Chapter 10
Marg sent a text letting Ava know that she was cleared to start having unsupervised visitation with Chay and his family for Gracie. Sweet. This was going to work out, she felt it in her bones. Of course, she was going to have convince Chay that he wanted it as well.
Something she’d bring up when they were at his place.
It wasn’t going to be easy for him to hear, but Chay had the bones of a man who craved family.
Of course, that was her therapist training helping her to see that he needed it.
But the woman who was starting to fall for him…
well, Ava knew in a way she was pushing her own agenda.
Trying to get herself to a place where…she could feel safe enough to start dreaming of a future again, where she wasn’t alone.
Her phone rang, and she glanced down, seeing it was her mom. Chay had been called in to work and pushed their date to just dinner.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Just checking in on you and baby Gracie. Also I could use your help with the charity event I’m planning,” Mom said.
Her schedule wasn’t too hectic for the next few weeks. Though she had been spending most of her free time with Chay. “I can probably come over on Thursday. Will that work? Have you started a Pinterest board?”
“Sent you a invite this morning. I want to make sure this one stands out. I’ve already got a few photos of the vibe I want to create.” Mom ran the Colton Foundation as a nonprofit, because she always said wealth was vulgar. They held an annual spring event. She always ran the committee.
Her mom always delivered ideas, which took the events to the next level, which was probably why no one else volunteered when she asked if anyone else wanted to plan it.
Her mom’s creativity came naturally to her.
Ava struggled to see outside the box. She tended to be more this is how it’s always been.
“So with Gracie…”
“Yes. Do you need me to come over and hold that little sweetie?”
“When we visit. I can’t leave her alone with anyone who’s not court approved because of the investigation,” Ava warned her mother, not wanting her to be offended that she couldn’t really babysit.
Her mom was cool but sometimes mentioned that she hoped to be a grandmother someday.
Which Ava always warned her would be down to Ryan.
Though she was starting to have think seriously about having a family of her own again.
“Makes sense,” Mom said. “It’s so sad what happened to the mother. Do they know any more about her?”
“I don’t really think so,” she said; her mom was so easily distracted, and maybe that was a good thing. She wasn’t sure she wanted to tell her mom she was pushing Chay toward adopting Gracie. Yet she needed another perspective.
“Um…I’ve been seeing a guy who shares DNA markers with Gracie.
He’s not really ready to be a father, but he’s great with the baby and I think…
” Trailing off so maybe Mom would pick up what she was putting down without making her say it.
She’d always been bossy around people she cared about. It was her fatal flaw.
Her mom sighed heavily. “Honey, that’s a tough one. Not everyone wants to be a parent or is actually capable of doing it. I can tell from your tone that you want this guy to be Gracie’s adopted father, but that has to be his decision.”
“Of course. I meant more giving him opportunities to be around the baby and get to know her. I mean, until I started fostering, I never would have thought I was capable of taking care of a child.”
“Trial by fire. That’s what I said to your dad when we had you. Never had a clue what we were doing. You were a testing grounds,” her mom said with a laugh.
Ava laughed, too. She’d heard that story before and knew her folks had figured it all out as they were raising her. Sort of the way Ava was doing with Gracie.
“Thanks, Mom. Glad you got it right for Ryan.”
“Oh, I still was fumbling along. The main bit of advice I can give you and your friend is that there is no one way to parent. Kids are different and constantly changing. Once you figure out something that works…it no longer does. Kept me on my toes.”
Her mom had an interesting way of looking at parenting, and it did make sense. Pushing Chay hard wasn’t going to work—he’d just get his back up. She’d adapt her plan so that he was just with Gracie more. And since they were sort of dating, that made sense.
“I’ll see you on Thursday. Gotta run, I have a client in fifteen minutes and need time to prep.”
“Perfect. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Hanging up the phone, she knew she had to be very careful how she moved forward with Chay. Marg had gone to the courts to get permission for Chay and Aponi to have visitation at Ava’s suggestion. But in her mind it was a first step. Something she wasn’t sure how Chay would react.
No one liked to be told that someone had done something in their own best interest. Sounded like Ava was butting into his life. Which she one hundred percent was.
She wasn’t sure how she’d feel if Chay did that to her.
But she wanted to try. For the first time since Greg’s car accident, she felt like she was ready to risk her heart.
Dating him had made her feel so much happiness. Taking out her phone, she glanced down at a photo she’d taken of him and Gracie when he’d been cuddling the baby. Her heart felt full and her pulse sped up.
Her gut told her that pushing him to be Gracie’s father was the right thing to do.
Not just for Gracie, but for him as well.
Chay needed someone to give all that love to.
While she hoped that they’d continue to fall for each other, there were no guarantees.
A child of his own, though…that could be the answer.
Following his leads on the different women who’d gone missing, Chay built a pattern. A lot of times his old sergeant used to say that the truth reveals itself in circles or squares—there’s always a line connecting everything.
That resonated with Chay. There had been a line connecting him and his mom to the Navajo Nation here in Utah, one that she’d tried to sever so many times, but even in death she couldn’t.
Same with baby Gracie. Her mom had brought her here…maybe looking for the father. Though there was no DNA connection to the father, and Chay’s gut told him it would be hard to find. But there had to be a line somewhere.
He’d have to go back and trace his mom’s path after she’d left him. It was entirely possibly she could have had another son. She’d spent a lot of her time high or drunk and hooking up in different places they’d stayed in. But he wasn’t entirely sure how to find a child that she’d never mentioned.
She’d left him in Utah and died in Atlanta.
She’d hated to fly so would have driven or hitched her way across the country.
Too much territory to cover? For a lazy man, Chay thought.
He wasn’t going to make it a priority, because he had a case he was working on.
But he knew he couldn’t let this go. If he had a sibling…
were they still alive? Did they want their kid?
Hell, that was the main reason why he was reluctant to have a child of his own. Children were vulnerable in ways that affected them as adults. He’d never asked his grandmother what it was his mom was running from. She’d never volunteered it, but Chay could guess it had to be here.
Mom had never wanted to live on the Navajo Nation again. She wanted to be a part of the bigger world. Had sought a path that would keep her out of here. Until him.
She’d never said she regretted him, but she hadn’t had to.
He’d guessed.
His phone rang. Happily shoving away those thoughts, he answered it.
“Officer Benally.”
“Chay, it’s Jacob Colton. Are you getting anywhere with the database?”
“You were on my list to call this morning. I am. There’s a pattern, but it’s loose to say the least.” He gave Jacob a rundown of all he’d found.
There were fifteen women in total whose missing-persons circumstances matched Fern Hensley and Camille Lancaster.
“But the locations are all over the state of Utah. So motive…I’ve got nothing. ”
“I have a call in to the town where Fern lived to speak to the officer who took the report there. I’m also hoping to hear back from Victor Olson at the Wilson Police Department. The reports I’ve gotten online are pretty standard. Not much detail. It’s always better to have a chat.”
“Definitely is. I will give him a call as well, see if I can rattle his cage. I’m still trying to get more details from Fern but won’t push.”
“Yeah, I talked with her. That part of the job—talking to victims—is the hardest part.”
“I’ve got no love for it, either.”
Jacob hung up a few minutes later, both of them agreeing to touch base in a few days. Chay spent the rest of the morning reaching out to the different police stations trying to speak to the officers who’d written the reports.
He spoke to two, and both times their statements were similar. They victim was a solitary woman with few connections other than jobs or maybe a neighbor. He already knew they’d all come out of the foster care system and asked each officer if they’d spoken to the care homes.
They hadn’t, because as far as they had been concerned, it was an isolated incident in their town.
Chay added that to his list of to-dos. Maybe these women had something that the police reports were missing. Were they all extremely beautiful or had blond hair or a skill set that no one else knew about?
Where was the line?
Taking out a yellow notepad, he wrote down, foster care—that’s the first line. Where had the girls come from? Could that be the second line?
They’d all been taken, which was a line at the bottom. He drew one. Making it a curve and adding in the cities they’d been taken in. Plotting out the distance between them all.
Pulling the map toward him, he tried to see if there was a pattern there. But they were all equal distance apart.