He tightened his hold on me. With his lips tantalizingly close to mine, he asked, “Are you sure this is what you want?” His muscles flexed against my back. I clung to him, my arms wound around his neck, afraid he’d changed his mind.
My answer was so soft I barely heard it pass my lips. “Yes…”
He moved quickly up the remaining stairs, rushed down the hall, and pushed open the door to our bedroom with his foot. I stared at the bed I had woken up in as Rhonda and hoped with all my heart I could be with him as someone
more
than Jennifer.
****
Anson and I stood in Brandon Sairs’ office, confronting him on his own turf. I glanced at my husband. My entire being sparked at the recollection of what Anson did to me just hours before—the heat of our passion expressed in the most delicious way possible. He grinned as if reading my mind.
Sairs looked from Anson to me and back to Anson. “I thought you were missing,” Sairs said, pulling us away from our stare down.
“Sorry. I guess I forgot to tell you I’d been found,” Anson replied. There was no apology in his flippant tone.
“Where have you been?” Sairs asked, surly and cantankerous.
Anson smiled and rubbed his lower lip. “None of your business.”
Sairs tossed a binder on his desk and dropped into his desk chair. “Then why are you here?”
I geared up to assault him with my accusations, but Anson moved in front of me. I caught the nonverbal signal and stood down.
“When you were investigating Claire’s death, you told me she was having an affair. Where did you get your information?”
Sairs shifted in his chair. “I never said that.”
“If you didn’t say it outright, you implied it. Do you have proof my wife was having an affair?”
“Which one?”
I cringed at his nastiness and stepped toward the man. Anson stiffened and put his left hand behind him, nudging me back.
“Claire,” Anson replied without emotion, keeping the confrontation under his control. “What evidence?”
“Well…none.” Sairs squirmed. A vein throbbed in his neck.
“The rumor was all around town. How did that happen? With no evidence? I certainly never made my suspicions public. Did you?”
“Look here, Cristobal—”
“What proof do you have that Jennifer is having an affair?”
“I never said she was. In fact,
she
said she was!” Sairs bellowed with suppressed fury, his nostrils flaring like a pit bull having a piece of raw steak waved in his face.
I lunged for the man, covering his desk with half my body. Anson drew me back and pushed me toward the door. “Go outside. I’ll handle this.”
“No. I have a right to face my accuser. When did I say that?” I circled the desk and got in Sairs’ face.
He came an inch closer to me. Looked me in the eyes. “You said so yourself. Did you not ask me if I knew about your affair with Whitaker?”
I recalled our conversation and flinched.
Did the whole thing start and stop with me? Did I conjure both of Price’s affairs in my deceitful heart?
Despite the possibility I might have imagined it all, I drew my hand back to strike the insensitive jerk but Anson was quicker than I was.
“Don’t do it.” He grabbed my wrists and pushed my arm to my side. “That’s what he wants you to do.” I struggled until Anson’s strength proved too much for me to overcome. “Is that what you said to him?” he asked me.
“I was trying to figure out what was going on. I thought—”
Anson released my wrists and turned his harsh gaze on Sairs. “It’s clear to me she was testing you to see who started this vicious rumor.”
I shook my head. That wasn’t what I meant at all. The first time I talked to Sairs I didn’t know what I meant. I was flying blind and making some bad assumptions. When I asked Sairs if he knew about Jennifer’s affair with Whitaker I was just fishing.
“What rumor?” Sairs asked.
“You’ve allowed your injured pride to cloud your judgment.”
Sairs laughed without mirth. “My injured pride? My judgment isn’t clouded when it comes to her. I can’t believe you refuse to see what kind of woman she is.”
“I know exactly what kind of woman she is. She’s the kind of woman who was smart enough to ditch you.”
Sairs clenched his fists. He stood and stepped forward. Moved back. “You’ve got it all wrong, Cristobal. You’re the kind of man who’s stupid enough to marry a—”
“Don’t say it.” Anson nudged my arm. “Come on, Jennifer. Let’s go.”
“I’m not through with my investigation of Sudha’s death. Don’t leave town.”
“We were together when that happened,” Anson said, all the while dragging me toward the door.
I didn’t want to leave. I wanted a piece of Sairs. An assortment of niggling questions fought to be asked. I spluttered and spat, but nothing sensible came out of my mouth.
“How do you know when it happened?” Sairs asked, ignoring my spastic fit.
Anson turned around, staring into Sairs’ eyes, one arm around my waist. “Whenever it happened, we were together.”
“Maybe you should account for your whereabouts—”
“Jennifer and I have business out of town.” Anson’s arm tightened around my waist. “We’ll check in with you when we return.”
“I’m warning you, Cristobal—”
Anson punched the door open. “You can’t hold us.”
Sairs said nothing to rebut his contention.
Chapter Twenty
The white-on-gray-on-black smudging the sky reflected my mood. The wind pushed gusts of debris along the sidewalk, plastering scraps of odd items in unnatural places. A soda lid smacked against a trash can, its claws still grasping a straw. The promise of rain weighted the air. A trail of dust scurried and whirled, only to deposit on the ground a brief moment before dancing once again.
I tried to keep up with Anson, but he was galloping away from Sairs. My lungs struggled to draw in a deep breath before my complaint exploded. “Hey, wait up. I can’t walk as fast as you can.”
Anson glanced over his shoulder. “Move. We have to get out of here before that idiot does something stupid.”
I came alongside him. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. I told Sairs we were leaving town, but we can’t go back to the beach house.”
I dragged on his arm, trying to slow him. “I know where we should go.”
“Where?”
“California.”
“No.”
“We have to.” I was practically skip-hopping to keep up with him.
He slowed his pace. “You can’t go back there.”
I looked left and right along the busy roadway. I turned and stared at the sheriff’s office behind us, making sure Sairs wasn’t eavesdropping on our private conversation. “When we get in the car, I’ll tell you exactly why we need to go back there.” We crossed the road together.
“We?” His brow arched in astonishment.
“Of course,
we
. I can’t go back there alone. So come with me.” Then I was the one dragging him down the street.
We sat in the car as the first hard pelts of rain pounded the windshield. “So tell me why
we
should go to California.”
I used my best I’m-being-logical voice. “Everything comes back to California. It all started there and we have to figure out how to end it there.”
“Go on.”
I dragged the picture of Claire’s mother from my purse. “I think she’s my mother.”
“Whoa!” The blank expression on his face changed. His brows raised in alarm, or surprise, or a strange combination of both.
“Remember when I told you what I thought Claire looked like?” I asked. He winced and nodded. “I was describing this woman. She’s the one I remember.”
He reached for the photo but drew his hand back as if the woman had fangs. “Where did you get that picture?” His voice indicted me of something…but I wasn’t sure what.
“I found it on the dresser while you were missing.”
“I wasn’t missing.”
I grimaced. In my haste to exonerate myself, I had revisited a sore subject. “No, you weren’t, were you? You knew exactly where you were. But I didn’t. I had to go looking for you.”
He glanced at me, but didn’t react to the mention of his recent descent into criminal behavior. “How did it get there?”
I rubbed my eyes, glad the rough moment had passed. “I thought maybe you left it there for me to find.”
“Why would I do that?” he asked.
“I don’t know…to shake me up maybe…”
He grunted. “You have a vivid imagination.” He returned his attention to the photograph. “That picture has been missing for years. Claire looked for it before she died. Shook her up when she couldn’t find it.”
I flicked one corner of the photo, studying the details of the woman’s face.
So familiar.
“That’s what Marnie said,” I mumbled.
He scrunched his nose. “Marnie? When did you and Marnie—”
“Marnie and I…it’s a long story.”
“The same story you haven’t been telling me?” he asked with just a hint of a sulky whine.
When I nodded, he grumbled something. I didn’t ask him to repeat himself. Leaving the subject alone for a while longer suited me just fine.
“Maybe Sudha put it there. Was it there the night she…?”
The memory of that night flashed across my subconscious. I didn’t want to think about it. “Let’s explore that question later. Let me continue.” I placed the photo on the dash and leaned toward him.
He consented with silence, but his obvious reluctance drew weary lines on his face. His eyes kept shifting to Claire’s mother.
“You said I was adopted. You said I went to California hoping Rhonda was my birth mother. Marnie said her grandmother was from California.” I stopped for a quick breath. “California, Anson.” I nudged him. He nodded and tightened his hands around the steering wheel. “Why would I have memories of Marnie’s grandmother unless I remember her? Maybe she’s my mother.”
His brows drew together. “That would mean that Claire was your sister—half-sister.”
My excitement bubbled. I was on to something and couldn’t be slowed down. “Marnie said her grandmother left some things behind in California that she wouldn’t talk about.”
“Yes, that’s true. She said that often, but never explained.”
“Could she have left a daughter behind?”
“Jennifer, honey,” he said and reached for my hand. There was nothing but kindness in his husky tone. “I know how much you want to find your mother, but this is too big a coincidence.”
My whole existence seemed to be a series of weird coincidences. Nothing in my memory confirmed Jennifer’s desire to find her mother. The only marker the need existed lay deep in her memory—a longing that swelled from within and pushed through the amnesia when I least expected it.
“Let’s assume you’ve stumbled upon something. What does your search for your mother have to do with Jackson Prentiss and Sudha? I mean, I get the California connection, but it’s thin.”
“I realize it’s a thin connection,” I muttered.
He squeezed my hand. I almost pulled back, but then the assurance of his support penetrated my insecurity. I closed my eyes and pretended nothing existed except the physicality of Anson’s comfort.
After a moment of blissful indulgence, I pulled Dr. Crane into the messy jumble of variables. “Why did I have my surgery in California? Why not here on the east coast?”
“Crane found the heart. He insisted on doing the surgery where he had privileges. I questioned it, but his reasoning sounded…well, reasonable.”
“Wasn’t the trip hard on me? I mean, my heart was failing.”
His face registered thoughts I couldn’t decipher. He dropped my hand and twisted the key in the ignition. When he spoke, he enunciated every word as if precision relieved the stress of recalling difficult memories. “He said it was worth the risk to do it where he felt more comfortable. He threatened to give the heart to someone else if you didn’t accept his offer. He didn’t give us much time to think about it.”
I tapped my pointer finger on the console between us. “Heart transplant patients are on a waiting list—a national registry. Why did I get special treatment?”
His voice slowed while he wiggled the car out of the spot where he had parallel parked. “I offered him a premium to bump you up the list—”
“Anson!”
He turned to me, then swiveled his head back toward easing the car onto the rain-slicked road. “I know what I did wasn’t right…or fair. But I was in a panic. I won’t make excuses. I did what I had to do to keep my wife alive. I couldn’t lose another—”
I placed my fingers over his lips. “Hush. I won’t ask any more questions.”
****
“Don’t crowd me,” Anson whispered as he tried to find the right key to fit the lock on the back door.
“I still don’t understand why we have to sneak into our own house,” I argued.
“I already explained this to you.”
I fell back from a squat and landed on my backside. “You don’t want anybody to know we’ve been here. I get it.” I scooted back to give him more room.