Page 124 of Dying to Meet You

“Are you sure? Can I see?”

He studies me for a beat with solemn gray eyes. “Sure, Ro. Whatever you need.” He turns around and heads for the den, Lickie on his heels, as if she’s his dog. Traitor.

I take off my coat and follow them both into the room. The first thing I notice is a Shop-Vac—the one I usually keep in the basement. And the second thing I notice is that lots of old paint has been scraped and sanded off the woodwork. “Whoa. What are you doing?”

“Finding my birth certificate.” He’s sorting through an old shoebox that appears to hold his personal documents.

“No, I mean in here.”

He looks up. “You said you were trying to remove the paint and wallpaper in here. If I rent a steamer, I could get the wallpaper off in a day.”

I blink. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Least I can do,” he mutters. “Now where the hell is... ah.” He pulls a manila envelope out of the box and flips it open. “Here we go.” He hands me a birth certificate.

George Harrison Jones. Born June 22, 1982, 10:25 a.m. at Mercy Hospital, Portland, Maine.

I read the details twice. His mother—who obviously loved theBeatles—listed her own name. But on the line for the father, someone has typed UNKNOWN in capital letters. Harsh.

“Satisfied?” he asks.

“Sorry.” I let out a sigh. “Nothing makes sense.”

“Rowan?” he asks quietly. “Are you okay? You seem really stressed.”

“Yeah. That was the longest night of my adult life. And I work for a man who may or may not be covering up a baby-selling scandal.”

He takes the birth certificate out of my hand, puts it away, and sits on the futon. “I think you’d better explain.” He pats the spot beside him.

***

“So...” Harrison pinches the bridge of his nose. “You think it’s possible that Hank Wincott is a killer? Because he wanted to shut Tim up?”

“Hank, or his asshole of a brother. Think about it—Hank runs the same foundation that his great-uncle used to run. And he’s positioning himself to run for Senate. Meanwhile, somewhere in the books and records of his charity are all these adoptions...”

“And some of them were coerced.”

“Right. There could be a dozen more women like Laura. The Wincotts ran that maternity home for, what? Thirty years? More, actually. It opened in the fifties, before closing in the late eighties or early nineties.”

Harrison strokes his beard. He’s always been the kind of person who thinks before he speaks, while I’m sitting here on the sofa in my dress, practically vibrating with anxiety. “It’s not just the bad adoptions that are rotten in this story. Laura said he was cruel to those girls. He liked punishing them. He might have been molesting them. If Hank knows aboutanyof it, then he’s up to his neck in scandal.”

“Okay, I can see it.” He picks up a pair of scissors off the side table. “You want a cup of soup?”

“What?”

“If I snip the thread at the back of your dress, you can put on comfortable clothes and have a cup of tomato soup. Your call.”

“Oh.” Am I stubborn enough to refuse the best soup in the world? Apparently not. “Yes, please.”

His smile is so quick that I almost miss it. “Then turn around.”

His voice is low and steady, and I find myself doing exactly as he asks. I’m too tired to find that irritating.

“Hold still.”

One of his roughened hands lands on my bare shoulder, and I try not to shiver. But he’s so close I can feel the gentle exhale of his breath on my neck as the scissors snip the stitches he made. Goose bumps rise on my skin as he unzips my dress a couple of crucial inches. The sound of the zipper’s teeth and the drag of his fingers against my bare skin make me close my eyes.

“All set,” he whispers, the words vibrating inside my chest.