Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

So he opted to call.

From a pay phone, because he didn’t want his mother to overhear him talking to her from home, and because his mother paid his cell phone bill and he didn’t want her questioning any unfamiliar Manhattan phone numbers.

And now here he was, with his biological mother on the line, trying to figure out what to say next.

She relieved him of that duty, sounding dazed as she asked, “How did you find me?”

“Someone e-mailed me the information. About you, and my father.”

“Your…father?”

“I know he died,” Leo assured her swiftly. “I saw the articles.”

“Articles?”

He hesitated, struck by a terrible thought. What if she didn’t know? About Jake Marcott? And the murder?

“From the Portland papers,” he said gently. “I got some links in that e-mail, and I read them all. You knew…right?”

“About the e-mail? No, I have no idea what you’re-”

“About Jake Marcott. You know…that he’s…”

“Dead. I knew. I was the one who found him,” she said, and he could hear the stark pain in her voice, could imagine it on her face.

A face that looked so like his own, even now.

He knew that because along with her contact information and the links to the newspaper archives, he had received another jpeg attachment. It was a digital photo, a little fuzzy and snapped from some distance. It showed a woman who was easily recognizable as the girl he’d seen in the other picture. She had the same dark hair, the same delicate beauty, the same slender build.

She was walking down a Manhattan street-he knew it was Manhattan because he could see the subway entrance disappearing into the sidewalk in the background, though he couldn’t make out the sign above it.

She wasn’t looking at the camera, which suggested she had no idea her photo was being taken…

Which gave him the creeps, really.

He was fascinated by the shot, though. He’d studied it for days, memorizing every detail, trying to work up the nerve to get in touch.

He finally had, and here she was, Lindsay Farrell-my mother?-on the other end of the line.

“I didn’t know you were the one who found Jake’s body,” he said, trying to remember the details from the articles. Jake’s body. It sounded so impersonal. And it was…except that the stranger in question, Jake, was his father.

“I just knew it had been a friend of his,” Leo rambled on, “but it didn’t say who.”

“The paper couldn’t print my name. I was underage then. Seventeen.”

“You were eighteen by the time you had me in August, though. Right?”

No response.

Not at first.

Then, so softly he had to strain to hear it, she said, “Right.”

Thud. His heart seemed to split in two and land in the soles of his feet.

So she really was his mother, and his father really was dead. As badly as he wanted to find his mother, to think that Lindsay Farrell was her, he hadn’t wanted to believe the other part. About Jake.

There went his fantasy of playing catch with a man who wouldn’t check his watch impatiently and say he had to go after the first couple of tosses.

There went his ideal father, someone with patience and attention and a heart full of love for his son.

There went another dad, gone, poof! Just like that. Just like Anthony Cellamino.

It wasn’t fair.

“Leo…did you say that was your name?”

It wasn’t fair, but she was still there. Lindsay. Sounding tentative. Vulnerable.

As tentative and vulnerable as Leo himself was feeling.

“Yes,” he replied somewhat hoarsely, “that’s my name.”

“Are you happy?”

That was a strange question. He didn’t know how to answer it.

“Happy?” he echoed stupidly. “What do you mean?”

“Just…are you happy?”

“You mean right now?”

“I mean in general. Your life. Has it been happy?”

He thought back to the time before his father left. And even about some times after he was gone.

“Mostly,” he admitted. “It’s been mostly happy. But there’s been sad stuff, too.”

“Everyone’s life is like that. But it wasn’t bad, right? Nobody beat you up, or starved you, or anything like that, right?”

“Right.”

She sighed. “I just want to know that I did the right thing. I want to know that you were raised by someone who loved you with all their heart.”

“My mother did. Does,” he amended, before he remembered that Betty Cellamino wasn’t really his mother.

No, but she loved him with all her heart. That wasn’t in dispute here, and never would be.

“What about your father?”

Leo’s thoughts darkened at the question. “He’s gone.”

“Gone? You mean he died?”

“No.” Worse. “He left.”

Silence.

Then, “I’m sorry.”

“I always thought-I mean, since I found out I was adopted a few years ago-I thought that maybe…” Leo trailed off.

“What?”

“Forget it. It’s stupid.”

“No, tell me. What were you thinking?”

“I had this fantasy of finding my dad…you know, my birth dad. And he would be this great guy. And he would be in my life. For good, you know? But that’s not going to happen now, so…it’s stupid.”

No reply.

“I mean, he’s dead,” Leo continued, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. “And my other father is as good as dead. So there go all my options. I guess I’m on my own, where dads are concerned.”

Again, silence.

Until she said, so faintly that he could barely hear her, “Maybe not.”

Lindsay hung up the phone with a trembling hand and a wildly beating heart.

Why did I say it?

Why to him, of all people?

Why now, of all times?

But the answer was clear, really.

Because he, of all people, deserved to know the truth.

And because now, of all times, he was reaching out to her.

That was either a monumental coincidence or a monumental sign that somebody was manipulating fate.

Leo said he didn’t know who sent the e-mail that led him to her.

But when he mentioned the screen name, it made her blood run cold.

Cupid 21486.

Jake had been felled by an arrow through the heart, on Valentine’s Day. 2-14-86.

That screen name couldn’t be a coincidence.

Nor could the timing of the e-mails sent to Leo.

The only saving grace, as far as Lindsay was concerned, was that the mysterious person behind them believed Jake was the father of her child.

Still, whoever it was had found out, somehow, about the pregnancy. It might be only a matter of time before they also found out the truth about the father and contacted him as well.

I’d rather he heard it directly from me. He deserves that.

He deserved a lot of things she hadn’t given him.

Because I couldn’t.

Not back then.

Who knew where he was now? Probably married, with a family.

Or maybe not.

Probably not.

He never did seem like he’d turn out to be the marrying type, she thought, remembering his rakish grin…his rakish ways.

Kind of like Jake-only Jake was darker beneath the surface. Much.

But he hid it well. People thought Jake Marcott was this great guy beneath that devil-may-care attitude.

I even convinced myself of that, for the longest time. But I knew, deep down, there was more to that bad-boy demeanor than just image…

Just as she knew that there was more-much more-to the other bad boy in her past-the one who stole her heart on that long-ago New Year’s Eve, then vanished from her life.

Whose fault was that? an inner voice demanded.

Both of ours, she told it stubbornly.

Then she amended, maybe it was mostly mine.

She just couldn’t handle what she’d done. She wasn’t the kind of girl who had a one-night stand with a guy she barely knew. And she had no excuse, other than the fact that she was feeling down that night, still trying to get over Jake, knowing he’d be there, probably with somebody else.