hair pulled back and away from her face, she was more than just striking. With very little effort, she could have been—what was it that his brother John called it?—drop-dead gorgeous.
He’d never met any of Joan’s relatives. Was this her daughter? A younger sister? They seemed to be too far apart for the latter, too close for the former. But then, anything was possible these days.
“Are you related to Joan?”
As he watched, the woman straightened her shoulders, pulling them back as if she was bracing herself for something.
“Yes.”
At least, that was what she thought, Cate added silently. If the woman in the room behind this door turned out to really be the Joan Cunningham, nee Haywood, that she was looking for.
Nerves danced through her. Taunting her. She hadn’t felt this unsettled even on her very first day out of Quantico, facing her first real boss. But she’d had confidence in herself then.
This was different.
The more he looked at the woman, the more he was certain that she was related to Joan. And if she was a relative, she couldn’t have timed her appearance better. Joan looked ready to fold when he’d talked to her. There was no doubt in his mind that she was going to need all the support she could get. Even with all the positive feedback he’d given her before she’d gone in for her test, and despite the fact that the numbers were increasing every day regarding survival rate, this news had to be devastating for Joan.
“She’s on the phone right now,” he told the woman. “Trying to reach her husband with the news. But any encouragement you can give her will be very good.”
“Encouragement?” Cate didn’t like the sound of that. “What’s wrong with her?”
Telling her wasn’t his call. His role here was limited, which at times frustrated him. “You’ll have to ask her.”
Cate nodded, really expecting nothing less by way of an answer. Joan’s daughter hadn’t been very informative, either, when she’d spoken to her on the phone earlier. But that was probably because she really didn’t know what was going on. The girl was eighteen, too young to be burdened with anything that might be happening behind hospital walls. Her mother was undoubtedly keeping this from her. Whatever “this” was.
“I will,” she told him. Moving around him, Cate rapped once on the door, then opened it. She assumed that the dark-haired doctor with the electric-blue eyes had gone on his way.
The moment she slipped into the room and closed the door behind her, Cate forgot all about the physician she’d encountered. Forgot about everything except for the woman she saw sitting up in the hospital bed.
The irony of the situation was not lost on her.
A little more than four weeks ago, she was entering another hospital room more than four hundred miles to the north. Entering it to say goodbye to her mother, although she didn’t realize it at the time. Her mother slipped into a coma that evening and died twelve days later.
And now here she was, walking into another hospital room, attending possibly another sickbed; this time, though, it was to say hello to her mother. Another mother.
A host of emotions charged through Cate, riding horses with jagged hooves. There was anger, sorrow, joy and so much more. Too much to sort through and catalog. She felt as if she had no room in which to think.
The woman in the bed—was that really her birth mother?—was talking on the phone just as the doctor had told her. Unable to help herself, Cate listened. The redhead’s voice was shaky. As shaky as the hands that were desperately clutching the receiver.
“I’m going through with it,” she said to the person on the other end of the line. “I just wanted you to know. Dr. Graywolf said it was important to do it as quickly as possible.”
The familiar name had her snapping to attention. Dr. Graywolf? Was her partner’s husband this woman’s doctor? Just how small was the world? Cate wondered.
The fact that there was someone in the room, silently watching her, slowly penetrated the wall of fear around Joan. She murmured “I love you” to her husband and then hung up the phone, her eyes now on the young woman in her room. An eerie feeling wafted through her, as if this wasn’t real. As if none of this ever since she’d first detected the thickness on her right breast was real.
As if she was looking into the mirror and seeing into the past.
Joan cleared her throat, her nervousness growing. “Can I help you?”
Cate kept looking at the woman in the bed, searching for some foolproof sign. All the while knowing that there wouldn’t be one. “That all depends.”
“On what?” Joan whispered the words, now clearly frightened.
Cate took a single step toward her, then stopped. She was afraid that the woman would pass out if she came any closer. Did she know? On some instinctive level, did Joan sense that she was her mother?
Cate put her thoughts into words. “On whether you’re willing to admit that you’re my mother.”
Chapter 9
The woman in the bed drew in a sharp breath. “Excuse me?”
Cate’s heart was in her throat as she confronted a piece of her life. The very air felt still, despite the soft whoosh made by the air-conditioning system.
Was this woman lying in a hospital bed, looking small, frightened and disoriented, really her biological mother, or had Jeremy’s information led them in the wrong direction?
She searched for signs of resemblance and thought she saw a few, but her desire to belong could have colored her perception. Maybe she looked like her father. So far, the only picture she’d managed to find of Jimmy Rollins was his last DMV photo. In true DMV fashion, the photograph was terrible.
“My mother,” Cate repeated. The word tasted chalky on her tongue. Part of her felt disloyal to Julia for even addressing someone else by that name, but part of her felt this need to connect, to still be someone’s daughter. The confidence with which she’d helmed her life was nowhere in sight.
Joan pressed the button on the side railing, moving the bed into more of an upright position. She struggled to get hold of herself.
This can’t be happening, it wasn’t real.
She was still reeling from what Dr. Graywolf had just told her, she couldn’t handle this on top of that.
Despite the reading about breast cancer that she’d done, despite having talked to several women at her club who had lived through the horror that she now faced, she’d discovered in the last five minutes that she wasn’t prepared at all. Not emotionally. Not for this horrible gut-twisting feeling that threatened to cut off her very air. She felt trapped, unable to know which way to run or where.
And Ron, well, Ron didn’t know how to deal with anything that couldn’t be solved with some kind of an elaborate mathematical equation. Her husband of the last twenty-two years had all his emotions stored somewhere in a bank vault and she had no idea what the combination to it was.
Her nerves frayed, her future uncertain, Joan was in no condition to field this latest shock.
Avoiding the young woman’s eyes, Joan grasped at a lie. “I’m afraid that you must have me confused with someone else.”
Then why won’t you look at me? Cate silently demanded. People lied to her all the time, attempting to avoid the consequences of their actions. Part of her job was to see through the lies and get down to the truth.
She saw through Joan’s.
Cate moved closer to the bed. “Are you Joan Cunningham?”
The woman’s breathing became more audible. Like a cornered animal, Cate thought.
“Yes,