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“I’m supposed to believe that because you, practically a stranger, say so? And what’s next? You’re going to tell me she wants her back? No way. Your sister, if she really is Stella’s birth mother, gave up her parental rights. The adoption was finalized nearly two years ago.”
“My sister is dead.”
“I’m sorry.” Marc’s voice had lost some of its edge. “But what do you want?”
Some family to love and to love me. She couldn’t say that. He’d think she was unstable. “To be part of Stella’s life, as her aunt, like your sisters,” Fiona answered.
He ignored her answer. “Can you prove it?”
“That Stella is Mairi’s daughter? I think so. I have information and documents and photos of Mairi at Stella’s age.” The last part sounded like she was grasping at straws. “Can we meet?”
“Not until I talk with a lawyer. Don’t call me. I’ll call you.” His phone clicked off.
That hardly could have gone worse. She leaned on the counter. So much for the fantasy she’d concocted on the drive home after Marc had dismissed her at the birthing center. A fantasy of her becoming part of the Delacroix family, of Stella staying over at her apartment, them exploring things together as she and Mairi had. A fantasy of Marc welcoming her help with Stella so he could put in more time on his restaurant launch.
Fiona slapped the countertop. But Stella was family. The only family she had, and she was going to fight to be in her life. It’s what she did, what she’d always done—fight to keep her family together.
* * *
Marc met Claire on her doorstep when she got home from work. He’d hated to drop Stella on his mom again, despite her insisting it was fine, but he needed to talk with someone away from little ears. And who got him better than his twin?
She eyed the bag from the Chinese restaurant around the corner from her apartment in Ticonderoga. “Happy Star? This must be serious.”
“More than you could guess.” Marc rose from his seat on the steps and followed his sister upstairs and into the kitchen.
“Get the food out, and I’ll get us drinks.” Claire opened the refrigerator. “I have lemonade, root beer and milk, or I can brew you a cup of coffee.”
“Root beer’s good.” He took the plastic cartons out of the bag and placed them on the table. “How well do you know Fiona Bryce?”
Claire raised an eyebrow suggestively as she placed the drinks on the table.
“Not like that.” Although the slight trip of his heart contradicted the force of his response.
“Just as a coworker. She seems nice, good at her job. We had lunch together the other day.” Claire hesitated. “From something she let slip about moving a lot, I got the feeling she may have had a rough childhood. But she seems like someone I could be friends with.”
He pressed his lips together. “Would you say she’s honest?”
Claire opened her food container and studied the contents. “As far as I know. Why?”
Marc took a slug of his drink. His throat was suddenly parched. “She says she’s Stella’s aunt.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh and then some.”
“Do you think she’s telling the truth?”
For whatever reason, even without proof, he did. “Possibly. If you’ve noticed, her hair is exactly like Stella’s and she says she has information and documents and photos of her sister as a child that look like they could be of Stella.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why I’m talking to you, to help me decide. I called the lawyer who handled the adoption. She assured me that I’m rock solid on it.”
“You think Fiona wants to challenge it?”
“I don’t know. She said she only wants to be part of Stella’s life as her aunt.” And he’d believed her. Or wanted to believe her, anyway.
“Could she be after money?”
He hadn’t thought of that. He laughed. “If so, she’ll have an uphill battle with that. Everything I own is sunk into the restaurant partnership and a job that’s dependent on what’s currently an empty shell of a building.” The sarcastic humor drained from him. “She wants to get together to talk.”
“Just the two of you? Is that wise?”
He bristled at his twin challenging him. “I’d rather start off keeping it private and civil, not drag Stella through some kind of legal battle.”
Shades of his mother and no less irritating, Claire patted his hand. “I understand. I meant you and Fiona could get together with a mediator.”
He stabbed a broccoli stalk. “Are you suggesting Renee? I know she’s a qualified counselor, but I’m not comfortable with our baby sister mediating my life.”
She slapped the hand she’d been patting. “Not Renee. I was thinking Connor.”
“Fiona might not agree. I haven’t seen her at Sunday services.” He would have remembered.
“That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t agree.”
“I guess. She may prefer someone else, like her pastor, if she belongs to another church.”
“You said Fiona wants to be part of the family, so play the family angle. Connor is Stella’s uncle, but by marriage, so he’s one level removed.”
“You might have something there. I’ll call the lawyer again and run that by her, see what she thinks about Christian mediation before anything legal. And speaking of family, keep this between the two of us for now. If and when anyone else needs to know, I’ll tell them.”
“Okay, mum’s the word.” Claire ran her thumb and forefinger across her lips.
Marc pushed away his food container. Supper had lost what little flavor it had had. He pulled out his cell phone. “It’s not six yet. If you don’t mind, I’m going to go into the other room and see if I can catch the lawyer before she leaves. I’ll let you know later what I decide.”
“That’s fine. I’ll be praying for you and Stella.”
“I appreciate it,” he said, powering up his phone to see Stella’s baby face smiling at him from the screen. He didn’t want to admit it, but he could see Fiona in her. He was going to need all the prayers he could get.
Chapter Three (#uab09f0e3-f685-5dee-9013-ef003b10b605)
Lost in her thoughts, Fiona almost missed the turn into the Hazardtown Community Church parking lot. Meeting with Pastor Connor seemed like a good idea. Marc had contacted her all businesslike on Monday with a couple items his partners wanted to include in the contract between the research farm and the restaurant partnership. Then he’d tackled the elephant in the room with an invitation to talk with him and Pastor Connor tonight about her claim that Stella was her niece.
Stepping from her car, she kicked a muddy chunk of snow out of her path. She knew in her heart that the little girl was her niece. And she had no intention of contesting Stella’s adoption. After her failure with Mairi, she didn’t want the responsibility of Stella, only to be part of her extended family.
Fiona walked into the church, the door closing behind her with a soft thud. The pastor’s office was almost directly in front of her, as Marc had told her on the phone. Or she assumed it was the pastor’s office. The door was open, but she didn’t see anyone, only a desk with a computer and some bookshelves.
She stood in the doorway bumping her knee against her briefcase. It was nearly six thirty, the time they’d set. She knew she was in the right place. Marc had given her the choice of meeting at the pastor’s office here or at his home. When he’d mentioned that the pastor was his brother-in-law, she’d hesitated before deciding they’d be on more equal grounds at the church. Fiona smoothed the wrinkles from the skirt of her green linen dress.
Or maybe not. From what she’d seen, Marc and his family were active in the church. While Fiona considered herself a believer, she hadn’t attended any church regularly since she’d worked in Guam, and then it was more because most of her neighbors and the people she worked with attended services than any real compulsion to be part of a church community.
“Here’s the video of him and Natalie.”
A male voice sounded from behind an almost closed door at the back of the room. A door that at first glance had appeared to lead to a closet. But it had a sign: Pastor’s Office.
“I’ve got one of Stella on the rug in the church hallway this morning after preschool, showing me how she learned to do a somersault.”
Marc. Fiona crossed the outer office toward the men’s chuckles, hungry to see the video of Stella. She stopped herself from barging in and knocked on the door instead.
“Come in,” Pastor Connor said.
She pushed the door open.
“Hi. Take a seat. Marc and I were kid-video warring.”
He handed her his phone as she took the chair next to Marc, facing the desk.
“My son, Luc,” he said, “dancing to my wife’s piano playing.”
The toddler in the video stole her voice for a minute. He was a miniature Marc. “Cute.” She smiled and handed back the phone.
“Obviously, he takes after Natalie’s side of the family, but that’s certainly not a bad thing.”
Another Delacroix sister. Fiona glanced sideways at Marc. No, not a bad thing at all.
“For you, it’s a good thing.” Marc razzed his brother-in-law. “You should be grateful.”
Fiona repositioned herself in her chair, unsettled by the easy back-and-forth between the two men and uncertain that Marc and Connor’s apparent closeness was a good thing for her, if Connor was going to mediate. “So, what did you have in the competition?” she asked, turning to Marc in an effort to join the friendly banter.
He tilted his head, looking confused. “Oh.” He followed her gaze to his phone. “A video of Stella doing a somersault.” He made no move to share it.
She swallowed away the painful tightness in her throat and focused her attention on Pastor Connor.
“Let’s begin with prayer.” He reached his hands across the desk to her and Marc.
Marc took her hand as if it were the perfectly natural thing to do. Maybe it was for them. They were family. She tightened her jaw and curved her fingers around Marc’s hand. She was Stella’s family, too.
“Dear Lord, be with us this evening and, with Your infinite wisdom, give Marc and Fiona and myself the guidance we need to do Your will. In Jesus’s name, amen.”
“Amen,” she whispered, lifting her head when the men released her hands.
“I talked with the lawyer who handled Stella’s adoption,” Marc said, moving a folder from his left to front and center on the desk. “Copies of all of the documents are here.”
“Wait.” Pastor Connor laid his palm on top of the folder. “I have a good idea of what you want out of this meeting, Marc. I need to know what Fiona wants. Then we can get to details.”
“First and foremost, stability.” Fiona paused. “My mother moved us around a lot, looking for something better that she never found. She died when I was nineteen and Mairi was fifteen.” She faltered, not used to talking about her family. “I’m only asking for a part in Stella’s life as her aunt. I don’t want to contest the adoption. I have no doubt it’s valid or that Stella is where she’s supposed to be.”
Marc’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. “You said you had proof Stella’s your niece.”
Connor frowned at the interruption.
“I do.” Fiona lifted her case onto the desktop. “I’ve made copies of everything I have. But I think this is the proof you want.” She lifted the papers from the case and placed them in front of Marc with a photo of Mairi at three and her at seven on top.
He sucked in a breath.
Fiona had felt the same sucker punch when she’d gotten out the battered family photo album Friday after her appointment with Autumn. There was no way anyone could deny the family resemblance.
She’d claimed the album as a child. It had come with her when, after her stepfather had left, her mother had dragged Fiona, Mairi and their baby sister, Elsbeth, all over northern Vermont and New Hampshire from each promised new start to the next. She’d brought it with her when she and Mairi had moved to Ithaca after their mother’s fatal accident, so Fiona could attend college. And the album had made the trip to Guam and back.
She cleared her throat. “Certified copies of my, Mairi’s and Stella’s birth certificates and the Ticonderoga Birthing Center’s record of Stella’s birth,” she said for Pastor Connor’s benefit.
“Where did you get the birth certificate for Stella?” Marc asked. “My understanding is that her original one is in the sealed records at the adoption agency.”
“I don’t know about that. The certificate I have was in an envelope addressed to me with a letter my sister never sent.” Fiona stopped so her voice wouldn’t crack. “I had no idea until I received a package from the lawyer I hired to settle Mairi’s estate. It came the day after we met at the farm.”
The masculine planes of Marc’s face softened. He tapped Stella’s certificate with his finger. “Stella was only eight weeks old when she was placed with us. Your sister couldn’t have kept her long.”
“About a month, according to the information Autumn Hanlon gave me.” Fiona bit her lip. She had no idea where her sister had been for that month. Mairi had checked into the cabin where she died only the evening before. “I think Mairi may have intended to give her baby up for adoption all along, just wanted a little time with her first.”
“You think?”
“She didn’t confide in me.” Fiona’s stomach tightened. Mairi had probably been afraid she’d be disappointed in her, as her letter seemed to say. Fiona had been so strident about neither one of them ending up like their mother. “I didn’t know about Stella.”
Marc’s eyes narrowed. “Over nine months’ time, I think I would have noticed if any of my sisters were pregnant.”
“Marc,” Pastor Connor cautioned.
“During Mairi’s pregnancy, I was in Guam managing the USDA farm there.” She pinned Marc with a gaze. “You know that from my professional profile I gave you. Mairi and I talked and emailed, but after she drove me to the airport for my flight to Tamuning...” She closed her eyes. This time, she couldn’t swallow the emotion that clogged her throat. “I never saw her alive again.”
A warm male hand covered hers, and her eyes flew open to Pastor Connor pushing away from the desk. It was Marc’s hand, giving her hope that despite his antagonism, they could work something out.
“I’ll get you some water,” Pastor Connor said. He left the office.
Marc’s hand tightened on hers. “I’m sorry I was so rude. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Fiona allowed herself to take comfort from his strength and wonder what it would be like to have a man like Marc care for her.
He removed his hand from hers. “I can’t imagine how I’d handle it if it had been one of my siblings. That’s when you came back to the US?”
“I came back for a couple weeks when the authorities contacted me, and then finished my contract in Guam.” She didn’t need to tell him now that her sister had used a false name to rent the cabin, nor how long Mairi had lain in the morgue as a Jane Doe until she could be identified from her fingerprints on record for her nursing license, and while Fiona was located.
“Where do we go from here?” she asked.
“We get together again to work out details.” He sounded as drained as she was.
“I’m willing to work with your lawyer, to put together something official.”
“No, I was thinking along the lines of telling the rest of the family, introducing you to them and Stella. You haven’t really met her, except the other day at the doctor’s office. We’re going to have to handle Stella’s getting to know you carefully.” He dropped his gaze to his hands on the desk. “Since Cate, my wife, died, Stella has verged on being hostile toward women with light-colored hair, who remind her of her mother.”
