“Okay, now, hear me out before you get too upset.”
“Oh, sweet heaven,” she murmured. “You’ve found her, haven’t you?”
“We’re pretty sure we know her name,” Justin said. “She’s an eighteen-year-old from Garden City. Vicki Murdock. Her friends say she was pregnant, that the baby was due a few weeks ago, but that she suddenly dropped out of sight. Her friends said her boyfriend was a real creep, that he didn’t want the baby, wouldn’t let her see a doctor. She was totally under his spell. None of them would be surprised if she had the baby, abandoned her, then went off with the boyfriend. I’d like it better if there were hospital records, but I had Lizzy check. Vicki Murdock didn’t give birth there. Even so, everything points to this being the woman we’re looking for.”
Sharon Lynn struggled visibly to keep her composure. “You said she’d gone off with the boyfriend. Were you able to find her?”
Justin slowly shook his head. “The two of them have just vanished. They’ve dropped out of sight.”
Hope flared in Sharon Lynn’s eyes. “They’re gone? What does that mean? Can the baby stay here?”
Justin nodded. “For now.”
“Oh, God,” she murmured, covering her face with her hands as sobs shook her shoulders. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Cord studied Justin’s grim expression and guessed there was more. He crossed the room and put his hands on Sharon Lynn’s shoulders, waited until her sobs ended.
“That’s not the end of it, is it?” he asked eventually.
Justin drew in a deep breath, closed his eyes, then shook his head. “No. There’s more.”
Sharon Lynn stilled beneath his touch. “What?” she asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
“In the process of identifying the mother, we talked to a woman who may be the baby’s grandmother. We’d have to do blood work to confirm all this, but, like I said, all the pieces seem to fit.”
“But you could be wrong,” Sharon Lynn insisted. “It might be a mistake.”
“Let him finish, darlin’,” Cord said, stroking a soothing hand over her hair.
“The grandmother, what was she like?” Sharon Lynn asked. “Was she kind?”
Justin shot a very revealing look toward Cord. “Far from it,” he said tersely.
“Tell me,” Sharon Lynn demanded. “What kind of a woman was she?”
“Naturally she was taken aback when I showed up to talk to her. She confirmed everything the friends had said about the pregnancy and the boyfriend. She said she’d thrown her out of the house when she’d found out. She said she hadn’t seen her daughter in months, that the girl was a tramp and a troublemaker and if she was gone, good riddance.”
Sharon Lynn looked shocked. Even Cord was stunned by the woman’s reaction. Was it any wonder that an eighteen-year-old had abandoned her child after being raised by a judgmental, unforgiving mother like that?
“She cursed a blue streak when I told her we were looking for her daughter because we thought she’d abandoned the baby. Then she said by God, she’d do her duty by the child, if no one else would.”
“But I will,” Sharon Lynn protested.
Justin patted her hand. “I know you would, sweetie. That’s why I told her the baby was in good hands for now, that she had nothing to worry about. I assured her that as soon as we could verify that the baby indeed belonged to her daughter, we’d be back in touch. I’ve stalled her for now. She let us call in a doctor to get blood tests done, so we’ll see if they’re genetically compatible. She was quite a martyr about it, said she would do what was right, take on this burden, even if no one ever thanked her for it.”
Cord tried to envision turning little Ashley over to a woman like that. Could Sharon Lynn do it? Could he? Could they fight her right to become the child’s legal guardian? Should they? Or would that only delay the inevitable heartache?
“Don’t panic, you two. Let’s just wait and see what happens,” Justin said, clearly intending to soothe Sharon Lynn, but settling Cord’s temper as well. “Something tells me this woman’s not all that anxious to take on a brand-new baby, despite what she said. Once she’s thought it over, she may decide the baby’s better off right where she is. After what I’ve seen, that would certainly be my opinion, not that it counts for much.”
“But she may decide to fight for her granddaughter,” Sharon Lynn said bleakly. “That’s certainly what I would do.”