That answer was just as plausible as his own theories—more even, because it summed up all the moving pieces. And yet it presented a devastating reality for her, and he desperately wanted something different to be the truth. “Don’t run that direction, Shannon. It will eat you alive. Suspend judgment for now. Let us figure this out so you’ll know, and then you can deal with the actual truth, not guesses.”
“Who’s my real father?”
Matthew would have closed his eyes if he were not driving. “Jeffery doesn’t know,” he replied. He glanced over to her. “Do you want to know?”
“Yes.”
“You can ask your mother.”
“No,” she whispered.
Matthew pondered the options, but none were particularly good. “My firm can find out,” he finally said. “Twenty-eight years ago, who was in your mother’s life? Work out the possibilities from there, figure out how to get a DNA sample from the most likely possibilities—a tossed-out coffee cup or water bottle, for starters—then run discreet DNA tests to confirm a suspicion until there’s a yes.”
“I need to know.”
“I’ll make a call.”
She was crying and trying to do so quietly. And she was breaking his heart. He retrieved the box of Kleenex he’d put in the car. “Your tears aren’t going to bother me . . . well, not too much,” he said with an attempt to lighten the mood. “Go ahead and let them come. You’ll feel better afterwards. I have that on good authority from Becky—tears are helpful.”
Shannon wiped her eyes. “Quit being nice, okay?” she whispered.
It was a good thing he was driving or he’d wrap her in a hug and not let go . . . and wasn’t that a tough twist to deal with? He settled for reaching over, lightly brushing a hand down her arm. “It will eventually be okay, Shannon. That I can promise you. Even this eventually gets better.”
“Yeah.” She found another tissue. “Don’t look my way when my face gets all splotchy with crying.”
The ache in his heart eased a bit. Vanity he could deal with. He offered her a small smile. “I’ll think kind thoughts even if you look like you’ve cried a river.”
She attempted a smile in return. “And what an image that gives. I’m probably going to do so tonight.” She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes again. “I’d like to bawl, and won’t that be a pleasant thing.” She blew her nose and rested her head back against the seat.
He saw her eyes were closed but she was still crying. He didn’t say anything. She needed to cry, needed the pain to wash out tonight so that tomorrow she could begin picking up the pieces. She’d taken the worst hit he could imagine and was going to get through it. He’d figure out a way to help her do that. She’s shown him repeatedly that she was a survivor. She’d make it past even this.
The sun was coming up. Matthew stopped and bought her a pair of sunglasses as they looped east, back into Chicago. She’d cried her heart out over the course of the night’s drive—her eyes had to be burning.
She’d finished a sport drink and ate some of the oatmeal cookies he’d tucked in a ziplock bag in anticipation of a long drive. He’d get some real food in her when he could. They would be back to the apartment within the hour.
“Matthew?”
He’d hoped she was dozing, as she’d been silent the last half hour. He looked over at her. “Hmm?”
“My friend should have called by now. I think she’s dead. Tell Paul I’ll give him what I have tomorrow.”
There was no emotion left in her voice, but he could read the body language: drooped shoulders and folded arms, the break in her voice. Her sadness was overwhelming.
“I’ll tell him, Shannon,” he said gently. “You can take another day if you need it before you talk with him.”
She shook her head. “It’s time.”
He reached over for her hand, squeezed it. “I’m sorry.”
She gave a jerky nod.
There was nothing he could say that would help. She’d been holding on to hope for so many days. To give up had to feel like a betrayal, of accepting a reality she so wished to change. He wondered how many prayers God had just let pass by with the continued silence from her friend. He’d like to know her name, details about how Shannon knew her. But those questions would only make this moment worse, so he put them aside.
“One thing, Matthew—I’m still not prepared to tell Paul the address where I was to be taken. All that answer does right now is open up more questions.”
“I promised to keep that address between you and me, and it will stay that way until you tell me otherwise,” he reassured.
They reached the parking garage just after six a.m. He pulled into a space and turned off the ignition, but neither of them moved.
“Thanks for just . . . driving me around. That was nice of you.”
“I wish I could have done more. This will get better, you know that, Shannon. Give yourself time.”
“Sure.” She sighed and pushed open the car door. As they walked through the connecting tunnel to the elevator, he put his arm around her shoulders, offered a hug. She was staggering from the lack of sleep, from the bitter knowledge of her parentage. And further, he was well aware that his heart was entwining with this woman in ways he wasn’t prepared to deal with.
Once they were back in the apartment, he gave her a smile, stepped aside. “Head to bed. Text or call me when you wake up. I’m going to crash across the hall.”
She nodded and disappeared down the hall.
He rubbed his own burning eyes, then walked across the hall, debating the value of a hot shower to ease the aches in his body. The night had gone about as bad as he’d feared, but it was over. He pulled out his phone and called Jeffery.
Matthew was working on his laptop at the kitchen table when Shannon appeared a little after four p.m. Her tears had ended, and it looked like she’d slept. “Hungry?” he asked, trying to assess her mood. It was hours after an emotional explosion, and for his daughter this had always been the most fragile time.
“A bit.” She pulled out a chair at the table.
He lifted his mug of coffee. “I’ve had breakfast in place of an early dinner and saved some for you, if that suits.”
“Sure.”
He walked over to the stove, plated bacon and scrambled eggs, added fried potatoes he’d kept warm. “It tastes better than it looks,” he told her as he put the plate in front of her.
She half smiled. “I’m always good with fried potatoes.” She ate in silence, and he didn’t try to introduce a topic.
He wasn’t sure how Shannon regrouped—whether it was pushing aside the issue and moving forward with other activities while she processed it, or if she needed the opposite—to circle back around and talk it through before she could move on. He had a feeling, though, that explosions in her world during the last eleven years hadn’t been followed with conversations. Just to survive she would have learned to bury the matter and move on, because she had no choice.
Shannon finished the meal and took the plate to the dishwasher, came back with a refill to her glass of milk. She rested her head on her crossed arms.
He could see she was physically blitzed. Mentally, emotionally . . . it was still hard to read her, though. The thing he most feared was that she had made the decision to walk away from Chicago, from all the pain and tragedy she was facing. That she’d possibly cracked in a way he couldn’t help repair. “Do you regret returning home?” he asked quietly.
She raised her head to look at him. “No. Jeffery needed to know I was okay.”
She sat up, propped an elbow on the table, rested her chin on her palm. “I need paper maps I can mark up, a national one and state maps for the lower forty-eight. Could you arrange that?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to go shower, wash my hair. Maybe later tonight I’ll paint my nails.”
He smiled. “Want me to find you a bunch of colors so you can rainbow your toenails while you’re at it?”
&
nbsp; She looked at him with a small smile. “Becky?”
He nodded. “I’m an expert on nail polish now. She needed those bits of fun.”
“I’m fine with my present raspberry pink.” She pushed back her chair. “Feel free to do whatever you want tonight. You don’t need to stay around here. I’m not leaving this place. I’ve got some work to do to get ready for the conversation with Paul tomorrow.”
She hadn’t changed her mind about talking with Paul. “Anything I can help with?”
“Just the maps.”
“I’ll make a call and get them sent over.” He nodded to the laptop. “Some of this is business from home, some is follow-up with Theo and Paul. I’ve got a couple hours of this before I figure out the rest of my evening.”
She nodded and stepped away, hesitated, turned back. “I have something else for you.”
“Okay.”
She disappeared and returned with a book in her hand—another diary, he realized.
“This is from year four. I got it from a box in Atlanta before I met up with you. Sorry they’re out of order. I’m not sure where Flynn put most of them. Don’t feel you need to read it.”
“Shannon . . . I would like to read it, if you’re okay with me doing that.”
She held it out. “Same conditions. No questions. And it doesn’t go to anybody else unless I want it to.”
“Agreed.” He accepted the diary. “Thank you for trusting me.”
She gave an awkward nod and left him. He held it in his hands a moment, then set the diary aside. Maybe tomorrow. He couldn’t handle another one quite yet.
Matthew raided the canister for the last of Shannon’s cookies, poured himself the final inch of the coffee, and then made the call he was both relieved and stressed to make, given all that was behind Shannon’s decision. “Paul, she wants to have a conversation with you tomorrow. She got the news about her dad not being her biological father last night. And her friend still hasn’t called. Shannon thinks she’s dead. She’s going to start giving you what she has.”
Paul sighed. “This is very much the wrong way I wanted to reach this point.”
“I hear you. Keep it small,” Matthew recommended. “You and Theo, maybe Ann. Or maybe just you, depending on how it goes.”
“Where’s best to have it? What time?”
“I’m thinking we have it at the FBI office so she can walk away from it when it’s over. A conversation here or at your home is an easier environment, but that becomes her memory of the place. Let’s do it early in the day so she’s not spending too much time dreading the meeting.”
“Nine thirty here, then. We’ll use my office,” Paul suggested.
“We’ll be there. I’m going to guess you’ll hear a list of names for those in the family. Locations they’d been or might be. The gravesites. She’s presently marking up state maps.” Matthew thought through the coming meeting. “Just let her talk, try to avoid asking questions. She handed me another diary from year four. That may be the only way she’s ever able to share the details, via those written diaries. She’s going to need a counselor reading them before she needs cops reading them.”
“You can relax, Matthew. I know how fragile this moment is and the foundation it needs to set for the future,” Paul reassured him. “I’ll let Shannon say what she’s comfortable sharing, and not push. This is a process I have no desire to rush with her. Hopefully this becomes the first of several smaller conversations. We need names, locations, confirmations on photos. We need to know who to protect her from once this becomes public. If we’re any good at our jobs, maybe she’ll only be a minor footnote in the trial, the majority of it built on physical evidence we can seize, IDs from abducted children, and confessions we can get from the family.”
“Thanks, Paul. The more you can keep her involvement to a minimum, the better for her future. As it is, I’ll need to make a break for her for four or five days, get her some breathing space.”
“Leave town?”
Matthew rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’d prefer not to travel again. It sets up being too easy for her not to want to return. But we stay in Chicago, it’s obvious she’s not seeing her parents. She needs to get her mind off those problems.”
“Talk to John. He’s good at coming up with ideas.”
“I’ll do that.” Matthew checked the time. “One last thing before I let you go. Don’t press her for the address where she was to be delivered. She’s still not comfortable giving you that detail.”
“Any guess why she’s holding it back?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll read into that that she’s expressed reasons she’s withholding it that you can’t share with me. I won’t quibble. Your first priority has to be Shannon’s trust. She stops trusting you, or this process, and our ability to unravel the case falls precipitously.”
“So far I think we’re both walking that line about as well as it can be done. This is moving as fast as it could, given what I see.”
“That’s useful to know.”
“See you in the morning, Paul. I’ll keep my role tomorrow to that of interested bystander, unless I see something with her that warrants my stepping in.”
“Understood.”
16
Matthew settled on the living room couch, found an old movie, filling in time while he waited for Shannon to finish marking up the maps. She’d been working at the kitchen table for the last two-plus hours. He had a mild headache, along with a desire to call Becky and hear the world was right in at least one corner of it. But he knew his daughter was out for the evening with friends and he would just be interrupting. He had a craving for something cold and set aside the remote. Maybe ice cream? He got up and fixed himself a bowl, set its twin on the table beside Shannon. She said a quiet thanks as he took a quick scan over her shoulder—dots and red lines now crossed the state of Georgia. He went back to the movie.
Just after ten p.m., Shannon stacked the open maps rather than try to refold each one, rolled them together, used several rubber bands to secure the roll, then placed them beside the canvas bag she had placed by the door.
“Ready for tomorrow?” he asked.
“Mostly.”
She leaned against the doorpost into the living room. She didn’t know what to do with herself, he thought, didn’t particularly look sleepy, even though he could see exhaustion in her overall appearance.
“What are you watching?”
“The first Star Trek movie.” He hit pause, as the movie was simply a placeholder while he’d been waiting. “Shannon, you’re a survivor. Tell me what to do that will help. Would you like to talk? Go for a walk? Want me to find a hotel with a pool?”
She ran her hand through her hair, an oddly vulnerable gesture for her because he rarely saw it. “I’ll be okay, Matthew. It is what it is.”
“You’re not okay right now.”
What he didn’t want to do was leave her alone, trapped in this sadness. It was one thing to carry the weight of the sorrow, to feel it, to grieve—but it was quite another to be alone during that process.
“Move over,” she said.
He did so. She curled up beside him on the couch. He offered the remote. She sorted through options, then came back to the one he’d been watching.
“Tomorrow when I talk to Paul, don’t go very far.”
“You know I won’t,” he promised. At the next commercial he returned to the top item on his list and mentioned casually, “Have you called your brother?”
“I don’t have much to say yet. I sent a text that I needed more time before I called him.”
“You could just dial and say you wanted to say good-night.”
She poked a finger in his ribs. “Quit pushing.” She sighed. “But, yeah, maybe. When the movie is over.”
If he had his hope, she’d fall asleep on the couch before the movie was done. She coiled her feet up and tucked her head in against his shoulder. He stilled, then relaxed, smiled. He
didn’t know if she actually realized how much simple proximity represented security to her, but he was growing aware of the pattern. He suspected her primary love language was related to touch—to be handled roughly was a strike against her person, to be touched with gentleness a significant statement of her worth. But he knew she was seeking comfort and doing it in the only way she knew how.
For Shannon to be restored to wholeness, someone had to pour in that emotional balm she needed. He figured he was part of that for her. He didn’t mind. He was a better man when he was needed. Tomorrow was going to be a very long day for both of them. But it would be over . . . that initial wrenching conversation with law enforcement. For merely a week since he’d met her in the hallway of an Atlanta hotel, it was good progress.
He watched a commercial while he wondered how the next week with Shannon would unfold. He had seen a strength that was bearing up under terrible news. On the other hand, she also seemed extremely fragile. Her dreams were being shattered now—her knowledge about her family, her hope for her friend’s safety. Freedom was proving to be not as wonderful as she had imagined.
He realized his own emotions were becoming tangled with her, more than was wise. But having his own heart slightly bruised when she was ready to thrive without him wouldn’t be such a high price to pay for this journey. Becky was right. Shannon mattered to him not only because she had sought him out for help, because she reminded him of what had happened to his daughter, but because he simply enjoyed being with her, liked her. Based on that first diary, on what she had described, Shannon had a long road ahead of her. He wanted to walk it with her.
Which meant once she turned in tonight, he was going to be reading her diary from year four. The only way to be able to help her tomorrow was to be as fully aware of her history as he could piece together. His heart already ached, but he’d deal with it. She needed one person besides God who knew it all, knew her, and accepted her as she was. Becky had taught him the significance of that. Shannon’s brother would be filling part of that role for her. A doctor and counselor would fill more of it in the future. But she also needed friends who knew, whether in whole or in part, who still unreservedly accepted her. He was determined to be one of those friends.