“Yeah. She said, that way I’d be off the hook. She said, that way I could get my life back.”
“But then where would she be?” Shayla glanced at him again. “Lieutenant, where did Maddie live before she moved out here, to be with you?”
“Palm Springs,” Pete said. “Not that Lisa had bothered to tell me, but about a year ago, they moved back to California to be near Lisa’s grandmother, Kiyo. Lisa’s mother died years ago, but her grandmother’s still, well…Kiyo’s in a nursing home, she’s not…any kind of option for Maddie.” He shook his head. “I actually drove out there this morning, but no one at the facility had seen Maddie since our last visit.” He’d tried to call, but they kept putting him on hold, so he’d finally just got into his truck and gone there—wasted six solid hours on the road.
Shayla nodded. “Okay, but is it possible that there’s someone else in Palm Springs, not necessarily a blood relative—maybe a good friend of Lisa’s—that Maddie might prefer to live with?”
“If that’s the case,” Pete asked, “then why wouldn’t she say something?” But then he laughed and answered his own question. “Maybe because she’s not saying much of anything.”
“Teenagers are complicated,” she reminded him. “Maybe Maddie doesn’t think she has a choice. Or maybe she’s just not thinking at all. I mean, her mom just died. She’s probably still completely overwhelmed.”
“So…how do I broach that topic?” Pete asked. “Hey, Maddie, is there anyone else out there, instead of me, that you’d rather live with?” He shook his head. “I don’t want her to think that I don’t want her.”
“But you just told me that she already believes that,” Shayla pointed out. “Was there anyone you saw at the funeral—”
“I wasn’t there,” he said. “I didn’t get called until, well, it was a week and a half after Lisa was buried.”
“Seriously?”
“Maddie didn’t mention me to anyone,” he confessed. “I gotta assume she was in shock. And Kiyo has Alzheimer’s, plus a bunch of other health issues. Maddie was already placed in temporary foster care when one of the longtime staff at the nursing home thought to ask about the Navy SEAL father. Thank God. That’s when social services finally tracked me down.”
“Wow. Forgive me for asking this, but it sounds like, well, do you have a sense of how Lisa…” Shayla stopped and then started again. “It occurs to me that Lisa may not have painted the, um, most flattering portrait. Of you.” As she glanced at him again, it was clear that she knew he wasn’t quite following, so she went point-blank. “Is it possible that Lisa trash-talked you to the point that Maddie would’ve rather risked going into foster care than live with, you know, her horrible monster of a father?”
“Jesus,” he said.
She attempted to soften her words. “Even the nicest exes can be shitty when under duress. And if you ever had any trouble, say, making child support payments, Lisa may have—”
“I didn’t,” Pete cut her off. “No. Not ever.” But then he corrected himself. “At first, because they moved around so much, the checks sometimes came back as undeliverable. But about twelve years ago, we set up a direct deposit account, so…Problem solved. Of course, that kept me from knowing where they were.” He sighed, because Lisa had been pretty crazy. “With that said, I really don’t know what Lisa told Maddie about me. All I know is that every time I tried to set up a visit, there was some ‘emergency’ and Lisa canceled.” He looked at her again. “And you’re right. It’s definitely weird that Maddie didn’t mention me to any of the social workers.”
“That’s another really awkward question to ask Maddie,” Shayla said. “You don’t want to put her on the spot with Please repeat to me all the nasty crap your mother ever said about me, so I can attempt to refute it in the face of her permanent absence. If I were you? I’d put on my amateur PI hat and sleuth it out. There are questions you can ask Maddie, things like Where exactly did you live? and Where did your mom work? And Did your mom have any good friends? Then you and Maddie can make another road trip to Palm Springs, let her visit her Great-Grandmother Kiyo while you go and round up some of Lisa’s neighbors, co-workers, and friends, and ask them the hard questions.” Her smile was filled with encouragement. “A bonus is that Maddie might really appreciate the chance to talk about her mother. And to hear about Lisa from you—you know, the fun stories, from before things went south.”
He nodded again. “That’s…good advice. Assuming I find Maddie.”
“We’ll find her,” Shay said. “But if we don’t—and I mean don’t find her right away because we’ll find her eventually…Well, another thing we could do is get a list of everyone who was at Lisa’s funeral or memorial service, go talk to them.”
She’d said we. Four times.
She’d noticed, too, and was instantly embarrassed. “Sorry,” she said quickly.
Pete was used to being we-ed by the women he encountered. It’s noisy here tonight. We could go to your place…This whole bizarre evening started to feel significantly more familiar—aside from his odd flare of disappointment that Shayla was no different from the rest.
But she had more to say. “It’s a mom thing,” she explained. “Even when it’s someone else’s kid that’s in trouble, there’s this…well, it feels like a biological urge to help. So if you need any help—finding Maddie, or even just, you know, a friend to talk to—I’m here.”
Okay, she’d definitely added extra emphasis to the word friend, and now Pete was oddly disappointed by that.
“I appreciate it,” he managed.
Earlier, Shayla had both squeezed his hand and patted him on the knee, like she was some kind of mom-to-the-universe. It had bugged him, because she wasn’t his mom—not even close. Yes, she was older than he was, but not by more than a few years. And she was smart, funny, and cute.
Although moms usually came with dads, and he’d expected her to be full-family equipped and filed under taken. But it didn’t take him long to note that she wasn’t wearing a wedding band, which had kind of made his head explode.
Not that Pete was actively looking for a date or a hookup or any variation of the two. Because, really, all he ever had to do to find a little no-strings fun was go to the LadyBug Lounge. The Bug was well known as a SEAL hangout, and he could almost always find an enthusiastic young tourist-type ready to we him for a few hours, because she wanted to add Navy SEAL to her Things I Did on My California Vacation list.