“I’m your son.”

She blinked. The young man stood still, as if frozen, while his words replayed themselves in her mind. He’d just said he was her son. He couldn’t be.

Sara clutched the door with both hands and leaned against it, her gaze never wavering from the young man standing just outside.

Who was this boy claiming to be the child she’d given away so long ago? This child she’d worried for, grieved over and daydreamed about ever since. This young man named Ryan.

“Should I go?” he asked.

“No!”

“You’re shocked. How could you not be?” His voice was filled with strength, compassion and a tremble of fear.

Years of training drove her to respond. She held out her hand.

“Nice to meet you, Ryan.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tara’s first book, Yesterday’s Secrets, published in October 1993, was a finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA® Award. Her subsequent work has earned her finalist status for the National Readers’ Choice Award, plus another two RITA® Award nominations. A prolific writer, she has more than forty novels as well as three novellas published. To reach Tara, write to her at PO Box 133584, Mesa, Arizona 85216, USA or through her website, www.tarataylorquinn.com.

Dear Reader,

Most of us will never face Sara’s challenges, but almost all of us have to make the same choices she does. The choice to play it safe, to exist – or to take the big risks, to reach for everything, to live fully. We have to be willing to not only face our fears, but to walk right into them if required, so we can get through them to whatever awaits us on the other side.

I’m often asked where I get the ideas for my stories. Sometimes I have specific answers. I have no idea where this story came from. It doesn’t quite fit the usual boundaries or genres. But it wouldn’t go away. I spoke to my editor about this story. She didn’t seem shocked or even hesitant as she told me she thought it would work and asked me to write it. I didn’t question her acceptance any more than I questioned myself about the original creation.

And then, halfway through the book, I questioned everything – mostly myself. What had I done? How was I going to get a romance out of this? How was I going to get anywhere?

I was scared. I’d taken a risk and felt I was about to fail. I considered calling my editor and telling her we’d made a terrible mistake. And then Sara spoke to me. Was I going to work my way through the fears and let her find her happily ever after? I cared about her. And for her, I sat down every day and I wrote.

I didn’t take Sara to her happily ever after. She took me. I hope you’ll join us on this journey.

Tara Taylor Quinn

The Sheriff’s Daughter

TARA TAYLOR QUINN

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my father, Walter Wright Gumser.

Because he always did his best.

I love you, Daddy!

CHAPTER ONE

May 24

1:00—Lunch

2:00—Interview (It’s the retired cop. Credentials in folder.)

2:20—Meeting with Rodney Pace. (Presentation schedule included in red folder on desk.)

6:30—Dinner with partners from Mr. Calhoun’s firm. Hanrahan’s.

Note: Proof Sheriff Lindsay’s book. Sign checks and contracts before leaving. (In blue folder.)

Further note: Don’t forget to eat.

SARA CALHOUN SMILED as she read the final line Donna had jotted on the daily agenda, which sat atop a newly readied pile of folders on her desk at the National Organization for Internet Safety and Education early Thursday morning. The redeye she’d taken from a PTA conference in Anaheim had just landed at Port Columbus International Airport half an hour before. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.

If she’d gone straight home to shower without stopping at the office first to review the day’s materials, she could have had breakfast with Brent.

Glancing at the plain gold watch on her wrist—a college graduation present from her parents—Sara sat, pulled the pile of folders onto her lap and started to read.

THE DOORBELL RANG just as she was finishing her makeup. Stroking a couple of coats of mascara onto her lashes, Sara quickly dropped the tube in the sectioned container on her dressing table and raced to the stairs. Maybe it was just a salesperson, but she couldn’t stand to not answer.

She never let the phone ring, either.

It was five to nine. She’d spent so long at the office already that she was now late for work. But the sun was shining, May flowers were in bloom and an entire lovely summer stretched ahead.

Sara slowed at the bottom of the stairs, taking a deep breath to compose herself as she smoothed a hand down her slim brown skirt and brushed the pockets of her jacket. Dignity and class were her mantras. Always.

Brent expected this from her.

“Can I help—” The ready smile froze on her lips. A cop was standing on her doorstep.

Something had happened to her dad. Or Brent.

The young man’s mouth moved, but at this moment Sara couldn’t concentrate sufficiently to make out his words. “What?” she asked, willing herself to hear what he was saying. “What happened?”

“Are you Mrs. Sara Calhoun?”

“Yes.” She wished she weren’t. Law enforcement officials never came to deliver good news. She ought to know. She’d grown up with one.

“You are.” The young man’s gaze deepened, studying her.

“Yes,” she managed to say, bracing herself.

And nothing happened. Officer Mercedes, according to the thin nameplate above his left pocket, just stood there, apparently at a loss for words.

“Can I help you?” she finally prompted, mystified. She was the one getting the bad news—wasn’t she?

“I…uh…I’ve been planning this moment for a long time and I thought I was completely prepared. But now I have no idea what to say.”

Planning this moment? One didn’t usually plan to deliver bad news.

He looked so lost, so young, Sara’s heart caught. “You’re sure it’s me you want to see? I’m Sara Calhoun, formerly Sara Lindsay. I’m married to Brent Calhoun. He’s an attorney….”

Relief made her talkative.

“Antitrust. Yes, I know,” the tall, well-built officer said with a rueful grin. And a nervous twitch at the left corner of his mouth.

He ran his hand through his short sandy-colored hair, his raised arm drawing her attention to the belt at his waist—and all the defensive paraphernalia strapped there. That gun looked heavy.

“And, yes, you’re the one I’m looking for.”

The kid was young, his green eyes switching back and forth between innocent and knowing as he stood there, shifting his weight. He couldn’t be much more than twenty-one, which made her thirty-seven seem ancient.

“What’d I do? Forget to signal a turn? I have a habit of doing that, though I’m working on it,” she said, brushing a strand of hair back over her shoulder. This had to be his first house call.

He frowned and then, glancing down, his face cleared. “Oh, the uniform,” he said. “I’m not here on official business. I work the night shift in Westerville—just got off duty and finished my paperwork.”

Westerville, a north Columbus suburb a bit west of the New Albany home she and Brent had purchased six years before. There was a park within walking distance of every home in their area. Barely thirty when they bought it, she’d still believed that her workaholic husband was going to agree to have the children they’d always said they were going to have.

“Speaking of work, I’m late,” Sara said now, suddenly anxious to be on her way.

“I can come back another time.”

“No.” She shook her head. What could a young cop possibly have to do with her that would justify a second trip out? Or any trip? “I’m listening.”

“And I’m finding that there’s just no way to say this except outright.”

She waited.

“I’m your son.”

She blinked.

The young man stood still, as if frozen in stone, while his words replayed themselves in her mind.

He’d just said he was her son.

Her son.

He couldn’t be.

Twenty-one years of fighting for dignity and grace served her well enough to keep her standing. Sara clutched the door with both hands, leaned against it, her gaze never wavering from the young man standing just outside it.

He shifted, his hands folded together as if in military or pallbearer stance. Had he ever been in the military, this boy who was standing there claiming to be the child she’d given away so long ago? The child she’d worried for, grieved over and daydreamed about ever since.

Had he, too, suffered the pain of losing one he loved?

“Should I go?”

“No!”

“You’re shocked. How could you not be?”

His voice was deep, not at all that of the little boy she’d imagined so often that he seemed completely real to her.

This voice was filled with strength. Compassion. And a tremble of fear.

Or was she only losing her mind? After all these years, all the determination and trying, the counseling, all the self-flagellation, was the past finally going to undo her, anyway?

“I’m… I’m sorry,” she finally managed, straightening. “I just…”

“I know,” he interrupted, his hands still folded together. “I tried to come up with some easier way to do this, but I guess there isn’t one.”

No. Not easy. Nothing about Sara’s life had been easy since the morning after this boy—if he was her son—had been conceived. Nothing had been quite real. She’d lost things then that she’d been too young to even know she’d prized.

“I… What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t. It’s Ryan—Ryan Mercedes.”

Ah. Yes. Officer Mercedes. Seemed like years ago that she’d read that name tag.

He was staring at her openly now. Counting the lines on her face? Finding her wanting? Wondering what kind of woman she was who would give away her newborn son?

Years of training drove her to respond. She held out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Ryan.”

Was she insane? Nice to meet you? With a handshake?

He glanced at her hand, looked up to her face. She thought he was going to refuse her offering. And then he reached out, took her hand and held on.

Sara started to cry.

AFTER A QUICK GLANCE behind him, Ryan reached with his free hand to wipe the tears from his mother’s face—and his own. He’d imagined this moment, of course. Many times.

He’d just never thought she’d be such a beautiful woman. Or that she’d look so young. He’d known she was thirty-seven, but he’d pictured someone more like his mom. Harriet Mercedes. Fifty-one. Graying. Twenty pounds heavier than she’d been when he was little.

Brent Calhoun was a first-class fool.

Shoulders tensing as a car passed behind him, Ryan said, “May I come in?”

He didn’t want her neighbors talking, asking her awkward questions. Didn’t want to make life harder for her than he already knew it was going to be.

“Um, of course.”

She turned and backed up, breaking eye contact with him. He was shocked at the loss he immediately felt. Of course, he’d expected to have some feelings for this woman—she’d given him life—but he’d imagined his reaction would be protective, rather than deeply emotional.

He had a mother and father whom he adored. They’d raised him, provided for him, loved him. They’d given him all the support and encouragement any kid could ever hope for.

He didn’t need Sara Calhoun. At least not emotionally.

She led him through a formal living room with carpet so plush that the sides of his black regulation shoes sank into oblivion—the maroon-trimmed cream silk furniture was obviously not used much—past a shining, stainless-and-granite kitchen to a large, more comfortable room at the back of the sprawling custom home.

Though they weren’t millionaires, the Calhouns’ yearly income more than doubled that of Ryan’s parents. He’d never been inside such a nice house.

Or expected her to have such long, dark hair. Was the color natural?

“Have a seat.” His birth mother was standing in front of a sliding-glass door that revealed an acre or more of freshly manicured green grass out back.

Ryan chose one end of the couch, not wanting to risk choosing Brent Calhoun’s chair out of the three in the room. Assuming the man had a special chair. There was only one chair in the family room at his folks’ house—his dad’s recliner. His mom used the couch, as did the two Labs. That left him the floor or the love seat when he visited. He used both, depending on his mood.

His perusal of the room complete, he turned back to the woman who’d seated herself at the other end of the couch—and was leaning heavily on the arm. He almost wondered if she was afraid of him.

Kids were, sometimes. When he was in uniform. He didn’t like it then and he didn’t like it now.

He didn’t want Sara Calhoun to fear him. He wanted her to like him, to approve of him.

And that’s when he knew he’d been kidding himself.

Pathetic as it was, what he needed was for her to love him.

“I ALWAYS THOUGHT I’d recognize you if I ever saw you.” Sara was completely out of her element. Every moment in her life was carefully planned, scripted. Often rehearsed. How did you do “tragedy from the past catching up with you” with dignity and class and the peculiar level of withholding yourself that dignity and class required?

“I think I have your chin. At least, that’s what my parents say.”

“They know me?”

He shook his head. “I showed them the pictures that I found of you.”

This was becoming completely surreal.

“What pictures?”

“Some I found in a newspaper article on the Internet. You’d just won the Ohio State alumni woman-of-the-year award.”

A miracle was happening. Or a catastrophe. And they were talking about the Internet.

“What makes you think I’m your mother?” She should have asked sooner. Would have, if she hadn’t been afraid she’d find out she wasn’t.

“You gave permission for your name to be made known, if I ever sought you out.”

She nodded. “I gave up hoping that would happen years ago.” She’d never given up the grieving, though. Not one day between then and now had passed without an awareness of the weight inside her.

He slid his hands along his thighs, to his knees. “So you don’t mind?”

“Mind?” Her face stiff, Sara smiled. Until her lips started to tremble. “I’ve mourned not knowing you every day of your life!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry! For what? You were a helpless baby!”

“You were mourning and I’ve known about you for seven years.”

He’d have been fourteen then. He’d known about her since he was barely a teenager. From the time she was thirty. Before she bought this house—when she’d still been counting on having another child.

“And you owed me nothing,” she told the son she’d had when she’d still been a child herself. “Don’t you ever feel sorry for your part in any of this. Not ever.” She carried around enough shame, anger and grief for all of them.

He nodded and she sat back, studying him further, finding every aspect of his face fascinating. And the way he held his hands, as if he was always aware of them, always in control of them.

“What do you think?” His question startled her, embarrassed her.

“That you’re everything I’ve imagined you to be. And more.”

“You don’t even know me yet.”

“Based on what I’ve already seen, I know that you can be kind. Compassionate. Gentle. You’re working in an admirable profession and obviously have lived your life in such a way that allowed you to pass the rigorous background checks necessary to be a law enforcement officer.”

“Just like your father was.”

She drew back, frowning. “Just how much do you know about me?” It was disconcerting, having this perfect stranger, this flesh of her flesh, aware of facts of her life—while she, who’d been yearning for even one word of him for more than twenty years, knew nothing.

He glanced down, his cheeks turning red, and when he sought her gaze again, his expression was pleading. “Can we start over? Or at least go back a little bit? I honestly had this whole thing planned and… I don’t know…” He shrugged. “Being here, meeting you. It’s not at all like I thought it would be.”

He was a planner. Just like she was. Except that she hadn’t been—until that awful night so many years ago.

“How did you think it would be?”

He made a face. “Businesslike.”

Her heart dropped. “Is that what you’d like it to be?”

“No!” Ryan sat forward, his hands on his knees, as if ready to push off. She expected him to stand, but he turned to look at her instead.

“I… Can I start at the beginning?”

Pleased by his strong need to stay, Sara smiled. “Of course. Especially if you’re going to tell me about you. It’s strange having you know things about me, when I don’t know anything about you beyond the fact that you made me sick to my stomach for three months straight, kicked like a soccer player and were so eager to be born I barely got to the hospital in time.”

And she also knew that he’d been a perfect baby boy. That he’d weighed seven pounds even. Been born at 3:58 a.m. And had a full head of sandy-colored hair.

“Really?” He grinned. Sat back. “I never knew that.”

“How could you?” Not even her parents knew that. They’d been out of town for the weekend, leaving Sara home alone with a neighbor on call next door. She hadn’t been due for another three weeks.

She’d taken a cab to the hospital. And called them after her son had already been whisked away.

Having Ryan had been something she’d had to do on her own.

Right now, he looked as if he was waiting for her to elaborate. She wasn’t prepared to go back there. Not yet. She’d spent twenty-one years running in the opposite direction.

“You were going to start at the beginning.”

Ryan told her about the youthful rebellion that had ended with his parents encouraging him to pursue finding her, if that was what he needed in order to have a sense of identity.

“I was shocked,” he said, one knee up on the couch as he turned to face her. His arm stretched along the sofa back until he was almost touching her shoulder.

Sara relished the closeness, the warmth of his fingers nearby. She wished she had the right to hug him, to fill the emptiness she’d felt in her arms since the day he’d been born.

“I knew I was adopted. I’ve always known. But I never asked about my birth parents, figuring it would hurt my real parents’ feelings.”

He stopped. Sara raised her brow.

“I was going to apologize.”

“They’re your real parents, Ryan. Never doubt that. I played a biological role in your life, nothing more.” The words just came out.

“How can you say that?”

“It’s what I’ve been telling myself more than half my life.”

It was the only way she’d survived without him.

“Do you really believe that?”

They were traveling backward again—to places that hurt a great deal.

“I believe I want to hear the rest of your story.”

He studied her a moment longer and then, to her relief, he continued.

“My mom called the adoption agency for me and a couple of weeks later I came home from school to find a letter waiting. It told us your name, and that you lived in Maricopa.”

A town just outside Montgomery County, near Dayton. A little over an hour from Columbus. She’d grown up there.

Ryan had been born there.

He pulled a document out of his back pocket and handed it to her. “And there was this.” A copy of his birth certificate. The official one with her name on it, next to the words Baby Boy Lindsay. That piece of paper would only have been released to one person—her son.

“I came to Columbus to go to Ohio State, got married and never left,” she said inanely, so disoriented she couldn’t think straight.

He nodded. “I know.”

There it was again. That knowledge he had.

“You never wanted to contact me?” God, she sounded pathetic. And the question was completely unfair.

He grimaced, shrugged. “Sure I did—some of the time. But I knew you were married. I didn’t know if he knew about me, or if you’d welcome the idea of a potentially painful reminder from your past showing up on your doorstep.”

“I would have welcomed you. Instantly. Any time.”

She couldn’t speak for Brent. Wouldn’t speak for him. They didn’t share the same feelings about children.

Hers. Or anyone else’s.

Though, for years, she’d thought they had.

“I also didn’t want to hurt my folks,” Ryan admitted next. “They were completely open about finding you, but I could tell my mom was a little worried, too.”

Understandably. Sara had a strong urge to meet the woman who’d been such a good mother to the boy she’d birthed. To tell her thank you. And to tell her not to worry.

To find out if the woman could accept her—or if she hated her. To find out if some of the jealousy she’d avoided acknowledging all these years could be put to rest.

But what if it intensified?

“Do they know you’re contacting me now?”

She’d jumped ahead. There was so much in between.

“Yes.”

That was all. Nothing more.

“I was kind of geeky growing up,” Ryan said then, obviously sensing that they had to go back to go forward. “I played Little League and high school football….”

“Were you good at it?”

“Good enough.” He shook his head, as if his sports successes were inconsequential. “I enjoyed playing, and my father encouraged it, but what I loved most was reading. And surfing the Net.”

“AOL would have been in full swing by the time you were in high school.”

“I was a junkie on Genie,” he said, naming an Internet connection source that had been out of business for several years.

“I’m assuming you know what I do for a living?”

“You’re executive director for NOISE, a national nonprofit organization that teaches Internet safety to kids, which your father, Sheriff John Lindsay, founded after his first book on the subject was published. You’re not supported by taxpayers’ money, but you get more than half of your funding through state-paid programs that contract your services.”

“Is there anything about me you don’t know?”

He glanced away and, for the first time since he’d come into her house, Sara felt uneasy with him there.

She realized she hadn’t called the office.

CHAPTER TWO

“EVERYTHING OKAY?” Ryan asked when Sara came back into the room and sat. He was sitting on the couch, right where she’d left him when she went to phone Donna. “Do you have to leave? I can come back another time.”

She shook her head, wondering how she was going to answer the questions her executive assistant was sure to ask when she finally did make it in to work. “I had an early flight from California this morning, so my schedule is clear until one.”

Everyone who knew her at all would find it odd that she wasn’t in the office, anyway—she’d been gone for three days.

But at the moment, she didn’t really care. For the first time in many years, the office, her father, what people thought of her, didn’t matter.

“Would you like something to drink?”

“I’m good, thanks.” He shook his head.

“You were starting at the beginning.”

“Yeah.” Head bowed, he didn’t speak right away. Then, looking up at her, he said, “This is kind of strange, isn’t it?”

Sara chuckled. “To say the least. I’m nothing to you—I don’t even know you. And yet I look at you, know that you’re my son and I feel like a mother. I’m thirty-seven years old and I don’t recognize myself.”

“I kinda feel like I know you, too.”

“Sounds like you know quite a bit about me.”

The thought was a comfort, given the seven years it had taken him to come and meet her.

“I’ve always loved puzzles, solving riddles and mysteries. When I was a kid I preferred old detective reruns to cartoons and all the action-hero shows the kids at school talked about.”

She could picture him, a much smaller version of the man sitting beside her, with skinny arms and legs, innocent eyes and the same freshly cut hair, lying on his stomach in front of a television set, his chin in his hands. The vision was so bittersweet it echoed the ache that accompanied her everywhere, every day.

“I don’t really know how it all started,” he continued. “It’s not like I ever made a conscious decision, but somehow, after I learned your name—and decided that I wasn’t going to try to see you—I started looking you up on the Internet.”

Sara’s chest tightened. Her entire life was a secret, built on air—and on her determination to protect herself, make amends, never be hurt or hurt anyone ever again. She would not allow herself to falter.

But no one knew that. In this area she had no confidants.

“There was no Internet when I was growing up. And I’m a behind-the-scenes kind of person. I imagine that search bored you fairly quickly.”

Ryan shook his head. But it was the compassion shining from his eyes that scared her to death.

He knew. That one look from her son brought back all the shame. The dirtiness. The fear and anger. The guilt.

She didn’t want him to see her like that. Didn’t want to be that person. She’d worked so hard to leave sixteen-year-old Sara Lindsay behind.

“When I typed in your name, nothing came up. But birth records are public and it didn’t take long to find out that your father was the sheriff of Brighton County.”

Court cases were probably public record, too. And if someone was savvy enough to know how to access them…

“It was actually through his name that I found the old newspaper articles.”

“How old?” The Internet hadn’t been around that long.

“Twenty-two years. The Maricopa Tribune, like a lot of newspapers, hired someone to archive their past issues and you can access the collection on their Web site.”

She’d had no idea. Had never seen the articles to begin with, though she’d heard about them. Her parents had pulled her out of school that year and her mother had homeschooled her. They’d done all they could to help her recover from the tragic consequences of her great rebellion—including arranging counseling.

Still, despite all their efforts—and her own—the damage remained.

Ryan hesitated, and now it was Sara’s turn to look away. How did a son broach such a subject with his mother? Especially one he’d just met?

He shouldn’t need to.

And yet it was clearly important to Ryan.

“It was my fault.” She hadn’t meant to say the words. And knew logically that they couldn’t possibly be true. Everyone who’d been around then, who’d had anything to do with her, had adamantly insisted that she hadn’t been to blame.

And yet she’d deliberately disobeyed her parents. She’d lied. She’d put herself in danger….

“You were raped. Three guys were convicted and sent to prison! How can you possibly think that was your fault?” Ryan’s words echoed those she’d heard so many times before.

“I should never have been at that party,” she said softly. “It was stupid teenage rebellion. Growing up the only child of a sheriff—especially when you’re a girl—isn’t always easy. My father was pretty strict, seeing danger in everything.”

“I can imagine.”

Glancing at his uniform, she was sure he could. And with twenty-one years’ hindsight—heck, with one more day’s hindsight—she’d been able to understand, as well.

But if they had to talk about this, she needed it done as quickly as possible, with as little discussion as possible.

“I’d wanted to go to a concert in Cincinnati at Riverfront Stadium with a group of girlfriends, and my father said no. I was the only one who couldn’t go and they all had a great time. Talked about it the entire week afterward. I felt left out. And so uncool. Like a little kid hanging out with girls who were growing up without me. And it just so happened that that following weekend one of my friends told me about a frat party that a group of college guys were having down by the lake a few miles outside of town. Her older brother was going. I’d been to the lake a hundred times, we all had. I saw this as an opportunity to show them all—most particularly my dad—that I was growing up, too. And so, pretending to be older than I was, I went to that party. Turns out there was only one other girl there and I don’t know how long she stayed.”

She cringed, even now, as she thought about the stupid young girl she’d been—so hell-bent on running her own life, she’d damaged it irrevocably.

Hers and many others.

“The paper said you’d been found there the next morning.”

“By my father.” Of all people. “All I can remember is having two bottles of some wine thing. And the next thing I know, my dad’s shaking me awake. I was already wrapped in his coat. And wearing little else.”

Ryan’s gaze fell momentarily. “The newspaper article didn’t mention that part.”

“There were empty beer bottles all over the ground.” Sara continued her recitation as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “And whiskey bottles, too.”

She’d do this once, and never again. For the child who’d been conceived that night.

“My father was determined to find the guy who’d taken advantage of me.”

“It was a lot more than that.” Ryan’s voice was stronger, coplike.

Arms around her waist, Sara shivered, in spite of the heat. “Maybe,” she allowed, and then nodded. “Probably, considering the fact that until that point I hadn’t even been kissed. Guys didn’t fool around with Sheriff Lindsay’s daughter.”

She’d been the quintessential virgin. She’d never even had her breasts touched through her clothes, and suddenly she’d been naked for all the world to see.

“There was a guy at the scene who I guess wasn’t as drunk as the rest. He apparently named the three guys and the hospital was able to confirm that all three of them had been…with…me.”

Problem was, she couldn’t remember if they’d simply had sex with her. Or raped her.

“I didn’t even have to testify,” she continued, lost in her thoughts with that young girl again, trying to make sense out of a world gone mad. “I couldn’t remember anything, but it didn’t matter to my father or the court. I was underage. It was rape. Statutory or otherwise.”

“The evidence was pretty clear that it’d been otherwise.”

She’d been badly bruised in places a girl should never be bruised.

“For all I knew, I got wild when I drank.”

“You’d never gotten drunk before?”

She shook her head. “And I’ve never been drunk since.”

“You don’t drink?”

“Socially.” One glass of wine, if a host was serving her. And only if the circumstances were completely controlled.

“According to what I read, none of the men convicted remembered much about what happened, either. Or at least, that was their defense.”

That’s what she’d been told. She hadn’t been present to hear any of the testimony.

“Based on the number of bottles found at the site and how sick we all were the next day, I’d guess we were all somewhat to blame.”

But she hadn’t lost her freedom for it. She hadn’t been sent to prison at eighteen, to be God-knew-what by the hardened and deranged prisoners who were spending their lives behind bars.

And if it had been only statutory rape, if she’d been a willing participant in the sexual antics that night, she was at least somewhat to blame for their incarceration. They’d been sent up on charges of having sex with a minor and she’d told them all she was twenty-one. Dressed as if she’d been twenty-one, with a bra that had pushed up her breasts and a low-cut blouse that showed more than it left to the imaginations of a bunch of horny college guys.

“Do you know if any of you were checked for drug use?” Ryan sounded all cop.

“Did the papers say we had been?”

“It wasn’t mentioned.”

“If we were, I wasn’t told about it. I sure didn’t see or hear anything about any drugs at the party. These guys were there to drink, but that’s all. Why do you ask?”

He shrugged. “PCP, for instance, is a dissociative street drug that’s been around since the fifties and it’s still used by about two and a half percent of high school seniors today. One of its side effects is loss of memory.”

He was well-trained. And seeing things that weren’t there because he knew too much?

“I’m sure if my father suspected drug use, we were tested,” she told her newfound son. “But passing out from an overdose of alcohol can also result in loss of memory, and I know for certain that there was an ample supply of that on hand.”

“So you think you passed out drunk, and then they had sex with you?”

Her body temperature rising from her feet to her ears, Sara concentrated on taking long, calming breaths. Distancing herself, as she’d been taught in her counseling sessions all those years ago.

“I try not to think about it at all,” she told her son honestly. “I woke up, spent the day vomiting and crying, and six weeks later I found out I was pregnant.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Afraid?”

He shrugged, looked down. “The papers, the trial transcript, said nothing about a pregnancy. I kind of hoped my conception was a separate incident.”

“I was sixteen.”

“I know. But you’d been to the hospital. They’d have taken precautions to prevent pregnancy.”

“There’s only so much they can do. It happens that way sometimes.”

“My folks said tests were never done to determine which of the three was my father.”

Since she had no memory of any of them, the three had kind of morphed into one in Sara’s mind.

“I’d say I was sorry, except that then I wouldn’t be here,” Ryan added.

“I’m definitely not sorry you’re here,” Sara told him, looking him straight in the eye. And she wasn’t. At all. She’d given life to a remarkable human being—given a son to a childless couple who’d clearly loved him well.

“You might be.”

That sounded ominous. “Why?”

“I haven’t told you what I’m doing here.”

He’d come out of a desire to finally meet her. Hadn’t he?

“So tell me.” Sara couldn’t imagine anything worse than what they’d just been through.

“First, I don’t think the story of that night ends with you having me and three young men going to prison.”

Of course it did. It was over, done.

“I think the whole rape thing was a cover-up.”

The idea was so ludicrous she couldn’t even consider it. Ryan was young. A rookie cop, overeager. Needing to put a different light on the night of his conception.

Because the facts as they were were unsatisfying—and ugly.

Because he felt the need to exonerate his birth mother? Or to pretend that he wasn’t the offspring of a rapist?

“A cover-up? For what?”

“Murder.”

“Whose murder?”

“I don’t know yet, but I intend to find out. Some bones were found on the other side of the lake later that year after a huge flood washed away much of the bank. The local coroner dated them to within a few weeks of the night of that party.”

In her mind, it was the night she was raped. The night of his conception. The night that changed her life forever. But if he wanted to refer to it as the night of the party, that was fine with her.

She remembered the flood. Had been glad to hear that the site of her foray into hell had been washed clean.

“Were the bones identified?”

“No. From what I can see, the townspeople were questioned and requests for information posted, but no one came forward. Apparently, there were not only no witnesses to the death but no one reported a missing person, either. You can’t match dental records without a possible identity to begin with. And Ohio has only been using DNA testing on a regular basis since the late ’80s. There were no matching missing-persons reports in the state during the three months prior, or two years after, the approximate time of death.”

She wasn’t going to ask him how he knew that. Maricopa wasn’t in his jurisdiction. But he was a police officer. He had ways to get access to information that most people wouldn’t even know existed.

Still…

“So how does this all tie in? You think someone was murdered that night at the lake? Surely someone would have reported a missing college kid.”

“The dead man was in his late thirties to early forties.”

Ryan’s earnestness, his conviction, was endearing. “And the tie-in?”

“That’s what I have to find. But think about it. The sheriff’s daughter, a conservative young woman, by all accounts, is suddenly having sex with three men—and all four of you have no memory of the incident. There’s ample physical evidence, and a baby, to prove what happened. This is a case that will consume every ounce of the sheriff’s attention, focus and energy. An open-and-shut case that won’t require digging into anything else that might have happened that night. You have to admit, it’s convenient.”

Not a word she’d ever associated with that night. “Too convenient, if you ask me,” Ryan continued. “Most cops don’t like coincidences, and I don’t like conveniences. Crimes aren’t usually that easy to wrap up.”

“And this…convenience…is what you’re basing your murder cover-up story on?”

He nodded, fingertips tapping together. “That, the unidentified bones, and…” he glanced away and then back, giving her a sheepish look “…I’ve read some of the police reports.”

“Did you find something unusual?”

“Not necessarily, but I’ve got some questions and am hoping to get the whole file. I’m studying to become a detective and I’ve asked to look over the case for practice.”

Just as she thought. A young cop playing sleuth. And where was the harm? If he needed to reshape the events that surrounded his conception, she wasn’t going to try to stop him.

“That’s actually not why I’m here,” Ryan said then, as if he knew she wasn’t buying his theory.

There was more? She wasn’t sure she had the emotional or physical resources to handle anything else at the moment.

She wanted to know how old he was when he took his first step. And whether or not he liked peas. Or if he had a girlfriend?

He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. But this wasn’t about her. She’d given up her rights to Ryan’s life the day she’d let them whisk him away, never to be seen by her again.

A newborn baby rejected by the woman who’d given birth to him.

At least she’d given birth to him. Her parents had spent weeks trying to convince her to terminate her pregnancy.

It was evidence of her overwhelmed state that it took her several minutes to realize Ryan wasn’t talking anymore.

“So why are you here?”

“I haven’t wanted to intrude on your life,” he answered slowly. “But neither have I been able to forget you.”

She smiled and he smiled back.

“So I’ve sort of been watching you.”

She sat up. “Spying on me?”

“No!” Ryan stood. Faced her.

He was a lot taller than she’d pictured him these past couple of years. An inch or two over six feet.

“Watching out for you, I should have said.”

Sara couldn’t help smiling again. While she’d been going through the motions of living, her long-lost son had been protecting her, kind of like her own private guardian angel.

Which was overstating things, she was sure.

But the calming sensation moving slowly through her sure was nice.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me.” His face was grim.

“What?” Sara sat forward, frowning. “Something’s going on at NOISE that I don’t know about? Tell me.”

“It’s not NOISE.”

“What, then?”

Her father was retired. Still living in the house in Maricopa where she’d grown up. Nagging her about NOISE. Writing the books on adolescence and Internet safety that had made the organization such a success.

“Your husband.”

“Brent?”

Ryan nodded. Waited. Almost as if he couldn’t bring himself to tell her what he’d gone through all of this to say.

“He’s gambling again?” She’d warned him. One more time and they were through.

He shook his head. His eyes warming again. And she knew. Ryan was like her own self-appointed private eye. And everyone who watched the old detective shows knew what kind of information they were usually hired to ferret out when it came to marriages.

She said the words so he didn’t have to.

“He’s having an affair.”

MARK DALTON ROSE when his name was called, walked across the front of the large hall on the Ohio State University campus and accepted his Juris Doctor. Circling around, he resumed his seat in the great hall at the law school he’d been attending for the past three years, immune to those around him. Some might not know who or what he was. Many probably no longer cared. He’d long since ceased to allow such things to bother him.

He’d have left, if not for the fact that his mom and sister were sitting with the family members of his classmates behind him. He’d told them they needn’t come. The two-hour drive from Cleveland, where they’d relocated twenty years before, wasn’t hard, but his sister—a waitress at a well-to-do club—had to work that night.

And his mother’s eyesight wasn’t good enough for her to drive alone in the dark.

Besides, Mark was going to work, too, as soon as he got home and changed out of the conservative shirt and tie he had on under his academic robes. He had a’52 Corvette to deliver the following day and some finishing touches to put on his workmanship.

The rich and famous in the car world didn’t mind doing business with a known sex offender, when he was also one of the best vintage car restorers in the country.

No one worried about him assaulting an engine.

Charles Granger, dean of Ohio State’s College of Law, ended his closing remarks and the ceremony concluded with a whoop of congratulations. Mark waited for his chance to leave.

“Good luck, Mark,” Sharon Rose said from beside him, squeezing his hand.

She was forty, divorced and starting a new life. She’d been hired by the county attorney’s office.

“You, too,” he told her.

“Give me a call sometime.”

He nodded, knowing he wouldn’t.

Filing out, Mark was greeted by many of the other students and professors, all gathered there to celebrate new beginnings. He waved at his mom, who was wiping her eyes.

For Mark, this was an end. Unlike most of his classmates, he didn’t have a job lined up with a firm or with the state, or any kind of a law career ahead. He’d done this simply because it had been one of the most important goals in his life back when his life had been his own. There were many doors closed to him now, but getting the degree was not one of them.

As to the rest of that dream—to practice public law, prosecute for the state of Ohio, as Sharon was going to do—it had died a long time ago.

Registered sex offenders were not permitted to take the bar exam. Nor to hold any position in society that required a professional license.

But he could drive a car.

And he was free.

CHAPTER THREE

SARA WENT TO DINNER with Brent and his partners Tuesday night, as planned. She made small talk with the wives, ordered steak and pretended to eat, and sat silently while her husband talked business. Brent was the rainmaker—the one who sought out business for his firm. And his partners were excellent attorneys.

She had one glass of wine.

And she went home to bed with Brent. They talked about the dinner as they moved around each other almost in choreographed motion, Sara washing her face at her sink while he brushed his teeth at his, meeting together over the dirty clothes hamper in their room-sized closet. She reached for her nightgown off one hook as he grabbed his pajama bottoms from the matching designer hook beside hers. They walked into the bedroom, turning off the lights as they went. She raised the blinds so the moon could shine in.

Brent was pleased with the evening. His partners were pleased with the amount of revenue he was bringing in for them, and they expected very little in the way of actual lawyering from him. He had a young attorney who worked for him who did most of his work—and, according to Ryan, did other things for him, as well. Intimate things. And what she didn’t do, his law clerk handled—workwise, anyway.

“I’m glad the evening went so well,” Sara said, pulling back the covers on her side of the bed to slide beneath them. As Brent clicked off the last light and joined her, she checked the alarm, making sure it was set to go off.

Brent turned, gave her a quick peck on the lips. “Me, too. You were great, babe, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said with dignity and class. And then rolled over facing the wall opposite him, just as she did every single night.

But instead of willing herself to sleep, she lay awake, long into the night, alternating between joy and despair, tears rolling silently down her face onto her pillow.

She’d met her son. After twenty-one years of longing and agony, she’d looked him in the eye, held his hand. Hugged him goodbye.

And after fifteen years of marriage, she had to face the fact that no amount of pretending or trying or waiting was going to repair her marriage.

This day had changed her life.

SATURDAY MORNING DAWNED at 6:09 a.m. Sitting at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee, Sara was waiting. Brent always woke as soon as the sun began to stream into the bedroom window. He’d take a quick shower, because he had a golf game scheduled. And then he’d be down for coffee.

A twisted sense of humor lurking in the part of Sara that had been detached from life since the morning after her rape, prompted the thought that she should take bets with herself as to whether or not he’d make his game.

Twisted thought he would. Kind—or dead, she wasn’t sure—guessed he wouldn’t. She gave up the attempt to pretend she could joke about this, in any way, even to herself, when the tears came again.

She couldn’t be crying when he came down. Tears made him uncomfortable, defensive. Tears would only make this harder than it already was.

Mostly, she couldn’t believe it had come to this. His refusal to have children, after telling her for so many years that he wanted them, too, as soon as they were solvent, had been rough. Putting up with his lack of satisfaction with their physical life hadn’t been easy, either.

But she’d comforted herself with the knowledge that she wasn’t alone—and he wasn’t, either. They had each other. They had trust and loyalty.

And she’d been willing to settle for those. They were comfortable. Safe.

After the rocky start to her adult life, safety and security had been priorities to her.

Sara heard the shower. Sipped her coffee. Waited. How could she be so calm, when inside she was falling apart? Devastated? Scared to death?

“You’re up early,” he greeted her with a quick kiss on the cheek, smelling of the musk aftershave she’d been buying him for years. His thick, dark hair was still damp.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Pouring his coffee, he turned, cup in hand, to frown at her. “Aren’t you feeling good? Cramps?”

She’d had her period the week before.

“I know about Chloe.”

His entire demeanor changed, stiffened. His shoulders closed in on his tall, lanky form. Cup in hand, he pulled out a chair at the table, not his usual one. One reserved for guests.

Sara catalogued his every move. Watched his long legs slide under the table, wincing as he sipped hot liquid, too much, too fast. Noticed his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. She watched herself watching.

“Who told you?”

The emotional weight dropped deeper into her stomach, making her queasy. Bringing on panic so intense she could hardly breathe.

So it was true. Her zealous, young son hadn’t been jumping to conclusions. Amazing how a life could fall apart without even making a sound.

And he wanted to know who had told her. “Does it matter?”

His gaze held hers for long seconds and then dropped. “I suppose not.”

He sipped. She watched. She had coffee, too, but she was pretty sure she’d choke on it.

“How long has it been going on?”

His face stiff, he stared at her. “Does it matter?” He repeated back to her.

“Yes, I think it does.”

When he glanced away, she knew she’d won. And lost everything. “A year.”

Jitters spread through her, just beneath her skin—and deeper. “As long as she’s been there?”

He acknowledged the statement with one tip of his head—as if this wasn’t all that big a deal to him. As if infidelity was just another little bump in the road—like stealing away, with false promises, her chances of ever bearing a child she could hold in her arms, nurse, raise.

And then, struck with horror, she realized something else.

“There’ve been others, haven’t there?” How stupid of her not to have considered that fact. How amazingly blind. She wanted to crawl into a hole.

“A few.”

Sara hadn’t figured there was enough left of her heart to be further crushed.

“They don’t mean anything, Sara.”

That made her angry. “Of course they do!” She raised her voice—something she almost never did. “They mean you’ve been unfaithful to me! To the vows we took. They mean you’re untrustworthy.” Didn’t he understand that loyalty and trust were all they had? And now they had nothing at all?

“They mean that I have needs you aren’t willing to meet.”

Sucking in a breath, she nodded. She’d heard about that before. Countless times. Couldn’t take it again—not right then.

Leave it to Brent to make this her fault. Just as it had been her fault that she hadn’t understood that when he said he wanted children later, he’d meant he didn’t want them—ever.

“I’ve never turned you away when you’ve asked for sex.”

“Who wants to have to ask?” His voice was quiet, his expression tired. “I want a woman who’s eager to be in my arms, Sara. One who enjoys my touch.”

“I enjoy it.”

“Sometimes,” he allowed. “And other times, you lie there and make the right moves and wait for it to be over.”

Didn’t every woman? When she was tired? Feeling taken for granted?

Is that how it had been for her the night of Ryan’s conception? Had she lain there, her thoughts and emotions separate from what they were doing to her body?

Sara shook her head, pulling her thoughts back from places she’d left behind long ago. She hadn’t considered that night for years. At least not for more than a second or two. Ryan’s visit was costing her greatly.

“If you were eager, Sara, you’d want to experiment.”

She stared at him, knowing she should speak up. Knowing there were things she needed to say. But she couldn’t bring them to mind, couldn’t focus. All she could do was hold back the tears.

“We’ve been married fifteen years. And in the same standard missionary position, with the same foreplay, for all of them. If you were doing more than your duty, feeling more, you’d need some variety, something to keep things fresh and new.”

“Why?” she suddenly spouted, not recognizing her own voice. “When apparently you’ve been getting fresh and new for years?”

His shoulders dropped more.

“I’m sorry,” she said, out of years of habit—and because she meant it. “That was beneath me.”

“Just think about what I’m saying for a minute,” Brent said, his voice soft, almost pleading, and Sara wondered if he actually wanted her blessing for his actions. Her approval. Maybe even a go-ahead to continue? “When’s the last time we made love?”

She tried to remember. Picturing them in bed. At night. On Sunday mornings. The last time they’d been in a hotel together.

“You can’t remember.”

Her mind scrambling, she stared at him.

“Can you?”

Sara shook her head.

“I can,” he surprised her by saying. “It was two months ago. On a Saturday morning. You’d had a bad dream and cuddled up behind me. I actually thought you were finally making a move on me and before I realized that you were still half asleep, I’d already gotten your attention and you finished what you’d inadvertently started.”

She remembered. Not the dream—that was long gone. But how she’d felt, needing comfort. Needing to be held. And having to have sex instead.

She’d taken comfort from the fact that making love was something that she and Brent shared that no one else had a part in; that it was something that he gave only to her, and she to him.

She hadn’t needed it often. But she’d valued the connection.

“How do I know you haven’t given me some kind of infection or disease?”

“I always use a condom,” he said, as if that made the fact that he’d been screwing his assistant while sleeping with Sara, too, okay.

It wasn’t. Right now it felt as if nothing would ever be okay again.

Finding it harder and harder to breathe, Sara considered her options. And she couldn’t find any.

“I’m filing for divorce.”

He set his cup down. “You can’t be serious.”

Maybe not. Maybe she wasn’t strong enough. But… “I am.” She waited for fear to make her take it back. To apologize. Or compromise. And it didn’t.

It sent fresh shards of panic through her, however, mingling with the despair. She couldn’t see beyond the hopelessness. But something inside her wouldn’t let her lie down, either.

She’d been a victim for such a long time. She just couldn’t do it anymore.

Brent sat forward, taking both her hands between his, holding them on her lap. “Don’t be ridiculous, Sara. We’re partners. We’re good together. We’ve built a great life.”

Drawing a strange kind of strength from the warmth of his hands, Sara listened to him. She recognized the words—they were the way she’d have described their relationship, too. A week ago.

“We’ve got a beautiful house,” she said slowly, as though waking from a deep sleep. “A healthy bank account. And a routine that works.”

When they weren’t eating out, she did the cooking. He did the dishes. She went to the grocery store and did the laundry; he looked after the cars and paid the bills. They took turns putting things back in place after the housekeeper had been in to clean. And they moved gracefully around each other in the bathroom every morning and night.

“Yes,” he said, sounding relieved.

And the things she’d been feeling since she’d found out about his adultery didn’t change at all. She might have been blind for a lot of years, but she wasn’t anymore.

“That’s an arrangement, not a relationship.”

“You’re just tired. Overwrought. I’m sorry you found out about Chloe, but this doesn’t change anything, Sara. Things are just as they were last week and the week before. You weren’t unhappy then.”

Wasn’t she? She hadn’t asked.

“You certainly weren’t thinking we needed to divorce.”

He was right. She’d never even considered the possibility. Despite the fact that she’d wanted children more than anything and he’d led her to believe he did, too, until it was too late for her to do much about it. Regardless of how unsexy he made her feel with his dissatisfaction.

Until two days ago, she’d been existing.

Her entire world had changed in the past forty-eight hours. She didn’t know how that could happen; how an inner self that had been complacent and exactly the same for more than twenty years could suddenly wear a completely different face. She just knew she wasn’t the same person she’d been when she’d run to answer the door two days before.

Funny how it seemed to be the unexpected instants in life that irrevocably changed things. Not the planned-for and worked-toward events.

“Are you going to stop seeing her?”

His hands dropped. So did his head. But when he looked up, she saw resolution in his eyes. “I will, if that’s what it takes to keep this together.”

What was “this,” exactly?

“For how long?”

Brent didn’t answer immediately. But she knew him well enough to know that he was attempting to be honest. “I can’t make any promises, Sara,” he finally said. “I’d like to tell you forever, but I just don’t know that. I guess it depends on how much you’re willing to do.”

“Me?”

“We could see a therapist. Work through your sexual issues and maybe…”

Sara stood, took her cup to the sink. “I’ve been through enough counseling sessions to write a book on the topic. Probably two,” she said. “I am what I am, Brent. A woman who doesn’t think sex is the be-all and end-all of life. I enjoy it when the timing is right. I can’t make the feelings come at random.”

He looked over at her. “I’m not asking you to.”

“What are you asking?” Arms folded, she leaned back against the counter.

“I don’t know.” He swore. “That you lighten up a bit, I guess. Be willing to experiment a little.”

Breathing wasn’t easy. The tightness in Sara’s chest had grown into a physical pain. She felt inadequate—in so many ways.

“Wild and crazy is not fun for me, Brent. It’s frightening.”

He stood, too, pushing his chair back to the table. He rinsed his cup. Put it in the dishwasher, and then took her shoulders between his hands.

“We’ll work this out, Sara,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “I’ll end things with Chloe and we’ll go from there. Okay?”

She almost nodded. Wanted to nod. Her instincts told her to nod.

She asked a question instead.

“Do you love me, Brent?”

“Of course I do.” His gaze dropped to her lips.

“Are you in love with me?”

Letting go of her, he ran a hand through his inch-long hair—still the California blond it had always been. “I don’t even know what that means,” he said, obviously frustrated with her. “It’s a pretty phrase some woman made up, I’d guess. I’m a good provider, Sara. Our bills are paid on time. We live in a nice house in a fine neighborhood. We can afford to vacation where and when we want and eat out every night of the week if we choose to. I clean up after myself and am always here when I say I will be. I don’t know what else you want from me.”

She wanted him to think she was enough just as she was. She wanted him to be trustworthy. To be loyal to her. She wanted him to be sufficiently in love with her that he couldn’t look at another woman.

She wanted from him the things she gave to him.

He grabbed her hand again and as she studied their interlocked fingers, her skin started to burn. Those fingers had touched her intimately. Been inside her.

And inside other women, too.

“I want a divorce.”

WHILE BRENT PLAYED GOLF, Sara packed every suitcase they had, as well as a few moving boxes they’d kept in the garage, loaded as much as she could into the back of their dark blue Ford Expedition and rented a furnished apartment near OSU, just off High Street. She’d go back to New Albany on Sunday to get the rest of the stuff she’d packed. And see about finding a more permanent residence—probably in a little better area. She’d been complacent for most of her adult life, but suddenly she couldn’t move fast enough. Couldn’t even recognize herself.

It was almost as though, if she slowed down, she’d fall.

In her new place she hung her clothes and unpacked bathroom essentials. Leaving everything else, she went to the nearest mall to walk around, be among people, find enough diversion to keep her from sinking into hell beneath the weight of her thoughts.

She thought about calling her father.

Or going to work.

Instead, she bought a beautiful teapot. It was fine bone china. Ivory with gold trim and exquisite little roses hand-painted across its belly.

The teapot reminded her of happy women. Of birds and beauty and things that were more powerful than money or marriages or even death. It brought tears to her eyes.

As soon as she had her purchase in hand, she left.

BACK IN HER TEMPORARY HOME, Sara tried the teapot in several locations, on the ledge inside the front door, the only door, in the middle of the dented, half-sized stove; on the back of the toilet; and ended with it on her nightstand, so she’d see it first thing when she woke up in the morning.

And then, at 8:42 p.m., according to the cell phone that was doubling as an alarm clock, she crawled into bed, pulled the cheap bedsheets up over her shoulders and cried until her ribs hurt so much she couldn’t move.

A SCREAM FROM UPSTAIRS woke him. Mark listened, trying to determine if he needed to get up and help. Call an ambulance.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what your mama said, this is my house and I’ll damn well leave my shit on the floor and anything else I want to…”

Mark pulled a down pillow over his head. The newlyweds who’d moved into the apartment above him were at it again.

“Uncle Mark?”

Hell. He’d forgotten he had Jordon with him for the weekend.

“Yeah?” Sitting up, Mark flipped the switch he’d installed in the wall beside his cherry-wood headboard, to see his thirteen-year-old nephew, wearing basketball shorts and nothing else, standing in his bedroom doorway.

“Shouldn’t you do something?” Jordon gestured to the ceiling. “Call someone?”

He’d been playing surrogate dad to his sister’s kid since Jordon was two and her husband, a firefighter, had lost his life in a warehouse fire. Mark took Jordon camping, drove to Cleveland to go to ball games, taught him how to fish. He just never brought him home to Columbus with him.

“They’ll stop soon enough,” he said now, wishing he’d done as Dana had suggested and stayed with Jordon in Cleveland while she went on an overnight trip with her new boyfriend on his cabin cruiser along the Ohio River.

He’d been afraid having the boy around while she was getting ready—maybe asking questions—would make her change her mind about going. Ken, a widowed doctor she’d met at the club where she worked, was the first guy his sister had dated since her husband’s death.

“You’re nothing but a pig and a jerk and I can’t believe I married you…”

Jordon glanced up again, his brow furrowed. “He might hit her.”

Possibly. But Mark didn’t think so. If this evening went true to form, Jordon was soon going to be hearing something else his sister didn’t want her adolescent son listening in on.

“Don’t you touch me, you…”

Yep, here it came. Mark jumped out of bed.

“How about some ice cream?” he asked, pulling on shorts and a T-shirt over the briefs he slept in.

“It’s almost midnight!”

“So?” he said to the boy. “I know a shop that’s open until one from May ’til September. You saying you don’t have room for a banana split?”

Jordon loved banana splits.

“Sure!” His nephew said, just as the sounds overhead started to change. “I’ve always got room for that.”

“Then get your rear next door and grab a shirt and some shoes.”

Moving out to the tiny space that served as a living room, Mark raised his voice, ostensibly to be heard from the spare bedroom next to his, avoiding the sight of the wrought-iron bars on the windows—a necessity in this neighborhood—as he grabbed his keys.

He had Jordon out of the apartment and onto the street before the going really got good upstairs. And he took the long way to the ice cream shop two blocks away. He figured he had at least an hour to kill.

“WHY DO YOU LIVE in that place?” Jordon asked, when his boat-shaped dessert dish was completely empty, as Mark nursed a cup of decaffeinated coffee, regardless of the eighty-degree temperature outside.

“I’m too lazy to move,” he answered the boy.

“You, lazy? Give me a break.”

“I’ve done a lot a work on the place,” Mark tried again, wondering how such short hair got so rumpled as he ran his hand through it. “What about that entertainment system? Can’t beat that, huh?”

“’Cept the room’s so small you get kinda dizzy watching such a large screen.”

Yeah, he hadn’t anticipated that consequence.

“It’s’cuz of that stupid sex offender stuff, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “It does make things a little difficult.”

“It’s not fair, Uncle Mark. You didn’t do anything.”

His family had never tried to hide from the horrible turn Mark’s life had taken that night at the lake, not far from Wright State University during his freshman year of college. He and Dana had told Jordon about Mark’s past as soon as they’d thought the boy was old enough to understand.

They’d thought that was preferable to him hearing about it somewhere else. From someone who maybe wasn’t in possession of all the facts.

“Yes, I did, son. There was forensic evidence to prove that I did.”

“You were at a party with a bunch of college kids.”

The place was empty except for the old guy working in the back room.

“I had way too much to drink.” Readjusting his long legs beneath the short, square table, Mark tried not to think about the bed he’d just left.

“And you haven’t had anything to drink since.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that I broke the law.”

“Yeah, and served your time.”

Though Jordon’s voice was changing, he still looked young for his age. Even with the too-long hair and baggy clothes.

“Some crimes you pay for for a lifetime.”

“The girl said she was twenty-one.”

“She was bruised.” He squinted against the harsh fluorescent lighting.

“There were two other guys with her, too.” Jordon’s hazel eyes—a family trait he shared with Dana and Mark—were wide and glinted with emotion. “They had to have hurt her. You wouldn’t have hurt her.”

“But I can’t remember what happened.” He’d tried everything from revisiting the scene to hypnosis, and still not one clear recollection of the latter part of that night came to him.

“You know you wouldn’t have hurt her.”

He did know that. Which was the only reason he could sleep at night. But he also knew he’d had sex with a sixteen-year-old girl at the same time that there were two other men having sex with her. Had they taken turns, watched each other? Had two of them touched her at once? The thought sickened him.

Stopped him in his tracks.

“I think you should move. You got the money.”

He did well for himself.

“There’s no law against it, is there?”

“No. I’d have to let the sheriff know, and reregister with my new address.”

“Then why not do it?”

Jordon was growing up, choosing to tackle mature issues. Mark decided to be honest with him.

“Because if I did, everyone in the new neighborhood would be notified about me being there. I’d likely have hate mail, things thrown at my house, signs put in my yard and people running scared with their little kids.”

“That’s bullshit!”

“It’s life.”

His life, anyway.

“I’m comfortable where I am, son. People know me.”

“It’s a ghetto.”

Not quite. But close.

“You could get gunned down taking out your trash.”

“We’ll stay in Cleveland next time your mom leaves town, okay?”

“I think you should move.”

Mark gave up trying to convince his nephew of things he had a hard time accepting himself.

CHAPTER FOUR

AMAZING, REALLY, how quick and easy it was to disassemble something that had taken fifteen years of hard work to build. Agree to split all assets in half, file papers, wait thirty days and the state of Ohio dissolves a union once destined to last a lifetime.

Sara hadn’t even been able to fully wrap her mind around the idea before the marriage was legally ended.

Providing male oversight on the last day of June, while the movers took her half of the household out of the home in which she’d hoped to raise children and grow old, her father gave her hand a squeeze.

She nodded.

And that was the end of any conversation they were going to have on the subject.

“When do you close on the new place?”

“A couple of weeks.” The new house had been vacant and the owners were letting her rent it until the paperwork was complete.

Retired sheriff John Lindsay stood up straight, staring out the front window toward the moving van. “Brent seen it yet?”

“No. Why should he?”

“Has he found a place?”

“Chloe has a place on a lake. He’s moving in with her for now.”

“She got kids?”

“Two.” Don’t let it show, she ordered herself. Don’t let it show and it won’t hurt nearly as long.

Her father’s nod said more than she wanted it to. He saw the irony in the situation. Her husband had refused to have babies with her—a woman who desperately wanted to have a chance for do-overs in that department—and yet he was willing to take on another man’s children for someone else.

She couldn’t stand his pity. All her life she’d had her father standing over her, watching her hurt. The pattern had to stop.

“Have you called him? Seen if he’s changed his mind?”

Sucking in air, Sara counted to ten, squeezing fingers to her thumb as she did so. “No.”

Two brawny, sweaty, unshaven young men were loading her dresser. Part of a set that was now split up.

“Don’t you think you should?”

Her father wanted what he thought was best for her, she reminded herself, while her mind screamed silently.

The man was unfaithful to me! An adulterer, dammit. More than once. For years. How could you want him to ever come near me again?

“He chose Chloe.”

“You’re better for him. He’s going to realize that.” But he’s not better for me.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that. She’s going to be a high-powered attorney someday.”

A furniture pad went over the dresser.

“He has his own power. What he needs is a woman on his arm who knows how to make him look his best.”

As much as Sara cringed at the description, she knew that her father had just paid her his idea of the highest compliment. How he survived in today’s world, with his chauvinistic views, she had no idea.

“I guess he doesn’t think so.”

One nightstand was next.

“Did you split the mattress set, too?”

“No. I gave him the set in exchange for the bed frame. I didn’t want the mattress we shared, anyway.”

“What about the cars?”

“I got the Lexus.” Leaving Brent the Expedition. She’d had to give up the boat, too, but it was worth it. She had no use for a recreational vehicle she could neither get into nor out of the water by herself.

“Good for you.”

With a nod, her father was gone—outside, giving last-minute instructions to the crew he’d hired.

BY SIX THAT EVENING—the first of July, a new month, a new life—all boxes and belongings were off the truck. Just as the Two Man Movers van drove away, the pizza delivery guy pulled up. Paying him and taking the hot cardboard box, Sara climbed over cartons on the way to her new kitchen.

The walls were green, but they were going to become yellow before the week was out.

“Dinner’s ready!”

She grabbed a beer for her father and a glass of diet cola with lots of ice for herself. Then she collected paper plates, tore paper towel off the roll to serve as napkins and fell onto an elegant dining-room chair in her ceramic-tiled kitchen.

Brent had gotten the kitchen set, in spite of the fact that Sara didn’t have a formal dining room. So…eclectic was in. The set was made of handcarved cherry wood and the seats were extremely comfortable.

“TV, VCR, DVD and stereo are all hooked up.” John Lindsay came in, stopping by the sink to wash his hands.

She nodded. Half of the components were new. As was the entertainment center in her small sunken living room.

Unscrewing the beer cap, he sat across from her, apparently unaware of the incongruity of sitting in his jeans and sweaty T-shirt in an informal kitchen on velvet brocade chairs. He loaded his paper towel with pizza slices. Took a hefty bite. Looked over at her empty plate.

“Eat.”

“I will.” Maybe after he left.

But probably not. She’d had a banana a couple of hours before. And cereal for breakfast. She’d stay alive another day.

“Now.” His dark-eyed gaze bore into her.

Sara picked up a slice of pizza and watched her father eat. John Lindsay, retired and in his sixties, was still an intimidating man. Tall, lean, even now, with broad shoulders that never seemed to hunch, he commanded respect.

He loved her. Sara had never doubted that.

He glanced up and caught her staring. “What’s on your mind?”

She could shrug, tell him nothing, and no more would be said. Or…

“I met my son.”

Hand on his beer bottle, he froze.

“I’d given permission for the agency to reveal my identity, if he ever asked.”

“Why didn’t your mother and I know about this?”

“You wouldn’t have approved.”

His glance was searching. And then he nodded, started to eat again.

“He’s a cop, Daddy,” she said softly.

“Where?”

“Here. With the Columbus police. He’s on the Westerville beat.”

“I know some guys over there.”

“I figured you would.”

“You want me to ask around about him?”

“Would it matter if I said no?”

“Probably not.”

She grinned. “I didn’t think so.”

He finished his pizza. Wiped his mouth. And sat back with his bottle of beer in his hand.

“How long ago did you meet him?”

“Over six weeks,” she told him and then quickly added, “I’ve only seen him once, when he showed up unannounced on my doorstep.”

“Did he say why?”

“He’s known about me since he was fourteen and he’s been keeping a watch over me, he said.” With a deep breath, she continued, “Which is how he found out about Brent and Chloe.”

John frowned. “He’s the one who told you?”

Nodding, Sara played with her pizza crust, twirling a thin piece back and forth between her fingers. “He thought I should know.”

Her father didn’t look as if he agreed with her son’s decision and Sara was struck once again with her awareness of something she’d always known. Her father would tell her only what he thought was for her own good, withholding everything else. And his idea of what was good for her wasn’t necessarily hers.

“What’s he like?”

Sara smiled and held back the tears that arrived every time she thought about the handsome young man who’d shown up on her doorstep and turned her life upside-down. In so many ways.

“Taller than you. Broad. Blond, with green eyes. Like any good cop, he seemed to take in the whole room at a glance.”

And he’d given her things to think about that were compelling enough to take her mind off the fact that life as she’d known it was over—that the man she’d trusted to be loyal to her, hadn’t been.

“His name’s Ryan. Ryan Mercedes.”

John sipped his beer slowly, gaze intent, though he didn’t seem to be focusing on anything in front of him.

“I don’t think it’s just chance that he’s in police work.”

“What?” Her father asked, turning that gaze on her. “You think it’s hereditary?”

“I think he’s a young man with an analytical mind like yours, an unbending view of right and wrong and a sense of responsibility to do what he can to fight evil. He’s known since he was fourteen that his grandfather was a sheriff, and I think some emotional need to connect with his biological roots, combined with his traits, has led him to his chosen career.”

“You got all this from one meeting?”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about him.”

And the things he’d told her.

“You going to see him again?”

The sun was setting, though it would be another hour or two before it got dark outside. Evening shadows were creeping into the kitchen.

“He left his number.”

“I take it you haven’t called.”

“I’ve been a little busy.”

SARA ALMOST CALLED Ryan Saturday night. Now that her father knew, hadn’t tried to deny that she’d ever been pregnant and given up her child or denied that he had a biological grandson, Ryan’s existence seemed all the more real.

She picked up the phone a couple of times, but always put it down again. She had no idea what she’d say. If he’d be at home on a Saturday night—or what he’d be doing if he was.

Did one leave a message for one’s child that one had given away? What did she call herself? This is your mother. Her mind played out various messages and rejected them.

Mrs. Mercedes was Ryan’s mother. Sara was Sara. Nothing more.

HER FATHER WAS BACK again on Sunday, seemingly undeterred by the seventy-five-minute drive from Maricopa to Columbus, to unpack her half of the tools in her garage. He’d brought along a Peg-Board and broom-holder bar to hang for her.

And when that was done, he came inside to help, moving boxes, putting together the new daybed in the room that was going to serve as her study and guest room. After which, he installed two new toilet seats in her bathrooms—Sara’s mother had always insisted new toilet seats were mandatory when moving.

Sitting on the edge of the tub, watching as he lay flat on his back on the tile floor, his head underneath the tank while he worked an ornery lug nut, Sara knew the time had come.

Ryan’s appearance in her life had prompted many changes. And because she was starting to obsess about some of the things he’d told her—the things left unsaid—she was going to have to do something.

“Tell me about that night.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “What night?” The words came out almost as a grunt as he gave the wrench a hard tug.

“The night I was raped.”

John Lindsay bumped his head on the bottom of the toilet tank. He didn’t swear. Barely acknowledged having done so. Just went back to the bolt. With one more tug, after ten minutes of struggling, it was free.

“I need to know, Daddy.”

“No, you don’t.”

Twenty years ago that would have been that. Hell, twenty days ago it might have been.

“I’m thirty-seven years old. Old enough to determine for myself what’s important to me.”

“You don’t know what you don’t know.”

She’d known this wasn’t going to be easy. Her insides were shaking. She’d always gotten knots in her stomach at the thought of standing up to him. But this time anxiety wasn’t going to stop her.

“I’m not going away on this one. I can’t anymore,” she said softly, as much for herself as anything else. “I’ve just spent the past twenty years of my life doing as you wanted, as Brent wanted, and look where it got me. Right back where I was at sixteen, trying to pick up the pieces of my life, with my father there taking care of everything for me. Except, this time, I also have the memory of an ex-husband so dissatisfied with me that he had no hesitation breaking our marriage vows.”

“He’s a fool—and a man. He’d have gotten over it.”

“I don’t think so.” And it wouldn’t matter if he had. The trust was gone.

The second bolt was loose with one twist and soon the new seat was securely in place.

“You sell yourself short,” he said, gathering up his tools. “You run a nationally recognized organization, one built almost entirely by your efforts. You have the respect of many of this country’s most important movers and shakers.”

That said, he left the room.

After unrolling the new purple-and-green bathroom rugs she’d bought to go with the shower curtain, towels and light purple paint that would soon be on the walls, Sara followed him. He was in the laundry room now, hooking up the washer.

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll ask someone else.”

She received a long under-the-arm glance for her efforts. But the usual look of steely determination that he used to perfection was not there.

Sara’s hands started to shake.

THEY ENDED UP in the kitchen with glasses of iced tea. Sara couldn’t remember a time when she and her parents had had any serious discussion any place other than the kitchen table. If you had to talk, that’s where you went. Period.

That’s where they’d discussed the results of the pregnancy test and, ultimately, the adoption. The college she’d attend. It had been over a Sunday steak dinner that she’d introduced them to Brent. And lasagna on a Friday night, when she and Brent announced their engagement.

It had been at the kitchen table, five years before, that her father had told her about the car accident that had killed her mother. She’d received a call at work, asking her to meet him at home. All the way from Columbus to Maricopa she’d imagined what she might find there. From her parents selling everything and retiring to Florida, to one of them finding out he was ill, she’d run the gamut. And come up horribly short.

“What do you want to know?” Her father’s question was brusque.

“Everything.”

Sitting up straight, his fingers tapping the sides of his glass, he frowned. “I don’t see how, after all these years—”

“You and Mom were still asleep that morning when the call came.”

“That’s right.”

“Who called?”

“Chris Watson.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Neither did I. He was a freshman at Wright State, new to town, and he came to the party with the rest of them.”

“How many people were there?”

He stared at her for a long time and Sara realized she shouldn’t have done this. Not because she didn’t need to know. She did—should’ve asked years ago. But she shouldn’t have done this to him.

Never once, in all these years, had she looked at that night and the months that followed through the eyes of a man who loved his only daughter. When she’d seen her father’s part in it all, it had been as her father, the enforcer, the sheriff. The big, strong man who always did the right thing and made damn sure those around him did, as well.

“Twenty-three for at least part of the evening,” he finally said. “Twenty-one of them male. I questioned everyone who’d been within half a mile of that lake, from the family who’d driven down to do some stargazing and left when they arrived to find a party in full swing, to the gas station attendant down the road who’d seen cars go by. And everyone who’d known about the party, as well, whether they attended or not. I’m certain there wasn’t a person in the vicinity I didn’t talk to.”

She’d known her father had worked exhaustively on the case. And she would have tried to find out more at the time if she’d been in any state to think for herself. In the months immediately following the rape, she’d been adamant about one thing. She was not going to have the abortion her parents were pressuring her to consider.

For everything else, she did as she was told. Ate the foods her doctor recommended, studied the lessons her mother prepared, visited with the two girlfriends her father encouraged her to see.

“In the end, the physical evidence did the work for us,” he said now, bending over his iced tea glass. There were lines around his eyes she’d never noticed before.

As soon as he left, she’d hook up her computer—she’d been planning to, anyway. And then she’d do what she’d never allowed herself to do before and begin to dredge up the past. She’d find the articles Ryan had found—articles that, until he’d told her about the small town news archives, she’d never even considered having at her disposal. She’d read about the night that had stolen away her childhood. It had taken an unfaithful husband, meeting her son for the first time, the shock of a quick divorce, but she was finally ready to rock the boat she’d been floating in precariously ever since that horrible night.

However, there was at least one thing she wouldn’t find in old newspaper articles.

And she had the chief investigator right here.

“Aside from the…incident…with me, was there anything else unusual about the party? Any fights? Or evidence of misconduct?”

“Other than littering?” her father asked. “No. By all accounts, and believe me I heard them all, the goal was to get trashed. It was the week before finals and they’d brought cases of whiskey, beer and wine to drown themselves. They put their car keys in a can, buried it and drank until they puked. Repeatedly, judging by what we saw at the party site the next day.”

“Were they smoking pot?”

John shook his head. “We found cigarette butts, but no drug paraphernalia of any kind.”

“Was anyone tested for drugs?”

“No. There was nothing to indicate drug use.”

“What about the fact that at least a few of us couldn’t remember anything the next day?” Ryan’s doubts confused an already blurry situation.

“You reeked of alcohol and were obviously passed out, drunk. With the number of empty bottles, divided by the number of people at the party, added to the fact that you’d mixed beer, wine and whiskey, we were more concerned with getting you awake and sober.”

And dealing with the rape. Sara filled in the blanks her father’s expression left hanging there.

“And you have no doubt that nothing else happened there that night?”

“Honey, I know the details of that party so well I could have been there myself.”

She wanted to believe him.

CHAPTER FIVE

OTHER THAN GOING to work on Monday and Tuesday, Sara devoted the next two days to searching. The archived articles provided surprisingly little information. They were frustratingly vague and she saw her father’s influence in that. Just as he’d kept news of her pregnancy out of the papers—and out of the trial. The young men might have gotten longer than five years, if evidence of the hardship she’d suffered had been presented at sentencing; but then she’d have had to be there, to testify before the jury. Her parents wouldn’t allow it.

John was busy on Wednesday, the Fourth of July, riding in the back of a convertible in Maricopa’s annual parade and helping the Fraternal Order of Police with their sausage booth at the festival that followed. He’d invited Sara to attend with him—as he’d done each of the five years since her mother’s death.

This year she’d declined, claiming a load of unpacking still to be done. And she did have a large amount of unpacking to do. She hadn’t done any since he’d left on Sunday.

Picking up the phone that morning, hoping that if Ryan was going to be celebrating with friends and family it would happen later in the day, she dialed her son’s number.

And this time she held on while the rings sounded on the line.

“Hello?”

“Ryan?”

“Sara?” She was thrilled that he recognized her voice, until it dawned on her that he’d have caller ID.

Whoa, girl, she cautioned herself. Hang on to the emotion here. You can’t afford not to.

“Are you busy?” It was the polite thing to ask. And at least now she knew what he was going to call her—Sara. As if they were friends.

Of course, the people who worked for her called her that, as well.

It meant nothing. Except that she wasn’t mother. Or Mom. Or Ma. Or even Aunt something.

“I just finished having my cereal and I’m heading to bed.”

“You were on duty last night?”

Did he know it wasn’t healthy to eat right before bed?

“Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights.”

“Do you sleep the other days, too, to stay on schedule?”

“Nah, I stay up on Saturday, so I can be on schedule with the rest of the world when I’m off.”

He’d be working that night, when the rest of the city had been partying all day and many people would be shooting off illegal fireworks—after drinking.

There’d be drunks on the road. Fights. Car accidents.

“Do you wear a vest?” Her father rarely had.

“Yeah. They’re mandatory.”

“And you call for backup before you get out of your car?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She was ma’am, now. Sara paced her small study, glancing out the window at a backyard in need of mowing.

She’d chosen the house for the white picket fence and flower garden that took up one corner and most of the back of the lawn. The colorful blooms were magnificent. And they needed weeding.

Her son needed to get some rest.

“I’ve been reading those articles you told me about.”

“And?”

“I… Is there anything we can do, I can do, to help find out if anything else happened that night?”

She’d been stripped of dignity, of an ability to love openly, of confidence in a sexuality that still hadn’t blossomed. She’d spent more than twenty years tormented with guilt over the possibility that three young men had gone to prison instead of college because she’d lied about her age. If she’d been a willing participant in what had happened…

The idea that there might have been another cause for what had happened that night than just alcohol, reckless choices by a stupid, recalcitrant, rebellious girl and male violence was one she couldn’t let go of.

“You could talk to your father. He was the investigating officer.”

“I already have.”

The pause on the line was telling. She simply wasn’t sure what it implied. Didn’t trust her judgment where this young man was concerned.

“You told him about me?” Ryan’s voice was less confident as he asked this question.

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“That he’s positive nothing else happened.”

“You asked him about the bones? Did he say if he’d ever made a connection between them and what happened to you?”

“No.” She slowed herself down. Picked some lint off the new maroon-and-rose coverlet on the daybed. “I didn’t tell him anything you said about the night of the party.” She hadn’t been ready to push him that far.

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