“Greg, you never cease to surprise me.” She looked up at him, impressed. “This looks amazing.”
Settling down at the table again, he looked across at the beautiful woman, infant in arms, who sat at his kitchen table. He didn’t know what the future held for them, but he had a pretty good idea that if he’d had the chance to ask his dad’s advice on what he was supposed to do with a woman this beautiful and a situation this complicated, he would have said, “Chocolate mousse, Greg. Chocolate mousse.”
* * *
That evening, stuffed from a spectacular dinner of roast beef and the creamiest chocolate mousse to ever pass her lips, Emily sat in her living room, Cora cuddled up against her chest. Crickets chirped somewhere outside the window, lulling her anxiety. It was a gorgeous night, the kind where the scent of flowers floated on a warm breeze and the stars glittered like diamonds. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky. Emily turned her head as far as she could to look up through the window. She could just see a wedge of black velvet sky before turning back to face the room.
Cora’s little head had that sweet baby scent, and Emily closed her eyes for a long moment, inhaling that smell she loved so much, memorizing it.
Lord, will she be mine? Is this the beginning of a lifetime together, or is there a father out there with greater rights to her than any of us?
The visit with Greg had conjured up the very real possibility of finding Cora’s biological father. Why wasn’t he in Jessica’s life? Or had he been in Jessica’s life against her will? It was hard to know, but the thought that a man out there might be able to walk in and demand his daughter be returned to him was a scary one.
Cora let out a deep sigh in her sleep and Emily looked down at her, at those fine little eyelashes and the wisps of orange-blond hair that stood up straight from her head like the plumes of a bird. Emily lifted one tiny hand up to her lips and gave her a light kiss.
Other nights, Emily would have slipped Cora into bed by this time, but tonight was different. Tonight, she didn’t want to put her down.
A few months earlier, Beth had squealed out her news that she was pregnant. It had been barely a year after Emily’s hysterectomy, and the news had stung. She’d smiled as brightly as possible, told Beth how thrilled she was for the news and then gone home and cried.
It wasn’t that Beth hadn’t had her own fertility struggles. She and Howard had tried to conceive for years with no success, and then one day, after months of looking into adoption, Beth was suddenly pregnant. Beth deserved this. She deserved to have a baby and to be happy with her adoring husband. She deserved all of it, but that didn’t make the sting any less for Emily.
She had no husband and no chance of having children of her own. While she hated giving herself a pity party, she’d eventually got over it and given the pain over to God. God was the one with plans, and she was the one who would just have to wait.
Now, with a baby in her arms before Beth had even given birth, she’d felt blessed. God hadn’t forgotten her. Yet was this part of God’s plan for her, after all? Or was it just a red herring, something tossed at her that got her hopes up and steered her into a new and unexpected direction?
An image of Greg rose up in her mind at that thought...the handsome chief of police with those gentle blue eyes and strong, broad shoulders. He was something unexpected, that man. If only he wanted to have children, too. Would it be so terrible to end up married to a sweet guy like Greg? Would it be enough?
Looking down at the baby asleep on her chest, Emily sighed. Can I have both, Lord? She was half joking, because she knew that wasn’t possible. So instead, she sang softly to Cora, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are....”
The song was still comforting, even after all these years, and she remembered the safe feeling of her father singing over her in her bed at night. There was a verse in the Bible that talked about that—a verse she’d memorized years ago: The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in His love He...will rejoice over you with singing.
She felt a flood of peace, and she sighed. She could feel God close to her there in the quiet summer night, and for the first time since Cora had come home to her, Emily let the tears come. Sometimes a girl just needed to cry it out and let her Father comfort her.
Chapter Twelve
The next afternoon, as she drove toward the one shopping mall that Haggerston had to offer, Emily felt drained, both from the emotional turmoil lately and from the heat. South Haggerston Mall, which vainly suggested the possibility of more malls in the town, was a small building with about fourteen stores in total, most of which catered to elderly people’s fashion. The “food court,” if it could even be called such a thing, consisted of two restaurants. This was the best that Haggerston had to offer in a mall setting. The rest of the Haggerston shopping experience was street side in a lovely downtown with hanging planters and stores that kept their doors propped open in hopes of getting an errant breeze. Emily wasn’t interested in the shopping, though. She was interested in the air-conditioning, so the mall was her destination.
The heat shimmered off the road in mirages as she drove along. Summer, it seemed, had kicked it into high gear. Emily kept her windows up and the air-conditioning blasting, enjoying the brief relief. She’d get used to the heat soon enough, but the first few days were hard, and she was worried that they’d be harder still on tiny Cora.
Glancing in her rearview mirror, she saw the same nondescript sedan behind her still. That was odd. How many people could be taking her route for this long? She shrugged it off. It was a small place, and there was only one downtown. She signaled for a turn, eyeing the car behind her again. It slowed, but didn’t signal. As she turned onto a side road, the car didn’t follow, but when she looked again, she saw it stopped at the corner. After a good distance was between them, it eased around and started after her again.
Am I being followed?
It was almost a ridiculous question to ask herself, because this was Haggerston, after all. Nothing happened here, and life wasn’t a TV show. That’s it. I watch too much TV, she decided firmly. She signaled again onto Sherwood Drive. This was the long way to the mall, but she was curious to see what would happen.
A few moments later, the car eased around the corner and slowed to put more space between them. Her heart sped up. This might be Haggerston, but she was definitely being followed. She took a sharp turn into the mall parking lot and found a space near the doors. She sat there, scanning the parking-lot entrance.
Nothing. The car didn’t turn in.
Her heart began to slow down its galloping pace, and she let out a nervous laugh.
“It looks like I’m just paranoid.” She chuckled aloud. “Well, Cora, let’s go wander around the mall.” She sounded more convincing than she felt, and that was a good thing. Cora needed a calm and reassuring mother, not someone panicking over a drive to the mall.
Emily took one last look around the parking lot, but still saw nothing, so she exited the vehicle and got the baby ready to go into the mall. She made the quick trip to the front doors, and as she stepped inside the mall she let out a shiver. The air-conditioning felt wonderful, but her attention was behind her. Where was that car?
She stood at the door for a moment, watching, but didn’t see anything. Paranoid. That’s it. She took a deep breath, willing herself to relax.
“All right, Cora. Now it’s time for us to just cool off.” Emily looked at the baby up on her shoulder, her big blue eyes taking in the colors and lights around them. “It isn’t much, sweetie,” Emily crooned. “But it’s air-conditioned, and that’ll have to do.”
As she walked around up and down the one corridor that made up the South Haggerston Mall, she tried to calm her nerves with silent prayer. God was in control, and she really had to stop this irrati
onal panicking. Was this the kind of thing mothers felt with their keen need to protect their babies, or was this something more?
She stopped to look at a rack of sale tops, all of which looked more suited to a woman in her sixties than someone her age. She flicked through the assorted colors and nodded at the shopkeeper, a woman in her forties with a hairdo about a decade too old for her.
“They’re all half off,” she called from her perch on a stool. “I have other sizes inside, too, if you need more options.”
“Thanks.” Emily tried to look as noncommittal as possible and continued wandering down the way. The shoe shop had a rack of laces on display, and the bookstore ahead seemed to be the most promising time waster for the day. Emily picked up her pace, but glancing back, she saw a young man talking to the saleswoman where she’d stopped. He wore a pair of jeans and a button-up shirt. His haircut was more expensive than Haggerston had to offer. Emily ducked into the bookshop, then looked back out. The man was gone.
Pull yourself together, Em. What’s wrong with you?
The front of the store had a display of biographies, and Emily picked up one about the Queen of England. She would have flipped through the glossy pictures in the center if she’d had both hands free, but carrying a baby and doing anything else seemed to be more difficult than she’d imagined.
“Jessica?”
Emily stiffened at the deep voice, and she froze. That was her cousin’s name.
“Jessica?” The voice was low and now just over her shoulder. She whirled around to see the man she’d seen talking to the shopkeeper a moment ago looking at her pointedly over his sunglasses, his gaze steely and direct. The muscles in his jaw tensed, and he stood stock-still as if ready to pounce.
“Who?” Emily asked, her voice foreign in her own ears.
His eyes moved down to Cora, and Emily took a step back, turning sideways so that Cora was as far from him as possible. His eyes moved over Cora slowly and methodically, then turned back to Emily.
“I don’t know you!” Emily said loudly. “Who are you?”
“You okay, Ms. Shaw?” the saleswoman called from the cash register.
“No!” she called back. “This man is harassing me. Call security.”
He took a step backward, but not an alarmed step. He’d heard what the saleswoman had called her, too, and he’d registered it. He was neither alarmed nor intimidated.
“Sorry for the confusion,” he said smoothly, moving away from her again. “My mistake.”
As he disappeared outside the store again, Emily stood there beside the pile of biographies, her knees trembling. That was the man who had been following her, she was willing to guess. He was looking for Jessica...and Cora.
Emily pulled her cell phone out of her purse and dialed Greg’s number.
“Are you all right?” the saleswoman asked, coming around the counter. Emily knew her. She was the mother of one of her students from a couple of years earlier. “Should I call the police?”
“I’m doing that now.” Emily’s mouth was dry, and she shook off the woman’s attempt to lead her to a chair. She wanted to keep her eyes peeled in case that man returned, and she wasn’t about to be shushed and patted as if she were hysterical.
“Hello?” Greg’s voice sounded distracted, and she could hear hubbub in the background. “No, file that one. I need two of these, though.”
“Greg, something just happened.” Even now, it felt as if the events were unraveling in her mind.
“Emily? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but there was this man. He just came and...” It had all seemed so coherent and complete a moment ago, and now she wasn’t sure how to explain it. “He called me Jessica.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, frustrated. That wasn’t proof of anything. This wasn’t coming out right.
“What are you talking about?” The voices and noise from the background got quieter, and Greg’s voice was low and reassuring in her ear. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I don’t know. This man... I think I was followed here. Then I saw him talking to the lady I was just talking to. Then he came right up behind me and called me Jessica and looked at Cora like a—like a snake about to swallow her.”
“I’m on my way. Where are you?”
“At the mall.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Stay where you are.”
Emily stood there for a moment, holding her phone. Was she being paranoid? She tried to focus on the events as they’d happened; it all seemed so flimsy and ridiculous when she tried to put it into words, but she felt something heavy and filled with foreboding in her stomach. That man had followed her, and he was convinced she must be Jessica. What had Jessica been involved in?
“Did you want to sit down, miss?” the saleslady asked. “You look kind of spooked. Who was that guy? Some old boyfriend?”
“No.” Emily tried to push down her irritation. “He’s not some old boyfriend. I don’t know him.”
“He sure seemed to know you.”
Emily nodded silently. Yes, he did. Except for her first name.
“Not bad-looking, though.” The woman laughed self-consciously. “Wonder if he’s single...”
Emily clenched her teeth together. Because that’s the important thing here, whether or not the creepy stalker is married. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
“I’m waiting for the police. They’ll be here in ten minutes,” she said instead. “Maybe you could remember what he looked like to give them a description.”
The woman looked slightly miffed and she moved away, but this was probably the most excitement she’d seen all month, so she hovered around the store entrance, looking for signs of the promised police.
The minutes ticked slowly by, but when Greg strolled up, another officer in tow, looking into each store, Emily let out a sigh of relief. He stood in the entrance, his ice-blue eyes sweeping the shop, lingering on her for a brief moment then darting back out into the mall. After a thorough scan, he stepped inside.
“Are you all right?” Greg stood there with his police hat on his head and the heel of his hand resting casually on his gun, but when he came toward her, he relaxed and reached out, giving her arm a reassuring squeeze.
“There was a man bothering her,” the saleswoman said excitedly. “He’s gone now, but he wanted to talk to her or something.”
The look on Greg’s face told Emily that the woman wasn’t entirely helpful. “What happened?” He turned toward Emily.
“He was kind of good-looking,” the saleswoman went on. “Like this tall, nice shoulders...”
“Thanks.” Greg gave her a cool smile. “I just want to ask Ms. Shaw here what happened, and that officer over there is going to get your statement, okay?”
“Suit yourself.” The woman shrugged, but lingered close by.
“Let’s walk,” Greg said in a low voice. He took her arm in his warm grip and steered her out of the store. “Now, I need you to slow it down and explain to me what happened.”
Emily put together the details as best she could, but even as she talked, she realized that the few flimsy events were tied together by her own feelings, nothing more. When she was finished, Greg nodded slowly.
“Do I sound paranoid?” Emily asked warily. “Hearing myself say it out loud, I sound nuts.”
“No, you don’t sound paranoid at all. You sound like you were followed.”
Emily wasn’t sure if she felt relieved to hear that or not. She gave him a wry smile. “I think I might like being nuts better.”
Greg chuckled, then turned serious again. “Look, something weird happened here, and you aren’t the paranoid type. From what I can see, someone is looking for Jessica and doesn’t know that she’s dead.”
“And Cora?”
“Obviously they were looking for a young woman with an infant. Here’s hoping Cora isn’t the goal.”
Emily felt a twinge of fear work its way up her spine. She took a deep, wavery breath. “Who would do this?”
“I don’t know. Do you?” He looked at her directly, his eyes watching her carefully.
She shook her head, then she frowned. “Maybe Steve knows more than he’s letting on.”
Greg nodded. “It’s occurred to me, too.”
Cora’s eyes were closed now, her head resting against Emily’s neck. Her arm ached from the position it was in, and Emily let out a sigh. “I’m so tired.”
“I’ll follow you home, and we’ll put a couple of cruisers on your house for the next little while. If this guy comes around again, he’ll see police presence.”
“Thanks.” She adjusted the sleeping Cora in her arms. “I appreciate it.”
As Greg steered her toward the outside door, she could feel his alertness, even in the gentle pressure of his fingertips on her elbow. He was still looking for something, for some clue to what was happening, and that was a relief. She wasn’t on her own here. Thank goodness, Greg didn’t think she was crazy.
“I’d feel better if I could keep a personal eye on you tomorrow,” Greg said as they stepped out into the bright sunlight.
“What did you have in mind?” She looked over at him, feeling a smile come to her lips.
“Come to church with me,” he offered. “It’ll take the pressure off you for a day, and I’ll feel better having you within sight.”
“Actually, that might be nice,” she admitted. Just for one day, to let someone else do the worrying about people following her sounded like the break she needed.
“Good.” His blue eyes softened, and he shot her a grin. “You’ll be okay. Trust me. No one is getting past me, all right?”
She nodded and returned his smile. Somehow, that made her feel a lot better.
* * *
That evening, after Cora was in bed, Emily’s fear turned to anger. Someone was following her, and she knew of one person who had an interest in scaring her—Steve. Pacing her kitchen floor for a few minutes, she tried to piece it all together again in her mind. It still didn’t make sense. If Steve knew something, maybe this would make him spill it.
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