Claire tossed another sheaf of papers into the fireplace, the crackling fire making her remodeled kitchen into a cozy haven against the chilly November night. After the workers left for the day, she’d made herself a peanut butter sandwich and a cup of hot chocolate and changed into her yoga pants so she could get to work on a project she’d been purposely avoiding.
Tomorrow a nice soft sage green was going on the walls of the second-floor office. She’d been dreading going through her father’s papers, but the painters had to be able to actually get in the room in order to paint it. She couldn’t put it off anymore. So she’d put on some music on her iPod and resolved to just get through it.
She’d gone through two stacks of boxes already, hauling them into the kitchen and sorting through them. A couple of gems had been tucked away in those filing boxes, like some old maps of the area. Black-and-white photographs of the town were hiding in there, too, and would look great in the long upstairs hall. She flipped through the files, which appeared to be more papers from her father’s time as mayor and an ill-fated run for governor. She pulled those out, throwing them with the others on the fire. When she went back for the next handful, her eye caught on a file that was titled, simply, GIRLS.
Heart pounding in her chest, she pulled out the file and sat down in the huge chair in front of the fireplace, legs crisscrossed underneath her. A manila envelope fell out into her lap. With trembling fingers, she unfastened the closure and opened it, first pulling out a hospital bracelet the width of no more than two of her fingers. It was joined by a tiny cap and a card with Baby Girl 1 written on it, and beside it, in pencil, Claire. She’d weighed seven pounds four ounces and had been twenty inches long.
When she flipped it over, she saw two itty-bitty footprints—her footprints. A tear dropped, quickly seeping into the old card. She’d never seen anything from her birth, never even heard the story until her father’s attorney told them the story about their biological mother’s death from an aneurism when they were newborns. Her father hadn’t felt like he could raise twin girls on his own, but he had wanted to find them as adults.
The attorney said it took two years for a private investigator to track her and Jordan. He’d traced them through the foster-adoption agency, pulling threads until he’d found their mom and ultimately the two of them. They met their father for a few brief hours one weekend, with plans for another visit, but by then their father had passed and their opportunity to hear their story firsthand was lost.
She placed the items gently on the table beside her, adding Jordan’s to the small pile. Next out of the file was a letter-sized envelope that held old photos. In the first one, a woman in a hospital bed held a baby. On the back it said, Anna with Claire. The pang of grief surprised her. It was strange, she thought, to feel the loss of a person she had never known, to see a glimpse of what her life might have been like if she hadn’t been adopted.
She set the photo aside and pulled out one of her and Jordan together—tiny babies dressed in pink. Her biological father was holding one on each arm with a big grin on his face.
Her breath stopped. In this picture, he looked like a proud papa. He looked like any other young father, equal parts joy and fear. She ran a finger down the faded face in the picture. I wish I’d known you.
She took a photo with her phone and texted it to Jordan. About four seconds later, the phone rang. She smiled. “Hey.”
“What is that?” Jordan’s voice demanded info, now. She never had been one to be particularly patient. Maybe that came with the red hair.
“It’s you and me with our father.”
Silence. Then, “He doesn’t look like a father about to give up his babies.”
Claire sifted through the photos again, pulling out one of their mother when she was obviously pregnant, their father standing at her side. “I guess maybe she hadn’t died yet. There are some pictures with her in them, too.”
“Our mother? What does she look like? Wait, no. Is that, like, dishonoring Mom to want to know?”
“No. I don’t think Mom would care. She always said that she would support us trying to find our biological family if we ever wanted to.”
“Okay, so what does she look like?”
“She has your red hair and my eyes.” It was eerie, actually, to see their features in someone else’s face. They’d never had that experience growing up. “She’s really beautiful, like you. I’ll send you one.”
Jordan was quiet for a moment. “Maybe he loved us, Claire. Maybe the house was a real gesture of love rather than just a guilt thing.”
Claire walked to the window, looked out over the field and imagined her father had stood in this exact spot. Instead of the normal tension of a memory of the man she’d never met, she felt a connection, something shared with the father who gave her life—twice, once through birth and once through adoption. “Maybe he did the only thing he thought he could do. I wouldn’t trade our life with Mom for anything. We wouldn’t be the same people if we hadn’t been adopted.”
“No, I wouldn’t change anything, either.” Jordan paused. “It’s weird, Claire. Knowing this about him doesn’t really change anything for us, but somehow I feel like everything is different.”
As usual, her twin’s words echoed her thoughts. “Me, too, J.”
She heard muffled voices, then Jordan’s voice came on the line again. “I’ve got to run. Someone’s here to look at Sugar. If they buy him, Hot Rod will be the only horse left to sell.”
“Hey, Jordan? I love you.”
“Love you, too. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Claire hung up the phone as Joe’s truck pulled into its usual parking spot by the path to the cabin. Amelia tumbled out, hefting her backpack to her shoulder. Claire could see her lips moving a mile a minute. She laughed, imagining how excited Amelia was about seeing the finished cabin for herself.
Joe closed the door to the truck and glanced up at the window. She knew when he caught sight of her because a slow grin spread across his face. She took a deep breath as her heart rate picked up. Waggling her fingers at him, she returned the smile.
Amelia must have called to him, because he said something toward the cabin and started that direction, turning back to wave at her one more time.
He was really a good man. A good father, learning and growing every day. She glanced down at the picture she held of her own father and for the first time, maybe ever, she thought he might’ve been a good father, too. Maybe he made a mistake stepping out of their lives, but he didn’t do it because it made his life easier, at least she didn’t think so now. He did it because he thought it was what would be best for her and Jordan.
She imagined Joe and Amelia looking in all the nooks and crannies of their cabin, discovering the surprises that she and Bertie had hidden for them. She was discovering things, too, definitely about her biological family, but she was also learning things about herself and the future she wanted to create.
The lights flashed on in the kitchen across the pond. At least a small part of her wished that Joe could be a part of that future. She went back to the files, pausing a moment with the picture of a man with two baby girls. Sometimes things didn’t exactly turn out the way you planned or imagined.
And sometimes God had bigger things in store.
* * *
Joe backed into the gritty cinder brick wall, that feeling churning in his gut that something wasn’t right. Tendrils of fog swirled around his ankles, silence heavy, the night air damp this close to the ocean. He caught True’s eye and motioned for True to search to his left.
Leading with his weapon, True turned into the narrow passageway. They were searching for the perpetrator from a robbery earlier in the day. An anonymous tip led them to the docks, where a string of alleys connected warehouses and businesses that had long pulled out of this declining neighborhood. Joe took another careful step and stopped as the hair prickled on the back of his neck. He scanned the dark windows above their heads.
No sign of movement—but something gnawed at him. He fought the urge to hold his breath until the dim light illuminated True as he stepped back into the alley. Joe took one step toward him. Just one lousy step.
The bullets came from the rooftop, as they always did, slicing right into the space where his vest met his armpit. Poker-hot pain arced into his chest and his legs refused to work. He looked at True, whose face erupted in rage as he shouted into his mic, “Shots fired, shots fired! Officer down! I repeat, officer down.”
In slow motion, the sound faded into static and his eyes rolled toward the sky. His body fell, even though he wanted to stay on his feet. Every cell in his body strained toward consciousness. His vision grayed.
“Show me your hands. Down on the ground. SBPD. Get down on the ground.” The sound of his team taking the shooter into custody.
Cold flooded his body, but it didn’t hurt now. Rapid-fire thoughts converged into a single one: breathe.
He jolted awake as his body slammed into the hardwood floor. Sweaty and shaken, he stared at the ceiling as it slowly came into focus. Freshly painted beadboard. Ceiling fan. His new bedroom in the cabin. And with that recognition came the knowledge that the breathlessness was the dream, not reality.
“Dad!” Amelia dropped to her knees at his side, terror at being woken up out of a deep sleep in her eyes. “Dad, are you okay? I heard yelling.”
He pushed up on one elbow. His skin was clammy and he was still quaking inside. “I’m fine, kiddo. Just a bad dream. Come on, I’ll tuck you back into bed.”
She looked at him like maybe he’d grown a third head, but she stood up as he gingerly got to his feet, rolling his shoulder.
The front door burst open. “Joe? Amelia!”
Joe grabbed a T-shirt off the end of the bed and jerked it over his head and wished like all get-out that he could just disappear right now. “We’re in here.”
Claire’s head popped around the corner. “Are you okay? I heard shouting.”
“We’re fine. I had a bad dream, but we’re fine. I’m going to tuck Amelia back in bed and I’ll be right out.”
Joe followed Amelia into her room, a rosy glow filling the room from all the pink, down to the night-light. Even her nightgown was pink, picked out by her grandmother. He smiled to reassure his daughter and pulled the covers up to her chin. “Sorry I woke you, pumpkin. Try to get some rest, okay?”
“Okay, Joe. I love you.” Her eyes were already drifting shut. At her words it was like his whole world slowed to a stop, his heart stuttering before it picked up the beat again. She’d been in his life only a few weeks and she was his whole world.
He brushed her hair away from her face with a hand that was far too rough to be touching her. “I love you, too, Amelia.”
Claire had tea made when he walked into the front room. He didn’t know they had tea. Or mugs, for that matter. But he took one and sat on a stool and leaned on the counter, letting the heat seep into his hands and ground him.
“Are you really okay?” she asked as she slid into the seat next to him. She wore pajama pants, a sweatshirt and flip-flops, her hair in a high ponytail, no makeup. She looked young and beautiful. All the things the story he was about to tell her was not.
“I should’ve realized I would dream tonight. I have it when I sleep somewhere new. It’s more of a flashback, really, than a dream. Crystal clear. I’m walking down the alley and True—my partner—is in front of me and I know something is about to happen and I can’t figure out what. And then I’m shot and trying to breathe.”
She reached for his hand. “What kind of case were you working?”
“Fugitive apprehension. We got a tip he was down in the warehouse district. He was there. He shot me and True shot him. He was the unlucky one. True doesn’t miss.” His jaw slid forward, and as a distraction, he brought the cup to his lips and drank.
“I’m sorry. That must’ve been awful.” Her eyes were soft and she smelled like fresh apples, which shouldn’t be that appealing but was, and he didn’t think, just reached for her. His hand slid into her hair, freeing it, and he drew her close. He lingered and then gently touched his lips to hers.
He let himself sink. Into her sweetness, honesty and optimism. Only for a moment, but he needed this, needed her. Her breath rushed out in a little sigh and he let his forehead touch hers. “You’re just so...perfect.”
Like the springs the town was named for, she was a fresh infusion of pure joy. Red Hill Springs didn’t know it yet, but like the springs to the settlers all those years ago, she was just what they all needed.
She laughed, but her eyes were wide, her cheeks a little flushed. “Either you’re very okay or you’ve completely lost your mind.”
He slid his hand down her arm to cup her elbow and watched as her skin prickled. He wasn’t the only one feeling with a heightened sense of awareness. “Probably a little of both,” he admitted.
“How’d you get that scar by your eye?” She touched it gently.
“I got that one in Iraq. It bought me a trip home and a couple months in Walter Reed. The vision came back and it doesn’t hurt, but my eyes are really sensitive to light, which is why I wear those cool sunglasses.”
She pulled up her sweatshirt and showed him a scar on her lower abdomen. “Appendicitis. Senior year. I missed the prom.”
He showed her his elbow. “Bike wipeout on the asphalt. I was ten, cutting school.”
Claire pulled her hair away from her forehead to reveal a tiny scar. “Got kicked trying to milk a goat.”
He rubbed his thumb over the inside of her elbow. “What about these?”
She went still. Her face was down, a curtain of hair hiding her expression. Finally, she said, “I used to cut myself. As a teenager. I was kind of messed up for a while about being put up for adoption by my biological parents. I had this idea that if I wasn’t good enough for my own parents, how could anyone else want me?”
“Oh, Claire.” He didn’t know what to say. She was so far from not being good enough. “It was his loss. He had no idea what he missed.”
“I know. I think he was doing the best he could at the time. And I don’t have those feelings—much—anymore.” She pointed to her hip. “I have a huge one there from softball. Sliding into home.”
“Hangnail.” He held out his thumb and she kissed it. The smile faded from his face. “You really are special. I hope you know that.”
“I’m not, Joe. I’m just a regular girl.” Sliding off the chair, Claire shook her head. “It’s late and we both have a lot to do tomorrow. Look, it was an emotional night. It doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to.”
Her eyes were big and dark in the dim room, the only light from a small table lamp in the living area. He was so tired. He didn’t even pretend to not know what she was talking about.
“Did it mean something to you, Claire?”
She stopped halfway through the door, looked back at him. Slowly nodded. “It meant something.”
As he watched her walk back to her house in the moonlight, he knew it meant something to him, too. But he wasn’t sure what he could possibly do about it.