Thread of Innocence

“It’s not just about us,” I said.

“I don’t give a shit, Joe,” she said. “I really don’t. They aren’t her parents. They aren’t her relatives. They don’t deserve anything and I’m not sacrificing my time with our daughter to give them any more time with her. They don’t get to play step-parents or aunts and uncles or whatever they’ve got in their heads that they think they’re entitled to. They can go to hell for all I care.”

I waited a moment, hoping she might cool off. “Okay. But what about what Elizabeth wants?”

“She doesn’t know what she wants, Joe,” she said, pleading with me to understand, to come over to her side. “She’s confused and I get that. Her life’s been turned upside down. But giving her permission to spend time with these people is like letting her pick and choose a family down the block as her new family.”

“No, it’s not, Lauren,” I said, frowning. “It’s the exact opposite of that. Until about a week ago, she thought they were her parents. She was attached to them. And she thought we were dead.”

“She’ll let it go,” Lauren said, her voice dropping. “It’ll just take time. When she’s able to shake the trauma off, she’ll remember us as her parents. Before all this happened.”

“Maybe. But you don’t know that. And even if she does come to terms with that, it doesn’t mean she won’t want some co

The line buzzed.

I waited.

“Well, until then, I’m saying no,” Lauren said.

She hung up before I could respond.

TWENTY SEVEN

I tried calling back once, but it went to voicemail and I knew Lauren was done with me for the night. That was probably a good thing because I didn’t see us getting on the same page any time soon and it was just going to create more animosity between us, which wasn’t going to be good for anyone.

As I lay awake, unable to sleep because I couldn’t turn my brain off, I couldn’t decide what was right. I believed what I’d told Lauren about Elizabeth’s co

But it was the way they’d gotten her that was still biting at me. No matter how they’d treated Elizabeth, they’d still flown to another city, paid an exorbitant sum and picked up their adopted daughter in a hotel room with no other adults around. No one in their right mind would find that acceptable’ every rational adult I knew would question the circumstances behind it. And no matter how long they’d had Elizabeth, they had to have always been worrying that someone was going to come knocking on their door. Desperation will make people do fu

I wrestled with those thoughts for most of the night, unable to convince myself that one outweighed the other, and all I ended up with for all my thinking was a sleepless night.

I pushed myself out of bed at daybreak, brewed a full pot of coffee and forced myself to think about other things as I opened my computer. I had money in my accounts, a product of a nomadic decade and having lived so sparsely in the years since I’d left Coronado. I’d never charged exorbitant fees for my services as a private investigator, but my clients paid me well. And I lived well below my means. But it wasn’t going to last me forever. At some point, I was going to have to make a decision as to what I wanted to do. Did I want to continue the investigating and become official? Or did I want to find something that offered some stability, a regular paycheck and wouldn’t chew my guts up?

On paper, it seemed like an easy decision. Find a job, have regular hours, deposit paycheck. But I wondered if that would be enough for me. I wasn’t going to go back to being a cop. That ship had both sailed and sunk. So I wasn’t sure what exactly I would look for.

But as I sipped my coffee and paged through the emails sent to me by people looking for their kids, I realized there was a certain pull. I was good at helping people. I could find their kids, even if the end result wasn’t always pretty. I could give them closure. I’d learned how to do it and do it well. I knew the tricks, I knew the questions to answer, I knew where to look. And by looking at the emails, I knew how desperate people were.

A ten-year-old boy in North Dakota.

A seventeen-year-old girl in New York.

A forty-year-old father in Florida.

A twelve-year-old girl in Kentucky.

Each of the emails was heartfelt, genuine, wrenching. Sent by people who’d had their lives shredded, just like mine. They didn’t have any answers and they felt helpless. They’d found my name because I’d helped others and they now clung to the hope that I’d be the one to get them the answers they needed and wanted.

I closed the laptop. I knew that I wouldn’t commit to traveling the country again. The only reason I’d done that in the first place was because being in San Diego was too painful and I’d taken to following tips about supposed clues to Elizabeth’s whereabouts. But, now, with her home, there was no way I was going to take off and leave her. That I was certain about.

But it was hard to think about saying no to people that needed help, too.

I drained the coffee pot and decided that, in lieu of ru

Almost an hour later, the grass was cut and I was wheeling it back into the garage. I’d just grabbed the edger when a familiar car pulled up to the curb. Mike Lorenzo got out of the driver’s side and came up the walk.

“Working pretty hard,” he said. “Your face looks like a tomato.”

I inspected the piece of equipment in my hands, giving it a once over. “Been awhile since I’ve done this stuff,” I answered. “I’m out of shape.”

He glanced around the yard. “You seem to remember how to do it. Maybe a landscaping business is in your future.”

“Maybe,” I said.

His hair was still damp from what I assumed was a shower and he wore dress slacks and a polo shirt, tucked neatly into the waist. His face was clean-shaven, but his eyes gave him away. They looked exhausted, bloodshot and ringed with circles.

I knew the feeling.

“I don’t want to stop the momentum you’ve got going here, but I wanted to talk to you,” he said. “You give me a minute?”

I laid the edger down on the grass. “Sure.”

He rubbed at the side of his face for a moment, like he was trying to gather what he wanted to say. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Joe, but it doesn’t feel right.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I didn’t say anything.

“I know we were good before you got to Mi

I shook my head. “No.”

“Something that pissed you off?”

“No.”

“Say something inappropriate to you?”

“No.”

He took all that in and nodded slowly. “See, I didn’t think I had, but I’m just trying to clear the bases here. Because I can’t figure out what I’ve done that has put me on the outs with you.”