The Off Season (21 page)

“Sh-she started out saying how it wasn’t her fault, and she never meant to leave us.”

“What did she say next?” Harris asked. “What did she want from you?”

“She said we had to come and find her. She needed to talk to us.”

“It’s what she said to me, too, that night on the monitor,” Christina admitted. “She told me if we didn’t find her, we’d both stay lost forever.”

Harris frowned at her and shook his head. “You didn’t mention that before.”

“I was shaken. I forgot that detail.”

He held her gaze long enough for her to understand he didn’t buy it, but he let it go and asked both of them, “Did she give you any idea where to look?”

“I didn’t give her a chance,” said Annie. “I hung up. You have to understand. I almost died that night. Because of what she did.”

“I thought you had,” Christina said, the gooseflesh prickling along her upper arms. “If those sanitation workers hadn’t come along and found us when they did . . .” She remembered the monstrous truck rumbling like a beast so high above her, two big men rushing toward them, and how she’d been too numb to scream. It was another detail she’d forgotten—or was stress causing her mind to manufacture false memories? How would she know?

“So what about you?” Harris asked her. “She tell you anything that might help you find her? Like her name, for starters.”

Christina shook her head. “No, but then . . . I don’t think this woman really wants us to come find her. I think she’s out instead to scare us. Or maybe to string us along, to make us desperate enough that we’ll buy into whatever her scheme is.”

“And what do you imagine that might be?”

Christina shrugged. “I suspect it will come down to money.”

“Why’s that?”

“A couple of years ago, I hired a PI to take one last crack at finding her. I needed some medical history, that’s all.”

“You never told me,” Annie said.

“I would’ve if we’d found anything. But there was no trace. I’m afraid, though, that it’s possible the inquiries could’ve led someone to us here. Some opportunist.”

“So you don’t believe she’s who she says she is?” asked Harris.

“If she were the real deal, would she be carving up my car or burning down the house where I was staying?”

“She would never have done those things,” Annie argued. “At least, that wasn’t the vibe I got from our conversations.”

Something went cold inside Christina when she heard her sister use the plural. “I thought you only spoke with her the one time?”

Annie hugged herself. “She, um, she called again earlier the other day, before you came home from work.”

And before the house caught fire. “You never said a word to me,” Christina blurted out. “Why not?”

“I had no idea what to do. What to believe. That’s the real reason I went to Kym’s that evening. After I broke down and told her, I was such a hot mess she poured me a drink so I could calm down.”

“What was it this woman said that upset you so much?” Harris’s tone was calm and understanding. For the moment, anyway.

“She convinced me she was our real birth mother.”

“She changed your mind, then?” Harris asked. “About Lilly, I mean?”

Annie looked down into her lap, picking at a jagged thumbnail.

“What about Lilly?” Christina asked, instantly on guard.

After a longing glance at the door, Annie answered, her voice barely above a whisper. “I just thought that maybe Lilly could be one of those children. Those toddlers that you read about, channeling the dead.”

“Channeling the
what
?” Christina sputtered, a wave of lightheadedness dimming her vision. She might have blamed the medications she was taking if she hadn’t heard her daughter’s voice running through her brain.
Kill me. No leave babies.

At the sound of footsteps on the staircase, all three of them looked that way. But instead of Lilly, it was only Max, heading back down toward the sofa.

“She doesn’t think that now, though,” Harris answered for her sister. “Isn’t that right, Annie? Not unless the dead have suddenly started using phones.”

“I—I guess that’s true.” She tried to laugh, but it came out sounding strangled.

Christina patted the vacant center cushion, too confused by this exchange to care that her mother would have had a fit about her letting Max on the furniture.

“So what did this woman say to change your thinking?” Harris asked her.

Annie scooted farther over to make room as the dog slipped up between them and laid his head and neck across Christina’s lap. “At first, she gave me some crazy story about some man jumping into her car when she stopped at an ATM, then forcing her to ditch us. When I called her on it, she admitted it was drugs.”

Finding her voice again, Christina asked, “And that’s when you decided you believed her?”

Annie nodded. “If you only could’ve heard her crying. I—I knew in my heart then that she’s not just some nut pretending to try to take us for a ride. I could sense it, Christina—you would have, too. This was a woman coming clean about something she hadn’t ever admitted, even to herself.”

It didn’t shock Christina that her sister would accept some stranger’s claims. It seemed that Annie’s childhood dream, common enough among adopted kids, of being reunited with a birth mother who’d all along been tragically misunderstood had never really died.

But Annie didn’t remember the terrifying ordeal her older sister did.

Christina’s own childhood fantasies had involved angry confrontations, at least until she’d finally accepted, with the help of the therapist she’d been taken to see about the nightmares, that holding on to hurt and rage was only hurting her.
Forgetting is the best revenge
, her
real
parents had often told her. And for years, she’d almost managed it, or at least managed to pretend she had.

Harris prompted Annie, “So your biological mother—”

“We don’t know that,” Christina insisted.

“All right, then. This
woman
claimed she was in the neighborhood that night to make a drug buy?”

Annie nodded. “Only she knew there was no way this biker dealer she did business with was going to sell her a hit if she showed up at his place with a couple of babies in tow. She started crying into the phone then, swearing she’d gotten treatment and that she’s been clean for years now. But at the time, she was so strung out, she couldn’t think of anything but scoring her next hit.”

Her sister’s look was thoughtful, her tone maddeningly sympathetic as she continued. “She was a lost soul before she got help. The drugs were running her life.”

Once more, Christina saw those disappearing taillights. Red lights that somehow in her mind became two shrinking flecks in Lilly’s eyes. Shaken, Christina said, “She drove off and left us. How can you buy into her—”

“She claimed they wouldn’t let her leave, that they held her.”

“For
months
?” Christina snorted in disbelief, knowing the police had spent at least that long looking for the woman. “Probably started partying and forgot she even had kids. Or she was whoring herself to score her next hit.”

She knew how harsh she sounded but couldn’t bring herself to care. Why should she, when that woman—on the off chance she was the person she claimed to be—had nearly cost them their lives? When she might very well be involved in the fire that could have taken Lilly from her if Harris hadn’t come in time?

“If it’s true,” Harris said gently, “you should count yourselves lucky that you escaped that lifestyle. I’ve seen what it does to kids, having a parent caught up in addiction. Never seems to end well for anyone involved.”

Christina swallowed past a painful lump, knowing he was right. She’d seen too much of it herself, in emergency departments from the East Coast to Texas.

“So what else did this woman say?” Harris asked her sister. “Name, location, anything that could help?”

Annie shook her head. “She was crying so hard by that point, and then she disconnected. Just like the first call, there was no number showing on my cell, so I couldn’t call her back. And she hasn’t called me again since the fire.”

Christina said, “That alone should tell you something. Don’t be so naive.”

“I’m not a child, Christina.” Her sister jumped up from the sofa, her voice vibrating with frustration, and her eyes shimmering with tears. “So you can stop treating me like one. Finally.”

“I’d be happy to do that, Annie—if every single time I did, you didn’t find some new way to disappoint me.”

“Come on, you two,” Harris said, gesturing for peace with raised palms.

But it was too late, with Annie shouting, “That’s it. I’m out of here. I’m going to Kym’s now, like I told you.”

“Please don’t leave.” Pushing Max’s head from her lap, Christina came to her feet, too, panic roaring through her, along with the certainty that she couldn’t have said anything more crushing to her sister if she’d plotted it for months. “I didn’t mean it. I’m so sorry. I’m just—”

“You’re finally saying what you
really
think, and we both know it. What you’ve been too polite, too busy being the
perfect
daughter, to let out of your mouth before.”

“I love you, Annie,” Christina said, too desperate to care about the show they were putting on for Harris, or even poor Max, who was whining and pressing close to her legs, clearly upset by the shouting. “I need you—and not just to take care of Lilly. You’re the only sister I have.”

Jaw tightening, Annie dug the keys to the Mercedes from her handbag and picked up the jacket she’d thrown over the back of the unoccupied chair. “I’ll have Kym drop me by and bring the car back later.”

“We have to talk,” Christina pleaded as Annie went for the door.

“You’ve already said enough for one day, don’t you think?”

Knowing the only way to deescalate this situation was to give the sisters time apart, Harris was up and after Christina in one fluid movement, grasping her uninjured elbow before she could reach the door that Annie had just slammed behind her.

Looking down into her tear-streaked face, he said, “Let her go for right now.”

Christina shook her head, her hair swinging out around her shoulders. “I have to make her understand I didn’t mean it.”

“She knows that,” he said gently, feeling her shaking beneath his grip. “Or she will, once she has time to calm down. And you, too, Christina. You’ve been through a hell of a lot.”

“I can’t believe I said that. I’m such an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot. You’re human. A human who’d just been socked with a lot of upsetting information, including a couple of huge secrets your sister’s been keeping from you.”

The tension in her body eased a little, but the pain in her eyes burned like a bed of hot coals. “First Renee, now Annie,” she said. “I’ve driven away everyone I care about. Everyone who’s ever cared for me.”

“Not everyone,” he said, meaning to add that there was a little girl for whom she meant everything upstairs now, a mother who’d be home again to see her and support her soon. But somehow, he didn’t finish, his pulse picking up as he mentally dared her to make of his statement what she would.

To his astonishment, she moved a step nearer and leaned her head against his chest. Slowly, he pulled her even closer, his intention—or so he told himself—merely to offer comfort.

What he hadn’t guessed was how much of it he would draw from her, how the warmth of her body, the way she fit so perfectly against him and the syncing of her breaths to his, could drain away so much of the stress and confusion he was feeling.

He stood there, rocking her slightly, rubbing his palm over her back, not daring to speak, or risk saying anything that would shatter whatever was happening between them. Anyway, wasn’t it words that always went wrong for him, words that made a mockery of what he was feeling?

“What are we doing here?” she finally whispered. “What are you—”

He ducked his head to press his lips to her temple. “Trying desperately not to open my mouth and fuck things up again . . . Oh hell. There I go. Sorry about the language—”

Instead of taking offense, she laughed—a rich, warm sound that he wanted to drink in like water. Amusement lit her face, making her more beautiful than her younger sister. More beautiful than any woman he had ever known.

That was when he realized he was in even more trouble than he’d imagined. His hand slipped along her rib cage, over the sweet curve between her waist and hip on its way back to his side.

“You’ve saved my daughter and got me rescued off that rooftop,” she told him, “and brought my dog back from the dead, too. So I think we’ll let it slide this once. And, anyway, what are a few
fucks
between good friends?”

No sooner had the words escaped than she was pulling away, flushing furiously. “I—I didn’t mean that the way it came out. I only meant to—”

It was his turn to laugh this time, so hard that she finally smacked his arm, her face redder than ever.

“Stop it!” she blurted out.

“Don’t mind me,” he told her, getting himself back under control. “I’m just so damn relieved
I
wasn’t the one to put my foot in my mouth. This time.”