Her heart was right in her throat, pounding so hard she could barely breathe. Her eyes kept stinging with tears and she kept blinking them back, because she couldn’t bear to miss a single second of watching him. She picked up the expensive camera from the seat beside her, and focused the zoom lens on him, then snapped several shots in rapid succession.
She had parked far enough away from the private school that no one would notice her. She didn’t want to alarm anyone, least of all Justin. But she’d had to see him, had to watch him just a little longer to feed these memories into her starving heart. This morning she had parked down the street from the Winborns’ house and noted what he wore when he skipped and hopped down the steps to meet the bus that took him to school. Rhonda Winborn had stood at the front door and watched until he was safely on the bus, and he’d given her a cursory wave. He’d been wearing the khaki pants and blue shirt that was the school uniform, and a bright red windbreaker. The windbreaker, which he wore now as protection against the chill breeze, helped her pick him out from the other boys.
She had sobbed aloud this morning when she’d watched him get on the bus, watched him wave to another woman. Everything about him was so familiar, from the color of his hair to the shape of his head, even the way he walked. His face was still a child’s face, but it was taking on the stronger lines of approaching adolescence even now. His hair was blond, his eyes were blue, and his grin was pure David.
Milla was so shaken and ecstatic that she wanted to get out of the rental car and throw her head back on the loudest, longest yell she could muster. She wanted to run up to the fence and scream his name, though of course everyone would think she was crazy and the school authorities would immediately call the cops. She wanted to dance, she wanted to laugh, she wanted to cry. There were so many emotions storming inside her that she didn’t know what to do. She wanted to stop strangers and point to him and say, “That’s my son!”
She’d never been able to do that, claim him in public, and she couldn’t do it now. Protecting him was the most important thing in the world to her, and she wouldn’t mess this up by scaring him, by breaking the news to him in the worst possible way.
The past week had been a nonstop roller coaster of emotions. Events had happened so fast that she could barely react to one before another was upon her. Once she’d found the information Diaz had tried to destroy, she’d been able to follow the trail that led straight to Justin.
Rhonda and Lee Winborn were both blond, and they had wanted a blond child, preferably a boy, to adopt. They were desperate for children, having lost three to miscarriages and a fourth had died only a few hours after birth. They weren’t rich people who went out to buy a child much as they would buy a car; they had all but beggared themselves to come up with the amount of money True had charged, and both their families had chipped in to make up the difference. Since then Lee had done very well in business; four years ago they had moved to this upper-middle-class neighborhood in Charlotte, and they could afford to send Justin to private school, but from everything Milla had been able to find out they were nice, likable, solid people who adored their son and were doing their best to raise him to be a decent human being.
They couldn’t have had any idea he’d been stolen from her arms. They’d been told that his mother wasn’t able to support him, and she needed so much money because she had other children to support, one of whom needed corrective eye surgery. The violin strings had been singing when that tale was told, but they’d had no reason to disbelieve it. The lawyer who’d handled the private adoption hadn’t known, so there was no way the Winborns could have known. All they knew was that they finally had their son.
Not their son. Her son. Her heart whispered it, insisted on it. Hers.
If there was anything of her in him, she thought as she watched him, it was perhaps his nose and jawline. Everything else about him resembled David.
Joy bubbled in her veins. He was alive, he was well, he was loved. Her baby was all right.
The Winborns had named him Zachary Tanner, for each grandfather. They called him Zack. He was Justin to her; that was the name that had been in her desperate prayers all these years, the name engraved on heart and mind and memory.
She had to tell David. Until she actually saw him and knew for certain it was Justin, she hadn’t wanted to get his hopes up. She could have been wrong; it could have been another child. Even after seeing the paperwork and knowing with her brain that this child was Justin, she had still needed to see him with her eyes before she could let herself believe.
It was Justin. And he looked like David.
Milla dropped the field glasses and buried her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking with sobs. Laughter kept mixing with the sobs, until even she didn’t know if she was laughing or crying. She sat there until play period was over and the teachers herded the boisterous youngsters back into the neat, yellow-brick building. She watched him go inside, the November sun glistening on his blond hair; he jumped the last step and was laughing as he went through the double doors and disappeared from her sight.
When she could, when she’d stopped shaking enough to hold the cell phone, when her throat wasn’t so clogged with tears that she couldn’t speak, she called David’s office and made an appointment to see him the next day. If she’d been a patient, she never would have seen him that soon, but he’d always told her he would see her any time, any day, and evidently he had instructed his office staff to accommodate her, because as soon as she told the receptionist her name, the woman had given her a noon appointment. She would be intruding on David’s lunch hour, but she didn’t think he would mind.
This wasn’t something she wanted to tell him over the phone. She wanted to see his face, wanted to share this with him as they had shared Justin’s birth. She could have called his home, gone there rather than his office, but she was selfish enough to want this just between herself and David, rather than sharing it with Jenna and his two other children. For this one time only, this one last time, she wanted just the two of them.
She had the legal papers in her briefcase. She’d had them drawn up before she even came here, because she wanted to have everything ready.
Taking a deep breath, she drove to the Charlotte airport and turned in her rental car, then caught a flight to Chicago.
David’s office was in a professional building adjacent to the hospital where he practiced. The decorations were tasteful and fairly shouted “money.” The surgical group he was in featured all heavy hitters, and David was one of their stars. He was young, he was handsome, he was brilliant. At just thirty-eight, he had many years left in which to shine.
Evidently he’d had his secretary clear his appointment calendar when he was told she’d called, because the waiting room was empty. Milla closed the door to the hallway and started across the taupe carpet to the receptionist’s desk, where a middle-aged blonde and a perky brunette wearing a nurse’s uniform were avidly watching her. Before she reached them, however, the door to the left opened and David stood there, tall and better-looking now than he had been when he was in his twenties. Age sat well on most men, and David was no exception. His face was stronger, with a few lines at the corners of his eyes, and his shoulders seemed a little heavier.
“Milla,” he said, extending his hand toward her and smiling the great smile that just yesterday she’d seen on their son’s face, the one that lit him up like a Christmas tree. His blue eyes were warm. “You look great. Come on into my office.”
He held the door for her and she stepped into the interior hallway, which was lined with examination and treatment rooms. Three different women, of diverse race and age, looked up from various tasks and watched as she walked by. The two in the reception area also poked their heads out.
“Don’t look now,” she said to David out of the side of her mouth, “but your harem is curious.”
He laughed as he ushered her into his private office and closed the door. “That’s what Jenna calls them, too. I c
all ’em my bodyguards. I feel very safe when they’re around.”
“They keep the wild women away from you, huh?”
He grinned. “They won’t even let me do surgery on one. They send the wild ones to my partners. I get the old farts and battleaxes.”
Her heart lightened to see him so basically unchanged. She could understand his office staff being protective of him; David was one of the good guys. She knew beyond a shadow of doubt that he was completely faithful to his wife, that no flirtatious nurse or patient had a chance with him, because she knew him. He threw himself heart and soul into his work and into his family. Whatever wonderful happened in his life, he deserved it.
There was a small grouping of photographs on his desk. Knowing what she’d see, she walked around to look at them. One was of a pretty redhead with an infectious grin, who had to be Jenna because there was another candid photo of the same woman and David with their arms around each other, hamming it up for the camera. There was a small heart-shaped frame that contained a photo of a plump toddler with smooth, shiny hair, holding a doll by its hair and looking like a little doll herself in a long lace dress. Another shot was of Jenna holding a baby and looking radiant, and Milla assumed that was their newest addition. “They’re gorgeous,” she said honestly, and she smiled because she was happy for him. “What are their names?”
“The little princess is Cameron Rose, called Cammy, and the baby is William Gage. We plan to call him Liam, but he hasn’t quite grown into the name yet. For some reason, Cammy calls him Dot.”
Milla snorted with laughter; then, while she was still smiling, she couldn’t hold it in any longer and said, “I found him. I found Justin.”
David’s legs visibly wobbled, and he sat down hard in one of his visitors chairs. He stared at her, pale with shock and unable to say anything. Slowly, tears welled in his eyes and trickled down his cheeks. His lips trembled and he finally choked out, “You’re sure?”
Milla bit her lower lip, fighting her own tears, and nodded. “We broke the smuggling ring. The woman who falsified the birth certificates kept detailed records, I suppose for either protection or blackmail.”
“Is he—” He gulped and fought back a sob, but his voice was thin and shaky as he asked the parent’s universal question: “Is he okay?”
Milla nodded again; then David lunged toward her and somehow they were clinging to each other as they both wept, his body heaving with sobs. She tried to comfort him, patting his shoulder, his hair, saying, “It’s okay. He’s fine. He’s safe,” but she was crying, too, so she didn’t know how much he understood of what she was trying to say. Then he did what she’d done, and burst into uncontrolled laughter. He alternated between laughter and sobs, swinging her around, releasing her to wipe his face, then grabbing her again.
“I can’t believe it,” he kept saying. “My God. All these years . . .”
Finally Milla pulled herself away from him. “I have pictures,” she said, fumbling with her briefcase in her eagerness to show him. “I took them yesterday.”
She pulled out the snapshots she’d taken, and handed them to David. He looked at the first one and froze, his expression that of a starving man as he stared at his son. His hands were trembling as he looked at each photograph in turn, then went through them again. Delight began breaking through, like the sun on a stormy day. “He looks like me,” he said triumphantly.
She burst out laughing at such blatant maleness. “Dummy, he’s always looked like you, from the day he was born. Don’t you remember what Susanna—” She broke off abruptly, remembering that he didn’t know about Susanna.
He was still staring at the pictures. “She said I’d cloned myself.”
“She was in on it,” Milla blurted.
David looked up, shocked. “What?”
“She’s the one who told the smugglers about Justin, and that I went to the market several days a week. They were waiting for me. They had an order for a blond baby boy.”
“But . . . why?” His voice was full of bewilderment that a woman he had considered a friend would do such a thing.
“Money,” Milla said bitterly. “It was all about money.”
His right hand tightened into a fist. “The fucking bitch. There was a reward! I’d have given her everything I had to get him back!”
“The reward didn’t come near matching what they’d charged the adoptive parents for him.”
“He was sold? What kind of people would buy a baby they knew was—”
“They didn’t know,” Milla said quickly. “Don’t blame them. They were totally in the dark.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the lawyer who brokered the deal didn’t know. It was a slick operation, with falsified birth certificates and legal documents from the fake mothers. The people who adopted the babies all thought it was legal.”
“Where is he?” David asked. “Who adopted him?”
“Their names are Lee and Rhonda Winborn. They live in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’ve checked them out, and they’re good people. Honest, upstanding. They named him Zachary.”
“His name is Justin,” David said fiercely. Still clutching the pictures, he sat down at his desk and looked at them again, examining every detail of Justin’s face. “I didn’t believe you’d ever find him,” he said absently, as if to himself. “I thought you were breaking your heart in a worthless cause.”
“I couldn’t stop.” The words were simple, the truth behind them fathoms deep.
“I know.” He looked up at her, studying her face as intently as he’d studied the pictures. “I didn’t know you, afterward,” he murmured. “I was devastated, but the basic me didn’t change. You . . . you turned into . . .” He paused as if searching for the right word. “An Amazon. I couldn’t keep up with you, couldn’t even touch you. You were so fierce, so determined, that you left me in the dust.”
“I didn’t mean to,” she said, and sighed. “But I couldn’t see anything else, couldn’t listen to anything else. I knew he was out there, and I had to find him.”
“I wish I’d had that conviction. I envied you your focus, your belief that he was still alive. I couldn’t believe it. I’ve had him dead and buried for years, and I thought I’d handled it, b-but now I know he’s alive and I feel like such a shit because I gave up on him.” He buried his face in his hands.
“No, don’t.” Moving swiftly to him, Milla put her arm around his shoulder. “My biggest fear was that he was dead, and I couldn’t stop looking for him because I had to know for certain. There was nothing you could have done that you didn’t do—”
“I could have looked for him! I could have been beside you, helping you.”
“Don’t be silly, of course you couldn’t. David, how many people would have died if you had stopped performing surgery?”
He considered that. “Maybe none. There are a lot of good surgeons in this town.” Then his natural surgeon’s ego kicked in. “Okay, maybe twenty or so. Or thirty.”
She smiled. “There’s your answer, Doogie. You did what you had to do. I did what I had to do. There’s no right, no wrong, no woulda coulda shoulda. So get off the pity train, and let’s talk about the future.”
Five minutes later, after she’d explained what she wanted, what they had to do, his face was once again white with shock.
26
The time with David was wrenching but necessary. When she walked out of his office, Milla knew she would probably never see him again, so she told him good-bye, kissed his cheek, and wished him a wonderful life. “You can stop with the alimony payments, too,” she’d said, smiling at him through her tears. “There’s your reason for practicing medicine: you funded the search. I couldn’t have done it without you in the background, supporting me and making sure I had the financial freedom to look for him.”
“But what will you do now?” he asked, looking troubled.
“The same thing, I guess. Look for lost kids. I’ll have to draw some kind of salary, tho
ugh.” The truth was, she had no idea what she was going to do. For so long her life had revolved around one thing, finding Justin, and now that she had, she felt as if she had hit a wall that she couldn’t see over. She was exhausted in every way, mentally, physically, and emotionally. She thought of going back to El Paso and felt nothing but blankness. So much had happened there, maybe too much. After she went back to North Carolina and handled matters there, then she would sleep for maybe a couple of days, and when she woke up she would feel better. Then she’d be able to think about the future. She was good at finding the lost ones. How could she stop now, just because she’d found her lost one?
David caught her as she started out the door, and fiercely hugged her to him as if he, too, knew that the last tie binding them had been severed. “Now you can move on, too,” he said.
Move on to where? she wanted to ask. Maybe one day she would know. For now, all she could focus on was what she had to do next.
She had booked a return flight to Charlotte late that afternoon, and by the time the flight landed she wanted nothing more than to check into her hotel, crawl into bed, and not move for at least twelve hours. Instead she ordered room service and unpacked while she was waiting for her sandwich to be delivered. She even had time to iron the outfit she planned to wear tomorrow.
After she ate, she put the room service tray outside the door and paced around the limited space, getting her thoughts in order. Finally, cell phone in hand, she looked up the Winborns’ number in the local telephone book and dialed it.
A woman’s pleasant voice answered on the fourth ring, with the particular ooo sound to her o’s that Milla already recognized as Carolinian. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Winborn?”