422,” she said as she turned up her collar. “Arrives at 12:04 p.m. Be there, Mr. Venner, or risk the wrath of the Child Welfare Office.”
He chuckled, a derisive sound completely lacking in mirth. “Oh, and I’m supposed to be terrified of a bunch of overextended social workers who don’t even have the time or organization to tell me I’ve become a father.”
At his assertion, M. H. Garrett slouched a little, looking even more tired than Carver felt. “Yeah,” she said. “You’re supposed to be terrified of us. Maybe we’re overextended, disorganized and pressed for time, but at least we care about our kids. And maybe we don’t always get the job done right, but we do our best.”
She reached behind herself for the doorknob and pulled the door open, but her gaze never left his. “I’ve been assigned to your case, Mr. Venner, and I’m going to do my best to make sure that you and your daughter get situated properly. If you need counseling, I’ll arrange it. If you need financial assistance, I’ll see what I can do. If you need help getting her enrolled in school, I’ll take care of it.”
“And if I need the services of a lawyer to prove this is all just a scam?” he asked pointedly.
“Then you’re on your own. Although I do have legal counsel at my disposal, I’ll only notify them if you don’t show up at the airport tomorrow or if you conveniently decide to leave town. Like I said, I’ll do what I can for you and the girl. Because as far as I’m concerned, and as far as the law is concerned, Rachel Stillman is your daughter.”
He was about to object again when he decided it would probably be fruitless to do so. He knew a good lawyer, one who’d pulled his butt out of a sling on more than one occasion. This Rachel Stillman thing would be a piece of cake for her. Before the kid’s plane hit the runway, Carver would be off the hook.
He watched M. H. Garrett’s back as she descended the stairs, still rattling his brain trying to remember where he knew her from. He even stepped out into the hallway to lean over the banister, and continued to observe her until her dark head disappeared into the stairwell completely.
Only when she was safely out of sight did it finally strike Carver in a burst of memory where he had met her. And once he remembered, he immediately recalled what the M.H. stood for. It didn’t stand for Mostly Harmless. It stood for Madelaine Helena. He also recalled that although Maddy was a lot of things, as far as he was concerned, harmless wasn’t one of them.
Madelaine Garrett settled herself wearily into the driver’s seat of her aged sedan and sighed. She told herself she should be worrying about the outcome of the Stillman case. Or about the outcome of any number of cases assigned to her docket. She told herself she should be studying the ragged city map in her glove compartment to locate the address of the next family she had to visit that day. She told herself she should even be thinking about what she was going to do for lunch, since she hadn’t consumed anything but coffee for more than seven hours. Instead, only one thought meandered through her brain.
Carver Venner hadn’t remembered her. He hadn’t recognized her at all.
Uncertain whether she was happy or sad about the realization, she angled the rearview mirror down toward herself and studied her reflection. Had she really changed that much since she had last seen him? Her face was still oval shaped, and her fair skin was still almost too pale. Her eyes were still brown and her hair was still black, albeit significantly touched with gray and considerably shorter than the waist-length tresses she had sported twenty years ago. The glasses she wore now weren’t so very different from those she had worn throughout high school, but these days they were considered fashionable instead of geeky.
Although she had been a little on the pudgy side as a teenager, she reminded herself. And she had shed all her surplus weight and more while going through her divorce five years ago. She was quite a bit thinner now than she had been as an adolescent—really too thin, she knew—something that made her eyes seem larger and her lips fuller than they had been before, something that more clearly defined what had turned out to be surprisingly stark cheekbones. Maybe that was why Carver hadn’t recognized her, she thought.
Or maybe he hadn’t recognized her, she pondered further, because she simply wasn’t anything at all like the kid he’d known at Strickler High School. Maddy leaned her head back against the seat and inhaled an unsteady breath. Boy, would Carver laugh hysterically if he only knew how right he’d been about so many things.
She turned the key in the ignition and waited for a moment while her little car sputtered to life. It groaned and grated and finally choked itself into gear, and Maddy drove forward with no particular destination in mind.
She had thirty-two cases assigned to her at the moment, not one of which showed any promise of turning out well. When the Rachel Stillman file had landed on her desk, she had at first embraced high hopes for it. Only when she’d realized the man she would be informing of Rachel’s existence was Carver Venner had she tried to get someone else to take the case. She’d pleaded with Vivian and Mohammed to pay back favors they owed her, and had even tried to bribe Eric. But, like she, everyone else at Welfare was overburdened with casework as it was. As usual, no one had the time.
Maddy caught sight of a fast-food chain up ahead and flipped on her right turn signal to make a quick stop at the drive-thru. When she exited with a greasy cheeseburger and fries and diet soda in hand, however, she suddenly lost her appetite. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually been hungry. Funny, at one time food had been her greatest comforter. Nowadays, even the most decadent confection in the world couldn’t ease the feelings of hopelessness that wanted to drag her down.
She pulled into the parking lot of a downtown Philly church and reached into the glove compartment for her map. Another new case, she thought as she flipped through her binder looking for the name of the family in question. Another lost cause.
She suddenly felt overwhelmed, a feeling she had to battle every minute of the day lately. It was all Carver’s fault, she thought. Seeing him again had made her ache for a time in her life when things had been so much simpler, so much happier.
“God, Maddy,” she scolded herself as she finally located the file she’d been seeking. Immediately she ignored it and stared blindly out the window at the passing traffic instead. “If you’re thinking of high school as a simpler, happier time, you’re definitely getting maudlin in your old age. Not to mention delusional.”
Her years at Strickler High School had been neither particularly simple, nor especially happy. The only child of parents who had adored her to the point of sheltering her from everything that might make her unhappy, Maddy Saunders had been the nerdy kid who wore the wrong clothes, listened to the wrong music and read way too many books. She’d been the brainy girl with big glasses, the only one in Chemistry who’d thought logarithms were a piece of cake, the only one in English who’d thought Lysistrata was hilarious.
She’d always been the nice kid. The other students, when they’d bothered to think of her at all, had referred to her as “Goody.” As in “Goody Two-shoes,” as in “Good God, she’s so naive.” The nickname hadn’t bothered Maddy, though. She’d considered it a compliment. Because back then, it had been true. She’d been a good girl with a good mind, good manners and a good heart. And twenty years ago, she’d also been something else she wasn’t anymore and would never be again—an optimist. She had always been certain that the world was, in essence, a good place, a place where she could make a difference.
Boy, what a laugh that was, she thought now. Had she ever been that innocent? That naive? That stupid? Everyone else at Strickler High had seemed to think so. Especially Carver Venner. But Carver had differed from the other kids in
