“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t understand.”
Daniel looked straight at Pierce. Just like Daniel’s father would have done...
“About Camille. About what went on here. Obviously you’re involved. The first order of business is to find out what we’re facing. I need to know what you know about all of this.”
Tears sprang to Eliza’s eyes, and she blinked them away. She loved her husband so very, very much. Could feel his restraint.
And his fear.
And he still thought Daniel knew something...
Daniel looked at her.
And her heart sank.
“I honestly didn’t know she was behind the vandalizing until this morning.”
Eliza believed him immediately.
But tensed as she watched Pierce.
“What do you know about her?” Pierce said. And then, “And I want to know everything this time.”
“Yes, sir.” Daniel nodded. Licked his lips. And sent a look to Eliza that seemed almost apologetic.
“I don’t know why she’d do those things,” he said to Pierce. “I can’t understand that part, either.” He looked at Eliza, “But she knows you’re my mother.”
Eliza froze. Mother. She was a mother. Of course, she’d known she was. But...for so long she’d been forced to deny that part of herself...
Mother. Her.
“What reason would she have for wanting to hurt your biological parent?” Pierce asked.
Daniel shook his head.
“I asked for the whole truth.” Pierce’s tone maintained its kindness, but it was also clear he wasn’t fooling around.
The teenager turned to Pierce. “I’ve known Camille only about a year. My girlfriend, Molly, was her older sister. Molly’s been in foster care since she was little. She and Camille were split up. About a year ago, her family services worker told her that her sister was having some emotional issues and they thought it might help if Molly met her. Molly didn’t even know she’d had a little sister. She was beyond ecstatic about the whole thing.”
“Did Molly know you were adopted?” Eliza had so many questions. And needed answers so different from the ones Pierce was seeking. She needed to know about his parents. That he grew up loved and adored and happy.
He was a great kid. Everything she’d want him to be. His parents had done a great job...
“Yes,” Daniel said, glancing at Eliza. “It was one of the things that drew us together...”
He broke off. Couldn’t meet her gaze.
“How so?” she asked.
In her peripheral vision, she saw Pierce frown. She wanted to reach for his hand, but it was too far away.
“My...adoptive parents...divorced when I was eight,” he said. “They both remarried, had families of their own. I was welcome in both homes. They were great to me. Included me. Always came to my baseball games. But... I was the odd one out, you know? When I was at Dad’s, I was the one with family at Mom’s. When I was at Mom’s, I was the only one who also had family at Dad’s. On Christmas, both families, my half brothers and sisters, would all each have all day at home, while I spent part with one and part with the other...”
Her eyes filled with tears again.
“And when you met...Molly...with her being in foster care, the two of you had something in common,” Pierce said. Kindly.
And yet like a cop.
“Yes, sir.”
“And then she met Camille.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did they hit it off?”
“Yes. Absolutely. But...like they said, Camille has some emotional issues. She’d, like, call Molly in the middle of the night, tell her she was thinking about killing herself, stuff like that. She’d talk about cutting...”
“How did Molly handle that?” Eliza wanted to know everything about every aspect of his life. All the things a mother would know.
“She was great. Molly was...she was the motherly one at school. Always taking care of everyone...” His voice broke, and Eliza wanted to pull him into her arms.
And had to remind herself that she was still a stranger to him. That another woman had mothering rights where he was concerned.
That he’d grown up loving another woman as his mother. And clearly still did love her.
But he’d sought Eliza out.
She needed to know why. In the worst way.
“So...what happened with Molly...when... How did...”
“Camille had called her late one night. Said she had to see her. Molly called me. I told her she shouldn’t go. That she needed to call Camille’s foster mother. That she needed to let their parents do their jobs. She said she would, but next thing I know, Mom’s waking me up to tell me there’d been an accident.” He broke off as he teared up again. And Eliza went to him. Put an arm around his waist and held on.
She was holding her son. For the very first time. He’d lived within her for nine months, and she’d never even been allowed to hold him.
She filed away the moment. Right then, it couldn’t matter.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her heart in her throat. She glanced at Pierce, needing his help. He was watching as if from a great distance.
“She was hit by a drunk driver,” Daniel said, wiping his eyes and sitting up straighter.
He was more man than little boy.
Eliza gave him space, but she didn’t leave the couch.
“I’m assuming Camille then attached herself to you,” Pierce said, his gaze intent, but...impersonal, too.
“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s back up a minute,” Pierce said. “How did it come to be that you and Camille happened to be working on the Family Secrets set at the time that your biological mother was a contestant?”
Finally, a question she’d have asked.
Looking down, Daniel picked at the skin on one finger. He shrugged. Then glanced at Eliza, looking embarrassed.
“I...went to the agency last fall...”
Before Molly was killed. It just hit Eliza. He hadn’t yet been hurting and feeling alone when he’d sought her out.
“Did she know?”
“Of course. We told each other everything. She...um...was the one who suggested it. The whole idea was hers.”
“Whole idea?” Pierce sat forward.
“To find my...her,” he said, nodding toward Eliza. “The information was decades old, but over Christmas break we did a ton of research and found out that the person who lived at the address we had had worked at Rose Harbor Bed-and-Breakfast...”
Eliza nodded. Smiled through a new spate of tears. She just couldn’t seem to turn off the waterworks.
“Molly was into these cooking shows...always watching them because she said she wanted to be the kind of cook I’d always want to come home to.” He blinked. But looked at Pierce and continued.
“When she saw that one of the upcoming contestants on Family Secrets was from Rose Harbor, you could have heard her scream all the way in Hawaii, I’m pretty sure.” He grinned. And then sobered. “She said there were no coincidences, that this was our chance...”
“Your chance?” Eliza asked.
Turning his head toward her, he nodded. Rubbed his hands together as he leaned forward on his knees. And then gave his attention back to Pierce.
“She did some checking and found out that the show took interns, two of them, from local high schools, each segment. Camille was in good with our drama teacher—some kind of counseling thing for her, to work out her emotions through theater—and she got us in.”
“So she was the one who brought you and Eliza together?” Pierce was nodding.
“Yes. Which is why it never occurred to me that she’d do anything to hurt her.” He nodded toward Eliza again.
Eliza wanted to know why he hadn’t told her the very first day who he was. She remembered him just standing there on the side of the stage, watching, when she’d discovered the mushrooms were missing.
He’d been watching her, she now realized, not because he knew anything about the mushrooms, but because he’d been getting his first look at his biological mother.
What had he thought? What did he think now?
That she’d abandoned him?
Shouldn’t he have asked by now why she gave him up? She had so much to tell him.
But the story wasn’t just hers. It was Pierce’s, too.
“I think it’s pretty safe to assume, given the circumstances, that when Camille saw you with your birth mother, she felt threatened,” Pierce was saying. “Either because you would have contact with a biological parent, which would leave her alone in her fosterhood, or because she somehow thought that if you had a chance to get to know Eliza, you’d leave her, too. At the same time, she knew this was what Molly wanted, so she’d wanted to be supportive. Maybe she hoped that when you saw Eliza, she’d somehow be a disappointment to you, or you’d take an instant dislike to her and that would be that.”
When Daniel’s gaze narrowed, Eliza glanced at Pierce. He really did have a gift for...
“She did talk a lot about how much she hated her parents for abandoning her and Molly,” he said now. “Like, every time I saw her as though she wanted me to identify and feel the same way about my biological mother. I just thought it was because she was missing Molly so much...”
“She wanted to please Molly, but she wanted the meeting with Eliza to go badly.”
Eliza expected Daniel to nod again.
He didn’t.
“There’s more,” he said.
He looked at her. There was something in his gaze. Despair. Determination. A mixture of the two.
And that was when Eliza knew that she’d stepped into far more than she’d ever imagined.
More than she could make right.
* * *
I GOT THIS. Rolling up the sleeves of his white dress shirt, Pierce adjusted the tie that matched his wife’s dress and faced the boy.
“I asked for the whole truth,” he reminded Daniel. He’d been in the room twenty minutes. Was doing fine.
He’d surprised himself. And imagined his wife was pretty surprised, as well.
He couldn’t be a father, but he could be in the room with the boy. Could take care of business.
When the young man in front of him appeared to be having difficulty continuing, Pierce thought back over the interview. Looking for what hadn’t been said.
The whole idea was hers. This was our chance. Daniel’s words came back to him.
“What idea did Molly have when she suggested you intern?” he asked slowly, watching the teenager for any sign of subterfuge. “Family Secrets was your chance to do what?”
Meet Eliza? He could have kept researching. He’d have found her.
But...
“Why did you choose now to search for your mother? What made meeting her so important all of a sudden?”
Daniel flinched. Pierce was onto something. Finally.
They’d get their answers. Go home.
And figure out what they did with what was left between them. You didn’t just walk away from a love like theirs. They’d remain friends. At the very least.
I can do this.
“Like I said, it was Molly’s idea,” Daniel said. He gave Pierce a pleading glance. A first. Pierce wasn’t at all sure what to do with it.
“I need to hear the idea.” He went with his instincts. He’d questioned kids before. Did it all the time on the streets. What you got in your pocket, boy? Did I just see you take that candy bar off that shelf and walk out the door with it?
“Molly was pregnant.” His chin lifted as though daring Pierce to make something of it.
“I’m assuming the baby was yours?”
“Yes, sir. Of course it was. Molly wasn’t like that. We were in love...”
He’d heard it before.
Coming out of his own mouth.
He faltered. A major brain blip. His kid didn’t even know him from Adam and he was already following in his footsteps.
It stopped right now.
“We were talking about her idea.”
“We’re both seniors, and we’d both hoped to go to college,” he said.
“You wanted to give up the baby for adoption, and she wanted to talk to me and see if, all these years later, I still thought giving you up was the best decision?” Eliza blurted. Pierce worried about her. She looked far too fragile all of a sudden.
“No.” Daniel swallowed. “She knew there was no way I’d consider giving up any child of mine,” he continued. “I’m sorry,” he nodded toward her. “But after the way I grew up, never being fully part of either family, knowing that I was the only one who wasn’t really related to any of them...I swore to myself that when I became a father, that’s when I’d have a family of my own. My own family,” he said.
Sniffling, Eliza raised a tissue to her face and nodded. She didn’t speak. Pierce suspected that she couldn’t.
“You were telling us about the idea,” Pierce said again.
He could do this. Be strong where Eliza wasn’t. Handle the situation. Get them home. Figure out where they went from there...
He had his part down.
“Molly wanted to keep the baby, too, but said I had to have a chance to go to college. Especially when I got the scores back on the entrance exams. She said that I had the potential to be whatever I wanted and that I had a right to that chance. She said that there was someone in the world who owed me that right. The person who’d robbed me of the chance to grow up being part of a real family. She said that it was karma, how I had the chance, now, but needed some help to make it all work out right. She said my biological mother was older now and should take responsibility. Just until we could get through college.”
Pierce didn’t move. The entitlement should have appalled him. Except that he came up against the same pretty much every day. Kids nowadays grew up thinking that it was all about them.
And yet, mixed up in there, this kid was trying to do the right thing.
Unlike Pierce, he’d had the goal to provide for his child. To be there for him. To give him a solid, loving family...
He swallowed a lump in his throat.
But then Molly had been killed. The baby had died, and...
“So why, after Molly was killed, did you still want to meet me?” Eliza asked, her voice wobbly with emotion. “I’m so sorry, Daniel. I never meant... If I’d known... Giving you up was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.”
Daniel looked more like a young kid than an almost-adult as he looked at Eliza.
Pierce was uncomfortable now. Had to get things back on track.
“Why did you continue with your plan to meet your biological mother after Molly and the baby were gone?” he asked. Because this wasn’t about him. Daniel hadn’t sought out his father. Only his mother. Pierce had to assume that was for a specific reason.
“He’s not gone.” Daniel looked between Pierce and Eliza with wide-open blue eyes. “Bryant Nathaniel is very much alive, and I need your help. That’s why I’m here. I was hoping, like how Molly thought, that you’d get to know me over these weeks and be more willing to help than if I just contacted you out of the blue. But, either way, we, my son and I, need your help.”
Pierce felt like he was going to puke.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SHE HAD A GRANDSON? She and Pierce were...
Her gaze flew to the love of her life. He sat straight, his hands on his thighs, immobile. He was looking in her direction but wasn’t blinking.
It was as though he was in a trance.
Recognizing the signs, she watched him.
“What’s up with him?” Daniel asked. The kid was obviously feeling the effects of emotional overload. His voice squeaked. His heel bopped up and down. He was pounding one thumb against his thigh.
What was she going to do?
Her men were falling apart on her. She’d just found out she had a third little guy who was someplace without them, and she had no clue whom to tend to first.
“He suffers from PTSD,” she told Daniel. “He’s having what he calls mind blips. They’re emotionally based. He can feel them coming on and generally gets himself outside, or even just turns around and focuses on something else and...”
They’d never been this bad. Usually it lasted a second at the most.
Pierce blinked. She knew the second he’d focused on her that he was okay. For the moment.
“You ready to go?” he asked her.
Of course she wasn’t. None of them were.
“Let’s all go back to the hotel.” She looked at Daniel. “That is, if you have time?” They were in town until the next day. If she’d won, there would have been after-show taping to do as well as a congratulatory dinner with the judges scheduled for that night.
“I’ve got time.” The young man seemed to have regained his composure almost completely. “I can follow you.”
The fact that Pierce didn’t argue was a testament to the level of his distress.
* * *
“I’M FINE TO DRIVE,” Pierce said when they reached their car. The boy had gone to an employee lot to get his Ford Ranger, white, he’d said, and would be coming around to meet them. He also knew a shortcut to the hotel where they were staying. He’d said that if Pierce wanted, he’d lead the way.
Pierce wanted time alone with Eliza. However that had to happen.
“You’re sure?” Eliza’s concern made him feel like a wimp—and comforted him at the same time.
“Positive.”
She studied him for a long minute, but then nodded and climbed into their rental sedan.
“You scared me back there, Pierce. Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked again as he started the car.
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