and return him to his worthless mother on a court order. And then—and then—I find out you’ve hired a private detective to hunt for your daughter! In violation of your signed legal agreement.”
Marik sighed. “What did he do, call you for information after I warned him not to?”
“Not quite that klutzy. He had somebody else call me.” She made a noise like a snort. “I got more information out of her than she did from me.”
“What a surprise.”
Marik set Daisy’s scotch on the table and sagged into a chair with her wine. “I haven’t broken any laws yet. Only when—and if—I actually contact her or the family.”
Daisy fixed her with a direct look, her hazel eyes large behind her frameless glasses. “If you do contact her, I will report you to the judge.”
Marik looked at her and knew this was a promise. “Thanks for your support.”
“You know how I feel about this. You signed a Consent to Adoption. I have told you she’s healthy and well cared for, and that’s all you get to know. Not only is it illegal for you to meddle in her childhood, it’s selfish and wrong.”
Marik looked into the red depths of her wineglass and said nothing. But Daisy wasn’t finished.
“The parents could get an injunction,” she warned, “maybe even get you arrested. And you’d deserve it.”
The force of her words silenced them both. Daisy sat back and drank a lusty draft of her scotch.
There was more gray in her brown hair than Marik had noticed before, and age spots speckled her efficient hands. Despite the difference in their ages, they had always been close. “I promised Dad I’d find her,” she said quietly.
“Graveside promises aren’t binding.” Daisy’s eyes softened. “I know you miss J.B. so much you can hardly stand it. And you regret that he never got to know his grandchild. Believe me, I get that. I miss him, too.” She blinked several times and traced a damp circle on the table beneath her glass. “I guess I was more or less in love with your dad for twenty years.”
Daisy had never admitted this before, but Marik had seen the way Daisy looked at her father. If he’d shown the slightest interest, Daisy might have been her stepmom. Instead, because her own early marriage had dissolved without children, Daisy looked after the interests of dozens of kids on her caseload. She delivered tough love and strict ethics, but there was nothing she wouldn’t do to help a child in need—and that had always included Marik.
The kitchen clock ticked, and Marik heard the wind gust through the carport.
“I’ve regretted giving her up a million times,” she said, her voice low. “I wasn’t thinking of the best interests of the child, or even my dad. I was only thinking of me, that I wasn’t ready to be a mother. Dad supported my decision so I could go on with my life like the self-involved college kid I was. He would have loved to raise a granddaughter here on the ranch. But I chose not to think about that.”
Daisy shook her head. “You’re too hard on yourself. You always were. But that doesn’t give you the right to renege on your decision.”
Marik met her eyes. “My daughter is all the family I have left.”
“You have Anna.”
“Not really. I haven’t seen her since Dad’s funeral, and before that it was years. Anna never even knew I had a child.”
Ice cubes clinked in Daisy’s empty glass. “You wouldn’t be able to leave it at just finding your daughter. I know you. If you saw her you’d want to be involved in her life, and that isn’t fair. Not when she’s so small and innocent.”
A realization popped quiet as a soap bubble in Marik’s mind. “You know where she is, don’t you?”
Daisy’s eyes didn’t flinch. “I have always known. I kept track so I could assure you—and J.B.—that she was loved and happy. And she is.”
“You told Dad that?”
“Yes, I did. Several times.”
Marik’s nose burned. At least he knew that much. “Have you seen her?”
“Not for quite a while.”
The light outside the window had turned dusky pink and Marik felt the coming sundown in her bones. “I wonder if she looks like Dad.”
“Maybe she looks like her own dad,” Daisy said pointedly.
For all her ethics, Daisy was excruciatingly curious. Marik had never told anyone who fathered her child—not J.B., not even the baby’s father—and Daisy never missed an opportunity to prod for clues. Marik guarded that secret as faithfully as Daisy protected the privacy of adoption.
Daisy sighed and pushed herself to her feet, her knees cracking. “I’ve got to go. Mounds of paperwork yet tonight.” She shouldered the tote bag. “I guess you know about the town meeting and what’s on the agenda.”
“I know, all right.”
“The power company will no doubt send a representative. Maybe they’ll make a good argument.”
“Hmm.”
At the door, Daisy turned. “I’m serious, Marik. Do not go looking for that child. She doesn’t belong to you, and she hasn’t since you signed those papers.”
Marik watched the taillights disappear down the driveway, feeling Daisy’s censure like an anvil in her chest. Finally she refilled her wine and put on her jacket.
She passed through the living room without turning on a light. The glassy eyes of a bull elk and two whitetail bucks glittered from the high walls below a vaulted ceiling. They were J.B.’s trophies from years ago, his hunting phase. Someday she’d get rid of them, but not yet. Her boots thumped quietly on the padded rug, noisily on the hardwood floor at the room’s perimeter, and out the front door to the cedar-planked porch.
The porch was wide and deep, her favorite place to watch the evening come down. She eased into a wooden glider that centered a cluster of chairs in the shadow of the overhang. All those chairs—as if company might drop by at any moment. Nobody else had sat here since Monte cleared out months ago.
It was a credit to their shockproof friendship that she and Daisy could disagree and move on with no permanent damage. They’d done it before. But Marik wasn’t sure that would hold true this time, not if she actually contacted her daughter.
Was Daisy right? Was her desire to find her child selfish and wrong?
Her decision to give up her baby had hinged to a large extent on the fact that she couldn’t be a single mom without the father’s knowing. And she had reason to believe he’d be a lousy father. She had told herself the baby deserved better parents, but part of her wanted to punish him for disappointing her. Maybe that was selfish, too. But none of it changed her desire to find her child.
She’d given up her legal rights, but how did you give up regret, or the knowledge of a shared biological link? She remembered the feel of that heartbeat inside her, the wrinkled reality of those tiny hands.
Marik drained her wine, inhaled against the vise of her rib cage. The glider squeaked back and forth. If she lost Daisy’s stalwart friendship, she’d be even more alone than she was now.
Up on the ridge, the windmills turned steadily, reflecting the last rays of a winter sun that had slipped behind the horizon. She watched the fading light climb the towers. When shadow swallowed the highest rotors, darkness fell quickly. Uncountable stars dotted the sky. Here there were no streetlights, no neon signs of civilization. Only the tiny red beacons atop the wind towers, blinking like sleepy eyes.
An owl called low and haunting near the barn, and from the windbreak behind the house, his mate answered. Halfway up the ridge near the cemetery, a coyote sent up its lonesome yipping,