by Marta Perry
* * *
GOOD OLD GEORGE. Juliet had had no illusions about her brother’s character, and she’d apparently been right.
“I wish you’d come back here.” Robert sounded fretful. “I’d be happier if you were actually in residence at the house. Possession does count, you know.”
“I understand. But I’d rather be searching for the truth of my parentage than sitting there in Boston waiting for the roof to cave in. Isn’t knowing the truth more important?”
“I suppose,” he admitted. “I just hope you’re not opening up something that will hurt and disappoint you.”
Poor Robert. She couldn’t let him take care of her any more than Juliet had ever been willing to. “Thanks, Robert. It makes me feel better to know I have you in my corner. You’re a sweetheart.”
“Yes, well...” He became flustered, as he always did when touched by emotion. “Just take care of yourself. And give me your address, so I know where to find you.”
After she’d given him the information he wanted and been soothed to the best of her ability, Amanda stood for a moment at the window, phone in hand. She glimpsed movement and spotted Sarah approaching up the path, carrying a basket on her arm.
Amanda opened the door even before Sarah reached it. Here was her chance to speak to Sarah privately, and she hadn’t had to go looking for it. That seemed to bode well for her goal.
“Sarah, hi. Come in.”
“I don’t want to disturb you. Are you getting settled in all right?” Sarah’s cheeks were like two red apples when she smiled.
“I’m all set. Thanks again, so much. The cottage is perfect. As you can see, Barney is making himself right at home.”
Stepping inside, Sarah glanced at Barney, who was sitting up, looking, Amanda hoped, like a perfect gentleman. “It’s gut you have him. I’d hate to think of you alone here.”
Amanda shook her head. “I wouldn’t be lonely, but he is good company.” Sarah probably couldn’t understand that, living in a house with so many family members crammed in.
“Well, here is some streusel coffee cake, just in case you get hungry before you have a chance to get groceries in. And milk. Just to tide you over.”
“That’s so nice of you.” Amanda took the basket and set it on the kitchen table. The coffee cake looked so delicious she was tempted to have a piece immediately.
“Ach, it’s nothing.” Sarah waved a hand to dismiss her kind gesture. “I’m sure you have things to do. Trey said you have business in town.”
Something about that sentence made it into a question. It seemed Sarah was as curious about her as she was about what Sarah might know.
“I’m here looking into some questions that came up after my mother’s recent death. There seemed to be a...a connection to Echo Falls.” How could she find out anything and still be as careful as Trey and Robert seemed to want?
“Ach, I’m so sorry for your loss.” Sarah’s face clouded, and she reached out and touched Amanda’s hand lightly in sympathy. “It’s hard to lose your mother.”
Amanda nodded, her throat tightening. “Yes.”
“So you said something about Echo Falls? Was your mother from here?” Sarah leaned against the table as if prepared to stay and talk for a while.
“Not exactly.” She hesitated, trying to think how to ask the questions she wanted without getting into an explanation she didn’t want to give. “But I think she may have been friends with someone who grew up here.”
“Yah?” Sarah looked puzzled but interested.
“You might have known her. She died in an accident at the falls. Her name was Melanie Winthrop.”
For an instant Sarah’s face seemed to freeze. Then, before Amanda could say anything, she’d turned away and headed for the door.
“I... I’d forgotten something I must do. I’m sorry. I can’t help you.” She left without waiting for a goodbye.
Amanda stood at the door and watched her go—fleeing, almost, as if from something she didn’t want to face. Slowly she closed the door.
Well. Amanda blew out a long breath. If that was the sort of reception she’d get whenever she mentioned the name Melanie Winthrop in this town, she wasn’t likely to find out anything.
* * *
LEAVING THE LIBRARY behind the next day, Amanda walked toward the café. She’d agreed to meet Trey there for lunch to share the fruits of their efforts. When she’d suggested that they didn’t need to have lunch together to do that, he’d countered with the fact that they’d have lunch in any event, so they may as well eat while they talked.
She hadn’t found an argument to that, at least not without coming out and admitting that she was trying to prevent a repeat of the feelings she’d experienced the previous day at the falls.
Trey, however, seemed friendly in a businesslike way, and his manner reassured her. Once Esther waved them to a table in the corner, he looked around as if something were missing.
“No guard dog today?”
Amanda shook her head. “I thought he’d better stay at the cottage. Somehow I didn’t think he’d be welcome at the library.”
“No, I don’t think so. Mrs. Gifford runs a tight ship. She used to make us kids empty our pockets before we went back to the stacks, just to be sure no sticky candy was going to get on her books.”
She had to smile. “I did think her rather intimidating. To say nothing of curious. She seemed to find a lot of reasons to walk behind me while I was scanning the microfiche.”
“That’s unfortunate, but it’s about what I expected. It won’t be possible to keep your mission a secret very long.”
Trey seemed to take that more seriously than she did. Maybe it was a sign of his mixed loyalties. Or possibly being overly cautious was part of the attorney’s job description.
“I never thought keeping it quiet was a viable option. If I’m going to find answers, people will have to know what the questions are.” A spurt of annoyance went through her. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” His eyebrows lifted, giving his face a momentary look of caricature. “The Winthrop family might well take offense at a stranger bringing up the painful past.” He held up a hand when she would have spoken. “Okay, let’s not go over the same ground again, especially when Esther is heading this way.”
Maybe he was right. She tried to focus on the menu, but ended up ordering the chicken potpie because Esther seemed to expect it. Meanwhile she wrestled with the unpalatable fact that if she made enemies of these people to start with, they were hardly likely to be cooperative.
Once Esther had gone, Trey glanced around the café, and he was apparently satisfied that the other customers were focused on their own meals and conversations. “How did you make out with the newspaper accounts?”
Amanda shrugged off her irritation. “Slim, very slim. Pictures of the falls, an account of the difficulty the volunteers had in bringing her out, a sketchy account of her being spotted by a hiker. And a carefully worded obituary a day later.” She toyed with her spoon. “It allowed me to visualize Melanie a little better, but it was short on helpful facts. I ran across a photo of her,” she said, setting it on the table. “She looked very young, very naive. She was barely eighteen when she died.” That was inexpressibly sad. Amanda glanced at Trey, to find him studying her face. “What? Do you see a resemblance?”
“Not in coloring, so much, but maybe in your features. What do you think?”
“I don’t know.” She’d wanted some confirmation one way or the other in the photo, but she didn’t see it. Certainly no one had ever said she looked like Juliet, and now she knew why. “For an instant I thought she looked familiar, but then it passed. Anyway, a black-and-white newspaper photo hardly gives an idea of how someone looks.”
“True enough. Did the newspaper say anythin
g about where Melanie had been? Or mention her leaving town at all?”
Amanda shook her head. “It said she’d recently returned from a visit to friends in New York. I suppose that was what the family told the reporter.”
“And he’d be unlikely to print anything else, even though the town had been whispering about Melanie’s departure for months.”
“But what was the point, if people already guessed the truth?” She let her exasperation spill over. “What’s the use of trying to manipulate the news, then?”
“Darned if I know, but obviously it was important to the Winthrop family. Pride, I suppose. Things were a little different then in terms of what was acceptable.”
“I guess. It’s difficult to envision how much society has changed in the last thirty years or so.” But this wasn’t getting them anywhere. “What about you?”
“I didn’t have much more luck with the records...”
He cut the words short when Esther arrived with their meals. Beaming, she slid steaming bowls in front of each of them and added a basket of rolls. “There now. You get that inside you, and you’ll have plenty of energy for whatever you have to do today.”
“It smells delicious,” Amanda said. And it looked that way, too.
Esther picked up her tray, gratified. “I hear you’re staying with the Burkhalter family.”
She blinked. “How did you hear about that already? I just moved in yesterday afternoon.”
“Ach, you haven’t run into the Amish grapevine yet, ain’t so? We don’t need telephones for word to spread fast. You’ll be happy there, I know. Sarah will take gut care of you.”
“She’s already brought me a streusel coffee cake, just to be sure I wouldn’t go hungry,” Amanda said. Somehow she doubted that any more gifts would be forthcoming, not if Sarah’s abrupt departure at the mention of Melanie Winthrop meant anything about her future behavior.
“Ach, that’s Sarah all right.” Someone hailed Esther, and she moved off, unhurried.
Trey buttered a roll, watching her. “You looked a little funny when she mentioned Sarah. There’s nothing wrong, is there?”
She wasn’t sure she liked the fact that he could read her expressions so easily. “Something happened that was rather odd. Sarah and I were having a nice conversation, and she asked about what brought me to Echo Falls. I didn’t tell her the whole story, but when I mentioned Melanie Winthrop she just...froze. I don’t know how else to put it. Her whole manner changed. She said she had to do something and rushed away. I didn’t know what to make of it.”
Trey’s forehead furrowed. “That is strange. I’m surprised she even knew about Melanie’s disappearance. She wouldn’t have been much more than in her early teens, I’d guess.”
Shrugging, Amanda scooped up a fragrant spoonful of the chicken broth and noodles. “Teenagers seem to know everything. I don’t suppose it was any different then.”
“Could be.” But he still looked troubled. “It’s odd, all the same. I can’t even guess what would make Sarah act that way. What did you say to her?”
Was he imagining that she’d given Sarah the third degree?
“I told you. I’d barely gotten Melanie Winthrop’s name out before she reacted. I didn’t have time to ask her anything.”
He shook his head, frowning a little. “There has to be a reason, but I’d guess she wouldn’t tell me, even if I asked.”
“I’ll cross her off my list of possible sources of information,” she said. “How did you make out?”
“The court records showed little or nothing. There was an inquest, of course, but it was more a form than anything serious. It brought back the verdict of accidental death and expressed sympathy for the family.”
So they’d been quick to sweep Melanie’s death under the rug, in other words. “What about the postmortem?”
“There wasn’t one.” Trey’s voice flattened, as if in disapproval. “The family was opposed to having it carried out, and according to the coroner, the cause of death was fairly obvious. Head injuries, as you might expect. Reading between the lines, I’d say the decision makers saw no point in going farther. An unfortunate accident or maybe a despairing suicide. They picked accident, issued a few warnings about the dangers of the falls trail and dropped it.”
She pounced on his words. “So you think they didn’t pursue it as they should have.”
“I didn’t say that.” Frustration edged his voice. “Don’t put your own spin on my words. If I’d been in that position, I might have done the same. It can’t be easy to make that sort of decision when you know the people involved.”
Obviously arguing the point wouldn’t get her anywhere. “Sorry. What did the police chief say when you talked to him?”
“He wanted to know why I was asking, of course.” He rested his spoon on the side of his empty bowl. Somehow he’d managed to scoop up a whole bowlful of potpie while they were talking. “As I predicted, he wasn’t exactly eager to talk about a local scandal just to satisfy your curiosity, so I had to tell him why you’re interested. Carmichaels won’t gossip, at least.”
She must have made an impatient movement, because he frowned before he went on.
“He didn’t have much to say beyond what I’d already found in the records. He did confirm that the family agreed they hadn’t heard anything from Melanie and didn’t know she’d come back.”
“That was strange, wasn’t it? I mean, why would she return if not to be reconciled to her family? If she’d had the baby, she might have realized how difficult it was and wanted to have their help.”
“I agree, that seems logical, but if they all said that she didn’t approach them, I don’t see how you can prove otherwise after all this time. It’s a dead end.” He made a gesture of finality.
She was beginning to think it delighted him to present obstacles. “Maybe I can’t prove anything, but I have the right to ask questions. This is my life we’re talking about and you—how do I know you’re not trying to protect the Winthrops?”
Trey’s face hardened. “You don’t. You’ll have to take me on trust. Or not. Look, what are you really after? To find your birth mother? If it was Melanie, you may never be able to prove it.”
“It’s not that simple.” She couldn’t keep the annoyance she felt from showing in her voice. “This isn’t just a sentimental journey. I have to find proof, if it exists, that Juliet actually adopted me. Otherwise...”
“Otherwise I suppose you might stand to lose your inheritance from her.” He was quick, she’d say that for him. “You must want that inheritance pretty badly to go to these lengths.”
“Is that your considered objective opinion?” She put some frost in her voice, which wasn’t all that easy when anger was like a fire on her nerves. She stood, grabbing her bag.
“Where are you going?” He got up, glancing around and lowering his voice. “Don’t make a scene.”
That infuriated her for a reason he couldn’t understand and probably wouldn’t appreciate if he did. “I’m going to see the police chief for myself.” Her bag strap hooked over the chair, and she yanked it free.
Trey tossed some money on the table and grabbed her arm. “Not without me, you’re not. He already knows you’re my client, so don’t even think about it.”
She glared at him for a moment and then jerked a short nod. Like it or not, she seemed to be stuck with him.
* * *
THEY’D GOTTEN HALFWAY to the police station before Trey realized how ridiculous they must look, striding along without speaking or even glancing at each other.
“Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that about your inheritance. Didn’t her will make her wishes clear?”
Her expression tightened, if anything. “It says that she left everything to me, by name, but then it says, ‘my daughter.’ Robert�
��s afraid...”
“Right, I see. That could conceivably leave it up to the interpretation of the judge if someone brought suit. Would anyone?”
“Robert says that Juliet’s brother, George, has been asking questions. He must have some doubts.”
Tricky. What might seem clear to a layperson could become anything but if it went to court. “Okay. Naturally you want to prove that you were Juliet Curtiss’s daughter.”
“I suppose...” She still didn’t look at him, but she shook her head. “If you’re asking me why this search is so important to me, I don’t know how to answer. At first, my only goal was to find the proof of my adoption. Now that I have an idea of who my mother might have been...” She pressed her lips together as if in need of control. “I do know you can’t imagine what it’s like to have everything you’ve believed about yourself suddenly in question. Not until you experience it.”
For an instant she looked lost, and Trey winced. He didn’t want to be the one who caused that feeling.
“Sorry,” he said again. He tried to think objectively about her situation. “Was there ever a time that you suspected the truth? Or questioned your mother?”
“Not really.” Amanda seemed to look into the past. “Juliet always made me feel so secure. Even when someone kidded me about not inheriting her looks or her artistic talent, she laughed it off. I looked like my father, she said, and everyone had unique talents.” She slanted a sideways look at him. “But I suppose you always wanted to be an attorney, like your dad.”
“And my grandfather,” he added, relieved that the ice had melted between them. “I don’t know that I ever considered any other option. I was born to go into the family firm.”
And it had nearly faltered on his watch. He could never forget how close they’d come. And how close they still were, for that matter.
“No siblings to take your place?” she asked.