Searching for Cate

She would rather never see him again than have him relive his pain, time and again.

He needed to put it all behind him. And she couldn’t hold her tongue any longer. It wasn’t in her. She set down her cup again and looked into his eyes. “You went there, didn’t you?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” He met her gaze unwaveringly. Of her two sons, Christian was the more sensitive one. The one more like her.

“Why should you?” Juanita challenged. She spoke quickly, before he could answer. Before he could defend actions that to her were undefendable. “Christian, every time you go, you come back with this look on your face, as if your heart has been torn out of your chest all over again. As if,” she emphasized, “what happened that day was your fault.”

He looked at her sharply with blue eyes that proved their lineage had allowed an interloper. “It was my fault. I was her husband, Mother. I should have seen it coming. I should have known.”

The words might be different, but the conversation was not new. They’d had it before. Many times in the past three years. It never got any better.

“The blood of the shamans runs through my veins,” Juanita reminded him. “And I did not know, did not see.” She leaned forward at the table, a new urgency in her voice as she pleaded with him. “Alma was an unhappy girl all of her life, Christian. We all saw that. We all knew that. How could we—how could you—have known that she would do such an awful thing?” she demanded.

Awful thing.

Words that could have been used to describe so many events. Somehow, they didn’t seem nearly adequate enough to apply to what had happened. Because what had happened that morning was beyond awful. Beyond anything he could have ever imagined.

Afterward, every night for a full year he’d wake up in a pool of sweat, shaking, visualizing what he hadn’t been there to see. Alma, their six-month baby girl in her arms, walking out onto the train tracks, the very same tracks that had run by the reservation ever since he could remember.

The same tracks where they’d foolishly played as children.

Except that morning she hadn’t been playing.

They were staying with his mother and Uncle Henry for a few days. He’d brought Alma and the baby with him on a working holiday, brought them so that his mother could visit with the baby. Alma had bid him goodbye as he’d gone to the clinic to work with Lukas. Both he and his brother returned as often as they could manage, to give back to the community where so many of their friends had remained.

That last trip, Alma had asked to come with him. He’d thought nothing of the request, except that perhaps she was finally finding a place for herself in the life they were carving out together. He was hopeful that she finally had put the baggage from her past into a closet and permanently closed the door on it. Because he loved her so much and tried every day to make up for the childhood she’d endured. The shame she had suffered at her father’s hands.

Alma had seemed happy enough to accompany them. Happy enough when he’d left that morning. He’d turned one last time to wave at her before climbing into the car. She was holding the baby in her arms. Picking up one of Dana’s tiny hands, she’d waved back.

There’d been no hint of what was to come in her manner.

Alma had waited until everyone was gone, his mother to the school, Uncle Henry to the gym he still ran, and then she’d taken their daughter and walked onto the train tracks. To wait for the nine-thirty train. Not to leave the reservation, but to leave life.

A life she could no longer tolerate, according to the note she’d left in her wake. She hadn’t wanted her daughter to grow up without a mother, the way she had, so she had taken the baby with her.

Lukas was the one who had broken the news to him. He remembered screaming, cursing and not much else. Except that there had been a burning sensation where his heart had been. For days afterward, he’d thought about following Alma, about making the same journey she had. Lukas kept him sedated and Lydia, his brother’s wife, kept vigil over him, making sure to keep him safe when the others weren’t around.

His whole family loved him and rallied around him. Eventually, he saw the reason for continuing to live. His tribe needed him. His patients needed him and his family loved him. So he continued. That was all the life he’d once relished with such gusto had become to him, a continuance.

He set up his practice and was affiliated with the same hospital that Lukas was. Blair Memorial in Bedford. He banked close to every cent he made, bringing it back with him whenever he came to the reservation. With the money, he purchased much needed equipment for the clinic that retained only nurses now that Doc Brown had died. He, his brother and the handful of doctors they’d gotten to volunteer their time came whenever they could.

The clinic needed so much, even now. The closest hospital to the Arizona reservation was more than fifty miles away. That barely amounted to a trip for most people, but in an emergency, it was a considerable distance, especially since most of the vehicles on the reservation were old and unreliable.

His dream was to someday have a hospital on the reservation. But until that time, he did what he could. And worked until he dropped so that he didn’t have to think, or remember.

Except that some days, it couldn’t be helped.

Moving her cup and saucer aside, Juanita reached across the table, her hand covering her son’s.

“Christian, beating yourself up isn’t going to change anything. Isn’t going to bring her or Dana back. And it’s wrong. It’s as futile as Alma constantly reliving everything that happened to her. She couldn’t let go of the past and it killed her. Don’t let what happened kill you,” she pleaded softly. “Learn from it, my son. Learn from it and grow.”

He knew his mother wasn’t giving the advice lightly. She’d been through a great deal herself. Married at seventeen to a man who betrayed her on a regular basis, she found herself suddenly widowed at thirty-two when Tom Graywolf had been killed in a barroom brawl. From somewhere, Juanita Graywolf had summoned an inner strength and made a life for herself and her two sons. Christian was well aware that he wouldn’t be where he was if it hadn’t been for her.

But right now, he didn’t want advice, didn’t want to be told what he should or shouldn’t do. The pain was there whether he stood over Alma’s grave, attended one of Blair Memorial’s surgical salons, performed an operation. It was always there to press against his chest when he least expected it and steal away the very air he breathed.

He’d married Alma, promising her that he would always be there for her, to protect her from everything. And he had failed. Failed to protect her from the inner demons that haunted her. And that failure was something he was going to have to carry around within him for the rest of his life.

He offered his mother what passed for a smile. “I’ll do what I can, Mother.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Christian saw his uncle entering the room. Short, squat and built like a bull even at his age, Henry had a vivid three-inch scar across his right cheek that he liked to refer to as his badge of courage. He’d gotten it as a young man, and in all these years, it hadn’t faded. And neither had Henry.

He helped himself to some of Juanita’s coffee, draining the cup in one long swig as if its bitterness was nothing. “You about ready, boy?” He put the cup down on the counter. “I’ve got miles to cover today, miles to cover.”

“I’m all set, just let me get my bag.”

Juanita rose from her chair, embracing Christian before he could leave the room. “Try to be happy, Christian,” she whispered.

For her sake, he smiled and nodded, even though he knew that wasn’t possible. “I’ll try, Mother,” he repeated. There was no feeling behind the words.

Chapter 3

For a moment, Cate remained where she was, near the door. Looking at her mother.

Ever since she could remember, she’d always believed in challenging herself, in seeing just how brave she could be. Her father had been her very first hero and she’d wanted to be just like him, an officer of the law who put herself out there, protecting people. Keeping them safe the way he made her feel safe.

Being brave, testing that bravery, was the first step to getting there. It wasn’t something she even thought about in the beginning. She just did her job. Even now, she would draw a line in the sand and dare herself to cross it. When one of the other field agents had recently referred to her as being fearless, she’d taken it as the highest compliment.

It was only privately that fear had gotten such a huge toehold in her life. Until the day he died, she had always thought of her father as being ten feet tall and bulletproof. Nothing could happen to him. Ever. When her mother would worry on those evenings that he was late coming home, she’d comfort her, saying it was just some loose end on the job that was keeping her father, nothing more. She never once thought that her father’s life might be in danger, that something could happen to him to permanently keep him from coming home.

When it did, the very foundations of her world cracked. They became so badly damaged that they were never quite the same again.

And neither was she.

Like the snake that had entered paradise and ultimately brought about the loss of innocence for Adam and Eve, fear entered her life the day her father was killed, forever robbing her of her innocence.

Losing Gabe had brought about another upheaval, another magnitude-nine earthquake that destroyed the foundations she’d so painstakingly repaired. Older, wiser, she was still that fifteen-year-old girl who had sobbed her heart out the July night her father was shot.

She hadn’t bothered to attempt to repair her foundations a second time. She just patched the gaping cracks as best she could and went through the motions of living her life.

Eventually, because she knew how badly her state affected her mother, she tried harder. Her enforced routine took, and while she didn’t exactly enjoy life, Cate found she could once again draw breath without pain. She rallied for her mother once again. Because the woman needed her.

Receiving news that her mother had leukemia threatened to throw her down into the bowels of hell again. Secretly, Cate clung fiercely to the threadbare hope that her mother would survive, that this was some kind of trial she had to endure, but that she would ultimately emerge on the other end of this long, dark tunnel victorious. Cate refused to entertain the thought that her mother might not make it. That Julia Kowalski’s light would be extinguished and that the sweet-tempered woman would no longer be a presence in her life. She’d lost her father and her lover. The thought of possibly losing her mother as well was too heinous to contemplate, even for a second.

And now, something besides death hovered between them. Something that threatened to destroy her world for a third time.

Or maybe it was death—not of a person, but of a belief. A belief upon which her very world had originally been founded. Each time she’d rebuilt, it was on that belief, that truth. That she was Catherine Kowalski, Big Ted and Julia’s daughter.

Was that going to be taken away from her, too?

Cate curled her fingers into her hands, as if to clutch what little power she had left. Silence blanketed the room. The only break was the sound of her mother’s labored breathing.

Say it isn’t so, Mama. Tell me I’m your little girl, your own flesh and blood. Yours and Daddy’s.

Cate remained by the door for a moment longer, trying to absorb everything she could about the woman. Holding off that first bite from the apple a moment longer.

She was acutely aware, not for the first time, that her mother and she didn’t look at all alike. Julia Kowalski was a short woman with dark brown hair and lively hazel eyes. Until this illness had begun to eat away at her, her mother had been pleasantly plump and large boned, like her husband.

Cate had always been thin, delicate, even as a little girl, despite all her attempts to bulk up and be just like her father. She was small boned and deeply frustrated by it when she was younger. To comfort her, her father told her she took after his only sister, who had died before she reached her twentieth birthday.

“Josephine was a real beauty, just like you,” he’d tell her time and again.

And she’d been content that she looked like his sister, Josephine. Even when he could produce no photographs to back up his claim, it never occurred to her to doubt him.

Cate doubted him now. Doubted everything they had ever told her, and yet she still desperately hoped that she was just being paranoid. That her imagination was running away with her.

Years on the job did that to you, Cate thought. It heightened your senses and made you ready to take on anything. It also made you see things that weren’t really there. Full-blown figures where in reality only shadows existed.

Please let there be only shadows.

Cate took a deep breath and braced herself. It was time to test her bravery again. Time to cross another line in the sand. God knew she didn’t want to. But she had to.

“Mom, what was Doc Ed talking about just now?” To her own ear, her voice trembled slightly. She fisted her hands harder, dug her nails into her palms more deeply. “Why is our blood type incompatible?”

The smile on Julia’s lips was thin, weary, and yet somehow still just as warm now as it had been when Cate had been a little girl of eight. Back then, thunderstorms would frighten her, causing her to crawl into the shelter of her mother’s arms, begging to hear stories that would distract her. Her mother always obliged.

She wasn’t eight anymore, Cate thought sadly.

“You’re a smart girl, Catie.” Julia’s voice was thin, reedy. “You know why.”

Yes, Cate thought, she knew in her soul. But until she heard the actual words, she would remain in denial. She needed that kick in the butt to make her stop playing games with herself.

Cate pressed her lips together, hating this. “Tell me.”

Julia sighed. Passing a hand over her eyes, she willed her tears back. A couple seeped out, anyway. Because she was tethered to an IV, her movement was restricted. With another bracing sigh, Julia dropped her hand to the bed. It fell as if it was too heavy to hold up.

God, how she wished Teddy had listened to her. She’d told him that it was wrong to keep this from Catie. But he’d begged. It was one of the very few times he’d asked anything of her 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 and wondering what was going to happen to all the files of the babies who had changed hands. He’d even gone so far as to try to find out. But the address on the card the lawyer had given him turned out to belong to a dry cleaner’s now. All trace of the dead man’s small office was gone.

“Twelve, fifteen years ago. Without him, there was no agency.”

She watched the doctor’s eyes for signs of nervousness. Seeing none still didn’t convince her. He could just be a convincing liar. After all, he’d allowed her to believe a lie all these years. “You’re sure?”

Doc Ed spread his hands wide. “I have no reason to lie to you, Catherine.”

“You had no reason to keep my adoption from me, either,” she pointed out.

“Not my call, Catherine.” He leaned back in his chair, an old leather chair that had long since assumed his shape. It creaked slightly as he studied her. She was a strong-willed girl, she always had been. She would get through this, but not easily. “For what it’s worth, I thought your father was wrong, keeping this from you.” He laughed softly to himself. “Big Ted was absolutely fearless, but you were his Achilles heel.”

Her eyebrows drew together. That didn’t make any sense to her. Achilles heels signified a weakness. She’d never held Big Ted back. “I don’t understand.”

“If you had wanted to call someone else ‘Dad,’ it would have killed Big Ted. You were the sun and the moon and stars to him.”

How could her father have even thought that she’d turn her back on him and all their time together? Turn her back on the man who’d taught her how to ride a dirt bike, how to play baseball, how to fish. She’d been the best boy she could be for her father, and all the while the relationship she’d believed in didn’t even exist.