Despite the salon’s elegance, the stylists’ stations looked much like those in more financially accessible places. There was a chair in front of a mirror surrounded by lights. Tucked into one edge of the mirror was Angie’s cosmetologist license, and below that, several photographs. Some of them were of Angie – the woman hadn’t really changed that much from the photo she’d found – but all of them featuring the same young man. Angie was a slender Hispanic woman, her high cheekbones and flawless complexion making her pretty enough to have been a model in her youth. Not that she was old. She’d been in Thorne’s graduating class, so she couldn’t be much older than he was.
The young man, though . . . Gwyn found herself leaning forward to study his face. He was a teenager, a recent high school graduate if the little number dangling from the tassel on his cap was anything to go by. He was startlingly . . . familiar. Blond hair, bright blue eyes and a dimpled smile that managed to be warm and slightly self-deprecating all at once, as if he was uneasy being the center of the photographer’s attention.
‘Hello.’
Gwyn jerked her eyes up to the mirror, where Angie herself stood behind the chair, smiling at her. Gwyn smiled back. ‘Hi. Thank you for fitting me in.’
Angie’s smile grew, and a dimple popped in her cheek. Exactly in the same position as that of the boy in the picture. ‘It was my pleasure, Miss Kelly. I like to have a little hand in happily-ever-afters. Weddings are my specialty.’
‘I’m just Amber.’ Gwyn settled into the chair and fingered the ends of her hair. ‘I want to look princessy, but my guy likes it long, so he made me promise that you wouldn’t cut it.’
‘Then we shall do both,’ Angie said, and draped a cape over her, drawing it around her shoulders to snap it at the back of her neck. ‘Where are you going for your big night?’
My bed was just fine for our big night, Gwyn thought, but she smiled brightly into the mirror. ‘Paris. I’ve never been and I’m so excited!’
Angie was studying her hair, testing the springiness of her curls and the weight of it. ‘When do you leave?’
‘We have an eleven p.m. flight out of Reagan National.’ Gwyn had made sure that the flight existed, just to be on the safe side. ‘We’ll get there in time for a late lunch or an early supper and we’ve made arrangements with a little chapel for an evening service.’
‘So I need to style it so that it lasts at least until then,’ Angie said seriously. ‘Flights are hard on hair. I’ll have to use some pretty strong hairspray. Is that okay?’
Gwyn nodded dreamily. ‘That’ll be fine.’
After a trip to the shampoo bowl, Gwyn was back in Angie’s chair, staring again at the photos of the young man. ‘I can’t help but think that I’ve seen that boy somewhere,’ she said conversationally.
Angie spared a glance at the photos, her expression softening. ‘No,’ she said almost sadly. ‘My nephew lives in Iowa. I don’t get to see him all that often.’
Iowa. Gwyn had to take a breath so that she didn’t reflexively stiffen in the chair. Detective Prew had said Angie had gone out west to ‘some state with corn’ during Thorne’s trial. If her nephew lived out there, she’d probably stayed with family.
‘You look very proud of him,’ she remarked. ‘I can see that you’re related. You have a dimple in the same place.’
Angie smiled again, revealing said dimple. ‘We do.’ She cast another longing glance at the photograph, a glance that was decidedly . . . maternal. ‘Liam is a good boy. I’m proud of him.’
Gwyn knew that look. She’d seen it in her own mirror every time she thought of her ‘nephew’, usually on his birthday, but it was also the look she’d learned to bury whenever anyone said the word ‘son’. Because Aidan wasn’t Gwyn’s nephew any more than Liam was Angie’s.
‘I can see that,’ she said quietly. You should tell Thorne.
About what? Angie’s son or mine?
Both. You know it’s the right thing to do.
And she did know that. She also knew it would be a hard thing to say. My son. She’d never spoken the words aloud to anyone, not even to Lucy, not since that awful day she’d signed the papers so that her beautiful boy could have the life he deserved with parents who could provide for him.
Because she wouldn’t have been able to. Not then. She remembered the scared, unemployed, uneducated young woman who’d foolishly believed the man she’d thought she’d spend the rest of her life with when he’d told her he loved her. Water under the bridge, Gwyn. After all these years, the only thing she had left was self-recriminations, and they never helped.
She wondered what Angie’s circumstances had been and mentally did the math. If Liam had recently graduated high school, he’d be about seventeen or eighteen.
About the same age as Aidan, who’d turned eighteen ten months before. That had been the kicker for Gwyn. The nudge she’d needed to get on with her life. To get counseling so that she could dig her way out of the darkness in which she’d been floundering since Evan. Because Aidan’s parents had promised they’d tell him he was adopted when he turned eighteen, or if he asked, whichever came first.
Hopefully he’d want to meet Gwyn someday, and she wanted to have her life together when and if that day ever came.
Her eyes were drawn to a photo of Angie and Liam together, smiling. ‘How old is he? Your nephew?’
Another wistful smile. ‘Eighteen just last month.’ But she brightened then. ‘He’s coming to Baltimore for college.’ Her whole demeanor changed. ‘He was accepted to Johns Hopkins, into their biomedical engineering department.’
‘Whoa,’ Gwyn said, suitably impressed. ‘He’s a genius.’
‘He certainly is,’ she said proudly.
‘And now you’ll be able to visit with him more often than before.’
‘I will.’ Angie did something magical with her hands, and Gwyn’s hair was suddenly up, delicate curls framing her face and making her look years younger.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed softly, and Angie beamed.
‘I thought you’d like it this way.’ She tugged and poked pins into the do, murmuring apologies when Gwyn winced. ‘Gotta make sure it stays.’ She winked in the mirror. ‘For Paris.’ She took a step back, surveying her work. ‘I’m going to find the heavy-duty hairspray,’ she said. ‘Just relax for a minute or two.’
When she was gone, Gwyn resumed her study of the photos. Young Liam had turned eighteen a month ago. Right about the time that four hundred thousand dollars had been deposited in Angie’s account. The same month that years earlier the Lindens had given her money for her business.
And then Gwyn knew why the boy’s face was so damn familiar. Glancing around for Angie, she pulled out her phone and studied the photo she’d snapped late Sunday evening while sitting at Phil and Jamie’s kitchen table. It was the photo of the Linden family that Jamie had included in his case file. She enlarged it until Richard Linden’s face filled her screen, then glanced up at the mirror, where an almost identical face stared back. The only difference was Liam’s smile, which he’d clearly inherited from his mother.
‘Angie is Liam’s mother,’ she whispered, hoping Thorne could hear her. ‘And Liam is Richard’s son,’ she added, swiping the photo closed just as Angie came back shaking a can of hairspray.
‘Let’s get you fixed for Paris,’ she said.
Gwyn forced herself to smile back. ‘Merci.’
Bethesda, Maryland,
Tuesday 14 June, 6.10 P.M.
Thorne sat back in his seat, stunned. ‘Did she just say what I thought she said?’ he asked Alec and Ford. The three of them had been gathered around Alec’s phone, which he’d had on speaker while recording everything that was said inside the salon.
Thorne had needed to pull himself from his own thoughts when Gwyn had spoken the words so quietly. Liam is Richard’s son.
He’d been stuck back on Guilty as charged, unable to hide his reaction. Not the burning of his cheeks and certainly not the hardening of his cock. But he’d borne it, because he was not adjusting himself in front of the other two.
Luckily, the conversation had shifted to Gwyn’s plans for Paris and what she wanted done with her hair. Still, his pants had remained uncomfortably tight.