The contact felt more intimate than he’d meant it to, maybe because the warm silkiness of her skin tempted his fingertips to linger.
But she didn’t protest. She stared up at him, her lips parted in an unspoken plea.
“I am sorry,” Daniel told her. “I can’t.”
Kimberly whirled away from him and was halfway to the door before she accused over her shoulder, “You mean, you won’t.”
With that, she yanked open the door, intent on leaving.
Then she paused. Took a deep breath that he could see move through her slim body. Stared at him with those pleading eyes again.
“We’re staying at the La Quinta near the interstate. Room 209. If you change your mind.”
Then she was out the door and across the firehouse to retrieve Marissa.
Marissa, the baby he’d already said goodbye to once before.
Daniel collapsed into the office chair in front of his desk and picked up the photo of him and Marissa. In his mind’s eye, he could see the bruises flowering against her pale baby skin, and he knew those memories gave credence to what Kimberly had told him.
With fingers that shook ever so slightly, he slid the photo out of the frame and watched as a slip of paper fluttered onto his lap.
The handwriting in the ballpoint ink was shaky, but still held a sixteen-year-old’s flourishes, the hearts over the i’s, the loopy M.
Miriam Graber—born on September 19, 1986.
She’d added a phone number and an address, but Daniel had discovered that both were bogus when he’d called to check on her. So maybe the birth date was, too.
Still.
A quick online search would probably turn up a short list of possible Miriams. And if she’d gone back to her family—who’d been bent on returning to the Indiana Amish community where they’d come from—it couldn’t be that hard to find her. There had to be some roll or register or paperwork somewhere. Census records, maybe? And now that she was an adult, maybe even voter registration lists?
He could do it.
Daniel stared from the paper to his computer. Considered.
Then he folded the paper and put it back behind the photo and the photo back in the frame.
Because there was nothing that said he had to do it right now.
KIMBERLY’S HEAD ACHED as the hotel room’s television blared out canned laughter from cartoon reruns that Marissa had watched a thousand times before. Yeah, it would be great if our problems could be solved in a half hour minus commercials.
She stared down at the list she was trying to make and attempted to focus on it.
People who might know something:
EMTs who responded
Police who responded
Emergency room staff
Newspaper reporter
Former fire chief
The person who took the picture of Daniel and Marissa
Daniel. He knew something. He was hiding some key piece of information.
The laughter blared out again. Marissa slurped loudly from the fast-food drink she still had from lunch and completely demolished whatever little focus Kimberly had managed to muster.
Kimberly whipped her head around, ready to snap at her daughter to turn the television down and throw the cup away already when she took in Marissa’s expression as the girl seemed to gaze at some point in the distance.
Marissa was stretched out, belly flat on the turned-back duvet, her chin propped on one hand and the empty cup in her other. Her eyes were wistful. Sad. She wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to the TV.
Kimberly pushed her chair back from the unsteady laminate table and crossed the room to switch off the television. Marissa didn’t even complain.
When she sat down beside her, Marissa jumped slightly. “Oh, sorry!” she mumbled. “I was thinking.”
“I can see that. What’s on your mind?”
“I just... Well, I just thought I’d know by now. You know. Why.”
The whole search for a family medical history had been a Pandora’s box, as far as Kimberly could see it. She’d waited as long as she could, fought the insurance company on appeal after appeal. But when that didn’t pan out, she knew she had to try to find another way to get that diagnosis.
Finding that diagnosis meant finding the girl who had given up Marissa. The prospect had filled Marissa with all sorts of conflicting emotions that Kimberly wished she could spare her daughter.
She squeezed Marissa’s arm gently. “I know, honey. I thought so, too.”
“We’re never gonna find her, are we?” Marissa flopped over and stared up at the ceiling. “And the doctors are just gonna keep poking me and doing test after test after test and you’re never gonna know what’s wrong with me. And...I’m never gonna know why.”
Kimberly’s throat closed up. She could barely breathe, much less swallow past the lump that had formed there.
Be the parent. Be the grown-up.
“Chin up,” she told Marissa in what she hoped was a brighter voice than she felt. “We’re not out of hope yet. I’m making a list of everybody who might know something.”
Marissa giggled, her nose wrinkling and her eyes crinkling up. “You and your lists.”
“Don’t poke fun. They work.”
“So let’s get started, then. Go bang on some doors. Anything is better than being holed up in this dump.” Marissa exploded off the bed and started a search for her shoes. A loud dull thunk resounded from the bed’s wooden toe-kick. “Ow! I stubbed my toe!”
“What? Is it—” Kimberly forced herself to stay calm. “Are you hurt?” She tried to ask this casually, as if she was a normal mom with a normal kid.
“Yes, I’m hurt! It hurts really bad—” Marissa hopped on one leg back to the bed, where she examined her toe. Kimberly could see no sign of injury.
The bruise would come later. And it would tell the story.
“Relax, Mom. It’s okay. Nobody ever died from a stubbed toe, it just hurts. Normal kid hurt, okay? No need to get all worked up. Why do they put that under there anyway?”
“To make it easier to clean up—if it’s blocked off, nobody can put anything under
