Jennifer Greene - Irresistible Stranger

Lily admitted her visit was probably a lost cause. “I just wanted to ask if there was any chance the department kept records from twenty years ago.”

“Honey, there are probably records in this place from the beginning of time. I can’t give them to you without legal permission. But I can probably scare up what you want to know and then just tell you. What’s the name, and what exactly are you looking for?”

Lily ran through the whole Campbell history. “I don’t know if there’s anything else we can find about the fire for sure, but there’s been a question that has really troubled my sisters and me.”

“And that is?”

“Why we were separated. We were orphaned by the fire, obviously, but each of us was fostered to different families, in different states. Can you tell me why that happened? I assume no one could afford to take on three kids? I realize how expensive that would have been. But I’ve been led to believe that my dad had some savings, so it’s troubled all of us for a long time-why we were separated. And by such far distances.”

“It is odd,” Loreen agreed, and went on the hunt.

Old records and files had been computerized, but some of that historical data was saved on giant-sized floppies. Before reading them, they had to be converted and updated, which required a computer in a different room-which also required Loreen to order out for sandwiches, because she didn’t miss lunch, and that was that. The phone rang, interrupting her several times, but Loreen repeated, “Just stay. We’ll get our answers, and then we’ll be done. It’s not as if there’ll be more time another day. There won’t be. There never is.”

In the meantime, Loreen kept up a general patter about Jason and Steven and Walter-and a half-dozen other boys that Griff had taken on. “Under the covers, you understand. Always under the covers. Doesn’t foster. What he does is intervene, find some way for a boy in trouble to see another path. You can’t always fix what’s wrong. You can’t make bad people into good. But youngsters, if they can see a way out, they’re resilient. They’re…well, shoot, honey.”

“What?”

Loreen peered at the monitor, trying to read faded print on unclear copy. “I’ve got it. The report after your parents’ fire. It was the sheriff.”

“Pardon?”

“The sheriff was the one who advised the state that you three girls should be separated.”

Lily sank in the battered office chair. “Sheriff Conner? But I’ve talked to him a bunch of times. He never said. Does it say why he advised that?”

“Hmm.” Loreen scrolled through the document, which involved several pages of information. “Two families stepped up, said they’d take the three of you. But one was unsuitable-a farm. They really wanted child labor. Another, they only had a two-bedroom house, just wasn’t big enough to add three youngsters. But that wasn’t the problem. Apparently the social worker at the time-that’d be Samantha LaFitte, she retired around five years back, died last year-anyhow, she was the one who handled the case. Seems the sheriff’s opinion was the one that pulled the weight.”

“Why?” Lily repeated, feeling as if her world was being upended yet again.

All these years, her sisters could have been together? And Herman Conner, who she’d talked to over and over, had hidden that information all this time?”

Loreen finally looked up again with a frown. “You need to understand. I’m no mighty fan of the law. I see injustice done to women and children every day. But I do think a lot of Sheriff Conner. He’s never been the brightest knife in the drawer, but he had trouble with his own kids, never judged other people that I could see. He’ll turn his back if he thinks it’s the right thing. At least sometimes.”

“I hear you. I thought he was a good guy, too.”

“Apparently, he felt it was just the wrong thing for you three to stay in this town. He knew from personal experience that it was mighty hard for a child to live down a reputation. That an event or a problem could come back to haunt them. He thought it best if you three went somewhere where you’d make a completely clean start, forget about Pecan Valley altogether.”

Loreen paged through to the end of the document, added, “Samantha LaFitte, she didn’t agree. She apparently argued for you three to be together, wherever you landed. But the judge took the sheriff’s advice. There’s some comment here I can’t quite read, but it refers to the sheriff having good reasons to understand problems with children.”

Lily still had the oddest sinking sensation in her stomach. “What problems was that referring to?”

“I don’t know, honey. Problems in his personal life, maybe, with his own kids? Or with kids in town? I wasn’t in this job then. I always heard two of his girls were wild as teenagers, but really, I just don’t know. Everybody always said he’d die for his kids. Was a great dad, a family man all the way. But that’s all I know.”

When Lily left the office, she walked out to a blaze of heat, immediately lifted the hair off her nape and hoped she’d survive walking the hundred feet to the rental car. For once though, her mind wasn’t on whining about the Georgia summer. She was just plain confused.

There was nothing exactly wrong with the sheriff’s play in the Campbell girls’ future back then. It was the exact opposite of what the three sisters had wanted, but that didn’t mean anything sinister or wrong or weird was involved. It just felt weird. That she’d talked to Herman Conner so many times, and he’d ducked any reference to his vote in their future back then.

She opened the car door, almost fell over from the blast of cooped up heat, and climbed in anyway. She dialed Griff on her cell, didn’t reach him, left him a short message that she’d left social services and was headed for somewhere she could track down old high school yearbooks.

Surprisingly, Louella came up with that answer. Lily only popped back at the B and B to grab a notebook and change shoes, but Louella got talking, claimed that Susannah Danwell, who lived just three doors down-“She’s over eighty, if she’s a day, but still dressing like she’s sixty-five, bless her heart, thinking she’s fooling anyone. But she’s been keeping the high school yearbooks forever. Wants to think of herself as a historian, she does, but the real truth is, her Herbert died, and she had nobody, so people come to visit her sometimes, to see the yearbooks, and she gets to talk then. She gets the company. I do wish she’d dress her age, but it’s nothing to me, of course. Anyway, sugar, I’ll call her and set it up, and you can take some of my caramel brownies over there, and it’ll work like a charm. She’ll be happy and you’ll be happy, and it couldn’t possibly work out any better…”

Lily knew Louella better than to interrupt-or to try arguing until Louella had finally run out of steam. Normally, Lily wouldn’t have wanted to impose on a stranger, but Louella had dialed the number before she could stop her, told the infamous Susannah Danwell that Lily would be ambling over there in just a bit, and that she was a peach and a half.

“There now, honey, that’s done. And you don’t need to worry about a thing. I’ll just call over there if there’s any messages. That way, you can hole up and nobody’ll know where you are, and you can just put your feet up with Susannah, bless her heart…”

Susannah, it turned out, lived in another of the city-styled antebellum homes. The veranda was long enough to bowl in, with a double screen door leading to a Scarlett O’Hara central staircase that gleamed with fresh polish. Her mother used to take in boarders, Susannah told her. She was dressed-as warned-with an I Love Vegas T-shirt and matching capris. Her neck, ears, wrists and arms glittered with rhinestones and bangles. “I do like a touch of elegance, honey, and oh, you have no idea how glad I am to meet you. The whole town’s talking about what a wicked, wicked girl you are, and here, all I see is a little darling. Why, you’re no bigger than a minute, are you? And you know what? I met your mama. And I was here when that fire happened, when the mill closed, all of it. Why, these caramel brownies are probably the best Louella ever baked. She dresses way too old for her years, bless her heart, but…”