Close to Home

by Jenna Bennett

  “Sure.”

  “Do you think he’d mind looking at a photograph and telling me if he knows the boy? I’m trying to track him down.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “And confidential. But it has to do with a will and a woman who died a couple of months ago.”

  “My mom?”

  Lord, no. “Not at all. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your mom. Or anyone else you know. I’m doing this for my brother. He’s an attorney in Sweetwater. The woman who died lived there, too.”

  “Oh,” Alexandra said. “Sure. When do you want to do it?”

  “When do you think he’ll be available?”

  “He has a game tomorrow morning,” Alexandra said. “Afternoon, maybe? Or Sunday?”

  “Either one of those would be fine.” I’d prefer it to be sooner, although I’d take what I could get. “I have to sit an open house for Tim on Sunday afternoon, but before or after would be all right. Or Saturday. I don’t have anything scheduled then. Why don’t you give me a call after you’ve spoken to Austin?”

  “Sure, Savannah,” Alexandra said, and hung up before I could say thanks, let alone goodbye. I was shaking my head as I tucked the phone away in my purse.

  “Who’s Alex?” Todd wanted to know.

  I glanced at him. “Just a girl I met a couple of months ago.”

  “Alex is a girl?”

  “Sure. Alexandra Puckett.” And that right there was one of Todd’s more annoying character traits. He tends to be jealous, for no good reason.

  All right, so sometimes he has reason. But he’d been fixated on Rafe long before anything actually happened between us, too.

  This time it was the waiter who derailed my train of thought. A plate of steaming Chicken Marsala appeared in front of me, and the delicious smell found its way into my nostrils. My stomach rumbled, and Todd glanced up. I smiled sweetly. He smiled back, as the waiter put his own plate of Veal Piccata in front of him.

  For the next few minutes we ate. Todd attempted to engage me in genteel conversation, but after the second time he had to wait for me to swallow before I could answer him, he must have given up, because he let me finish in peace. He did look somewhat taken aback at my hunger, and when I was finished, he glanced at my empty plate. “You really were hungry, weren’t you?”

  There was a faint note of resentment in his voice.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess I was.”

  I waited for him to make some joke about women and dieting, but he didn’t. Of course not. He’s much too much the Southern gentleman to draw attention to a woman’s weight.

  “Dessert?”

  He asked every time, and I always said no. This time I was tempted to tell him yes, because I still had a bit of room, and the Fidelio cheesecake was out of this world. If I couldn’t enjoy cheesecake when I was pregnant, when could I?

  But of course I couldn’t. Todd would wonder why I was eating enough for two, and from there he might guess that I actually was eating for two. Or mother might, once he told her that I’d behaved like a swine at dinner. She taught me better than that. So I shook my head. It was just as well, really. Once I stopped being pregnant, either in the next couple of weeks or seven months from now, I’d have to trim back down anyway, and it would be easier if I didn’t gain too much weight. And besides, the longer I stayed slim, the longer before anyone would guess my secret.

  “Coffee?” Todd said.

  “Better not.” Caffeine was something else I’d cut back on since learning I was pregnant. I didn’t exactly know why, since I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be carrying this baby to term, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

  “Have you had problems sleeping?” Todd asked, frowning.

  I blinked, and then realized he’d handed me a perfect excuse. “That’s right. Between finding Brenda Puckett’s body back in August, and Lila dying in September, and that whole incident with Perry Fortunato—” who’d had me tied to a bed ready to do unspeakable things to me before strangling me; Todd’s face darkened at the reminder, “I sometimes have nightmares. It’s better if I don’t drink coffee before bed.”

  “You had coffee last time we went out,” Todd said.

  “It’s something new I’m trying.” I was getting pretty good at this lying business. Even if I found my hand sneaking up to my hair to play with a tendril. Hopefully Todd wasn’t as adept at reading me as my brother was.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and sounded sincere, too. That didn’t stop him from ordering a piece of cheesecake for himself, and devouring it, right in front of me, with every sign of enjoyment. Any guilt I’d felt evaporated as I tried to content myself with nibbling on a dry piece of bread left over from dinner.

  So far he hadn’t tried to propose, and I’d allowed myself to believe I might get through a meal without having to refuse him again. I should have known better.

  Although I will say for him that he waited until we were alone, instead of proposing in public, the way he did the first time. I guess maybe he was expecting another refusal, and he wanted to save himself at least that little bit of embarrassment. To be honest, I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t just stop proposing altogether. But I guess I ought to give him points for persistence as well as for having a hopeful attitude.

  Anyway, he waited until we were back at my apartment and I’d invited him to come in for a few minutes before he had to drive back to Sweetwater. He’d said yes to a glass of sweet tea, and while I was in the kitchen fetching it, like a good little Southern-wife-in-training, he’d wandered over to my dining room table and laptop and to the picture of Elspeth’s son—or who we assumed was Elspeth’s son—lying there. When I came back into the living room, he had it in his hand.

  “Where did this come from?”

  I bristled at the tone of his voice—suspicion mixed with accusation and distrust—but I did my best not to let it show. “What do you mean?”

  “What are you doing with a picture of Rafe Collier as a boy?”

  “I’m not.” I handed him his iced tea with one hand while I took the photograph out of his hand with the other, laying it facedown on the table.

  “What do you mean?” Todd said, promptly picking it up again. “This is Rafe Collier.”

  “No, it isn’t.” I retrieved the photo once more, and this time held onto it. “This is the boy I’m helping Dix track down. If you look at the car in the background, you can see that this picture was taken sometime in the last couple of years. Chrysler didn’t start making those cars until recently.”

  Todd held out a hand, and I put the photo back into it. He examined it again, and admitted, grudgingly, that I was right. “This is Elspeth Caulfield’s son, isn’t it?”

  “That’s the assumption.” If she’d had a son and wasn’t just confused.

  “Always knew there was something to those stories,” Todd said with a sort of gloomy satisfaction. “You can’t look at this and deny that, Savannah.”

  “Deny what? That Rafe and Elspeth had a fling in high school? No one’s ever tried to deny it.” Rafe certainly hadn’t. It wasn’t something he’d volunteered, I’d had to ask, but when I did, he was upfront about what had happened. And I believed him when he said he never knew there’d been a baby.

  Todd looked down at the picture again. “I guess he got adopted?”

  “So we assume. He certainly didn’t live with Elspeth, and Rafe never heard of him. Until Dix found the will, no one knew Elspeth had a child.”

  “Dix hasn’t been able to trace him?”

  I shook my head. “That why I’m trying to find him through the logo on his shirt. If he is Elspeth’s son, he inherits her house and any money she may have had.”

  That was if his adoptive parents allowed it. It all depended on the kind of relationship the boy had had with his biological mother. It could have been a closed, or even secret adoption, and the boy had no idea he was even adopted. That would explain why Dix hadn’t had any luck find
ing any information through legal channels.

  Although that left the question of the photograph. Elspeth had gotten it from somewhere, but there was no way to know whether she’d taken it herself, whether she’d hired someone to track the boy down, or whether it had been an open adoption and she’d been in the boy’s life all along, as his loving ‘aunt’ or his mother’s good friend. Watching as another woman loved and cared for and openly claimed her son.

  “That must have been incredibly hard.”

  “Excuse me?” Todd said.

  I realized I’d spoken out loud. “Oh, nothing. I was just wondering whether Elspeth stayed in contact with him through the years. It must have been difficult to watch her son being raised by someone else.”

  “It wasn’t like she could have kept him,” Todd said reasonably.

  “I imagine she could have if she’d wanted to.”

  “She was seventeen.”

  “Lots of girls have babies when they’re young. Look at LaDonna Collier.” Rafe’s mother had been fourteen when she got herself in the family way; fifteen when Rafe was born.

  “I’m not sure LaDonna Collier is the example you should be using here, Savannah,” Todd said.

  It seemed like a pretty good example to me, and I said so. “They lived in the same area, with the same kind of people and the same prejudices. LaDonna was even younger than Elspeth when she got pregnant, and her father was a horrible racist; it’s hard to imagine that Elspeth’s parents could have been any worse. Yet LaDonna managed to keep Rafe, and to raise him to be a pretty decent human being.”

  “That’s spurious,” Todd said, reminding me that I should know better than to argue with a trial lawyer. “Rafe Collier was not a decent human being. He was a criminal. And a man who abandoned his pregnant girlfriend and his child.”

  I could feel my eyes narrow. “First of all, Elspeth was not his girlfriend, she was someone who took advantage of him when he was drunk. Second, he didn’t abandon her, he went to prison.” All right, so maybe that wasn’t actually a point in his favor. Neither of my points were, come to think of it. “And I told you, he never knew about the baby.”

  “Or so he said,” Todd said.

  “So he said, and I believe him.”

  We stared at one another for a moment in silence before Todd straightened. “Your loyalty is admirable, Savannah, if misplaced.”

  I shrugged.

  “I don’t suppose it matters now, anyway,” Todd added. “They’re both dead. That’s a good thing. It will make it easier for the parents when you find him.”

  I found I had no response to that. It was a wrinkle I hadn’t foreseen. Elspeth was dead, yes. But Rafe wasn’t. Not technically. When we found this boy, assuming Austin Puckett recognized the picture and actually knew the boy’s name, did we let his parents know that the boy’s biological father was still alive? And that he hadn’t given consent to the adoption?

  In light of my own predicament I’d done a little bit of research, and I knew that both birth parents have to give consent to adoption unless one of them has given up parental rights. The reasons for giving up parental rights would be through abandonment, failure to support the child, abuse or neglect, or mental incompetence, usually. Rafe hadn’t done that. Mentally he was just fine, and the abandonment and failure to support the baby hadn’t been his fault; he was in prison and no one told him he had a baby to support.

  Not that I thought he’d want to challenge the adoption. He knew he wasn’t in a position to take care of a child. But he might want to get to know his son. Having grown up without a father himself, I knew he felt strongly about being there for any children he made. It was the main reason he’d never had any. Or at least none he knew about.

  But that touched on my own problem, and I didn’t want to think about it right now. So I forced myself to focus on Todd again. He was watching me with concern, so I may have checked out for a few seconds. “Is everything all right, Savannah?”

  “Everything’s fine,” I said. “I was just thinking about children. Having them and giving them up and adopting them.”

  Todd reached out and took my hand. “We can make our own children, Savannah.”

  No, we couldn’t. Not right now, anyway. Not ever, if I had Rafe’s baby and kept it. Dix and I had already discussed how I couldn’t pass it off as Todd’s, and I couldn’t imagine he’d be open to marrying me and raising it as his own.

  “Would you ever do that?”

  “Do what?” Todd said, still holding my hand. A small wrinkle had formed between his sandy brows.

  “Adopt a baby. One that looked like this.” I held up the photograph.

  Todd dropped my hand and took a step back. “I hardly think that’d be fair to either of us, Savannah.”

  “Either of who?”

  “The parents or the child,” Todd clarified. “He’d be better off with his own kind, don’t you think?”

  His own kind. “I suppose,” I said.

  Todd fumbled for my hands again. Both of them this time. I had to drop the photograph on the floor. “I love you, Savannah. Will you marry me and have my children?” His blue eyes were sincere, and I felt like a heel.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry, Todd, but I just can’t.”

  Todd sighed and dropped my hands. “I understand.”

  No, he didn’t. But I wasn’t up to explaining. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll just keep asking. One of these days you’ll change your mind.” He smiled.

  I smiled back. “It might be better if you didn’t, Todd. At least for a little while. When I told you I needed more time, I meant more time than the two weeks between every time we go on a date.”

  Todd looked like I’d kicked him, but he recovered himself. “If that’s what you want.”

  “Thank you.” Impulsively I went up on my toes to kiss his cheek. He turned his head at the last second and I ended up kissing him on the lips instead. The kiss lasted a little longer than I’d intended, and when it was over, Todd’s eyes held a look of suppressed triumph.

  By the time he had gone, I was ready to fall into bed and sleep for twelve hours, but I made myself get on the phone with my brother. Things tended to be a little hectic in the morning, what with the morning sickness and getting up and dressed and to the office, and I wanted to get Dix and the news out of the way before I went to bed. So I pulled out my cell phone and dialed, after kicking off my shoes and curling up on the sofa.

  The phone rang once, and then was answered. “Sheila?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s Savannah.”

  “Oh.” Dix took a breath. I could hear the girls squabbling in the background. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I just came home from a date with Todd and figured I’d call you.”

  “What did he do?” Dix asked, resigned.

  “Nothing. I mean, he proposed again, but I’m not calling about that. I think I may have found Elspeth’s son. Or at least I’ve found a lead.”

  “Tell me about it,” Dix said, and I imagined him leaning back and getting comfortable.

  “Well, I looked up private schools in Nashville I thought might match the logo on the boy’s shirt. There were a few possibilities, so I drove around to them this morning. One of them is Montgomery Bell Academy.”

  “I’ve heard of that,” Dix said. “Mom wanted to send me there, didn’t she?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if she did. It’s a very good school. Very expensive, too. And quite a long way from Sweetwater.”

  “That’s why I didn’t end up there,” Dix said. “Mom didn’t feel like getting up at four every morning to drive me to Nashville.”

  “Well, I talked to the school secretary. And she said that she couldn’t help me. She wouldn’t even confirm that the boy is a student there. Not without a court order, she said. But I think he must be. Her demeanor was very cold, and she couldn’t wait to get rid of me. Even threatened me with security if I didn’t leave.”

  “I can get a co
urt order,” Dix said.

  “I figured you could. But before you do that, I’m going to show the picture to a boy I know. He goes to MBA, and he might be able to give us a name.”

  “Sounds great,” Dix said, and muttered something to the effect that at least one thing was going his way today.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Did you and Sheila have a fight?”

  “Of course not.”

  Of course not. My perfect brother would never argue with his perfect wife. How could I even suggest such a thing?

  “It’s just that when I called, you thought I was Sheila. I thought maybe you’d argued and she left.”

  “No,” Dix said. “She dropped off the girls at school and mothers-day-out this morning, and I haven’t seen her since. She hasn’t called or anything.”

  “That’s weird,” I said. “Have you called the police?”

  “I told Todd’s dad. But there’s nothing he can do until she’s been gone for twenty four hours.” He sounded dissatisfied, but not actually worried.

  “I’m sure she just lost track of time. Maybe she went out with a friend? You know how girls are when we get together.”

  “Gabbling geese,” Dix said. “Let me know what you find out about the boy in the photo, sis. Any decisions about your situation yet?”

  “No. I still don’t know what to do.” Although the conversation with Todd had at least clarified one thing: I couldn’t have my cake and eat it too. Marrying Todd and keeping the baby was out of the question. Not that I hadn’t known it all along.

  “Have you spoken to Collier?”

  “I haven’t even tried to find him. If I decide to end the pregnancy, he never has to know it even happened.”

  “Right,” Dix said, but he didn’t sound happy. “Listen, Savannah, I have to go. I think I hear a car. It’s probably Sheila.”

  “Fine. You know where to find me if you want to talk more. I’ll give you a call after I’ve shown Austin the picture.”

  “Thanks,” Dix said, and hung up. I dragged myself off the sofa and to bed.

  It felt like I had just closed my eyes, but when I woke up the next morning, a glance at the clock showed me I’d slept for nine hours. Even with that, I knew I would have stayed in bed longer if someone hadn’t been knocking on the front door. It wasn’t loud, nobody was hammering and demanding to be let in, but the knocking was insistent, and I had the impression it had been going on for a while. Grumbling, I swung my feet over the side of the bed and stuffed them into fuzzy slippers. I grabbed the negligee that matched my lacy nightgown from behind the door and shrugged it on while I stumbled into the living room and down the hall, fighting back nausea with every step.