"We'll get a couple of cold drinks and go to that park we passed today. If you can stand the heat."
Again she nodded. The afternoon heat in the park wouldn't be anything like the heat if they went back to his motel room.
***
The park was small with half a dozen kids climbing over the playground equipment on one end and a grove of trees on the other. The grass was freshly clipped, and a lanky teenage boy was just pushing a mower into a small wooden shed in the middle.
Jake pulled onto the graveled parking area on the wooded end, and Rebecca spotted a weathered picnic table on the shady side of a huge oak tree.
She sat on one side of the table with Jake on the other.
"It's not so hot here," she observed. "Kind of nice, actually." And surely, separated from Jake by the splintery wooden table, sitting outside in bright daylight with kids shouting and laughing somewhere close by, she could get away from the fluttery sensation of being near him.
Head bent, he shuffled through papers in his briefcase. A breeze stirred the leaves above, and sunlight fluttered across his ebony hair.
"Lots of background stuff here," he said, his voice dark yet shiny with streaks of light, sounding just the way his hair looked. "Mayor Morton and Jordan served together in the Army. Morton saved Jordan's life, killed three men who ambushed the two of them and shot Ben in the stomach and him in the shoulder. Both men subsequently received honorable discharges, and Morton came back here with Jordan. Our good old boy with the cowboy hat and down-home drawl is actually from Ohio."
"That's very interesting, but what does it have to do with my mother?"
He looked up, his eyes now the color of the faraway, cold sky at sunset in winter rather than midnight in summer. "It may not have anything to do with your mother, or it may have everything. Morton knows something about her, so we need to know more about Morton." He returned his attention to the papers. "They don't seem to have had many leads in Ben Jordan's murder. I don't remember reading anything in the 1980 papers about them catching the guy who did it. Did you see anything?"
"No, nothing. But I could have missed it. I wasn't looking specifically for that."
He studied the photocopies for a few minutes longer then passed them to her. "You might see something I didn't, something that has meaning to you but wouldn't to me."
It was the first time he'd admitted she might actually be a help instead of a hindrance. She took the papers from him and bent over them, reading carefully though she had little hope she'd find anything.
"What the devil?" Jake exclaimed.
She looked up to see him holding a sheet of paper and frowning. "What?"
"Do you know anything about this article on Janelle Griffin?"
"No. Maybe it got mixed in when Eunice was making your copies."
He shook his head. "It wasn't with the copies. It was under the top folder." He turned the paper so she could see it. Across the top in red block letters someone had written: "Go home. Your mother's dead."
The wide-open park seemed to close in around Rebecca. "Janelle. You said since my mother used the name Jane Clark on my birth certificate that Jane might really be her first name."
"This woman died fifteen years ago." His words grated over her like coarse sandpaper, scraping away the skin and drawing blood.
"Let me see it."
Wordlessly, he handed it to her.
She stared at the black and red images on the white paper, concentrating all her efforts into forcing them to coherency, something she really didn't want. Go home. Your mother's dead. The glaring, personal note, then the impersonal print of the news story. Janelle Griffin...dead at thirty-one...accidental overdose of prescription sleeping pills...graduate of Edgewater High School...volunteer at Edgewater Memorial Hospital...member of First Pentecostal Church of Edgewater...survived by her parents, the Reverend and Mrs. William Griffin.
In the summer heat, a cold hand gripped her heart and squeezed, shutting out the possibility of warmth ever entering that region again.
Dead.
"Don't go jumping to conclusions. We have no proof this woman is your mother," Jake said.
"Somebody went to a lot of trouble to put this in your briefcase. This article and the note to forget my mother confirms the phone call telling me she's dead." Rebecca was humiliated to feel tears rolling down her cheeks. Angrily she swiped them away with the back of her hand. She wasn't going to cry, especially not in front of Jake.
For a fleeting moment she thought she saw sympathy in his eyes, then the look was gone, replaced by his usual impenetrable expression. She didn't want sympathy from him.
"We've got plenty of time to get to the cemetery before dark," he said.
Her throat tightened. She swallowed twice before she could speak. "Then you do think this is my mother."
"Rebecca, I'm not suggesting we go to the cemetery to mourn this lady. I'm suggesting we go there to check out the stones, her family, dates of birth and death...anything. Research. Investigative work. What you hired me to do."
"Go to a cemetery to check out the stones?" She felt a sob rise and turned it into a semblance of a laugh as it came out. "That's what you call investigative work?"
He pushed himself off the bench and rose. "That's right. Unless you're firing me, I plan to continue to do my job. Now are you ready to go back to your air conditioned house in Dallas and check the mailbox and answering machine for my reports?"
She swung her legs over the bench and stood also, glaring at him through a film of tears that blurred the harsh angles of his face. "No. I'm going to that cemetery. If that is my mother, I want to see her grave."
"Suit yourself." He closed his briefcase and picked it up then walked away. She followed close behind.
***
The cemetery was small, but even so it took them almost two hours to find Janelle Griffin's grave. The area was well-tended, the Bermuda grass newly mown.
Jake walked around, studying the inscriptions and making notes.
Rebecca stood beside the stone that marked the passing of Janelle Griffin.
Her mother?
She studied every word, every carving on the gray marble, trying to ferret out the secrets of the woman's life. Beloved daughter, it read. Not wife or mother. The two words told their own story of loneliness. The sensation surrounded Rebecca, and she couldn't tell if it came from the grave, from the inscription on the stone or from her own heart.
"Her father died five years after her," Jake said. "Apparently her mother's still alive. Paternal grandparents and great-grandparents are here. All Reverends. Three infants." She looked up, and he hastily added, "Born in 1895, 1904 and 1906. Infant mortality was high in those days. Here's another single woman, Janelle's great-aunt, judging from the year of birth, dead in her fifties. Looks like Janelle's family has lived in Edgewater for generations."
Rebecca walked around the area, reading the story carved in stone. "A prominent family, like you said, a long line of ministers, the kind of people who would have been scandalized if their unmarried daughter had turned up pregnant. The kind of family who just might have enough influence to get the police department to declare an overdose of sleeping pills accidental. Her mother's still alive, and the Mayor and the Chief of Police are still protecting her. She'd have been sixteen or seventeen when I was born. A teenage girl, again like you said."
He moved over to stand close beside her. "There's nothing here to prove this is your mother, Rebecca."
"There's nothing to prove she isn't."
"Stop it. You're jumping to conclusions."
"Am I? How much more evidence do we need? Do you want to have the body exhumed so we can do DNA testing?" She looked away, toward the last sliver of sun resting on the horizon. "This whole thing has been pointless. I never had a mother to search for. I've been chasing a ghost, a will o' the wisp."
The enervating loneliness wrapped its tendrils around her, stealing the energy from her body, from her soul. She started to sin
k to the ground, to rest for a moment or a lifetime on the cool grass, but Jake's strong arm stopped her.
"Rebecca, don't do this."
Anger surged through her, mingling with the grief and filling the empty spaces. She whirled on him. "Leave me alone!"
To her complete humiliation, she burst into tears. Jake pulled her against him in spite of her efforts to push away.
Painful sobs she could no longer suppress heaved themselves up from somewhere deep inside, pouring onto Jake's broad chest, drenching his denim shirt, while he held her firmly with one hand on her back and stroked her hair with the other. She willed herself to stop, but her body was no longer under her control. Even as one corner of her mind berated her for her weakness, she leaned against Jake, crying in huge gulps.
Gradually when enough of the inner tension had been thrust outside of her, she was able to catch her breath and again tried to push away.
He loosened the circle of his arms enough to allow her to pull a handful of tissues from her purse and blow her nose. Gently he coaxed her back to him and continued to stroke her hair. In spite of herself, she relaxed, unballing her fists and pressing her hands against him instead.
"Just because your parents loved every stray that crossed their paths doesn't mean they put you in that category." His words whispered past her, so soft she wondered for a moment if they existed only in her mind.
"I never said that," she murmured against him, refusing to look up and meet his gaze.
"Not in so many words. But you thought it, didn't you?"
She took in a long breath, wondering if she could answer that question, if the answer would be a betrayal of the two people she'd loved most in the world. Probably.
Jake didn't press her, and suddenly the words began pouring out as uncontrollably as her earlier sobs.
"One day when I was ten years old, I was playing at my girlfriend's house, and I said to her that I wished my mom and dad loved me special the way hers loved her. Her mother overheard me, and she called me in for a talk. She told me how proud I should be of my parents, how wonderful it was that they were so kind and loving to anyone in need. She made me feel very selfish because I resented something everybody else admired."
Waiting for the expected censure, Rebecca stood with every muscle in her body tense.
"I don't think that sounds selfish. It sounds like every little kid in the world."
"I thought I should be special to them because I was their little girl, their only little girl. When I grew up, I was more adult about it. I knew they loved me. I knew they were terrific people with big hearts and plenty of room for everybody. But then they died, and I couldn't be adult about it anymore. I understood then why I'd never been special to them. I was just another homeless person they took care of. It was like I'd been an orphan all my life, like I'd never had a home or a family."
"And you thought if you found your birth mother, you'd have a real family, a real life."
She leaned back in his arms and looked up at him. The sun had almost vanished from the sky and his face was shadowed, unreadable. "Pretty dumb, huh?"
He chuckled quietly without humor. "Been there, done that. Trust me, it is possible to survive."
She recalled Jake's farcical recitation of his own family life. Had he once been a small boy looking for someone who'd love him in a special way?
She searched his face for the softness, the vulnerability that must have been there once. He moved his head slightly, and a final glimmer from the sunset reflected in his eyes, bringing to life bright flames of raw desire, igniting an answering flame deep inside her.
For a long moment he stared at her, his gaze flicking across her face and back again. She tried to turn away so he couldn't see the way he affected her, but she remained immobile, as if her body had somehow linked itself with his. His head dipped toward her, and she could only lift her lips to his as all rational thought disintegrated into pure sensation. His mouth on hers, warm and soft and firm and demanding and giving, carried her away from the empty world she'd been trapped in, created a whole universe of twinkling stars and swirling galaxies, of moons and planets and suns waiting to be explored.
Her arms wrapped around him, her hands splaying across his back, her fingers searching the corded muscles beneath his denim shirt. Her heart pounded in rhythm with his ragged breathing, as though the two of them comprised a single entity. He pulled her more tightly against him, one hand sliding down her hip while the other tangled in her hair.
With every breath she drank in more of him. The scents of denim and masculinity she'd noticed in the library mingled with the green scent of the freshly-mown grass, and all seemed to belong to Jake. He surrounded her, his lips devouring hers, his arms wrapping her body, his essence invading her soul. She could feel his hardness against her and she wanted him, wanted all of him, needed to be a part of him, as if by a physical union he could fill the black hole she'd become.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, an alarm bell clanged. She wanted to ignore it, to immerse herself in the wild sensations Jake's kiss created in her, to grasp for the elusive quality of completion, but the alarm kept screaming discordantly.
She'd just lost her family, maybe twice. This frantic need for Jake wasn't going to change that. He wasn't going to fill the void.
Reluctantly she pushed away, and this time he let her.
The summer evening turned cold as his lips and his body left hers.
"It's getting late," she said breathlessly. "We should go back."
His eyes searched hers for a long moment, then he nodded. "You're right," he said, and she wasn't sure if he was responding to what she'd said or what he'd seen in her eyes. Or both.
They crossed the cemetery side by side but not together, and the setting sun cast long shadows before them.
When they were seated in the car, Jake sat for a moment with his hand on the key. "I shouldn't have done that," he said, not looking at her.
That made a horrible situation even worse, made her eager participation one-sided, desperate. "It's all right," she mumbled, studying her hands in her lap.
"It wasn't professional."
"It's all right," she repeated, unable to come up with anything more original to say.
He started the engine, and they drove into the gathering darkness.
If Rebecca had felt alone before, the sensation was multiplied exponentially now. For a few brief moments she'd known a joining to someone else, a belonging. With the withdrawal of that connection, the barren wasteland inside her seemed even more stark.
"As soon as we get to the motel, I'm going to pack up and drive back to Dallas," she said. "Tonight."
"Good idea. I'll keep you up-to-date on anything I find."
"I don't think you'll find anything else. I think Janelle Griffin was my mother." The last of her hope had gone with Jake's withdrawal. The bleakness in her soul was complete. "I think my mother's dead. I've got to accept that and do as you said, get on with my life. Go back to work, reclaim my friends, carve out a place for myself." Though that seemed an impossible feat right now.
"Good idea," he repeated.
So it was sealed. She'd leave and never see Jake again, never again experience the heady sensation of his touch, his kiss. The night stole into the car, seeping inside her pores, running through her veins where hot blood had flowed only a few minutes before.
Two blocks away from the motel, red lights flashed behind them, and a siren sounded.
"What the hell?" Jake pulled over.
"Were you speeding?"
"In this town? Considering our relationship with the local police chief, I wouldn't dare change lanes without giving a signal. Assuming we could find a street here with an extra lane to change to."
Farley Gates lumbered up to their car door.
"What's the problem, Gates?"
"Need to see your driver's license."
Jake reached into his back pocket, took out his wallet, removed the license and handed it to the po
lice chief.
Gates copied information onto a ticket.
"What are you doing?" Jake demanded. "I wasn't speeding and you don't have any red lights for me to run."
"Got five, but that's not the problem. You got a busted out head light."
"The hell you say! Look!" He flung his arm toward the windshield. "You can see both beams from here."
Gates walked to the front of the car, took out his club and swung it downward. Rebecca gasped in shock as the sound of breaking glass filled the quiet summer night. He walked back to the window and handed Jake a ticket. "Like I said, you got a busted head light."
Gates returned to his car and drove away.
"What's going on?" Rebecca asked. "Why did he do that?"
Jake shook his head and continued to stare out the windshield until the tail lights disappeared.
Finally he turned to Rebecca. "I've got a real strong hunch Janelle Griffin is not your mother. Otherwise, he wouldn't still be trying to get rid of us."
Comprehension finally penetrated Rebecca's shock, followed by righteous anger and a new determination. "I'm not going back to Dallas."
"I had a hunch you'd say that, too."
He didn't sound upset, but he didn't sound glad either.
It didn't matter. No more than it mattered that her mother didn't want to be found. At the cemetery she'd given up her mother, had accepted that she would never be special to anyone, that she had no identity. Dealing with the pain only to find it was a false alarm had hardened something inside her. She would find her mother, even though the woman might slam the door in her face, she'd find her and meet her and see the color of her eyes, the shape of her chin, the slant of her nose, then turn and walk away from her.
Secrets Rising Page 8