“She’ll gain weight quickly,” Gemma said. “She has a good appetite.”
Farrell wondered what he was doing sitting in the coziest kitchen he’d ever seen with a girlchild in pink-footed pajamas on his lap and a woman with a smile as warm as summer sitting across the table. A woman who defined the word.
“So do you,” Gemma added.
For a moment he didn’t know what she meant; then he looked down and realized both cinnamon rolls were gone and his coffee cup was empty. He didn’t know when he’d had anything as good as the rolls. He couldn’t help himself. He grinned.
Gemma smiled, too, then took his dishes to the sink and refilled his coffee cup. “I really shouldn’t have asked you to come. You have the kind of job you probably want to forget about in your off hours. I wouldn’t have called except that, well…”
“It’s okay. You were just thinking of her.”
She brushed his arm as she leaned over to set the cup in front of him again. He inhaled the scent of steaming coffee and something new, something sweet and feminine that emanated from her and reminded him of lilacs. He remembered that he’d felt this same surge of unadulterated longing when he had touched her hand last night, and now, like then, he stiffened in denial. “I have to get out of here in a few minutes.”
“I’m sure you do.”
He found himself picking up the coffee cup, though he’d already had his fill. “Will she stay here long, do you know? Or will they move her as soon as a place in another home opens up?”
“No, she’ll stay right here.”
So the child would stay with Gemma, who had probably taken better care of her in the past twelve hours than anyone else ever had in her whole sad lifetime. The child would stay until the parents were found, and possibly, a reunion was attempted. Or the child would stay until the parents’ rights were terminated—a process that might take years—and she was placed for adoption.
Farrell knew that even though this solution was faulty, the child was more than lucky to have landed with Gemma for the time being. “She’ll be happy here as soon as she settles in.”
“Would you like to see the backyard?” Gemma looked startled at her own question, as if it had just popped out. “It’s probably silly, but I’m proud of what I’ve done with it.”
“You’re a gardener?”
“Not much of one. No, bring your coffee and come see. Let’s find out if our friend will come with us if you’re not carrying her.”
Our friend. He set the child down, and although she whimpered, she was not nearly as upset as he’d feared she might be. He stood and stretched, then extended his hand. She slipped her tiny one inside and padded beside him toward the door on the other side of the kitchen.
Gemma led them out to a small deck. “I bought the house because of the yard. It’s a double lot. Apparently the previous owners never went outside, so it had grown into a jungle. I had to hire professionals to prune everything down to size. But see what you think.”
Farrell realized he was in a child’s paradise. He stood beside Gemma with the little girl clinging to his hand and looked over the storybook creation. A weeping willow tree sat in front of a tall wooden fence, with a tire swing hanging from one massive branch. Beside it was climbing equipment consisting of timbers, posts and thick rope net stretching over what appeared to be the hull of a ship.
Closer to the deck was a wooden playhouse, complete with tiny window boxes under windows just tall enough for a child to see out. Curving even closer—right up to the steps, in fact—was a free-form sandbox large enough for four or five children to play in without endangering each other.
A picnic table sat off to one side, with a barbecue not more than a few yards away. Forsythia in full bloom bordered one fence, and an apple tree stood in front of the other. Brick pathways ran from one piece of play equipment to another, and flower beds just waiting for summer annuals circled the playhouse and deck.
“One of my brothers-in-law built the playhouse and the deck.” Her voice dropped a notch. “The other one put together the climbing ship. They’re good guys right down to the bone.”
He suspected they adored this ethereal sister-in-law with her serene expression and her soft blond hair curving to her shoulders. He doubted she’d even had to ask for their help.
She gazed up at him. “I just wanted you to see it. So you’d know…”
“So I’d know she’s in good hands?”
“Exactly.”
“I didn’t doubt it.”
“You did last night.”
His voice sounded like steel against steel. “Look, it doesn’t matter what I think.” He tried to soften his words. “I’m just the cop who brought her here. But for the record, I’m glad this is where she landed.”
She hesitated just long enough that he knew she was scrambling for an answer. He hadn’t meant to sound so harsh. But he was suffocating on the intimacy of standing beside this woman with a small child clinging trustingly to his hand. Both of them thought he was more than he was. Both of them thought he was somebody who gave a damn.
And right now, he was afraid they might be right.
“Well, I know you have to be getting back.” Gemma rested her hand on the little girl’s arm. Farrell looked down and saw the child weave her fingers through Gemma’s.
The child was going to be fine. She didn’t need him anymore.
The relief he should have felt didn’t materialize. “I’d better get going.”
“Thanks again for coming. It did the trick.”
He squatted to say goodbye to the child. “Hey, sweetheart, I have to go now. Be a good girl, okay?”
She wrinkled her forehead, as if she were going to cry. Before the tears could fail he stood and faced Gemma. “I hope the doctor’s visit goes well.”
“Would you like to know what he says?”
He was out of this now. Done. If he had a place in this case, it was to find the scum who had abandoned this child. But what could he say? That no, he wasn’t interested in how the little girl was? He was many things, but never a liar.
“I’d like to know.” He met Gemma’s eyes and saw questions she was too polite to ask. “Will you call me?”
“I’d be happy to. But not this early in the morning, I promise.”
“Call me any time you want.” He turned away before he could take back the words. But, of course, he’d already said them and wouldn’t retract them, anyway. Worse, much worse, he’d meant every one of them.
Chapter 3
The report room of the Hazleton police station was a wasteland of battered metal desks and ringing telephones. Farrell sat at one of them, tackling what seemed like a bottomless stack of paperwork. Usually he tolerated filling out forms in triplicate better than most of his colleagues did. He understood the need for record keeping, but today it seemed like a huge waste of time. He didn’t want to write up his part in finding the little girl in the closet. He wanted to search for her parents.
“You got a minute?”
Farrell looked up to find Archie standing in front of him with an open folder. “You have something?”
“I sent Brady and Scanlon out to question the neighbors last night after you left. Most of them didn’t want to talk.”
Farrell wasn’t surprised. People protected themselves and their families in the only ways they could. “Did you discover anything about the little girl?”
“An old lady who lives next door claims that the kid’s name is Mary. She said the kid’s mother used to come and go at the drug house a lot, and one day a couple of months ago she caught the old lady out on her back porch and demanded that she baby-sit. The poor woman was afraid to say no, and the kid ended up staying at her house for most of a week until the mother finally came back to get her.”
“And she didn’t tell anybody?” Farrell shook his head.
“She was scared. I don’t think she would have talked to us last night, either, but she’s moving to Detroit in a few days to live with
her son. I guess she thinks she’ll be safe.”
“What does she remember about the mother?”
“She never got a name, but she gave a pretty good description.” Archie looked down at his folder. “Long dark hair. Short. Overweight. She said the woman was missing a tooth or two in front. The description matches one a neighbor across the street gave us. They both guessed her age at somewhere around twenty-two or twenty-three. Most of the time she was seen with a man, and they were pretty sure he lived at the house.”
“Anything else?”
Archie closed the folder. “Nothing. They could be in California by now. Who knows? We’ll run what we came up with last night, but we’re probably never going to catch up with them. They’ll find another house somewhere, set up business…” He shrugged.
Farrell knew the answer to the next question already. “So what about little Mary?”
“She’ll be better off with the state than with a mother who abandons her whenever it’s convenient. After a while—a long while, probably—some judge will admit she’s been deserted and terminate the parents’ rights. Then, if she’s not too badly damaged by what she’s been through, they’ll place her somewhere more or less permanent. But at least nobody will drop her off with strangers for days at a time.”
“Some consolation.”
Archie dropped the folder on Farrell’s desk. “She’s a cute little thing. It’s too bad we probably won’t find the mother. She might agree to give up the kid. It’s happened before.”
Farrell didn’t tell Archie that if he had his way, it was going to happen again. He did his job, and he did it well. He didn’t take on personal missions, and he didn’t become obsessed with crimes he couldn’t solve.
Not usually.
Archie leaned over so his face was closer to Farrell’s. “Heard the foster mother at that home you took her to was something else.”
Farrell looked up and saw the speculative expression in Archie’s eyes. He knew where Archie had gotten his information. “Cal never knows when to shut up.”
“He tells me you stayed with the kid until she fell asleep.”
“She was sobbing her heart out.”
“This foster mom, she live by herself?”
Farrell heard the interest in his superior’s voice. “Does it make a difference?”
“Could. It sure could. She might need some home security. A regular patrol, you know?” Archie winked.
Farrell arched a brow, but Archie just laughed. He was still laughing as he strolled away.
“She’ll need vitamins. Lots of good things to eat. I want to do some blood work before you leave.” Anna Choi, a pediatrician who worked with Child Welfare’s clients, looked down at her chart. “I think she’s not quite two. I want you to make an appointment for developmental testing. We have a psychologist in this building who understands cases like this and knows what we’re looking for.”
Gemma balanced her new charge on her knee. “Can she settle in a little first? I don’t think anything we’d learn right now would be completely accurate.”
“Oh, he’ll take everything she’s been through into consideration. But we need some results now, so we’ll have a baseline for comparison.”
Anna stepped into the hallway and signaled for her nurse. “Will you take our patient down the hall and get her a toy from the basket?”
The nurse, an older woman with a friendly smile and superior child management skills, coaxed the little girl off Gemma’s lap and out of the room. Dr. Choi turned to Gemma. “I didn’t want to discuss this in front of her. We don’t know how much she understands.”
Gemma nodded.
“She’s got some serious bruises.”
“I know.”
“They’re consistent with what I’ve seen in other cases like this one. Somebody got angry and took it out on her. That’s why I got some pictures. We may have to use them if the mother returns and wants her daughter back.” Dr. Choi sighed and blew a strand of hair off her forehead. “Believe me, I’ve seen much worse. She’s almost healed, and I didn’t see anything to indicate broken bones, either recent or prior. But I’m going to order some X rays, just to be sure we know what we’re dealing with.”
“Whatever you need.”
“This might be hard for you to believe, but this kid might be one of the lucky ones.”
Gemma made a sound of disbelief.
“I know,” the doctor said. “She’s been slapped around, not so badly that she’ll have any lasting physical effects, but badly enough that we can use the evidence in court. She’s survived and come this far. If we can intervene and keep her from going back to a bad situation, then she has a chance to grow up more or less normally. Not all kids get that chance.”
“I want to protect her.” Gemma’s voice cracked with emotion.
“Don’t get too involved,” Dr. Choi warned. “All you can do right now is take this one step at a time.”
“Just as long as the next step is making sure she doesn’t go back into an abusive situation.”
Dr. Choi folded her arms and leaned against her examining table. “You know we can’t always prevent that, don’t you?”
Gemma did know, and she’d thought she was prepared. But even after one night with the little girl, she felt fiercely maternal.
“Take good care of her while you have her,” Dr. Choi said. “Right now, that’s the one thing you can do for sure.”
By the time Gemma made arrangements for X rays and shepherded the little girl through the process, both of them were starving. Gemma knew a deli that cut peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into stars and moons for their pint-size customers, and it was only after they were sitting at a window table looking over a busy street that she realized the police station was directly across the street.
Two stars, a moon and one turkey sandwich later, Gemma found herself choosing a giant slice of cheesecake to go. “You don’t have a bow, do you?” she asked the proprietor.
He didn’t, but he cut loops of string and fastened a carnation from one of the tables in the center of the plastic foam container. With the cheesecake tucked under one arm and the child tucked under the other, Gemma crossed the street.
Inside the station, she approached the woman in uniform sitting behind the reception window. “Hi, is Officer Riley in?”
Gemma hadn’t had time to think about what she was doing. But by the time the question left her lips, regret was already taking the place of impulsive goodwill. What had convinced her to bring Farrell the cheesecake? For that matter, what had possessed her to choose a restaurant directly across from the police station? She had wanted to say thank-you, but there were less personal ways to do it. She set the bag on the counter between them. “I can just leave this with you if he isn’t.”
The woman didn’t lift her head. “I’ll check. Take a seat.”
Chastened, Gemma nearly told the woman to forget it, but her charge began to rub her eyes, as if either a nap or tears were imminent. Gemma took the bag and moved to the side of the room, murmuring soothingly, “Hey, it’s okay. We’ll be going home in a few minutes.”
Home. It wasn’t the little girl’s home, of course. She might stay with Gemma for years. She might stay only days. At any time, the woman who had abandoned her might decide she wanted her daughter after all, and the courts might agree to give her a second chance. Then Gemma would be required to hand her over. She swayed to console the child, closing her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, Farrell was standing in front of her.
“Oh…” She forgot everything she’d planned to say. She had only come to thank him again and to repeat what the pediatrician had said. But for moments she just stared up at him and wondered what it was about this man that made her feel safe and under seige at the very same time.
She already knew he was a man who didn’t waste words. He didn’t waste any now. “I have some news.”
She nodded, as if that was the entire reason she had sought him out. “Do you?�
��
He bent his head to speak to the child. “Hi, sweetheart. I hear your name is Mary.”
The little girl, who was no longer nameless, held up her arms so that Farrell would take her.
“Mary?” Gemma rolled the word on her tongue as she handed the child to him. “That’s easy enough.” She felt an unwanted connection to the woman who had given this child both life and a traditional name. “I don’t suppose you have a last name to go with it?”
Farrell smiled down at Mary, who wrapped her arms around his neck. He didn’t look at Gemma. “I’m afraid not. That’s all we know for now.”
Gemma admired the strong sweep of his jaw. His dark hair was cut short, but it was thick and wavy enough to defy the closest supervision. She wondered if the man was the same way, if under the guarded exterior there was something inside him that couldn’t quite be tamed.
She reached into the paper bag and pulled out the container. “We came to say thank you. We brought you something.”
He turned his attention to her. She already knew that he hated emotion. He had probably been raised by a stern father who had taught him well. But now the expression in his gray eyes was not as remote as she had expected. It was, in fact, warm, maybe even probing. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know. And it’s a silly present, really. I mean, you probably eat across the street all the time. It’s their cheesecake. But it looked so good…” She realized she was babbling. He was smiling at her. A smile that made something inside her catch and hold. “If you don’t take it, I’ll eat it myself.” She smiled back.
“It’s a nice change from doughnuts.”
She laughed, and his smile broadened in response. “We were in the neighborhood. I took…Mary to the doctor.”
“What did he say?”
“She said Mary looks fine. She needs some extra weight and vitamins. Her throat’s a little red, but Dr. Choi thought she’s probably just coming down with a mild cold.”
“That should be fun for you.”
“Oh, we’ll do fine.”
“What will you do if you ever need help with her? Do you have…anyone who can lend a hand?”
A Mother's Day: Nobody's ChildBaby on the WayA Daddy for Her Daughters Page 3