Adopt-A-Dad

“Yes, ma’am.”

HE DIDN’T leave her. Michael wasn’t letting Jenny out of his sight, not until the last of the legal documents had been signed. Instead, as she sat with head bent, plowing through questionnaire after questionnaire, he sat at the back of the office and used his cell phone.

Ellie answered on the first ring.

“Michael!” He could hear relief echoing in her voice, and he felt a twinge of guilt. Okay, he should have phoned earlier, he acknowledged. Jenny was right. It never occurred to him that anyone worried about him—it never had, which was a side of his personality that drove his sisters nuts. “Where on earth are you?” Ellie demanded. “I’ve been calling everywhere and you’ve had your phone turned off.”

“I’m not in Austin,” he told her obscurely. “I’m out of town on business.”

“And would this business have anything to do with Jenny Morrow?”

“It might.”

“Then don’t tell me,” she said hastily. “I don’t need to know. What I don’t know I can’t be forced to tell.”

“We’re not talking torture here, I hope, Ellie,” he said, startled, and she gave a reluctant chuckle.

“Not quite. But the people asking questions…they have all the right authority and they’re very insistent. They say Jenny’s taken off and plans to stay in the country illegally.”

“Ellie, how many illegal immigrants do you guess are in the U.S.?” Michael asked slowly. “Rough guess? Ballpark figure?”

“I don’t know. Thousands?”

“That’d be my guess.” He frowned into the phone. “So why do you think there’s all this interest in our Jenny?”

“Our Jenny?”

“She’s my secretary,” Michael said, stifling the impulse to lay claim to a closer relationship. That could wait. “I’d like to know what the heck is going on.”

“I thought you might know,” Ellie said thoughtfully. “Being away from work and all.”

“Ellie, when did I last have time off work?”

“Beats me,” she said. “I don’t think you have. Not since you started here two years ago.”

“Permission to take the rest of the day off, then? With that and the weekend… That should do it. I’ll be back at work on Monday.”

“Should do what?” Her voice rose. “No. Don’t hang up. I take back what I said about not wanting to know. I do. Michael, what’s going on?”

“I want you to find out. You’re closer to the action than I am.”

“There’s a strange woman here,” Ellie said suddenly, as if she was looking around reception as she spoke and her gaze had rested on someone. “Not a bureaucrat. English, upper crust. Mid-sixties. Looks like Wallace Simpson on a good day. Not a hair out of place. Expensively dressed and smooth as silk. You know the type—or maybe you don’t. It’s a female thing—on the surface polite and sweet and a little bit helpless, and underneath as tough as nails. She’s questioning all the staff about where Jenny might be—says she’s Jenny’s mother-in-law, and she’s worried sick.”

“Is she now?” Michael turned away so Jenny couldn’t hear him. “What’s she saying?”

“She thinks Jenny’s run away because the immigration officers have come. She says Jenny’s pregnant and alone, with practically no money. She told me the immigration officials are trying to deport Jenny, and she’s desperate to help her daughter-in-law and her poor little unborn grandchild. So do I know anything I’m not telling the immigration people?”

“What did you tell her?”

“I didn’t tell her anything,” Ellie said frankly. “When she asked the staff in accounts where Jenny might be and they didn’t know, she offered them money. A heap of money. To be honest, she gives me the creeps. So no, she has nothing from me except blank stares. I can be a real dope when I try.”

“Good girl.”

“Don’t patronize me, you toad. Just tell me—”

“Watch her, Ellie,” Michael interrupted. “You’re right not to trust her. I don’t understand yet if there’s just cause, but Jenny’s frightened of her, and Jen doesn’t scare easily. And don’t worry. I’ll see you at work on Monday.”

“Michael!” Ellie’s voice rose in a wail, and Michael grinned and disconnected.

For a change, it wouldn’t hurt Ellie not to know what he’d eaten for breakfast that morning.