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“India? Are you all right?”
She couldn’t tell Jack what was on her mind, so she bit back her questions about her daughter’s first days with him and Mary and changed the subject. “I love to look at photos, but I always want to know the stories behind them.”
“Colleen is like that, too. Unfortunately, we couldn’t tell her much. Mother Angelica only told us Colleen had a normal delivery. You don’t seem surprised to hear she’s adopted. Has she already told you?”
India nodded in time to the beat of her own heart. Jack’s question tempted her again to enter a dreamworld, where Colleen would get used to the idea of her true identity, and Jack would forgive her for her lies.
“J-Jack,” she stuttered, “Colleen’s birth mother could tell you all about her birth. Have you never wondered about her?”
His vehemence gave away the depth of his feeling about the “birth mother.” “No. Mary was Colleen’s mother. That’s all I need to know. For years, we dreaded the idea of some woman trying to take our daughter away from us. I still think about it when I hear one of those stories on the news….”
His voice trailed off, and India tried to hide her utter dismay. Averting her face, she scrambled for composure. He’d given her a swift, detailed answer. If she tried to tell him the truth, he’d think she’d come to steal his child.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anna Adams grew up battling for position with four brothers and five male cousins. Her grandma, concerned when Anna built a tree house that resembled a condo for a family of four, gave her the gift of a Harlequin romance novel and told her that young women (Anna was twelve and—please—no longer a “girl”) could combine other, even more exciting adventures with their architectural accomplishments.
With wholehearted joy, Anna plunged into a world of strong women and loving men who knit their lives together no matter what obstacles stood between them. Now Anna can’t believe she’s lucky enough to add her stories to the ones that came before her. She hopes to bring the same delight she’s known to other readers. She just wishes she could share that cool reading spot, too.
Anna lives in Georgia with her jazz guitarist son, Colin, her swims-like-a-fish daughter, Sarah, and her hero of twenty-one years, Steve.
To Mamie—who gave me that first book.
To Colin and Sarah—may life bring you the love
you’ve given me.
And to Steve—I still listen for your voice on the phone,
your key in the door. You love like a hero.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
ON NEW YEAR’S EVE, in the basement of St. Genevieve’s Home for Unwed Mothers, India Stuart gripped a small flashlight between her teeth and bent over a locked filing cabinet. Seconds ticked like frantic heartbeats in her head.
She’d learned how to pick locks from a book, but her hands hadn’t trembled this way when she’d practiced at home. Like the attorneys she’d consulted and Mother Angelica, who’d run the home since before India had come here to give birth, the lock remained firm.
She didn’t take burglary lightly. Fifteen years ago, she’d stepped outside the rules and made one mistake that had taught her never to rebel again. She glanced at the window she’d climbed through. Headlights on a waiting car flashed twice.
Her father, encouraging her. He was only trying to help, not alert the local police. “Dad!” She redoubled her efforts. A bead of sweat trickled down her nose. Had he flashed the lights before? Even at a time like this, she and he did not know how to communicate.
She tightened her moist fingers on the tools. Any minute Mother Angelica might materialize to engulf her in voluminous black robes. No, at night, Mother Angelica only ventured from her room to investigate the sound of a gallon of ice cream bouncing across the kitchen tiles. India still remembered.
Inhaling a shaky breath, she started over. Use a gentle touch. Persuade the lock. Don’t force it.
With a metallic thunk, it finally gave and sprang outward. Astounded, she stared at the cabinet. A moment of truth. Fifteen years of hopes and dreams and regrets, all concentrated in one shattering second.
She yanked the handle on the S drawer.
Smith, Smith, Smith—how many frightened young women had borrowed that name? Finally, a Smythe and two Snyders. She ran her fingertips over the folder tabs. Sprayberry, Spritzer? At last, a Stewart, and another, and then—Stuart, India. Even in the dim light her folder looked old.
Fifteen years.
She tugged at the file. Wedged between the others, it stuck. She tugged harder, but left it halfway in, so she wouldn’t have to figure out where it belonged when she finished with it.
Prying the folder open enough to see the writing on the pages inside, India shone her small flashlight on Mother Angelica’s spidery scrawl. She searched for the name she’d tried to imagine for too many years, the name of the child she’d given up for adoption.
Colleen Stephens.
India squeezed her eyes shut, holding in terrified joy. This moment was worth any danger. She shook herself, remembering her father outside. Getting him arrested wouldn’t improve their strained relationship.
She dug a small notebook out of her pocket. Her knees wobbled as she wrote down her daughter’s address. Arran Island, Maryland. So close. She’d always been so close. India stared at Colleen’s adopted parents’ names. Jack and Mary Stephens. She hoped they loved Colleen the way she’d wanted to. She vowed not to hurt them as she jotted down their names and then threaded the file back into its slot.
She shut the drawer and pushed the lock back into place. Quickly she turned off the flashlight and stowed it in her pocket. Across the room, her father’s wrench, upright and gleaming in the moonlight, still braced the window open.
She clambered to the window ledge and eased the wrench out. Then, she forced a space large enough to wriggle through and tumbled out onto the grass. As she leaned back to tug the window down, her father gently revved his car’s engine.
She scrambled up the slight rise and pushed through shrubbery that grabbed at her clothes and skin. Gravel scrunched under her heels as she skidded to the front passenger door and yanked it open. Breathing hard, she slid into the seat. The man behind the steering wheel, all in black, his hair a shock of steel, tilted his head in a silent question.
“Colleen Stephens. Arran Island, Maryland.” India choked on the words, amazed she had gone to such lengths, but unbelievably glad.
For a moment, Mick Stuart’s eyes reflected her happiness. He sobered abruptly. “So you found out her name. Let it go now. Get back on a plane for Seattle and take that job. Hire someone to find out if she’s all right.”
The last plane she’d boarded for Seattle had broken crosswise on the runway, burst into flames and changed her life forever. Dragging herself through smoke so thick she almost had to chew it, she’d seen her bland life for the safe picture of responsibility she’d created. She’d thrown away her parents’ love and hidden her own for them so deep she didn’t know how to find it anymore. Since Colleen’s birth, she’d kept herself from loving anyone.
As she’d struggled into clean air, she’d known—to go forward, she had to confront her past. Later, flat on her back with a broken leg, she’d had plenty of time to face the truth. Giving up her child had been the wrong decision for her to make. She couldn’t change the choice she’d made, but she needed to know Colleen hadn’t suffered because of her.
Now, adrenaline pushed her to snap a sharp reply to her father’s suggestion she put her daughter behind her. She swallowed old resentments. “I was looking to run away once and for all when I considered that Seattle job. I’m tired of running. For the same reasons I want to mend my fences with you and Mom, I have to know Coll—she’s safe.”
Grunting, he eased the car into gear and drove toward the wrought iron gate. “I know the accident changed things for you, but India, you’re looking back with hindsight. You have a master’s degree in library science. You have security I couldn’t provide for you when you got pregnant. You must know we were right. What would you have made of your life if you’d had to care for a child?”
“Dad, my heart still hurts for her. When I woke up in that hospital bed, I knew I had to make my peace—and not just with you and Mom.”
India turned her face to the window. Neither of her parents knew the guilt and shame that had haunted her as she’d carved out her competent life. She’d taken her degrees and then taken jobs in small towns and big cities close to a “home” that no longer felt like hers. Doing unacknowledged penance, she’d lived near her parents and hidden her true feelings—an easy feat, because she couldn’t bear to see them often enough to let them have a good look at her.
“I won’t meet her or talk to her. I don’t want to hurt her family, but I have to see she’s happy and safe.”
“You were sixteen years old. Forgive yourself. Forgive your mother and me. You need a family of your own. You need to let someone love you.”
“I can’t let anyone love me until I know she’s safe. I’ve believed I abandoned her. I just need to see she’s safe.”
For the first time, he backed down. “It’s my fault. If my business hadn’t failed…” Trailing off, he maneuvered the car into the street and anonymity.
“No, Dad.” India stared at his face, rugged and lined from the years he’d spent painting other people’s houses in Virginia sun and weather. “I made the final choice. It was easy to blame you and Mom, but everything changed when that plane skidded down the runway. I took the easy way out—with my baby and with you.”
“You’ve worked hard for everything you have.”
“I’ve worked at not getting hurt, at not letting anyone love me, including you and Mom.” India eyed the thick, wavy strands of his hair. “You didn’t have to come tonight.”
“I couldn’t let you come alone. I owe you this, and tomorrow, I’ll arrange for an ad in the Arran Island paper. Someone will need a housepainter.” Reaching across the gearshift, he patted her knee. “And his able apprentice. Your mother is going to manage the business while I help you—as long as I remember how to run the equipment after all this time in the front office.”
India splayed her fingers over the ache in her chest. To find her own way, she had to see she’d done right by the child she’d never even held. She’d looked back for too long. From today, she looked forward. No fear, no guilt.
Mick slowed the car for a traffic light. “If we can just get one house, we may find out everything we need to know.”
India’s smile took all her acting ability. She talked brave, but she felt wary. The huge chance she was taking could break her family apart all over again.
“What’s the matter?” Her father’s gaze searched hers in the dim light.
Twisting in the seat, she pressed the back of her head against the cool window. “I just made you an accessory to breaking and entering.”
Mick curved his mouth. “You got my wrench back, right?”
CHAPTER ONE
“HAYDEN, I DON’T NEED YOU and Nettie to help me raise my own daughter.” Jack Stephens pushed away from the worn kitchen table and his half-eaten lunch. His former father-in-law scraped back his chair, too.
“We know you’re a good father to Colleen, but she’s grown even more rebellious since we were here at Christmas. While you’re busy with the boat, let us help you.”
Intense March sunshine flooding through the window hurt Jack’s eyes. The boat. Two months ago, a storm like the hand of God had pushed his boat ashore. Since then, he’d worked on a friend’s boat during the day and made repairs on his own in the evenings. Maybe Colleen had acted up more since then, but his busy schedule hadn’t started her one-girl rebellion.
No, she’d changed when Mary died. Nearly three years ago. He shied from the uncomfortable truth. Colleen had stopped talking to him after her mother died.
Jack shoved his plate onto the counter. “You’ve worked up to this all morning, haven’t you? No wonder Nettie wanted a girl’s day out.” Hayden Mason’s diminutive wife had insisted she and Colleen needed new clothes for the spring festival tonight. “Did Colleen ask you to talk to me?”
“Of course not,” Hayden said, picking up his own plate. “Unless you approve, we won’t even tell her we want to stay.”
Like a living, breathing entity, Jack’s small kitchen seemed to squeeze him. “What if I don’t approve?”
Hayden narrowed his gray eyes, Mary’s eyes, but Jack wouldn’t let memories of Mary soften his impatience with her managing parents. His parents, too, after all these years.
“I don’t want you to stay. You and Nettie come between Colleen and me. When you’re here, she turns to you first, and I can’t reach her.”
“Maybe she needs us.” Hayden took Jack’s shoulder. “I don’t want to hurt you, but you two can’t talk to each other anymore. You don’t understand each other.”
“She doesn’t have to understand me. She has to do what I tell her to do and be where I tell her to be. She forgets she’s fifteen, and I’m her parent.” Jack broke off. Tough talk, tougher than he meant, but his anxiety for Colleen made him feel weak, out of control. “How could you and Nettie do a better job? You pave her way with gifts. Look at that leather jacket Nettie bought her last weekend.”
Hayden sighed reflectively, as if the black and silver-buckled, biker-gang special clanged in his memory, too. “Now, Nettie made a mistake there. She swears Colleen showed her a different jacket. One with a velvet collar.” Hayden shook his head. “But Colleen also told her how much she misses Mary. Has she told you?”
“What kind of man do you think I’ve become?” Taking Hayden’s plate, Jack avoided his eyes. “I know how much Colleen misses her mother.”
“But has she told you? Has she cried in your handkerchief?”
At the sink, Jack stared out the window at the green-blue bay. Colleen hadn’t shed one teardrop in almost three years, not when the police called to say Mary’s car had gone off the road, not when he’d come home from Mary’s hospital bedside two weeks later to tell Colleen her mother was gone.
Colleen seemed to want him to believe she regarded her mother’s death with the same stone-cold apathy she extended toward every word he spoke, from “I love you” to “Call me before you stop at your friend’s house.”
“We’ll work out our problems.” He tried to sound sure. Colleen was his little girl. Why didn’t he know how to reach her? “Maybe you and Nettie should stop running interference for her.”
“You need time to get your boat back in the water. Colleen needs attention. We can give both of you exactly what you need. Let us stay, just until you finish repairing the boat and get your business back on track.”
Pressure beat behind his eyes as Jack stared at the older man. Maybe Hayden was right. If Colleen had talked to Nettie about Mary, maybe she’d find a way to talk about the other things she couldn’t tell him. “What about your house in Baltimore?”
“Nettie’s cousin in D.C. will check on it. Besides, we’re not so far away that we can’t go home if we need to.”
Even as Jack opened his mouth to give in, the front door slammed open. Colleen’s usual entrance. Leaving Hayden behind, he hurried through the kitchen archway. In the dim light, he saw what Colleen had done to herself while in her grandmother’s care.
Her hair, much darker than the honey-blond it had been that morning, stood on end. Exaggerated paleness painted on her cheeks and eyelids stopped Jack cold. She smiled through black lips. Behind her, Nettie hovered, cautious as Colleen ought to be.
“What have you done?” Jack clutched at his slipping temper. Who knew parenting could scare the hell out of a grown man? His daughter needed him, but he couldn’t figure out what she needed. “Colleen, what have you done to yourself?”
Adolescence hadn’t robbed her of all her good sense. A hint of anxiety finally entered her eyes. “I had a make-over.”
“A makeover?” She looked like one of the living dead. Jack eased in a deep breath. Their arguments followed the same pattern. Step one—he lost his mind. Step two—she clammed up. Step three—silence deepened the gap between them. “Go upstairs and clean your face. We’ll talk about this in a few minutes.”
“I paid for the makeup, Dad.” Squaring her shoulders, Colleen lifted a Macy’s shopping bag. “I plan to use it.”
Jack stared at his daughter, pointedly ignoring Nettie and Hayden, who were blind to the fact they didn’t help Colleen when they financed her mistakes. “How did you pay?”
She hesitated, reluctant to involve Nettie, keeper of the moneybags. She bit her lip and shifted her shopping to her other hand. “Grandma gave me the money.”
Nettie scooted around her. “Now, Jack, honey, I know this looks bad.” She was as reluctant as Colleen to come clean. “I didn’t know—I thought, what’s the harm in a little makeup? I—”
“But where were you when she did this?” As he switched on the hall light to see his daughter’s hair, Jack’s fuse burned a little shorter. He turned Colleen’s head so that the spiky ends glinted. “Purple?” Appalled, he let her go.
“No. Burgundy.” Colleen tapped her palm gently over the points.
Her hair looked like an eggplant sunburst.
In one more rescue attempt, Nettie nudged Colleen farther behind her and lifted one hand to her own shoulder. Clenching her face in an exaggerated grimace, she rubbed her shoulder, as if her muscles ached horribly. With a sideways glance, she made sure she’d lured Jack’s attention away from Colleen. “I indulged in a short massage.” She tilted her head toward her granddaughter. “I’ve been under a little stress, you know.”
Hayden showed up at Jack’s side. “Nettie.” His voice dripped disappointment.
“I know. I know.” Her show of guilt made Jack want to laugh and shout at the same time. Nettie dropped her head. “I don’t know how I—”
“Dad, this isn’t Grandma’s fault.” Colleen stepped in front of Nettie. “I tricked her.”
“I’m the adult, Colleen.” Nettie muscled back in front of her granddaughter, forcing Jack to retreat a step or two. She patted her own perfect silver coiffure with delicate weariness. “I should have paid closer attention.”
Their protective dance softened Jack’s heart. Leaning against the wall, he pressed his palms to the cool plaster. Since Mary’s death, Colleen had held her emotions tight. The joy he’d loved in her seemed muted, and she showed him only frustration. He’d tried to give her privacy, because he understood her need. Later he realized she’d stopped telling him her troubles. Only when she’d begun to act out anger she refused to discuss had he realized he should have pried.
He couldn’t punish Colleen for withdrawing when he’d let her go to give her time. She missed Mary, but she refused to talk to him about her grief. He’d thought he understood because his own pain and sorrow had felt so private.
Maybe if he let Nettie stay, Colleen would find a way to talk to her.
Jack swallowed a huge lump in his throat. Why can’t she talk to me? But before she went and did something to herself he couldn’t undo, she had to talk to someone. And Nettie made her care more than anyone else could.
All three of them waited for what he’d do next. “Go wash your face, Colleen,” he said again. “I don’t want you to wear that stuff to the festival tonight.”
A slight, relieved smile curved her mouth, but she held it back. “I’ll do something about my hair, too.”
Reluctant to look too closely at the damage, Jack allowed himself a brief nod. “Your grandpa and grandma are going to stay awhile, until I finish the boat.”
Colleen hesitated, looking from Nettie to Hayden. “Great. Two more keepers.”
Jack pushed away from the wall. “Cut it out.”
She headed for the stairs, the heels of her ankle boots tapping on the pine floor’s wide planks. She whirled, planting her hands on the balustrade to look down with pink cheeks and stormy eyes.
“Don’t be mad at Grandma, Dad. I’ve tricked you before, too.”
He didn’t trust himself to speak until Colleen slammed her door, and its echo let the air out of him. He turned and took Nettie’s hand. “I’m sorry it’s not a more exclusive club.” He glanced from her to Hayden. “Are you sure you still want to stay?”
“YOU LOOK FINE, INDIA. Stop worrying, and try to have a good time. Tonight’s your chance to meet people who might tell you something about her.” Her father lowered his voice on the pronoun.
India smoothed the hem of her new plaid skirt over her thighs and felt conspicuous. “She might be out there.” India nodded at the festival crowd that snaked around the cavernous high school gym. “I feel like a kid, myself, in this. Maybe I’ll call Mom tonight and ask her to send some of my things.”
Mick handed her a plastic cup of pink stuff. “Try this. A little girl wearing that same skirt poured it for me. I’ve never seen hair her color—purple, I swear. I’m not sure I could mix paint to match.”
Smiling despite choking tension, India held the glass at her lips. “Thanks, Dad. I feel better now.”
Mick ran his hand over her gauzy sleeve. “Your eyes look like big blue marbles. Relax.”
India shifted away. After all these years, she hardly knew how to accept her father’s comfort. She twisted the blond strands of her ponytail. She’d tried so hard to protect her parents, she’d forgotten how to go to them when she was afraid.
And she was scared stiff. What would she say if she met Colleen? Nothing. She couldn’t intrude in Colleen’s life. She had to run away as she had so long ago.
She’d kept running until those few terrifying moments on a burning plane had taught her what was important. Family. Living down the past before it ate up the future. She’d been all appearance before, but now she wanted to feel the emotions she’d hidden from, as long as she did nothing to hurt Colleen. “What if she’s here? What if I meet her accidentally?”
Mick sipped his own drink, somehow understanding her mid-thought conversation. “She might also be at home, tucked up in her own bed. She might be out of town. Don’t get your hopes up.”
India rubbed her index finger through the condensation on her plastic glass. “I’m not secretly hoping to run into her.”
Hurt bruised her father’s gaze. “I’m not saying you’d try to see her, but you’re my daughter, and I don’t want you hurt.”
India took a deep breath and plunged into the heart of the matters between them. “I know what you’ve done for me.” After he’d dragged his business back from the edge of bankruptcy, he’d put away his brushes to manage his company from a desk in a comfortable office. Until now. “I know you only came back into the field to give me an excuse to come here, but we could be lucky. Maybe we’ll meet someone tonight who’ll tell us Colleen lives in a fairy tale, and we can finish painting Mr. Tanner’s house and go home.”