His Lost and Found Family
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Tara Taylor Quinn
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19
Chapter One
Michael O’Connell collapsed. Straight down, with a hard thump, to the high-backed leather chair behind his desk. Knees weak, using his free hand to loosen the knot of tie at his neck, he just stared at the registered letter that had been waiting for him upon his return to the States. It dangled, limply suspended, from his shaking fingers.
June was dead.
He’d wondered. Suspected. But to know for sure...
His sweet baby sister turned into a drug addict by their abusive drunk of a father...
His thoughts didn’t complete. Just reached stopping points and hung there.
Pointing to a fact that was always with him. He should have done more.
What, he didn’t know.
But something.
More.
June was dead.
The letter teetered there at the end of his drawing hand. Bearing unread revelations. Late on that early-September Thursday afternoon, he wasn’t ready to hear about the where, or how. Didn’t want to know if she’d been arrested for drug possession and prostitution and God knew what else, if she’d died in prison like the old man should have done.
Didn’t want to know he was too late to give her a proper burial.
He most definitely didn’t want to look at the years during which he’d climbed to the top of his profession without being in touch with her.
Didn’t matter that that choice had been hers. And hers to make.
Or that the last time he’d tried to see her she’d called the cops and threatened a restraining order if he didn’t leave her alone.
He’d wanted her to complete the rehab program he’d enrolled her in. She’d wanted the right to make her own damned choices.
Her right had trumped his love for her and he’d been forced to walk away.
Leaving her with his cell phone number.
And never leaving home without the phone.
Not ever. In all the years since, she’d never called.
But he did stop procrastinating. Lifting the letter, he read it in its entirety. Twice. Parts of it a third time. And grabbed that phone he was never without to call his own lawyer.
“Len, I got a certified letter here from an attorney in Marietta, Oklahoma. Says I’m guardian to a four-year-old child. Can that be right? Can I be made a guardian without consent? Or knowledge?”
“What kid?” Len asked, and followed the question with, “Whose kid?”
“June’s.”
What in the hell was June thinking? She of all people knew that he was no good for raising a child. Or being family to anyone.
And a four-year-old girl? Heels bopping a mile a minute, his feet were held in place by the soles of his hand-tailored black business shoes pressing into the floor. He felt the blood drain from his face as Len said, “In answer to your question, yes. Though it’s not at all advisable to do so without prior conversation and agreement, for obvious reasons, it is legal to appoint a guardian in the event of death and to do so without said guardian’s knowledge.”
There was a pause. Michael hung there with it until Len asked, “June’s dead?”
He swallowed. Jutted his chin. And eventually said, “Yeah.”
“Wow, man. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so mandates vary state by state, but for the most part requirements stipulate only that the guardian be a minimum of eighteen years of age, be of sound mind and not be in prison.”
He could do a stint in prison. Should do one for having abandoned his little sister to their abusive father in order to accept the full-ride academic scholarship he’d earned. Didn’t matter that the old man had never raised an angry hand to her prior to Michael’s leaving. Didn’t matter that he’d been the only one to earn his father’s ire, that he’d been the cause of all the anger in their home, and he’d hoped to give June a more stable home life by vacating. Or that she’d chosen to run away and live on the streets over telling Michael what had been going on after he’d left.
What mattered was that he hadn’t gone home himself to find out. And that he’d left town in the first place, taking away her immediate access to him.
Running a hand through his hair, he ended the silence that had fallen on the line. “Yeah, uh, Len, I need you to find out what it takes to transfer guardianship.”
“Seriously, Michael? This is June’s kid you’re talking about. You’ve spent ten years hating yourself for leaving her alone with your old man, ten years trying to gain back her confidence, to help her, ten years of throwing money away on rehab and tuition she never used, and now you’re going to give up her kid?”
He made a mental note, reminding himself to get a new attorney. One who wasn’t his former roommate and didn’t know every damned thing about him.
“Just get me whatever paperwork there is, tell me what I need to do, and how soon I can sign to make it happen.” He’d screwed up on a fifteen-year-old girl. No way he was taking on a four-year-old.
No way he could even figure out what June was doing, giving the child to him. Trying to trap him? Make him pay for leaving her?
She hadn’t been thinking clearly. The answer came to him quietly.
Grasping hold of a thought that finally made sense to him, his wave of return to sensibility diminished as Len said, “You’ll need to have someone else to name as guardian before any paperwork can be created, signed or filed.”
Whom did he know whom he could ask to permanently take in a little kid? To love her as though she was their own?
No names came immediately to mind. Except...
“What about you and Sarah?”
“We were going to wait to tell you until dinner over the weekend, but Sarah’s pregnant, Mike. They think it’s twins...”
His friends had been trying for years...to the tune of half a dozen miscarriages. His own challenges disappeared as he pictured the sorrow he’d seen on Sarah’s face the last time she’d lost a child. The three of them had been having dinner together and, her face ashen, looking stunned, she’d dropped her fork and run for the bathroom...
No way he was going to add any stress to a new pregnancy. “How far along is she?” he asked, knowing all of the pertinent markers from the last six attempts.
“Four months.” The jubilance in Len’s voice was a bit subdued, but Michael heard it. “We waited this time...haven’t told anyone...”
“Well, hallelujah,” he said, grinning. “Congratulations, man!”
“You’re going to be an uncle.” Because Len sounded as though he was grinning from ear to ear, Michael didn’t disabuse him of the moniker.
Neither did he take it on.
He was a friend. Only a friend.
In his own personal world, family meant screwups and pain. He wasn’t going to repeat the pattern. He’d promised himself, the last day he’d seen June, that he’d never, ever bring anyone else into a family with him.
The O’Connells just didn’t know how to do it right. His grandparents had split. And then his parents. And even when it had just been their dad and him and June, Michael had mouthed off, or forgotten something, or given a wrong look pretty much every day. June would tell him how good things were when he was away spending the night with a friend. And urge him to try to stay out of the way when he got home so they could all live in peace.
He hadn’t been able to do so. He’d been too busy thinking he had all the answers.
“Maybe she’s all you’ve ever needed,” Len’s voice came softly, referring to June’s child—as though just because they’d been friends for so long the guy thought he could read Michael’s mind. “She could be a big cousin in five months and we can fill the house with kids’ excitement on Christmas morning instead of just the three of us drowning in mimosas.”
He looked forward to the mimosas. They were a tradition that didn’t hurt. And he only went there because Len and Sarah didn’t have any family close, and they put up a tree. Michael didn’t own a single ornament. And liked it that way.
He’d seen enough of them broken as a kid.
He’d also seen enough of the travel wrinkles in his gray chinos. He should shower. Change.
“Get going on the paperwork,” he said, more curtly than he should have done. “I’ll find someone to take her.”
He rang off, but didn’t put the phone down. Instead, he clicked and scrolled with one thumb, coming up with the name he’d wanted within seconds.
“Dan, yeah, Michael O’Connell here. I’ve got a job for you...” He’d pay whatever it took to be at the top of the man’s list.
Sitting impatiently, silent through the private detective’s greeting, nodding at the ten years it had been since they’d last spoken, he then said, “I need you to find out who fathered Harper Blackstone, a four-year-old girl living in Marietta, Oklahoma. And get me everything you can find on the guy and his family. By tomorrow, if possible.”
The child was in a shelter in Marietta. Michael had to claim her. Find someplace for her to stay, preferably with him for only an hour or two. One night at the most. He’d book a room in a hotel with a nanny service.
The little one would likely be afraid of him, a six-foot total stranger. And it wasn’t like he had one iota of experience when it came to dealing with kids. He’d have no idea how to assuage fears, or know what she should eat, or how to put a kid that age to bed. Did they just go? Did you have to...
“This have anything to do with June?” Dan’s question rescued him from his speeding thoughts.
“Yeah, the kid is hers.” Kid. Not little girl. Not child in need. Definitely not niece. Nothing that would make him feel personally protective of her.
He already knew he’d fail that one.
“You been in touch with her since we spoke last?”
Dan had been the one to find June every single time Michael couldn’t get a hold of her. He’d been there that last day, when June had called the cops.
“Nope.”
“How do you know about her daughter?”
Daughter. His baby sister had a daughter. Throat tight, he shook his head. He wasn’t going there.
And knew how to stay away. You controlled your thoughts. Ruled your mind instead of letting it rule you.
“I heard from her legal representation. She named me guardian of the child in event of her death.”
“June’s dead.” More confirmation than question.
The PI didn’t sound surprised. Michael didn’t blame him.
“Apparently.”
“You want me to find out what happened?”
He’d been trying to avoid the obvious. Knew it wasn’t going away. And couldn’t waste valuable brainpower on fighting it. “I want to know everything she’s had to eat in the past ten years,” he said. Or, at the very least, how she’d died.
He hoped to God she hadn’t suffered long.
“But I need the other first,” he said, standing at the high-rise window in his office, looking out over the city of Little Rock. “Find the father. And get me a dossier on his whole family.”
“By tomorrow, right, I got that,” Dan said. “You do know I own my own firm now, right? I’ve got a staff of people I can put on this.”
He hadn’t known. Should have known.
“I’ll pay you all double what you’d normally make,” he said.
And hung up a second time without saying goodbye.
He wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
Not to anyone.
But whether he said the words or not, he wasn’t going to change the facts.
“Where’s Mama?”
Slowing the rocking chair, child specialist Mariah Anderson looked up from the disaster relief resource book she’d been reading to see the small-boned but well-fed four-year-old—with her head still on the pillow of her temporary shelter bed—staring straight at her. Her big brown eyes bore shadows that Mariah would give anything to erase.
No matter how many times Harper asked the question—and she’d asked many times a day—the answer remained the same.
“Mama died,” she said softly, leaving her book on the rocking chair and brushing her hair back over her shoulder. She sat on the edge of Harper’s little cot and then adjusted the lightweight-fleece purple-and-white-heart-print blanket up to the preschooler’s chin. After three days of sharing the space with other displaced preschoolers, Harper had the room to herself as of that morning. All of the other children her age had been collected by parents who’d been treated and released or by other approved family members.
“What’s ‘died’?” The little voice struck a hole clear through Mariah’s heart. She was in too deep with this one. Couldn’t seem to find her professional distance.
She picked up one of Harper’s tanned little hands and lowered the blanket to put that small palm on the little girl’s unicorn-shirted chest. “You feel that beating?”
Harper nodded, still meeting Mariah’s gaze as they went through a process they’d repeated many times in the three days since they’d met. It was almost as though Harper knew she’d broken through the barriers that Mariah had to have in place in order to do her job. The young child just kept climbing deeper inside Mariah’s heart.
Without boundaries, Mariah would hurt too much to be able to do her job week after week, year after year.
“That’s your heart,” she continued softly. She moved Harper’s hand atop her green-shirted larger chest. “You feel my heart beating?”
The child’s nod was quick.
“That’s my heart. Bodies need hearts to beat to stay alive. Mama’s heart stopped beating,” she said then.
“When will she be back?”
Another question she’d answered multiple times. And one Harper would likely continue to ask repeatedly in the coming months. But for some reason, knowing that the girl was exhibiting typical behavior didn’t make the questions any easier to hear. Or answer.
“She’s not coming back.”
It wasn’t Mariah’s first bereavement. It wasn’t even her fiftieth.
But it was her hardest yet. And she couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t like the other kiddos she’d been called on to help through crises were any less special than Harper Blackstone. She’d even had other cases where both parents were suddenly deceased.
“I want Shadow.” Another sentiment she’d heard over and over.
Both hands on the thighs of her cotton capri pants now, she said, “I know, sweet Harper, and the people who are cleaning up your house will be bringing us everything they can find from your room, okay? We just have to wait for them to get done.” She’d managed to find out, through a series of questions and drawings and reading stories in picture books, that Shadow was a stuffed cat—not a real one, who likely would have been killed during the tornadoes and storms that had ravaged the small town of Marietta three nights before.
With four-year-old imaginations, things like stuffed and alive weren’t always clear. Especially when concerning a personal companion.
Whether or not Harper would ever be reunited with her Shadow wasn’t clear at the moment, either.
“When they bring us all the things, we’ll look through them together and see if we can find Shadow, okay?” It was the best she could offer.
“Okay.”
Mariah waited for the “Where’s Daddy?” question that should be coming up next. They’d talk about breathing, then. About how Harper breathes, and Mariah breathes. Maybe play a game of blowing on each other. And then get to the part where Daddy had stopped breathing.
It was way more than a child should have to deal with, but Mariah didn’t get to choose what happened to the kids in her care. She only got to help them through what did happen as best she could. And direct honesty was the healthiest way to do that. Esoteric comments like “in heaven” were too ethereal for Harper to grasp. Telling her her parents were “sleeping” was a huge unfairness—lying to her would only instill mistrust for the future.
Harper wasn’t asking about her father. She also wasn’t nodding off to sleep as Mariah had hoped she would. The little tyke hadn’t had more than three or four hours of sleep a night without waking up in tears. And neither had Mariah.
“I want Mama.”
Mariah brushed the curly blond bangs from Harper’s forehead. “I know, Harper.” Mention of the girl’s name was purposeful—giving her a sense that she was known.
“I don’t want that man to take me away.”
And there they had it.
Mariah had been trying for a day and half, through storytelling, drawing exercises, building block and stick figure play, coloring and point-blank questions, to get Harper to talk to her about going to live with her uncle. She’d explained that he was her mama’s brother, which made him her family, too. That she was a lucky little girl to have him. And that her mama had grown up with him and had chosen him to be the one to come get Harper, but the child had shown no reaction at all.
“Why don’t you want him to come get you?”
“I don’t like him.”
“Why not?” Harper had finally opened the door for exploration. It was Mariah’s job to keep it open.
The little girl shrugged.
“Maybe you will like him when you meet him.” No one in Marietta had ever met Michael O’Connell. Mariah had looked him up on the internet, though, the first night she’d met Harper. He didn’t seem to do social media at all, but had a nice, clearly professional website. And a ton of articles written about him with pictures of impressive buildings he’d designed.
There’d been some pictures of the architect, too, and she hoped she hadn’t just imagined the kindness she’d thought she’d seen in his eyes.
“I want Mama.”
“I know.”
“When’s she coming to get me?”
“She’s not coming to get you. Mama died. Your uncle is coming.”
With a sigh, Harper turned her back.
And five minutes later was snoring softly.
