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“I hardly think Constanzias will storm the town, Tony. I only gave away the one daughter.”
“And how much money have you given away since you won the lottery?”
“I really can’t say.”
Tony couldn’t either, and that was the crux of the problem. He’d fled the stifling environment of McIntosh for Michigan State as soon as he was old enough for college, found excuses not to come home for the summer, settled in Seattle after graduation and had only returned to Ohio for brief visits since.
Even after his father died of a sudden heart attack two years ago, Tony could justify living apart from Sofia. She was still a young woman, her life was in McIntosh and she’d visited him often in Seattle.
A one-dollar lottery ticket she’d bought on a whim after stopping for bottled water at the 7-Eleven had changed everything.
Sofia had beaten fourteen-million-to-one odds by predicting the six correct numbers in the Super Lotto. As the single winner, the ten-million dollar jackpot was hers and hers alone.
The irony that Sofia was the one who’d gotten rich quick didn’t escape Tony. She’d all but supported their family single-handedly while he was growing up. His father had worked sporadically, persisting in the mistaken belief that one of his wacky inventions would make them rich.
Sofia’s stroke of luck had set Tony’s mind at ease about her future. Her lump-sum cash payment was just over three and a half million after federal and state taxes, enough for her to quit her job and be set for life.
But then the reports had started filtering in from his high school friend Will Sandusky, who still lived in McIntosh.
Sofia, it seemed, was a soft touch. So far she’d doled out money to a couple who planned to start a business making custom chocolates, paid off a stranger’s mortgage and sent her friend on a Caribbean anniversary cruise. And now she was inviting trouble.
At this rate, she’d lose her newfound fortune before a few years were out.
Tony rubbed his forehead to ward off a brewing headache. “Sofia, you really don’t see a problem here?”
“Is everything all right, Tony?” His girlfriend Ellen Fitzsimmons stuck her beautiful blond head around the door frame, her question drowning out his stepmother’s reply.
She held a wine goblet in her right hand, and the overhead light caught the rich red hue of the merlot. It reminded him that he’d originally intended to break out a bottle of champagne to cap off an evening that had begun at a trendy French restaurant he’d booked a week in advance.
“Just a second, Sofia,” he told his stepmother. He covered the receiver, futilely wishing Ellen had stayed in the living room. “Everything’s fine, Ellen. I’ll be just a few more minutes.”
She hesitated, but then left the room on three-inch heels, the skirt of her dress swirling around her slender legs. Tony waited until she was gone to speak into the receiver. “I’ll tell you what the problem is. Fake Constanzias who’ll want a piece of your fortune.”
“Tony, dear, it’s not like I won a Powerball jackpot.” Sofia sounded amused. “And there aren’t that many women named Constanzia.”
“We talked about this when the private investigator couldn’t find out anything, remember? He said the adoptive parents might not have kept the name Constanzia.”
“He didn’t know that for sure. Besides, I have to take the chance. I don’t have much information to go on.”
“You’re inviting pretenders.”
“But I’ll know if someone’s trying to put one over on me. I have a picture of her in my head, Tony. When I close my eyes, I can almost see what she looks like.”
Tony’s head throbbed, and he rubbed his forehead with two fingers. “When, Sofia? You’ve been looking for Constanzia since I was in college. The P.I. I hired couldn’t find her. What makes you so sure she’ll show up?”
“Besides the power of publicity?” she asked, then answered herself. “I have faith.”
“Do you know how vulnerable that faith makes you to an impostor?”
“If it’ll make you happy, dear, I’ll ask Constanzia to show me her driver’s license.”
“It’s easy to get a fake ID,” he said, trying not to sound frustrated. He knew how much finding Constanzia meant to Sofia. Hell, there was nothing he wanted more for her. But if a top-notch P.I. couldn’t locate her, chances were slight that a mention on a television program would. “Anybody with access to the Internet can call up a dozen sites that will do it for you.”
“Oh, Tony. You’re being dramatic. Do you honestly believe somebody would pretend to be my daughter just because I have a little money?”
He stifled a groan at her definition of multimillions as a “little” money. “Yes, I do believe that.”
Her sigh was audible even over the phone line. “I wish you weren’t so cynical, Tony.”
“I wish you weren’t so trusting.”
“Let’s not argue. I see you so seldom that even our time on the phone is precious to me. Have I told you lately that I miss you?”
“I miss you, too,” he said while he faced the inevitable. He needed to go back to McIntosh to make sure a fraud didn’t worm her way into Sofia’s life. He felt confident he could run off most of the pretenders with a show of bluster. And as a last resort, there was always DNA testing. He took a deep breath, then forced out the words. “In fact, it’s time I paid you a visit.”
Even as he made the declaration, he knew he’d used the wrong word. This wouldn’t be a visit, but an indefinite stay.
His stomach twisted at the thought. He’d worked hard to escape the place where the shadow of his fabulously unsuccessful father hung over him like a dark curtain.
And he’d succeeded. He made a very good living running an online security company featuring a protocol he’d developed to verify the identities of remote users. The company was so successful, the college friend he’d hired to help run the business had been pushing him to expand.
While Tony couldn’t stay away from his Seattle headquarters indefinitely, he’d been itching to take some time to redesign the company’s Web site. And he could run Security Solutions from anywhere as long as he had Internet access. Including McIntosh.
“A visit from you would be lovely.” Sofia paused. “As long as you realize I know you’re coming to McIntosh to keep an eye on me.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“If playing watchdog is what it will take to get you here, I can live with it,” she said agreeably.
He talked to his stepmother for another five minutes in which she deftly sidestepped his questions about her finances. She was especially evasive about the local financial planner she’d insisted on hiring instead of the one Tony had found for her in Columbus. One more thing to check up on, he thought.
He reluctantly rejoined Ellen in the living room when he hung up, not looking forward to the coming conversation.
She’d crossed one leg over the other, and her slim gold ankle bracelet glinted in the soft light of the living room. She gazed up at him through expertly made-up lashes. Even though her wineglass was half-full, her pink-tinted lipstick looked fresh.
“Can I top off your glass?” Her musical voice was as perfect as the rest of her. They’d been dating for seven months, ever since she’d approached him at the health club they both used. His initial impression of her, as a woman who went after what she wanted, had turned out to be correct.
“No, thanks. I need to make it an early night.”
Her perfectly shaped eyebrows lifted in question. She had every right to expect that this Saturday night, as countless others before it, would end in his bed. Sundays, they usually spent together.
“Has something happened? Is that why you took so long on the phone?”
He sat down next to her on the buttery-soft leather sofa in front of a fireplace that didn’t blaze and filled her in on his conversation with Sofia, ending with his plan to return to McIntosh.
“Is that really necessary, Tony?” she asked. “Sofia’s forty-one. That’s only fourteen years older than you. She can take care of herself.”
He pressed his lips together, wondering how best to explain. Ellen would understand better if she knew Sofia, but he’d somehow failed to get them together.
“You don’t know her, Ellen. She has a big heart and a trusting nature. Not a good combination for somebody who just came into millions of dollars.”
“But you were just there last month.”
“Last month she hadn’t announced on television that she was looking for her daughter,” he said.
She set her wine goblet on the glass top of his coffee table, then crossed her arms over her chest. “How long will you be gone?”
“Try to understand, Ellen.” He laid a hand on her arm, which felt cool to the touch. “I need to stay as long as Sofia needs me.”
“But I thought you hated McIntosh. Didn’t you tell me that leaving was all you could think about when you lived there?”
Now wasn’t the time to confide that even the three days he’d spent in McIntosh after Sofia won the lottery had been too long. He composed his words carefully. “How I feel about McIntosh and how I feel about my stepmother are different things.”
“So you’re going to let things here slide? What about expanding your company? And the house? At that price, it won’t stay on the market for long.”
He’d forgotten about the sprawling, contemporary house until this moment. It needed a new roof and a new heating system, but its spectacular views of the Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains made it a bargain.
“There will be other houses,” he said.
She got gracefully to her feet. Her blue eyes locked with his. “In my experience, Tony, if you don’t seize your opportunities when the moment is right, you lose them.”
After she was gone, Tony went into his bedroom, reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a small black velvet box. He snapped it open, removed an oval-cut, one-carat diamond ring and held it up to the light so that it sparkled.
He’d been carrying the diamond around for the better part of two weeks, the same length of time he’d kept the champagne in the refrigerator.
He shut the ring back in the box, opened his sock drawer and tossed the box inside next to a blank application for season tickets to the Seattle Supersonics pro basketball games. It would have to stay there until he returned from McIntosh.
THE BEAUTIFUL rolling countryside of McIntosh and Sofia Donatelli’s heart-tugging plea replayed in Kaylee’s mind at odd moments over the next week, but her own predicament was much more pressing.
Joey’s tummy ache had not been caused by too many hot dogs but by a lingering stomach flu the pediatrician claimed wasn’t serious. That was a matter of opinion.
The restaurant where she was a waitress provided a sorely deficient benefits package. Not only had she been forced to pay fifty percent of the doctor’s bill out of her own shallow pocket, but she’d lost tips by staying home to care for Joey.
Not that the tips had been all that great since Dawn’s departure forced her to change to an earlier shift. Even if Joey hadn’t gotten ill, she needed to face the fact that they could no longer afford to live in Fort Lauderdale.
She’d spent the last few nights agonizing over where they could go. The inescapable conclusion was her father’s house in Houston that she’d fled while still a teenager.
Kaylee had doubts over whether they’d be welcome, but last night she had swallowed her pride and telephoned, only to get the answering machine. So far, her father hadn’t called her back.
For Joey’s sake, she tried to shove aside her worries. Her forced smile strained the corners of her mouth after she and Joey got out of the serviceable ten-year-old Honda she’d bought used five years ago.
“What do you want for dinner, sport?” she asked as she opened the mailbox in front of her duplex and took out a stack of envelopes and junk mail.
She’d picked up Joey from school ten minutes ago and worried that his color still wasn’t right. Had her boss’s insistence that she not miss another day of work caused her to rush his return?
“Fish sticks,” he said.
She hid a groan. He’d eat fish sticks seven days a week if she let him. But at least they were cheap and easy to prepare.
“Yummy, yummy, yummy. Joey wants fish sticks in his tummy,” she said, ruffling his thick hair.
He groaned. “I’m not three, Mom.”
“Too bad. When you were three, you laughed at my jokes even if they were bad.”
“They’re bad,” he agreed readily.
She covered her heart with her hand. “You wound me,” she said dramatically.
Joey giggled, that high-pitched boyish noise that never failed to warm her heart.
“Got you,” she said.
He giggled again. She ushered him from the mugginess of the late afternoon into the duplex, which was only slightly cooler because she kept the thermostat on a high setting during the day to save on electricity.
Had she really been living here for six years? It seemed impossible but her rapidly growing son constituted proof of how quickly the time had passed.
Still, she could barely believe that almost seven years had passed since she’d ditched her high school classes and spent the day at the mall charging purchases to the credit card she’d stolen from her mother’s purse. She’d felt completely justified because her mother had grounded her for some reason she couldn’t remember but at the time seemed grossly unfair.
Night had fallen when she finally returned home to find her father sitting in his favorite recliner with the TV off and the lights out. His voice had been steady when he told her he’d given up trying to track her down hours ago.
She remembered the fingernails of her right hand digging into her thigh as he went on to say her mother had collapsed that morning while waiting in line at the post office. She’d probably been dead before she hit the floor.
Following her father’s lead, Kaylee hadn’t cried. Neither had she told him her last words to her mother.
After the funeral, things had gone downhill fast. Without her mother around telling her what to do, Kaylee had done what she pleased. Within a month, she’d bagged her senior year and run off to Florida. Then she’d gotten pregnant.
A kind social worker had gotten Kaylee a bed in a home for unwed mothers run by a charitable organization that also helped her get her GED. If not for the stroke of fate that had landed Dawn in the same home, Kaylee would have made the biggest mistake of her life.
As the two girls had cried together over the children they’d never see grow up, somehow their tears had nourished their own emergence into adulthood. Then Dawn had come up with the radical, wonderful idea that they live together and help each other raise their babies.
And so they had, a situation that had worked out beautifully until Dawn had fallen in love. Kaylee owed Dawn more than she could ever repay so she’d tried to be happy for her. And she was. But that didn’t stop her from being sad for herself.
Not because Kaylee craved a man of her own—she’d learned the hard way that romantic entanglements could cause more problems than they solved—but because she’d lost her family.
Kaylee crossed the main room to the controls on the wall, turning the air conditioning up but only far enough that they wouldn’t break a sweat. She hoped.
She banished thoughts of Dawn, who she’d assured just yesterday over the phone that she was doing well, and concentrated on her greatest joy: her son.
She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat that the old memories had formed. She hadn’t truly recognized how badly she’d treated her own mother until she became a mother herself.
“What did you do in school today, Joe-Joe?”
In answer, the child knelt beside the backpack he’d dumped on the floor, opened it and took out a piece of paper.
Joey was a surprisingly good artist with a keen eye for the physical characteristics that made a person an individual. He’d drawn two people holding hands, and she clearly recognized them as herself and Joey.
“Miss Jan said to draw the people in my family,” he explained.
