P.D., she’d worked with Ellen Denby and marveled at how the woman could keep a cool head and deal with the toughest cases involving children. But as the years went by and she and Ellen had exchanged confidences, she had learned that they shared a similarly tragic experience which enabled them to understand each other in a way no one else could. Just as Kate understood Leenie as only a mother who’d also had a child stolen from her could understand.
Kate offered to clear up the dishes and surprisingly Moran stayed in the kitchen to help her. Leenie felt as if she’d made a new friend in Kate and understood on an unspoken level that perhaps Kate had suffered once just as she suffered now. She realized she could be wrong about Kate, but her feminine intuition—her gut instincts—told her she was right. Sometime in her past, Kate Malone had lost a child.
Frank had been awfully quiet while they ate sandwiches, chips and cheesecake. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten cheesecake twice in one day. Oh yes she did remember—it had been the last time she’d made love with Frank. They’d had cheesecake for breakfast and again for lunch.
Alone together in the living room, Frank and she sat side by side on the sofa while she opened Andrew’s baby book, filled with photographs and memorabilia from her pregnancy and Andrew’s first two months of life. When Frank made no effort to close the gap between their bodies—the two feet that separated them—she took the initiative and scooted up next to him, hip-to-hip. He flinched, then stiffened. What was wrong with him? She wasn’t going to attack him, for pity’s sake. She laid the book in her lap and flipped it open so the other side dropped down on his thigh.
“Here’s a picture of me at my baby shower,” Leenie said. “Elsa came back to Maysville to help Haley host the event.”
Frank glanced at the picture, but said nothing.
“I was big as a barrel there. I gained thirty pounds.”
“Elsa and Rafe knew you were pregnant?”
“Yes, they knew. And before you get all huffy at Rafe, Elsa threatened him with divorce if he called and told you. She tried to talk me into getting in touch with you, but once she realized she couldn’t persuade me, she promised me that neither she nor Rafe would call you because it wasn’t their place to tell you.”
“You’re right. It was your place.”
“I thought we’d already agreed that I made a mistake in not informing you I was pregnant with your child. Do we have to continue beating a dead horse?”
Frank glanced at the photo again. “You look happy.”
“I was happy.” She tried to smile. “Fat and happy.”
“You were beautiful pregnant. Fat and beautiful.” He grinned, but didn’t make eye contact.
“I got even fatter,” she told him. “I was only seven and a half months in that picture.” She flipped through the pages, slowing on each page long enough for him to glance at it. When she reached the page with Andrew’s birth announcement and the first photo of him taken at the hospital, Frank clamped the page open with his big hand.
“Were you alone when he was born or did—”
“Haley was with me.”
“I should have been with you.”
“Yes. And it’s my fault you weren’t.”
“No, it was only partly your fault. And it was partly my own damn fault.”
“Well, at least we can agree on something—that there’s enough blame to share.”
When Leenie heard a phone ring, she tensed. It had to be either Kate’s or Moran’s cell phone since the ringing came from the kitchen and it wasn’t her private line.
“It’s not necessarily bad news,” Frank told her.
“I know. It’s just that I—”
The kitchen door swung open; Kate walked in and looked right at Frank. “Moran wants to see you in the kitchen for a minute.”
“What’s wrong?” Leenie asked. “And don’t tell me it’s nothing. I can sense something has happened.”
“You’re right,” Kate admitted, then called into the kitchen. “We’re telling them both, Moran. Leenie needs to know, too. Right now.”
Oh, God, what was it? What had happened?
Moran came out of the kitchen and stood in the open doorway. He glanced from Frank to Leenie, shuffled his feet and said, “I got a call from Chief Bibb.”
“And?” Frank asked.
Moran hesitated. “They…er…they found a body.”
Leenie gasped. Frank put his arm around her waist and held her.
“A baby?” Frank asked.
“Yes. An infant. A boy. Age estimated at one to three months.”
“Oh, God, no!” Leenie screamed and suddenly everything went black.
Chapter Five
Frank wasn’t the type of man easily affected by a woman’s tears, swooning spells or temper tantrums. He’d seen it all as a kid—watching his mother, who’d been an expert in feminine wiles, manipulate his father time and again. And he’d learned from that very same father how to harden his heart and shut off his emotions. The only time he’d ever let his defenses down had been with Rita. Bad mistake. Not one he’d repeated. But damn it, catching Leenie in his arms when she fainted dead away had stirred up some unwanted emotions inside him. She wasn’t playing him, wasn’t putting on an act in an effort to control him. Her actions were real, brought on by true and honest feelings. All he’d wanted to do at that moment was hold and comfort her, protect her from the ugly truth and reassure her that she wasn’t alone. And here they were an hour later at the police morgue and still all he wanted to do was protect her, take care of her, shield her from more pain. Already this woman—the mother of his child—had somehow managed to sneak past his defenses and make him vulnerable. He hated feeling vulnerable; it was an alien concept to him.
“You shouldn’t have come down here.” Chief Bibb cleared his throat as his gaze dropped from Leenie’s pale face to the tile floor beneath his feet. “We can get an ID on the body without—”
Leenie gasped quietly. When he felt her stiffen, Frank tightened his grip on her waist. “Andrew’s pediatrician or even Haley Wilson could ID the child,” Frank said softly. “Why put yourself through this ordeal when it might not even be Andrew?”
“Either way, I have to do this,” Leenie said.
Frank studied her, noting the tension in her body and the grave expression on her face.
“No, you don’t have to do this.” If Frank had been given the chance to know his son, a chance to have been a father from the moment Andrew was born, then he could have come on his own to ID the infant’s body. He assumed that in most cases such as this, the father was the one who went to the morgue and put himself through hell in order to protect the child’s mother. If only
