I REMEMBER READING SOMEPLACE THAT 99 PERCENT OF what we worry about never happens. It might have been in Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking—another long-ago birthday present from my mother. Is there a corollary to that? Maybe that other 1 percent represents the things we really should worry about. For example, after my one-night stand with Jasmine Day, I was never the least bit concerned that she might have gotten pregnant, and yet that’s exactly what I should have been worrying about. And now the thing I hadn’t given a moment’s thought to was right here biting me in the butt.
The phone rang, and Mel’s photo appeared on the screen. “Just got back to the house,” she said when I pressed the call button to answer. “I’m wearing my robe, sitting by the fireplace, and just finished eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I miss you, by the way,” she added. “How are you doing?”
So I told her—the good news and the bad news—that I had found Naomi and she had agreed to relinquish her parental rights. I told her the other part, too, that even without my DNA profile, it was clear to me that Naomi Dale and I were related.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Fess up,” I said. “It’s time for me to tell Alan the truth. The DNA is nothing but a formality. Naomi and Kelly could just as well be twins.”
“Good luck with that,” she said.
“How did your situation sort itself out?”
“All right, I suppose. The bad guys are in jail, the woman injured in the hit-and-run is hospitalized with serious injuries, but she’s going to live, and the wreckage has been cleared off all affected roadways. The only thing left to handle is a mountain of paperwork, but that’ll have to wait. I deserve a break. As tired as I am, I decided it was too late to head out tonight, but I’ll show up there first thing in the morning—probably around nine or so.”
“Your usual dressing-room space will be off-limits,” I warned her.
“I’m a big girl,” she assured me. “We’ll manage.”
Once I was parked in the garage, I took Lucy out for her final walk of the evening and went looking for Sam. As expected, he was ensconced in his usual digs.
In the old days when I was first on the job, I was lucky if I had fifty bucks of walking-around money in my wallet at any given time. These days I usually have five one-hundred-dollar bills and a few smaller ones tucked into my billfold. It’s just my thing. I guess, after growing up poor, it’s nice to know I have a bit of spare moola in my pocket—in this case the reward money I owed Sam Shelton.
“Anybody awake down there?” I called into the alcove.
Someone stirred beneath the mound of blankets at the bottom of the stairs. Billy Bob was the first to emerge from under the makeshift shelter.
“That you, Beau?” Sam called.
“It is,” I told him. “I came to bring your reward.”
“You found her, then?”
“We certainly did, at the all-female homeless encampment you told me about. I’m here to make good on my promise.”
Keeping some of the blankets wrapped around him, Sam lumbered up the stairs. “Is she okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, “at least I think so. It’s hard to tell.”
I counted out five bills and handed them over. Sam took one and passed the others back. “I got me Billy Bob, but you know what it’s like out here. If I end up getting rolled, I’d rather the thugs get away with only one of these hummers instead of all of ’em. So why don’t you put the other ones in an envelope and leave them with that nice doorman, Mr. Bob. When I run low on funds, I can always stop by during one of his shifts and pick up the next one. It’ll be sort of like having a savings account. Don’t think I’ve ever had one of those before.”
“Envelope it is,” I said, putting the four remaining bills back in my pocket. “I’ll give these to Bob the next time I see him.”
“By the way, I’m still looking for that Petey guy,” Sam told me. “I’ve talked to a couple of people who remember him and his girlfriend, too, but no one has seen him lately, and that’s a bad sign. When people disappear off the streets like that all of a sudden, it’s usually not good news. You should probably file a missing-persons report on him.”
That made me smile—the homeless guy giving the ex-cop law-enforcement advice. “Will do,” I told him. “We’re working on it.”
“Tell Naomi’s dad thanks for me,” he added, turning and heading back down toward the warmth of his nest. “See you around.”
“I will,” I said, knowing that in thanking me he already had. “Good night, then,” I told him as Lucy and I headed inside.
Upstairs, the moment we entered the unit, Lucy voted with her paws. She turned a hard right and headed straight for the guest room, making it clear where her loyalties lay. I was a bit bemused by her obvious attachment to that little blanket-wrapped creature lying asleep in a crib. Alan Dale, on the other hand, was perched in the window seat, cup of coffee in hand, staring out at Puget Sound, where a couple of ferries were passing each other in the night.
“Well?” he asked.
“Naomi agreed to sign.”
“She did? Oh, my God!” he exclaimed. “I can barely believe it. How did you do that? What did she say?”
“That she knows she can’t take proper care of Athena and she thinks you and your mother-in-law can. That’s what she had in mind when she left Athena at the hospital—that you and/or her grandmother would take Athena back home to Texas. She had no idea that the state would get involved and throw a wrench in the works.”
“When do we sign?” Alan asked.
“Whenever you can arrange it,” I told him. “but as soon as possible. Naomi is staying at the Pike Street Mission at the moment. Reverend Seymour, the woman who runs the shelter said we can call her to set up a time.”
Before the words were out of my mouth, Alan was reaching for his phone. “I’m calling Andrea Hutchins,” he explained, “She’s Athena’s social worker, and she told me to call her anytime, day or night. Nine o’clock’s not too late to call, do you think?”
“Not on a Friday,” I told him.
“Andrea,” he said a moment later. “It’s Alan Dale. I’ve got good news—great news, actually. I’m sitting here with J. P. Beaumont, my detective. He found Naomi, and she’s willing to sign. I’m putting you on speaker so he can hear what you’re saying. Naomi is staying at a homeless shelter located somewhere here in Seattle. We can meet with her there to get the paperwork signed, but we need to set up a time.”
“That is good news,” Andrea agreed. “Good work, Mr. Beaumont, glad to meet you.”
“Me, too,” I told her.
“Here’s the thing,” Andrea continued. “In my experience the longer we wait around after someone makes this kind of decision, the more likely they are to change their minds and back out. I know it’s the weekend, but is there any way we could do this tomorrow?”
“I can see,” I said. “What time would be good for you?”
“Eleven, maybe?”
I hauled out my phone, found the number Rachel had called me on earlier, and dialed that.
“Alan Dale is on another line with Athena’s social worker just now, and she’s wondering if we could stop by tomorrow morning about eleven to sign that paperwork.”
“I’m not at the shelter right now,” Rachel said. “Let me call the housemother and have her check with Naomi. If that’s all right with her, is it okay if I give the housemother your number so she can call you back directly?”
“Of course,” I said. “No problem.”
It took only another five minutes to nail down all the details. When we called Andrea back to confirm the appointment, once again Alan put the call on speaker. “What was the name of that shelter again?” she asked.
“It’s the Pike Street Mission, but it’s not on Pike Street anymore.”
Andrea laughed aloud at that. “I’m a social worker, Mr. Beaumont. Believe me, I’m up to date on the location of the various homeless shelters in the Seattle area. Rachel Seymour and I go way back.”
I didn’t hum a few bars of “It’s a Small World,” but I could have.
With the signing appointment set, Alan was downright jubilant. I didn’t look forward to telling him about my unwitting participation in Naomi’s parentage, but I couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Look,” I said finally, taking a deep breath. “There’s something I need to get off my chest. It’s time you heard the whole story.”
Alan studied me for a moment with a quizzical frown. “About what?” he asked. “About you and Jasmine and that one-night stand?”
You could have knocked me over with a feather—literally. “You knew?” I stammered.
“Not right away,” Alan answered, “but we figured it out within a couple of weeks—as soon as we realized she was expecting. Once the doctor told us how far along she was, we were pretty sure you were the guy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“Maybe I’m the one who needs to tell you the whole story,” Alan said. “I was married once before. I wanted kids. My then-wife absolutely did not want kids. She told me that if I didn’t get a vasectomy, she was going to divorce me. I wanted to be married and live up to that whole ‘in sickness and in health’ thing, so I did what she asked. Guess what? She up and divorced me anyway and ended up having three kids with her second husband. Live and learn, right?”
“Right,” I muttered.
“When the show was on the road, there were rumors among the crew that Jasmine was being coerced into playing hostess with some of the high-fliers on the producer’s guest list. The talk was she was probably putting out. I already liked her by then. We weren’t together yet, but I didn’t want to believe the gossip either. I thought it was just a bunch of sour grapes. Then, when the whole drug-dealing thing came to light, of all the cops on the scene, you were the only one who seemed to have Jaz’s back—our backs. Later on, when we started getting serious about each other, she told me about what had been going on. She also told me that she doubted you had any idea in advance about the nature of your date. She said that when she hopped into your bed, you’d been pretty much blindsided.”
“Blindsided yes,” I agreed, “but pretty much blind drunk as well. That was a couple of years before I sobered up.”
“Jaz and I were already back in Jasper when she started getting sick. At first we thought it was the flu or else something she’d eaten, but when she went to see a doctor, it turned out to be morning sickness. That’s when we counted back and figured out you were probably Naomi’s biological father.”
“Why didn’t you let me know?”
Alan shrugged. “It seemed to me that God was giving me a second chance to finally have a family, and I was afraid to rock the boat. I worried, too, that if you knew Naomi was yours, you might initiate some kind of custody battle. I mean, you were a cop and all, and I’m sure you could have if you’d wanted to.”
I wasn’t sure he was right, but I let it go.
“So the three of us became a family,” Alan continued. “I have to admit that when Naomi hit her teens and turned into such a handful, there were times I thought we might all have been better off if we’d brought you into the picture. We decided early on that when Naomi turned twenty-one, we would tell her the truth, but long before that Naomi took off. A few years later, Jaz was gone, too, and after that last awful phone conversation, I’d lost both of them without ever telling Naomi the truth. With all those DNA companies out there now, I figured there were ways she can find that out on her own without it coming from me. Which reminds me, how did you reach that conclusion?”
“I suspected it when you first showed me Naomi’s school photo, the one you keep in your wallet,” I answered. “But tonight, the moment Naomi walked into Reverend Seymour’s office, there was no denying it. She looks just like my daughter, Kelly . . . my other daughter. But if you knew this all along, why did you come looking to me for help in finding Naomi?”
“Because,” Alan Dale said simply, “you were the only person in Seattle I knew I could trust.”
“Thank you,” I said and I meant it.
Sometimes the bad things you worry about turn out to be the best things, but I went to bed that night and tossed and turned. I thought about my other kids—about Scotty and Kelly. Due to an inheritance from a biological auntie on my father’s side, those two kids are both fixed for life, even if I never left them another dime—which I will do eventually anyway. But what about Naomi? What did she have? A cot in a homeless shelter, a paper bag holding all her worldly goods, no education to speak of, an addiction problem, and no hope—no hope at all. Not to mention a broken heart.
And what about Athena? If and when we could locate Petey Mayfield and get him to sign that relinquishment form, Athena would be going off to Jasper, Texas, to live with a loving but impoverished grandfather who would probably be in his late seventies before the child even graduated from high school. Poor Athena. It looked to me as though she, like her mother, was starting life from way behind go.
Reviewing my pantheon of past sins wasn’t much fun. Had booze played a part in what happened back then between Jasmine Day and me? The answer to that was easy—of course it had. I finally sobered up and started working my Twelve Steps in AA, but when I got to Step 8, the one where you’re supposed to draw up a list of the people you’ve harmed and then make amends to them, Jasmine’s name didn’t find its way onto the list. I had put her completely out of my mind.
But what if I’d known about Naomi from the get-go? What would I have done then? Would I have tried to interfere in their lives? Would I have offered to pay child support? When she started getting into hot water as a teenager, would I have tossed my two cents into the mix or tried showing up with a magic-wand checkbook in hand and hoping a bribe would work when discipline and direction hadn’t? I doubt that throwing money at the problem back then would have helped. As for any well-thought-out advice I might have offered? We all know that when it comes to kids and discipline, those skills aren’t in my wheelhouse.
So I tossed and turned, pounding my pillow and brimming over with a whole catalog of woulda, coulda, and shoulda interior debates. Finally, sometime around three in the morning, I fought my way through to a possible solution. I hadn’t helped with raising Naomi because—God help me—I didn’t know she existed. But I knew about her now, and I knew about Athena too, and I needed to make up for lost time. Once Karen and I divorced, hard as it might have been, I never once missed a child-support payment. With Naomi and Athena, I wanted to cover all the back payments I had missed, and with Anne Corley’s assistance I would do so—starting that very day.
Once that decision was made, I was finally able to fall asleep.