by Loree Lough
“Hey, Buchanan. How’re things?”
Connor balanced an ankle on a knee. “Fine, O’Dell, and you?”
“Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news. Whaddaya want first?”
He could almost picture Buddy O’Dell, the potbellied, Dallas-born private eye whose impish grin seemed painted on his face. “The usual,” Connor said.
“Okay, bad news first.” O’Dell proceeded to fill Connor in on the search for Kirstie. He’d reached a dead end at a small hospice in a Chicago suburb. She’d been in Lombard as recently as last week, the detective explained. Rumor had it she’d gone to Milwaukee to spend her last days with a friend. “I followed that lead, but either the friend isn’t home or she’s avoiding me. I have a couple feelers out in Racine and Kenosha in case they’re headed south on their way back to the hospice.”
Connor nodded sadly. “If we don’t find her…”
“I know, Boss, I know.”
There was no mistaking the sympathy in the man’s voice. Connor stiffened his back. “So what’s the good news?”
“It’s about the lady who has your great-nephew.” Connor listened as O’Dell rattled some papers. “Says here that once upon a time, she was a singer. Toured the U.S. all by her li’l self with nothin’ but a twelve-string guitar to keep her company.”
“A singer?”
“Yup. Little over ten years ago. She was doin’ pretty good there for a while. Folks musta liked her ‘cause she made return performances in just about every place she was booked.”
Connor couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around that news. “A singer?”
“Uh-huh. She even cut a record. Made the top ten back in the late eighties. Then she dropped out of sight, just like that.”
Connor heard the unmistakable pop of snapping fingers. “She quit? After a hit recording? Why?”
“Arrested.”
Every muscle in his body tensed. “Arrested?”
“We must have a bad connection.”
Connor frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“’Cause you keep repeating everything I say.”
He cleared his throat. “Why was she, uh, arrested?”
“Seems the guy she was seeing at the time—drummer name of Bill Isaacs—was having some trouble with booze.”
“Spare me the details, O’Dell. I get the picture.” He’d been clamping his teeth together so tightly, he was beginning to get a headache.
“I don’t think you do.”
Connor ran a hand over his face. “There was an accident, wasn’t there?”
“Uh-huh. Bad one.”
Connor’s heartbeat doubled. “Was Jaina hurt?”
“Yep. Spent a week in intensive care, another two in a private room, then six months in physical therapy.”
Connor clenched his fists until the joints began to ache. “And then what?”
“A stint in the pen.”
“What!” Connor clenched and unclenched his jaw. “She got in the car with a drunk. There’s no crime in that. She probably didn’t even know he’d been drinking till it was too late.”
There was a considerable pause before O’Dell spoke again. “Seems she was in the driver’s seat when the cops showed up. She claimed she was trying to drive back to the hotel when Isaacs lost it and grabbed the wheel, and… Well, the rest is in the report.”
Connor replied with a deep sigh.
“Can I ask you a question, Boss?”
“You can ask.”
“Are you sweet on this li’l gal? Not that I blame you, ’cause I’ve got a picture of her here, and she’s right pretty, but…”
Sweet on her? Did he have to tack a Texas cliché onto everything he said? “This is business, O’Dell. Period. She’s the lady my niece left her baby with. If I hope to adopt the boy, I need to know as much about her as possible.”
“Didn’t mean to pry. It’s just that your reaction to the news was—”
“Believe it or not, even a coldhearted defense attorney like me can feel a pang of pity when he hears about the suffering of others.”
“Yeah, well, whatever…” Then, “You want I should fax this stuff to you?”
“Do that. And Buddy?”
“Yeah?”
“Keep your mouth shut about this. I don’t want the information falling into the wrong hands.”
“Consider my lips zipped. You want me to head on home?”
“Nah. Give it a couple more days. Maybe we’ll get lucky and one of your leads will turn up something on Kirstie.” He breathed a deep sigh, then said in a gravelly voice, “I don’t want her dying alone.”
“I could always hire couple a locals. Three heads are better than one and all that.”
“Whatever you think best,” he said distractedly.
Connor hung up, then buzzed his secretary. “I’m expecting a fax,” he announced when Pearl answered. “When it comes in—”
“I know, I know. Don’t read it, don’t touch it. It’s top secret, right?”
“Right.”
“I’ll buzz you the minute it arrives.”
After thanking Pearl, Connor spent a few restless minutes shuffling folders around his desk and pacing from one side of his office to the other.
Finally, Pearl entered with O’Dell’s report. Connor nearly grabbed the papers from her hand. “Hold my calls,” he instructed.
Connor quickly scanned the report, which included old news articles, police records and also records from Jaina’s internment at Jessup. Connor didn’t know how O’Dell had gotten them, but there they were. The date O’Dell had given him was emblazoned on his brain, and he aimed to find out all he could about the night of Jaina’s accident. It took nearly an hour of cursoring, but he finally found what he’d been looking for.
According to an old article, Jaina had spent seven months in the hospital, and after her release, she’d spent another six at the Women’s Corrections Center at Jessup. There had been an operation, too. “Injured Convict Under Suicide Watch,” that headline said.
Connor’s heart pounded as he skimmed some medical records from her prison file. “Surgery performed by Dr. Thomas Stewart to correct internal injuries sustained in a head-on collision on Interstate 94 in June of this year may have rendered Jaina Chandelle incapable of having children… Chandelle was extremely depressed upon learning of her condition.”
Rubbing his forehead, Connor sighed. “Poor kid,” he said under his breath.
He quickly flipped through other pages, noting her description as a “model prisoner,” then paused to skim Jaina’s arrest record. The officer who’d taken the police report recorded that Jaina had claimed that Isaacs pulled the wheel away from her, causing the accident. Other than that, her “jacket” was clean. One of those “guilty by association” cases, looks like to me, Connor thought. He closed the file and set it aside on his desk.
He stared down at the file. This was the secret he’d suspected she’d been hiding. This was the weapon he needed to beat her in court. He should be feeling elated, confident. So why didn’t he?
He tried to focus on his work again. But it was no use; he couldn’t concentrate on anything but Jaina. O’Dell had called the report a bad news/good news kind of thing, but in Connor’s opinion, there hadn’t been anything good about it.
He sat back in his chair and linked his fingers behind his head. Until now, he hadn’t really understood Jaina’s deep and sudden attachment to Liam. But if she believed she’d never conceive a child of her own, it made perfect sense that she’d latch onto one that had literally been dropped in her lap.
And now he understood why that single case of his that she’d read about had pushed all her buttons.
But Connor had taken an oath on the day he became an attorney. In it, he’d sworn to fairly and honorably defend all citizens protected by the Constitution. He didn’t believe in much these days, but he believed in that.
The harsh, unfeeling upbringing of his Bible-wielding parents had caused him to leave organized
religion behind long ago; if his mother and father were typical examples of devout churchgoers, he’d just as soon not call himself a Christian. He worshiped privately in his own way and found, during his one-on-one sessions with the Almighty, that whether social, political, personal or religious, any issue could be put to the Golden Rule test. If he’d been brought up on similar charges, would he want to be stamped “guilty” without benefit of a fair trial?
Each time such a case crossed his desk, Connor forced himself to answer that question because how would he face the man in the mirror if he wasn’t willing to give every defendant the benefit of the doubt? He firmly believed in the basic precepts of the Constitution. Among them, that no matter what crime a man is accused of, every U.S. citizen must be considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law by a jury of his peers. Anything less, and anarchy would prevail.
His heart ached for Jaina. A familiar “I want to do something about that!” sensation plagued him, as it always did when he heard a story like hers. But, as usual, he felt paralyzed because, much as he wanted to right every wrong committed against the innocents of the world, he could not. The best he could hope to do, given his powerlessness, was to go back to basics: the Golden Rule.
If he had survived Jaina’s ordeal, how would he want her to deal with him? Would he want her to back off, let him win Liam simply because he’d lived through some tough times? Or would he want her to treat him as an equal, with no more rights—and no fewer—than she had?
The answer was obvious. He would not add insult to injury by treating her like a victim because, in truth, she was anything but. She had turned tragedy into triumph, had risen above her past and emerged victorious. Out of admiration and respect for that, he owed it to her to treat her as an equal.
Besides, he wanted Liam to be a full-time, permanent part of his life. True, he’d mostly felt that way at the start because the baby was kin—his only connection to family—but within moments of his first encounter with the bright-eyed, smiling little boy, Connor had been captivated. Liam had stolen his heart, and there was no escaping that fact. The love he felt for the child was like none he’d felt before, and that’s why he wanted Liam now. If he had to hurt Jaina to make Liam his…
He’d represented parties on a great many custody suits and couldn’t recall one that hadn’t been hard fought, that didn’t end up causing hatred or, at the very least, bitterness between the parents. How could he even consider putting Jaina through that when he felt…
But exactly how did he feel about her?
Connor knuckled his eyes and sat up abruptly, knowing that to acknowledge the truth was tantamount to legal suicide. His head and his heart were clashing.
You’re falling for her, old boy, falling hard, said his brain.
FallING, his heart asked, as in “You’re gonna”? Or fall EN, as in “Man, are you in trouble”?
What’s the difference? his brain demanded.
If you have to ask, answered his heart, it’s already too late.
Dear Jaina,
I’ve been staying in Milwaukee with some friends that I met in the hospice. They told me a man has been poking around, asking a lot of questions about me. I told them to ignore him.
You’re the only person I know who would have any reason to send someone looking for me, and I think I know why. It’s because you don’t want me to be alone right now. I’m not a bit surprised that you would go to such lengths to make my last days happy and comfortable. It’s even more proof that you’re exactly the right person to raise my little boy.
I know that some people will say I’m a terrible mother for leaving my son with a woman I had never met before. They just don’t understand! I didn’t want to leave him at all! So when they say it, you just tell them that in my heart you were never a stranger! Because as soon as I found out I was going to die, and Liam might end up in some of the same horrible places I grew up in, I spent hours on my knees, asking God to help me make sure that wouldn’t happen.
I know it sounds crazy, but I believe He put me in your diner because He had chosen you to be Liam’s new mommy. God wouldn’t steer me wrong. Especially not at a time like this!
So please don’t worry about me, Jaina, because I really am fine. I’m not in any pain, and I’m not afraid of what’s about to happen because, as God said, “Your years will end like a sigh.”
I think that it’s a real blessing that Liam is so young. If he was older, I’d probably be all worried that he might miss me. As it is, I can go to Jesus without a care in the world for I know my baby boy couldn’t be in better hands. Plus, I know that you’ll help him understand why I did what I did, and that you won’t let him forget me.
They say there’s a special place in heaven for people who do angelic things on earth. You are one of those people, Jaina. God bless you, and thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Kirstie Buchanan
Jaina thanked God that she’d had the presence of mind to put Liam to bed before opening the envelope. Though there had been no return address, she had immediately recognized Kirstie’s unique handwriting, and something had told her the contents of the letter would not be easy to accept. She stared through her tears at the colorful balloons Kirstie had drawn in the upper left-hand corner. They seemed to bob and float on the page. She was far too young to meet her Maker, Jaina thought, sighing.
Kirstie was dying when she’d come into the diner. When she’d penned this message, the end was closer still. For all Jaina knew, the girl had already joined her Father in heaven. It seemed terribly unfair that a beautiful young woman should be separated from her child for any reason, but this…
If only Jaina could find her! She’d do everything in her power to make the girl comfortable, until the end came. And surely if Kirstie wrote a letter, or made a tape, outlining her desire to have Jaina raise Liam….
Why did life have to be so hard? she wondered.
But Jaina knew better than to ask why, because her own experiences had taught her that there were no satisfactory answers to questions like that.
Jaina had heard it said that human suffering was a test from God, that it must be endured so He might humble and discipline His children, to make them worthy to spend eternity with Him. You need to take a lesson from Job, Jaina told herself, because he managed to accept all the anguish tossed at him without question or complaint. Still…she wanted to believe there was a better way, an easier way for God to read Kirstie’s heart than cancer.
Jaina went to the bookshelf and pulled down her copy of Don’t Blame God. She’d purchased the book years ago while searching for healing of her own wounded spirit. The text had not brought her comfort despite the fact that she’d read it cover to cover several times. Maybe this time, she’d find the answers she sought.
The book opened automatically to page 179. “God cannot be blamed for sickness, disease, tragedies, and trials,” Michalski had written, “any more than He can be blamed for sin.”
He cannot be blamed for tragedy any more than He can be blamed for sin, Jaina reflected. If He created the universe and everything in it, didn’t He also create sin?
No. Jaina couldn’t pin that one on the Lord. He’d blessed His children with something He hadn’t given a single other creature: free will. Unlike the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky, He expected His children to exercise that free will rather than act upon instinct. Crime was the direct result of the actions of people who chose to do evil. No one had forced Bill Isaacs to get drunk and then get behind the wheel of a car; no one had forced Jaina into his car that night. The accident that altered her life was no one’s fault but her own, she reasoned, for she had chosen that path.
It wasn’t as easy to explain something like cancer. The answer to that—if an answer existed—could only be found through prayer. A lot of it. But…did she remember how to pray? Did she even want to remember?
She’d been a devout girl, a prayerful young woman. But Jaina had not conversed with God in a long
, long time. Not, in fact, since that night. Why would she, when she believed He didn’t listen to her pleas?
Her fifth-grade Sunday school teacher had given this homework assignment: “Find a Bible passage you can call your own. Memorize it, so that when trouble comes your way, or you’re afraid, or your faith is tested, you can recite it, and it will renew your strength.”
It took hours of searching before Jaina had come across the verse in Psalms that had always soothed and calmed her, even on the stormiest of nights: “…when the waters of the sea roar, and the mountains shake with the swelling thereof, be still and know that I am your God, your refuge.”
Jaina closed her eyes and huddled in a corner of the sofa, hugging her knees to her chest. Until that awful night, she’d believed wholly and completely that she was a child of God, that He loved her with all His might and would never leave her alone and unprotected.
Don’t do that, she warned herself. Don’t let yourself remember….
But in the blink of an eye, she was transported back in time to Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, and the nondescript room management had provided as part of her week’s pay for entertaining guests in the hotel lounge.
There was Bill’s car, an old yellow boat of a thing that had been around since the late seventies. She’d thought it odd that he hadn’t greeted her with his usual kiss to her cheek, but dismissed it. Bill was often withdrawn and surly when his band was out of work.
It wasn’t until he steered the car onto the highway that she realized he’d been drinking. “Pull over,” she said, “and let me drive.”
He shot her a withering glance. “Nobody drives my baby. You know that.”
“Yes, but you’ve been drinking, Bill, and I think….”
“I haven’t had that much. I’m fine.”
They drove in silence for a moment or two before Jaina turned in the passenger seat. “You have two choices, Bill Isaacs. Stop this car and let me out, or pull over and let me drive, because I have no desire to die in a….”
“Okay. All right. Calm down,” he said, a hand in the air to silence her. Both brows rose as he considered his alternatives. One look at her no-nonsense expression seemed enough to convince him to steer onto the road’s shoulder.
