wouldn’t have to confess to feeling relief that the firefighter she barely knew and shouldn’t be planning to get to know better wouldn’t be meeting someone else.
Ross Van Zandt set a heavy file box next to the sofa, leaning back into the cushions without opening it. He could have worked in his office this afternoon, but he preferred to be home as much as he could these days.
He reached for the remote control and flipped on daytime television, not expecting quality viewing but still looking for white noise. As if to confirm his prediction, a local celebrity’s face appeared on the screen in an extreme close-up.
“Good afternoon, Richmond. I’m Douglas Matthews, and I would like to welcome you to Afternoons with Douglas Matthews.”
“How many more times can he cram Douglas Matthews into one sentence?” Ross grumbled.
As the camera pulled away, the black-haired and blue-eyed talk show host leaned in and smiled with unnaturally white teeth, as if he was talking to his best friends. All half a million or so of his buddies outside the screen.
“You’re going to love our lineup today. First up, is your garden ready for the snowy season? Our garden expert will offer the Top Ten tips for planting, pruning and primping to ensure a plentiful spring.”
Ross rolled his eyes as he opened the box at his feet. The talk show host prattled on about how to make marinated salmon with some local celebrity or other, but Ross tuned out the rest.
Why did people watch that garbage, anyway? Afternoons didn’t deal with anything meatier than the best food for roses or favorite boat tours on Richmond’s Kanawha Canal.
From what Ross had heard, Matthews had made a scene at the Starlight Diner when Richmond Gazette reporter Jared Kierney had suggested a show on the Tiny Blessings adoption scandal. Even if Matthews didn’t want to help people by sharing their stories, at least Ross would have expected the talk show host to jump on the story for a ratings boost. With material like today’s lineup, he probably needed it.
“You’ve procrastinated long enough, Van Zandt.” Ross blew out a breath as he forced his attention back to the box of records.
He knew this drill. For the last two months he’d been going through these records systematically, comparing them to the documents on file at Tiny Blessings and trying to weed out the truth from an overgrowth of lies. He was glad he could provide pro bono private investigative services for the agency his wife headed because Tiny Blessings would never be able to afford those services otherwise.
At the squeak on the stairs, Ross was sorry he’d decided to leave the office and pore over more records at home today. Kelly didn’t need any more aggravation these days, and this newest crisis facing the agency was nothing if not aggravating.
Just when they thought they’d put the scandal involving illegal adoptions behind them, more falsified records had been discovered in the walls of the Harcourt mansion during the renovation project by Ben Cavanaugh’s construction company.
Ross had hoped Kelly would relinquish more of the responsibility, and the headaches that went along with it, to Eric Pellegrino, the agency’s new assistant director she’d hired to take the pressure off her pregnancy. But he knew Kelly better than that. For all the crises and bad publicity the agency faced, his wife believed the buck stopped with her.
The woman he loved appeared then at the end of the sofa, her hands resting on her rounded belly, her hair mussed from a nap.
“I thought you were supposed to be resting.”
Kelly frowned at him and then lowered herself on the sofa cushion. “I’m too tired to sleep, but I’m sure I won’t be sleeping tonight, either. Our little acrobat likes choosing that for gym time.”
Still, she gave her stomach a loving pat. “This counts as resting. I’ll even put my feet up if you scoot over.”
Ross did as he was told, as all husbands of extremely pregnant wives should do for their self-protection. Tucking a pillow beneath her feet that she had settled on the brown leather ottoman, he reached in the box and pulled out a stack of files.
“Who are we looking at today?” she asked, holding out a hand for him to offer her a stack.
“I just thought I would flip through these again. Maybe this time a name will ring a bell.”
“I hate thinking that some of these adoptive children searching for their birth parents will never find the answers they’re looking for though we have the answers right here.”
“With a lot of work and even more prayer, we’ll help them find those answers,” he told her.
Ross scooted closer to his wife, propped his feet next to hers and glanced down at the names on the file tabs.
“Bailey-Brock-Brown,” he read aloud. “Brown? If that won’t be like finding a needle in a haystack.” Every single name in those case files was another needle, but neither of them needed a reminder of that.
“Daley-Davenport-Dexter,” Kelly read aloud from her own pile before looking over at him.
Ross shook his head. “No. Nothing.”
“Yeah, me, neither.”
They continued on, listing names back and forth, but none sounded familiar. Even if one had, it wouldn’t have made a difference since these could have been the mothers’ maiden names—if these were the real files and not just another round of doctored documents.
Ross stopped on a file that said “Harcourt.”
“Now there’s a familiar name.” He turned the tab to the side, letting Kelly take a look. “I wonder how many Harcourt offspring are running around Chestnut Grove and the rest of Virginia without any idea who they really are.”
“Maybe a few. As long as the young women’s parents were willing to pay for Barnaby Harcourt’s silence. I doubt he gave relatives a discount on his rates.” Kelly frowned as she always did when she mentioned the founding director of Tiny Blessings whose illegal acts had tarnished the agency’s reputation.
For curiosity’s sake as much as anything, Ross flipped open the file and started calculating.
“This baby’s a thirty-three-year-old man now. Birth mother is named Cynthia. Recognize that one?”
She shook her head. “And her last name could be anything now.”
“The father is listed as ‘unknown.’”
Kelly made a sound of acknowledgment in her throat but didn’t comment further. The absence of a birth father was as common an occurrence in the adoption-agency business as the lack of complete information.
Ross’s hands tightened on the folder. If he couldn’t solve the problems for the agency his wife loved, then he’d at least hoped to help her reunite some of the adoptive children with their birth parents. Even in that plan, he was failing Kelly.
Shuffling the papers again, he smacked the file closed, but when he did, something fell to the ground. It wasn’t much, just a tiny slip of yellowing paper, about the size of a sticky note.
Ross automatically reached down to grab it and stuff it back in the file, but the two words stopped him with his hand still held high: “See Donovan.”
He cleared his throat, his pulse pounding. “Honey, ever see this?”
“What is it?” she asked, but her eyes widened and she reached into the box between them.
It was all Ross could do not to shove his pregnant wife out of the way and start riffling in the box himself, but somehow he managed to wait until she was finished. Her frown didn’t leave any doubt that she hadn’t found the file, but her expression lifted again, and she tilted her head to the side.
“You don’t think—”
“No,” he blurted. He didn’t need her to finish to know how