Emery Davies cast her eyes down. She was holding back tears as well. “No, you’re right, of course. We can’t understand that. We only know that the loss you must have felt—are still feeling—is unthinkable,” she said softly. She met Josie’s eyes and Josie saw the tears shimmering there. “But please, think of Reed. We’re the only parents he’s ever known. To take him from us would be to detonate a bomb in his life.”
Josie blinked at them, taking a moment to get hold of herself. They both looked so deeply troubled and she wanted to be understanding toward them, she did, and rationally, she was. But there was also this red haze that filled her brain when she looked at them. An unrelenting bitterness and, yes, she could admit it, jealousy, that gripped her and made her want to shake them. To scream. Surely there had been clues that the adoption wasn’t completely legitimate. Had they seen her story on the news? Had they ever wondered just once at the timing . . . had they decided to turn a blind eye? She didn’t know, but she couldn’t help wondering. Couldn’t help the deep hurt that rose up inside her when she thought of how she’d felt during that time, the debilitating grief she’d been crushed under, not knowing whether her baby was dead or alive, if he was suffering, if he was safe. These people could have stopped that pain. These people had been holding her baby while her arms were empty.
These people hadn’t even told him he was adopted. He didn’t know of her existence at all, had never once thought of the unknown woman who’d carried him within her, and that knowledge cut her to the quick. Because she’d fought so long and so hard, every day, rationing and struggling and surviving so she could give her child life. She gripped her hands in her lap as she attempted to gather control of her spinning emotions. “I know you’ve raised him, and to him, you’re his parents. It will be . . . an adjustment, I understand that. I would never remove you from his life. You can visit him in Oxford where I own a farmhouse. You can even help him get settled, make it as easy for him as possible. I’d be grateful if you would.”
The couple shot each other a wide-eyed glance and then Emery Davies bent toward her large purse where it sat on the floor and pulled what looked like a photo album from it. She handed it to Josie. Her hands were shaking. Josie reached out tentatively, taking the book from Emery’s hands. Their eyes met, these two women who desperately loved the same little boy. Josie looked down, a small gasp emerging from her lips when she saw the photo of the chubby baby on the front cover. She ran a shaking hand over it, her eyes greedily taking in every feature of her son’s face.
He looked like Charles, he did, she couldn’t deny that. But he also looked like her. She saw herself in his eyes, in the particular way his cheek muscles bunched when he smiled. Mostly, he was himself, the unrepeatable combination of genetics that had come together to form this perfect, individual boy. “He’s beautiful,” she said, her voice breathy with emotion.
She looked up at Emery and her eyes were glistening with tears. She nodded. “Yes. He is beautiful. And he’s smart, and kind. He’s the most special little boy I’ve ever known.”
Josie smiled, and for just a moment, she felt not a competitiveness with this woman but a bond. She looked down to the book, opening the front cover and looking through the pictures. His baptism, first birthday, grinning with blue frosting smeared across his joyful face, swim lessons, more birthdays, his front teeth missing. Josie flipped each page, more tears flowing, her eyes moving from one happy memory to another. “He’s had a happy life,” she said.
Emery and Jeb Davies nodded in unison, something desperate in their gaze. She knew what it was. She looked away. These were memories. But none of hers. Because she’d been robbed. She deserved the memories she’d make now. And her son deserved to know his mother.
Didn’t he?
She handed the album to Emery but the woman gestured no. “It’s yours. I have copies of all those photos. Please, keep it. I brought it so you could take it home with you.”
Josie slowly took it back. It felt like a consolation prize, like the woman thought the pictures of her son’s life would be enough. They weren’t enough. But she held tightly to it anyway. For right then, it was all she had. “We need to talk about the . . . transfer,” she said. It was such a cold word, but it was the one her attorney had used, and so it was the one she used as well. Defeat appeared on Emery’s face and Josie saw that Jeb tightened his hold on her hand. A tear rolled down the woman’s cheek, but she sat up straight, obviously pulling herself together. Despite herself, admiration rose inside Josie. Emery Davies wasn’t going to crumble. At least not now.
“Please let us tell him,” Emery Davies said softly. “Please. Just give us a week. He doesn’t even know he’s adopted, yet. We were . . . waiting for the right time. And now . . . well, it will all be a blow. A terrible blow. Please, just a week, it’s all we ask,” she said, her voice breaking on the last word.
Josie measured her for a moment, watching the woman struggle, her heart softening even if she didn’t necessarily want it to. It was far more simple to see these people as adversaries than as allies. She knew eventually she would have to see them as the latter for her son’s sake, but right then, she had to do what was easiest or risk falling apart. She nodded. She needed a few days anyway. The last couple had been a whirlwind of emotions and lawyers, and meetings with the police as they broke down exactly how the crime of Caleb’s illegal adoption had been committed. She’d fallen into bed each night and slept like the dead. She still needed to get a room set up for Caleb, figure out how to enroll him in school . . . “Yes, of course. Take a week.” She stood. “My lawyer will be in touch.”
Emery and Jeb Davies stood shakily, and the lawyers followed suit. At the haunted look in Emery’s eyes, Josie again had the sudden desire to reach out to the woman, to comfort her, but she didn’t. She glanced at Zach and he was looking between them, his expression worried, deep conflict in his eyes.
They left the office, and Josie walked with Zach down the hall and outside into the warm, clear day. They headed toward his car and got inside. When he didn’t immediately start the ignition, she turned, looking
at him questioningly. “Are you sure about this?” he asked softly.
She tensed, drew back. “What do you mean, am I sure? God, Zach, I thought you of all people would be on my side here.”
He turned to her, his eyes intense. “I am on your side. Only your side.” He massaged the back of his neck that way he did. “But, Josie, I’m adopted too. I just . . .” He exhaled a pent-up breath. “I always knew I was adopted, but even so, I can’t imagine what it would have felt like to be ripped away from the only family I’d ever known at eight years old. It would have been . . . God, those people were my whole world, Josie. My family. My safety.”
Bitterness and hurt warred in her chest. What he said made her feel like nothing, like she had no right to the child who had been cruelly stolen from her, the child she’d yearned for since he’d been torn from her arms. She knew she was being unfair. She knew it. Zach was just expressing his concerns to her, but she couldn’t help the deep sense of . . . betrayal his words were eliciting. She looked away, out the window. “Of course it will be hard. Don’t you think I know that?” Tears threatened but she held them back. “I’ll get him counseling if I have to. It will take time. I’m prepared for that. But he’s my child, Zach. Mine. And he deserves to know me too.”
She flashed back suddenly to the moment they’d been separated, their cries blending as they’d wailed for each other. Didn’t her child carry that heartbreak too? Wasn’t there something visceral inside of him, a nameless longing that would only be made right by their reunion? Or did she carry that grief alone? For a moment she felt such crushing loneliness she didn’t think she could bear it. “I will not stop fighting for him,” she whispered. “I can’t.” I don’t know how.
“Josie,” he said, his voice throaty as he reached for her. She let him take her hands in his, but they sat limply in his grasp. He looked defeated, still torn. “Stay at my apartment again tonight or I can stay with you.”
She looked away from him, out the front window, feeling empty suddenly, drained of the intense joy she’d been feeling the last few days as she’d basked in the knowledge that she’d found her son, that she was getting him back. She sighed, shook her head, but squeezed Zach’s hands before letting go. “I need to go home. And . . . I need to be alone, Zach. I need that, just for a couple of days.”
His gaze shot to her then. “You can’t be alone. He’s out there.”
Her heart sped. In her short haze of happiness, the whirl of meetings, and information, and planning and dreaming, she’d almost convinced herself Charles Hartsman was gone for good. But she knew very well Reagan was still out there, still counting on the police to find her. Zach had been working around the clock following each flimsy lead they had. The police were currently searching every empty or abandoned house in the city of Cincinnati but hadn’t hit on anything yet.
“I have an alarm now,” she said. “I’ll be okay. Send officers if you have to, but I need to be by myself.” He looked at her knowingly. She didn’t mean by herself. She’d have officers guard her because her safety was still at risk. What she meant was she needed to be without him.
For now. Just for now.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Josie stood back, checking that the picture she’d just hung was straight, adjusting it slightly and then standing back again. It looked so strange, the sight of the painting of a flower field where before her board had hung, littered with lists and numbers, and signifying the hope she’d held in her heart for eight long years. The dream that had finally come to fruition. Her son had been found. He was coming to live with her. That board was a relic of the past. She no longer needed it.
She turned, leaving her room and walking to the bedroom next door, the one she’d been working on for two days to set up for Caleb . . . Reed. She had to start thinking of him as Reed.
She’d called Rain and invited her over for a visit, desperate to keep busy, distracted. There was still no news on Reagan, and her heart was breaking. What had started out as a somewhat awkward visit over coffee and cake had quickly and naturally turned into a gab fest—and a bit of a cry fest—and Josie had given her the rundown about what was going on in her life, unbelievable as it was. Rain had seen the story on the news, of course, and though she was shocked, she was also incredibly supportive. Josie was so glad she’d reached out, confided in her, made a new friend. Rain had offered to help with the room, and as they’d worked, she’d told Josie the details of her own life, her recent divorce, how her husband had been physically abusive toward her, how she’d packed up her car, driven to her mother’s, and never looked back. How she, too, was starting over in Oxford.