LITMIR.BIZ

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and she couldn’t deny him, even though she knew it was wrong. Teddy had been and always would remain her childhood sweetheart, the man with the key to her heart.

      With effort, Julia forced words past her lips, trying not to let the very act exhaust her. “Your father and I loved you from the moment we saw you.”

      “Tell me, Mama.”

      And so Julia said the words she’d promised her husband never to say. But he wasn’t here now, and if Teddy was looking down, she told herself he’d understand. “You were adopted, Catie.” She channeled every last bit of strength into her voice, determined to make Cate understand. And forgive. “You came into our lives when you were just a week old, but you were always part of us.”

      In her heart, she begged Cate not to be angry at the grave omission that had been made. Julia fisted one frail hand and placed it against her breast.

      “I didn’t get to carry you beneath my heart, the way your birth mother did. But I held you there when you cried because the other kids made fun of you, or when that boy you liked so much asked another girl out. I held you to my heart when your father died—and he was your father. Just as you are my daughter, Catie. In love, in spirit and in fact. In every way but the mechanics of birth.” Pushing a button on the hospital bed, Julia drew herself up as best she could, a pale shadow of the vivacious woman she’d once been. “No one could have loved you more than your father and I did. No one,” she underscored as fiercely as she could.

      “It’s okay, Mama, it’s okay.”

      On legs that were less than solid, Cate crossed to the lone bed in the room and took her mother’s hand. She didn’t want her to become agitated and waste what precious little strength she still had left.

      Even as Cate held her mother’s hand, she could feel everything around her cracking, breaking. Shattering and raining down around her like tiny shards of glass. Cate struggled to understand why her parents would keep this from her. Were they ashamed of her, of how she had come into their lives?

      Julia wrapped her fingers tightly around Cate’s, afraid to let go. Afraid that the young woman she’d loved for the past twenty-seven years would walk out the door and never come back.

      But that isn’t my Catie. Catie would never leave.

      “But why didn’t you ever tell me?” Cate asked.

      A ragged sigh escaped Julia’s lips. “That was your father’s decision. He was afraid to let you know. When I tried to argue him out of it, he made me promise that I would never tell you.” Julia tried to read her daughter’s expression, but Cate had on what she’d once teased was her special agent face, the one that gave nothing away. Julia proceeded cautiously, as if every step on the tightrope might be her last. “Your father loved you so much, he said it would kill him if someday you wanted to go away to find your real parents.”

      Digging her elbows into the mattress, Julia struggled to sit up. Shifting pillows, Cate propped her up. Julia offered her a weary smile of thanks. “We were your real parents, your father and I.”

      “I know.” Cate said the words because her mother expected them. Because up until a few minutes ago, they had been true. But they weren’t now. There was a hollowness opening up inside of her, a hollowness that threatened to swallow her whole. It took everything she had not to let it register on her face.

      Doggedly, Cate pressed as much as she dared. “But after Daddy died…?” She paused, searching for words. Trying desperately to absolve the woman she’d thought of as her mother. “Why didn’t you tell me then?”

      A helpless look entered the hazel eyes. “You were fifteen and I didn’t know how to tell you. I did try, though, several times. But every time an occasion opened up, I realized that, like your father, I was afraid, too. You have to understand, after he died, you were all I had. I didn’t want to lose you.”

      After her father died, she and her mother had grown closer. So close that when it came time for her to go away to college, she opted to go to the University of San Francisco instead of a school back east the way she’d originally planned. She didn’t want to be far from her mother in case she was needed.

      They’d taught her that family was everything.

      How could they have said that to her, knowing what they’d known?

      Cate battled back the bitter anger as she lightly squeezed her mother’s hand. Trying to remember only the good times. “You wouldn’t have lost me, Mama.”

      The look in Julia’s eyes said she knew better. “I’ve lost you now.”

      She couldn’t allow her to think like that. If Julia was going to get well, she needed only positive energy in her life. Cate was determined to provide it. She knew she owed it to the other woman.

      “Shh, don’t talk nonsense. I’m here and I’m always going to be here.” Cate took the once robust woman into her arms. Julia felt as if she weighed next to nothing and it broke her heart. “You just make sure that you do the same, understand?”

      “I’m trying, Catie,” Julia whispered hoarsely. “I’m trying.”

      “Yes, Mama, I know you are.”

      The problem was, Cate thought, she was afraid that it just wasn’t enough. A cold fear gripped her heart once again.

      Chapter 4

      When her mother fell asleep, Cate slipped out into the parking lot and drove the five miles over to Doc Ed’s office.

      Rhonda, the nurse who had been with him for the past ten years, looked somewhat surprised to see her and even more surprised when she asked to speak with the doctor. The nurse obligingly sandwiched her in between patients.

      Cate ignored the exasperated look the woman in the waiting room gave her as she walked by and went into the inner office.

      The doctor’s terrain was as familiar as the back of her own hand. Three exam rooms huddled together, with Doc Ed’s personal office at the end of the tiny hall. All three charts were in the slots that hung on the outside of the doors. It reminded her of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, except that she was in search of something far more important than porridge and comfortable sleeping accommodations.

      She knocked once on Doc Ed’s door and let herself in before he gave his permission. If he was surprised to see her, he hid it well.

      Cate struggled to hold in her hurt and anger. “You knew, didn’t you?”

      Doc Ed put down the file he was reviewing and indicated that she should take the chair that was before his scarred desk. Old-fashioned in his methods, he put the patient before the fee and there was no computer on his desk, challenging his mind and his time. He liked only what he could put his hands on, like the files that littered every flat surface within his office.

      “Yes,” he told her, scrutinizing her reaction, “I knew.”

      Somehow, that seemed like the ultimate betrayal to her. Had no one in her life been honest with her? “For how long?”

      “From the beginning. I was the one who put them in touch with the private agency.”

      Cate reminded herself that she was first and foremost a special agent with the FBI. That meant she had to conduct herself professionally. She was supposed to be able to gather information under the worst situations, and heaven knew, this one qualified. “What was the name of it?”

      Doc Ed shook his head. “Angels From Heaven,” he told her. “But it’s long gone.” He saw the protest rise to her lips, as if she thought he was lying. “From what I’d heard, the lawyer handling all the private adoptions was killed in a freak accident. Stepped off a curb and right in front of a bus. Died instantly.”

      That sounded like the punchline of a bad joke. “When?”

      Doc Ed thought for a moment, trying to pin down a year. He remembered reading the story in the paper

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