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“I’m going to warm up my tea,” she said. “Care for a refill?”
He shook his head. “You said you lost your dad when you were twelve?”
She nodded over her shoulder, and he winced inwardly as a wary expression darkened her pretty features. What did she know? he wondered. Had the look been prompted by something she suspected…about him?
He thought of that old saying— Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you—and wondered again if her visit here had been happenstance…
…or part of a plan.
And speaking of plans…
“Your father must have planned well for you and your mom.”
Brow furrowed, she gave him a sidelong glance. “Planned well?”
“Well, you seem to have done pretty well for yourself. House that’s free and clear of bank attachments, a successful business… Did you go to college, Kasey?”
“Sure did. Graduated the University of Maryland with a BS in business administration.”
“Well, it’s not as expensive as Harvard, but the tuition sure ain’t free.”
Her frown deepened. “True.” Kasey perched on the arm of the sofa, wrapped both hands around her mug. “My tuition wasn’t paid with funds from my dad’s estate, if that’s what you’re implying. He was a good, hardworking man, but he wasn’t rich. Not by a long shot.”
She focused on some unknown spot behind him. “We had bills, lots of them. In fact, we found bills we didn’t even know we had until after he died.”
Clearing her throat, she stood, walked around to the front of the couch and sat down. “Which is why, first chance I got, I wrote a check to that mortgage company.”
“Sorry,” Adam said. “Didn’t mean to pry.”
She met his eyes and sent him a smile so warm, so sweet, it made his heart ache. Oh, to have a woman like this…so kind and nurturing, so resourceful and dedicated…for his very own!
“You’re not prying, exactly,” she said offhandedly.
“So you made it through college on scholarships, then?”
That made her laugh. “No. I did okay in the grades department, but not okay enough to earn scholarships.”
That surprised him, a fact that must have shown on his face.
“Oh, I think if I’d had the luxury of time to study, time to turn in detailed reports, if I’d had a dad at my elbow, making sure I’d dotted all the I’s and crossed all the T’s, I probably could have done better in school.”
Shame and remorse thudded in Adam’s chest.
“I had to work two, sometimes three, part-time jobs to help out. Mom did what she could, but she’s never been particularly healthy….”
There had never been any indication that Mrs. Delaney was anything but hale and hearty. “What’s wrong with her?”
Kasey shrugged. “Little of this, little of that. My grandmother always blamed it on self-pity. Me? I call it loneliness.”
Mortified, Adam scrubbed both hands over his face. If the woman was lonely, there could be but one reason.
“Lonely for what, I never quite figured out,” she tacked on.
He raked his fingers through his hair, waiting, hoping she’d explain.
“My folks didn’t have the most loving, romantic relationship in the world.” A harsh, nervous laugh punctuated the statement. “And if you had known them, you’d realize what an understatement that is!
“They rarely spoke, and when they did, it was only to insult one another. So it took me by surprise how hard my mom was hit by my father’s death.”
Kasey hugged her legs to her chest, rested her chin on her knees. “I’ll never forget the look on my mother’s face when the grim-faced cop arrived on our front porch to deliver the news,” she whispered.
She met Adam’s eyes. “She looked so lost and alone—like a little girl. It frightened me so much.” She sighed. “Turned out she loved him in her own way, despite all their problems.”
Adam didn’t know what to say, and so he said nothing.
“I was a mess, crying and blubbering like a two-year-old. Mom was too distraught to provide much comfort. Things only got worse the next day, when the cop came back to tell us about the evidence the department had found all around the railroad tracks.”
“Evidence?” His heart thundered. What did she know…and could she connect him to that night? He recalled the article in The Baltimore Sun and the other papers. “Evidence of what?”
“Cigarette butts, footprints and pieces of a pumpkin, of all things, in the cemetery near the tracks.”
Holding his breath, Adam waited for her to hit him, square between the eyes, with the accusation.
“The police found what was left of a scarecrow-type dummy, just down the tracks from the graveyard. They figured it was just a silly Halloween prank—kids probably, who were curious to see how far the train would carry their ingenious little creation. At the time, the cops decided the shock of thinking it had been a real person in front of his engine scared my dad so badly, he had a heart attack.”
What did she mean “at the time”? Adam stiffened, waiting for further explanation.
But she shook her shoulders, instead, as if casting off the dour turn the conversation had taken. “Enough about me,” she said in a deliberately brighter voice. “Tell me how you got interested in medicine. Were you a fan of Marcus Welby, M.D. reruns?”
He’d seen the television show a time or two and had enjoyed it, but he hadn’t made a career choice because of it. He hadn’t gone the route of most students interested in medicine, who, after interning in pediatrics or obstetrics or geriatrics, changed their specialty until they found one that “fit.” Adam had known almost from the morning after that life-changing night which field he’d choose.
But how could he explain that to Kasey?
Just then, the oven timer began chiming.
“Oh, my,” Kasey said, dashing into the kitchen to turn it off. “I must have pushed the wrong button when I was looking for the overhead light.”
Saved by the bell, Adam thought. With any luck, when Kasey came back to her perch on the couch, she wouldn’t pick up where she’d left off.
“I wish there was some way to call home. They’ll be so worried.”
“They?”
Nodding, she snuggled back into her corner of the sofa. “My mom and Aleesha. Who knows what they’re thinking, what with this storm and all. And it’s the night before Halloween.”
The night before Halloween. Fifteen years ago tonight, Adam, Luke, Wade and Travis were huddled in Buddy’s basement, making plans for “the great prank,” each agreeing to bring one element vital to its success….
“Well, you know how it is in Maryland,” he said. “Chances are fair to middlin’ it isn’t even raining in Ellicott City.”
His words seemed to reassure her, for she sent him a small smile.
“True. Still, I’ve never been gone this long without telling them where I was. They’re probably thinking something terrible happened to me.”
“And maybe because they know you so well, they’re thinking you’re a feet-on-the-ground kind of gal who’s riding out the storm in a safe place.”
“You’re very sweet to say that.”
The warmth of her gaze lit a fire in his soul, and as much as he wanted to warm himself by it, it was a blaze Adam knew he had to tamp, immediately.
“So who’s this Aleesha person you mentioned?”
“She’s seventeen now, but I met her three years ago, when I volunteered for the Big Sister program in Baltimore. Her parents died in a house fire at just about the same time my dad was killed. She’d been bounced from foster family to foster family ever since. Poor little thing doesn’t even remember her folks, she was so small when she lost them.”
Kasey hadn’t said her father died, he noticed; she’d said he’d been killed. All the more reason not to stoke what he was beginning to feel for her, because sooner or later, she’d find out he was one of the killers.
“Aleesha and I hit it off, right from the get-go,” Kasey continued. “She’s the most wonderful, loving girl. She has some problems but we’re working around them.”
“Problems? What kind of problems?”
“Learning disabilities, for starters. Plus, she’s very myopic, and wears braces on her legs. I adopted her just over a year ago.”
“Legally?”
She gave one nod. “Legally.”
So the girl who’d grown up without a dad had learned enough about loving, about giving, to share her life—her self—with a needy child. “You’re something else, Kasey Delaney. Something else.”
She blushed, waved his compliment away. “Seemed the least I could do. I mean, God has been pretty good to me.”
God? Adam failed to see what God had to do with who and what Kasey had become. Seemed to him she was self-made, that she’d fought adversities of all kinds, and won—and Adam said so.
“No.” She said it emphatically, in a no-nonsense voice. “I am what I am, if you’ll pardon the Popeye quote, because God saw fit to give me my own little miracle.”
What kind of nonsense was she spouting? She’d seemed perfectly rational and reasonable, until that “miracle” business came out of her mouth. It was ridiculous enough to be laughable. “A miracle, huh?” he asked, hoping the sarcasm he felt didn’t show in his voice.
“Yup. In the form of a generous, anonymous benefactor.”
Adam’s heart beat harder. A generous, anonymous benefactor. So she did know about him! But how? He’d been so careful about his deliveries.
“For fifteen years now, once a month, someone has been leaving money in our mailbox.” She held up her hands. “I know, I know, it sounds like something out of a Dickens novel, but it’s true! He started small, just a few dollars at first, and worked his way up. Last envelope contained over a thousand dollars. Cash.”
Adam swallowed, hard.
“I have a pretty good idea who he is, too.”
He held his breath, grateful for the semidarkness that hid his blush. “But how…how do you know it’s a ‘he’?”
She grinned and tapped a fingertip to her temple. “Two and two, Dr. Thorne, usually equals four.”
“I—I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Well, we have this neighbor, see, and after Dad died, he began looking in on us. A lot. Never had two words to say to us before that night—unless you count boyhood pranks—and then suddenly, the day after Dad was killed, he came over to ask if Mom and I needed anything. Day after that, we found an envelope with ten dollars in it stuffed into the mailbox.
“A month or so later, he cut our grass—using his lawn mower and gas!—and we got fifteen bucks in the next envelope. Another time, he trimmed the hedges, and, yep, a couple days later, there was a twenty-dollar bill in the mailbox.”
“That was…nice of him.”
“Not was,” she corrected. “He’s still doing it!” Kasey laughed softly. “Not the chores, of course. He’s a big important businessman now, far too busy for that kind of stuff. But he’s still leaving envelopes full of money every month.”
Adam cleared his throat. “Very…uh, very generous man.”
“I’ll say. If it hadn’t been for him, I would never have been able to afford to go to college. When Mom was able, she’d take in ironing, decorate cakes, things that didn’t tax her delicate system too terribly….”
There was no mistaking the sarcasm in her voice. Kasey didn’t believe for a minute that her mother had a physical condition that prevented her from working. And yet, she’d taken care of the woman all these years. He had to wonder why a girl who’d suspect her own mother’s intentions had such complete faith in the do-gooder from across the street.
“I always managed to find steady work, and pretty much kept the wolf from the door, as they say. But college?” She shook her head. “No way that would have been possible without him.”
It gave Adam a good feeling, knowing his monthly contributions to the Delaney household had served the intended purpose: to make life easier for Kasey and her mom. Suddenly, it didn’t matter who got the credit.
“I say a little prayer for him, every morning. Say another one every night, before I turn in.”
Did she have any idea what she was doing to him, sitting there, pretty as a picture, telling him things like she’d been praying for his miserable soul? Looking into her innocent, trusting eyes, it made him ashamed. So ashamed that he would’ve stood up and walked right out of the room…if there had been anywhere else to go.
“I just wish I knew for sure that it was the man across the street.”
He leaned forward, drawn closer by the sincerity of her tone. “Why?”
Her eyes misted with tears and yet she smiled. “Because I’d like to tell him that, much as we appreciated everything he did for us, we don’t need his help anymore, that we’re doing fine on our own, thanks to him.”
“And this man across the street…what makes you think it might not be him?”
She shrugged one shoulder, wiped the tears from her eyes. “Well, he must know that I’ve guessed what he’s been up to all this time, and yet he seems to think it’ll buy him certain—” she frowned “—favors.” Kasey shrugged. “That just doesn’t quite jibe with the kind of man who’d leave regular payments.”
“What kind of favors?”
“Oh, nothing, really. Drops in last-minute for meals. Stops by unannounced with laundry, mending. Things like that.” She frowned and a huge sigh whispered from her. “He has enough money to buy and sell Mom and me ten times over. And his lifestyle, well, that’s another story altogether!”
“His lifestyle?”
“It’s…well, let’s just say it doesn’t fit the profile of—”
“—a generous benefactor,” they said together.
After a moment of friendly laughter, Kasey said, “I’ll bet you’ve heard of him. Buddy Mauvais?”
A punch to the gut couldn’t have knocked the wind out of him more effectively. Yeah, he’d heard of Buddy Mauvais, all right. Anybody who hadn’t been living in a cave these past ten years knew Buddy…as a two-bit con man. But Adam had a whole different reason to know the name that had appeared in countless newspapers, and been mentioned on local TV news stations every time a crooked stock deal or a get-rich-quick scheme scammed some poor fool. Somehow, Buddy always managed to slither through one legal loophole after another. Not that it surprised Adam; Buddy had been lying and conniving his way out of trouble since he was a boy.
Why hadn’t Adam made the connection earlier? He’d known all along that Buddy lived across the street from the Delaneys. That’s one reason he’d been so careful when dropping envelopes in their mailbox; he wouldn’t have put it past good old Buddy to steal the money, if he’d seen Adam delivering it!
