to travel for a couple of years? Give in to all the yearnings that made her so restless. Spend a year traveling between hostels in…Romania. Or Swaziland. Or…
The hat lady’s face popped into her mind, and a smile curved her mouth. England. How silly of me! Of course it has to be the British Isles. Images of thatched roofs and hedgerows, church spires and castle towers rose before her mind’s eye. Perhaps she would bike between villages, staying as long as she chose in each. She’d have to start over financially when she came home, if she ever came home, but she was young. At least she’d have lived a little before she settled into being a small-town businesswoman.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning would certainly approve.
Only a pair of tourists sat in front eating pie in the late afternoon when the front door opened so precipitously, the bell rattled and banged against the glass. Startled, Lucy let the dough she’d been kneading drop and peered over the divider between the kitchen and dining room.
It was George who’d rushed in, expression distraught. George, fifty-five and counting the years until retirement, who Lucy had believed had only one speed: measured, deliberate. George, who now let the door slam behind him with a bang.
“Lucy! Did you hear?”
Hands covered with flour, she used her shoulder to push the swinging door open and go into the dining room. She was vaguely aware that both the tourists and gray-haired Mabel, who was wiping down tables, had turned to stare. “Hear? Hear what?”
“The hat lady was hit crossing the highway.” His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked as if he might cry. “She was pushing her shopping cart, and apparently didn’t look. God.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “She’s not dead, but it doesn’t sound good.”
“Did they take her to the hospital?”
He nodded.
“But…she doesn’t have insurance.”
A silly thing to say, since the hat lady also didn’t have a name. Not a real name, one that was her own for sure.
“I didn’t hear anybody quibbling.” So he’d been to the hospital.
Lucy took a deep breath. “I’ll get over there as soon as I can.”
He nodded and left, perhaps to spread the word further.
Lucy called for Mabel to take over the dough, and remembered another line written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose poetry she, too, had loved, back when she was romantic and firmly believed her path would take her far from too familiar Middleton.
Life, struck sharp on death,
Makes awful lightning.
ADRIAN RUTLEDGE was immersed in the notes his associates had made on legal precedents for a complex case that would be coming to trial next month when his phone rang. He glanced at it irritably; he’d asked Carol, his administrative assistant, not to interrupt him until his three o’clock appointment.
He reached for the phone immediately, however. She wouldn’t have bothered him without good reason.
“Yes?”
She cleared her throat. “Mr. Rutledge, there’s a woman here who doesn’t have an appointment.”
His eyebrows rose. People without appointments rarely bothered a partner in a rarified Seattle law firm. If they did, Carol was quite capable of sending them on their way.
“She says it’s about your mother.”
“My mother,” he repeated. He felt as if he were sounding out a word in Farsi or Mandarin, a language utterly foreign to him. Yeah, he knew what a mother was; yeah, he’d had one, but at this moment he couldn’t picture her face.
“Yes, sir.” Carol’s generally crisp tones were hesitant.
“What about my mother?” he asked.
She cleared her throat again. “This woman…ah, Ms. Peterson, says she’s in the hospital and needs you.”
In the hospital? That meant…she was alive? His heart did a peculiar stutter. Adrian had assumed she was dead. Maybe preferred thinking she was.
Oh, hell, he thought in disgust, this was probably some kind of hoax. Still, he didn’t seem to have any choice but to hear her out. “Send her in,” he ordered, and hung up.
The wait seemed long. When the door did open, he saw Carol first, elegant in a sleek black suit and heels that made the most of her legs. He quit noticing his administrative assistant the moment the other woman walked in. Nor was he aware of Carol quietly closing the door behind her. He couldn’t take his eyes from this unexpected visitor.
He guessed her age as late twenties. Lacking the style of an average urban high schooler, she was as out of place as a girl from small-town Iowa wandering into the big city for the first time. Of middle height and slender, she wore a dress, something flowery that came nearly to her knees. Bare legs, flat shoes. Her hair, a soft, mousy brown, was parted in the middle and partially clipped back. He doubted she wore any makeup at all, which was too bad; she might be beautiful after a few hours at a good salon. It was her eyes that he reacted to, despite himself. Huge and blue, they devoured his face as she crossed the room, the intensity enough to make him shift in his seat.
Adrian had never seen her in his life, and couldn’t imagine how she’d found him.
Showing no emotion, he held out a hand. “I’m Adrian Rutledge.”
She shook with utter composure. “My name’s Lucy Peterson.”
“Ms. Peterson.” He gestured at a chair. “Please. Have a seat.”
“Thank you.” She sat, smoothing her skirt over her knees.
She didn’t look like his mother. He realized that had been his first fear; that he had an unknown half sister. Not that children always did look like their parents, he reminded himself. The possibility was still on the table.
“What can I do for you?”
“I assume you know nothing of your mother’s whereabouts.”
Dark anger rose in him at this blunt beginning. Who the hell was she to sit in judgment on him? And she was, he could tell, despite her careful tone.
“And you know this because…?”
“I live over on the peninsula. Your mother has been homeless in my town for the past ten years. I’m reasonably certain no family has visited her or offered any support.”
What in hell?
Adrian sat back in his leather desk chair. After a moment, he said, “You’re correct in thinking I have no contact with my mother. But tell me just why it is that you believe some homeless woman is my mother? Did she give you my name?”
This Lucy Peterson shook her head. “No. After she was in the accident, I searched her things. It wasn’t easy.” She seemed to assume he’d care. “She had a shopping cart, but she also had several stashes around town. She liked clothes.
