True Places(24)

“The social workers will bring her around. That’s their job.” He didn’t like the direction the conversation was heading. Was she thinking they should foster this wild kid? Suzanne was worrying about something that had nothing to do with them.

His wife hung her head. Her shoulders trembled and she reached for the napkin in her lap.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“She’s really sick, Whit.” Suzanne raised her head. Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I couldn’t see her today. She’s got a serious infection. I’m worried she might not make it.”

Whit got up, squatted beside his wife, and stroked her head. “She’ll be okay, sweetheart. You said she was strong, right?”

Suzanne wiped at her eyes. “If you could see her, Whit. She’s so skinny and scared.”

He took her in his arms and wondered how it was they had ended up talking about kids after all. A kid who wasn’t even theirs. It pained him to see Suzanne so distraught.

“Okay, Suze, okay. I’ll see where I’ve got an open slot in my schedule. I’ll meet your little forest girl.”

His wife nodded and began crying again. All he could do, all he knew to do, was hold her.



Three days later, Whit found himself standing at the foot of a hospital bed watching Iris sleep. One arm lay exposed on top of the covers, the IV needle taped to the back of her hand. Her wrist was no thicker than a broom handle, her fingers like twigs. So small. The bed, the equipment, he himself, seemed out of proportion and wrong somehow. Iris was asleep, but Whit got a hint of what Suzanne had described, that Iris was special. Suzanne had moved to the chair beside the bed. She smiled up at him but didn’t say anything.

Iris stirred and opened her eyes. Whit was startled by their color. Iris studied him warily.

“Iris,” Suzanne said.

The girl turned to Suzanne. Her face relaxed like a dose of morphine had just kicked in. Suzanne’s smile was one Whit had not witnessed in a long while: open, loving, assured.

“It’s wonderful to see you, Iris.” Suzanne nodded toward Whit. “This is my husband, Whit.”

“Hi, Iris. I’m glad you’re feeling better. We sure were worried about you.”

She gave him a small nod, less wary than before. And Suzanne turned her smile on him because he had used the word we. He hadn’t meant to imply anything, but it didn’t matter. When Iris tired, he and Suzanne would leave the hospital and talk about becoming foster parents for Iris. He knew exactly how the conversation would go. He would agree with her that Iris was in need. She would agree that it was only until Iris’s family could be located, which might be soon and might be never. (Whit assumed it would be soon—everyone had family.) They both would predict that Reid would not object to having Iris live with them and that Brynn would. “Generosity and compassion are good lessons for her,” Suzanne would point out, and Whit would have to agree with that, too. He knew they would fail to consider some things, that he would keep some of his reservations to himself, reservations that might grow into resentment. He knew all that.

Because the moment Suzanne smiled like that at Iris, Whit knew what their decision would be. He could not stand in Suzanne’s way and break her heart.





CHAPTER 11

Suzanne was putting away groceries when she spotted her father’s black Jaguar XJS pull into the drive, carrying both her parents, she assumed, since Anson never visited her on his own. Suzanne couldn’t remember the last time she’d been alone with him for more than a few minutes. She didn’t crave his full attention, not that their being alone together would secure it. Her father did not seek out her company, and she did not seek out his. If only she’d been a boy, although there were no certainties even when parents got the gender they wanted. Suzanne’s constant management of Whit and Reid’s relationship confirmed that.

Her parents swept into the house without knocking. Suzanne called out to them from the kitchen, although her first impulse had been to run out the back door and hide in the neighbor’s yard.

“In here!”

Tinsley deposited her handbag on a counter stool, unwrapped the paisley scarf from around her neck, and laid it on top. She was dressed in indigo jeans tucked into boots with motorcycle details, artfully scuffed. On top she wore a white silk blouse and a pale-gray leather jacket. Her makeup was minimalist perfection, and her hairstyle managed to walk the line between classic and up to the minute. Suzanne was bewildered by her mother’s abilities in this arena, how she could attain this appearance so precisely and yet be such a mess otherwise. Suzanne was the opposite and was certain Tinsley mused, as Suzanne herself often did, about the possibility that they were not in fact mother and daughter, or related at all. Their hair and their eyes linked them, however, and Tinsley bemoaned Suzanne’s difficult birth in such detail it was unlikely she had not been present.

Judging by her father’s clothing, Anson had been commandeered for this mission directly from his tradition of Sunday-morning golf followed by lunch at the club. “Hello, Suzanne.”

“Hi. How was your game?” Suzanne avoided calling him by name. “Daddy” made her feel like a little girl, his little girl, and if he had ever inspired that feeling when she was small, he didn’t now. “Anson” was out of the question. Far too forward and modern for him.