Poisoned Secrets

The child’s expression showed concern. “Will your grandma be too upset?”

“Nope,” she murmured around the lump in her throat. Where do I begin getting to know my brother?

“I know if I’d done something like that, my grandma woulda been upset big-time. And my mom would be crying by now. Once she broke a dish my grandma gave her and she cried. Told me family was important to her.”

His words stole her breath. Her lungs burned as she tried to drag air into them. “Your mother’s right.” And she robbed me of mine. She fought the tears that now gathered in her throat in order to ask, “Would you like to help me finish unloading my car? I’ll pay you.”

“Sure!” Kenny beamed. “Mom isn’t gonna be home for a while. I could use the money—that’s if you don’t mind Ashley tagging along.”

“Fine. Is she your sister?” She knew the answer, but it didn’t stop the feeling of too much happening too fast and the need to slow down.

“My baby sister.” His face screwed up into a frown as though he’d just taken a spoonful of distasteful medicine.

“Tell you what.” Maggie lifted the box, grimacing when she heard the broken glass clinking. “I’ll take this to my apartment while you get Ashley. Then we’ll head to my car.”

Hurrying up the stairs, she needed to put some distance between herself and Kenny before she cried in front of him. She’d dreamed of getting to know her family for a long time—ever since she had learned her birth mother had one—but she’d never dreamed of the rush of excitement that she felt, the anxiety that caused a pressure in her chest, the tug of emotions that ripped through her gut. And the overriding thought that she’d missed so many years of this child’s life, as well as Ashley’s.

At the top of the stairs she paused to catch her breath, to swallow the tears. She looked down at Kenny, who waved and smiled. She returned his grin, resisting the urge to rush down the steps and hug the boy.

I have to take it slow and easy.

Outside her apartment door, she slipped the key into the lock. Surprised it was already unlocked, she tensed, her mind flooded with pictures she’d seen on the nightly news when Henry Payne had been found murdered in this very place.

Cautiously, ready instantly to flee, she eased the door open and peered into the living room. Kane McDowell had said he would be gone by two, and it was well past that time. “Anyone in here?”

“Just me.” Kane came into the living room from the kitchen.

Where the murder occurred. She could do this. She hadn’t lived in the town long and certainly didn’t have anyone mad enough at her to kill her.

“For a second there, I had visions of tossing this box and hightailing it down the stairs. Not an especially dignified start in my new home.” She managed to strike a relaxed pose against the doorjamb.

The sides of his mouth curled upward. “I have your garbage disposal fixed—I think. If this doesn’t work, I’ll have to replace it.”

Stepping closer, his scent of pine engulfing her, he took the box from her. Her mouth went dry. Her reaction to Kane was as strong as the day before. After meeting Kenny, she realized she would have little emotional energy left after dealing with the Penningtons to pursue any other kind of relationship.

“That was beginning to look awfully heavy. Where do you want it?”

“Probably the trash.” When his forehead creased in question, she continued, “I dropped it on the stairs. That doesn’t sit too well with glass. I guess I’d better check it, though, to see if anything is salvageable.”

“How much do you have to carry in today?”

“A carload. I do have several pieces of furniture in storage that I’ll move here later when I’m settled.” Those pieces were the only connection she had to her adoptive father. A rush of sadness washed over her at the thought of never seeing him again. Such a good man.

Kane glanced at the box. “I can lend you a hand with your unloading.”

“That’s great.” Although a deep ache had burrowed into her heart, she arranged her features into a smile. “I have one helper, but truthfully I wasn’t sure how I was going to get some of the larger items up those stairs.”

“Who’s helping you?”

“Kenny.” Maggie started to ask some questions about him and Ashley when the two children appeared in the doorway. Kenny grinned while Ashley hid behind her big brother, peeping around him with her thumb in her mouth.

Maggie wanted more than anything to scoop both children up in her arms and hug them tightly. She might never be able to do that; she might always be no more than the lady who lived across the hall. The realization cut deeply.

“Are you all ready to work?” Maggie asked, putting a firm lid down on her volatile emotions.

Kenny nodded while Ashley stared at the floor.

“I’ll pay you, too, Ashley.” Maggie stepped to the side to get a better view of her little sister.

The child ducked behind Kenny even more, concealing her face from Maggie. A knifelike pain sliced through her heart. Her half sister wasn’t playing hide-and-seek; she was hiding—from her. Ashley’s actions only reinforced the fact that Maggie was a stranger to her own family.

“She’s an old scaredy-cat. She’ll probably just watch. That’s all she ever does.” Kenny frowned at his baby sister.

“That’s okay.” Whirling around, Maggie headed out into the hallway, needing fresh air desperately.

A bond with Ashley formed in the moment Maggie watched her little sister trudge out of the apartment behind Kenny, her gaze glued to the floor, her thumb in her mouth. She knew the frightened feelings Ashley experienced around new people because she had been there herself until one day she’d decided she couldn’t spend her life locked up inside of herself and did something about it. She’d forced herself out of her shell but only so far. Still craving solitude, she preferred watching people from a distance, but it was suddenly very important to help Ashley. Maggie prayed the child would let her.

Descending the staircase, Maggie suppressed a flash of anger. All her life she’d wanted a large family, full of brothers and sisters, laughter and love. Now she was faced with two children who regarded her as a stranger and would never know her as their big sister since she had no intention of saying anything about who she was. She only wanted to get to know them from afar, learn about them from her observations. Why give her birth mother a second chance to reject her? She’d had enough of that in her life.

The next afternoon after Edwina Bacon paid her a visit with a welcome gift of banana nut bread, Maggie sat at her kitchen table downing a large glass of iced tea, relishing the cool liquid as she took a break from unpacking. Every muscle in her body ached. She rolled her shoulders, refusing to look at the spot where Henry Payne’s body had been. There wasn’t a trace of blood on the beige tile because it was brand new, shining in the sunlight streaming through the bay window that overlooked the lake and yard.

Back to work. Finishing her drink, she pushed to her feet and put her glass in the sink. When she started for the living room, a pounding at her front door interrupted her trek to the nearest box. Instead, she answered the urgency in the knock.

“School’s out already?” Maggie asked as she took in the sight of Kenny. Then she noticed the frantic look in his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Come quick. It’s Ashley. She can’t breathe.”

In a space of a heartbeat, Maggie reacted to Kenny’s words. She hastened across the hall to the Pennington’s open front door, following the boy into the apartment. Ashley stood near the dining room table, clutching her throat, trying desperately to draw air into her lungs, her eyes wide with fear. The bluish tint to Ashley’s skin alarmed Maggie. She must have something in her throat. For a few seconds, terror held her immobile until her emergency training kicked in.

Maggie raced to the little girl and encircled her torso. Please, dear God, not Ashley. I can’t lose her now.

Clasping a fisted hand under the child’s rib cage, Maggie pressed upward in four quick thrusts. Relief trembled through her when she saw a peanut pop out of the girl’s mouth. Ashley coughed, then began to breathe again.

Maggie gently laid the child on the floor, then hugged Ashley to her. The sound of Maggie’s heart beating roared in her ears as she struggled to control the quaking of her body. She had to remain calm, but for the life of her, she wasn’t sure how she would. She had almost lost her sister, and she had just found her.

“Are you all right?” Maggie asked when she thought her voice would work.

Ashley’s shudder rippled along Maggie’s body. The child nodded but kept her arms locked about Maggie while dragging in deep breaths. She stroked the little girl’s long brown hair and thanked the Lord.

“You’ll be okay now,” Maggie whispered as much to reassure herself as her sister. Never in her life had she felt so scared as she had when she had seen Ashley unable to suck in air.

The five-year-old sobbed against Maggie’s chest, tremor after tremor passing through her small body into hers. “I—I couldn’t—breathe.”

“I know, honey.” Her arms around Ashley tightened as though Maggie could absorb the child’s fear and wipe from her mind the past few minutes. What if she hadn’t been here to help? She clung tighter to the child.

“What happened?” Kane asked from the doorway.

“Maggie saved Ashley’s life,” Kenny said, his face still registering his own fear and panic. “She was blue!”

Maggie looked up at Kane, his gaze ensnaring hers. “She’ll be all right now. A peanut went down the wrong way.”

For a brief moment distress lined his face until Kane visibly took command of his emotions. He glanced from Maggie to Ashley. Crossing the room, he took the child into his arms. The small girl wrapped herself against him as he held her cradled to him, his eyes soft with concern, a smile of reassurance on his face.

“Uncle Kane, I tried to. Really I tried.” Ashley hiccupped between her words, tears cascading down her cheeks.

An ashen cast to his skin sharpened the hard planes of his face. “Shh,” Kane whispered while he held Ashley in his arms. “I won’t let anything else happen to you.”

He walked down the hallway toward the bedrooms and disappeared inside one. Maggie stood. All strength flowed from her legs. She clutched a dining room chair to steady herself, trying to assimilate what had just taken place.

“Kenny! What’s going on in here?”

Both Maggie and Kenny turned at the sound of the woman’s voice. Maggie felt paralyzed, staring at the woman who had given birth to her. In that instant when their gazes touched, time came to a standstill for Maggie. She didn’t have to be introduced to Victoria Pennington to know the woman standing inside the doorway was her birth mother. She was a stranger, yet she was familiar at the same time. Maggie experienced the most disconcerting feeling.

“Who is this woman, Kenny? You know my rule. No one is allowed in this apartment when I’m gone.” Victoria’s gaze swung from Kenny to Maggie. Victoria placed her hands on her son’s shoulders, her stance protective, her expression accusing as she continued to scrutinize Maggie, stranger to stranger.

Don’t you recognize me? Don’t you know who I am?

Maggie pushed away from the chair holding her up, a taut band about her chest making each breath difficult. “I’m your new neighbor, Maggie Ridgeway.” The words came out in a whisper, her mouth parched. It took all her strength to remain standing a few feet from Victoria Pennington and not shout the truth. Maggie wanted to run; she felt as if her carefully thought-out plan was blowing up in her face, leaving fragments behind to slice her composure to shreds.

“Kenny, that still doesn’t excuse you from breaking an important rule,” the woman said in a softer tone.

Maggie backed away, beads of sweat coating her brow. She needed to leave before she hyperventilated.

“She saved Ashley’s life. She wasn’t breathing—”

“What? Where’s Ashley?”

“In her room with Uncle Kane,” Kenny answered.

Victoria rushed down the hall as Kane came out of Ashley’s bedroom. “Vicky, she’s okay. She’s sleeping now.”

With hands clenched at her sides, fingernails digging into her palms, Maggie took another step toward the door, the air charged with intense emotions that demanded she feel something other than indignation. But at this moment she couldn’t deny the anger deep in her heart.

While Kane briefly explained what happened, Vicky peered into the room and sighed. “She fell asleep the minute I put her down.”

“I should have been here. I got held up at the office. The police came again to the campus to question everyone who knew Henry.”

“Yeah, I know. They talked with me.” Kane shot Kenny a look.

Vicky closed her daughter’s bedroom door and headed toward the living area with Kane. “I wish I didn’t have to work. Then that wouldn’t have happened.”

“It could have happened with you sitting right here.”

“John and I are so lucky to have you here. You’re like a member of the family. I miss not living near mine.”

Maggie felt as if she had been slapped in the face. To them she was an outsider. But I belong. She bit the inside of her mouth to keep from shouting the truth. The realization that the words she had no intention of saying had been on the tip of her tongue sent alarm through her.

Kane nodded toward Maggie. “Thankfully Maggie was home to help Kenny.”

“I’m sorry about the earlier reception. As you may have gathered by now, I’m Kenny and Ashley’s mother, Vicky Pennington. Thanks for saving,” her voice faltered for a few seconds before she swallowed hard and finished, “my little girl.”

My little girl. But I am also. Lord, I can’t do this.

Both Kane and Vicky waited for a response. Maggie fought down the panic surfacing. She needed to escape, retreat to her apartment and regroup.

“I’m glad I was here to help out,” Maggie finally said, her throat closing about the words. Her anger swelled to the surface, her fingernails cutting deeper into her palms. Why did you give me up? She was afraid to say anything for fear that question would tumble out.

“I helped Maggie move in yesterday,” Kenny said, breaking the awkward moment of silence. “She paid me ten dollars!” He took the money out of his pocket and waved it in the air.

Vicky shifted her attention to her son. “Ten dollars?”

Envy, doubt and anger constricted Maggie’s stomach. She prayed none of her confused feelings were showing on her face. As Kenny and Vicky talked, Maggie saw her chance to escape. She took the few steps to the entrance and fled into the hallway.

Her gaze fastened on her door, she headed for it. The sound of the one behind her closing relaxed some of the tension in her until she heard Kane say, “Are you all right?”

“Great,” she murmured and thrust open her door. Safe.

She turned to close it, but Kane had already slipped inside her apartment. She rotated away from his probing gaze. It was bad enough she felt this seesawing between anger and hurt. She certainly didn’t want him to see it in her expression.

The sight of the disarray and stacked boxes accentuated her loneliness, a sense of abandonment. She hadn’t been prepared for this tangle of confusion twisting her stomach. In St. Louis she had thought she could handle this objectively as she did most things in her life. Wrong. There was nothing objective about this situation.

“Maggie?”

The sound of her front door finally being closed echoed through the apartment—her home now, hundreds of miles away from anything familiar. Why did I do this? Why couldn’t I be happy not ever knowing why my mother gave me up, what my heritage is? Lord, why do I have two mothers who don’t really want me? She desperately sought the strength she always gained when she turned to God for reassurance and comfort.

“Maggie, you aren’t all right.” Kane touched her hand, sending a bolt of recognition up her arm.

His nearness further eroded her self-confidence, making herself doubt her sanity for even considering this move. She’d gone through life insulating herself from others, and suddenly the walls were crumbling, her usual defenses no longer working. She stepped away, needing to put some distance between them.

His worried expression prompted her to say, “I’m fine. Why do you ask?” None of the nonchalance she wanted to project came across. She held herself so taut that her body ached.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it was the pale tone to your skin or the fact you didn’t even tell Kenny and Vicky goodbye.”

Feigning an interest in an open box, she lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “It isn’t every day I save someone’s life.”

“True. But my gut instinct tells me something else is going on here.”

She picked up a book and flipped through it as though she hadn’t a care in the world. “What possibly could be going on?” When she thought she had herself under control, she faced him.

He studied her, that piercing gaze of his roaming over her as though he could read her innermost thoughts. She prayed he couldn’t because after that scene in the Penningtons’ apartment she didn’t know if she could go ahead with her quest. She wanted answers, not a relationship with her birth mother. She’d already had one with her adoptive mother that hadn’t turned out well. Why subject herself to another?

But still, there were blank holes in her family history she wanted filled. Could she form a friendship with the woman across the hall and discover the answers without disrupting anyone’s lives, especially Kenny’s and Ashley’s?

Shaking his head, Kane massaged the back of his neck. “You know I usually make it a habit to stay out of other people’s business.”

“Safer, isn’t it?”

The intensity in his eyes trapped her. “Yes. Much safer.”

For a long moment she stared at him. She glimpsed his vulnerability, a flash of pain, and that touched her battered heart. She wished she could deny his potent effect on her, but she couldn’t. She wished she could deny the spark of interest she sensed in his eyes before he veiled it, but she couldn’t. Just as she couldn’t give up her quest when she was so close to finding some answers.

They both had their secrets. The barrier he had placed around his emotions was strong, possibly impregnable, and she had never been good at tearing down another’s defenses because she couldn’t get past her own, fortified from years of rejection.

She averted her gaze. “Did you take care of everything in here yesterday?” That ought to be a safe enough subject. His visual assault still tingled up her body. She kept her eyes fixed on a spot across the room.

He moved toward the front door. “I believe everything is good to go. If not, Edwina can take care of it.”

“Kane.”

He stopped and glanced back at her, his expression completely masked, no vulnerability evident.

“Yes, Maggie?”

“Thanks.”

“For what? The Penningtons are special to me. I should be thanking you for saving Ashley.”

“For your help today.” For understanding and not pushing, she finished silently.

He inclined his head toward her, then left. The door closing magnified the feeling of loneliness that had inundated Maggie earlier. She looked about at the chaos. She felt her life was like the items in the boxes, not one of them in its proper place.

Suddenly she needed to get away from the apartment. Walking into her bedroom, she dug through a box until she found her jogging clothes and her MP3 player. One of the best ways she had found to handle her stress was to exercise—hard. After donning her shorts, T-shirt and tennis shoes, she left to run until she was too exhausted even to think.

An hour later and bone tired, Maggie let herself into her apartment, removing her earplugs and placing her MP3 player on the table in the small foyer. The idea of a hot shower prodded her to move faster toward her bedroom even though her muscles ached from her grueling workout.

She entered the room, her gaze immediately fastening onto the boxes stacked against one wall. An unfamiliar scent accosted her nostrils. The hairs on her nape tingled. She started to turn.

Thud!

Something hard slammed into the back of her head. As she crumbled to the floor, the blackness swallowed her up.

THREE

Pain pulsated a pounding rhythm against her skull. Maggie reached up and touched the spot that throbbed. A sticky substance coated her fingertips. Although the darkness reeled behind her closed eyes, she slowly opened the lids. Light assaulted her, and she shut them immediately.

What happened?

Again she inched her eyes open, letting them adjust to the brightness that illuminated her bedroom. She held her hand up in front of her face and saw the red that covered her skin.

Someone hit me?

She remembered coming into her apartment and heading for her bedroom. After that, a blank slate greeted her probing. She was lying prone on the hardwood floor so something had happened. But what?

As though in slow motion, she twisted to her side to push herself to her feet. Halfway up, the room spinning before her, she clutched the small table by the doorway to steady herself. It came crashing down on top of her. The books she had stacked on it tumbled into her and sent her collapsing to the floor. She hit her head in the same place that hurt. Pain streaked outward in waves that threatened to drive her back into the black void.

Edwina Bacon shuffled toward her recliner in front of her TV when she heard a loud noise as if something above her in Maggie’s apartment struck the floor. After all that happened in the past month, the manager of Twin Oaks skirted her chair and made her way toward her front door. She jingled her keys in her pocket to make sure she had them and left her place.

With her hand on the ornate carved banister, she climbed the stairs as quickly as she could.

At Maggie’s place, Edwina rang the bell.

Nothing.

She pressed in the white button a second time then a third.

With a glance from side to side, Edwina removed her key ring and found the one to Maggie’s. If she wasn’t home, what caused that sound? If she was home, why hadn’t she answered the door?

Edwina inserted her key and paused before turning the handle. Memories of Henry’s death only weeks before inundated her. She prayed this wasn’t a repeat of what happened to Henry. For a few seconds she thought of going back down and calling Kane or her nephew at the police station.

Lord, what should I do?

What if Maggie had fallen and hurt herself and couldn’t come to the door? What if she needed help now? With her teeth clenched, Edwina twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

“Maggie? Are you all right?”

Edwina stood in the entrance and glanced around. Relieved nothing seemed disturbed although there were still unopened boxes scattered about the living room, she moved a foot into the apartment, leaving the door wide open.

“Maggie,” she called.

A moan sounded from the bedroom. Edwina hurried as fast as she could down the hallway. Her heart pounded with each step against the hardwood planks.

Then Edwina saw Maggie. She lay on the floor, her eyelids fluttering. Books were scattered about her, and a small table sat at an angle across her stomach.

With an effort, Edwina knelt next to Maggie. Edwina pressed her lips together to keep her own moan inside her at the pain in her aching knees. Maggie needed her help.

“Maggie,” she touched the young woman’s shoulder, “what happened?”

Maggie grimaced as her gaze connected with hers. “I’m not sure.”

“Here, let me help you up.” Edwina pushed the small table to the side, slid several books away and clasped the new tenant’s arm.

She attempted to hoist herself up, but pain flitted across her features.

“Where are you hurt?” Edwina’s gaze fixed on the red stain on the wooden floor.