Close to Home

by Jenna Bennett

  The waitress examined Dix and nodded. I guess she’d noted the family resemblance and decided I was who I said I was.

  “Sheila was his wife,” I added. “She died Friday night. We’re trying to figure out what she was doing in Nashville that day. She didn’t live here.”

  “She didn’t really talk to me.” The waitress shrugged. “Sat down and looked at the menu. Ordered her food. Ate it.”

  “Was she alone?”

  She nodded. “Oh, sure. Came in alone, left alone, didn’t speak to nobody.”

  “Did she do anything? Read a book? Make a call? Text message?”

  “She looked at her watch,” the waitress said. “A couple times. I asked her if she was waiting for someone, and she said no, she had an appointment she didn’t want to be late for.”

  “Did she say where?”

  But of course she hadn’t. “Just that it was at one o’clock.”

  Sheila’s appointment had to have been somewhere fairly close, then. Detective Grimaldi had said she’d used her debit card at Sara Beth’s at a quarter to one. If her appointment was at one and she didn’t want to be late, she couldn’t have driven far after she finished lunch.

  “Thanks,” I said, and the waitress nodded and bustled off toward the kitchen, while I busied myself with gnawing the lipstick off my bottom lip and thinking about where Sheila might have been headed.

  The area where Sara Beth’s was located, was full of businesses. There were several office parks a half mile to the west, and business buildings lined both Franklin Road and Old Hickory Boulevard for a mile or so in both directions. I’d passed insurance agencies, retail spaces, tailors, dentists, lawyers, other restaurants and coffee shops, a bookstore, a couple of banks... Sheila could have been on her way practically anywhere.

  “I don’t suppose she said anything about what kind of appointment it was?” I asked hopefully when the waitress arrived with my chicken salad. “Dentist? Doctor? Lawyer?”

  The waitress pondered for a second, her gaze faraway. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure, though. I’m sorry. It’s a couple of days ago, and I didn’t know I’d have to remember.”

  “That’s OK,” I said. It wasn’t like I could remember the exact exchange I’d had with the waitress at the Café on the Square in Sweetwater on Thursday, either. “If you remember anything, would you give me a call?” I dug a card out of my bag and gave it to her.

  She told me she’d be happy to, and flounced off. I devoted myself to eating. For two.

  My cell phone rang halfway through the meal, and when I checked the screen, I saw it was Denise Seaver’s number. “Dr. Seaver? What can I do for you?”

  “I’m calling to remind you,” Dr. Seaver said, “that if you plan to use that pill I gave you—” the abortion pill that was sitting on my kitchen counter, “—you’ll have to do it today or tomorrow. After that, you’ll have to have an in-clinic procedure if you choose to terminate the pregnancy.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t realized I’d left it so long. “Thank you.”

  “No problem.” She hesitated, then added, “Any news about Sheila?”

  None I felt good about sharing. “I haven’t heard.”

  “Do you know what she was doing in Nashville?”

  “I’m... I think they’re close to figuring that out. She had an appointment in Brentwood.”

  “Brentwood,” Denise Seaver said. “Really?”

  “Do you know someone in Brentwood she might have been going to see?”

  She was quick to deny it. “Oh, no. Not at all.”

  “OK,” I said. And opened my mouth to continue. She got in before me.

  “I should go. I just called to remind you about the pill.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  There was a moment of silence before she said, “Can I assume... have you made a decision to terminate the pregnancy?”

  “Not yet.” I was quick off the mark myself, I realized. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet. I need more time. I don’t want to make the wrong choice.” Once I made it, it would be irrevocable, after all. I couldn’t change my mind once I’d popped the pill.

  “Of course not.” Her voice was back to its professional and comforting cadence. “You need to make the choice that’s right for you. There’s still plenty of time to have an in-clinic procedure. And you know, Savannah, even if you decide to have the baby, and then change your mind, there are options. There are plenty of couples who can’t conceive, who would be happy to adopt a newborn. If it comes to that, I can put you in touch with someone who’ll—”

  “Speaking of that,” I interrupted, “remember when I asked you about Elspeth Caulfield’s baby? You said he was stillborn.”

  Dr. Seaver made a noise of agreement.

  “Someone must have misinformed you. He’s alive and well and almost twelve years old.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I didn’t even think twice before I blurted out my exciting news. Doctor-patient privilege, right? “His name is David Flannery. He was adopted by a family in Nashville just after he was born. At least we think he’s Elspeth’s son. We won’t know for sure until we do a DNA test, and the parents haven’t agreed yet. But I don’t see why they won’t. And he looks just like—” I caught myself a second before I said a name I shouldn’t be saying. “Elspeth,” I finished lamely, when in truth, David Flannery looked nothing at all like Elspeth. At least not in the photo I’d seen.

  “That’s wonderful,” Dr. Seaver said warmly. “Your brother must be happy. But you won’t know for certain until the boy’s DNA has been tested? When will that be?”

  “I’m hoping they’ll call soon, to let me know they agree to do it. We spoke to them last night, so they should have had enough time by now to make a decision.”

  “Good luck,” Dr. Seaver said lightly. “I really should be going.”

  “Of course.” Her lunch break was probably over and she’d have to start seeing patients again. Nice of her to have checked up on me. “I’m sorry to have kept you.”

  “Just keep me updated on what you decide to do,” Denise Seaver said, and rang off. I went back to eating salad.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out where Sheila might have gone after Sara Beth’s on Friday. When I left the café, I actually spent an hour just driving around Brentwood in every direction, turning back after I’d gone fifteen minutes and making note of any interesting businesses along the way. It didn’t help. I didn’t even know that Sheila’s appointment had been for. For all I knew, she could have gotten off the interstate here just so she could eat at Sara Beth’s, perhaps because someone had recommended it, or because, being pregnant, she couldn’t wait any longer. I could certainly relate. And then after lunch she’d gone back onto the interstate and continued north until she was close to downtown. She could have been headed to Music Row. Or one of the universities. Or the hospital district. She might have made it to that part of town in fifteen minutes if she’d known exactly where she was going.

  It was a futile errand. So I gave up, and turned into the parking lot of a Target superstore instead, and amused myself for a while by looking at the clothes. While I’d been married to Bradley, I’d been able to afford to shop for designer clothes in rather more upscale establishments than this, but now that I was on my own, and I was down to scraping the bottom of the savings account whenever I needed something new to wear, I’d lowered my standards considerably. And Target really has a lot of very cute clothes. In fact, I fell into temptation and bought a lovely cardigan with the little bit of money that was left on my credit card. It was soft and gray and draped beautifully, and it had a row of rosettes down the front that drew attention away from my stomach. I did talk myself out of getting the pair of maternity jeans, but I did note the price and size for future reference, should I have need for them.

  Driving back to East Nashville, I faced facts, not for the first time.

  There was a big part of me that wanted this baby. I’d w
anted a baby once before, and had lost it. And although I’d realized, in retrospect, that it might be better this way—a child would have tied me to Bradley for all eternity, even after our marriage dissolved, which it would have eventually—I did occasionally lament the loss.

  Now I had a second chance. I could have a baby. I’d have to raise it on my own, and I’d probably have to deal with a fair amount of unpleasantness and prejudice and difficulty. Plus, I’d be irrevocably tied to Rafe until the day I died. But somehow that thought failed to fill me with the same sense of vexation as the thought of being unable to get away from Bradley.

  And it wasn’t just that I was a little bit in love with Rafe. Maybe even more than a little bit. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I was infatuated with him. Or in good old lust.

  Whatever the correct term, I found him fascinating. He was different from anyone else I’d ever associated with. He was certainly different from anyone else I’d ever slept with. But since that list began and ended with Bradley, that wasn’t big news.

  Rafe was nothing like Bradley, in bed or out of it. Where Bradley had been cool reason and thorough professionalism, a Southern gentleman to the bone, Rafe was heat and passion and laughter and exasperation and joy. I didn’t have to pretend with him. I could be me, with all my flaws and insecurities and occasional inappropriate questions. He didn’t expect me to be anything but who I was. And he made me happy. Being around him was sometimes difficult, sometimes frightening, usually fun. Occasionally it was peaceful. But it always made me feel alive, like I wasn’t just watching life go by, from up on the pedestal where Todd put me, but I was taking part in it.

  Having Rafe’s baby would be tough. Financially, I had no idea how I would manage. I could barely feed myself at the moment. My mother would certainly have conniptions. Todd would be horrified. So would a lot of other people. And Rafe might not be precisely happy, either. He hadn’t signed on for fatherhood. He hadn’t signed on for any kind of relationship at all. What if he wished he’d never slept with me and had no plans of ever talking to me again?

  Or worse, what if I told him I was pregnant and he felt compelled to be a part of the baby’s life? Not because he wanted to, but because he felt he had to. What if he asked me to marry him, to make the baby legitimate?

  Silly to worry about that in our day and age, I suppose, when babies are born out of wedlock all the time, but I was brought up the old-fashioned way, and he knew it, so maybe he’d think he had to offer...

  The phone rang, just as I reached East Nashville and this depressing point in my cogitations. I fumbled it out of my bag and glanced at the display. The number wasn’t familiar. A potential real estate client, maybe? That’d be nice. If I ended up with another mouth to feed, I’d need all the clients I could get. Child care isn’t cheap. Maybe I could move back to Sweetwater and dump the baby on Catherine whenever I needed to work...

  “This is Savannah,” I chirped.

  “This is Aislynn,” a voice answered. “I work at Sara Beth’s. We spoke a couple hours ago?”

  “Of course.” The waitress with the piercings. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve realized something,” Aislynn said. “Your sister-in-law said she was going to see the doctor.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” She lowered her voice. “See, when her sandwich was ready, Jerry, the guy behind the counter, took it out to her himself. He probably tried to flirt with her, and she told him she was going to see the OB.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Probably telling him—without telling him, you know—that she already had a boyfriend. Or a husband.”

  “Right,” I said. That made sense, actually. “So Jerry told you this?”

  “Uh-huh. I told him about your sister-in-law, and that she’d died, and that you were trying to figure out what she’d been doing on Friday, and he said she’d been on her way to the doctor. Because she was pregnant.”

  Aislynn pondered for a moment before she added, “Cause, she could just have been lying. I’d lie, if Jerry tried to pick me up.”

  “She didn’t,” I said.

  “‘Scuse me?”

  “It wasn’t a lie. She really was pregnant. And married.”

  “That’ll make Jerry feel better, anyway,” Aislynn said. “So does that help?”

  “It helps a lot. Thank you.”

  “Great,” Aislynn said. “Listen, I gotta go. I’m gonna keep your card, OK? My girlfriend and I have been talking about getting a place together.”

  She hung up before I had the chance to gush about how much I wanted to help her and her girlfriend—girlfriend?—buy a new place.

  I spent the time before dinner looking up obstetricians and gynecologists. Not unexpectedly, there were hundreds. The majority was located in and around the hospital district in midtown, where several of the teaching hospitals are. Vanderbilt University Hospital had a fair few OBs on staff, and so did Meharry Medical College. Add in Metro General Hospital (across the street from Meharry) and Baptist Hospital, Centennial Hospital, and St. Thomas Hospital, all within a stone’s throw of midtown, and a pregnant woman could have her pick.

  When I focused on obstetricians just in Brentwood, the number became more manageable. There were still a couple dozen, but that’s easier to consider dealing with than a couple hundred. The problem was, I had no idea how to deal with them at all. It wasn’t like I could call and ask whether Sheila Martin had had an appointment there at one o’clock on Friday. They wouldn’t tell me if I did. And where on the list would I start? Should I call them all alphabetically? Or organize them geographically and spend a couple of days dropping by?

  At least a half dozen of the obstetricians seemed to be grouped together with the same address—

  And that’s when I realized that that address happened to be another hospital. A small private one located in Brentwood, just a few miles from Sara Beth’s Café.

  St. Jerome’s Hospital.

  Where David Flannery supposedly had been born.

  Chapter 11

  I was watching HGTV when the phone rang. It was almost eight o’clock and I was ready to crawl into bed. I considered not answering, but thought better of it. Just in case it was another potential client. Or someone with information about Sheila.

  “This is Savannah.”

  “Miss Martin?” The voice was vaguely familiar, and it took me a second to place it.

  “Mrs. Flannery?” I admit it, my heart skipped a beat.

  “Yes,” Virginia Flannery said, “it’s me. Have you seen David?”

  I blinked. “He was upstairs doing his homework last night. So no, I didn’t get a chance to meet him.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Her voice was shaking so much I had a hard time understanding what she was saying.

  “OK.” I did my best to keep my own voice calm and even. “No, I’ve never seen David. Except in that photograph I showed you. Why?”

  “He’s gone,” Ginny said.

  “Gone?” It was a stupid thing to say. I mean, it wasn’t as if I thought I’d misheard.

  “I dropped him off at school this morning. He went to classes until the end of the day. He was supposed to have basketball practice afterwards, but it’s extracurricular, so when he didn’t show up, the coach didn’t call to let me know. I went to pick him up at five, and he wasn’t there.”

  “Maybe he went home with a friend,” I said.

  “I’ve called everyone. I thought maybe...” She trailed off.

  That I’d grabbed her son to forcibly test his DNA? Surely I hadn’t come across as that much of a nutcase. Had I?

  “Did you call the police? Ask them to put out an Amber Alert?”

  “They can’t,” Ginny said. “There’s no evidence he’s been abducted.”

  “They think he ran away? Why would he...?”

  I stopped when I realized what she was thinking. I’d heard a noise out in the hallway when we’d all sat around the table in the Flanner
ys’ dining room last night. What if David had been curious about the people who were visiting, and curious why his parents had told him to stay out of sight? What if he had crept down the stairs for a peek at Dix and me? He could have gotten an earful. He would have heard that he was adopted. That his biological mother was dead. That his biological father was, too.

  Suddenly it made perfect sense that Ginny Flannery asked if I had seen David. I was the logical place for him to start his search if he was trying to learn more about where he came from. Dix was in Sweetwater, but I was in Nashville; much more accessible for a curious eleven-year-old. And I’d left my card with the Flannerys yesterday. All he’d had to do was call the office, and Brittany would have told him where I lived.

  “I haven’t seen him,” I said again. “And he hasn’t called.”

  Virginia sniffed wetly. “He’s just eleven! Anything could have happened to him.”

  I could certainly understand how she felt. I already felt a touch of the same panic myself.

  “I have a friend with the police,” I said. “She works homicide, so she wouldn’t normally have anything to do with a missing person case. But if I call and tell her what’s going on, I’m sure she’ll do everything she can. I don’t know how much that is, but I’m sure it’s better than nothing.”

  “OK,” Ginny sniffled.

  “I’m going to hang up and call her, all right? You just stay home and by the phone. Maybe he just needed some time to think and he’ll be home soon.”

  “Maybe,” Ginny said. “Thanks, Savannah.”

  “Don’t thank me. I’m sorry we created problems by showing up. Tell me exactly what he looks like.”

  I jotted down notes while she spoke, and then I told her to call me if David came home or called, before I disconnected and immediately dialed Tamara Grimaldi’s number. “Detective.”

  “Ms. Martin.” She sounded tired.

  “I need a favor,” I said.

  “Oh, sure. The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department exists to do your bidding.”

  I ignored the sarcasm. “This is important. It’s about a missing child.”