Add this to the visit from His Honor, the Mayor, last night, and I'd say we're looking at a person who's influential in the community."
Rebecca wrapped both hands around her oversized glass of tea and tilted her head briefly in acknowledgment of his deductions. "Very good. I'm impressed."
"Next we consider that your mother came to your parents penniless, gave a phony name on your birth certificate and left with a request that you never try to find her. From this we can assume her parents knew nothing of her pregnancy. The phone call you got last night and our visit from Morton tells me she's still hiding."
"So you really think Morton knows who she is?"
Jake thought about it for a minute, about the assessing way Morton had studied Rebecca, his determined reassurance that they'd find no traces of her parentage in Edgewater. "Yeah," he said. "I think he knows, and I think she's putting the pressure on him to get us out of town."
He realized he'd said the wrong thing as Rebecca's face fell. She was going to have to learn how to keep her every emotion from showing. Such transparency was like an invitation to the sharks of the world to move in for the kill.
He took another drink of his beer, deliberately avoiding her eyes.
"Go on," she said, her voice tentative but firm.
"Nothing else. That's our inch for the morning."
"So what are we doing this afternoon?"
He spread his hands in frustration. "You're going back to the motel, get your things and head out for Dallas. You had no business coming with me this morning. You're too involved, too emotional about this whole thing."
She stared at him coldly across the vinyl covered table. At least she didn't look so damned vulnerable. "Of course I'm emotionally involved. What do you expect? This is my family we're talking about. I assume even you have a family, a mother and father, that you didn't spring fully grown from the seat of that big chair in your office."
"Yeah, I got family. Enough for both of us. I'll tell you what, you take two or three of my step parents, and we'll call off this entire chase. In fact, you can even have my birth parents...if we can figure out which ones they are."
"What are you talking about?"
Jake tossed down the rest of his beer. One part of him didn't want to give her any of him, certainly not his personal life, but another part wanted to warn her, to let her know how foolish she was being.
He gave a mental shrug. What did it matter what he told her? It wasn't like she was going to be a part of his life for more than a few days at most.
"My parents got a divorce when I was a baby. When my dad remarried a couple of years later, I went to live with him so my mother could go back to school. But then my dad divorced his second wife and I went to live with my mother and her new husband. Until they got a divorce. To make a long story short, I never lived with anybody for more than a couple of years, and I have so many step parents and step brothers and step sisters and half-brothers and half-sisters, we'd have to rent Texas Stadium if we ever decided to have a reunion. And you know what? Having all that family hasn't done one damn thing to improve my life. All it's done is create chaos around Christmas. I never know who to buy a present for, who's going to give me a new tie I'll never wear or a bottle of cologn
e that smells like a service station bathroom. They don't know anything about me, I don't know anything about them, but we're family. Whatever that means."
Her expression had softened as he spoke. "I'm sorry you never had a real family."
He tilted his head back and drew in a deep, frustrated breath. "You're missing the point here. My family was real. Your family was real. Families don't come with rules. I have no complaints about mine. I don't recall ever being unhappy, just a little confused sometimes. But it sounds like you got a good one. So why not leave it at that? Why are you setting yourself up for disappointment? Why are you being greedy and asking for another good one?"
She leaned forward, her voice low and intense. "Greedy? Is it greedy to want to know who I am, what my mother looked like, where my grandparents came from...why my mother gave birth to me and then got away from me as fast as she could run?"
"Howdy!"
Jake's attention jerked toward the sound of the intrusion.
A pulpy-looking, ruddy faced, fortyish man wearing a police uniform smiled down at them. He held his cap politely in his hands, his fingers twisting the brim nervously. "I'm Farley Gates, Chief of Police. Mind if I join you?"
First the mayor, now the chief of police? The city officials must be strapped for entertainment.
"By all means." Jake indicated the chair Farley Gates was already pulling out.
"You folks found the best barbecue in Texas right off the bat," Gates said.
Secrets Rising Page 6