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D oreen had a lot to think about. When Mack finally called her just before dinnertime, she smiled when she saw his name on the screen. “Hey,” she greeted him cheerfully. “How was your day?”

“Don’t ask,” he declared in a dry tone. “And it’s not over yet. I still have to meet a couple of the lawyers and go over some of the testimony for tomorrow.”

“I’m so sorry,” she replied. “You must be exhausted.”

“I knew it would be a tough week. I just wasn’t expecting this level,” he muttered.

“No, of course not,” she murmured.

“And you,… are you okay?”

“Of course. I’m fine,” she stated.

He laughed. “And, even if you weren’t, you would say you were.”

“If there was a problem, I would tell you.”

“Would you though?” he asked in a wry voice.

“I would,” she declared.

“I hope so. Somebody mentioned how you came into the shop today.”

“I forgot you were in court.”

“Right, yeah, I’m definitely tied up this week. I’m just hoping that, if I’m lucky, I’ll be off the hook next week.”

“I hope so, for your sake.”

“Our testimony should be done here pretty soon,” he shared. “Once that’s over, things will get back to normal.”

They talked a little bit longer, and then she asked, “We talked about the Winters family in town, right?”

“A politician, a big-business guy, and, other than that, not a whole lot to say. Don’t think they’ve crossed the law, at least not very much to my knowledge,” he conceded. “I have heard a few rumors about less-than-kindly dealings in terms of business, but I don’t know of any court cases up against them.”

“Right,” she noted. “That makes a difference, doesn’t it?”

“It does because, if nobody is charging them with anything, it’s a little hard for us to go after them, not without solid probable cause of any wrongdoing. Why? Are you coming up with them connected to this case?”

“Kinda,” she said. “I’m still digging.… I’m really just happy to hear your voice.”

The surprise was evidence in his tone, when he replied, “And that is exactly something I needed to hear at the end of this long day. I thought about coming by,” he added, with a sigh, “but honestly, I’m just tuckered and need to get some sleep.”

“Then you do that,” she agreed. “It’s all good in my corner.” When he hesitated, she added, “Honest.”

“You would tell me if it wasn’t, right?”

She chuckled. “Absolutely I would.”

When she disconnected, Thaddeus glared at her phone from his position atop the kitchen table.

“I would,” she stated defensively. He cocked his head to one side and glared. She shrugged. “It’s not as if there’s anything he can do about this mess right now. And, besides, for the moment, we have to honor Richie’s secret,” she muttered. “I don’t know how much we can do with that anyway, though one of the options is to take his DNA and to run it through the system. That’ll take a while.”

She frowned at that and then sent the captain an email, asking what the procedure was for getting DNA from possible suspects. She didn’t hear anything that night, but the next morning, bright and early, the captain got a hold of her.

“It’s not so much that it’s a very expensive process,” he explained, “but it’s a time issue.”

“Right,” she noted. “I would need more evidence before we get there. What if the DNA was collected by somebody else, and we ran it through?”

“If it’s a match,” he said, “that’s a job well done for you. At least it may give us,… say, a direct familial match. Then we could go for more than that.”

“Right,” she muttered. “Okay, I’ll keep working.”

And, with that, she disconnected, then sat down and tried to do a time line, but it didn’t exactly line up. As she reviewed it, she realized she needed to talk with Richie, but with Richie only. Not the rest of the gang. She picked up the phone and called him. When he answered, his tone was heavy and sad.

“I know what you’re calling about,” he muttered.

“Either I can come down, and we can talk a little bit together,” she offered, “or we can just do it now on the phone.”

“It would probably be better if we do it face-to-face. I’m not a coward.”

She chuckled. “You’ve lived a good life,” she stated. “I don’t consider that cowardice in any way.”

“This was one of those times when I was a coward.”

“Let me gather the animals, and I’ll come down to you.”

With that, she looked longingly at the coffeepot, realizing she should have had a cup of coffee before calling him, but it was already too late now that he was expecting her.

It seemed as if these seniors got up so early nowadays that there was just no time for anything or anybody else. Richie would probably say it was more about everybody needing naps in the afternoon, and they really liked their naps. Which Doreen understood, having had one or two herself. But she was eager to get at this and to get something resolved. She was eager to get at something tangible, at something that would be a step forward, or even a lead they could follow, some real progress. Even ruling things out would be welcomed at this point.

She wasn’t trying to finish this before Mack was back on duty—although that had crossed her mind—but it would be nice if she could find more information. That way, when he did get back, he could hopefully just step in to nab the bad guys. At least that’s how she wanted it to be. She chuckled at that because, although bad guys were everywhere, it seemed as if she found more than her fair share of them.

She packed up the animals, and, bundling up against the cold, although it was bright and sunny out, she walked down the river toward Rosemoor. As soon as she got there, she confused the animals completely and bypassed Nan’s apartment to head down to see Richie.

When she knocked, he opened the door and stared at her with a sad puppy-dog look that made her smile. She asked, “May we come in?”

He nodded and stepped back out of the way. “You might as well,” he grumbled, all too surly. “Lord knows everybody will know soon enough.”

“Not necessarily,” she replied. “There’s no need for anybody to know if it isn’t needed.”

He looked at her, a smile brightening his face. “You think so?”

“I would hope so,” she declared, with a nod. “Now, tell me what went on back then.”

He shrugged. “I was in a dark place. I’d been with a long-term partner, and she broke up with me. I didn’t handle it very well and went looking for solace in the arms of another woman, and, well, that’s just what happened.”

“Okay, that much I get but which woman?” she asked.

“Iris, of course.”

“Hang on a minute. Was she not married at that time?”

He winced and then nodded. “She was married. She was, but she was also, in a way, separated.”

“In a way, separated? What does that mean? Did the husband see them as separated, or were you stepping on toes?”

“I thought she was separated and didn’t think I was stepping on toes,” he declared with a huff. “But according to Claudia, her daughter, Iris wasn’t separated at all.”

“Did you believe Claudia?”

“I wasn’t sure who to believe, and I didn’t have much choice in believing any of it because, somewhere around that same time, Buck found out about us,” he muttered. “And that’s when Iris told me that they were taking a separation.”

“What was the reason behind the separation?”

“She told me how Buck had beaten her up, and she wasn’t willing to be a punching bag anymore.”

“So why was it a temporary separation?” she asked.

“That’s what I asked her,” he stated, nodding in agreement. “Iris said it was temporary because he was supposed to behave himself.”

“Wow, I’m not sure that’s really an option either.”

“No, I didn’t think it was, and I don’t think she understood what she was asking for. Yet it didn’t matter because that’s what she thought. And Buck,… once he found out,… well, I’ve got to tell you that he gave me a pretty-good licking himself. I was big and strong, but I wasn’t mean,” he explained, speaking in a low tone. “That Buck, he was mean.”

She winced at that. “I am so sorry.”

He gave half a shrug. “It was part of a whole lesson about not really understanding marriage and the give and take in all that, plus whether that was really what people were talking about in life. She was new to me in the sense that I hadn’t really ever met anybody who swept me off my feet,” he admitted, looking everywhere but at Doreen. “We were together for about ten months, and, when that broke up—and because of the way it broke up—I was in really bad shape after that.” He hung his head and took a deep and shaky breath.

“Of course,” she replied, with a nod. “How were you not supposed to be upset when you’re thinking that you’re having a relationship with somebody special, but she’s just spending time with you while she figures out the rest of her life?”

He looked at her, and his shoulders sagged. “It was too soon. I was vulnerable and should have realized that.”

“You can turn yourself inside out and up and down forever, or you can realize that it was a mistake that you learned from, and life moves on.”

“I didn’t really get a chance to make a mistake, to learn from it, and to have life move on because I was too busy getting kicked to the ground,” he stated in a harsh tone. “And then everybody found out about it, so that just made it all even worse.”

“I’m so sorry. Being the town joke isn’t fun.”

He looked at her, his gaze lighting up as he realized she understood. “You know from experience, don’t you?”

“I sure do,” she said, with a smile. “But, back to you, it wasn’t good and didn’t do anything for your self-confidence, which would have taken quite a hit as well.”

“I didn’t even know what was happening. I didn’t know what I did. I loved her as if there was no tomorrow,” he muttered, “and, yet for her, apparently it was just for today.”

“And maybe she needed to know that somebody out there could love her, that someone wouldn’t beat her up. Maybe that’s what she needed.”

“So why did she go back to him?”

“I don’t know, but now I’ll ask you a really tough question.”

“You think I don’t know what that question is?” he muttered, glaring at her. “You think I haven’t thought about it since you brought it up?”

“And yet did you have any idea who we were talking about?”

“No, except that I know Iris had a baby. And it was a while past us.”

“When you say a while ?”

“That I don’t know exactly,” he admitted. “I was kept out of the loop. She wouldn’t see me anymore. I just heard through the grapevine that she’d had a baby, and it pissed me off because it meant that she’d gone back to him right away, and that what we had together didn’t mean anything.”

“Or… she felt she had no choice. She was married, so she went back to her husband, as a good wife of that day, and did what she thought was the right thing to do at the time, trying to make up with her husband.”

“Maybe,” he muttered, staring at the wall behind her. “But now you’ve got me wondering if I had a child back then and didn’t even know it.”

“Did you ever ask her?”

“No, I tried to talk to her once, and she told me to get lost, and that it would be really bad for me if I didn’t.”

“She threatened you?”

“I saw it as more of a warning,” he clarified. “I think she was telling me that, if Buck found out again,… if I was found out talking to her, then it would go badly, more than the last time.”

“Of course. It’s not as if he would forgive, would he?”

“No, he would not,” Richie declared, with a headshake.

“As a man who finally married and had a family of your own, you know what he was feeling.”

Richie stared at her and slowly nodded. “I do understand that part,” he conceded, “but still, I left a part of my heart there with her.”

“Hopefully your wife didn’t know.”

“No, and she’s been dead and gone these many years,” he shared sadly. “Only after you lose everybody do you start looking back over your life and wonder how many more losses you can take and still not break.”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t have any experience with that level of loss. Although my life has been a mess lately, I think it’s got more to do with the level of love you felt.”

He stared at her, his gaze lighting first, and then his whole face. “That’s a good way to look at it. I did love her,” he admitted, “so whatever came from it would have been okay by me.”

“I guess the question then is, have you ever had your DNA checked?” she asked.

His eyebrows shot up, and he shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Are you serious? None of your family ever put their DNA into one of those genealogy sites and checked it out?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea. You can talk to Darren about that.” Then he winced and shook his head. “No, wait. Oh, please don’t.”

“Right.” She then asked, “Will you let me get your DNA tested? I’ll just pay for it privately,” she added, wincing to herself.

“I can pay,” Richie said. “I would like to know if that’s my baby or not.”

“Of course you would,” she agreed. “Okay, let me get a kit, and we’ll you tested. I don’t know what it costs.”

“It’s expensive,” he noted. “I heard somebody talking about it not all that long ago.”

“Okay then, and you’re okay to pay for it?” she asked, looking at him questioningly.

He nodded. “I will.”

“Okay, good.” And so she grabbed the animals, then turned to him and added, “I’ll get it as soon as possible.”

“Of course.” He gave her a bright smile, but the smile soon fell away. “Don’t say anything.”

“No, I won’t,” she said. “I won’t say a thing. Then, once we get the DNA results, if you want to say anything to anybody, you can do it yourself.”

“Will do,” he agreed, with a nod. “I highly suspect it will be something I take to my grave.”

“And that’s okay. That’s a decision you get to make, as long as—”

“Right,” he muttered, “depending on what the DNA test says in regard to this baby. I hear you,” he muttered. “Good enough.”

And, with that, she packed up the animals and headed out.