Mercy, things were falling apart. Tessie was in here. In rehab! Lawson hated her, and the worst part about all of it was that it would likely get worse before there was any chance of things getting better. Both Tessie and Lawson had to heal, and God knew how long of a process that would be.
Lawson’s phone buzzed, the sound cutting through the shuffling of their footsteps. “Dylan,” he muttered when he glanced at the screen, and he let the call go to voice mail. He probably wasn’t ready to try to explain any of this to members of his family.
She checked the time. Lawson and she had been there nearly an hour. Way too long with no news. Of course, the drive there had been too long as well, especially since Lawson had insisted on making the trip with her. Eve hadn’t even bothered to try to dissuade him. Now that he knew he was Tessie’s father, he probably thought he had as much right to be here as she did.
“Welcome to fatherhood,” Eve grumbled. She hadn’t meant to say that loud enough for Lawson to hear. It’d just slipped out, but it was a good sarcastic assessment of what was going on. And he heard it all right.
He slowed his pacing enough to look at her. It was a glare, but like the other stink eye he’d been giving her, she deserved it.
But she also deserved answers as to what was happening with her child.
There was a sign on the counter next to the opaque glass surrounding the reception desk. A sign that warned Do Not Tap on the Glass. There were other warnings below that about not using a cell phone, no weapons and no loud conversations. Lawson and she had the last one down pat since they hadn’t spoken directly to each other, but Eve had already violated the cell-phone rule when she’d called Cassidy to check on Aiden.
And she’d broken the glass-tap rule when they’d first arrived.
That had earned her more stink eye, this time from the sour-faced receptionist-nurse who’d first had them fill out a contact info form and then had told them to wait, that the doctor or someone on their medical staff would be out shortly to talk to her. Since shortly had now turned into an hour, Eve tapped on the glass again. She’d barely managed to move her fingers away when the glass slid open, and the grouch puss stared at her. According to her name tag, she was Loralee McCarthy, but Eve had halfway expected it to be Nurse Ratched.
“The doctor or someone on our medical staff will be out shortly to talk to you,” the woman said, repeating the exact words she’d used before.
Nurse Ratched came through loud and clear in that tone, and the woman would have shut the glass right in Eve’s face if Lawson hadn’t caught onto it.
“Get the doctor or someone who can answer our questions out here now,” he ordered.
The woman opened her mouth as if to howl out a protest.
“Now!” Lawson insisted, and he had bested Nurse Ratched with enough badass that the woman picked up her phone.
“Can you see if Dr. Patel is done with the patient?” She paused. “Yes, that’s the one. Her actress mother keeps tapping on the glass.” She said actress as if it were navel lint.
Eve couldn’t hear the response from the person on the other end of the line, but several seconds later, Loralee ended the call. “She’ll be right out.”
“Tessie will be?” Eve asked.
That got her an eye roll. “Dr. Patel. She’ll talk to you about your daughter.” Her gaze cut to Lawson. “Is he her father?”
“No,” Lawson said as Eve fumbled around to get out a yes. “I don’t think this is a good time for Tessie to find out,” he added in a whisper to Eve.
It wasn’t a good time, but Eve wasn’t certain when that “good time” would magically appear. Still, she was appreciative that Lawson had put Tessie first in this.
“It’s complicated,” Eve told Loralee, who was still waiting for an answer.
The woman’s next eye roll let Eve know that she didn’t care. “Dr. Patel can only discuss things with the patient’s parents or legal guardian.”
Lawson and Eve exchanged glances. “We’re the parents,” Eve said. And maybe that wouldn’t get back to Tessie before she’d had a chance to tell her in person.
The door next to the reception area opened, and a tall, slim woman in a white coat greeted them with a thin smile. The kind of smile that was probably an attempt to reassure them that life as they knew it wasn’t about to end, but it was hard for Eve not to feel that way. Because it had.
“Ms. Cooper,” she said and looked at Lawson.
“Lawson Granger, Tessie’s father.” Lawson didn’t stutter on the last word, but Eve heard the hesitation. Eve didn’t resent it. She’d had nearly eighteen years to come to terms with being a parent. Lawson had had two hours.
The woman made another of those attempted smiles. “I’m Dr. Patel. Come with me, please.”
She motioned for them to follow her, and they went down a short hall to an office. Neither the hall nor the office looked especially big. For that matter, neither did the building. It wasn’t much larger than a two-story house.
Lawson’s phone buzzed again with another call. Eve saw Dylan’s name on the screen again, but like the other one, Lawson let this one go to voice mail, too.
“What happened to Tessie?” Eve asked the moment they were seated.
Dr. Patel took her time answering. “Your daughter said I could share some things with you,” she said, emphasizing the some. “Since Tessie is still a minor, you can insist that I show you her medical records, which has a summary of her intake exam, but she’s asked that you not do that.”
Mercy. What a decision. If she didn’t ask, she might not learn something important, but if she did ask, Tessie would have even more fodder not to trust her. She looked at Lawson to see if he had a take on this. It wasn’t fair to place any of this on his shoulders, but Eve was walking on eggshells with him, too.
“Tell us what Tessie said it was okay to share,” Eve finally answered, and she prayed that was the right thing to do.
The doctor nodded. “Several hours ago, Tessie came here saying that she needed help, and she voluntarily checked herself in. This is a privately funded free rehab facility, so there was no need to get her medical insurance information from you.” She paused. “Were you aware that she’s been drinking?”
“I just learned about it.” Eve tried not to blame Lawson for not telling her sooner, but she wished that was something he’d done. That way, she could have forced Tessie to talk to her about the night Tessie and he had met face-to-face.
Maybe.
Tessie hadn’t exactly been a font of two-way communication since this adoption-reveal had happened.
“Had Tessie been drinking when she got here?” Lawson asked.
“She didn’t appear to have been, but I don’t have the results of her blood test yet.”
Eve thought there was a good chance that Tessie hadn’t had a drop of alcohol today. “I think Tessie came here because she found out that I’d learned about her drinking. This could be her way of avoiding me.”