A Touch of Grace (19 page)

H
olding the flip phone to her ear, Gretchen pulled her Mazda to a stop at a red light. Rush hour traffic bunched up around her as if the Miata was magnetized. One jerk was so close she could practically smell his breath.

Some days she wanted to live in the swamps.

To add to an already tense afternoon, her hyperactive boss had called three times. “I’ve heard rumblings. What do you have on the Isaiah House audit?”

She glanced in the rearview mirror at the idiot riding her bumper. If the guy knew how stressed she was, he’d back off. Road rage was becoming more understandable by the minute.

“The Second Chances report goes on tonight, not Isaiah House.”

“Your favorite councilwoman has sources who claim there is a problem with the audit out there. We need that story.”

Gretchen tensed. Right now, her heart was breaking, her mind was racing, and the last thing she needed was Marian Jacobs interfering with the way she did her job.

“The report is still developing, Mike. I won’t go live without facts.”

“Then get some. We don’t need a popular politician breathing down our necks.”

“When did Marian Jacobs start running the newsroom?”

Mike was silent for so long Gretchen wished she’d kept her mouth shut. When he spoke, the words were terse and to the point.

“Get me a story. Tonight.”

“I can’t.”

“You’re an investigative reporter. A good one. Don’t let a preacher’s pretty face keep you from doing a good job, Gretchen. The public depends on your integrity.”

The man didn’t play fair. He’d gone straight for her most vulnerable spot. People did have a right to know if something was wrong at Isaiah House. Not only were donations at issue, but kids’ lives, as well.

“All right then. I’ll do what I can.” The light changed and the car behind her honked before she could even get her foot off the brake. Grinding her teeth, she accelerated. With one eye on the road, one on her rearview mirror and her ear to the phone, she was about as safe as a turtle on a freeway. She looked for a place to pull off but in this traffic she was stuck.

“How about a strong teaser to run at the end of tonight’s segment?” she said.

Hopefully, after Ian’s secret meeting, she’d have a teaser to send.

“That’ll work. Make it good.”

“You got it.”

Flipping her phone shut, she gunned the Mazda to escape the guy who thought he was Dale Jr., then headed through the narrow streets and across Lake Pontchartrain toward the Treehouse Restaurant.

Promising a strong teaser was easy. Following through could be a little tricky.

The Treehouse was a cozy little place nestled amidst moss-laden oaks and weeping willows. Taking advantage of its name and surroundings, the Treehouse was a two-story structure with an atrium on the first floor. The result was a restaurant whose interior felt like an exterior. Plants, trees, bushes filled the place.

She asked for a table on the second floor and strategically maneuvered to be seated overlooking the atrium. The establishment was moderately busy though Ian had yet to arrive. She searched the faces wondering which person waited for him. And why.

No one looked the least bit suspicious. Voices drifted upward along with delightful smells, but conversations were indistinct.

Not good. She could see and smell, but not hear.

As she was debating a seat change, Ian entered the atrium. Her heart fluttered foolishly. He looked so handsome wearing a sport jacket over a blue shirt. A waitress attired in camouflage shorts and camp shirt showed him to a table where a tall, muscular man sat alone. He stood to greet Ian. Neither of them smiled.

From this distance, a cell phone video was basically worthless. Taking her digital camera, she snapped a photo as the two exchanged tense, polite handshakes.

Something serious was going on all right.

Ian spoke to the waitress and then folded his hands on the tabletop. Though his back was to her, his posture screamed anxiety.

The dark stranger began to talk, but Gretchen could make out nothing. It drove her crazy not to know what was being said. She considered going downstairs, but Ian would see her. There was nothing to do but watch and wait. Later, when she confronted Ian with her evidence, he would have no choice but to explain or lie. She hoped he cared for her enough to tell the truth. Either way, she’d have a teaser.

Not caring one whit about food, she picked the first thing on the menu and quickly placed her order. With the churning in her stomach, she might be sick at any moment.

Eyes glued to the tense scene below, she watched Ian lay something on the table. She strained forward trying to see but couldn’t make out the object. What in the world could it be?

The stranger shifted forward and flipped open his jacket.

Gretchen gasped. Breath froze in her throat.

Snugged close to the man’s side was a shoulder holster, complete with revolver.

She snapped a picture.

Ian was in much deeper trouble than she’d ever dreamed.

“Oh, Ian,” she whispered. “What have you done?”

For once, she was waist deep in a situation that all her inner strength and self-reliance couldn’t handle. Her job demanded that she follow the story to its end and report the truth, even if Ian was a criminal.

Her heart cried to protect the man she loved.

She squeezed her eyes closed. She didn’t know if God would help, but Ian was worth the effort.

Ian stared down at the two identical fish key chains as his world crashed in around him. Collin Grace was painfully familiar. And something deep inside Ian responded to the story he told of a childhood Ian couldn’t fully remember but that sounded frighteningly like the nightmare that haunted him.

He rubbed a hand across his eyes. Was this man his brother?

Collin seemed like a good guy. A SWAT cop, he’d said, from Oklahoma City. A Christian, too. He even gave God the credit for discovering Ian’s whereabouts.

Collin tapped the ichthus. “All three of us were given one of these by the counselor the day we were separated.”

“My parents gave me this key chain when I was in the hospital.”

Collin’s cop eyes, much darker than his own blue ones, narrowed. “Are you sure?”

He wasn’t. He’d never really known where the little token had come from and for some reason he’d never been comfortable enough to ask.

His silence must have been telling because Collin didn’t press. Instead he said, “Why were you in the hospital?”

“Meningitis. When I was five.”

“You remember that? The hospital and all?”

“Sort of. I was pretty sick. But my mother—” He stumbled over the word.
Was
she his mother? “Mom has pictures.”

The waitress brought iced tea. Glad for the interruption, Ian took a sip to clear his dry throat. “Anyone could have a key chain like this. They aren’t exactly rare.”

Collin shook his head. The dark military-style haircut befitting a SWAT cop glistened beneath the restaurant’s bright lights. “Not rare, but old. I haven’t seen another one like it in a long time. But I have other more conclusive evidence.”

Once again Collin reached inside his jacket. This time he withdrew an envelope. “From the welfare office. Bits about the adoption.”

The word adoption screamed at him. Could his entire life have been nothing but an illusion created by adoptive parents? “Bits?”

“I can’t get the originals.” He didn’t look at all happy about that. “Neither can you. The records are sealed. That’s why I’ve had such a hard time tracking you down.”

“None of this makes sense to me. I was old enough to remember something, so why don’t I? And why would my parents lie to me? Why would they be so determined to hide the truth that they sealed the records?”

Another of Collin’s long thoughtful pauses hung in the air between them. “Did you have a good life, Ian? Were your parents good to you?”

He thought of his happy childhood, of the two people
who had adored him and filled him with confidence and love. That didn’t excuse the startling secret they’d kept from him. But that wasn’t what Collin needed to hear and Ian wanted to ease the worry he saw in the man’s face.

“Yes. They were terrific parents.”

A little of the tension seeped out of Collin’s broad shoulders. “During the time I was in foster care, I searched for you, and all the years since. I never stopped hoping that you and Drew had been adopted together. That you’d found a family. I wanted that for you.”

The unspoken pain was there. Collin had grown up in the social system, a lousy place for a kid, though he appeared to have done all right. Apparently the other sibling, Drew, hadn’t found a family, either.

“Have you found Drew?”

A shadow of sorrow slid over Collin’s serious face. “Let’s discuss that later, okay? After I’ve convinced you that we’re brothers.”

Either Drew hadn’t been found or something bad had happened to him. From Ian’s work with runaways, he knew the end result for many troubled kids, especially those lost in the system. Drugs, gangs, crime, lives of desperate dysfunction. He shuddered to think that he might have been one of those statistics.

His gaze dropped to the table.

The copied paper looked like rattlesnakes. He didn’t want to look, and yet he was fascinated. Was his true identity folded inside these few sheets?

Slowly, he unfolded the documents. A worn, curled photo of three little boys looked out at him. His stom
ach went south. He recognized those faces. They haunted his dreams.

He swallowed hard. The document in his hands trembled. As some deep, inner glimmering stirred, Ian glanced up at the dark, intense man.

“It’s you, Ian. And me. And Drew. I took care of you when you were small. Don’t you think I’d recognize you?”

Heart keeping a jungle rhythm against his rib cage, Ian muttered, “We were so young.”

Then he stopped, not ready to admit that his mother had lied to him for years and that he was not at all who he believed himself to be. Yet the evidence lay before him.

And, of course, there was Collin. Something inside him yearned toward this man. He’d always wanted a brother.

“If we’re brothers, why don’t I remember?”

“That’s the puzzle. I don’t know. The meningitis maybe?”

“Is that possible?”

The side of Collin’s mouth lifted. “Lately, I’m finding that all things are possible. I’ve looked for you all my life and now here you are.”

Sweat beaded under Ian’s collar. He slid the documents along with the photo back into the manila envelope. “How long?”

“Every single day of every single week. Since the day the social worker dragged you kicking and screaming out of her office.”

Chills raced up his back. The dream pushed at his mind. Was the nightmare a reality? A repressed memory he’d lived through? Was that why he could never escape it?

He took a breath, tried to get hold of the trembling inside. “Start at the beginning. Tell me what happened.”

Collin studied him for a few seconds, the intense brown eyes weighing what to say and how to say it. His desire to find his long-lost brothers was a palpable thing. Ian didn’t want to disappoint him, and yet the alternative scared him to pieces.

What kind of man would spend his entire life searching for lost siblings? The answer was clear. A man of deep commitment and responsibility who loved his little brothers. The idea made listening a lot easier. If he had to choose a brother, Collin Grace would be a good one.

“The story’s ugly,” Collin said. “Common, but still ugly.” He stirred a spoon of sugar into his tea but didn’t drink. “Our birth mother was a crack addict. I don’t remember when she started. After your dad left I think. I’m not sure. I’m not even sure if he was my dad, too, or only yours. All I remember is that Mama was gone a lot. Sometimes for days. We spent enough time in foster care for me to know that wasn’t the life I wanted for any of us. But that’s what happened.”

Collin went on, telling tales of living in rat-infested houses and old cars. Of going hungry and being scared. But he also told of three brothers whose bond of love had kept them together and fighting for life until welfare stepped in.

Collin spread wide hands on the table. “I tried, Ian. I tried to take care of you and Drew. I tried to keep us together like I promised.”

“You were a kid, too.”

“I was the oldest. You were my responsibility, my
brothers, my best friends. All we had was each other. You needed me.” His voice dropped, low and intense. “I needed you, too.”

Some vagary, just out of reach, scraped at the edges of Ian’s memory. He fiddled with the tiny pewter fish trying to remember something, anything before the time in the hospital. “The day we were separated. That last day…”

“I’ll never forget it. The social worker took us to her office from the school. It was cold outside. I knew—” he tapped his chest with one finger “—I knew what was going to happen but couldn’t do a thing to stop it. You were wearing a plaid flannel shirt and shoes without strings. Little and skinny and unaware that the world was coming to an end. A social worker took you by the hand and started the car, leaving me and Drew behind at the welfare office. When you realized what was happening you started to scream.” Collin squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, his voice grew soft. “I can still hear you screaming my name.”

Collin. Collin. Collin!

Ian heard it, too, deep inside his soul.

And then he knew. As if floodgates had opened, memories tumbled in, one on top of the other, so fast Ian feared he couldn’t contain them all.

His heart pounded so radically, he wondered if he’d have a heart attack.

Collin. His big brave brother. The boy in the dream who comforted him when he cried.

Love mixed with sorrow slammed through him.

“You taught me to tie my shoes,” he murmured through
a mouth dry as cotton. “I was sitting in the sun. In the backyard on something metal.”

Collin leaned forward, face intense. “An old car hood. Blue and rust.”

Ian lifted eyes full of knowledge to stare into the face of his beloved brother. “You stole food for us.”