Jo Leigh - Confessions Bundle

“The man tried to swindle my father.” Blake gave Schuster dates. Times. Quotes from an investment agreement. Accounts. “That’s what I mean by well enough.”

“Are you willing to testify to this?”

Of course. If he had to. The one thing that held steady in his life was his compulsion to tell the truth. To tell it and to live it. But he didn’t relish showing his late father for the fool he’d apparently been in that incident, particularly since it was the only time in the man’s entire life that he’d been led by sentiment rather than logic.

“I have a paper trail outlining a series of investment frauds that, with your validation, could nail James to the wall,” Schuster said. “Without your testimony—the explanation that will tie all the paper evidence together—he could walk.”

“When do you need me in court?”

“YOU SURE LOOK gloomy.”

Leaning her head against the back of the seat, Mary Jane nodded.

“Was it rough, apologizing in front of everyone?”

“Nah.” She hadn’t cared. She was sorry she’d spit on Mrs. Thacker.

“Then what?”

“I just wish I didn’t have to go to any dumb school.”

What she wished was that she could stay home where Mom always knew what she meant, knew that she wouldn’t do bad things on purpose, and didn’t think it was weird that she didn’t know her dad.

She wished she’d never told that to dumb Jeff Turner anyway. But he’d made her really mad when he’d said her dad didn’t want her because her hair was so curly and she said weird stuff.

At least she hadn’t told Jeff that her dad didn’t know her, either—didn’t even know about her.

“School’s not dumb, Mary Jane. You’re a very smart little girl, but if you don’t learn facts and information, that intelligence isn’t going to do you a lot of good.”

“You could teach me at home.”

“Honey, you know I have to work.”

“Well, I can stay home alone and teach myself.”

“Did someone say something mean to you after I left?”

Thank goodness it had been yesterday when Jeff had said her dad didn’t want her. Because she couldn’t lie to her mom, and she didn’t want to tell her what he’d said.

“No.”

What if the thing Jeff said was true? What if her father didn’t want her?

“You sure?” Mom’s face was all soft and kind of smiling when she looked over at Mary Jane.

She nodded. And looked out the window for a while, thinking about her dad. Mom had told her a long time ago who he was. Her mom didn’t keep it a secret, because her grandma had kept secrets from Mom and Aunt Marcie that had turned out to hurt them a lot.

That big building downtown was her dad’s. And she was glad he didn’t know about her. If a man came to live with them, it would just mess up the best life she’d ever had. Still…

“Do you think Blake Ramsden woulda wanted me if you’d told him I was born?”

“He wasn’t anywhere where I could have told him,” Mom said. “You know that.”

“But when he did get somewhere, do you think he woulda wanted me?”

Mom was quiet for a while and that scared Mary Jane. If Jeff Turner was right about this, was he right about the other dumb stuff he said, too? Did everyone really hate Mary Jane and laugh at her behind her back because she mostly got all the answers?

Did they say they didn’t want to be her friend?

“I believe that if he knew you, he’d love you as much as I do,” Mom finally said.

That was good. “But would he want me?”

“I can’t speak for him, sweetie,” Mom said. “But I don’t see how he couldn’t want you. I’ve told you before that I would contact him for you if you wanted me to,” she added. “Would that help?”

“No!”

The trees were going by really fast and it made her a little dizzy, staring out at them. She liked them though. They were too big to be hurt by just about anything, ’cept lightning, and they helped you breathe.

“Did you want me?” She’d hadn’t planned to ask that.

Mom pulled into their street and into their carport and stopped the car, but she didn’t open her door. Mary Jane didn’t either.

“Why all the questions about being wanted?” Mom asked, frowning a little.

She shrugged. A shrug wasn’t a lie.

“When I first found out I was pregnant with you, I was scared to death.” That was something Mary Jane had never heard before. She stared at her mom.

“You were?” She’d never seen Mom scared of anything. Usually she made the scary stuff better.

“Uh-huh.”

“Scared of me, a little baby? How come?”

Mom’s fingers pushed curls off Mary Jane’s forehead. She liked it when Mom did that.

“I wasn’t afraid of you. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to take care of you. I was alone and not even a real lawyer yet because I hadn’t taken the bar exam. I had no idea how I’d support us.”

Oh. That kind of stuff. “But you did.”

Mom smiled. “Yes, I did.”

“So then did you want me?”

“Very much.”

That was enough. But Mary Jane liked talking about this. It made her feel good. Like she really was special and not a loser like Jeff Turner said.

“When did you first know you wanted me?” she asked, still sitting with her seat belt on even though she was getting pretty hungry.

Mom had kind of a faraway look, and Mary Jane knew she was remembering. She wished she could remember, too.

“I always wanted you,” she said, her voice soft like she was telling a dream. “But the first time I knew you were going to be more important to me than anything else in my life was the first time I felt you move.”

“In your stomach?”

“Yep.”

Mary Jane grinned. “What did it feel like?”

“Like a tiny little butterfly fluttering its wings.”

That wasn’t so bad. She wasn’t ever going to have babies herself. That would be too gross.

But she was sure glad Mom had.

“MY PAWN TO your king,” Blake muttered to himself. Still in the gray suit and coordinating gray, black-and-white tie he’d worn to the office that day, he stood at the computer in his glass-walled home office the last Wednesday night in March. He pushed a couple of keys, hit Enter, took one final look at the game on the screen, and left the room. His opponent, a man he’d met in Kashmir, India, several years before, would be at least an hour figuring his way out of that one.

He had guests coming for dinner, Donkor and Jamila Rahman. A Christian father and daughter he’d lived with for a while in Egypt—before his marriage to Jamila’s closest friend.

After checking the last-minute details on the dinner his housekeeper had prepared for him that afternoon, Blake moved from the kitchen, with its shiny black appliances, granite countertops and double oven, to the side of his house that didn’t overlook the ocean. In contrast to the western side, these rooms didn’t have windows. The house was built into the side of a cliff in the quaint village of La Jolla.

The east side was where he’d put his treasure room—a museum with track lighting, built-in shelves and marble tables that housed all the artifacts and souvenirs of his travels. It was also where he housed his wine cellar.

The cellar—more of a wall-size wine closet—had been his wife’s idea.

A woman who’d been orphaned young, Amunet had grown up half Egyptian, half French and later, a New Yorker. She’d been visiting Egypt when Blake was there helping to rebuild a small village that had been hit hard by weather and poverty. Donkor, a man of means and a charitable heart, had been the largest donor and overseer of the project.

Blake chose the wine, checking the year, although he knew there was not one bottle in the house that wasn’t worthy of a fine restaurant.