Meant to Be Immortal (Argeneau #32) - Lynsay Sands Page 0,84

herself, but the only thing she’d come up with was: “Maybe I was a colicky baby who drove her nuts when she had to deal with me.”

“So she punished you with a horrible first name?” Mac asked with amusement.

“Maybe,” she said with a faint smile, and then shrugged. “The truth is I prefer CJ to Jane anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, I like CJ better too,” Mac admitted. They were both silent for a minute and then he asked, “Did Officer Cummings and his wife have kids of their own?”

“No,” CJ said softly. “They’d apparently tried for years, but given up by the time I came along. They were older by then, in their late forties. But I think not being able to have children of their own, along with the fact that the care worker had given me his last name, is why he was so invested in my well-being at first. Most police officers would have handed me over to Social Services and forgotten all about me.”

“But he didn’t,” Mac murmured. “And he and his wife ended up raising you.”

“Yes. They were great parents, Mac,” she told him solemnly. “Like I said, they were older, and had always wanted kids. They poured all that love they’d been saving up into me.”

“Yet they never adopted you?” Mac said almost reluctantly, his confusion obvious.

CJ’s smile dimmed and then she sighed. “You have to remember I already had their last name. Legally. Everyone around us—teachers, the kids at school, and so on—all thought they already were my parents. Including me,” she added quietly. Swallowing, she continued, “I gather they were advised not to adopt me at first, that it wasn’t even likely the courts would allow it in case my mother’s family popped up and wanted me. So my father, Johnathan Cummings,” she added again to prevent confusion, “apparently spent a lot of his off-duty time the first four or five years of my life trying to identify my birth mother and locate her family. He was hoping they’d give him and Mom permission to adopt me.

“He said he gave up when I was six, and the courts probably would have allowed the adoption by then, but it would mean interviews with Social Services and the judge talking to me. They’d raised me as their own. I thought I was their daughter. They didn’t want to confuse and upset me while so young. I already had their name, and they considered me their child. All that going through the courts would do is give them a piece of paper saying what they already felt in their hearts, that I was their daughter. So, they decided to wait until I was sixteen, and then planned to sit down and explain about my birth mother, and ask me if I’d let them adopt me and make me officially their daughter.”

“But they died when you were around fourteen, you said,” Mac murmured with a frown. “Is that how you found out they weren’t your real parents?”

“No,” CJ admitted solemnly. “Unfortunately, I found out before that . . . by accident. I went poking around the attic in search of something to make a costume out of for Halloween when I was fourteen and found a stack of checks and a bunch of paperwork in the attic that told me before they could.”

“Right,” Mac murmured. “Foster parents get paid.”

“They do,” she agreed, and then added, “But mine didn’t.”

When he turned a confused expression her way, she smiled faintly. “These checks were uncashed. My parents never put them in the bank. They just stuck them in a box in the attic. They said they didn’t want to be paid. Raising me was a labor of love. They considered me their daughter and always planned to adopt me, so there was no need to be paid.” She peered down into her now empty coffee cup, and then admitted, “At least, they tried to tell me that, but in the end I didn’t really accept or even hear what they were trying to tell me until I read their letter.”

“A letter?” Mac echoed with surprise.

CJ nodded. “They wrote it when I was five or six and gave it to their lawyer to give to me along with their wills should anything happen to them.”

“That’s sweet, but why the hell didn’t they just tell you everything themselves after you discovered the checks and paperwork about you being a foster kid?”

“They tried,” she assured him. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t