“Why she gave you away?” Greer spoke the words Ramona wasn’t able to say.
“I was barely five. She gave me these”—Ramona picked up the bag of photos—“and dressed me up and took me to someplace. . . . I don’t remember much except that there was an elevator and it had mirrors in it. I remember thinking how pretty Mommy looked. She wore a new dress that day, and so did I. We got off the elevator and there were nice red carpets on the floor. We went into a room that had a long table in it. There was a man in there, he sat at the head of the table and he smiled when we came in.”
Ramona squeezed her eyes tightly shut, wanting to remember every detail so she could tell the others, but not wanting to remember because it hurt so much to look back.
She opened her eyes, determined to see it through.
“He told me what a pretty little girl I was. How pretty my red hair was. My mother made me sit and color while she signed some papers, and then he gave her something that she put into her pocketbook. She stood up and I did, too. I thought it was time to leave. But she told me I had to stay. Then she told me I had to be a very, very good girl, and if I was, that good things would happen for me. But if I was bad, something very bad would happen.”
“And she left you there,” Greer whispered, ashen, as if reliving the scene with Ramona.
“Yes.” Ramona nodded. “She left me there. And a few minutes later, a man and a woman came into the room. They were all smiling and made such a big fuss over me. . . .”
“Your new parents,” Greer said softly.
“Yes. My new parents. They were so excited.” Ramona swallowed hard. “The first thing they said to me was how they’d wanted a little girl just like me, one with red hair, for a long, long, time, and that they were so happy they’d waited for me.”
“Were they . . . ?” Greer struggled with the words.
“Oh, they were wonderful,” Ramona assured her. “I couldn’t have had a nicer family. They gave me everything. But there was always that . . .”
“That hole inside you,” Greer whispered. “That knowing that you weren’t good enough to keep. That somehow you just weren’t . . .”
“Yes.”
Ramona slid another photo across the table. Greer picked it up and stared at it before passing it to Sean.
“My mother gave me that before she took me to the office that day. She said that was my big sister and brother.” Ramona looked directly at Greer. “Only she called you Sasha, not Greer.”
“My adoptive parents named me Greer. Before that, my name was Susan. Everyone called me Sasha.”
“What do you think, Sean, should we do DNA testing?” Ramona’s jaw set stonily. “Would that prove to you that I am your sister? Half sister, at the very least.”
Sean appeared to be at a loss for words.
Ramona reached for the photos. Greer covered her hand with her own. “No, don’t leave in anger.”
“I’m sorry, Greer. I need to get home. I told the babysitter I’d be back before ten.”
Sean found his voice. “You have children?”
“A boy and a girl.”
“Where do you live?”
“In East Hilton.”
“Are you married?”
“Divorced.”
“Do you work? Do you—” Sean shook his head. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Start by saying that you believe I could be who I say I am.” Ramona’s eyes pleaded. “We can go on from there.”
Greer looked back at the photo. “I have this picture, too. It was taken on Grandma Michaels’s front porch.”
“That’s what it says on the back.” Ramona flipped the photo over and read the tidy handwriting. “Sasha and Sean on Mom’s front porch.”
“Makes you wonder about her, doesn’t it?” Greer shook her head slowly. “Why she had the three of us, if she was going to give us away . . .”
“Yeah, well, all these years, I thought it was just me. That maybe she kept the two of you in some secret place, and just got rid of me because I was . . .”
Unable to finish the sentence, Ramona pulled the hood of her raincoat up around her face, preparing to go out into the storm again. “I need to go,” she said in a shaky voice as she moved quickly toward the door.
“Don’t you dare.” Greer got up from the table. “Don’t you even try to run away from us.”
She wrapped her arms around the young woman and held her for just a minute as Ramona’s shoulders began to shake and she wept silently.
“Now, you don’t have to do that, hear? It’s going to be all right. It will be. We will work this all out, the three of us, and everything will be fine.”
Ramona nodded and whispered, “Thank you.”
“Oh, thank you, darlin’.” Greer gave her a hug. “Thank you.”
Ramona nodded and opened the door. With a look back at Sean, she stepped through it.
“Now, you be real careful going home.” Greer followed her outside. “And you call me in the morning, and we’ll talk, okay, honey?”
When Ramona had disappeared down the driveway, Greer turned to Sean, her eyes wet, and said, “I understand that you are a skeptic by nature, Sean. But you could have been a little kinder.”
“I didn’t know if she was telling the truth.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Why would she make up a story like that, about going to that office and being handed over like that? It’s not like we’re the heirs to some big family fortune.” Greer came behind him and put her arms around his shoulders. “I guess you were too young back then, but I remember like it was yesterday what it felt like to be taken away from that house—Grandma’s house—and away from you, to be put in with strangers. Everything changed, Sean. Even my name. I kept waiting for them to bring you. I felt sure that if I was really good, that they’d let you come, too. I waited and waited. . . .”
Her tears rolled down the back of his neck, but he sat, still as a stone.
“I missed you every day. And every night, when I said my bedtime prayers, the only thing I ever prayed for was to be with my little brother again.” She sniffed and searched her pockets for a tissue. “When I found you, it was the sweetest day of my life. So I know exactly what Ramona means when she says she has a hole inside her. I’ve had it all my life.” She blew her nose and stuffed the tissue back into her pocket. “I suspect you do, too.” She gave his shoulders a gentle squeeze. “Only difference between you and me is that I want that hole inside filled up. You seem to be content to let it stay empty.”
She gave him one last pat on the back, then turned off the outside lights. “It doesn’t have to be that way, Sean. But of course, it’s your choice.”
She tossed the tissue into the wastebasket on her way out of the room, leaving her brother alone in the quiet kitchen.
The room was nearly dark, the neon under-the-counter lights the only ones left on. Amanda stood in the doorway, studying the silhouette that sat motionless at the table.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “Sean?”
He nodded. “I’m fine.”
“So fine that you’re sitting here in the dark at two in the morning?” She ventured closer.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” He ignored her question.
“I could ask you the same thing.” She paused at the stove. “I thought I’d make a cup of tea, maybe it would help me sleep. Want one?”
“No, thanks.”
“Yeah, me either.” She came closer.
He watched her cross the room. When she got to his chair, she moved his arm aside and sat on his lap. He couldn’t help but smile.
“So. Want to talk about it?” She poked him gently in the chest.
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Start with Ramona.”
“I believe her.” He leaned back away from her.
“And that bothers you because . . . ?” She gestured for him to continue.
“I don’t know.”
Amand
a ran her hand over his head, stroking him, as one might a child who needed comforting. He leaned back and closed his eyes, relaxing for the first time in days.
“She was adopted, too. Given away by her—our—mother.”
The clock over the back door ticked softly.
“What would make a woman do that? Give away her children like that?” His eyes were still closed. “Ramona talked about being taken to an office. She described what sounded like a conference room, probably in a lawyers’ office. She said the man there gave her mother something in an envelope and then her mother left.”
“You think she got money from the adoptive parents.”
“Yeah.” His jaw tightened.
His arm drifted to her back and kneaded her shoulder gently.
“Greer said something about having a hole inside and wanting it filled up. I’ve lived with that same emptiness for as long as I can remember. I never knew it could be filled,” he said softly.
“It must have been so hard on you as a little boy. Being separated from Greer.”
“When Ramona said that her mother called the girl in the photograph Sasha, I knew she was legit. Just hearing the name brought it all back. I’d forgotten it, but hearing her say it, I remembered. Remembered being there in my grandmother’s house and being so scared the day they took her in the ambulance. And then people came—strangers—and took my sister and me away. I don’t remember where we went or who was there; I only remember being afraid. And then my sister wasn’t there anymore. And I don’t really remember too much for a while after that. Just a lot of faces and confusion and not knowing what was going on. Nothing specific, you understand, just a feeling of confusion all the time, through that whole time in my life. I didn’t have the words for it then.”
“You were a very frightened little boy. All alone . . .”
“I’m afraid it didn’t bring out the best in me. I wasn’t a very pleasant child.”
“I don’t think anyone could blame you, Sean.”
“But everyone did. And with good reason. I mean, I was a really obnoxious kid. No matter where they placed me, no matter how nice the people tried to be, I wanted no part of anyone. I broke things, got into fights, was overly aggressive, and as I recall, had quite the colorful vocabulary in those days. No one wanted to keep me for very long.” He shook his head, remembering the child he had been. “I made sure of that.”
“How did you manage to stay out of jail?” She continued to stroke his hair.
“God only knows. I wonder sometimes if things might have been different for me if Greer and I had stayed together.”
“She said she had wonderful parents.”
“I’m sure they were. Look at Greer, at the person she is.”
“You really love her, don’t you?” Amanda smiled. “Whether you wanted to or not, you really love her.”
“It’s kind of hard not to. She just sort of wraps herself around you. You saw how she welcomed you here, how she was with Ramona.”
“You’re afraid you’ll have to share Greer with Ramona.”
“Am not.”
Amanda laughed out loud and he laughed with her.
“I just don’t know how to deal with . . .” He struggled for words.
“Having people in your life that you could care about.”
“Yes.”
“Because if you care about them, maybe they’ll leave you.”
“Something like that. Maybe.”
“On the other hand, it could turn out to be very good. Just like knowing Greer has been a very good thing.”
“After so many years of being alone, of not really having anyone I cared all that much about, my life is starting to feel a bit crowded right now.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“I don’t know. It seems that the more people in your life, the more complicated your life becomes.”
“Well, then, here’s something else to think about. Things are about to become even more complicated.”
She leaned down and kissed his mouth softly, first one side, then the other.
“Consider me part of that crowd who wants in,” she whispered, then kissed him again, hungrily.
Sean pulled her against his chest, his mouth meeting hers, his tongue teasing the inside of her lips until she thought she was going to implode with the heat.
“This is a complication I can handle,” he whispered into her ear.
“That’s good, because I’ve decided to stick around for a while.”
He slid his hands up and down her back, needing her warmth and her softness. Needing more of her mouth, more of her sighs, more of her hands on him. He shifted her so that she was facing him and drew her down and into him as closely as he could, caressing her until her head was swimming, her body adrift in sensation. His lips moved across her throat, a steady line of kisses that moved ever downward. She leaned her head back, exposing her neck, urging him to take more.
They barely heard his cell phone when it rang.
“Shit,” he grumbled, then reached into his pocket, his mouth still on her skin.
“Yeah,” Amanda sighed.
He leaned his head back against the chair and studied her face while he listened to the caller. “All right. I’m on my way.” He turned off the phone. “I, ah, have to go.”
“I figured as much.” She pulled away and slowly stood up, her legs slightly numb.
“There’s been an accident out on Harkins Road.”
She nodded. “You’re the chief of police. I understand.”
“There’s a cruiser parked outside. I’m not leaving you unguarded. The house is being watched.”
“I know.” She buttoned his shirt and straightened his collar. “You’re a bit disheveled.”
“Hold that thought . . .” He smiled and kissed her before heading out the door.
“I’ll be here,” she said as he went through it, then she moved to the window to watch him hurry down the drive to his car. “I’m not going anywhere.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY
“Vinnie, what are you doing here?” An obviously pleased Dolores smiled at him in the mirror, then turned to touch his arm, her eyes alive with pleasure at his unexpected arrival at her shop.
“I missed seeing you yesterday,” he said, returning the smile, “so I thought I’d stop in and check out this little business of yours.”
His glance traveled the room, one end to the other, assessing his surroundings. There were six stations, each with a nice work counter, large wall mirror, and the obligatory swivel chair. All very standard, even to the black-and-white patterned linoleum on the floor. The walls were painted a pale pastel pink, the furniture in the dryer section black vinyl, and the receptionist area a high counter with a phone, appointment book, and small stack of business cards. Photos of pretty women with elaborate hairstyles and makeup lined the walls.
“Nice, babe. Very, very nice.” He nodded his approval.
“Thanks. We’re really proud of it, me and Connie.” She beamed. “We worked real hard for a long time to get this place together. Right now it’s just the two of us, but we’re hoping to hire someone to do manicures part-time for the holidays. And eventually we’d like to have a receptionist. We’re doing our own phone work and bookings for the time being. But we have big dreams, Vinnie.”
“And there is no doubt in my mind that you’ll make all those dreams come true.” He patted her on the back affectionately, then winked at the woman upon whose head Dolores was applying some sort of goop. “Talented as you and Connie are, you know you’re going to be a big success here.”
“That’s sweet of you to say.” Dolores turned back to her client and resumed spreading the light-colored stuff on top of her head. “I can talk but I have to keep going here. We don’t want Mrs. Olinski’s hair to be two different colors now, do we?”
“Might be interesting.” Mrs. Olinski shrugged good-naturedly.
“I won’t keep you. I just thought I’d stop in and se
e if you would be free for lunch later.”
“Oh, I’d love to, but I am booked straight through till seven again tonight.” Dolores made an exaggeratedly sad face.
“Well, then, how ’bout dinner?”
“It’s my night to clean up. We take turns, me and Connie. She closed last night,” Dolores explained.
“You need to leave early for something, Dolores?” Connie came into the shop, a plastic bag in one hand, a folded newspaper under her arm. Seeing Vince in the shop, she slowed her pace. “Oh, hi, Vinnie.”
“Connie.” He nodded, sensing something in her face, her manner, that brought all his senses to life. “How are you?”
“Good. I’m good.” She walked past him and took a bottle of soda from the bag and deposited it on the counter next to where Dolores was working. “They didn’t have Diet Pepsi. I had to get you Diet Dr Pepper.”
“That’s fine, Con. Thanks.” Dolores continued to work, oblivious to the faint trace of tension. “Ellie Cohen called. She’s running fifteen minutes late.”
“That’s okay. Gives me a minute to put my feet up.” She went back to the reception area and sat down. She took the top off a bottle of water and downed a long drink before setting it on the counter and opening the newspaper.
She called back to Dolores. “Dee, what were you saying about closing?”
“Just that you closed last night so it’s my turn to close tonight.”
“I could close if you needed to do something.” Connie opened the appointment book and studied the entries. “I’m going to be here late anyway. Your last is at seven, just a cut. My last is at seven-thirty, but it’s a double process and a cut. You’ll be done by seven-thirty. I’ll be lucky to get out of here by nine-thirty.” She turned to look back at Dolores. “No point in you hanging around until I’m finished.”
“Are you sure? I could close for you tomorrow and the next night, then.”
“That works.” Connie nodded, toying thoughtfully with one corner of the newspaper.
Dead Certain Page 21
