LITMIR.BIZ

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blinked as if he was stepping out of the shadows and into the light. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, then he swallowed hard and shook his head. “No, sir, I haven’t. And nothing like that would happen without me seeing it. I’m on duty right here. No one would get in who didn’t belong.”

      “I did,” Max pointed out.

      Henry licked his upper lip, blew out a breath and said, “What I meant was, no one could stay inside who didn’t talk to me first. And no one but the mailman and the residents go near the mailboxes.”

      “You’re sure about that?”

      Henry lifted his narrow chin, met Max’s gaze with the direct stare of an honest man and said, “Absolutely.”

      Max was sure about something, too.

      Henry was lying.

      Max couldn’t prove it, but he knew it down to his bones. And that made him wonder what exactly was going on at 721. The old place looked quiet, dignified. But there were undercurrents here and Max didn’t like it. He didn’t want to think about Julia staying here. One woman was dead and Julia herself was being blackmailed.

      Something was very wrong in this building.

      “You’re pregnant?”

      Julia winced as her mother’s voice hit a particularly high note. She’d known this was going to be an ugly meeting. She had to face her parents not only with the news of her pregnancy, but her upcoming marriage, as well.

      She sighed a little as her mother stood up from her silk-brocade chair and stared down at Julia as though she were a particularly appalling bug. Just imagine, she thought, what this scene would have been like if you hadn’t been able to tell them you’re getting married.

      The sting of their only daughter being an unwed mother was something her parents might never have recovered from. All her life, Julia had been a disappointment. She knew that. Her parents had made sure of it. And all of her life, a part of Julia had tried to make them proud. To make them love her. Despite her efforts, nothing had changed.

      She looked up at her mother and felt … nothing. No connection. No bond. No threads of affection or familial loyalty. Just … nothing. As sad as that made her, Julia realized that accepting this was the first step in finding her own kind of peace. The first step in building her own family. Her own world, separate and apart from the people who’d made her.

      “Yes,” Julia said, smiling into her mother’s disapproving gaze, “I am. And my baby’s father and I will be getting married in just a couple of weeks.”

      “That’s something, I suppose,” her father muttered from the chair where he sat glaring at her. “As long as you’re married quickly, no one will have to know the reason.”

      Julia glanced at him and noticed that his bushy gray eyebrows were drawn together in a too-familiar frown of disgust. She couldn’t remember a single time in her life when her father had held her, hugged her, told her that she was pretty or that he loved her. How strange it was to sit here in this place and realize the sad truth of her life.

      She didn’t have a family. She had biological parents. That was all.

      And because she knew that they would never approve of her or give her the kind of love she’d once longed for, Julia was free. Free to speak her mind. To tell them what she’d feared telling them only days before.

      Straightening in her chair, she clasped her fingers together tightly in her lap and said, “People will know I’m going to have a baby, Father.”

      “Eventually,” he conceded with a shake of his head.

      “Donald, you’re missing the point here,” Margaret Prentice snapped. “This will make us grandparents. For heaven’s sake, I don’t want people thinking I’m old enough to be a grandmother. This is a disaster.”

      “Thank you,” Julia muttered.

      “You will not speak to us in such a fashion, Julia,” her mother said as her cold blue gaze fixed on her daughter. “At the very least, you owe us civility and respect.”

      “Respect is a two-way street, Mother.”

      Margaret laughed shortly. “Respect? You expect us to respect you for being stupid enough to get pregnant? You ask too much.”

      “Having a baby isn’t stupid,” Julia argued.

      “You’re not even married,” her father said.

      “I will be soon,” she responded, feeling a fire begin to build inside her. For years, when there were “discussions” like this one, she’d kept her mouth shut, done what was expected of her. But not anymore. She owed her child more than that. She owed herself more than that.

      “How could you do this to me?” Margaret’s voice shrieked a little.

      “I didn’t do anything to you, Mother …”

      “None of my friends are grandmothers,” her mother said hotly. “How will this look to people? How can I face my friends?” She crossed her too-thin arms over her narrow chest, but not tightly enough to wrinkle the cream-colored silk blouse she wore tucked into the waistband of linen pants the color of wheat. Margaret’s elegantly styled hair was short and dyed honey-blond every four weeks. Her manicure was perfect, her makeup expertly applied, and her unlined face was a billboard for the best cosmetic surgeons in the city.

      “Mother—”

      “Don’t speak to me.”

      “If we keep the ceremony quiet,” Donald Prentice mused more to himself than anyone else, “it’s possible—”

      “What?” Margaret turned on her husband like a cobra. “That no one will notice when Julia’s body begins to swell? People will notice, I assure you. And my friends will never let me forget that I’m a grandmother, for pity’s sake.”

      It was as if Julia wasn’t even present. They talked around her, over her, about her, as if she wasn’t their daughter at all, but some annoying distant relative who’d made a claim on them they didn’t care to acknowledge.

      This she was used to. She’d grown accustomed to being nothing more than an annoyance to the people who should have loved her the most. Her succession of nannies had given her the only affection she’d known in her childhood, and as she grew older, Julia had realized that her parents had never wanted children in the first place.

      At fifteen, she’d actually heard her mother telling a friend one day about “accidentally” getting pregnant and what a horror it had been. Julia glanced around the living room of the home where she’d grown up and realized that she’d never once felt comfortable there. Never once had she felt as though she belonged.

      And that still held true. The walls were a glaring white with only a few abstract paintings lending garish splotches of color to the cold room. The floors were white tile and the chairs and couches, upholstered in subtle, differing shades of beige, were designed more for appearance than comfort. Even the smell of the house was sterile, as if the air in the place had long since died and was only being recycled by the people who continued to breathe it.

      Rubbing at her temples, Margaret glared at Julia. “Who, may I inquire, is the father of this unfortunate child?”

      Julia squirmed in her chair and cupped one hand over her still-flat abdomen as if she could prevent her baby from hearing its grandparents’ dismissal of its very existence. “His name is Max. Max Rolland.”

      Margaret frowned, though her too-tight forehead prevented it from showing. “Rolland. Hmm. No, I don’t believe I know any Rollands. Donald?”

      Julia waited, knowing that this news would completely wipe away her parents’ fury at hearing about the baby. Discovering that their only child was about to marry a man with no pedigree would put everything else they’d heard into perspective for them.

      Strangely

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