He swallows hard, takes her hand.
“I don’t want you to waste any energy worrying about this, Mindy. You have a battle ahead, and I want you to focus on that. We can sort out who I am to you after you kick the cancer’s ass, okay?”
She smiles wider this time. “Oh, thank God. Mom and Dad, sorry, and even Juliet, they can’t bring themselves to talk about it. Like uttering the words will make something happen. Yes, it’s going to be a nasty few days, but you’re here now, and it’s all going to be okay. I can feel it. I’m intuitive that way.”
“I like your attitude. Yes, I teach English. I like to help young men and women find their voices. I’ve had a couple of students go on to become novelists. It’s very gratifying.”
“Do you like to read? ’Cause that’s the other thing I love.”
“I do. I saw your bookshelves. You have good taste.”
The smile is so genuine, so open, that he can’t help himself. “Can I hug you?” he blurts.
She thinks about it for a second, her gnomish forehead wrinkling. “Yes. I think that would be appropriate, considering you’ve been looking for me for almost eighteen years. Just watch the IV, it gets in the way. Mom’s always yanking the tubing out of the machine by accident.”
He carefully sits on the edge of the bed, reaches over Kat, and gathers Mindy in his arms. Despite her height, she is so tiny, and smells like the hospital, and medicine, and oddly enough, the flowery scent he often catches in the woods behind his house. The feelings he has are utterly confusing, strong and intense. He wants to cry and shout for joy at the same time. Her arms slip around his neck, thin but strong, and he closes his eyes and finally, finally, begins to weep.
She holds him, patting him on the back and whispering, not at all put out by the large grown man weeping into her shoulder. He finally calms himself, and pulls back, wiping his eyes. Kat is nestled between them, and Mindy’s eyes are shining, too.
“I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through all of this,” she says. “It must be incredibly difficult to find me after all these years and to have lost your wife, too. I really am sorry. I would have liked to meet her.”
He watches her for a moment, those eyes of his looking back, the feminine face, the chin so like Vivian’s. “You’re amazing, do you know that?”
The grin turns wicked. “You should see me ski.”
55
Lauren stares at the small biscuit on her plate as if all the answers will come from breaking the piece of soft bread wide open. Next to her, Jasper fiddles with a straw, folding it around his finger then unrolling it, over and over. Juliet babbles, as she usually does, talking about the police investigation to come, and how she likes the detectives from Nashville, and what steps they should take next. Jasper nods and answers a few times, but Lauren doesn’t hear, not really. She is consumed with thoughts of her daughter, her Mindy, upstairs, alone with the man who helped create her.
And...her daughter’s innocent question that feels less and less innocent as the minutes tick by.
V.
Shit.
Mindy knows. She found the letters, and she knows.
This is all going south, she can feel it. Everything is wrong. She should be happy there is a chance for a match, a chance to save her daughter, but instead, she feels exposed. Like every bad decision she’s made in her life is about to be revealed.
“Lauren, have you heard a word I said?”
Juliet is staring at her, head cocked like a dog, brows raised in question.
“Sorry, no. What was that?”
“We’re going to have to get a formal statement from you about the conversations you had with Castillo. Plus, I need to see your paperwork.”
“There is no paperwork! I don’t even have the birth certificate she gave me.”
“Why not?”
“When Jasper adopted Mindy, we had it changed. There may be some record of that in the Colorado databases. I turned the old certificate in to them. They made me.”
“Was Kyle Noonan listed on the original birth certificate as Mindy’s father?”
“Of course. That was part of the fiction Castillo created, that he was the father. That’s why I wanted Jasper’s name on there. That asshole was never part of our lives. Thank God he died before I brought Mindy home.”
“In Mexico.”
“Baja. A diving accident. You already know all of this.”
“I do. But once the police start asking questions, they’re going to push for every detail. I’m trying to help you remember.”
“Juliet, I think that’s enough for now,” Jasper says quietly. “It’s a difficult enough day without dredging up bad memories from the past. Can we give it a rest, and eat our breakfast, please?”
“I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. We need to focus on Mindy and the transplant, and her reaction to Zack.”
“Yes, we do, and speaking of that, I’d like to go back up now. They’ve been alone for nearly an hour.” Lauren hears the edge in her tone, can’t help it. She drops the uneaten biscuit on the tray and stands. Jasper puts down his straw and stands as well, gathering the two trays together. Juliet watches them, a small frown on her face.
“Are you coming?” Lauren asks.
“I’ll be there in a minute. I need to make a couple of phone calls.”
Lauren puts her hand on her sister’s shoulder. “We’ll see you up there. And, Juliet, I do appreciate you finding Zack. I do. It’s just hard to know things will never be the same again.”
*
They are laughing. Lauren can hear them from three doors away, both of them cawing, their laughs weirdly similar, brash and unforced. Jasper hears it too, and she sees his brow furrow. She stops and pulls him to her. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers into his chest. “This was never supposed to happen.”
He lets her hug him, though she notices he doesn’t hug her back. Oh, he puts his arms around her and rests his chin on her head, but that’s it, no squeezing, no holding on for dear life, like she’s doing. It is a polite hug, nothing more.
“I know, Lauren. This is hard on all of us, so don’t try to corner the market on feeling bad, okay?”
She pulls back. “Wow. That’s awfully harsh.”
“I’m not in a forgiving mood.”
“Don’t take it out on me. I’m trying to hold this family together.”
“Our lives have been turned upside down, Lauren, all because you chose to hide the truth from me. I’m not feeling charitable about it. Sue me.”
“Sue you? What sort of flippant remark is that?”
“The kind you get for lying about things for so long. You don’t seem to understand how this is going to affect us. How the police investigation is going to tear our lives apart, how the media are going to want to interview us. We’re not just the parents of a missing child. Her mother was murdered. Mindy doesn’t even belong to us. Technically, we have no legal rights to her. Did you ever stop to think of that?”
“We don’t know that, we don’t know—”
“I’ve done some research. Zack can walk out of here with her today, and a judge will take his side. It will be like our family, and the past seventeen years, never existed. Until they start investigating us for her kidnapping. You’ve read the reports on this. You know what happened to his wife. You are the one who got us into this, Lauren. I don’t know how you’re going to get us out of it, so I’m going to have to find a path for us. This is hard enough on me without you being temperamental, so please just knock it off.”
“I’m being temperamental? Me?”
“Yes, you!” They are yelling at each other now. Nurses are turning; the hallways are silent.
“You’re being a complete and total ass, Jasper Wright. I can’t believe you’d say that to me. All I’ve done is try to make things easier on our little girl, and you say I’m being a jerk? Go, just go. I don’t want to see you anymore.”