Her Best Friend Jon Read online

  "It’s late. You’re tired. I’m tired. Can it wait until tomorrow? I have the letters at my apartment. Nothing I say will make much sense without them. And I can see even now, you don’t really believe me. If you read those, it will help."

  "What letters?"

  "The letters he sent to my mother."

  "This is getting more confusing by the second."

  "I know. And I’m sorry, but this mess is really complicated. Just call me when you get up. I’ll drive back over, and you can read them. You'll understand when you see the letters." She must have seen the indecision on his face, because she reached in her purse and pulled out her wallet, handing it to him.

  "Why are you giving me this?"

  "I want you hold on to it until I come back in the morning. It has my driver’s license, my bank card, my checkbook, some cash, and who knows what else."

  "If you’re a criminal, you could have more than one set of identification."

  "I could, if I were a criminal. But I’m not. I've worked for you for about six months, Jon. Can't you trust me for a few hours? Please?"

  He looked at the wallet he held in his hand, then back at her face. She seemed to be telling the truth, and he really wanted to believe her, but he just didn't know. Whoever was stalking Ed was really good at what they were doing. And they knew a whole lot about everyone. So it was entirely possible that whoever it was might be working for him. Someone like Hannah. But there was still that picture that had been sitting on Ed's desk for years…

  "If you don’t show up, Hannah, I’ll find you. I swear I will."

  "I’ll be here. Call me as soon as you wake up, and I’ll get in my car and come back out here as soon as I hang up."

  "I-"

  "All right, fine," she snapped, looking at him with a scowl. "If it will make you feel better, you can come home with me. I live in an efficiency, so you’ll have to settle for a pillow and blanket on the floor, but at least that way you can keep an eye on me so I don’t escape."

  Jon thought about it for a moment, then handed her wallet back, and glanced at his watch.

  "I’ll be up in about seven hours."

  "I’ll set my alarm and be back by nine then." She reached out to lay her hand on his arm. "You can trust me, Jon. But please – please don’t tell anyone about this."

  "Why?"

  "Because I’m not sure I want Ed to know. He might not even want to know who I am."

  "We’ll talk about it in the morning," he said, not sure he was doing the right thing. "Go home. Let me get your license plate number first."

  He definitely wanted that, but he also wanted to make sure she got safely back to her car. If he was wrong, he didn’t want to feel any guiltier than he already knew he’d feel. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from demanding to see her registration, and he wrote that information down, too.

  Watching her drive away, standing in the cold, a light snow falling all around him, he still found it hard to believe what she’d just told him. Ed was her father? Were the girls in the picture really his daughters? Or at least Hannah? And if she was telling the truth, why had he given them up. The man he knew simply wouldn't give up on a kid. Especially not one of his own.

  Shrugging, he headed back to the warmth of the house. If she was telling the truth, he’d find out soon enough. If she was lying, he’d find that out, too.

  ~~~~~

  Hannah poured four ibuprofen from the bottle into a hand that shook. So much for thinking she'd been discreet. She should have been more careful. Jon was too observant, so of course he’d have noticed how much attention she’d been paying to Ed Winslow, and anything having to do with the man.

  The question was, would he believe what she had to tell him in less than an hour? Would the letters be enough to take her off the short list of suspects? She hoped so, given that her name was the only one on it at this point.

  She wished she’d been able to get more sleep, but she'd tossed and turned all night, worrying about how this meeting would turn out. Wondering if Jon would keep her secret.

  She wished she’d never found that stack of letters, tied together in her parent’s attic with a faded blue ribbon. But what she really wished was that her mother had been honest. If she hadn't lied to everyone for the past twenty years, this mess would never have happened, and she wouldn't feel like she were on her way to her own execution.

  Filling a quart travel mug with steaming herbal tea, one she used in place of coffee, for energy from a natural source when she needed it – and she needed it today, she pulled on her parka and gloves, tucked the box of letters under one arm, and trudged down the stairs to warm her car up.

  If she wasn’t pulling in Jon’s driveway by nine, she feared he might put out a call to the cavalry, and to the police, and then her face would be plastered all over the media before the day was over. She had no desire to become one of America’s most wanted fugitives.

  Shivering in the cold, she started the car, set her mug on the dash, and grabbed the window scraper from the backseat of her Kia. Maybe an inch of snow had fallen during the night, but it hadn’t been wet, and with the temperature right around twenty, all she had to do was brush it off.

  Soon she was sitting inside, pressing on the gas pedal in hopes of hurrying the process along. Since there was no getting out of it, all she wanted was to get it over with. Why she ever thought she could keep a secret like this forever, she’d never know.

  It would have been easier if it had been Harry, or one of the other girls who had figured it out. But no, it had to be one of Ed’s closest friends. Would he keep the information to himself? Because no way she was ready to introduce herself to her father. Not yet. The way she felt right now, she might never be.

  ~~~~~

  While Jon wasn’t much of a cook, Dan had taught him and the other guys how to make a decent breakfast during their college days, and so he always had the ingredients on hand for weekends. By five minutes to nine, scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage, and toast were ready for his guest, warming in the oven until she showed up. If she showed up.

  Not that he considered her a real guest, but since he’d pretty much demanded she come back and show him proof that she wasn't trying to terrorize and murder Ed, and his truck was still parked out at Sam’s, her coming back here was the only solution to get the answers he needed. If she were telling the truth, he’d feel a little better about manhandling her last night if he offered her some food. If she were lying, well even condemned prisoners got a last meal.

  If it weren’t for that picture sitting on Ed’s desk, he’d have blown her story off as impossible. He remembered camping out in Sam's backyard when they were teenagers, whispering about it after they'd been given a tour of the coach's department that day. To the best of their knowledge, Ed had no family, and so they'd wondered about it for half the night. And then they'd forgotten it, except for the occasional reminders when one or another of them would stop by the station to take him out for lunch. In all that time, he’d never mentioned parents or siblings, or even a cousin ten times removed, so Hannah could be telling the truth.

  As far as he knew, she’d never set foot in that office, so she wouldn’t have any way to know about it. Unless she’d been there as a prisoner, in which case Ed would have remembered her. He remembered everything. It was also possible that she cared about someone the detective had arrested, but again, if she’d been there for questioning, Ed would have recognized her.

  Which brought him right back around to the story she’d told him last night. As he stood at the window, watching for her arrival, he thought about the expression on her face when she'd been trying to convince him she wasn’t the stalker. She’d looked innocent enough, and he really did want to believe her. If she actually showed up, it would go a long way toward convincing him.

  More surprised than not, he watched her little Kia round the corner a quarter of a mile down the road, it’s brilliant red standing out against the
pure white of the freshly fallen snow. By the time she pulled in, he had the table set with paper plates, plastic silverware, and paper napkins.

  He was sure all of the green groups on the planet would have him on a hit list in a heartbeat if they knew how many disposables he used, but he kept his belongings to a bare minimum, and that included most of the things that could be found in the kitchens of ordinary people. The only items in his cupboards were a few stainless steel pans, a handful of cooking utensils, and a set of dishes and silverware that served four. Those were only for the times he had a normal dinner with company who would expect to eat their meal on something other than paper. So far that hadn’t happened, and he hadn't touched them since he'd put them away the first time.

  When Hannah knocked at the back door, he was right there to let her in, waiting as she stomped snow from her boots, then closing it behind her, hoping to keep as much heat in the old house as possible. He noted that she carried a shoebox, and that she didn’t let loose of it even when he helped her out of her coat.

  "Sorry I’m late," she apologized, glancing at the table, her eyes going wide. "Are you expecting company?"

  "Just you. I figured we might as well have breakfast while we talk."

  ~~~~~

  As Jon opened and read each letter, Hannah couldn’t seem to shut her mouth. She wanted to kick herself, to just let the letters tell the story she hadn’t expected to confess to anyone. Except to Ed. Someday. Maybe.

  "I don’t even remember him," she was saying, as Jon laid one sheet of paper on the table and removed a card from the third envelope. It was clear that he was going to make a mess out of them, and she’d made sure to keep everything in chronological order since she’d found them tucked away in the chest in the attic. "Just vague images of a man I’m not even sure are him."

  "Does your sister?" he asked, distracted. "Remember him, I mean."

  "More than I do. She was a little over five. She’s two and a half years older than I am, so she didn’t forget everything."

  "What does she think about all of this?"

  "That I’m setting myself up for a letdown. That if he walked away from us then, it was because he didn’t want us in the first place."

  "These letters tell a different story," he said, glancing away from a birthday card with a hundred dollar check. All of the cards contained checks…for that much – and more. "Why didn’t your mother cash these?"

  "I don’t know. They total up to a small fortune, so I'm surprised she didn't. She loves to shop. Maybe she felt guilty? I haven’t really talked to her about this yet."

  "So she thinks you just packed up and moved to Michigan on a whim?"

  "I wouldn't know what she thinks, and frankly, I don't care. She knew I wasn't happy when I left, but it was soon enough after my dad died, she probably believed me when I said I needed a change." He glanced at her, his brows raised. "I figure if she could keep a secret like this from me for two decades, I could keep one or two of my own."

  "That’s the only reason?"

  "No," Hannah admitted, looking at the hands she’d clasped on the tabletop. "I don’t understand how she could not tell me. I had a right to know I was adopted. That I had a real father who wanted me. If she lied to me all that time, how can I ever trust her again?"

  "Make you a little mad, does it?"

  "It does."

  "You know she's probably noticed that the letters are gone by now."

  "I doubt it."

  "Hannah, you don't think Ed sent Christmas checks last month? Or maybe birthday card or two since you moved here? She has to know you have these ones."

  "Oh no," she breathed, her face paling. Her mother would have gone up to the attic to put anything he might have sent with the others, except they wouldn't have been there – because they were here in Michigan with her. In her haste to put as many miles between them as she could, she'd hadn't once thought that part through. "She didn't mention anything about them the last time she called."

  "I'm not surprised. What's she going to say? Oh, by the way, sweetheart, there's something I never meant to tell you…"

  "Jon-" Before she could protest his sarcasm too much, he changed the subject.

  "Do you even know why Ed gave up his rights to the two of you?"

  "From everything I’ve been able to piece together from the letters, I think he was shot – at least twice. I guess my mom had had enough and divorced him. Then at some point, she met my father, the only one I’ve ever known. I think they were seeing each other while she was still with him though. I'm guessing she talked him into letting Dad adopt us when he got transferred to Texas. I don’t even know what all she told Ed, but obviously she didn’t keep her word."

  "Yeah, I kind of figured that out already," Jon said, glancing at the letters and cards he’d read so far. The expression on his face spoke volumes as to what he was thinking about her mother. On one hand, it offended her. On the other, she knew whatever was going through his mind wasn’t anything she hadn’t thought herself.

  "Have you made up your mind about whether to tell him or not?"

  "No. Not yet."

  After that, Jon stopped talking, and so did she. There didn’t seem to be much left to say. At least not until after he made his way through the rest of the box, and that could take a while. There were dozens of envelopes with letters and notes that told the story of an angry man. A man who wanted to be a father to his children, but who had been denied that right…because her mother had lied to him.

  ~~~~~

  "You know," Jon said, shoving the last card – sent just before Hannah must have moved to Michigan – aside. "While you’re thinking about all of this, you might consider something else, too. I’ve read all of these letters. I’ve seen the thousands of dollars of checks he sent the two of you for birthdays and holidays. He wanted to be there for you and Mary. He tried to be, but your mother wouldn’t let him. After laying a major guilt trip on him, she lied to him and stole his daughters."

  "Hey! Just one minute there, Jon!" Hannah exclaimed, jumping to her feet and glaring at him. "You don’t know my mother. You can’t make those kinds of judgments about her."

  "Really? The evidence is right here," he snapped, waving one of the envelopes in her face. "You read them, too. Isn’t that why you packed up and moved to Michigan? You felt as cheated as Ed must have, only he’s had to deal with it for what? Twenty years?"

  "Jon, I mean it-"

  "So do I, Hannah," he said, almost shouting. He worked to remove the harsh tone he could hear from his voice. "You were a toddler when she orchestrated all of this. I’m sure that in some way, you felt a loss, but not like your father did. You might have suffered for a few weeks, or even months, but kids have pretty short memories at that age." He thought about Scotty, and how quickly he seemed to get over traumatic procedures each time, though the poor little guy might need some time once he was finally released from the hospital. "Clearly Ed suffered for years. I imagine he still is. The last birthday check was dated last spring. He’s never forgotten, Hannah. Never."

  He watched as she seemed to deflate before his eyes, sinking back into the chair across from him and covering her face with her hands. It would have been easy to feel sorry for her in that moment – if she hadn’t been so quick to jump to her mother’s defense. He was still irked over that. In his opinion the woman was no better than a thief and kidnapper.

  "I think you know what kind of a man he is already. You can see that all of us guys, all of us, love Ed like a brother. He’s a decent, honorable man. And he never gives up on anything without a good reason. Like maybe emotional blackmail."

  "It’s not my fault. What she did – I didn’t have any say in it. I was just a little girl."

  "I know that. But you do have a say in it now. From here on out, what you do and what you don’t do – that will be your fault, Hannah. You have a chance to right a serious wrong here. You’ll never be able to make up for all the years she
stole from him – from all three of you – but he never turned his back on you and your sister. You need to remember that." She lowered her hands and he could see tears streaming down her face. Guilt gnawed at him, but he ignored it. Most of it anyway.

  "I just wanted to get to know him," she murmured, brushing at her eyes. "I just wanted to know him so I can figure out what to do."

  "So get to know him."

  "I’m trying. It’s not like I’ve had a lot of opportunities to be around him. Once in a while at the worksite, moving Harry, the get-together last night – and a few others. And he's not even at all of them. If I try to do anything more than that, everyone else will think I’m the stalker, too."

  Jon plowed his fingers through his short hair in frustration. She had a point there. He’d been ready to have her tossed in jail, condemning her because of the efforts she’d made so far. He knew there had to be a better, more effective way, yet when it finally came to him, he immediately rejected it.

  No, that wouldn’t work, he told himself. It was a stupid idea. Except he knew that it was actually a perfect idea.

  Chapter 4

  Closing his eyes, he tried to think it through, but the only thing he could see was Ed. And there wasn’t a thing in this world he wouldn’t do for that man. For as close as he was to Dan, Sam, and Cal’s fathers, Ed was- Well, if Jon could have had the choice, Ed would have been the father he’d have hand-picked. Of course he would have been a fourteen-year-old father, but that was beside the point.

  "Okay," he finally mumbled, taking a deep, fortifying breath. It didn’t help a bit, and he thought this might be how men felt on their way to the electric chair. "Here’s the deal. Since there doesn’t appear to be another solution, this is what we’ll do."

  "Okay…" Hannah said, when several moments of silence followed his statement.

  "We’ll pretend we’re dating." Now it was his turn to shoot to his feet, and he started pacing from one end of the kitchen to the other.