where her child—hers and Daniel’s—should have been safe, should have grown until ready to face the world. She struggled against a flood of tears.
“I am not shedding one more tear over that man,” she said staunchly. And she’d shed all she could over her lost child.
But despite her intentions, the tears fell anyway. She sank onto the edge of the bed, still clutching the picture, mentally cursing herself for not having thrown it away years ago.
A whisper of sound had her wiping her eyes before she faced Kendra, who was standing uncertainly in the bedroom doorway.
“Are you okay?” the teen asked worriedly.
“I’m just fine,” Molly reassured her, then patted the edge of the bed. “Come sit here for a minute.”
Kendra sat next to her, keeping a careful distance between them. “I tried to wait up for you. I guess I fell asleep.”
“That’s okay.”
“We can talk now, if you want.”
“Sweetie, I need to know why you ran away from home. That’s the only way I can help you.”
“I can’t say,” Kendra said, her expression apologetic. “I’m sorry. You’re being real nice to me, but I can’t. It will ruin everything.”
What an odd thing to say. Puzzled, Molly studied her. “What will it ruin?”
“Can’t I just stay here a little longer, please? I’m helping Retta. She said I was doing good. She taught me to make chowder today, and the customers liked it. I heard them say so.”
“You are good, and if it were just about a job, you could stay,” Molly told her. “But you have a home, Kendra. You have parents who are worried sick about you. I have to think about them, too.”
“Is this just because you don’t want to keep fighting with that man who came today?”
“No, it’s because I feel guilty standing between you and your parents when I don’t know what’s going on.” She tucked a finger under Kendra’s chin and forced the girl to meet her gaze. “What did they do that was so awful?”
“It’s not what they did,” Kendra said at last. “It’s what they’re gonna do.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They’re going to send me away,” she said, barely choking back a sob. “I’m just saving them the trouble.”
And before Molly could ask a single question, Kendra was out of the room and out of the apartment, thundering down the stairs and out into the night.
Molly raced after her, then stopped when she got to the front door of Jess’s. Kendra was outside, but she hadn’t gone far. Molly pulled a chair over by the door and waited, leaving light from the bar spilling into the street. She wanted Kendra to know that when she was ready, this was one home she could come back to.
4
Daniel tried to spend as much time as possible burying himself in work. Even so, for the next few days he made it a point to stop at Jess’s at various times, and at least once a day. He hoped to catch a glimpse of Kendra, but mostly he wanted to keep Molly rattled and aware that he was not letting her off the hook. He hadn’t quite decided what time to show up today—probably around dinnertime, maybe not until just before closing when she’d be breathing a mistaken sigh of relief that he hadn’t turned up.
In the meantime, he went out to do follow-ups on five cases, checking on at-risk kids to make sure that their situations at home were under control. The unseasonably hot temperatures could escalate tensions, and family members who’d been making positive progress could suddenly revert to old ways. He tried to show up unexpectedly often enough to make sure that didn’t happen.
But as he went from home visit to home visit, he couldn’t shake the image of Molly from his head. Why the devil did she have to be so damned stubborn? Couldn’t she see that she was just prolonging the inevitable? Sooner or later he would talk to Kendra. It would be best if their first meeting wasn’t when he walked through the door with her parents. He liked to make sure such reunions went smoothly, but right now his back was to the wall, thanks to Molly.
He picked up a tuna on rye and a can of soda from the vendor in the basement of his office building in Portland, then climbed the stairs to his office. He found Joe Sutton waiting for him, his feet propped on Daniel’s tidy desk, his chair tilted back precariously, his eyes closed. Though it was barely noon, he looked as rumpled as if he’d slept in his clothes.
“About time you got back,” he said, startling awake when Daniel knocked his feet off the desk.
“Some of us spend our days out in the field checking on clients,” Daniel said.
Joe stared hopefully at the sandwich Daniel was unwrapping. “Is that tuna on rye?”
Daniel sighed. Joe was notorious for always stealing whatever food was around. Apparently there was plenty to be found, because he was at least thirty pounds overweight. That didn’t mean he couldn’t move when he had to.
“Here,” he said, handing the policeman half of his sandwich.
“No chips?” Joe asked, disappointment etched in the lines on his face.
“There’s a vending machine at the end of the hall. You’ll have to buy your own.”
“It’s out. I already checked.”
“Then you’re out of luck.”
“So how’s the Morrow girl doing?” Joe asked Daniel as he chewed.
“Haven’t seen her,” Daniel admitted.
Joe’s eyes filled with surprise. “Why the hell not? It’s not like you to brush off a case.”
“I’m not brushing it off, believe me. I’m at an impasse. A temporary impasse,” he corrected.
“How so?”
“Molly refuses to admit she’s there.”
“She’s there. I saw her.”
“I know that,” Daniel said. “I spotted her, too. But it’s as if the two of them have a sixth sense about when I’m going to walk through the door and, poof, Kendra vanishes out the back.”
“Any idea why Molly’s lying to you?”
“Because she thinks she’s helping Kendra. She’s not giving her up until she knows what’s going on back at the girl’s home. Have you made any progress on that front?”
“I’ve poked around the neighborhood and Kendra’s school,” Joe said. “From everything I’ve seen and heard, they’re a model family. Mom’s a chemist. Dad’s a brilliant physicist. Everybody’s squeaky clean, as near as I can tell. The kid’s some sort of genius. She’s skipped a few grades.”
“Which is probably why she’s
