A Different Blue (28 page)

“Not right away. Apparently, when they realized there was a child unaccounted for, they took a DNA sample from the woman and it's in some national database.”

“How soon will they know?”

“Months. It isn't like TV, I guess. Detective Bowles said he's had to wait a year for DNA results before, but he thinks this will be a priority, so it shouldn't be that long.”

Wilson huffed out. “Well, the sooner you get up there and give them a sample, the sooner you'll know, yeah?”

“Yeah.” I felt queasy.

“I'll come with you.”

“You will?” I was surprised and oddly touched.

“You can't go alone. Not when you're this close.”

“I've got two weeks.”

Wilson waved that away and whipped his cell phone out, making arrangements for a substitute for Thursday and Friday as well as reservations at a Reno hotel, all in a matter of minutes.

“Did you tell Tiffa?” He paused, phone in hand, glancing up at me. “She's going to want to know.”

I called Tiffa, and, as it turned out, Tiffa didn't just want to know, she wanted to come. She actually didn't want me to go at all, but Wilson just shook his head and took the phone from me.

“She has to go, Tiff. She has to.” So Tiffa decided the next best thing was to just come along. Jack was going to be in Reno for a medical convention on Saturday and Sunday anyway, and she had debated joining him. She would just leave a couple of days early so she could be with me. Baby Mama status was getting a wee bit old, I told myself grumpily. I had been so independent for so long, it felt strange needing to clear my comings and goings with anyone. Secretly, though, I was thrilled that she cared so much.

“Road trip!” she squealed, coming through my door two hours later, suitcase in hand, sunglasses on, wearing one of those big hats you wear on the beach. She looked ready for a day on a yacht. I giggled and allowed her to pull me in for a big squeeze, a smooch to my belly, and a kiss to my cheek. I'd always thought the English were supposed to be less effusive, less demonstrative, than Americans. It definitely wasn't true where Tiffa was concerned.

“We're taking the Mercedes! I'm not squeezing these long legs in the back of the Subaru, Darcy!”

“Fine. But I'm driving, and you are still sitting in the back,” Wilson said agreeably.

“Please do! I'm just going to sit back and relax, maybe read, maybe kip a bit.”

She didn't read a word. Or sit back. And she definitely didn't kip . . . which I learned meant to sleep. She talked and laughed and teased. And I learned a few things about Wilson.

“Did Darcy ever tell you how he wanted to trace the steps of St. Patrick?”

“Tiffa..please, can you just fall asleep already?” Wilson groaned, sounding a lot like one of his students.

“Alice had just turned eighteen – done with school, wanting an exciting holiday. I wasn't even living at home then. I was twenty-two and working at a little art gallery in London, but every year we had a family holiday. We would go somewhere for a couple of weeks, usually somewhere sunny and warm where Dad could unwind a little. Alice and I wanted to go to the south of France, and Dad was on board. However, little Darcy had gotten a wee bee in his bonnet. He wanted to go to Ireland – cold, wet, and WINDY just like Manchester was that time of year. Why? Because the precocious lad had just read a book about Saint Patrick. Mum, of course, thought that was wonderful, and we all ended up traipsing all over a bloody hill in sloshy boots, reading pamphlets.”

I giggled and tossed a look at poor Wilson. “St. Patrick was fascinating.” He shrugged, grinning.

“Oh, Cor! Here we go!” Tiffa groaned theatrically.

“He was kidnapped from his home at fourteen, chained, marched onto a boat, and kept as a slave in Ireland until he was twenty years old. Then he managed to walk across Ireland, get on a boat, with nothing more than the clothes on his back, and make it back to England, a miracle in itself. His family was overjoyed at his return. Patrick's family was wealthy and educated, and Patrick would have had a comfortable life. But he couldn't get Ireland out of his head. He dreamed about it. In his dreams, he claimed God told him to go back to Ireland to serve the people there. He went back . . . and ended up serving the people in Ireland for the rest of his life!” Wilson shook his head in wonder, as if the story still moved him.

I thought St. Patrick was just an Irish leprechaun. I'd never even thought about him as an actual person. Or an actual saint. It was just a holiday.

“So, how old were you when you discovered St. Patrick?” I teased.

“Twelve! He was bloody twelve!” Tiffa bellowed from the backseat, making everyone laugh. “When Darcy was born, he was wearing a tiny little bow tie and braces.”

“Braces?” I giggled.

“Suspenders,” Wilson supplied dryly.

“He has always been an absolute geek,” Tiffa chortled. “That, my dear Blue, is why he's brilliant. And wonderful.”

“Don't try to be nice to me now, Tiff,” Wilson smiled, catching her gaze in his rear view mirror.

“All right. I won't. Did you know he was going to be a doctor, Blue?”

“Tiffa!” Wilson moaned.

“Yes . . . actually. I did know that.” I patted Wilson's shoulder.

“He wasn't cut out for it. He would have been completely miserable. Dad saw how brilliant Darcy was and just assumed that meant he should be a 'man of medicine' like he was, and his father before him, and his father before him. But Darcy was brilliant in all the ways that had nothing to do with science, right luv?”

Wilson just sighed and shook his head.

“Darcy always had his nose in a book. He used enormous words and used them correctly . . . at least I think he did. He loved history, literature, poetry.”

“Have you heard him quote Dante?” I interrupted.

Wilson's eyes shot to mine.

“What was that lovely poem you shared with us . . . about harpies?” I questioned.

Wilson chuckled at the memory and quoted the lines obediently.

Tiffa moaned, “That's awful!”

“I thought so, too,” I laughed. “I couldn't forget it, though. I ended up carving 'Bird Woman' as a result.”

“That's what inspired 'Bird Woman?'” Wilson asked, astonishment coloring his voice.

“Your history lessons seemed to find their way into my carvings more often than not.”

“How many? How many carvings were inspired by my history class?”

“Counting 'The Arc?'” I counted them in my head. “Ten. Tiffa bought a couple of them the first time she came to the cafe.”

Tiffa and Wilson seemed stunned, and the car was quiet for the first time since we'd set out. I fidgeted uncomfortably, not sure what the silence meant.

“Blue!” I should have known Tiffa would find her tongue first. “Blue, I have to see all of them. We should do something big, a big display with all of the pieces together. It would be brilliant!”

My cheeks flushed and I looked down at my hands, not wanting to get excited over something that hadn't even happened. “Some of them I sold at the cafe, but you are welcome to see the rest.”

“Darcy can die a happy man now,” Tiffa added after a moment. “His teaching has inspired art.” She leaned up and hoisted herself over the seat and kissed Wilson's cheek with a loud smack of her lips.

“Actually. For once, Tiffa is absolutely right. That might be the best compliment anyone has ever paid me.” Wilson smiled at me. Warmth pooled inside me, and the baby kicked in response.

“I saw that! The baby kicked!” Tiffa was still hanging over the front seat and she laid her hands against my belly, a look of intense rapture on her face. The baby rolled and nudged a few more times, inducing squeals of delight from Tiffa.

For the rest of the ride we talked, listened to music – I introduced them to Willie Nelson – and took turns driving and dozing off. But I couldn't get the image of a young Darcy Wilson out of my head, plodding over Irish hills in search of a saint who had lived many hundreds of years before. It was easy to see how a boy like that could go to Africa for two years or shun a medical profession for something simpler and less glamorous. It was harder to see how a boy like that, so inspired by a saint, could be attracted to a sinner like me.

Chapter Twenty

The process was incredibly easy. I met with a Detective Moody, who had been the responding officer on the case more than eighteen years before. He was bald, whether by choice or necessity, I wasn't sure. He was in his early forties, but tired looking, like he had a long life so far. He looked fit and slim in khakis, a dress shirt, and a shoulder holster that he seemed as comfortable with as everything else he wore.

“I can't give you details of the case. Not yet. You understand that if you aren't this woman's child, you have no right to the information. Not to her name, to her child's name, to the details of her death, nothing . . . do you understand?” Detective Moody was apologetic but firm. “But if you are who we think you are, when we get that DNA confirmation back, we'll give you everything we have. I have to say, I hope to hell that you are that little girl. It's bothered me for a lotta years, I can tell you that. It would be a happy ending to a very sad case.” Detective Moody smiled at me, his brown eyes sober and sincere.

I was sent to the lab, and I was given a big Q-tip and told to rub it against the inside of my cheek. And that was it. Eight hours in the car for a buccal swab. Detective Moody told me he would put a rush on it, and he hoped to have it back in three or four months.

“It all depends on whose goose is being cooked in these things. There are priority cases, though. And this rates pretty high up there. It'd be pretty exciting for us to see resolution on this. And we want that for you too.”

Resolution. Redemption. My life had began to circle around these reoccurring themes. Now we could add Reno. That was a new one. Another 'R' to add to the list.

We stayed the night in Reno, Tiffa and I in one room, Wilson in another. Tiffa had put her arms around me as we left the police station and had kept me close through dinner, occasionally rubbing my back or patting my hand, as if for once she had no words. None of us did. The whole thing was stranger than fiction, and the ramifications affected not only me, but my unborn child and the woman who wanted to be her mother. It wasn't until we lay in the darkened room, the long day put to bed, the sounds of the Reno night shut out by heavy curtains and thick carpeting, that I faced the fears that had clawed for recognition since talking to Detective Bowles on Monday.

“Tiffa?” I spoke up softly.

“Hmm?” Her voice was drowsy, as if I had caught her just before she dropped off into sleep.

“What if she was a monster . . . a terrible person?”

“What?” Tiffa was slightly more awake now, as if sensing my turmoil.

“Can that be passed on? Does it hide in our genes?”

“Luv. You'll have to forgive me. I don't have a clue what you're talking about.” Tiffa sat up and reached for the lamp.

“No! Please leave it off. It's easier to talk in the dark,” I pleaded needing the buffer of a shadowy room between us.

Tiffa dropped her hand but stayed upright. I could feel that she was looking at me, letting her eyes adjust in the dark. I stayed turned on my side, looking at the wall, the weight of my stomach supported by the thick mattress.

“You are going to adopt this baby. You say you don't care if it's a girl or a boy. You don't care if the baby is brown-skinned or light. And I believe you. But what if the baby is . . . the offspring of a weak, selfish, evil person?”

“You are none of those things.”

I thought for a moment. “Not all the time. But sometimes I'm weak. Sometimes I'm selfish. I don't think I'm evil . . . but I'm not necessarily good, either.”

“You are much stronger than I am. You are incredibly selfless. And I don't think evil resides with strong and selfless,” Tiffa said softly. “I don't think it works that way.”

“But my mother . . . what she did was evil.”

“Leaving you with a stranger?”

“Yes. And her blood runs in this baby's veins. Are you willing to take that chance?”

“Absolutely. But I don't think it's much of a risk, luv. Jack has diabetes. Did you know that? It's pretty manageable. I never considered not having a child just because the child might suffer with the same illness. I had the most ghastly buck teeth growing up. Thankfully, braces made me a ravishing beauty.” There was laughter in Tiffa's voice. “But what if there were no such thing, and my child was doomed with horse teeth?”

“None of those things compare,” I protested, needing her to understand. Tiffa plopped down on the bed behind me and began to smooth my hair. She would be a fabulous mother. It was all I could do not to curl into her and let her soothe me. But of course I didn't. I lay stiffly, trying not to be so susceptible to a gentle hand. She stroked my hair as she spoke.

“We don't know what kind of life your mother had. We don't know what her reasons were. But look at you. You're brilliant! And that's enough for me, Blue. What if my mother had chosen not to adopt Darcy? She never met his birth mother or father. She knew nothing about them but their names. But she loved Darcy, maybe best of all, and he was a complete unknown. His father could have been a serial killer, for all we knew.”