long have you had her?”
“Since she was twelve hours old. Almost five months, now.”
“What happened to her parents?”
“There was no father named. Her mother’s young, has no means to care for her.”
The room was cold. The day was cold. Not even the memory of Joe’s friendship could warm her.
Grandma was gone. For good.
“I thought there was always a waiting list for newborns.”
“Her mother won’t give her up. She has six months to complete a state-ordered program as part of the process of getting her back.”
“How long until she regains custody?”
“Depends on the mother. Could be months. A year or two. Never. In the meantime, because she can’t be adopted, I keep the baby.”
“You could have her for years?”
“I could.” Sue couldn’t allow herself to consider the possibility or she’d get too attached. “It’s not likely, though. I’m sure her mother will come through. She wants this baby more than anything. In all my years of fostering, I’ve never had a baby for more than nine months.”
And in all the years she’d worked for Joe, he’d never asked her a single question about the kids in her care.
“And you had no problem giving it up after all that time?”
Now he was trespassing. “Having problems is relative,” she said. Her last long-term baby had been with her seven months. Dante’s mother had loved her son enough to straighten out her life. She’d visited every single day those last couple of months. Handing him over to her had been as much a celebration as it had been a loss.
“There’s always another one,” she said now, hoping that Dante’s mom was still as dedicated to her boy when he was three and four and into everything as she’d been when he was a cuddly little baby.
The revolving door at the front of the foyer turned again, admitting a middle-aged man with a briefcase and a cell phone pressed to his ear who disappeared through one of many identical doors.
Where were her parents?
And then something else dawned on Sue.
“I thought you and your dad’s half brother, your uncle Daniel, were your dad’s only family.” Joe had said so when his grandma Jo had passed away several years before.
“We are.”
“Your uncle didn’t die, did he?”
“No. He’s still here in San Francisco. Still in construction.” Though she’d never met Daniel Kane, Sue felt as though she knew him. Joe had idolized him.
Only nine years older, Daniel had been there when Joe was young, and hadn’t seemed to mind him tagging along. Adam’s and Daniel’s mother was Joe’s Grandma Jo—the woman who’d raised all three.
Daniel had given Joe his start in the construction business.
“So who passed away?” Sue asked again, staring at the man who’d fathered—and then abandoned—her onetime best friend. “Someone from his dad’s side?”
Adam Fraser’s father had been a soldier in World War II. He’d made it back from the war only to be killed in a car accident before Adam was even born. But apparently no one from his dad’s family had ever tried to see Adam. Or be a part of his life.
“He says he doesn’t know what’s going on.” Joe sounded more bored than anything. “He claims he got a call from some attorney and was told he needed to be here this morning for the reading of a will.”
“Surely the guy gave him the name of the deceased.”
“Yeah, but he says he doesn’t have any idea who the woman is.”
“That’s odd.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“You don’t believe him. You think he knows?”
“How many people get calls out of the blue telling them they’re supposedly named in a will of someone they’ve never met?”
“It happens.”
“On TV.”
“So what reason could he possibly have for lying?”
“Because he has something to hide?”
“Then why bring you along?”
“How do I know? I barely know the man.”
Hard to believe she’d once been privy to Joe’s every thought.
“You’re here.”
“He’s my father.”
That sounded like the Joe she’d known.
Uncle Sam strode back down the hall toward the foyer just as the revolving door turned again. Sue’s parents had arrived. Belle, still cuddling a sleeping Camden, stood with her mother to greet them.
And Sue’s cell phone vibrated against her hip. She recognized the number. Please God, she prayed silently as she turned from Joe to take the call. Let my third crib be filled. Not another one emptied…
Sue barely had time to finish the call—and certainly no time to digest the information—as her parents moved toward her. She forced a smile, keeping her news to herself, trying not to look at the little guy in Belle’s arms—a baby she’d cared for, almost exclusively, for five months. She had only six more hours to keep him close to her heart before she had to hand him over. And never see him again.
“I’M SORRY, MR. KRAYNICK. I appreciate your candor and your intentions here. I understand your situation, but unfortunately, I can’t give you access to the baby. It does appear, by these documents, that you and the mother’s baby could be half brother and sister, but…”
Frustrated beyond belief, Rick already knew what the woman—State Worker Number Four—was going to say. He’d been hearing the same news, in various versions and from various people, for the past three days, which was why that morning he’d finally used the information he’d been given at the cemetery.
Ever since he’d heard from that young girl that his sixteen-year-old sister had had a baby, he’d been unable to think of anything else.
The city’s social services network had verified that the infant existed. But they couldn’t possibly expose a baby girl to a complete stranger on his word that he was family. It didn’t help matters that he’d admitted he’d never even met his sister.
He’d hoped producing his birth certificate, to compare with the one they could get for Christy, would verify their relationship. Would change things.
Turns
