by Mary Stone
And he missed Kylie. Even though she was just sitting at home, he wanted to make sure she was okay.
As she’d probably expected, which was why he figured she hadn’t told him, he’d gotten all the more protective of her since he’d gotten the news. He couldn’t not be. He tried to be cool about it, but those three were his whole family. If anything happened to Kylie now, he might never recover.
As he refastened the latch, he climbed into the truck and lifted out his phone. He started to type in a You ok? to Kylie but erased it.
She’d probably come back with some snide remark. After all, she was at the farmhouse with Vader and Storm. What was the worst that could happen?
His mind started to wander to a dozen unlikely—but possible—scenarios. She could fall out of bed. She could hear the phone ringing and run to get it and trip down the stairs. She could have tried to take a bath and slipped in the tub…
He quickly typed in: You ok?
A moment later: I’m trapped under a large piece of furniture. Send help.
And there it was. The snide remark. Superdad on the way.
He chuckled and put his phone in the cup holder, then pulled out of the vet parking lot. After making it about a mile down the street, a pile of fur did a free fall over his shoulder, landing in his lap.
Roxy.
He groaned. “What part of stay in the kennel don’t you understand?” he said, stroking her ears.
He nudged her to the passenger seat, but she put her front paws on the elbow rest and started to lick at the window. What was that all about? Did that actually taste good?
He reached for her, pushing her away from the glass. “If I want that done, I’ll go to a car wash,” he told the pup, pulling over to the shoulder of the road just as Zita followed her partner-in-crime over to the dark side. Now the window was coated in swirls of thick dog saliva.
He opened the kennel and got the dogs back in, shaking his head.
As he did, he thought about how they’d manage two car seats in a truck like his. Two car seats, and a sea of dogs. No, it wasn’t possible. His brothers had no more than two kids each, and their family had graduated to massive three-row SUVs. Was that what they would have to do? Maybe buy a minivan? A tour bus?
And how would they all live in the farmhouse together—and carry out a business there too? Talk about Grand Central Station.
He got into the truck again, thinking how strange it was that, though their entire world was about to be flipped on its head, Kylie hadn’t mentioned much about it. She didn’t seem keen to talk about their plans for the future. He chalked that up to nervousness, wanting to make sure that the babies were all right before she got too excited.
And maybe that’s what he should’ve been doing too. Waiting for the go-ahead from the doctors that everything was okay.
But he couldn’t. He was too excited.
So, he’d done little things. Nothing too crazy. He’d put up a wipe-off board in the kitchen, where they could write potential baby names they liked. He’d started to clean out the spare bedroom, which they used for storage. He paid more attention to ads for things like dance studios and baseball leagues and summer camps in the area, even clipping out a couple he’d seen in the free newspaper they got on Wednesdays. Just for future reference.
But Kylie? She hadn’t mentioned any of that. When he’d mentioned doing an announcement or gender reveal via the Facebook she loved so much or some crazy YouTube stunt to let all the family know they were expecting, Kylie, who’d normally be all in to that, just shrugged and said, “We’ll see.”
It was a strange thing, considering Kylie was usually the fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants kind of person. She usually threw caution to the wind and followed her heart with little concern for her safety.
Now, though, she had someone else’s safety to think about.
Maybe this new caution was a good thing. It was good that she was finally starting to live a little more in his world, where what-ifs dominated and anything could go wrong.
As promised, he stopped at KFC on the way back up to the house, getting a bucket of chicken and the fixings. He hoped she hadn’t been serious about eating it all herself, but just in case, he ordered a few extra drumsticks.
Before he went up the drive, he stopped at the mailbox and unloaded its contents. Among the piles of wedding planning postcards and brochures—why were they still getting those?—he noticed a handwritten card with a familiar Asheville address and tore it open. It was the invitation to Faith and Jacob’s engagement party, at one of Jacob’s casual barbecue places, though the invitation was printed in a flowy script that was probably the more formal Faith’s idea.
He had to laugh. The differences were what made it interesting. Good thing they were compromising.
Pulling the truck farther up the drive, he stopped in his normal spot in front of the barn and let the puppies free to do their bidding in the fenced-in yard. Yipping happily, they headed off in all directions like a stack of Pick-up Sticks.
Shaking his head, he took the pile of mail and climbed the stairs. He pushed open the door and looked around.
No Kylie. Good.
“Kylie?” he called up the stairs. “I’m home.”
“Hey, honey,” she called back. “I’m just up here…skydiving.”
“Ha, ha,” he said, scanning the room as he put his truck keys on the hook. “Got your chicken.”
“Thank you. I’m starving.”
He walked to the kitchen and started the coffee maker, looking up at the room’s one new addition—the board where he’d told Kylie they could write name ideas, so that when the time came, they’d know. They’d talked it over and decided not to find out the sex of the babies, so they had both boy and girl names in mind.
He’d put on a total of five names, two of which had special meaning to him. His grandfather’s name, Gavin, and his grandmother’s name, Margaret. Other than that, he’d jotted down nice-sounding names he’d heard, since now, any time anyone was introduced to him, he ran over the name in his mind for its potential. But lately, he’d been putting names down just to see if it would get her attention.
Granted, she wasn’t down here very often. But he did bring her down once or twice a day to sit out on the porch or to eat dinner in front of the fire. She hadn’t remarked on his choices of Aravis or Corin from one of his favorite books growing up, C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy. Neither had she added any of her own to the mix.
He poured himself the coffee before yelling, “Anything special I can bring you up there?”
“A million dollars.”
He grinned. “Want to come down and eat on the porch? It’s nice outside.”
“You mean I can have my freedom, master?”
As he was climbing the stairs, though, he noticed it. The filing cabinet was open a sliver, and a corner of one file was sticking out. Things like that drove him batshit. He couldn’t let it go.
With a groan, he went over, opened the drawer, and started to right it before curiosity got the better of him. He pulled the file out and read the tab. Hanson, a name which meant nothing to him, and the folder was a bit older, which made him think it wasn’t a recent case. He also realized it was a part of the “unsolved cases” section of the cabinet.
He opened it up and found himself staring into the face of a tiny naked baby, crying in a hospital bassinette, a photo which must’ve been taken only moments after it had been born. Underneath the photo was written Jewel Marie Hanson, 12-1-07.
He paged through to a police report and found that Jewel Marie Hanson was born to an unwed, poor woman named April Hanson from Sylva, North Carolina, and that the baby had disappeared too. The police probably never put much work into finding the baby since April Hanson had admitted to being strung out on drugs and couldn’t remember what happened.
It appeared that, years later, she’d contacted Greg Starr for help, but by then, Greg hadn’t been able to do much. Originally, April had thought the father mi
ght have taken the baby, but when Greg tracked him down in Mexico, he admitted he never saw the kid. The file showed that after that, Greg had contacted various possible witnesses in the apartment building where April lived, but most hadn’t seen anything. There was one who thought he saw a well-dressed, elderly blonde women leaving the place with the baby, but he, too, was a heavy drug user.
Closing the file, Linc replaced it in the filing cabinet and looked up the stairs. No doubt about it. She’d been down here. And she was still researching the Kirby case.
He took a couple of calming breaths. It was all right. The doc had said she could get “light exercise,” which probably meant going up and down stairs, but he hadn’t wanted to take any chances, insisting that “bed rest” meant just that.
And the Kirby case? Well, what damage could she do from here?
At least, he hoped.
He decided not to mention it as he climbed the stairs. When he got there, she was sitting up in bed, staring at her phone. She looked a little flushed. He hoped that didn’t mean she’d run all the way upstairs when she heard him coming. “All good?”
She yawned so wide he could see her tonsils. “Just bored.”
He noticed that the front window was open a little, the gauzy curtain pushed all the way back despite the hot sun streaming in. He waved a hand in front of his face. “Hot in here.” Then he noticed she had put on a little lip gloss and brushed her hair. “Were you waiting for someone to come?”
She bobbed her eyebrows at him. “Yes, my lover,” she deadpanned. “We were going to have some really hot, non-doctor-approved sex.” Then she grinned, tossing a pillow in his direction. “No, I was waiting for you and my chicken, Dumbo.”
Damned she was adorable when she was sarcastic.
“Okay.” Enough with the suspicion. He easily lifted her up into his arms as she cradled her laptop and cell phone on her stomach, and he carried her down the stairs, sitting her on the big porch swing outside. “This good?”
She rubbed her hands together as he set the bucket of KFC next to her. “Thank you.”
“There’s mashed potatoes, coleslaw, biscuits, and of course, lots and lots of fried chicken. Lemonade?”
She smiled, licking her lips as she peeked into the bucket. “Yes, please. Thank you very much.”
He went and poured her a glass, and when he returned, she was hugging the bucket of KFC to her chest, devouring a drumstick like it was her first meal in days. As she ripped the crispy coating off, she made noises of gratitude. “Dis is guh,” she said, absently checking her phone.
So, maybe she had been serious about all that chicken being for her.
He grabbed the bag and pulled out the extra drumsticks and the coleslaw, which he knew Kylie never ate. He’d deal. “We got the invitation to Jacob and Faith’s engagement party,” he said, passing it over to her.
She looked at it and sighed. “It’s only two weeks from now. I guess you’ll be going alone? I can’t go like this.” She licked her lips. “Mmm. And it’s a barbecue. Talk about cruel and unusual.”
“I can bring you back a plate. Or…two, even.”
“Three. Since there’s three of me.” She nodded and took another bite, patting her stomach. “It’s crazy. I’m ravenous like, all the time. Well, when I’m not puking.”
“The doctor said that’s a good thing. You were losing weight before, with the morning sickness, so you need to put on weight now.” He shrugged, tearing into his own drumstick as he watched her check her phone again. This was the third time since he put her out here five minutes ago. “Expecting a call?”
She tucked the phone under her thigh. “Oh. Yeah. Just waiting for some business stuff.”
“Business stuff?”
“All right, all right. I was expecting Allison Simmons to get in contact with me. She said she would. But she hasn’t.”
“Allison…oh.” He scowled at his drumstick. “Is this because I wasn’t working fast enough for your liking?”
Kylie picked at her chicken, pulling off a piece of the extra crispy crust. “I’m sorry. The woman clearly had a story to tell regarding the baby she lost. She’s eager to get it out. She even agreed to come meet me here.”
Linc scratched the side of his jaw. “She’s going to come here?”
Kylie nodded, observing his face. He hadn’t said anything, but his expression must’ve done some weird, completely involuntary contortion because she sighed. “Don’t give me that. You were dragging your feet because you’re not comfortable with it.”
“It’s not that. I—”
“Yes, it was. Admit it.”
All right, it was.
It was one of those things he would’ve gotten to eventually, but so many other tasks were competing for his attention. He conceded the point with a shrug. “Okay. I hate doing that shit. So…you’re still looking into this case?”
Her face transformed into a half scowl, half pout. “Barely, but I want to try.”
“And I guess that was you, going through the Hanson file downstairs?”
Her guilty expression gave her away before she admitted the truth. “Yes. Fine.” The word was more like a growl. “I should’ve known you’d find out. Did you install motion sensors I wasn’t aware of?”
He bobbed his eyebrows in a maybe gesture before admitting, “No, but you’re a slob. You left the cabinet partway open.”
“The horror.” She tossed a chicken bone back in the bucket. “Okay. Greg told me about an old case that sounded similar, so I was just looking into it. I swear, I took it easy. I just went down…very, very slowly…and right back up again.”
She was starting to sound a lot like Rapunzel, locked in her tower.
“I’m probably going overboard with the safety stuff,” he admitted, “but I know you’re just as concerned about the babies as I am.”
She placed a hand on her stomach, a small smile playing at her lips. “I am, but I’m even more worried that my being nervous about it is going to make it worse. They tell me to relax, but how can I relax when I know that I’m solely responsible for whether these kids make it? It’s a lot of pressure.”
But even as she was speaking, her eyes drifted down to her phone.
“So, this woman blew you off?” he asked her.
“Unfortunately. Which is so weird because she really seemed like she wanted to talk. I mean, she volunteered to come all the way up here.”
“You think her case and the case of Elise Kirby are connected?”
She blew out a breath that made her lips flutter. “Well…here’s the interesting thing. I did find a little bit of a connection. It’s a thread. Not even a thread. A strand. Maybe not even that. But I have a description from Agnes Mott of the ‘aunt’ who took the baby.”
Linc held up a finger. “An elderly blonde woman who smelled like perfume and had claw-like nails.”
Kylie gave him an impressed look. “Exactly. And just now, reading the file on the Hanson case, one of the witnesses mentioned a similar elderly blonde woman. Coincidence?”
Linc rubbed his jaw. “Could be.”
“So, I was really hoping Allison might be able to add to that. I’m wondering if she or anyone else she knew might have been aware of such a woman.”
Kylie’s eyes were all lit up, the way they only got when she was working on a juicy case. He shouldn’t have expected her to be happy knitting booties all day. He should’ve known she’d be miserable, not using her newly honed detecting skills.
He stabbed a spork into his coleslaw. “Interesting.”
“I know. And here’s the really weird thing. A few weeks ago, when I went to one of the adoption agencies, I actually met a woman who fits Agnes’s description of the aunt almost to the letter, right down to the claws and the perfume. She’s the director of the agency.”
He took this all in, staring at his wife. “Seriously?”
Kylie nodded.
“So, if you met her, she knows you’re investigating,” he went on, a
sick feeling growing in his stomach.
Kylie waved a drumstick at him. “Relax. She doesn’t. I told her I was pregnant and simply looking for options for my pregnancy. That was all.”
He eyed her doubtfully. She’d told him to relax before, and that was usually when the floor dropped out. “I wasn’t saying anything.”
“You were looking constipated,” she said as she dug into the new piece of chicken, smacking his foot with her own. “And that says it all. But I’m fine. I’m up here in the middle of nowhere with a slew of dogs to protect me.”
It wouldn’t be the first time Kylie brought danger home. He thought of Storm and her career-ending injury. How he’d almost lost his beloved furry friend down in Georgia.
He mentally shuddered. “That sounds like the beginning of a horror movie, you know.”
21
Kylie sat in bed, stroking Vader’s fur while listening to her mother blabber on about the weekly gossip and her eternal bliss with her new husband.
They’d already been on the phone for two hours, and Kylie had no intention of shutting her mother up. Kylie was a social being. She needed to socialize, something Linc didn’t fully understand. It was like fuel for her body.
She was happy her mother had found true love with the handsome and charming Dr. Jerry, who treated Rhonda Hatfield Phillips like a princess. After all, Rhonda hadn’t had the best luck when it came to men.
Kylie’s own dad had been a definite dud who’d left them when Kylie was only days old, and Rhonda had rarely dated until she met Jerry, quite literally by accident.
Rhonda’s wedding to Kylie’s father had been a boring justice of the peace kind of deal. Jerry’s first wife had passed away, so he’d done all the frills before, but understanding that Rhonda had never had the fairy-tale wedding, he had been more than happy to make his second wife-to-be’s every dream come true. He’d rented The Venue, one of downtown Asheville’s most expensive wedding spots, for the event.
They’d gotten married in March, and Rhonda had been floating on a cloud since then.
