The Marriage Conspiracy

Dekker had seen way too much in his life. He’d been a detective with the OCPD before Stacey died. He’d quit the department during the tough time that followed. But before that he’d seen too many examples of the terrible things people can do to each other. Now he worked on his own as a private investigator, which gave him an ongoing opportunity to witness more of man’s inhumanity to man. Sometimes he saw trouble coming whether it was on the way or not.

Joleen put on a confident smile. She was going to do her best to make things work with the Atwoods. It was her duty, as the mother of their grandchild.

She could stand up just fine under Robert Atwood’s cold looks and demanding ways. What could he really do to her, after all? She held all the power, when it came to their relationship with Sam.

She would not abuse that power. But she wouldn’t let Robert Atwood walk all over her, either.

Joleen found the Atwoods waiting by the back door. They followed her into the kitchen and on to the central hall, where Uncle Hubert’s snoring could be clearly heard through the open door to the living room.

Joleen held up a hand. “Just one minute.”

The Atwoods stopped where they were, at the foot of the stairs. Joleen moved to the living room doorway. Uncle Herbert lay just as she and Dekker had left him two hours before, faceup on the couch, his stocking feet dangling a few inches from the floor. Gently she closed the door.

“This way.” She led Sam’s grandparents across the hall to the room her father had used as his study. She reached in and flicked the wall switch. Four tulip-shaped lamps in the small chandelier overhead bloomed into light.

The room was as it had always been. Samuel Tilly’s scarred oak desk with its gray swivel chair waited in front of the window. His old medical books and journals filled the tall bookcases on the inner wall. There was a worn couch and two comfy, faded easy chairs.

“Have a seat.” Joleen closed the door.

The Atwoods did not sit.

They stood in the center of the room, between the couch and her father’s desk. Robert looked more severe than ever. And Antonia, hovering in his shadow as always, looked nothing short of bleak—too pale, her thin brows drawn together. She had clasped her hands in front of her. The knuckles were dead white.

Joleen said, “Antonia? Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes. Fine. Just fine…”

“But you don’t look—”

Robert interrupted, “My wife says she is fine.”

“Well, I know, but—”

“Please. I have something of real importance to propose to you now. I’ll need your undivided attention.”

Joleen did not get it. Antonia looked positively stricken, and all her husband could think about was what he wanted to say? A sarcastic remark rose to her lips. She bit it back. “All right. What is it, Mr. Atwood?”

Robert cleared his throat. “Joleen, after the spectacle I have witnessed today, I find I cannot keep quiet any longer. I have come to a difficult but important decision. It is painfully obvious to me that my grandson cannot get the kind of upbringing he deserves while he is in your care. Antonia and I are prepared to take him off your hands. I’m willing to offer you five hundred thousand dollars to sign over custody of young Samuel to me.”

Chapter 3

Joleen forgot all about Antonia’s distress. She could feel her blood pressure rising. So much for trying to make it work with the Atwoods.

She spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m sorry. I’m sure I could not have heard you right. You did not just offer to buy my baby from me—did you?”

Antonia squeaked. There was no other word for it, for that small, desperate, anguished sound. She squeaked and then she just stood there, wringing her hands.

Robert, however, had no trouble forming words. “Buy your baby? What an absurd suggestion. Of course, I’m not offering to buy Samuel. What I am offering you is a chance. A chance to do the right thing. For your child. And for yourself, as well.”

“The right thing?” Joleen echoed in sheer disbelief. “To sell you my baby is the right thing?”

Robert waved a hand, a gesture clearly intended to erase her question as if it had never been. “I know that you have never attended college—except for a year, wasn’t it, at some local trade school?”

“Who told you that?”

“I have my sources. Now you will be able to finish your education. You’ll be able to do more with your life than run a beauty shop.”

“I happen to like running a beauty shop.”

He looked vaguely outraged, as if she had just told an insulting and rude lie. “Please.”

“It’s true. I love the work that I do.”

He refused to believe such a thing. “I am offering you a future, Joleen. You are a young, healthy woman. You will have other children. My son only had one. Antonia and I want a chance to bring that one child up properly.”

“Meaning I won’t bring Sam up properly.”

“My dear Joleen, you are twisting what I’ve said.”

“I am not twisting anything. I am laying it right on the line. You don’t think I will bring my son up right, so you want to buy him from me.”

“You are overdramatizing.”

Joleen, who, since the loss of her kind and steady father a decade before, had always been the calmest person in her family, found it took all of her will not to start shrieking—not to grab the brass paperweight on her father’s desk and toss it right in Robert Atwood’s smug face.

“My offer is a good one,” Robert Atwood said.

Joleen gaped at him. “I beg your pardon. It is never a good offer when you try to buy someone’s child.”

“Joleen—”

“And what is the matter with you, anyway? Your ‘offer’ is bad enough all by itself. But couldn’t you have waited a day or two? Did you have to come at me on my sister’s wedding day?”

“Please…” croaked Antonia. She looked as if she might cry.

Robert put his arm around her—to steady her or to silence her, Joleen wasn’t sure which. He held his proud white head high. “Once we’d made the decision, the sooner the better was the way it seemed to me. Might as well make our position clear. Might as well get you thinking along the right track.”

A number of furious epithets rose to Joleen’s lips. She did not utter a one of them—but she would, if this man went on saying these awful things much longer.

This conversation can only go downhill, she thought. Better to end it now.

“Mr. Atwood, I’m afraid if you stay very much longer, I will say some things that I’ll be sorry for. I would like you to leave now.”

Antonia made another of those squeaky little noises. Robert squeezed her shoulder and said to Joleen, “I want you to think about what I’ve said.”

I am not going to start yelling at this man, she told herself silently. She said, “I do not have to think about it. The answer is no. You cannot have my child. Not at any price.”

Robert Atwood stood even taller, if that was possible. “My dear, I would advise you not to speak without thinking.”