Father Of The Brat

Carver didn’t like that line of reasoning one bit. And it still didn’t prove a damned thing. Abby Stillman had been a real party girl. She hadn’t exactly been promiscuous, but she had liked men. A lot. And there had been plenty of men in Guatemala besides him back then. Any one of them could be this Rachel kid’s father. His name on an official document didn’t mean anything, and he told the caseworker so.

Unfortunately, M. H. Garrett and the state of Pennsylvania saw things a little differently. “Sorry,” she told him, “but as long as you’re listed as Rachel Stillman’s father on her birth certificate, the law says you’re responsible for her now that her mother is dead. Unless you go to court and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the girl is not your daughter.”

“Then I’ll go to court and prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“Fine. In the meantime, just make sure you show up at the airport tomorrow morning at eleven-thirty, a half hour before Rachel’s plane arrives. You and I are both going to be there to meet her.”

That said, M. H. Garrett, Caseworker, scooped up her impressive array of documents and stuffed them back into her satchel, snapping the briefcase shut with all the aplomb and confidence of Clarence Darrow. Then she stood and collected her trench coat from the rack by the door and shrugged back into it.

“USAir flight number 422,” she said as she turned up her collar. “Arrives at 12:04 p.m. Be there, Mr. Venner, or risk the wrath of the Child Welfare Office.”

He chuckled, a derisive sound completely lacking in mirth. “Oh, and I’m supposed to be terrified of a bunch of overextended social workers who don’t even have the time or organization to tell me I’ve become a father.”

At his assertion, M. H. Garrett slouched a little, looking even more tired than Carver felt. “Yeah,” she said. “You’re supposed to be terrified of us. Maybe we’re overextended, disorganized and pressed for time, but at least we care about our kids. And maybe we don’t always get the job done right, but we do our best.”

She reached behind herself for the doorknob and pulled the door open, but her gaze never left his. “I’ve been assigned to your case, Mr. Venner, and I’m going to do my best to make sure that you and your daughter get situated properly. If you need counseling, I’ll arrange it. If you need financial assistance, I’ll see what I can do. If you need help getting her enrolled in school, I’ll take care of it.”

“And if I need the services of a lawyer to prove this is all just a scam?” he asked pointedly.

“Then you’re on your own. Although I do have legal counsel at my disposal, I’ll only notify them if you don’t show up at the airport tomorrow or if you conveniently decide to leave town. Like I said, I’ll do what I can for you and the girl. Because as far as I’m concerned, and as far as the law is concerned, Rachel Stillman is your daughter.”

He was about to object again when he decided it would probably be fruitless to do so. He knew a good lawyer, one who’d pulled his butt out of a sling on more than one occasion. This Rachel Stillman thing would be a piece of cake for her. Before the kid’s plane hit the runway, Carver would be off the hook.

He watched M. H. Garrett’s back as she descended the stairs, still rattling his brain trying to remember where he knew her from. He even stepped out into the hallway to lean over the banister, and continued to observe her until her dark head disappeared into the stairwell completely.

Only when she was safely out of sight did it finally strike Carver in a burst of memory where he had met her. And once he remembered, he immediately recalled what the M.H. stood for. It didn’t stand for Mostly Harmless. It stood for Madelaine Helena. He also recalled that although Maddy was a lot of things, as far as he was concerned, harmless wasn’t one of them.

Madelaine Garrett settled herself wearily into the driver’s seat of her aged sedan and sighed. She told herself she should be worrying about the outcome of the Stillman case. Or about the outcome of any number of cases assigned to her docket. She told herself she should be studying the ragged city map in her glove compartment to locate the address of the next family she had to visit that day. She told herself she should even be thinking about what she was going to do for lunch, since she hadn’t consumed anything but coffee for more than seven hours. Instead, only one thought meandered through her brain.

Carver Venner hadn’t remembered her. He hadn’t recognized her at all.

Uncertain whether she was happy or sad about the realization, she angled the rearview mirror down toward herself and studied her reflection. Had she really changed that much since she had last seen him? Her face was still oval shaped, and her fair skin was still almost too pale. Her eyes were still brown and her hair was still black, albeit significantly touched with gray and considerably shorter than the waist-length tresses she had sported twenty years ago. The glasses she wore now weren’t so very different from those she had worn throughout high school, but these days they were considered fashionable instead of geeky.

Although she had been a little on the pudgy side as a teenager, she reminded herself. And she had shed all her surplus weight and more while going through her divorce five years ago. She was quite a bit thinner now than she had been as an adolescent—really too thin, she knew—something that made her eyes seem larger and her lips fuller than they had been before, something that more clearly defined what had turned out to be surprisingly stark cheekbones. Maybe that was why Carver hadn’t recognized her, she thought.

Or maybe he hadn’t recognized her, she pondered further, because she simply wasn’t anything at all like the kid he’d known at Strickler High School. Maddy leaned her head back against the seat and inhaled an unsteady breath. Boy, would Carver laugh hysterically if he only knew how right he’d been about so many things.

She turned the key in the ignition and waited for a moment while her little car sputtered to life. It groaned and grated and finally choked itself into gear, and Maddy drove forward with no particular destination in mind.

She had thirty-two cases assigned to her at the moment, not one of which showed any promise of turning out well. When the Rachel Stillman file had landed on her desk, she had at first embraced high hopes for it. Only when she’d realized the man she would be informing of Rachel’s existence was Carver Venner had she tried to get someone else to take the case. She’d pleaded with Vivian and Mohammed to pay back favors they owed her, and had even tried to bribe Eric. But, like she, everyone else at Welfare was overburdened with casework as it was. As usual, no one had the time.

Maddy caught sight of a fast-food chain up ahead and flipped on her right turn signal to make a quick stop at the drive-thru. When she exited with a greasy cheeseburger and fries and diet soda in hand, however, she suddenly lost her appetite. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually been hungry. Funny, at one time food had been her greatest comforter. Nowadays, even the most decadent confection in the world couldn’t ease the feelings of hopelessness that wanted to drag her down.

She pulled into the parking lot of a downtown Philly church and reached into the glove compartment for her map. Another new case, she thought as she flipped through her binder looking for the name of the family in question. Another lost cause.

She suddenly felt overwhelmed, a feeling she had to battle every minute of the day lately. It was all Carver’s fault, she thought. Seeing him again had made her ache for a time in her life when things had been so much simpler, so much happier.

“God, Maddy,” she scolded herself as she finally located the file she’d been seeking. Immediately she ignored it and stared blindly out the window at the passing traffic instead. “If you’re thinking of high school as a simpler, happier time, you’re definitely getting maudlin in your old age. Not to mention delusional.”

Her years at Strickler High School had been neither particularly simple, nor especially happy. The only child of parents who had adored her to the point of sheltering her from everything that might make her unhappy, Maddy Saunders had been the nerdy kid who wore the wrong clothes, listened to the wrong music and read way too many books. She’d been the brainy girl with big glasses, the only one in Chemistry who’d thought logarithms were a piece of cake, the only one in English who’d thought Lysistrata was hilarious.

She’d always been the nice kid. The other students, when they’d bothered to think of her at all, had referred to her as “Goody.” As in “Goody Two-shoes,” as in “Good God, she’s so naive.” The nickname hadn’t bothered Maddy, though. She’d considered it a compliment. Because back then, it had been true. She’d been a good girl with a good mind, good manners and a good heart. And twenty years ago, she’d also been something else she wasn’t anymore and would never be again—an optimist. She had always been certain that the world was, in essence, a good place, a place where she could make a difference.

Boy, what a laugh that was, she thought now. Had she ever been that innocent? That naive? That stupid? Everyone else at Strickler High had seemed to think so. Especially Carver Venner. But Carver had differed from the other kids in one respect: where the others had pretty much overlooked and dismissed her, he’d seemed to single her out on a regular basis. He’d teased her relentlessly, infuriated her daily, and generally made a mockery of her decency.

And then there was that episode during the senior play, that kiss behind the cave scenery during Act One of Macbeth. Even if it had been brief and passionless, and even if he had only meant it as something else to make her crazy, Carver’s kiss had been the first one Maddy had ever received from a boy. As maddening as Carver Venner had been, she’d never been able to forget him because of that.

And now, dammit, he had to come barreling back into her life. When she least expected it, when she was ill-equipped to handle it.

She closed her eyes and remembered again the way he had looked when he’d thrown open his front door. Half naked, with his dark hair falling over his forehead and his unshaven jaw set in exasperation, he’d looked like some brooding gothic hero. So incredibly masculine. An odd thrill of excitement had wound through Maddy unlike anything she’d ever felt. He’d been a wiry kid back in high school, she remembered. Now he was solid rock.

The moment she’d seen him, she’d been nearly overcome by an inexplicable urge to lean against him and feel his arms around her. For some reason she still couldn’t figure out, she had wanted to bury her face in his neck and inhale great gulps of him. She’d wanted him to make her feel as strong as he looked. Instead, she hadn’t even let him know who she was. Because that would have been a foolish thing to do. That would have made him remember too many things, too.

After her divorce, Maddy had only kept her married name because it would have been too inconvenient and timeconsuming to change it back to Saunders. She’d never thought she would have a reason to be thankful she’d kept Dennis Garrett’s name, especially since she hadn’t been able to keep Dennis. But because she was no longer Maddy Saunders—neither literally not figuratively—there was absolutely no reason for Carver Venner to find out who he was actually dealing with. Her time with him and his daughter would be minimal, then she could slip discreetly out of their lives without a backward glance never to see Carver again.

How very like him to have fathered a child without even knowing it, she thought.

Pushing the memory of Carver away, Madelaine Garrett blew an errant strand of hair out of her eyes, found the street she’d been looking for on the map and lurched her little car back into gear. She didn’t have to think about him any more today, she told herself. Tomorrow would be soon enough.

And suddenly, for no good reason she could name—and for the first time in years—Madelaine Garrett was actually looking forward to the following day.

Two

Carver arrived at the airport even earlier than he’d been instructed, but not because he was excited about seeing this kid that the state of Pennsylvania insisted was his daughter. Simply put, he was quite certain she wasn’t. He couldn’t imagine why Abby Stillman would have tagged him for paternity, but he was convinced there was no way he could be responsible for some kid who’d been running around L.A. for twelve years. The idea that he had been a father for that long—or for any amount of time—without even knowing it was simply too troubling for Carver to consider.

Unfortunately for him, however, according to his lawyer, he was indeed going to have to prove his conviction in a court of law. Still, she’d told him it shouldn’t be such a difficult thing to do—a simple DNA test would give the needed evidence. It was only a matter of time before this whole mess was cleared up.

In the meantime, however, Carver had to play by the rules of the Child Welfare Office. Yet even his legal obligation wasn’t the real reason he had come to the airport today. No, if he was perfectly honest with himself, he knew the real reason he’d come, the reason he’d even arrived early, was because he was curious about the social worker assigned to his case. The more he’d thought about her since her departure the day before, the more convinced he had become that M. H. Garrett was in fact Maddy Saunders, a girl he’d known way back in high school, when the world was a warmer, happier place.

A girl, he recalled now, who had always driven him nuts.

Maddy Saunders had been the most infuriating human being Carver Venner had ever met, a Pollyanna of obscene proportions. She had been convinced that the world was full of goodness and light and that the media just made things seem bad to make more money. She had been certain that the people who ran the country had nothing but good intentions and only the welfare of the American people at heart. She had thought it was only a matter of time before inflation was whipped, violent crime was crushed, and poverty was overcome. Her self-professed role model had been Mary Poppins.

She had, quite frankly, made Carver sick.

As if roused by his musings, the woman in question came walking down the terminal toward him, her beige tailored skirt skimming just below her knees, her cream-colored shirt nearly obscured by her massive trench coat. She took her time approaching him, as if reluctant to get too close, her battered satchel banging against her calf all the way.

Funny, Carver thought as he contemplated the wellturned legs below the skirt, he’d never noticed before what great gams Maddy Saunders had.

She seemed to slow her pace when she looked up and saw him, something that convinced him even more completely that he’d been right about her identity. As soon as she was close enough for her to hear him, he dipped his head once in her direction and greeted her simply, “Maddy.”

She blushed as if she were a four-year-old child caught in her first lie. “So, you, uh, you remember me after all.”

He smiled wryly. “You’re not exactly someone I could easily forget.”

His statement didn’t require a comment, and she didn’t seem any too willing to offer one. Instead she only stood there looking at him in that unnerving way she had the day before. Little by little, the silence between them stretched and became more disconcerting. And little by little, Carver began to feel the same edginess Maddy Saunders had always roused in him.

“Boy, you sure whacked your hair,” he finally said, unable to keep himself from reaching out to tuck a short strand behind her ear. Immediately after completing the action, he dropped his hand back to his side, surprised and unsettled at how easily the gesture had come. Twenty years seemed to dissolve into nothing, and he was suddenly right back at Strickler High, sneaking up on Maddy to tug on the long, black braid that had always beckoned to him.

“I had it cut short a long time ago,” she told him as she lifted her own hand to put the strand of hair back where it had been before he touched her. He decided he must have imagined the way her fingers seemed to shake almost imperceptibly as she did so. “It was getting to be too much trouble to take care of. I didn’t have the time.”

He nodded, letting his gaze wander over the rest of her. “You’ve dropped a lot of weight, too.”

She sighed, as if giving in to what would be an inevitable line of questioning. “Yes. I have.”

“You’re too skinny.”

“I know.”

He frowned at her unwillingness to communicate—her unwillingness to spar with him—when that was what the two of them had excelled at in high school. Then he remembered that he’d always had a talent for saying something that would rile her into a state of agitated verbosity. He smiled. “And your name is Garrett now. Finally found some poor bastard to marry you, huh?”

She nodded, then hesitated only a moment before adding, “And divorce me.”

Carver’s smile fell. “Oh. Sorry. Or…or should I say congratulations?”

She stared him square in the eye as she said, “He left me six years ago for a grad student who was his teaching assistant. I couldn’t have been more surprised than I was when I came home one night to find him packing his bag. It just seemed like such a cliché, you know? Sometimes I still have trouble believing it happened.”

Carver nodded slowly and bit his lip. Yeah, he’d always known the right thing to say around Maddy, all right. And she’d always been able to make him feel like a total jerk. “I assume, then, that he taught college?”

Maddy almost smiled at his lame attempt to change the subject and cover his gaffe. Almost. “He still does,” she said. “Don’t worry. I didn’t set fire to him while he was sleeping or anything. Dennis is a physics professor at Villanova.”

Carver shoved his hands deep into the back pockets of his jeans and tried to think of something to say. For some reason, he suddenly felt very awkward. Not that he hadn’t always felt that way around Maddy, but this was a different kind of awkward. He just couldn’t quite put his finger on why.

“Figures you’d marry a brain,” he finally said.

Maddy did smile at that. A small smile, granted, but it wasn’t bad. “Figures you’d never marry at all,” she replied.

This time Carver was the one to sigh. “Yeah, well, there never seemed to be time, you know? Or the right woman.”

Maddy nodded, but said nothing.

“So you’re not Maddy Saunders anymore,” he said.

“Not in any way, shape or form,” she assured him. Before he could press her to elaborate, she rushed on, “Rachel’s plane is going to be about an hour late getting in. You want to go grab some lunch while we wait?”

“Sure. Why not?”

They found their way to a small café and ordered sandwiches and coffee, then passed the time indulged in idle, meaningless chitchat. Hadn’t it been great going to college after having been so stifled by high school? Wasn’t it amazing how little they’d known back then about what it took to be a grown-up? How could anyone survive in this economy when interest rates kept going sky-high?

“Why did your husband take a powder?”

The words were out of Carver’s mouth before he’d even fully formed the question in his brain. He was appalled by his nosiness and lack of discretion. Then again, he reminded himself, he was an investigative reporter. His nosiness and lack of discretion had landed him some pretty great stories, not to mention that Pulitzer. Unfortunately, judging by the expression on Maddy’s face, he wasn’t about to win any awards for those characteristics today.

She stared at him from over the rim of her mug, her dark eyes revealing nothing of what she might be thinking. She took her time to sip her coffee, then carefully replaced the mug back on the table. Finally she replied, “Why do you ask? I would think you above all people would understand why Maddy Saunders would drive a man away. God knows you spent enough time making me feel like a misfit in high school.”

“I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have asked,” he apologized. “It’s really none of my business. I don’t know what made me say that.” After a moment, he added, “And I’m sorry if I ever made you feel bad when we were at Strickler. I was a dumb kid back then. I never thought about anyone but myself.”

She picked carelessly through the remains of her sandwich, most of which, he noted, had been untouched. “You weren’t any worse than any of the others,” she said softly. “Hell, at least you took the time to notice me.”

Carver had never heard Maddy swear in his life. She’d always been way too nice to do something like curse. There were so many things about her that had changed over the years, he marveled. Not only did she look like a completely different person, but she acted differently, too. Maddy Saunders, though very nice, had never been the quiet, reserved type. Now just getting her to talk was becoming a challenge. He could scarcely believe she was the same person he’d known so long ago.

If she noticed his lack of a response, she didn’t let on. And in spite of it not being any of his business, she didn’t seem unwilling to share the facts of her past with him. She shrugged, sipped her coffee again, and said, “The fact is that Dennis left me for what he considered a very good reason. He wanted kids. I didn’t. So he found someone else who did. He and his new wife are expecting their second child in January.”

“Maddy, you don’t have to—”

“It’s no big deal, really.”

“Okay. If you say so.”

“I say so.”

Carver hesitated only a moment before pressing his luck. “It’s just that I always remember you saying you wanted to have about ten kids when you got married because the world needed more people like you in it, and—”

“It’s no big deal,” she repeated, enunciating each word thoroughly, as if he were a child incapable of understanding otherwise.

“Okay, it’s no big deal,” he relented, still wondering about the source of his sudden, unusually intense, curiosity about Maddy.

“Fine. Now that we’ve got that all cleared up…” She glanced down at her watch and quickly swallowed the last of her coffee. “We should be going,” she said pointedly, reaching out to collect the bill.

“I’ve got that.” Carver intercepted, snatching up the scrap of paper before she had a chance to grab it.

“It’s no trouble,” she assured him. “I’m on an expense account.”

“But it’s supposedly my kid we’re going to meet.”

“Carver…”

It was the first time she’d called him by his given name, and hearing Maddy say it again after so many years, in exactly the same, exasperated way she had in high school whenever he was giving her a hard time about something, made him smile. “I’ve got it,” he said again. “My treat.”

She smiled, too, and shook her head. “Being around you has never been a treat.”

His smile broadened. “Oh, come on, Maddy, admit it. You had a huge crush on me back in high school.”

He thought he saw a soft pink stain creep into her cheeks at his allegation, but he wasn’t sure.

“That’s ridiculous,” she assured him. “Why would I want to have anything to do with an overbearing, cynical, sarcastic egomaniac like you? Besides, you were always too thin.”

He patted his belly. “Yeah, I can’t believe I only weighed 150 when I graduated from high school. Age has added about thirty pounds to this carcass.”

And all of it exquisitely arranged and proportioned, Maddy thought as Carver turned to make his way toward the cashier. Funny, she’d never noticed what a nice tush he had. She felt her face flame and covered her cheeks with her cool hands before he could see her reaction and sense the waywardness of her thoughts.

Good heavens, what had come over her? Clearly she’d gone too long without any kind of male companionship, she told herself. That could be the only reason for why she was so thoroughly turned on by Carver Venner.