doors, she glanced up and down the street, searching for a pickup with an extended cab and tinted windows.
Two minivans drove by. Soccer moms with their brood of kids. Nothing to fear.
Meredith swallowed the wad of anxiety that seemed perpetually lodged in her throat, pushed open the door and stepped into the humid outdoors. The briny smell of the sea hung in the early spring air.
Regret filtered past her with the breeze. She’d miss the ocean when she left Refuge Bay, but she wouldn’t miss the nervous apprehension that continually bubbled up, causing her chest to burn and her head to pound.
Just as long as the stress didn’t affect the baby. Bless this child, dear Lord. Let nothing harm the precious gift You’ve given me.
Purse draped over her shoulder, she rubbed her hand protectively over her belly as she rounded the corner and nearly collided headlong into the guy who had chased her earlier.
She did a hasty about-face, ready to run back to the bank.
He grabbed her arm. Twisting, she tried to break free.
“Ma’am, please. I won’t hurt you. I work in an Atlanta medical lab. My name’s Pete Worth.”
She glanced down at the fingers wrapped around her arm.
He relaxed his grasp and dropped his hand. “Please, don’t run away.”
Raising her gaze, she noted concern in his dark brown eyes.
“What do you want?” she demanded, keeping her shoulders back, her chin jutting forward. No need to cut him any slack.
He drew a business card from his pocket. “Information about a woman named Dixie Collins.”
She took a step back. Collins? “I…I don’t know anyone named Dixie.”
The lab guy crooked a brow and leaned in closer. He raised a finger to her eye. “You’ve got a little brown dot in your iris.”
The mark she’d had since birth. Her adoptive father called it the devil’s curse. Not what a child needed to hear.
“Look, I don’t have time for this,” she said with a huff.
He held up his hand. “Sam Collins and his wife Hazel adopted a baby twenty-four years ago.”
Meredith’s world shifted. Vertigo or lack of food, but for half a second, everything swirled around her.
“The infant was born on November sixteenth.” He stepped closer. “The Collins family lived in Augusta, Georgia, at the time. Now a woman named Dixie claims she’s the adopted daughter.”
Questions flew through her mind, not that she’d give them voice.
“I’m helping Eve Townsend, the birth mother, find her rightful heir.” He stared at her, waiting for a reply.
Meredith swallowed, trying to form a response. “Seems…seems to me someone who gave her child up for adoption wouldn’t want to revisit the past,” she managed to stammer.
“Unless the woman’s dying.”
His words hit Meredith hard. “Dying?”
Pete looked past her down the street. “Is there someplace we can talk? A coffee shop? Or the diner? I’ll buy you lunch.”
She shook her head. Much as she wanted to believe the man with the even gaze and the calming voice, she’d learned things weren’t always as they seemed.
She took the offered card. “I need to go.”
Frustration washed over his face. “Eve has the same mark on the iris of her eye, which you evidently inherited from your biological mother. She also has a fatal genetic condition that could have been passed on as well.” He glanced at Meredith’s belly. “You need to be tested, for your baby’s sake.”
She shook her head, not ready to absorb what he was saying. Every action and reaction she’d had in the last seven months had been to protect her child.
Now a stranger she didn’t know tells her about a woman to whom she may be related, and a disease that could adversely affect the precious life growing within her.
Her husband had been murdered. The men who’d killed him were after her, and this guy wanted to compound the situation?
For all she knew, he could be working with the thugs. Right now, she couldn’t trust her instincts, and the last thing she needed was another problem to weigh her down.
Meredith took another step back.
“Wait. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he insisted.
She turned, needing space and time to process everything he’d just thrown her way.
“I’m staying at the Lodge. Think it over and we can meet later.”
Meredith dashed around the corner and stumbled into the alleyway on the far side of the bank.
She wasn’t ready to trust anyone. Certainly not the police, who hadn’t believed her when she was a child and had questioned her more than she felt necessary after her husband’s death. Had they thought she was somehow involved?
Her hand brushed over the rough brick wall. She needed support. Her world was in chaos and shifting far too quickly out of control.
Two months before delivery wasn’t the time to be thrown off track because of a woman who had a deathbed wish to right a mistake she’d made twenty-four years ago.
Pete had mentioned Atlanta, so Meredith wouldn’t head west. Charleston and Hilton Head were up the coast. Maybe the Carolinas would offer a safe haven.
She found her car and fell into the front seat. For a moment, she stared at the business card.
Who was she kidding? She had no place to go and no one to help her. If things didn’t change soon, her child would be born into a life on the run.
She needed to know more about the disease that could affect her baby.
The way she looked at it, she had two options. Hit the road to nowhere or find out what Pete Worth had to say.
Pete sat on the deck and watched the boat dock at the neighboring marina. Gulls cawed overhead as waves lapped against the side of the fishing vessel. The day’s catch must have been good the way the birds swooped low over the deck, begging for scraps of fish.
The setting sun cast the sky in shades of pink and blue like a patchwork quilt. Something Eve might create with her tiny stitches and pieced fabric.
Or Meredith.
The brown pigment on her left eye was identical to Eve’s. Seems Dixie Collins—whoever she was—had led him to Eve’s long-lost daughter.
He doubted that Meredith knew about the vast wealth that would fall into her lap if she and Eve reconnected. Unless Dixie or the boyfriend had told her.
