by Marta Perry
Trey shrugged. “I wasn’t invited to the dinner, but from what Amanda said, they were at least on their best behavior. I imagine Elizabeth insisted on that, and they’re too smart to go against her wishes.”
“That’s for the best in this case. But they might all be better off if they didn’t knuckle under so readily to Elizabeth. She’s too used to having her own way.”
“She’s not going to get it with Amanda, at least.” Trey had to smile, thinking of Amanda’s instant reaction to Elizabeth’s assumptions. “Elizabeth actually wanted her to give up her independent life and move into the Winthrop mansion.”
“She won’t do it?” his father questioned.
“Not a chance. She’s one independent woman.”
“Good for her,” his mother said unexpectedly. “She wouldn’t be able to call her soul her own with Elizabeth looking over her shoulder all the time. Although at Elizabeth’s age, I don’t suppose she’ll be able to boss them all around for too much longer.”
“I hope they’re not counting on that.” There was a sarcastic edge to Dad’s tone. “Elizabeth is capable of living forever just to thwart them.”
Trey grinned, glad to see his father’s spirit hadn’t dimmed. “I guess I’m glad you don’t have millions to leave us, then.”
“Consider yourself lucky on that score.” His father’s smile faded. “This young woman—is she after the Winthrop money?”
On that subject, Trey had no doubts. “Not at all. Like I said, she’s an independent woman. She came here to find out the truth, not to cash in. As far as I can tell, she’s more pleased at being a part of the Miller family than anything else.”
“Miller? Jacob Miller?” Dad was sharp this morning. “So that’s who it was. I knew there had to be some good reason why Melanie was so tight-lipped about the father of her baby. Elizabeth wouldn’t have countenanced that marriage for an instant.”
“More fool her, then. Jacob’s a good man.” He’d been favorably impressed with what he’d seen of Jacob thus far. Amanda was fortunate in having him for a father.
“I’m sure you’re right. That’s a fine family.” Dad pushed the empty fruit bowl away.
“You must bring your Amanda over for supper some evening soon. We’d like to meet her.” His mother was obviously trying to remain neutral, but she couldn’t quite hide the rampant curiosity in her eyes. She probably suspected that her son had more than a professional interest in Amanda. “Maybe over the weekend? Why don’t you ask her?”
“I’ll see what she says, okay? As long as you promise you’re not going to bring out my baby pictures.”
Mom’s cheeks flushed. “I only did that once.”
“I know.” He’d polished off the eggs and the toast that had come with them, so he stood, bending over to kiss her cheek. “I’ll mention it.”
His father seemed to be lost in a reverie. “Dad? I’m going to the office now.”
He nodded, his gaze coming back to Trey. “I’m glad that Melanie’s child found her way back after all this time. I was never happy about the part I played in that situation.”
“I thought you split with the Winthrops over that.”
“I did, but not soon enough.” The lines in his father’s face seemed to deepen. “When I saw how determined they were I knew none of the things I’d said had made a difference. So I found the place where they sent Melanie, and I made the arrangements.”
He paused, shaking his head. “Maybe I should have told you, but Elizabeth was my client at the time.”
“I understand,” Trey said quickly. “It doesn’t matter, because Elizabeth told Amanda where it was. She’s already put the private investigators on it.”
“Good. I’m glad. When Elizabeth wanted me to write a new will for her, cutting Melanie off, I’d had enough. It was no good telling myself she’d just get someone else to do it. I had to live with myself.” His gaze sharpened on Trey. “I said earlier that your duty was to your client. But that’s not always the case. Your first duty is always to your belief in justice. And to your own principles.”
Trey nodded, reflecting that justice wasn’t always quite so clear-cut. One thing was sure, though. It would be best if Amanda never knew the part his father had played in what happened to her mother.
* * *
THE CHANGING PALETTE of color on the ridge intrigued Amanda, and she lingered on the porch the next morning when she returned from her usual morning walk with Barney. The autumnal air was crisp, with just a hint of mist rising from the valley floor.
She’d miss this when she lived in Boston, she realized, after the taste she’d had in Lancaster County. The city had its charms, but the constant daily touch of nature seemed to draw her to this place. Maybe that indefinable longing to be close to the natural world came along with whatever she’d inherited of her father.
The sound of a car coming up the lane brought Amanda instantly alert. Barney, catching her emotion, rose to his feet and gave a single warning bark.
“It’s all right.” She pacified him with a pat, reminding herself that there was no need for alarm. Her assailant was far away by now if he hadn’t been picked up by the police.
But she didn’t recognize the car that nosed to a stop behind hers, and she fingered the cell phone in the pocket of her windbreaker. Even when the woman stepped out, she was blank for a moment before she realized it was the person who’d spoken to her in town one day about Carlie. Lisa Morgan, that was the name. She’d wondered afterward if the woman had been a friend of Melanie’s. She looked about the right age.
Amanda’s welcoming smile hid, she hoped, the questions that seethed in her mind. What was behind this unannounced visit?
She descended the steps, Barney at her heels. “Mrs. Morgan, isn’t it? It’s nice to see you again.”
“Lisa, please.” Well-dressed in a casual style suited to the surroundings, the woman was much like any of the well-to-do matrons who’d brought their pets to the practice in Boston.
Was this how Melanie would have turned out, had she made different choices? Maybe, but she’d think the teenage rebel might have been a little less conventional.
“I hope you don’t mind my dropping by, but I didn’t have your number, so I couldn’t call.”
“Not at all.” Amanda gave the expected polite answer. “Won’t you come in?”
Lisa glanced at the porch. “You were relaxing on the porch, weren’t you? It looks like a delightful spot. Let’s sit there. If you’re sure you have time for a visit?” Her tone made it a question.
“Of course.” She led the way to the comfortably curved rocking chairs. “I’m glad to have a chance to talk to you. Were you, by any chance, a friend of my mother’s?”
Lisa’s eyes sparkled with sudden amusement. “I suppose it’s pretty obvious, since I seem to be forcing my acquaintance on you. I wouldn’t have intruded, but I imagine any version of Melanie you’d get from the Winthrop family would be a little...skewed, shall we say? Maybe you’d like to hear from a friend.”
Warming, Amanda smiled back. “Elizabeth is a bit prejudiced. I take it you’ve heard that Mrs. Winthrop has accepted the results of the DNA tests.”
“I hope you weren’t trying to keep it a secret. Thanks to Carlie and her brother having a noisy quarrel about it outside the office at the plant, most people know.” She leaned toward Amanda, reaching for her hand. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’ve been found at last. All these years I’ve wondered...” Her voice faded, and she wiped away a tear that spilled unexpectedly onto her cheek.
Amanda was moved. “You knew about the pregnancy, then.” Here, finally, was someone who might be able to fill in some of the blanks.
“Oh, yes. And I knew about Jacob, too. Probably I was the only one who did.”
“Melanie must have confided in you.”
Her thoughts buzzed with questions, but she tried to rein them in. She didn’t want to seem to be giving Lisa the third degree.
“Mel and I were best friends.” Lisa had a reminiscent smile. “BFFs, as my daughter and her friends say. We told each other all the things we kept from our parents, I suppose. It’s sometimes terrifying now to think about that from the parental point of view.”
“I suppose so.” Amanda thought of the secrets she’d tried to keep from Juliet. She hadn’t been all that successful. “Did you hear from Melanie after she left here?” She held her breath for the answer.
“What an idiot I am—that’s why I came.” She shook her head. “It’s just so disorienting, talking to you and seeing flashes of Melanie as I knew her. But yes, I did hear from her. She sent me letters from the facility, telling me not to let her family get hold of them. So it was all very secret—I was afraid of my parents finding out.”
Amanda had a mental image of those two naive teenagers, still holding on to their secrets and not daring to ask for advice. “She didn’t call?”
“That was pre–cell phone era, remember? If she had called, it would have come through on the family phone and been impossible to hide.” Lisa shook her head. “When I think how immature we both were, trying to deal with something that was completely beyond our abilities...”
“I’m sure you did your best for her.” She found herself in the role of comforter. “She must have appreciated your help.”
“I’m not sure how much help I was,” Lisa said ruefully. “But I’m dithering. The important thing is to tell you what Melanie was thinking and doing.” She paused for breath, and Amanda decided she’d have to take control of the conversation if they were going to get anywhere.
“How did she react when she first told you she was pregnant?”
“Shocked,” Lisa said promptly. “We thought we were so sophisticated, but I doubt she’d seriously considered the possibility. She said Jacob wanted to get married, but she was underage. She hoped her grandmother would consent.” Lisa shrugged. “Obviously that didn’t happen. I didn’t hear from her again until she was in that place in Massachusetts.”
Amanda tried unsuccessfully to put herself in Melanie’s shoes. Too much of society had changed in the intervening years for her to manage it.
“So, anyway, Melanie complained about going there, but she seemed to settle down, and she said people were nice to her. I started to think she’d go through with it, give up the baby for adoption and come back afterward with some story about being away at boarding school. Nobody would have believed it, but it would have saved face for the family.”
Yes, that would have been important to the Winthrops, secure in their mansion on the hill. The problems that beset normal people couldn’t be allowed to touch them.
“Still, she can’t have been that happy there, since she ran away,” Amanda probed.
“I didn’t hear from her for a time. Then she wrote, and she said everything had changed once she started feeling the baby kick and move. You,” Lisa added, smiling. “You became so real to her then that she couldn’t possibly consider giving you away to strangers. So she left.”
“I can’t imagine how she got along...alone in a strange city, pregnant, without resources...” She was beginning to manage putting herself in Melanie’s place.
“She was determined. And she showed a lot more independence than I’d have believed. More than I could have,” Lisa added. “She got a job as a waitress, and that’s where she met Juliet.”
Amanda let out a breath, something in her easing. Here was the link that had haunted her.
“Melanie said she couldn’t believe her luck, to find a friend when she needed one so desperately. I admit I was a little jealous that Juliet was doing what I couldn’t for Mel. They moved in together, and Melanie started sounding...well, hopeful. As if she could manage things.”
Nodding, Amanda thought that it was probably Juliet who’d given her that confidence. Juliet was a strong woman, and she expected that of other women, too.
“We seemed to be growing apart about then. I guess it was natural. I was worried about a date for the homecoming dance, while Melanie was preparing for a baby. But I had a note from her when you were born.” Lisa’s smile was tender. “She was so happy—raving about her beautiful little daughter. I remember sneaking around to buy a gift for the baby, a little pink sweater set. I didn’t want to have to answer any questions about why I was buying it.”
Amanda was touched by the image, but even more by her birth mother’s apparent love for her baby. “Did you hear anything more about how they were doing?”
“I received one more letter after that.” Lisa hesitated, eyeing her warily. “Unfortunately, I didn’t receive it until after her death.”
“I see.” She swallowed, wishing her throat didn’t feel so tight. “What did she say? Did she mention coming back?”
“She enclosed a picture of you.” She reached into her bag and pulled out an envelope. “I destroyed the letter, as we’d agreed, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the photo. After I heard about you, I went searching in the attic and found it packed away with a lot of high school mementos. You should have it.”
For a moment Amanda could only stare at the envelope. Then she roused herself to take it, open it. The photo slid out—a fading picture done with an instant camera, by the looks of it. Still, it was sharp enough to show Melanie, sitting in a rocking chair, cradling a baby in a pink blanket. The baby slept, its small face relaxed, lips slightly parted. A fluff of fair hair was visible on its head.
But it was Melanie’s face that drew her. Gone was the naive young schoolgirl of the photo her grandmother treasured, with her unformed, untried face. This was a woman, not a girl, a little too thin, maybe, with maturity in her face and fierce maternal love in her eyes.
“Thank you,” she whispered at last, sliding the picture back into the envelope. “I’m more grateful than I can say.” She cleared her throat, dragging her attention back to the important issue. “Do you remember what she said in the letter?”
“I couldn’t forget it, coming when it did the day after she’d been found.” Lisa’s tone was somber. “She said she was very happy, but she’d been thinking a lot about little Amanda’s future. She’d made up her mind to come back here and talk to the family, thinking if only they’d accept her and her baby, her daughter would have all she’d had.”
“No mention of coming back to marry Jacob?”
Lisa shook her head. “But she may have had that in mind, of course. At the moment, she seemed concerned about how best to manage the family. She said she wasn’t sure when it would be, but there was a trucker who frequented the restaurant where she worked who’d promised to drop her in Echo Falls the next time he had a trip in that direction. And that Juliet would take care of the baby while she was gone. Oh, and she said she’d try to get in touch when she came. But she never did.”
“I suppose they asked you—the police, I mean.”
“The chief came by and talked to me. But my parents were there, so I didn’t say anything. It wouldn’t have made a difference, and I was afraid of messing up any arrangements she’d made for you.”
Amanda nodded. She was still frustrated by how the situation had all petered out at the time, but she was glad nothing had happened to take her away from Juliet. “That’s all you remember?”
“Well, there was one thing I didn’t understand. She said something like she was thankful she had someone here in Echo Falls who would help her. I thought she might have meant me, but then I wondered if there could have been someone else.”
A little silence fell between them. Maybe she should say that Lisa was right, that she couldn’t have done anything, but how could they ever know?
Lisa seemed to rouse herself. “When I heard people whispering about suicide, it ma
de me so furious. That’s one thing you can dismiss from your mind entirely. Melanie was happy. I know that. And she was confident she could take care of herself even if her family turned her down. She’d never have killed herself and left you alone.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TREY HUNG UP the phone in his office and sat for a moment, staring at it. The call from Robert McKinley, Amanda’s Boston attorney, had surprised him initially. He couldn’t imagine why Robert was calling him instead of getting in touch with Amanda directly.
It had taken the man time to get to the point, leaving Trey with the sense he’d been uncomfortable with what he was about to ask. Finally, he reached the bottom line. An extensive search of court records had not turned up any trace of adoption proceedings. Unless Juliet Curtiss had traveled very far afield, it seemed unlikely that there had ever been a formal adoption.
Worse, Juliet’s brother had hired an attorney, who was making noise about why Juliet’s will had not been submitted for probate. McKinley felt sure that meant he intended to contest the will, and he hadn’t, of course, been able to submit until all loose ends were tied up and any outstanding debts paid, as well as the complicated valuation of the artwork still in Juliet’s possession at the time of her death.
Trey sympathized. The details involved in winding up an estate, especially when the death had been abrupt and unexpected, took time. But that hadn’t been the man’s point. McKinley had called because he wanted Trey to break the news to Amanda.
It was understandable, he supposed. From everything Amanda had said, he’d formed the impression that Robert had been much more of an uncle to her than an attorney. He’d been an important figure in her life from the time she was a child.
Now, faced with telling her something he thought would upset her, he’d like to justify handing it off to someone else. Trey was there on the spot, he’d been representing Amanda, he was the logical person to discuss it with her, or so McKinley reasoned.