His face may have stirred up a welter of half-forgotten longings, but she never wanted to see it again.
Ten minutes later she held the man in her life tight in her arms. Her eyes stung with tears of happiness as she kissed his cheek and felt his lips brush hers.
“Were you a good boy today?” she asked.
Joey blinked cornflower blue eyes at her and blew a soft raspberry.
Rosalie brushed a lock of strawberry blonde hair out of his chubby face and hugged his small body so tightly he tried to wiggle out of her arms.
Joey must have had a busy day at day care because he didn’t indulge in his usual protest at being strapped into his car seat and fell asleep as soon as she started the engine. Which left her with nothing to do on the way home except think about Morgan Danby’s visit.
She couldn’t believe he hadn’t questioned her more closely about how many months’ pregnant Márya had been when they’d first met. Rosalie had never been a good liar because she rarely lied. She understood the power of truth.
Her mother had always told the truth about the long illness that had eventually taken her life. Her honesty had made it possible for Rosalie to trust that she always knew the worst. And that, in turn, had given her the strength to move beyond the slow tragedy playing itself out at home and thrive in the world.
She’d only lied today because she’d panicked, but it had worked. Nothing else mattered. Even her mother would have understood that.
Still, Rosalie wished she’d started adoption proceedings when she’d first gotten custody of Joey. She hadn’t because it would have alerted Charlie’s relatives to Joey’s existence. She’d thought they wouldn’t care enough to look for the boy, but she’d been wrong.
She glanced in the rearview mirror at the sleeping child who filled her life with such joy. She’d do whatever was necessary to protect him.
“I don’t care what you have to do,” Márya had told her right before she died, after she signed the papers giving Rosalie custody of her son, “Keep Joey away from Charlie’s family.”
Morgan raised his gaze from the laptop and looked down Wilshire Boulevard, the lights of Los Angeles nothing more than so many colored stars from the twentieth floor condo his company owned here. He took a sip of wine and rolled his shoulders.
When his smartphone beeped he made the mistake of checking to see who it was.
Lillian. He’d have to talk to her some time. Might as well do it now.
He saved the spreadsheet he was working on and answered on the second beep.
“Hello, Lillian. You’re up late.”
“Why didn’t you call me with the report about your meeting with that woman who testified against Charleston?”
He swallowed the familiar irritation. “I told you I’d call when I learned something.”
“You didn’t learn anything at all about my grandchild?”
If she hadn’t sounded more like a major general barking orders than a grieving grandmother, he might have had more sympathy for her.
“We’re not sure there was … is a grandchild, remember? I have a couple of new leads to follow up, but nothing definite.”
“This is taking too long. Are you sure we shouldn’t have kept the private investigator?”
“We can always hire another P.I. if we need to.” Preferably one smart enough not to try to bribe the bleeding-heart workers at some homeless shelter who’d not only refused to give him any information, but had also gotten his license suspended. Morgan disapproved of unethical behavior, but he could not tolerate stupidity.
“If you’re sure.” Lillian’s voice sounded weary, older. “Call me if you learn anything.”
“I will, but it may be a day or two. I have to drive up to Merced to check out those leads.”
“Merced? Is that even in the United States?”
“Yes, it is. Good night, Lillian.”
He needed to get this over with, and soon. Almost daily interaction with his father’s second wife was not good for his mood.
She meant well—most of the time. But the woman pushed buttons and pulled strings she probably had no clue were there. Every time he talked to her he felt drained afterwards, and vaguely angry. He sometimes wondered if his own mother would have had the same effect on him, if she’d bothered to stick around.
Morgan wished he could simply hire another P.I., but he couldn’t shake the image of Charlie’s child in some overcrowded foster home, subject to who knew what kind of abuse from the older kids. Kids could be cruel, especially if their victim couldn’t fight back. And it was often easier for a paid caretaker to turn a blind eye than deal with bullying. He should know.
Besides, Morgan couldn’t ignore the possibility that Charlie’s father might locate the child first and claim custody. A judge could consider the elder Thompson’s young new wife better mother material than Lillian, but two generations of abuse in the Thompson family was enough. More than enough.
Morgan pinched the bridge of his nose to forestall a headache that threatened to knock him off-task. Danby Holding Company needed his full attention if they were going to maximize their opportunities in this kind of market. He rolled his shoulders again and refocused on work.
Two days later Morgan understood the P.I.’s impulse to resort to bribery.
Death certificates were public records, but without a full name or date, the clerks couldn’t tell him if such a record existed.
Medical records might be available to a family member, but since Charlie had never bothered to marry the Mendelev woman and there was no proof he was the father of any child she might have had, Morgan couldn’t get anywhere near those records.
He was reduced to reading back copies of the Merced newspaper from the time when Charlie and the woman had lived in the area, but he found no mention of her or of any child. Only a paragraph about Charlie’s arrest when he’d tried to break into the hospital to get at her.
When he called Lillian to say he’d hit a dead end, she was unconvinced.
“What about the woman lawyer?” his stepmother asked. “If she and that woman were such good friends, she should want to help you find my grandchild. We can offer the little darling a life someone like his mother could never have imagined. Far better than being in foster care with who-knows-what kind of people.”
His thoughts exactly, but what more could he do?
“Lillian, I have a business to run. The same business that supplies most of your income. I don’t have time for this wild goose chase. I need to get back to the office.”
“I don’t ask for much, after the years I spent raising you.”
Paying other people to raise me, he corrected silently.
“But to have Charleston’s child to love in my old age …” She gave an artful sniff.
He sighed. He hated it when she tried to play him like that, but she was the closest thing he had to a family, give or take a mother in Key West he hadn’t seen or spoken to in almost thirty years.
“Okay. I’ll talk to her.” For some reason the idea of seeing Rosalie Walker again made him smile. “But don’t get your hopes up. I doubt I’ll learn anything new.”
“I knew I could rely on you, Morgan. You were always such a good child.”
I had to be or you might have walked out, the way my mother did. He ignored the little boy’s voice inside him and resigned himself to a few days more in California.
Rosalie escaped the overheated courtroom and flipped open her phone. Her heart lurched when she clicked the calendar. Her