A Mommy in Mind

Ramon fixed her with an implacable look. “She stalled from concern for you, Miss Sumner. That’s what has taken her so long, her concern for you.”

“Me?” Lori replied weakly, more moved than she wanted to be.

Ramon Estes nodded, his expression softening. “My client is not insensitive to your plight.” His eyes seemed to say that he felt concern for her, as well.

Lori didn’t buy it for a moment. It was just a lawyer’s trick designed to win a point. Wasn’t it? If so, it was terribly effective. She collapsed against her chair with a gusty sigh.

“I am not insensitive to her plight, either, Mr. Estes, but I believe I can best provide Lucia with everything she needs.”

“And I believe that Lucia is better off with her real mother,” he replied simply.

What he did not say, what he did not need to say, was that as the biological mother, Yesenia surely had more claim to the child than Lori herself. Bereft, Lori rose to her feet, clutching her enormous bag beneath her arm.

“I suppose we’ll have to leave it to a higher power then.”

He spread his hands, also rising. “I fully expect the courts to side with my client, ma’am.”

“I wasn’t speaking of the courts, sir,” Lori said softly.

“Ah.” He nodded. “Well, I shall make my arguments at the court bench. You may make yours at an altar if you wish, but I still believe my client will win.”

“We’ll see,” Lori whispered, turning toward the door. She kept her head high as she walked away from him, but she made her way downstairs to the first floor with eyes clouded by tears.

She’d never expected to identify so strongly with Yesenia’s situation. Yet, Lori believed wholeheartedly that God had brought Lucia to her for a reason. What could that reason be if not, at long last, to provide her with the family she had always wanted?

Upon reaching the foyer, she hurried out onto the sidewalk and then up the street to her car. With summer waning and September only three days away, the air felt soft with just a hint of the chill to come. Tossing her soft leather bag inside, she dropped down behind the wheel, aware that she had forgotten to lock the door earlier in her agitation.

Then again, who would want a basic, faded, eleven-year-old coupe except someone tied to the decrepit old thing with emotional bonds? Her foster parents, Mary and Fred Evans, had given her this car, already used and without a single luxury, when she’d graduated from high school. Lori had intended to trade it once she could afford better, but Mary died unexpectedly of a heart attack that summer, and Fred, who had been fighting cancer for months, had quickly followed. After their deaths, Lori had traded transportation for room and board with the family of a close friend, Joanna Tipps, now Allred, who’d attended the same junior college.

Joanna had not gone on to university. She’d married her high-school sweetheart instead, and now lived in Maryland with her husband and three children. Lori had stayed on with Joanna’s parents until she’d graduated. Joanna and the elder Tipps were the closest thing Lori had to family beside Lucia, but they’d drifted apart over the years, Joanna busy with her lot, Lori concentrating on her career.

It had comforted Lori, in some way, to go on driving the vehicle that Mary and Fred had sacrificed to provide for her, just as it comforted her to go to God with her problems as they had taught her. She knew that He had a plan, and she trusted Him, she truly did. It had to work out so that she could keep Lucia, because she simply couldn’t see her life without Lucia anymore.

On the other hand, it was so easy to picture the home that she could build around Lucia, an island of serenity in a turbulent world, a haven of acceptance and love. Lucia would never be the angry, sullen teenager that Lori had been.

Lori still marveled at the patience of Mary and Fred Evans. Working quietly, gently, steadily, they had won her over step-by-step, until one night Lori had finally whispered the words that they had so longed to hear. She whispered them again now, as she had so often over the years, in a kind of remembrance, a ritual act of praise.

“Thank You, Lord, for Mary and Fred, and making them care about me. Come into my heart and forgive me of my sins.”

The first time that she’d said it, a long laundry list of confessions had followed. Afterward, they’d all cried because they’d all been so happy.

Lori closed her eyes, wanting that for Lucia, wanting to be the one to patiently, tenderly guide her home to God. Never, never, did she want for Lucia or any child what she had experienced before the Evanses.

It was one thing to lose one’s only parent, another entirely to be the one to find the body. Not that she’d realized it at the time. At four, you just think that Mama is asleep on the sofa and won’t wake up. You don’t think—you can’t think—that Mama will never wake up again because such a thought is so far beyond anything you’ve yet learned.

It was only after the man and woman had stumbled into the living room and tried to wake her mama that Lori had realized this was not the same as all those times before. Funny, she couldn’t remember their names now, even though they’d been particular friends of Mama’s, friends who’d often spent the night after an evening of laughter and shrieking and other things Lori had tried very hard not to see.

She vividly recalled being asked their names after the police had come, but she didn’t know now if she’d been able to reveal them. Whoever they were, they had called the cops, gathered up all the drugs and beat it, leaving her there alone.

She’d remained alone until she’d been placed with Mary and Fred, alone in all the shelters and homes to which she was trundled over the years. It was as if she’d simply disappeared in some ways, and that was fine with her at first; so fine that for over two years she hadn’t said a word, until finally she’d realized that she would never again have a mama or anyone unless she somehow called attention to herself.

Some of the things that she’d done to make herself seen and known made her cringe now. They were all the wrong things, of course; the very things her mother had done. She’d been well on her way, in fact, to being the drug addict that her mother had been, until Mary and Fred had taken her in.

She wasn’t sure when she’d first realized that Mary was right, that God had a reason for it all, that there was a heavenly plan for her life that human willfulness could shape but not derail. Even now, she could not doubt that there was purpose and intention at work here.

“I know You have a plan, Lord,” she said, smiling. “And I trust You. Truly I do.”

After all she had been through, how could she not?

Feeling better, she headed back home to Chestnut Grove and her daughter, determined to fight for the child God had given her.

Chapter Two

“Goodbye, sweetheart.”

Lori bent and placed a kiss on Lucia’s tiny brow. Every leave-taking was bittersweet now, but then perhaps that was the way it should be. Perhaps that was what she was meant to learn from her current troubles, that every moment a mother spent away from her child was a moment lost. Realistically she knew that it was not possible, or even desirable, to spend every moment with her daughter, but that only increased the value of the time they did have.

Cradled in the crook of the plump elbow of Juanita Jackson, the middle-aged nanny whom Lori had hired, baby Lucia imitated Lori, pursing her mouth with concentration so intense that her little eyes crossed. The two women laughed with delight. Of Cuban ancestry, unfailingly pleasant, competent and a devout believer, Juanita had been a true blessing to both Lori and Lucia. Because she was married, she preferred not to live in, which suited Lori well since her apartment provided only two bedrooms.

The second-story apartment in a converted town house east of downtown Chestnut Grove was small, but Lori loved everything about it, from its polished wood floor to its high, plastered ceiling with their lazily circling fans. The kitchen certainly could have been bigger, but the windows were large enough to give the place an airy feel. Lori especially loved the nursery, which she’d done up in soft yellows and creams, with pale pink and spring green accents. She’d even handsewn the window curtains and a ruffled bed skirt for the antique crib that she’d stumbled onto in a little shop downtown.

As Lori hurried out of the building to her car, she made a mental note to take the baby out for a stroll that evening. They went out at least a couple times a week for long, lazy cruises around the neighborhood. It had become a habit with them, but with autumn on the doorstep, Lori felt a sense of urgency that she hadn’t before. At least she tried to tell herself that was the problem. In truth, she couldn’t help fearing that her time with Lucia would end even before the summer, which was exactly why she was heading out early today.

After yesterday’s meeting with Ramon Estes, Lori needed advice, and she couldn’t think where else to get it except at the Tiny Blessings Adoption Agency. Her hope was that Pilar would have a few minutes to speak with her. Lori didn’t want to put Ramon’s sister in the middle of the custody fight, but it seemed to her that Ramon had already done that. She only hoped that Pilar would have something helpful to offer.

Careful of the brick privacy fencing on either side of the drive, Lori guided the car out into the street and drove through Chestnut Grove at a sedate pace. Even here in the suburbs of Richmond they had their share of rush-hour traffic. It was nothing, of course, like that of the city itself, but folks were fond of complaining about the traffic, anyway, in a rather self-congratulatory fashion, to be sure. Lori was guilty of it herself. Traffic in Chestnut Grove might be trying at times, but that didn’t keep her from being happy to leave Richmond behind every day or stop her from appreciating the benefits of small-town life.

Real traffic congestion, however, was simply abnormal, which was why Lori knew as soon as she turned the corner onto the street where the adoption agency was located that something was wrong. This traffic had little to do with the workday rush into Richmond and everything to do with catastrophe. It looked as though a parade had stacked up, complete with fire engines, flashing lights and police cars parked at odd angles.

Whipping the coupe into the first available spot along the curb, Lori tossed back the flap of her shoulder bag and pulled out her press credentials, which she clipped to the collar of her white blouse before bailing out of the car. Despite the narrowness of her knee-length khaki skirt, she put her tan leather flats to good use, digging a pen and pad from her bag as she hurried toward the fire engine taking up a good portion of the street. She used a technique honed by years of experience and called out a question based purely on assumption to a firefighter locking down a coiled water hose.

“Any idea how it started?”

He looked up and shrugged, but then as she drew closer he not only confirmed her assumption that there had been a fire but also yielded vital info. “Considering the break-in, I think it’s safe to say the fire was intentional.”

Wow. Fire and break-in. Looked as though the adoption agency had not yet left its troubles behind. Too bad. Tiny Blessings did much good in the community.

Lori glanced over her shoulder at the policemen and firefighters going in and out of the building, commenting offhandedly, “Sounds like somebody’s still nursing a grudge. Any idea who it might be?”

The firefighter shook his head. Well, one thing was certain. It was not Lindsey Morrow, the wife of Chestnut Grove’s former mayor. Lindsey had not only murdered the agency’s founder, Barnaby Harcourt, she’d attempted to kill the agency’s current director, Kelly Young, now Kelly Van Zandt. Unfortunately the list of those who might have reason to bear a grudge against the agency could be lengthy because Harcourt had taken payoffs and bribes to falsify adoption records for decades before his death.

Kelly had done everything in her power to restore the agency’s reputation and fulfil its mission of bringing together God’s needy children and worthy parents. The series of positive personal stories that first Jared and now Lori were currently writing for the paper was intended to get that message out to the public. Lori could only hope that this latest catastrophe would not set things back, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to cover the story. Quite the contrary. It was her job to report the news, and better her than someone who had no personal knowledge of the workings and value of the agency.

Lori thanked the firefighter and hurried toward the building. She was rehearsing what she was going to say to get past the uniformed officer at the entrance when Kelly’s husband, Ross Van Zandt, stepped out onto the sidewalk.

Van Zandt was a man’s man, tall and solid, with dark hair and eyes and a beard so heavy that more often than not he appeared to be in need of a shave. Since his marriage, he’d been an active member of Chestnut Grove Community Church, along with his wife. Consequently, Lori knew him well enough to use his given name.

“Ross!”