Father and Child Reunion

by Christine Flynn

  Remembering, he spun back around. “Don’t sit down without looking in your chair,” he called after her. “Some kids were trying to raise money for baseball equipment. I thought of you.”

  “What kind did you bring me?”

  “I think they’re almond.”

  The wrinkles around her mouth deepened with her suppressed smile. “Are you trying to bribe me?”

  “If I were trying to bribe you, I’d tell you where my fishing hole is.”

  Rio knew she didn’t really want to know. It just bugged her that he was never specific about where he went when he felt the need to get away for a while. Until he’d decided to build himself a cabin, all he ever said was that he was going fishing. He’d never bothered to mention that he didn’t own a single pole, reel or hook.

  With a grin, he turned back to his desk. The smile was gone long before he reached for his coffee. From what Lettie had just said, it looked as if he was about to move another step closer to his goal. Assistant Editor would look very nice on his résumé. And that’s all he was working for—to beef up the résumé that would get him onto a paper in some distant city.

  Yet, as he checked his schedule of meetings and appointments for the day, he couldn’t feel pleased about the potential move up. Not just because an editorial position would mean he’d no longer be out chasing stories. There was actually some appeal to that. His reluctance existed because to count on anything before it was a done deal was to make a date with disappointment. Rio had learned the hard way to take nothing for granted. Ever.

  It was that hard-learned lesson that had him jogging up the steps of the library when it opened at ten o’clock.

  * * *

  Grand Springs’ main library was on the hill near Grand Springs University. Because the university was small, it pooled its resources with the community to provide a facility that served the students and the public better than either could have been served alone. It even boasted a modest law library downstairs near the archives.

  He needed to talk to Eve about Molly. Before he did, he needed to know his legal rights.

  The murmur of voices drifted toward him as he moved between the high rows of heavy tomes and headed for the tables near the computers. Terry Sanchez, one of the librarians, was leaning over the broad shoulder of a fair-haired man sitting at a terminal. Very pretty, and very pregnant, she wiggled her fingers at Rio when she saw him, smiled and turned back to the man she was helping. The guy looked vaguely familiar, but, preoccupied, Rio didn’t bother to wonder why.

  Blocking their quiet voices, Rio sat down two terminals over and keyed in "Colorado statutes." He could have looked up the statutes on his laptop. For research beyond them, though, he needed the library's access codes to legal search engines. He had friends at the courthouse who probably could have answered his questions. He could have called on the Herald’s attorney, for that matter. But he preferred to keep his business to himself. He wasn’t sure how to explain his relationship with Eve to anyone, anyway. He wasn’t so sure he could explain it to himself.

  They were no longer friends. Not as they’d once been. But they weren’t strangers to each other anymore, either. He wasn’t even completely sure how he felt about her—though he was well aware of her ambivalence toward him. She wore every emotion on her sleeve. In the space of an hour he had seen her pout, laugh, tease and frown, all with the same intensity. He’d never known anyone like her, anyone so open and honest with her feelings. Or anyone so blindly accepting of people. Maybe that was why he’d felt such freedom with her before. Why, after six long years, he sometimes felt it with her now. But he didn’t trust the feeling any more than he trusted the attraction that had him feeling as tense and twitchy as a caged bear.

  He wanted her. He couldn’t have denied that if he’d tried. He couldn’t get within three feet of her without wanting to be inside her. Her scent, the sound of her voice, the way she moved, anything and everything about her seemed destined to drive him slowly out of his mind. If he ever got her near a bed without Molly around, he knew it would take every ounce of willpower he possessed not to back her onto it—which was precisely why he hadn’t let himself be alone with her.

  Concentrate, he muttered to himself, and forced his attention to the index.

  Keys clicked as he searched for the section he wanted. It might be getting harder all the time to keep his hands to himself, but he couldn’t let physical need override his common sense. Eve had walked out on him once before. Though he didn’t think she’d leave before she finished what she’d come here to do, there was really nothing to prevent her from walking away again.

  But Molly was another matter. He wasn’t about to let his daughter disappear from his life. That was why he needed to know what his legal rights were before he got serious about discussing joint custody with Eve. Just in case she opposed the idea.

  Before he talked to Eve, though, he needed to talk to his family. Molly was part of his life, his family, and his mother needed to know she had another grandchild.

  “Copies of the Denver papers might help. Their back issues are all online. Maybe go there next,” he heard Terry say just as he figured out that the first thing he needed to do was legally establish paternity.

  Hating how cold and impersonal the legalities sounded, Rio logged out. He wasn’t sure he was ready for this. He knew Eve wasn’t. Abandoning the thought for now, since there were other matters to attend to first, anyway, he watched the friendly librarian walk away, claimed the spot she had vacated and extended his hand to the man frowning at the print on the screen. “Martin Smith, right?”

  Six feet three inches of lean muscle rose from the chair. The frown had disappeared, revealing little beyond curiosity in his intense blue eyes.

  “I suppose,” he replied, accepting Rio’s handshake. A scar, faded from red to pink, slashed the right side of his forehead. Even without it, the man had a faintly dangerous air about him. “Do I know you?”

  “We met at the hospital a couple of months ago. I’m Rio Redtree. A reporter with the Herald.” Martin Smith wasn’t the man’s real name. That was just the name the hospital had stuck on him because the staff had needed to call him something other than “the amnesia case.” The man had suffered a head injury the night of the storm and hadn’t been able to remember anything since. When the hospital had tried to help him locate family, the newspaper had run a request for help identifying him.

  “I didn’t know you were still around.”

  “Don’t know where else to go.” His shrug might have appeared philosophical had it not been for the tension in it. “I thought looking through old newspapers might trigger something.”

  His tone was flat, as if he didn’t expect anything to come from his efforts. But Rio sensed a quiet sort of desperation in him, masked though it was by a kind of ironclad control he knew all too well. The only thing a person truly had any power over was himself. When that control was threatened, as it certainly would be not knowing who he was, a man’s hold over himself would became that much more imperative.

  That Martin Smith appeared almost afraid to discover who he was prompted Rio to ignore his inclination to simply leave the man to his task. If he was afraid to discover who he was, might that be because he was afraid to discover what he’d done?

  The man was a stranger. No one had ever seen him before the night of the storm—which also happened to be the night Olivia had been murdered. But the speculation had no sooner formed than Rio remembered that Stone had already talked to this guy—and that, at the time of Olivia’s attack, “Martin” had been stuck on the side of a mountain. Two local citizens, Sean and Cassandra Frame, had seen him there. Aside from that, if there was any credence to Jessica Hanson’s visions of Olivia’s murder, there was no way on God’s green earth that Martin Smith could ever be mistaken for a woman.

  Every time Rio thought he had a lead, the trail evaporated before it even started to take off. Still, long after he had wished Martin luck and returned to the ne
wspaper office, an idea nagged in the back of his mind. Mud slides had trapped the Frames on the mountain. Those same slides had made passage in or out of town impossible for days. Their little airport had been closed, too. So whoever had killed Olivia couldn’t have left town. It was always possible that whoever had done it lived in town and was still right there. For the first few days, at least, the killer could well have been right under their noses.

  He felt about as much hope of discovering anything of value pursuing the idea as Martin did poking around newspapers for a hint of his past, but when something started nagging at Rio, he couldn’t let it go.

  * * *

  “I know it’s late, but your lights were on.”

  He should have called first. Even before Eve stepped back to let him in, Rio could tell that his timing was lousy. She looked as pale as snow, and there was a telltale sheen to her eyes.

  “If this isn’t a good time…”

  “It’s fine.” True to form, she straightened her shoulders and made herself smile. “Actually, I could use the break. Some of the boxes we brought down from the attic were full of pictures,” she said, self-consciously stuffing a tissue into the pocket of her short denim jumper. “I was just going through them.”

  “By yourself?”

  Eve lifted her shoulder in a dismissing shrug. She didn’t know if he was aware of the concern behind his frown, but it was definitely undermining her efforts to maintain her composure. “Molly helped before she went to bed.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  She knew that. She also knew that standing there wondering if he would ever put his arms around her again wasn’t helping her effort, either. “I asked Hal if he wanted to go through them with me,” she told him, heading into the dining room. “But he didn’t have time. All I’m doing is dividing them up.” She motioned to the clear plastic photo boxes on the table. “I’d forgotten how fanatical Mom was about getting every occasion on film.”

  Shaking her head as if she’d just remembered something, she glanced back at him. “I’m sorry. Is there something you wanted?”

  The light of the brass chandelier bounced off the crystal in the mahogany-and-glass china cupboard, the glint of pure white light reminding Rio of the telltale brightness in her eyes moments ago. He’d undoubtedly caught her fighting memories as she’d sorted through photographs of birthdays and holidays and whatever else her family had celebrated, but already she’d pulled herself together. Anyone seeing her now might think she only looked tired.

  “There is. But this might not be a good time to talk about it.”

  With anyone else, considering the seriousness of the matter, he would have forced himself past his natural reluctance to intrude on her pain. It was a battle he constantly fought when faced with certain types of stories, which was why he went after facts rather than what his editor euphemistically referred to as “human interest.” He’d quit his job before he’d shove a recorder in a victim’s face to ask how she felt while she watched her house burn. But he would ask if she knew how the fire had started.

  That he was willing to wait for a better time to talk to Eve might have worried him a little, had she not suddenly looked so uneasy.

  “You want to talk about Molly.”

  “No. No,” he repeated. “Not now. We need to talk about her, but that can wait. I wanted to talk to you about the people you saw when you were here in June.”

  She didn’t understand what he was getting at. She told him that, too, sinking onto a chair at the table and pushing aside the pictures someone had taken at an office party. “What about them?”

  Since she expressed more interest than reluctance, Rio pulled out the chair next to her, sat down with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped between them, and proceeded to explain his theory about the killer being in town for the first few days following her mom’s death. He wanted to know if she’d seen anyone who’d appeared suspicious, or if anyone she hadn’t recognized had come by the house. He’d asked her that question before about the people at the house and the hospital the night her mom had been taken there. But what about visitors afterward?

  “There were so many,” she told him, sounding bewildered at the task of sorting through all the faces. “Mom had friends and business acquaintances I’d never met.” She pushed her fingers through her hair, trying to think. “It just seemed as if people were dropping off casseroles and flowers from the moment I got back from the hospital.”

  “Flowers?”

  Not sure why he thought that extraordinary, her voice went flat. “People do that when someone dies, Rio. Send flowers, I mean.”

  His bland expression mirrored hers. “But how did they do that? There were power lines and trees down everywhere, remember? Emergency vehicles could barely get through. And the businesses that weren’t damaged were closed because there was no electricity.”

  In other words, of the half-dozen florists in town, none had been delivering that day.

  “Maybe people were bringing them from their gardens,” she suggested. “I really don’t remember there being many that first day. The only reason I remember any at all was because someone brought a huge bowl of gardenias. I had to put it on the patio table before we went to bed that night because the scent was so overpowering.”

  Her words sent up an immediate red flag, but Rio kept his expression even. “Did you see who brought them?”

  Eve shook her head, trying to get through the haze that clouded those days. “Millicent must have answered the door. Or maybe one of the women from the church. I just remember thinking that I’d never be able to stand the smell of gardenias again.”

  “Do you know what happened to the bowl?”

  Eve had been watching his clasped hands. Strong, steady, still. She envied him his calm. Now, puzzled by his question, she glanced up. “It’s out in the garage, in a box of old vases and things to be donated to the thrift shop. Why?”

  “Was there a card with it?”

  “I’m sure there wasn’t. The florist cards all have the type of arrangement or plant written on the back of them. We did that when someone would bring something to the house, and the funeral home did it for arrangements that were sent there. I just finished the thank-you notes for all the remembrances last week, and I know I never came across anything for those flowers.” She cocked her head. “You didn’t answer me,” she reminded him. “Why are you so interested in this?”

  Rio figured that any fingerprints had probably already been obliterated. The bowl would have been handled by heaven only knew who by now, not to mention washed and wiped clean.

  “It’s a complete long shot,” he told her, refusing to get her hopes up. “But I’m going to mention this to Stone. He might want to have that bowl picked up. Don’t handle it anymore. Just leave it where it is.” In the meantime, he was going to pay Millicent Atwell a visit.

  “What’s this all about, Rio?”

  “Ask Stone. Okay?”

  She could have pointed out that one of the reasons she was answering his questions was because he’d agreed to give her information so she wouldn’t have to bother the police for it. But she had the feeling this was one of those details he’d promised his friend he wouldn’t discuss, and she knew Rio would never break his word. His basic sense of integrity wouldn’t allow it.

  Because she respected him for that, she wouldn’t ask any more questions. Except, maybe, one. “I know it frustrates you when I can’t remember things about those days, but has anything I’ve told you been any help at all?”

  She wouldn’t have asked had she not been feeling so powerless just then. But she knew the second the words were out of her mouth that she was seeking reassurance Rio couldn’t give.

  “Never mind,” she murmured, letting him off with a smile that didn’t quite work. “I’ll ask the detective. Would you hand me those pictures, please?”

  It wasn’t her request that had Rio hesitating. It was the thought of Stone or some other officer offering her th
e reassurance she so badly needed. Not that Stone would do anything other than talk to her.

  The thought didn’t help. Palming the stack of colorful photos, he slid them across the gleaming wood surface. He was battling enough where this woman was concerned without having to admit to jealousy.

  He started to hand the pictures over, but when her fingers closed around the opposite ends, he didn’t let go. “Do you want me to stay and help you with this?”

  She looked down at their hands, thumbs grasping from the top, fingers from below, contact separated by the smiling face of Hal at thirteen.

  “Why would you want to?”

  “It’s not that big a deal, Eve.”

  She didn’t buy the disclaimer. “It is to me,” she insisted, no longer willing to speculate. “Why are you helping me the way you have been? Don’t get me wrong,” she hurried on, loath to let him misunderstand. “I appreciate everything you’ve done. But you don’t have to help me so you can spend time with Molly. You have to know that.”

  “I do.”

  “Then, why?”

  Because I know you need to do this for your mother, but I can’t stand the thought of you doing it all alone. Because you haven’t accepted anyone else’s help, but you’ve accepted mine, and I like the way that makes me feel. “Because you’re my daughter’s mother.” The faintest hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “And it seemed the easiest way for us to get to know each other again.”

  She should have known he was just being practical. Still, she was grateful. For what he’d done, and for what he was doing now.

  “You can put those in that big box over there,” she quietly said, letting go of the snapshots. “That’s the one for Hal.” She turned to the pictures she’d been looking at when she’d heard Rio at the door. It was already easier with him here. “I really wanted him to do this with me.”