Bill looked around the crowded coffee shop like he was in search of a familiar face in the crowd. More likely, he was picking out words in his head.
“Employment is good,” she prompted. “Dinner is good. Soooooo…”
“I don’t want you to get pissed at me, but I looked into your adoption.”
Jo’s heart stopped. Then started thumping. “What did you … what did you find? And you had no right to do that, yada, yada, yada.”
If he’d asked her, she would have said no. But considering he’d clearly found something?
Bill reached into the pocket of his corduroy coat and took out a sheaf of papers that was folded length-wise. “Your birth mother was a nurse. Up in Boston. She left the hospital there when she found out she was pregnant. Back then, in the seventies, single mothers weren’t viewed the same, and she had a son that she gave up for adoption. She stayed, continued to work in various places. Fifteen years later, she gets pregnant again, by the same guy. She never married him, though. Not from what I saw. It was definitely the same man, though, according to diary entries that were copied and put into the file. This time, with you, she moved away, came here, settled in Caldwell. When she had you, she didn’t make it, unfortunately. It was a high-risk pregnancy because she was older by that time. She never disclosed who your father was, however, and there were no next of kin who came forward to claim you.”
Jo sat back in the chair and felt all the noise and the people around her disappear. Brother? And her mother had died …
“I wonder if she would have kept me,” she said quietly.
“Your father—your adoptive one, that is—had asked a lawyer to keep his eyes out for possible babies at St. Francis here in town. As soon as your birth mom died, he paid to claim you and it was done.”
“And that’s that.”
“Not exactly.” Bill took a deep breath. “I found your brother. Kind of.”
The reporter put a black-and-white photograph down on the table. It was of a dark-haired man she didn’t recognize. Who was about forty years old.
“His name is Dr. Manuel Manello. He was the chief of surgery at St. Francis. But he went off the grid over a year ago, and no one’s really seen him since.”
With a shaking hand, Jo picked up the picture, searching the features, finding some that, yes, were like her own. “We both ended up in the same place…”
“Caldwell has a way of bringing people together.”
“We have the same-shaped eyes.”
“Yes, you do.”
“They look hazel, don’t you think? Or maybe they’re brown eyes.”
“I can’t tell.”
“May I keep this?”
“Please. And I’m sorry I stuck my nose in where it arguably didn’t belong. But I just started digging and couldn’t stop. I wasn’t sure what I’d find, so I didn’t say anything.”
“It’s okay,” she said without looking up. “And thank you. I … I always wondered what my blood looked like.”
“We can try to find him, you know?”
Now she lifted her eyes. “You think?”
“Sure. We’re investigative reporters, right? Even if he’s left Caldwell, there must be some way of locating him. It’s extremely hard in modern life to go completely blank. Too many electronic records, you know.”
“Bill, are you some kind of fairy godfather?”
He nodded and toasted with his latte. “At your service.”
A brother, Jo thought as she resumed staring at the image of an arguably handsome face.
“Just one brother?” she murmured, even though it was greedy, she supposed, to want more.
“Who knows. That’s all your mom seems to have given birth to. But maybe through your dad’s side? Anyway, maybe there’s some way of finding him. The trail might be cold, but we could get lucky.”
“You know, this whole vampire search is such a distraction.” She smiled ruefully. “I’m well aware that they don’t really exist, and certainly not in Caldwell. I think it would be better to start looking for my real family than some fake fantasy, don’t you think.”
“Maybe that’s why you went a little crazy with it all. Although I admit, I’ve been right there with you.”
“Family,” she murmured, still staring at the picture. “Real family. That’s what I want to find.”
SEVENTY-THREE
“Should I wear a suit?”
As Rhage came out of the bathroom, he had a cleanly shaven face, mostly dry hair, and a towel around his waist. “Mary—”
“Coming,” he heard from out in the hall. “I’m just helping Bitty.”
“No hurries.”
He was smiling as he crossed the carpet and headed for the walk-in closet. The ceremony was supposed to start in half an hour, so there was still time to get thought up about which black silk shirt to put on—
“Motherfucker!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Are you fucking kidding me!”
As soon as he let fly with the f-bombs, all twelve kinds of laughter bubbled into the room, his Brothers and his shellan and his Bitty girl streaming in, yukking it up like the total defacement of his wardrobe was sooooooooo frickin’ hilarious.
It was like Baywatch had thrown up all over his shit.
“A surfboard! Fishnets? Is this a … a harpoon?” He stuck his head back out of the jambs. “Where do you bunch of lunatics even find a harpoon in Caldwell?”
“Internet,” someone said.
“Amazon,” somebody interjected.
He rolled his eyes and pointed at Bitty. “And you’re in on this, too? Et tu, Brutus Bits?”
As the girl laughed harder, he went back into the closet and picked up the blow-up great white shark. “How many hours did someone spend putting air into this thing?”
While Rhage threw the nightmare out into the bedroom, Vishous raised his hand. “That was me. But I used a tire pump—and actually, I blew up the first one.”
“Good thing we had a back-up,” Butch pointed out.
“You guys are insane. Insane!”
“Never gets old,” Wrath announced. “Ever. Even without the visual, it’s some priceless shi—ah, shitake. Mushroom. That is.”
“Ha!” Rhage said to his King. “Having fun with that? Not quite so easy, my Lord, is it.”
“Technically, I can have you beheaded for that kind of insubordination.”
“Promises, promises.”
Rhage rolled his eyes as the crowd began to disperse, and he had to fight to get to his clothes, beating back the—OMG, was that a taxidermied tarpon, for fuck’s sake?
“You people have too much time on your hands,” he shouted at no one in particular.
Five minutes later, he came out dressed in the same version of black and tailored that he’d put on to get interviewed by Rhym.
His two females were sitting at the end of the bed, his Mary in a black dress and Bitty in a bright blue frock that had been hastily made with pride by the household’s doggen. Both had silver bows around their waists, and between them on the duvet were two long bindings of satin ribbons in blue, black, and silver.
“Oh, my girls.” He just had to stop and look at them. “Oh, my beautiful females.”
Both of them blushed, and Mary was the first to cast it off as she got to her feet and put her hand out for Bitty.
“Here’re your ribbons,” his female said as they came over with the arrangement.
“Our ribbons,” he corrected.
As they left the room together, they joined a river of other people, everyone streaming down the grand staircase, making the turn, continuing through the hidden door and into the underground tunnel.
“It’s so long,” Bitty said as she walked between them. “The tunnel is long.”
“This is a big place,” Rhage murmured.
“Does anyone get lost ever?”
He thought of Lassiter. “No,” he grumbled. “Everyone always finds their way back. Especially fallen angels with bad T.V. viewing habits.”
“I resemble that remark,” Lassiter cracked from the back of the pack.