The Beast

SEVENTY-TWO

Sitting in the back of I’ve Bean, Jo looked up as Bill came over to the table. “We have to stop meeting like this.”

The reporter laughed as he sat down with his latte. “So, good news.”

“You found the restaurant Julio was talking about downtown?”

“No, you got the online-editor position. They’re going to call you in about an hour and officially offer it. They wouldn’t tell me what the salary is, but it has to be in the low thirties.”

Jo pumped her fist. “Yes. Yes. That is awesome—I can start right after I finish my notice period at Bryant’s.”

“Do you know he called me?”

“What?”

Bill unwrapped another one of his scarves and draped it over the back of his chair. “Yeah. I think he’s obsessed with you. He wanted to know whether or not we were dating.”

“You’re married.”

“I pointed this out to him. P.S., Lydia wants to invite you over for dinner Saturday night. My cousin’s coming. Troy, you remember him.”

“Tell her I’d love to. What can I bring?”

“Just yourself and not Dougie.”

“Done.”

There was a slight pause, something she didn’t associate with the guy who had somehow become her older brother over the last week or so.

“What is it?” she said.

Bill looked around the crowded coffee shop like he was in search of a familiar face in the crowd. More likely, he was picking out words in his head.

“Employment is good,” she prompted. “Dinner is good. Soooooo . . .”

“I don’t want you to get pissed at me, but I looked into your adoption.”

Jo’s heart stopped. Then started thumping. “What did you . . . what did you find? And you had no right to do that, yada, yada, yada.”

If he’d asked her, she would have said no. But considering he’d clearly found something?

Bill reached into the pocket of his corduroy coat and took out a sheaf of papers that was folded length-wise. “Your birth mother was a nurse. Up in Boston. She left the hospital there when she found out she was pregnant. Back then, in the seventies, single mothers weren’t viewed the same, and she had a son that she gave up for adoption. She stayed, continued to work in various places. Fifteen years later, she gets pregnant again, by the same guy. She never married him, though. Not from what I saw. It was definitely the same man, though, according to diary entries that were copied and put into the file. This time, with you, she moved away, came here, settled in Caldwell. When she had you, she didn’t make it, unfortunately. It was a high-risk pregnancy because she was older by that time. She never disclosed who your father was, however, and there were no next of kin who came forward to claim you.”

Jo sat back in the chair and felt all the noise and the people around her disappear. Brother? And her mother had died . . .

“I wonder if she would have kept me,” she said quietly.

“Your father—your adoptive one, that is—had asked a lawyer to keep his eyes out for possible babies at St. Francis here in town. As soon as your birth mom died, he paid to claim you and it was done.”

“And that’s that.”

“Not exactly.” Bill took a deep breath. “I found your brother. Kind of.”

The reporter put a black-and-white photograph down on the table. It was of a dark-haired man she didn’t recognize. Who was about forty years old.

“His name is Dr. Manuel Manello. He was the chief of surgery at St. Francis. But he went off the grid over a year ago, and no one’s really seen him since.”

With a shaking hand, Jo picked up the picture, searching the features, finding some that, yes, were like her own. “We both ended up in the same place . . .”

“Caldwell has a way of bringing people together.”

“We have the same-shaped eyes.”

“Yes, you do.”

“They look hazel, don’t you think? Or maybe they’re brown eyes.”

“I can’t tell.”

“May I keep this?”

“Please. And I’m sorry I stuck my nose in where it arguably didn’t belong. But I just started digging and couldn’t stop. I wasn’t sure what I’d find, so I didn’t say anything.”

“It’s okay,” she said without looking up. “And thank you. I . . . I always wondered what my blood looked like.”

“We can try to find him, you know?”

Now she lifted her eyes. “You think?”

“Sure. We’re investigative reporters, right? Even if he’s left Caldwell, there must be some way of locating him. It’s extremely hard in modern life to go completely blank. Too many electronic records, you know.”

“Bill, are you some kind of fairy godfather?”

He nodded and toasted with his latte. “At your service.”

A brother, Jo thought as she resumed staring at the image of an arguably handsome face.

“Just one brother?” she murmured, even though it was greedy, she supposed, to want more.

“Who knows. That’s all your mom seems to have given birth to. But maybe through your dad’s side? Anyway, maybe there’s some way of finding him. The trail might be cold, but we could get lucky.”

“You know, this whole vampire search is such a distraction.” She smiled ruefully. “I’m well aware that they don’t really exist, and certainly not in Caldwell. I think it would be better to start looking for my real family than some fake fantasy, don’t you think.”

“Maybe that’s why you went a little crazy with it all. Although I admit, I’ve been right there with you.”

“Family,” she murmured, still staring at the picture. “Real family. That’s what I want to find.”